MASD Board Meeting - September 12th, 2022

001good evening everyone this is the madison school district board meeting on monday uh september 12 2022 and the time is only just exactly 6 30. 6 31 and so i'm calling this meeting to order i don't think there are any introductions that need to be made so we will uh does anybody have any changes or additions to the agenda okay um public participation oh no sorry approval of minutes did everybody have a chance to look through the minutes from the last two meetings [Music] i will take a motion to approve the minutes from uh august 8th and also september 6th so moved second um does anybody have any comments or questions about the minutes if you're a nun i'll do a roll call vote on this uh bill how do you vote hi and davis

002what about you i [Music] rebecca how about you hi amy hi [Music] and i am an so the minutes have been approved unanimously uh did you ask amy or me i'm sorry nancy i i said i for aim i wrote your name down i'm sorry i apologize and i did ask amy she's sitting here next to me and she said i um christine who is would you mind putting a since we can only see nine of the ten people on would you mind showing who's uh yeah let's see if i can just something like this i need to do it on the animal i think right okay change the way out okay i should see everybody so we have one member of the public here okay all right our next item is public participations um

003we uh have a chance we have changed our agenda to reflect the change in public participation which is to say that uh it now has the agenda now has directions at the bottom on how to contact our board and uh uh the comments which are sent to the board may or may not be publicly read out it's sort of at the board's discretion but um uh the email addresses are all all listed there does anybody have any public comments or announcements i do um oh i'm sorry you meant like public no where upon getting out of my car larry dower he saw me and he called me into the building and he showed me an amazing um would say yeah dining hall it's it's more like a cafe it's gorgeous and i recommend anyone and

004everyone after this meeting to just kind of meander it was finished at five just before this video yeah 30 this evening looks amazing excellent yeah amy i gotta show you something [Music] but it's very exciting and that was through the capital research i heard a bloop from someone [Music] bill asked if there are changes or additions or please get that bill uh i already called out for changes or auditions do you have a change or addition that you'd like to make yes i must have emotionally phased out there or something um i thought we were going to or am i missing it on the agenda uh the uh i discussed the start of the school day i'm sorry it's not on the agenda but uh we can add it under d well my suggestion may

005be to add it to the preliminary budget discussion because it may actually coincide with that i think we talked about it at the su meeting bill no we talked about talking about it during this meeting so i brought i did bring it up at the su meeting and i did and and then i asked elizabeth after i i mean i did put my spiel out there i asked elizabeth if this would be more appropriate during the um scotty and she agreed with me so i apologize bill that is um [Music] so we'll put it we can add it on to the preliminary budget discussion okay does anybody else have a an announcement that they would like to make or public participation of some sort okay hearing none um uh well uh actually um kate would

006you mind giving us since we're not going to meet again until after homecoming would you mind giving us the rundown of homecoming uh days yeah sure it's on our slideshow so do you want to do that you want to do the report or do you want to like how do you want to do this i'm happy to help uh well no that's fine you could say before the slideshow absolutely fine okay let's go to the administrative report do you want me to share [Music] sure okay is that easier sure uh i will kick off with a few notes from jen baldridge who wasn't able to be here tonight she did a recording of her talking over the slides which we're not able to access at the moment so i'll do my level best and jennifer

007may have to correct the record for things that i don't say quite correctly but anyways here we go um i think it's been a great kickoff at abs there are some pictures up on the first slide that she has there of some of the first days and some of the main themes that she has noted there she has talked a lot about full school morning meetings some of which are starting the student led which is really exciting in line with our leader me initiative this is the work that even certainly all schools are doing right now building community in classrooms building learning community and certainly that has begun a yes uh some new exciting things where celebrations that she has noted here are hot food that sounds that's always we all always like that that's

008great outdoor fun uh starting to get into those outdoor spaces and set norms expectations around their use as a learning environment which is really exciting celebrating new friends new classmates and certainly new staff to the abs building which is super great no school year start is without some challenges so there have been some notes about after school care and some problem solving there certainly after school care when it comes to transportation i think i can touch on that in just a second and then keeping food hot as i believe it's made here and then brought over exciting problem solving around that as well but i think the liftoff has been really really great there and we do a lot of placements of education and community which is exciting the after-school needs i'll try to dig

009in a little bit here and then um perhaps jen can follow up with their specific questions and they don't have the answers to these parts i know that she has done some work to gather some data on the needs and just provide the survey and she has some of the initial data there in the orange box on responses and they're looking to problem solve around that there are a couple notes here about where jen and the team are in process problem solving with the afternoons working with potential staff members and potential models working with dcf on the licensure pieces and what the process will need to look like depending on where they are working with jessica brody selectboard which is where i believe jennifer is tonight and then reaching out to the btg program housed

010here at windsor and other possibilities um what does she mean by do you know what she means by reaching out to bridging the gap um to yeah but potential of more have there been families turned away from me did you yes there have been because we're licensed here for a certain number uh-huh we reached our max so i don't think they were able to accommodate all the abs needs to help correct on that yeah i think it's a staffing issue i think we could have snapped it for enough people and like they've tried and i think they're still trying um but i i'm not positive but i i think that that was it [Music] uh next steps jennifer has in green there uh engaging with the town and the rec department there's some of that

011she may be doing now uh getting clarity on what's still needed uh for licensure from last year it sounds like some of that work was uh in the works and then collaborating with the team in place there to come up with some creative solutions um are you fully apprised of the licensing problem i think so yeah okay can you describe because my understanding last year was from david that he was working with emily who ran the adventure club last year to get it licensed what to know what happened so i think in case katie can uh chime in the application may have been started but it's pretty intense when you are licensing a new facility and program so there's two parts to it but the actual physical space in the program um so i think

012one option jen was exploring was could btg be the parent and have a like a satellite office out at abs it would be quicker to license that way the space and not the program because the program is already licensed btg is already licensed you can chime them because that's about all i know but now that's pretty much episode the difference between etg already meets all the licensure requirements and up staffing training all of those pieces and what kind of program they run supervision and everything else so when you're starting from scratch you're trying to get someone to license the people the program the approaches all of that the licensure and then the physical space so if you already have an established early childhood program that already has an after-school program and they're running a satellite

013they would just need to add that satellite in their program is already licensed and then you just have to get the plant licensure done which is a lot easier than that part of is the space accessible and all the rest of it for early for for after school programs so that's why the process there's a big there's a large process for our actions and you still need staff and then when we met would be teaching in the spring when heartland lost their after-school program um it has to balance fiscally like there have to be enough children in the program to make it work as well so it's just so i think jen was collecting data to figure out how many kids would actually use the program to see if it would physically sound as well

014because uh we've been here several times before asking btg if they would let an after-school program adventure club specifically yeah be under their their wing and they've said no every time that we've asked because it needs to be their program and their staff right because that's where the licensure lies that's why what my what my question is is what's different about now versus uh that btg would be running the program and the curriculum and the supports and everything else they would be the same director there and everything okay okay i was misunderstanding that yeah okay okay yeah good which doesn't mean it could look a little bit different and take its own flavor in a different place but that would then also need to be approved through licensure okay so it's hard to start a

015program from scratch thinking it's the same process you would have to start if you're starting your own licensed daycare you really have to prove everything tonight or be around school or yeah yeah um uh do you do you know much about the status of me teaching i know kate probably knows just about as much as i do that they've been struggling with staffing on yet and we put it out to the staff here as well um a couple of different times to see if they were interested in working btg but they there as christine said they're at the max of the number of kids they can take with the staff that they have and they have a couple really great volunteers but those students don't count as against their staffing numbers so i think it's

016they have three adults kate and i remember very correctly that are consistent adults i think it's only i think it's only two consistent adults occasionally you see three but yeah it's two which would i think puts them at twenty twenty five sorry it limits them and katie uh katie carey's been trying like she wants to expand the program she's always looked for this opportunity and looked for it before and now it just can't stop it so it's two adults at a sub right now okay um and do you have any idea what uh what they're doing at the select board regarding [Music] uh what their idea is about well i think they're exploring um because in some towns the rec department runs the after school program and i don't think that westminster has um a

017rec department so i think they're engaging in conversation about that is that is that feasible is it possible and if so could the rec department um run the after school program so i think she's trying to explore all options and it is you know it's difficult it is it is child care and the school wants to support and help but it's tr it is child care for families so there is it's an added ask with the school um so she's doing her best but she's she's also running school during the day yeah and it's it's a challenge everywhere yeah rec departments are having a hard time hiring people to to manage their after-school programs and [Music] we're not the only school i know that two rivers supervise reunion can't manage an after-school program right now

018because they can't find this down yeah and it's hard you know west windsor is particularly hard because can't get it's hard to get somebody to go to brownsville right for two hours yeah two and a half hours i mean ideally it could be if we could find the staffing it would be it's always been that's always been the linchpin right yeah i mean since since we've lived at brownsville it's yeah you know it's always been problematic yeah um i i i mean jen is definitely doing her due diligence to try to figure out i'm not doubting that i'm just asking asking questions it's hard for families i mean we know that well we don't have any child care in brownsville yeah at all so rebecca i see that you raised your hand yes thank you

019um is the problem also um or is it um that there there is an inconsistency in how many you know children um are are coming into the school system and how many children need child care i i'm just wondering if that number has remained constant or has it changed um and i'm not only talking about um covet but prior to covet well as far as i know it's really always been about staffing and there there's always been around 20 kids who have needed uh after school care um and there's always you know that it's been it's been kind of troubling along for years any other questions on that nope sure um we obviously have a school counselor need as noted passport meetings uh filled and desired middle school counseling position and also certainly an unfilled

020and desired high school guidance counselor position so we have started the collaboration with the new hire school counselor over at abs here one day a week to help share some load there and the btg seven west windsor kids i believe are able to get into something that's not quite the need but that's how much [Laughter] yeah so nice to see the mountain scotty mines getting together i think the numbers for school choice were asked for in the last meeting and they're here by grade level so students coming to windsor here you can see on the right and green suits going to abs in the left nazi i see you've raised your hand how many uh children are at albert bridge in total [Music] i'm not sure i want to guess around 45.50 sounds about right

021total enrollment oh you think it's more i'm looking it up on powerschool right now that was my next move thanks thanks 52 but that's just and that includes the six 58 students in power school eight that's great thanks colleen thank you okay hiring needs uh i just noted a couple of them there um fourth grade teacher is a certain one it's a bit of a bubble class uh we're managing at the moment with a very very strong fourth grade team which is awesome but of course we'd love to have some more uh resources there to leverage for fourth grade uh the middle school counselor i noted already then a high school counselor obviously and also an academic support teacher is still important [Music] um are we still uh are we still looking for a health

022teacher yes yeah we haven't posted and we're still looking for we're looking at uh pretty much show with anyone we interview for the academic support teacher if there's any way to get him a provisional for health we're looking about different solutions we could do in-house uh with a provisional for health um so we're hoping to bump it up to the top of the list and repost right when people are graduating in december [Music] thank you rebecca i see that you've raised your hand um i have a question regarding the the needs of the the juniors who i i don't know how many juniors we have right now and the seniors um and and um how um their needs are being filled at the moment i mean for juniors um it's for both it's a really

023important time and i'm just wondering if um you have someone that's helping them counseling needs so you're talking about yes yeah so what we did i you should come visit so what we did is in the student services we kind of we put our hrs clinician or not hrs it's now our in-house clinician because we couldn't find one through um hrs who's shelly becker right next to her jess vivian who's our counselor right next to her is um bridgette farial who's our mt's mtss 504 um but knows a lot about power school also then we have those conference rooms kind of like the war room where everyone could go in and work together and then on the other side is our um bcba aaron rockwood so that we're kind of taking like a team approach

024um and colleen and i because we know these kids and we've we've taught these kids we're going to take the letters of recommendations off jessica's plate because they can come from a counselor or an administrator so we're going to take a lot of those off off the plate um and then we kind of triage like if it's a crisis that would have gone to a clinician anyway so that's going right to shelley if it's um something that we need to team then jessica takes it either with the help of the nurse or myself and bridgette's really stepped up and doing a ton of like the power school scheduling stuff it's working um it's working great it was fast and furious at the beginning and now we've seen to settle into a nice pace um but

025it'll be really nice to find someone but now i feel the we feel like the pressure's off of finding a body and we're going to find the right fit [Music] that is really amazing and i just yeah i just want to congratulate you all on on on that that work for that that sounds great thank you colleen i see you've raised your hand i just wanted to add one other way we're taking a little bit off of jessica's plate is today was the first day we were able to have mr mcphillips with us from albert bridge who's going to be with us at least one day a week and he is taking on some of the sixth seventh and eighth grade needs so the t with the team with the seis with the with the

026um mental health clinician with support staff and with andrew mcphillips on mondays right now we're able to make a pretty succinct schedule to touch base with all of the students who have those needs and we do them on rotating basis so we have a a start to um help so that jessica is not and our elementary counselor is not feeling all the pressure to have all the sixth seventh and eighth grade along with the high school and elementary school so we're teaming it at the middle school too to support i have a question um sorry uh uh who who does um the uh college application side of of guidance counseling jessica takes the lead on that and right now she's setting up meetings every senior they're the priority of coming in to get a one-on-one

027meeting to get their college applications going thank you she sends out a nice newsletter every week you probably don't get it so it'd be like we'll go to the seniors or the ones that just go to the high school um thing about high school parents but it's all about opportunities internships scholarships but right now the focus is on the college applications thank you i appreciate that okay five that's me um here we go it's been a super strong start to the school year uh it has been really fun to be a new person to see windsor program spool up super excited to meet smiling faces at the door every day and do the work that we do now we're in the act of kind of settling into our routines and creating classroom communities which i

028think is the most important thing to note at this time this is where they are building relationships and building trust to do the hard work of the academics now and ahead and a lot of that work is being done through things like responsive classroom and later in me so it's been fun to watch and i i didn't get all the pictures but i have to make sure that i certainly could in the future uh classroom mission statements that go along with the leader and meet program each of the 25 classrooms has done that focusing on that actually i'm sorry i think this is a little bit wrong but anyways i digress leader of me to start which is great um some of the exciting things that we have noted are a fully staffed team of

029seis for the elementary school which has been a great resource in helping students build skill and stay in class and engage in their learning and build relationships wonderful a lot of our team has been doing summer work and is signing up for work this fall around the science of reading so it's really fun to walk around to start to see some of that work uh integrate into curriculum and integrate into work with our kids right away which is awesome uh leader of me i jumped ahead of myself because i was excited i guess there but anyways there it is again leader in me classroom mission statements i think we have a slide talking about here at me specifically uh a big excitement if you were to talk to rk5 students uh of course hurrah is

030lunch is back in the cafeteria this year which has been really fun doing three elementary school lunches k one two three four five and so far so great it's been really good to get back in and help our students uh understand and learn how to eat lunch in the dining hall some of our students especially the younger ones i've never done this at school so it's an important skill and of course important opportunity uh for social skill building and an important way to highlight our wonderful in-house food service which is great so so far so good it was uh breakfast for lunch today which was very popular nice i'd say a little sticky because there was maple syrup but it was very fun uh our folks are also really excited in the elementary level about

031uh several of our classrooms getting to eureka square somebody who worked with rigamath for years and it's generally highly of it one of those things that was always fun to juice up with all sorts of activities and yorkie squared does just that so far so right there as well what what is syracuse word it's our math quick is it an augmentation of eureka math it's a pilot of the new version okay so that worked so what's different about it it takes um i think eureka was has been a pretty popular program around and it's based in best practice and i think generally very well regarded as a long time math teacher it is always one that i like to spice up and and bring connected activities into motion into and things like that and eureka

032i think they got the feedback and squared very much does that which is very cool so i've been in the second grade a lot these last couple days today and last week doing some of those activities so it's exciting to see that work going and uh kudos to those teachers who are leading it's less uh one of the big complaints about eureka was it was really language yeah really language heavy so this is tapered down and i think it's um there's it's based on principles of udl so uh-huh which is really important um but it seems it's so cool yeah can you explain what udl is please universal design for learning just practices making sure that we have um representation engagement and there's one more i always forget there's three parts of udl um it's

033really it's about access and making sure all kids can access the curriculum um so that's representation computer's gonna be slow engagement representation action and expression so thank you you're very welcome that's that you ready yeah okay kindergarten open house you did that one kindergarten open house um which was great it's nice to get back to doing those kinds of activities i think we had 90 or so of our families excellent good evening everyone um our sixth seventh and eighth graders are off to a great start they are currently planning their first trip this thursday and friday to farm in wilderness um one of the things happening with our new middle school model is we're really making sure that when we touch base with our other school partners i know christine's going to talk a little

034bit more about that we're we're using common language and some of the consistent things that we're doing is consistent advisory messaging for all grades um themes for all the sixth through eighth graders and it's nice to have them all in one mostly in one wing minus their specials and in one of their classes they're pretty close to each other in a hallway with lockers that's really exciting for middle school students the field trip is the trip is coming up the farm and wilderness this thursday and friday and we will have lots of pictures to share for our next um school board meeting the teachers and students are talking about the farming they're going to do the hiking they're going to do the exploration the math lessons the science lessons the cooking together and we're hoping

035that ms bourne will be with us for the day on saturday if she can make it to see some of those activities and we're really excited to be sleeping in cabins for the seventh and eighth graders on thursday night so really looking forward to it um the other thing that's going on with the middle school is their schedule this year is really really nice in that they get to participate in lots of things without those items conflicting in their schedule so they have the opportunity to be a part of music ensembles the teachers are really happy about this they're able to have the choice to do that music ensemble or some one-on-one time what we call win time what i need now working on courses or intervention with the teachers help that they need with

036they also every student will have a whole semester of physical education they have one or two choices in the year for unified arts depending on if it's a semester or quarter long class which is theater art and tech ed and the students all chose what their first choices were so they all got their first choice it might not have been the first quarter or the first semester but they're getting that first choice this year as an option and our eighth graders are able to take world language as a choice and for a semester and our all of our students get at least a semester of a passion period which the students are working with the teachers for different mini courses that they're going to rotate through and right now they're kind of introducing that to

037the students until we get back from farm and wilderness this week and then we're going to get into a pretty um consistent rotation of what students are interested in so we're looking at some academic enrichment courses during seventh period as well as some clubs during seventh period yes elizabeth what is a world language so we have one world language teacher in the school right now we could not fill the french teacher position so she does a spanish immersion program and our eighth graders are able to um take that course as an introductory but they also get an opportunity if they want to test out of that at the end of the semester to earn a high school credit or maybe that's a high school half credit for the spanish but i could be i could

038be wrong i'd have to double check if it's a half credit or whole credit um i have another question just really quickly and then i'll get to you rebecca um do students have the opportunity to take any classes online in middle school like if they wanted to take a language other than spanish um i don't think that has come up but we could definitely talk that through as a team i don't know if it is yeah i i think that's something we can definitely talk through i was just thinking about outside of the school day or inside of the school day so we would have to see how that could fit just wondering whether it was possible to make the opportunity available yeah i really don't know the offerings of the languages at the middle

039school level we're mostly familiar with all the offerings that we had at the high school level when we were in our period of covid and using vtvlc for all of our coursework so i would have to follow up with that i can get back to you on that thank you rebecca i see you've raised your hand thank you elizabeth that was my question um i i think it would be a great opportunity for eighth graders to be able to access another language um uh it would yeah and i know that it is offered i it's been a long time but i know that it is often online um and um um and the last time i recall it being offered it was up opportunities that were offered on in the library or but i i

040i would like if you would explore that because i would like to see i would like for eighth graders to be able to access another language i'll explore i'll explore that with angie and um the vtvlc options and get report back can i just say the two pieces of those pictures the one picture is a science class and the students did some hands-on learning in the first week and the that's the lower picture the picture up above is leaders in action it's our eighth graders actually in one of the passion periods teaching the sixth graders an activity so it was like natural leaders which was great can i um i think there are people trying to get in and i don't see them when i'm presenting cater calling could you present your screens is that

041feasible yeah i could do it okay sorry i think somebody was trying to get in and i i didn't see it because i wasn't on that screen um nancy i see you've raised your hand i just want to tell colleen it looks really exciting and i'm sort of sorry that we missed it because my upper school but that you've done a lot of work and it sounds very very good um colleen i have a question about uh about uh the general maybe my question should be directed to angie but is vtvlc the only thing that we have access to in terms of online classes we've also used edmentum and i believe we have one more platform which i'm not thinking of right now that ms gogan uses with um the flexible pathway students so i'll

042i'll follow up with ms gogan and angie and jessica okay thank you very much are we on to me now sorry i'm like sharing and looking now um that's okay the 9 12 opening was great um shout out to the booster club that kind of lined our walkways with some welcome back signs which was nice for both the teachers and the staff and the pto did that on the elementary side so that was that was nice to come back to um we did host this year a welcome breakfast for the freshmen so that took place before school started students and families were working came in um craig provided them breakfast and they were able to get their lockers and do a tour of the school kind of get those first aid jitters out if they

043didn't know where their room was teachers came and met them we have 80 freshman in our freshman class so that puts our high school up to about 260 this year it's 80 and then about 65 and 50. so a really nice population there our homecoming is next week it kicks off the 22nd with our community barbecue um and then friday september 23rd we have field hockey at 4. the bonfire is to be determined and i'll tell you why and maybe someone there will have the answer davis i'm counting on you so the autumn moon fast asks us when our homecoming is because they like to coincide with it um so it's that friday so now we have the field hockey game at four and then we could put in the bonfire at dusk which is

044about an hour so probably 7 30 to 8 30. um and that would be friday night and i'm unsure if the autumn moon fest put that in purpose i know they put it in purposely during homecoming weekend but i'm not sure if they put it in purposely during bonfire night so i reached out to riley to ask her because we could we could make a switch and do the bonfire on thursday um so i reached out to her to ask her because i don't want to i want to work with the events in our town and not compete with them so i'm just waiting on that answer and then i will announce the um bonfire if it's thursday or friday saturday is girls soccer right now that game scheduled for four um and that's a

045real bummer to the girls they feel like nobody comes at that time so we're trying to work with the other team to switch it but they we have no confirmation on the end so i hope no matter what time it is we get some faces out there to cheer on the girls um and then the football game is at one o'clock while we're on the topic of football well i'll say we're also having a homecoming dance on saturday night from about 8 to 10 so that's going to be awesome i plan on doing a balloon arch so i figure if i put it out there publicly then i'll have to show you my hard work and maybe i can actually pull it off um i don't know if you saw went to the football game

046on saturday but our football varsity football team has borrowed the kicker from the girls varsity soccer team olivia mcclay and she went six for six at saturday's game um so i sent you all i sent it into the valley news today see if they'd come out here um and talk to her but the eagle times did come out and talk to her so i'm hoping that she's featured in the paper so that's cool um next is you can't see but these are the clothes i have on today so this literally just happened the furniture got delivered i sent larry a text he came over craig was open and craig said we're gonna do it today so it was kind of like an all hands on deck of craig lukerno rodney claro larry was there colleen

047was there sergio was there anyone in that pod who has a child their child was there getting some stuff done and we got all this furniture set up between we started at about three and finished at about 5 30. um so if you're over there in windsor tonight it's worth taking a walk down to see i don't know who's my age but it's very saved by the bell to me which is um next on here is safety at windsor school i put this on this this is kind of um ask you expectations but i wanted everyone to know what the chain about the changes because if bill's knocking on our door and no one's answering it i want you to know then that we're doing a good job if that's the case because we're kind

048of letting all of our kids know our staff know it doesn't matter who's banging on that door you cannot open it to let them in they everyone has to go through the protocol no matter who you are so when you come to the rowing you have two entrances they can go to during the day kristin or wendy and there's no surprise guests so if i had someone coming today i would email kristen i would say just want to let you know rebecca roysman's coming to school on thursday she should be at your entrance at about nine o'clock please send me a text when she gets here i will then walk over and meet rebecca and we will walk to our location together um i just wanted and we're putting that in our newsletter for our

049parents to be aware but we like if i'm out there and i'm knocking on the door we don't even want the kids to open the door for that so that everyone is practicing the protocols knows the protocols so i don't want you to come and feel like god how unwelcoming they won't even let me in we're just trying to keep the school as safe as possible um colleen myself sergio and paul had our first meeting the other day about what safety drills are going to look like and kind of what a contingency plan were to look like should something happen um and we do have to do 10 safety drills this year and three of them have to be options based which means that the teacher has to talk through the class and say okay

050if we had um an intruder in the building and today we were going to evacuate the building what would that look like how would we get out of the building where would we go we're moving slowly but carefully slowly but forward i should say with these drills because we understand the importance of them but we also understand the importance of not traumatizing kids or adults in our in our building um we're going to be transparent about them with parents um and kids and if anyone has any questions uh please bring them to our attention we'll be happy to address them paul's been a great resource sergio brought a lot to the team with throwing this idea out there of table talk where the four of us just to get together or the whole admin team

051get together and they throw out scenarios so that you practice so what would what would you do if this happened um and while it's like terrifying and um not fun to talk about it's really making us think and i feel really get prepared should anything happen and the theme for alice is prepared not scared rebecca i really like the idea of your of focusing on safety i really like the idea of making it transparent i really like the idea of making it public that you know that we how we can be involved in um creating a safe community so i i i just really like what you're doing here and um i think the more um uh i it'd be great to just make sure that you know we get that information i just so

052that we're aware of what is exactly what a safety look like um in our school community but i think it's a great idea thanks so much yep uh you just reminded me on december 5th we have a half day so our admin meeting we're gonna ask the other schools for uh permission and help and we're gonna farm out when they're teachers for that day so they'll come into school kids will be dismissed at twelve by one o'clock i'll teach winter teachers will be out of the building at another building for the in-service and then um chief frank along with some state troopers are coming into our building and doing an actual training um in our building so that there know the ins and outs of our buildings and that they're prepared so i hope that

053brings some comfort to the community i know firsthand that sometimes you think twice about sending your kid to school some days because you just have this bad feeling or you saw something on the news and i want them to know we're doing everything we possibly can to keep these kids safe leader me i think that colleen and sergio kind of both touched on it um i'll be hoping that the and bill can probably back me up on that high school teachers are sometimes kind of the last to jump on board with a new initiative or a change and shout out to jeff beachy and cambrian johnson because they have hopped right on and said we are going to be the change we want to see we are going to be the voice and this was

054the end of last year my kids are arguing with each other right outside the store that was uh the end of last year um and they've really taken the lead and we've had our meetings with leader me we've had our meetings with mike nicholson and you know the competitive spirit of me is pleased to hear them say every time you guys are so far ahead in this right now you're doing so much um so jeff and kim did a nice job of weaving it into a portrait of a grad and breaking it down so they're having weekly meetings with about 25 high school students and this is just step one and their their plan is to have the high school students um eventually become the teachers in the future years and it's a lot of

055extra work for them with not a lot of extra compensation at all and they're really doing it enthusiastically and happily so that's nice to see for the middle school we um are working week for the leader and me in the middle school we have um the teachers trying to get through the seven habits dividing them out so between now and december we spend two to three weeks on each habit because when we get to december and start the next semester we're going to move as in as a district into the core 2 training and the first part of the training is learning and living the seven habits so mr pooler is the lighthouse leader for the middle school team and he's coordinating um all of our leader in me advisory lessons and we have um

056as a staff we have a lighthouse meeting once a month and we have an action team leader in me action team meeting uh another time a month so everybody can participate and we are also excited about um having these kids who are naturally stepping up to these leadership roles without even being asked they're already some are thinking about it in a more formal way how they can do it they're talking about maybe wanting elections and things like that in the middle school and other kids are stepping up to lead class meetings which have already happened so we're excited about that i got ahead of myself a little bit earlier but uh elementary school we're focusing on uh developing the classification statements those are done across k5 now and that's really exciting to see those are

057done obviously with students it's an exciting process that takes a little time they're focusing on initiative and leadership of the first eight days and direct teaching of the seven habits which has been happening oh i'm sorry i didn't thank you for putting that up rebecca that's okay i was at a second where i couldn't acknowledge your hand thank you i i was just wondering is there a way to sort of um uh how is it um the roles that um to sort of um chart in students records on in on some level these students that that are stepping up um to just i'm not sure how that would go into their personal learning plan or whatever but a way to kind of like note that um so that they can they start developing that portfolio

058about who they are and and you know um i mean that should be a wonderful you know um evolution at some point but if if there's a way to sort of identify that and and just let students know and they can look back and say oh wow yeah i did it i and i've done it and i continue to do it do you know what i'm i'm asking colleen yeah i think um we have our grade level faculty meetings once a month we do the full faculty and one time a month we do our grade level faculty meetings which is coming up next wednesday so i think that is a place for kate and sergio and i and and jen too to remind our staff where um where do we find the time to remind

059our students that their leadership roles can also be a part of their plp i know in the middle school they have part of their themes and advisory is taking that time to work on the plp but i'm going to make sure i bring it to their attention that we have to make sure it gets into the plp when they're naturally stepping up and i think mr baichie and mr mr brink johnson and the lighthouse team in elementary school would feel exactly the same way so good good reminder we will bring it up to the staff okay i'm on i'll i'll be brief um just a couple of things that are specific to madison scott make not in the superintendent report from a couple weeks ago and we talked about lead roles at bonus monastery for

060for the lead learners that we have here and the team has kind of taken on natural um natural interests so colleen is going to be the lead learner i would say the go-to person for our wellness team which is run by a that's actually a staff member but she's the administrator who's the support for that and will help that team move forward and that's a really important team we know that wellness of our of our staff is about most important so okay so wellness is staff wellness staff okay yeah not that student wellness is not important as well but um this is primarily focused am i correct on that colleen well the wellness that the team is focusing on student and students and staff so we're working with our vehi coordinators and our wellness leaders

061elizabeth and jan and annette and then we're also looking with our team uh people on the wellness team who are comprised of people all over the su of themes for the schools for wellness for the students as well so it's both good so colleen's going to be the lead on that jen is focusing on sel and the performing arts she is um very dedicated to building our music program back up and suffered a little bit during the pandemic so she's taking a lead on that um and and within sel you know jen's the has been the lead on collaborative problem solving some of the trauma-based work we've done so that all is incorporated in there um sergio and also katie who's here she's not on this mountain list but but um sergio and katie are

062going to be taking the lead on the diversity equity and inclusion team we're going to have a school team that meets um during our end of day time and we're also planning on having a community team and so how those two teams kind of mesh together we're still trying to figure out but um what what do you mean by school team do you mean teachers teachers and students and other staff yeah yeah um and we haven't um we had staff do um a survey on the in the beginning of the welcome back where they got to choose what they were interested in working on so we have a number of staff really interested in working on diversity equity and inclusion some of that is going to be those action steps that the anti-racism task force

063created and figuring out what that team can take on this year and how to bring students into the conversation as well so and katie does the special ed staff take part in all the different stuff together not separately um and kate is going to take the lead on the communications person really making sure the newsletters get done and out because it's a collaborative effort somebody needs to start that charge board reports um those kinds of things some of the shared responsibilities we talked about mtss really happens at different levels so it makes sense for each each lead learner to kind of manage that in their own grade span we are hope as well um food service and transportation although they knit together they are separate as well so those are going to share so those

064are um those are the lead roles of the lead learners does anybody have any idea what the um transportation problem for albert bridge has been yeah for that for the after school program oh okay yeah that's what it was it was um we had said up set up a transfer and it we only did it one day it took um it was well over an hour some i heard an hour and a half for that uh transportation from albert bridge to btg so that currently jen is um driving them in modern bands at the end of the day which is much faster um and you know hopefully we can get a program at abs we won't have to worry about that anymore but we'll see rebecca i see that you've raised your hand thank you

065elizabeth um uh christine i see that uh kate is going to be doing communications newsletter and report is that does that mean that there's going to be um a monthly report on on um how these lead roles are evolving um i don't think so we just wanted a point person i mean we can certainly talk about it if need be um kate was going to take the lead on making sure the reports and the newsletters get started and shared out because somebody has to do that um and so she was going to take the lead on that and then i mean sergio busquet the newsletter but she's she's taking the lead on it um and those were roles those were roles that the team those were chosen roles that they wanted to be in charge

066of so does that sound okay rebecca yeah no no that's good it's just that i'd be i'd be interested in just hearing some of you know what those conversations are about and um because it sounds exciting yeah okay obviously these all you know these folks are passionate about the areas that they've chosen so it just sounds exciting and no one's on it alone like larry and brittany are help are helping me so it's kind of like a team approach to everything and and if if you're speaking of reports on how those um teams are going like how what wellness is happening you know within the seo i'm sure that that will be included in the board reports going forward those teams just started meeting today so thank you you're welcome i just wanted to bring

067back middle level model i know it's something that um we're talking a lot about at monastery and how we collaborate with our albert bridge middle level students so just just briefly the team the middle level team is meeting monthly the goal the some of the goals that they set for consistency and advisory programs across the su so they are all doing some leader in me um lessons however they choose to do them and they are working on plps some schools have have dabbled in this before and it's not very um it's it's not new to them some schools one in particular really hasn't done an advisory program at all so they're they're moving a little bit slower and figuring things out but but that is the goal um and when they met right at the

068start of school we talked about how do we know this model is working what data can we collect to show progress um and so the middle level teachers came up with a quick survey to give to the students three times a year on the that reflects the model and so we'll bring that data to you at a future date but they are definitely collaborating and working together and it's nice to see them so we'll we'll continue to talk about the middle of the model um as the year goes on my last slide is just a reminder and a plug again i'll keep bringing it if he can advance the slide she goes that the vsva conference is in october i hope many of you will will join me there with the theme of how are

069the students doing so that's just a reminder that it's coming up in a month we still have time hi jen and i don't know if um jen wants i need to do any follow-up on we couldn't play your recording because it was in the trash for some reason but sergio sergio gave your report and he did a really nice job excellent and um i don't know if you've had me follow up from your meeting or not yet um i can tell you where they are which is um we shared the situation where we are with the actual issues and they would like us to move forward with trying to develop the recreation department um although full disclosure it can't take it can't be developed until march correct yes okay so it's not it's not this

070year's solution and and who's going to be um primary lead on that so right now jessica brody and myself are going to work together to try and create a presentation about possible benefits i think we didn't have any other questions from jen did they report from the answer we figured out you have 58 students enrolled yes partly as one all right thanks kate you can stop sharing if you'd like done thank you thank you thanks thank you all very very much and congratulations on a great what sounds like a great start to the year okay excuse me okay we didn't hear about uh the role of the van and whether it enables interaction between schools and or field trips how is the band share going right now part of the presentation was the issue with

071the bus ride i think um so the way we have solved that currently because these students were not getting here until almost four o'clock which when you get on the bus at 2 25 to 4 o'clock so we've actually started i typically middle of the day come over pick up the van and drive our kids from west windsor to windsor every day with the van so it's been used that way at this point we have not done any between the school day sharing activities at this point that's where well in the first few weeks and what about transportation of the windsor kids ever double bridge so right now parents are doing that okay bill i see that you've raised your hand so my question would be and this is a rhetorical question of course because

072no one has the answer but it may be something that we may want to explore what changes might need to be done so that busing fits the needs of all students within this school district um [Music] we do hire a bus company and um the i think the goal of getting the van was not that to transport students to the after school program and this is sort of a an amazing thing that jennifer has put together to you know make things work at the same time as we come up on budget discussions and you know and how the bus company actually functions in the past um david had has intimated um david baker had intimated difficulties in getting the bus company to understand that we are now a school district not just albert bridge school

073district and i mean west windsor school district and windsor school just we are one school district um and getting the head of the busing company to to to grasp that um that him intimating that made me infer that there are some difficulties dealing with the bus company i don't know if that's true or not that's just something that i picked up um so i think as a school board going into budget season to explore um one the function of the bus company two are they doing what we're paying them for three are there other options in which we can fund more to get what we need just something i just want to bring up so i can say bill that when the situation occurred and i talked with larry he connected with the bus company

074and it sounds like they they have limitations in their drivers as well [Music] so they were not able to figure out another option at this time and it sounded like it was not um that they didn't necessarily understand the need but they didn't have capacity it's how i understood it from larry right and if that is the case then as a school board i think it would be important for us to look at what we can do to make sure that that capacity is there within busing that fits the needs of both schools okay that's all basically what i'm pointing out is i want to be a supportive of of a board so that bussing is not an issue that principals need to deal with okay um and i'd like to know more about the

075role of the buses what they may need to to to get it done and i just like to understand it more because i am a i am a systems guy all right that's this is what i do i figure out issues and stuff but my role here really is limited to you know policy making and budgeting so what is there within the policy probably nothing what is there within a budget that we could do to assist both buildings in busing and and bill i believe larry was trying to enlarge that um point person with mike got out of the bus company and what he was trying to do was make it work with the buses that we have available so i think what you're seeing may be suggesting is we may need another bus as

076a potential solution right so we could do it with what we had it's just those kids were on the bus for a long time yeah yeah and that's what i want to limit is there's no i don't want kids on the bus for an hour no matter if it's in the morning in the afternoon that's especially younger students may i suggest that next board meeting or board meeting after we asked larry to come and give his perspective sure so the but where does the bus go after it drops off the windsor kids at albert bridge it goes back on its routes through windsor so they're back down 44 and then um okay okay i didn't realize it wasn't its own yeah it's got a whole host of kits out that much that's pretty packed okay

077yeah so basically that one day i i know the whole story because my son was on the bus is that uh one who was late from hactc it got late to albert bridge and then it had to go through its entire drop-off route and then it went to windsor so i got to pick up daniel at 4 30 after he had gotten there at 4 15 or so so yeah okay all right uh huh okay just looking at the okay let's move to items for discussion update on the movie and panel discussion uh unfortunately i um went to the [Music] summit down in phoenix and caught copen right at the summit um and so i was out of commission on planning the panel or a week after i was already gone for almost a week

078um and so i'm behind this is my first real week of full being back all one day a bit so far and uh and um we do not yet have funding for the film presentation so um uh that does not mean that everything has been dropped but um i think it's going to be delayed by a couple of weeks so that's where everything stands at the moment i did learn a lot when i was at the early childhood education summit and earl early childhood child care and education summit and uh a lot of it very useful for the purpose of this particular discussion i asked people from all over the country um particularly rural states what their solutions were so i think it'll be a robust discussion um that's where that stands uh update on

079engaging students as members of the school board um kate uh well as a result of my having had coveted rebecca and i have not been able to go down to the school to talk to students about it i know that we have at least one um very interested party who would like to be part of or put his name in into the selection process um uh and now rebecca will be gone for about a week right rebecca yeah uh so that's all being pushed back as well but um uh once we come and talk to the classes uh can you remind me what the next step in the process is students fill out a a uh application is that application available somewhere on the school website already is there i think the last thing we

080did was i shared it um with everyone to see if it wanted to be an update uh if anybody wanted to update it but i could have it share it out and i could have an email to all the students that's pretty that's very easy can you just put it is there a way to put it on the high school website as well yeah yeah send it to the webmaster that's very easy and like a a description of the process yep i can do that do you know um i will say when i go around to classes when colleen and i have gone around the past the single response we always get is the time um the amount of time yeah i mean i see it now with my own kids and they're not even

081in high school yet they're just over overbooked they do so much um and they just have concerns about putting one more thing so if we could kind of ease that um worry with them uh i think that would get a lot more interest but um i don't know my other thought was in the in the meantime like once mr beachy and mr break johnson get the leader and me going like have a couple of those kids take turns coming to the board meetings they can because they can report out on what what's going on and they could also take in information um and they're kind of a cohesive group with two men with two moderators so um it might be a nice way to start um well i think those are two separate purposes one

082is to hear from the students reporting out to our board and also here having them report or having them hear what our board is up to and reporting back to the students but also we want to have a student board member who weighs in on our discussions on behalf of the students and so that would that would require a consistent person um i mean both of those things aren't at the same time are really valuable they're really valuable but we also need a student board member who can um kind of way in for us to give us a perspective on what we're talking about okay make sense yeah that makes sense um [Music] do you want to do you want me to email you to set up a time to come in sooner rather than

083later yes or i guess you email email me a time and we'll make it happen on this end okay i mean i i really have um for the next couple of weeks i'm i've got plenty of time and i can come in um that'd be great because it would be least disruptive if you could come in like in the morning and do freshmen and sophomores because they're all together then and then last period juniors and seniors are all together so if you can make two appearances that would be really great okay do we want to also talk to middle schoolers about it just in case there's a middle schooler who'd like to or did we agree that we were just going to do high school i can't remember um [Music] uh phil i see that

084you've raised your hand oh thank you as we're discussing this i want to put in a plug here for my opinion um about not just looking at student board members to get feedback from students but also um utilizing um existing student groups to share what they have done and what they've discussed within their work within the high school i think this is an idea that colleen brought up a while ago and i'd have to say that i'm i'm all on board for that just because i've seen it work and it could be a really useful additional an additional line of communication and have a broader impact on allowing students at the high school level in particular to feel connected to two decision makings it's sort of you know walking the walk of leader in me

085and a high school level and so that they as a group working within the group um discuss topics that they have and possibly topics that we have to come up with solution and then to give them a platform within a school board meeting to share that i think what i liked about what bill shared i think at the last the last time we spoke about this was and we say it all the time as as administrators and teachers meeting the kids where it fits them and i think that's really important and if we have students who want to participate as a as a student who wants to be at the board meetings and can stay consistent that's great but we also have students who have really busy after school lives who are participating during the

086school day in school clubs who have voices as a group too so i love the meeting the kids where they're at i totally agree and i i'm not i i didn't mean to sound like i was discounting that idea i think it's a great idea but i'd like for us to have both um i think both are important or or as my uh husband likes to say both i agree with that absolutely at the same time um pursuing both topics we may find that one works and one doesn't and if we can meet the students where they're at if they're on the board coming every week that's great but if we can meet them with their work that they're doing with leader and me and other topics at the same time that may work so

087i agree with you elizabeth let's pursue both options and uh rebecca i acknowledge your hand um i i agree with everything that's just been said okay uh so that is where that is so uh kate i will um [Music] i will send you an email either tonight or first thing in the morning with times that um i can days that i can come in both in the morning in the afternoon i just wanted to say i added the last draft of what i think we had for application for high school board members in the chat thank you very much okay is there anything else about the students um yes the student really wants to apply for that position before you go visit them is that allowed yeah i think the application is just checking someone

088just submit an application it's very possible so uh but i mean we still have to go through a process um so uh okay that brings us to preliminary budget discussion and before we get started on our preliminary budget discussion um i'd like to kind of follow up with a couple of questions about it's still part of the budget discussion but um did we get the amplification equipment installed at albert bridge that yes in what classrooms are they it's in the five six classroom and the music room okay they ask me if i know how to use it do you know how to use it i have not figured it out but we've been playing with it maybe bill could come over and teach you how to use it elizabeth can you repeat that what i

089missed what you said i asked whether the amplification equipment that we um set aside funds for had in fact been installed at albert bridge did we have any installer eight here and two at albert bridge okay let's see and so and then later so do you know what classrooms they're in here in windsor there are a bunch of them i couldn't tell you the complete list off the top of my head and do you know whether they're being used and to what effect i could pull teachers and give you a more detailed response um but i believe that they are in use more in some classrooms than others and certainly at certain times of the day since they've been used at times and i know there's a lot of circle time and things like that

090yes they're a tool i am familiar with from past schools uh bill i see your hand so maybe at some point uh say three or four months mid-year something like that they uh we might get some feedback from the teachers it also might be nice to um if teachers want to some may want to visit hartford some hard for schools to see if see how they use it and integrate [Music] amplification system that portland is yeah it's similar lightspeed is the one um it's integrated right into the classroom wiring yes we used that we had them in hartford when i worked there yeah but i thought you know that the units that were at heartland were amazing they're pretty awesome yeah yeah i think these are even better i see your hand um two things

091jog my memory when we started talking about the amplification system in one of the other classrooms is the ace classroom is one of the classrooms to have the amplification system and that made me remember that i had forgotten our ace classroom is also going on a field trip this week to the tunbridge fair and they will also also have some wonderful updates on their slides and pictures when we return next month as well they're using the band colleen what does ace stand for academic community excellence classroom i went to the tumblr's fair for 16 years with my class was it a good idea it was but there's some definitely some hints that i would pass on if i had that opportunity about how to handle things i was a parent volunteer chaperone for two years

092with two different second grade classes and yeah function experience yes stamina i'm going several months yeah depending on the weather which it sounds like it's going to rain this week yeah that's the most boots sorry so one of the things that i wondered um is at the at all throughout our district um i i should say for full disclosure hudson shared with me today um some uh feedback that he received from teachers and students about our district and our supervisory event and i'd be glad to share that with the rest of the board in the su board but it raised the question one of the questions that was raised is uh going back to the the um idea of access to elective classes and whether they're um accessible online for both school or all of

093the schools i should say and whether we want to explore putting money into into more robust access if we don't have access to them so that our students can have uh the opportunity to to participate in in some of those other electives um does anybody else have any like kate sorry i just wanted to say that right now every um high school student does have access to at least on one online class um we sometimes allow students to take another online class if it meets their needs but we do also we are also very mindful of things to take an online class takes a special kind of skill set from a student right it's way different than being in a class um and they cost money so um we're very mindful of how opportunities that

094we give if in the past you haven't fulfilled your end of the opportunity um because of kind of the equity and the financials of it but every winsor student does have the chance to get that and we're trying to roll out uh or have more students take the opportunity of their dual enrollment um credits and then rebecca had sent an opportunity last year that she had mentioned at the board meeting and the name that's escaping right now but we sent that up to kim gogan and that's also something that every high school student has the access to get a college credit where they could actually graduate high school with an associate's degree so we're putting that information out to our students that program is not something that a school can bring in rather they provide

095the information from their students to their students and the students have to take the lead on it okay yes rebecca we have opportunities right now in vermont for our high school students to um literally graduate with a an associates or very close to an associate's degree and um and i'm not sure how how that's done i know that it is done and i know that it happens and i think it's just a wonderful opportunity i don't know if it's a combination of online classes of um also attending one of the community colleges but um i just think it's just a wonderful way one to introduce some of our students um to college and if some of them walk away with an associate's degree that may be enough at least for them to get into the

096fields that they're interested in at in entry level positions um so yeah i i i you know i'm glad that that you know that that's being looked at and explored thank you rebecca and thank you kate um uh i do know that having served in the legislature i know for a fact that there are several programs that for for a high school student we we uh in the legislature we started a program called grow your own and uh so we have uh any any nursing or i think um i would be remiss if i said any other program because i'm not sure about outside of the medical field but there uh any starting medical um any starting medical program is absolutely free for for uh our students in the state of vermont and uh and

097that's and there are other other programs around the state as well because the idea was to reach down into the high school years to recruit students from uh i think it starts in ninth grade actually so there's a lot of opportunities out there but i wondered also um kate you mentioned that it costs money and and i wondered since we are in our preliminary budget discussion whether we should be adding that as a as a budget item for our high schoolers or for any any of our schoolers um and whether i'm asking whether other board members think that's a good idea or think it requires more investigation or i'm sorry i didn't mean to button but i would think it would be helpful if i brought back more information in the next meeting like how

098many students requests were ever denied for an online class because in the last three years we've only denied two it was based on the fact that we've we already paid for three that they didn't finish or something like that like an extreme case so we are um very good about setting it but what we won't do and i wanna i wanna make this clear is if we offer the class we're not going to give you an online option because you don't like that teacher or something like that so yeah yeah we offer american lit you can't take american lit online unless there's some crazy schedule conflict just because it's easier online or you had a personality conflict with that teacher um so there's kind of all these nuances but um i will bring back more

099information in the next meeting thank you rebecca yeah i i would agree with that kate that that is not the purpose of of of the online class which or shouldn't be the purpose of the online class um and um but you i i have had parents come up and um request the class because they did not want their child taking the teacher um and it it so i don't think you're gonna ever avoid that but i i agree i i um um that should not be the purpose you know of you know now if you're talking about a senior that um did not take her required three english classes she's in her senior year and she really needs to take two of them at one time i i i just think those are just you

100know you really need to look at the the needs of the student um but i also um want to say that it it should be an opportunity for students um so i i will i would appreciate yeah you know listening to what what's brought back and my my question is uh a couple of questions um one is uh are students i mean students may not be requesting classes because they don't know they have the opportunity to to look into them um uh and secondly um if there is a scheduling conflict for a student are they then able to fulfill their i mean can they can they then take an online class if they if they cannot work it out within their schedule just ask yeah yeah they can take an online class if it can't

101be worked out a schedule the other thing we have done is a student who has made a goal graduate in four years and really is not in a place to take on the full course load we'll put them in an online class over the summer we really do believe in meeting people where they're at there's just a lot of different nuances to it um and one of them is it's grievable by the union because we can't put teachers out of jobs so there's also that balance of when we offer a class they have to take it here yeah i'm not i'm i'm merely saying i'm merely suggesting that that we uh you know if we're going to have flexible pathways make it you know make make the the opportunities flexible as well that's all yeah

102yeah so i'm happy to bring that back that info from the last couple years kind of at the next board meeting so we could have more um eyes on it and more suggestions to make it more flexible because i agree with you and it drove me nuts when flexible pathways was a required graduation credit because it's flexible yet required so i am all for moving forward with that and i know kim is too and she she's great at this so i will connect and bring you back some more information okay and and really truly the reason that i'm asking it as part of the budget discussion is if you need more money for it you know we should we should talk about putting it in the budget um nancy i see your hand and your

103cat's tail yes one of them um um i would be very interested kate to hear how many people on a you know a ballpark figure need this and how much does it cost it does it depend on the class okay you're muted sorry i didn't realize that um no it doesn't depend on the class so it depends on licenses so we buy so many seats at the beginning of the year and then we could buy additional seats as we as we go along it's never been a case and then elizabeth might be right like maybe we're just not maybe kids just don't know it's an opportunity but we've we've always we've always met the needs of our students and we've always been fiscally responsible about it so we've either fulfilled all the licenses that we

104bought seats for and then bought a couple more which is another couple hundred dollars it's not it's not a lot per student or a massive amount of money we've always encouraged that dual enrollment credit to use those right first because they're free um but it is something i want to say that last year we were actually able because of the way we're using them and because that we're actually able to to cut that budget a little because we worked with the company um we did a pilot last year this is really a long conversation now so it costs more to do it when we pay the company and say you also have to provide the teacher right so the teacher has to come along with the company and i know bill that you probably know

105a lot about this too so the teachers company my friend in hartford district tested that out and kind of directed their kids how to interact with the teacher to see if it was worth that extra money to have to pay for the teacher out there and they found that it wasn't and they shared those that kind of information those results with us so we went that option last year to not also pay for the teacher which made it a lot more affordable like half the price something like that but the same amount of students were able to take online classes we just had to provide a teacher which we are able to do now that we have that hub academic support center up and going in the high school or if a student in seventh

106or eighth grade wanted to take a language other than spanish you know it'd be nice to be able to find a way for them to take whatever language they are interested in just to explore it i mean um yeah so we can look at that from both angles because middle school's not credit varying so that should be an easy and easier fix perhaps i don't know but we'll put it on we'll make sure it gets on the report for next month thank you very much rebecca i see your hand um i was just gonna comment on um so if you have if you have an agreement where you don't have the teacher does that mean that all of the classes that you offer to the students don't have a teacher or for instance if an

107eighth grader decided to take chain um chinese um i know you wouldn't have a teacher to teach chinese so you would be able to allow that student to take the chinese class and have the teacher now colleen you can go before i talk i just wanted to add um we did learn a lot about those online courses during covid and one of the things that came out of those discussions was making sure we were offering just enough right fit for kids like kate had said which an online course takes a special student even more so at a middle school level and one of the things that came out of those discussions with some of the team was kind of like a online prerequisite class to help kids get used to like how an online class

108works how you turn things in what the expectations are so that's something we've talked about with ms gogan so it looks like we're both going to bring back some information for next time to see what's available for our middle school and high school students but what we learned was that it was really hard to do those online courses during covid especially with our high school students who had the majority of them and i imagine it would be pretty tough on your average middle school student to do that as well so we will we will dive into it and try to find the best fit for kids yeah and rebecca picked a perfect example because languages is the one where we're really hesitant to put kids online for because even i'll take our sorry my daughter's

109like in the background here even with we looked at that for an option for our french three students for this year right and we only had a couple handful too and the response was the best part of class is conversing with your classmates in person so we don't want an online class um and chinese was the perfect example we don't have the personnel to support that um so i don't know we're happy to get all this information look at look at what other options we can explore i mean if a kid i will say it is very these are the benefits of a small school there's lots of them right um so the benefits of a small school is really being able to meet each kid where they're at and we really do consider each

110one individually um but i guess it would be nice to have like kind of broader maybe some more opportunities especially at the middle school and also i would think you know there's a difference between the cove uh online instruction where everybody was at home with the full-on home distractions versus finding a quiet place in school where you could take a class i i don't i don't know i um but i would imagine that there would be you know some variants in there there's also a difference between a high schooler taking it for a credit bearing um to graduate in the sixth seventh or eighth grader trekking as part of their passion project and doing it independently and reporting back you know their teachers about their learning so do you want us to just include this

111on the can we just put this as a part of including an administrative report for our code i already added it for next month you're the best bill i see your hand yeah i just want to uh thank colleen and kate for coming at this topic with a healthy amount of skepticism um so because there are real limitations to online classes thank you um okay so moving on from the online classes does anybody among us have a specific this discussion is a philosophical discussion of our budget and what we would like to express through the budget this year davis you have not said a single word this evening so far i see you is there is there something that you feel we should be expressing through our budget this this season i don't have anything

112particular i'd be interested to hear what other folks would have to add okay bill oh i have lots to add um first and foremost i am um i'm wondering philosophically if we're going to continue down the path that we took last year of really putting a considerable amount of money into staff and other programs for student staff's support um you know as many counselors as we were able to hire and other support staff um i think the board took a really bold stand when it was laid out sort of the uh the administration put up three different options and we chose the most expensive option option because of really a point in education where we're at i mean i would like to see that that to continue the commitment the board made to moving forward

113with those supports for to help the recovery from covet which we all thought would start last year and really didn't and hopefully it's going to start this year i think that's one of the the commitments we made last year so i'm going to throw my support for that sort of philosophy going forward i agree with that bill um you said you had a whole roster i do i don't want to get too in-depth now but you know um also you know i i brought up the whole um the looking at the beginning of the day issue that we were going to get into this i guess looking at things budget wise um you know one of my philosophies in education is meeting students at the beginning of the day when it's expected and where they're

114at and having the staff available to be there at the beginning today so the school day teacher interaction really can start at the very beginning of the day um eight o'clock you know that's that's which of course means that you have to have staff available to interact with students before that so when students come in there's staff available to make sure one that they have the time and the place and the supervision to eat breakfast when they get to school to have the staff available so that if there's any issues to meet students at the door if they need to be met at the door because there are students who get to school at say you know 20 of and that student really needs at one-on-one individuals to meet them at the door bring them

115to respond and get their day off started right so it's just i'm i'm definitely not thinking about you know my idea is not to allow parents to drop their kids off at 7 30 and then move on with the day basically i want to make sure that the staff is available so that morning transition is as seamless as possible and i think that's a philosophy in which may need some budget consideration in what way do you think it's a budget consideration well it's a budget consideration so if we need to have staff available especially uh paraprofessional staff available earlier than 7 45. it's also a contractual you have to think about the negotiations for all of that as well right but at the same time i i think it's important for everyone to understand i

116know the contract back backwards and forwards i have the thing pretty much memorized so basically the only time constraint within the budget for teaching staff is that their school day their expectation for them to be in the building where they must be in the building cannot exceed seven and a half hours and that's across the su so that's the only constraint that is there so working within that mode well actually there is another constraint which isn't really in the contract it has to do with paraprofessionals in overtime and that's just a consideration budget times in which if they exceed a 40-hour week then we're legally obligated to pay them over time but so with those two constraints in mind i think the reason i think this is a real budget issue is that you know

117making sure that we have staff available that is needed at the beginning of the day when it is needed within those two constraints we could we could also consider it a a stipend issue you know create a um a teacher stipend for it um in the budget that way no as amy pointed out even if it's a stipend um we're still bound by the seven and a half hour work day but not all staff are teaching staff i i think that's an important point to put out not all staffers are under that contract and so there are staff available and even if we need to hire additional staff there are staff with the flexibility to be able to work to be at school before 7 45. yes one of the um we have staff that

118because support staff do not have the school day constraint of 745 to 315 is what we've defined that we do have some staff that come in at 7 30 or 7 15 or even early to ride buses and others that stay later and the only constraint we have is they can't go over eight hours in a day that's where overtime kicks in it's not it's by day not by week um tina and i have gone over this several times because it comes up fairly frequently we have discussed with the support staff that we would like to move everyone to a longer school day it's come up several times this year i will tell you what exactly what we told support staff at our recent meeting and we planned for a three and a half percent

119increase this year when we planned our budget we didn't plan for the amazing support staff do salary schedule which ended up being 12 and a half percent which do the math that's nine percent difference um so we decided this year was not the year we could make everybody who wanted to be like a seven and a half hour employee we just we didn't have it um and we're hoping next year to tie into your budget discussion bill next year that that would be our goal to be for those who want it and we do have many staff that choose because of what works for their schedule to work six hours a day we have a couple that work six hours a week um that we're still doing that but you know i think that everyone

120supports staff wise and teacher being able to have more access to support staff skills and their ability to be more flexible because they don't have some other constraints the classroom teachers do for example to be available is out there um but it will take the financial planning so if that that kind of help i think we're all on the same page um right so i think what us as a school board if we're going to talk about this as a philosophy meeting students where they're at first thing in the morning um i think would be good for building administrators just to to basically to to look at their day and look at their systems look at their drop-off and through the as this is the beginning in the budget process just to to consider what

121sort of staff would make the flow and the start of the day for students better to make it a easier transition for them and so as we prepare for the budget next year you know if we get that is someone saying hey we really could use x y and z because a b and c then can then figure out what would that cost to make it happen and then lay it out to what staff would be willing to do it how could we accomplish that and put that in the budget and i know what i believe that was katie talking because that was her voice but i couldn't see her um except to like this much of her face um he's here yeah next year's budget bump for parapay is not as significant as next

122year's isn't as significant as this year and now and we know so that'll help we we know that bump so now i can plan accordingly with budget preparations um number because that that's been a little bit of a surprise to my budget i will share as someone who has most of the support and staff which worth everything um so um now my question would be my question katie is why you were not aware of that how did that information not flow to you as i would feel it would be you would be the most important person to know when was that when was that contract ratified bill um i could go back but it was it was last year not too late i think it was i really can't remember but i don't think it

123was after [Music] i don't think it was after i think it was after so my budget for special ed has done well used to have to be by october 15th for the service plan so i submit everything to the state based on that and differently so my budget would have been locked done and sent off for print yeah so i think that's why yeah it just so i think definitely we need to consider that before it happens next time we do a round of negotiations which luckily isn't going to be a while um yeah okay so that is definitely a problem the board should address katie uh rebecca i see that you had your hand up but you have lowered it did you get your question answered or do you have a comment yes my

124question was answered thank you okay i just want to make sure uh does anybody else have any um any uh philosophical budget ideas bill yes um there's been a significant transition um into outdoor education um what sort of equipment might support training might both schools find useful to continue and build upon this transition to utilizing outside excellent point bill thank you i i do think that's something that we should be taking into consideration yes thank you thank i'd like to really thank jennifer for organizing that um cleanup day um yeah it was fun you know uh basically i i'm thankful for one of the younger men to step in before i had a complete coronary there running the chipper um i'm not as young as i used to be but hey we got a lot

125done in um it was a great piece of community building so thank you jennifer you bet thank you um okay next we have on our agenda the items fraction i don't think we have any items for action um so setting the next agenda we've got bus updates from larry best updates and also i think this might be a supervisory union level thing but i'd really love to know how old our chromebooks are and whether they need to be taken i'll put them in i think they get yeah larry has a has a replacement plan that is in yeah he's got that pretty well covered but i think it'd be a great idea you know if he's going to come in to talk about the buses sometime to talk about that people know i mean i

126would say that our kids have the latest in technology because yeah recalling yeah i was just gonna repeat what bill said i think it's a three-year rotation plan and i think mike walker could also answer those questions for us okay thank you i i would wonder okay and this may be a personal preference of mine um i'm wondering um if there may be an administrative requirement and i mean um i seem to be having issues with my network um i know administrators have chrome books as well i'm wondering if any of you find that finds that limiting well katie does i'm sitting here covering my math book so i can't hear anything i said bill i'm sitting here coveting my macbook can you hear me bill phil see i mentioned macbooks and we've replaced 25

127ipads in the past two years for mostly for special education students who needed them for communication and proctors plus putting them in use with students and those are widely used even with really nice cases and everything else so that we completely revamped but in terms of to answer bill's question so it could be reflected in the notes um we i have found because aoe requires everything on microsoft office now that chromebrooke doing it on the chromebook last year i almost lost my swash marbles and everything else you could imagine um with uploading everything in microsoft office version that doesn't really work well in a chromebook with the online version yeah and with monitoring whatever we required yeah so that was how two of us now have i didn't want an ibm clunky thing i wanted

128a macbook and both of us have um sabrina existing director the microsoft office suite on it so i do think that chromebooks with the way the aoe is and and we probably should check with angie too because she has to submit a lot and i'm not sure they might actually desktop computers i know two of our administrative assistants can't function on chromebooks either they have to be on a windows-based computer so because of youtube medicaid and all the state reporting so it would be interesting so i can just take my end of it for a lot of stuff we have to do for the state um it is it is limiting it doesn't bother me but i have a husband who says why don't you get a real computer yeah though goes back i mean

129i would have learned to adapt to it but did you hear most of that bill i don't know when you came back i well i i i got a lot of it but i mean i know i couldn't survive with a chromebook because of how the aoe functions um that is exactly what she said i had promised larry it wasn't going to be a mac takeover though when you saw the order um but i i did i could not it was horrible last year um i believe that yeah the reality is is that max don't play very well also that's very that's true too yeah so that may tie in with the whole budgetary consideration um really love to hear it we haven't heard a technology update anyway for a while about i think it's

130in our schedule okay but i'll double check that and let you know when that's i think i think larry has the network fixed so that once i brought up chromebooks he blocked the assistant [Laughter] um rebecca i think we wanted to also talk about extended learning opportunities for middle and high school um and uh we also want to talk about the the uh early child care child the ece panel and film and will you talk about that at the su meeting elizabeth gosh that seems a little bit then but anyway i think we're going to have a couple of other things that uh get added on i hope luckwood will have a couple of other things that get added on uh at the same time so uh unless anybody else has something that they'd like

131to add to the agenda right now um i'm going to leave it kind of here should we nancy when do we discuss our conversation with sean of the lawyer yes uh we we discussed that either in executive session which uh we could have after this or we wait from it we wait for a next step from sean okay so uh i think that is it for our future agenda um at least as it stands right now uh so i will take a motion to oh so does anybody do any of the board members feel that we need to have an executive session a brief one no i don't think so okay so i'll take a motion to end the meeting so moved second and that was bill and man yep and thank you uh very

132quickly running down the list bill how do you vote hi davis how do you vote hi and nancy how do you vote hi rebecca how do you vote hi amy how do you vote i