MASD Board Meeting - May 9th, 2022

001good evening this is the mounis gutney school district monthly meeting on monday may 9th we are a little bit early this evening at 607 pm and i will call this meeting to order [Music] um we have a couple of changes to the agenda this evening starting with uh moving the conflict of interest uh discussion up to the top of the discussion pile [Music] are there any other changes to the agenda that anybody would like to make [Music] elizabeth will need to add i'm trying to pull the agenda up now we'll need to add on to items for action uh the appointment of sergio's appointment [Music] okay anything else okay uh then let's move on to the approval of minutes did everybody on the board have a chance to look at our minutes from our last

002meeting [Music] nancy i see your hand i have a change on the minute she put the uh the vote to have a uh hearing for the conflict of interest and um if the vote was not unanimous there was one no and the rest would get incorrect in the minutes [Music] i will proudly take responsibility for that no vote [Music] anybody else have an amendment to the minutes from our last meeting [Music] yes accept the minutes okay nancy has moved to accept the minutes do i have a second i'll second [Music] um let's see phil how do you vote i and uh let's see nancy how do you vote hi davis how do you vote hi and rebecca how do you vote hi and amy how do you vote i [Music] i am also an i

003so that's a unanimous acceptance of seven minutes uh let's see moving on to our public participation hold on one second please [Music] public comment is not legally required but we believe it is crucial for us to hear from our community members about their concerns over issues through these meetings our board models for our students how to conduct public discourse and that the board and members of our community can approach controversial issues in a civil and constructive manner and can demonstrate mutual respect having said that please note that the board is here to listen the board will not necessarily respond to public comment the public comment period is not designed for discussion okay are there any uh members of the public who would like to say something or announce something david baker yeah i um i'm

004proud to announce the uh we offered uh i'm going to take my hand down we offered the position of the third administrator you remember the board in its wisdom felt that the school windsor school was getting too big for two administrators and you budgeted for another administrator and we went on a pretty extensive search we had quite a few applicants we had probably six that were qualified we interviewed them got it down to there was a screening committee that got it down to three uh then the administrators took it from there we we brought it down to two we had we had a site visit school visits and um and uh i'm proud to announce tonight that the person who survived all of that interviewing and visiting and all that stuff was uh sergio someone

005of it i don't know if i did that right but the c is hard at the end uh the kids call him mr s i think from this point forward i will call him mr s um and uh and he uh definitely um showed an awful lot of experience and i don't certainly don't know if any of the other administrators want to speak to it i put the resume uh in in the chat um he comes to us currently after being principal of the manhattan day they have a day school at current hatton and a residential program but he's been the principal there for five years uh he also has been an academic dean at the greenwood school he has a strong uh strong background in in working with uh kids in somewhat creative ways

006and unconventional ways and uh and all of his references were strong and he also served on the school board at putney town school district for two years uh and they were kind of a tough two years because it was right during the sort of middle to end of the act 46 process so he knows it from that end as well so sergio i will publicly welcome you to our team uh this is a great board to work with and if any of the board members have any comments or questions rebecca was on the search team and [Music] now would be the time to do that if not i'll just uh say welcome sergio [Music] thank you all for the uh privilege i could not be more thrilled to be joining the windsor team that is

007clearly a cherished community school with an amazing group of educators and again i could not be more thrilled to be joining the team [Music] welcome now where do you reside i live in pakistan just down the valley a little bit and hopefully before the end of the year or shortly into the new year week next school year we can have more of a little gathering where we can spend some time with sergio and he can give you a sense of his background jen knew him from one of her graduate programs that wasn't why he applied or why he was accepted but um that was also a good connection [Music] excellent thank you does anybody have any questions for mr scott yeah i would just say that i was on at least two of those interviews

008um and we had a lot of applicants and jennifer did a great job with the questions and shepherding through the uh committee and sergio as far as the uh the voting that we did was far and above he was uh so i just want to say welcome and really excited and i think he's going to do a great job and i just want to let you know as far as the committee was concerned um speaking for myself but also the numbers that we looked at after the committee uh sergio was far and away the pick excellent well welcome sergio oh with somebody else this is amy amy i can't see you yeah all right i'm on the l [Music] okay um i just want to welcome you to the mount of stepney school district to

009windsor west windsor community thank you everyone i've felt the warm welcome everywhere and once again and just humbled to be a part of a great community school very much looking forward to working with you all on the school board and uh certainly open and very much looking forward to connecting further and getting to know all of you as we go forth in this next school year thank you i can't wait to meet you in person [Laughter] we'll have to work that out and and i think sergio and i have talked there will be a couple of days certainly before the end of the year he starts officially july 1. there'll be a couple of days when we'll do some transitional work um and he'll get together with kate and colleen and just to figure out

010some of the organizational systemic pieces uh as as we go forward the big part of this was to make sure that we had one administrator dedicated at each of the levels the elementary the middle and the high school so one of the first steps will be to sergio's got a strong k-8 background so he could do the elementary he could do the he could do the middle so um i really think that's going to be in the hands of the administrative team to figure that out but they're all committed to making sure they've got that designation next year [Music] excellent nice work everybody all right thank you sergio thank you david thank you all hey character um does anybody else have any uh announcements or um comments from the public hey um and we will

011move on to the principles report [Music] all right i'm gonna try and share my screen i don't know if people calling are on yet i haven't noticed not yet i'll give them a quick heads up but while doing that i will share [Music] beginning so starting with albert bridge um lots of happenings over the last month since we last met um we have found a school counselor which i have no idea how excited we are um he won't be starting till next year his name is andrew mcphillips he did an intern with us a couple of years ago and um is super excited to join our crew and has already started connecting with some of our students or reconnecting i should say with some of our students so that's really good news for the abs

012community we've done some revamping of recess in that we have the ability now to mix our pods so we realized that our kindergartners and first graders first have never done any mixing upgrades up to this point um and our second graders only had a little bit at the beginning of their kindergarten year and everybody has been away from this mixing of age groups for a while so what we've done is really back off and go back to a responsive classroom approach really thinking about teaching and being proactive in how we work together the kinds of things we do so that has been going incredibly well it's great to see kids playing together across ages and a lot of the um transition of or trans transformation of learning as kids who are younger observe and start

013modeling those who are older is really exciting and then those who are older just seeing them step up to the plate becoming um leaders that we want them to be we're moving away from our maple unit moving into our gardening units and our whole school place based units we did a full school field trip into woodstock and we went to see a haitian ensemble perform which was totally fantastic um kids were dancing and it was just wonderful to um get the kids out again some of these kids have never been on a field trip some of them haven't even been on a bus for a few years so it's just wonderful to connect as a community and to give them some exposure to something outside of our small school we're working um pretty diligently on

014developing restorative circles within our school community as an approach to addressing challenging situations that we believe are community-based situations and we've been using a book called circle forward which is filled with a whole lot of wonderful resources on how to do specific types of restorative circles and that's going incredibly well our third through sixth graders have been working with tracy kohler who's the library primarily over at windsor but she comes over to us one day a week and she's been doing this fantastic robotics steam project which once we get some good videos out there we're going to share those with you but i just want to let you know it's really exciting the kids are so into it um it's pretty pretty engaging for them when we talk about student engagement they're right there and

015in fact the sixth grade fifth and sixth grade class trip they want to explore more having to do with um coding and particularly um when it has to do with things like video games not a surprise but they're they're really talking about how do you make these things happen so that's very exciting uh walk and bike to school happened this past week um we changed it to wednesday to thursday we were supported by our local police department um chief frank showed up and our school resource officer paul favreau and lots of community members and it was great fun just rolling into the school with music going kids just interacting and having a good time and one of the kids afterwards he said i'm so tired i think i need a nap and this is a

016kid you would not imagine um needs a nap but it was great just just to have them put that extra effort in before school starts teacher appreciation big shout out to our skit community and april psych for really making our teachers um aware that they are appreciated even though they go day in and day out um without needing the appreciation i think is just wonderful throughout the week to see them just being celebrated for um for being teachers for being willing to do this job um we have seen some really great progress and we'll do some more visuals with to track my progress but what we did over this year is really focus each grade level around one thing that we really wanted to achieve and i wanted to say that in our track my

017progress we have done beyond expected growth in every category that we focused on so that was really good news one other thing that's not on here but i may as well slip it in is that we are hoping to have fifth and sixth grade do an out of state trip sixth graders have traditionally gone to boston the sixth graders want to include the fifth graders in part of their trip um not all of it but part of their trip because they're such a tight community it's a small group um so i can put that proposal out um you guys would like um through your email to see if that's okay or if you'd like me to do that now i'm happy to do that now [Music] um and then upcoming stuff for abs um s

018back for not just abs but winter as well um math and ela are starting next week at abs we have youth beats with um mr rich who has been with us before he's going to be an artist in residence may 31st through june 3rd ending with an all school performance with not just mr risch but our music department is going to be doing some work as well as a couple of kids who have some talent they want to share um our leader in me next steps as a school this is our some of our summer working going into next year is really trying to draw some through between responsive classrooms collaborative problem solving our trauma informed work and portrait of a graduate um sixth grade graduation is june 15th we're super excited about that [Music]

019and let's see here is our k through four stop for windsor and [Music] let's see um if i can just pause for a moment i'm gonna see if one of them is able to jump on yeah you know and that uh excuse me that it might have been my fault because much like elizabeth said um they also thought that we were starting with yeah going to start with the conflict yeah done with their children's sports activities yeah because i knew they had some sports activities for one of them to jump on would you like me to share the proposal for the sixth grade trip yes where where are you planning to go oh can you try that again [Music] elizabeth i couldn't hear that oh you couldn't hear me can you hear me right now

020yep uh where are you planning to go so they want to go to boston the sixth graders want to do the boston trip they want to go the freedom trail and make connections we've got a couple of connections one is a question of when is standing up or standing against authority a good thing so that's one of our kind of guiding questions and talking about the revolutionary war and how we became separated from england [Music] they want to go to the planetarium down at the museum of science um they've got a couple of really great um exhibits specifically around um our place in the universe and their interest in that we're hoping to do something fun like the duck tours which if you get a good leader it can be thoroughly interesting and informative and

021with the fifth graders we are hoping to do a hike by um lake winnipesaukee there's a specific trail that has um some really good identifications of trees and that connects to the fact that over this past couple of years they've been doing a lot of identification as part of their play space with our local trees and so we wanted to see what what are similar and what are different and try and make uh connections about why they might be different if they are different um and then near lake winnipesaukee is the arcade museum which is three stories of one of historic arcade games um dating back to the late 7 1970s all the way up through and then trampling part for the traditional joy which our sixth growers have usually done [Music] bill i see

022you're in [Music] so the the boston trip that wasn't that would that include both the museum and the freedom trail yes i've done that i wouldn't suggest it yeah so we're not thinking of doing the actual museum of science we would usually do that as an overnight but right now museum of science is not allowing overnight stuff so what we're going to do is just the planetarium component okay and then catch the duck tour from there and do a loop around oh but you're not planning on walking the freedom trail yes when we first get there we'll do the freedom trail through the holocaust there's a the holocaust museum outside of faneuil hall quincy market area and then go to the museum science do the planetarium then do the duct tours and then come home

023and then the next good luck yes yeah we we've done a version of it every every year that i've been here so almost every year that i've been here um and this takes out the museum part of it [Music] because we can't do the overnight which is usually when we get a lot of our museum time is when they after hours and before hours it'll be live yeah let me let me know if you need a chaperone for the uh the tree identification trip i find that interesting fantastic thank you that's great amy i see your hand and then rebecca um so if the well if you have good weather you will have an excellent time [Music] that's the last time the last time i accompanied a class to boston it was to do part

024of the freedom trail and it was a downpour and it was kind of sad but we still walked i mean they were they were game i was probably more sad than the kids yes we've done it once in the rain since i've done um the groups here uh we have these beautiful umbrellas we can take and we can always buy ponchos but i found the kids are generally pretty just excited to be in the city um and not much dampens their spirits once you get there yep jenn i was just going to ask how many um students would be attending more or less and um and chaperones um do you have parents and obviously you already have a volunteer um so with just the sixth graders going to boston there's only four sixth graders that

025we have and it's gonna be myself and the classroom teacher will be gone on the next day when we go with the fifth graders we're planning on having eight students and three adults with us but we can easily add an expert tree identifier to help us along the way [Music] um the trail that we were thinking of going on is called let me see if i can pull it up real quick um it's called locks hill trail and my understanding from somebody who gave me some information about this is that it has some really nice information about the trees along the way and we compared the trees that the kids are studying with the trees there and found enough differences that we think it'd be a pretty engaging conversation [Music] oh if you would like

026i can continue on through the windsor stuff i'm here jen oh awesome sorry yeah so we have a lot happening at our k4 because the end of the year is very exciting so our kindergarten registration is set for this week and i think we have about 20 kids coming registered so far next year um first grade if you haven't seen this it's worth a visit to the school so they do a theme each friday so if it's a camping theme when they go in in the morning it's all set up with uh tents um they do an ice cream day it's just i'll take pictures because it's really worth seeing second grade hold on i have to get my daughter to the bathroom second grade is doing um a book goal and if they read

027150 books then they're gonna get a nature they're doing this nature walk and um a love lunch a picnic lunch third just did um a walking tour of windsor and that's really cool to see because [Music] there's some pictures there the fourth grade doing the cleanup challenge which was fun to watch from the inside because some of the stuff that they thought they found that were treasures were definitely just trash i'm sure their parents were pleased that we got rid of it um at the 5-8 they are getting married due advent day which is like a mini kind of intensive they're doing that in seven eight so they can choose from bowling hiking girling mountain biking uh five six is still going strong with their author visits they had one they have one from london

028coming up tomorrow and they're just wrapping up an activism book club and an environmental book club um our passages is scheduled for june 13th and there's more info on that coming out this week our high school happenings um i put a couple things in here that i thought that we had asked about uh bill i was thinking of you and i put in our hartford numbers for next year so that is roughly almost 50 percent of our our juniors that are going next year our marching places have been moved to may and tenses it's full of full day trips and half day trips some are local some are uh there's a group going to boston we did have a successful play i hope some of you got to see it because it was really funny

029and we had an anonymous donor donate the ukraine flag and it's flying high for the next 30 days we just put it up on a beautiful day there are some pictures there the boys varsity baseball team which was totally initiated by their coach doing some cleanup around town and we're getting ready to um set up what credit recovery could look like for this summer but we're also trying to find a way for the kids who just want to come anyway come in get a lunch have a walk trying to get those kids to school too this summer so that's in process should have what that looks like by the next meeting [Music] so that's our principles report any questions for us [Music] davis i see your hand although you just took it down oh yeah

030i just took it down because i saw you noticing it um yeah not not so much a a question as a comment for uh for jennifer i'm really glad to hear that you're uh you started working with restorative circles at abs um i was lucky enough to uh catch a presentation by the individual who one of the individuals who is behind the uh longmont community restorative justice project out in colorado uh which is one of the first really like widespread adoptions that in the country and uh style did really great things to the community so i'll be interested to hear how that goes i think it's a really great way of building conflict resolution into uh into the school system and that uh it can be a really good model for the entire community so

031uh thanks for sharing that and i i hope that it yields great results that's where um we've had wonderful success with it so far and it fits i could love with our responsive classroom and our philosophy behind what we believe about kids and who we are as a community where we don't believe that might makes right we want to teach people to work together so we're finding that it's um it's flavor intensive um but i would argue probably not compared to the labor intensive if you don't do the work yep [Music] oh i'm sorry i never took my my mic off um i have a question for um i wondered if um and this is mostly for juniors and seniors and i wonder if you have if you know of or have heard of the

032mcclure free degree program which is a program that allows juniors to um students to graduate with an associate's degree and i think they would start in their their junior year [Music] sorry i don't know about it but if you want to send me info i'm happy to greg and jess and i'll dive right into it great thanks the other thing i forgot to mention is please come to our community barbecue it's may 25th it's going to be a presentation of what collaborative problem solving like little skits done by the kids at different grade levels to show what that looks like and then we're going to have some games i'm hoping for whiffable wiffle ball and cornhole and we're going to have barbecue by craig so that's um on the 25th i'll send out a reminder

033as it gets closer and that's where um all residents of windsor and westwinder you do not have to be connected to the school um so if you know of any neighbors or anyone wants to go we're just trying to get a small head count we send out a survey every week so it'll be in the newsletter this week but please make sure everyone knows they're included pete i've got a question go for it if there's a uh a community member who's not associated with the school how do they get word to you that um they want to attend um you can just include them on the survey when it goes out like if you know someone who's coming because we don't need names we just need like a general number 150 people showing up or

034you know 50. tom will put it in the town newsletter i don't know where i would send it to put it to get it out to west winds or residence but if you want to tell me i'm happy too i'd be glad to put it on our list serve i would really appreciate that i'll send it to you tomorrow okay thank you thank you okay any other questions or comments for our principals [Music] all right hearing none david you're up with the superintendent's report [Music] david are you talking because we can't hear you well that's why nobody was answering me i get it now i leave my sound off when it's supposed to be on and the other way around that's not good all right now everybody can see that correct yes we needed a

035minute to take a breath anyhow so that's good all right i'm going to be pretty quick here um just some general updates the equity audit proposals are back we have a committee already identified um the pep is on the committee davis is going to be on that committee and then there are a couple of other task force members we wanted to keep it relatively small because remember we're also doing this with springfield so and what i'm really waiting for is for them to put their committee together uh i don't know i mean i i know zach is you know working on it and if we don't have something by middle of this week i mean we may we may have to go forward with our committee and then just send our top one or two

036to them we'll we'll we'll see how that goes i'm just waiting to hear back from him [Music] a shout out to tina canfield she did a great job getting contracts out and contracts back uh you can't imagine how much work it is and also we had to update the contract so the language were it was was similar and also so it reflected the work that was done during negotiations but the good news is contracts have been returned uh we're only dealing with a few extension requests which i think all of those ended last friday and there'll still be a little bit of hiring to do um uh and again i i would leave that up to colleen and kate and jen to let you know what and and probably kate too because i know she's

037got some special education hiring to do so if anybody has questions about that at the end we can let you know specifically what is to be hired uh friday we had a parent gathering virtually with mike nicholson around student self-directed learning might put a lot of time into preparing this you know organizing this and um we did have i know we had at least one parent from out of scrutiny it was a pretty large group and i couldn't see everybody but i know misty booting was was did show up and she was in my group because we broke into small groups uh and the conversation was um was uh robust and uh and and i think folks really learned a lot from the other schools around the country that are doing this kind of work

038but thinking about doing this kind of work and one of the things that mike would like to do next year and he no longer works for battelle he uh he uh is doing some private kinds of con consultation what he'd like to do is keep that parent group um alive and well next year so maybe they meet two or three times over the course of the year so uh we'll keep those parents on on our mailing list and there were a couple of parents from heartland a couple of parents from wethersfield as well so there was good representation from our su uh the middle level work continues we now have a timeline which has to be vetted one more time i think before we go completely public with it we have a meeting toward the

039end of may uh and i also think the interim superintendent is going to want to weigh in on this i know it's on our agenda for later on tonight but uh but but that's kind of where the task force is uh at this point the calendar is final for next year i can put it in the chat i think i can find it and put it in the chat but if not you know it's it's i think it's already gone out the only thing that needed to be done was to insert those four early noon release days that the supervisor union board approved at their last uh meeting um i know principals are working now on the daily schedules that's not easy especially since we're trying to provide planning time during the school day common

040planning time collaborative time for all teachers in particular our middle school teachers so the day will be extended again next year by 10 to 15 minutes which will bring us back pretty much to where we were pre-coping so principals will get those schedules out uh they will have to match up because we have itinerant teachers that go back and forth between schools we have special educators that do and plus we have a unified contract that requires teachers to work the same number of hours and support staff also have to be under the same union agreement um so stay tuned and those schedules i know they're working hard on those right now we're going to be barbecued out because on june 2nd and i want to thank some of the folks who are here tonight who

041have been a part of this community forum planning um it's been a a a good group i think we've got it uh i think we've got it down now it will be june 2nd it'll start at 5 30. it's su wide the forum and if you remember our community asked for a bit you know more dialogue between the boards and between uh the community and the parents in particular um so those invites uh are going out probably in the next few days um and uh 5 30 to 6 45 essentially will be the forum piece in the auditorium and then from 5 45 to 6 30 nice little barbecue weather permitting we're going to do it rain or shine but hopefully we can be outside uh and who knows maybe kate will share cornwall games

042with us uh that night as well but it should be a good night uh cornhole champs i just want to point that out so if anybody wants a challenge we will accept it all right so bring those bring the bring those cornhole games with you for that night should be a good night kind of a good way to you know to end our year um waiting a decision on an interim i know that the su board is interviewing uh candidates for interim superintendent uh as we speak uh and we should have a decision reasonably soon and have enough time to do that transitional work uh and last but not least the last day of school is a new dismissal on june 17th and uh also there will be an su wide seventh and eighth grade

043dance at the windsor rec center uh that evening and i know there's a group of parents planning that uh and we i think we got a tentative notice uh in my last email blast but you'll be hearing more about this from the in individual schools but a great way for our seventh and eighth graders to get together if we do middle school next year by the end of the year maybe our sixth grade will be ready to join in but this year it's only seventh and eighth grade uh and uh it should be uh an exciting time and last but not least the task force uh the equity task force our anti-racism task force uh we'll be meeting soon to prioritize our action steps and mary gannon's work looks to be promising at the su

044level it begins tomorrow night at 5 30. it's virtual only uh and uh and it's an opportunity for mary to share with the board some of some of her thoughts um and so we don't we do not have an in-person option uh for that tomorrow night and it is basically uh i mean certainly the public is welcome to attend but it is uh basically for board education and board board development um and we're still talking about whether or not we're going to continue with lavelle brown's work next year i'm going to leave that up to the interim superintendent i think we had some good good good work done with lavell and i know that he and his contacts have been wondering if we're going to continue to be part of that cohort next year so

045that's uh that's it for me um and i will stop presenting and answer any questions you might have [Music] rebecca [Music] david i i just wanted to be clear um so with next year's schedule um we're going back to pre-covet um arrangement which now which means that there will not be that um [Music] that time at the end of the day for teachers to gather and and work on on different things yeah no that that's a great question rebecca there will still be some of that time because you know you either schedule that collaborative time in the middle of the day or at the end of the day and so we've decided within the framework of a seven and a half hour work day that there'll still be you know upwards to 45 minutes for

046teachers to work in collaborative groups to work on teams to do that kind of collective work aside from those noon release days but yeah there'll be some of that not quite as much as we had this year but there'll still be some of that time [Music] i just wonder also because i i thought that that was really um the intent of those efforts were to to to sort of um give the board an idea of what was going what was how how teachers and um and staff were um working with the the different initiatives that are presently in place um and um and and we really haven't heard back anything about that in in some time and if i would i would be very interested in in getting back and finding out how that time

047how the staff found that time um in terms of helping them during these um during this time so do you know what i'm saying i just think that i'd like to hear back on what what what is going on and and how that's working for teachers yeah no i i i certainly understand that one one of the things that happened rebecca um remember when we designed that schedule and we set that at 45 minutes to an hour at the end of the day we had all those professional learning communities that we're going to meet and meet regularly what happened is we had a tough fall and a tough winter with covet so what happened was anxieties began to build and teachers were exhausted and so we used some of that time we used some of

048that time to give some relief and release to our teachers to just kind of gear up for the next day uh that's just to be completely transparent so those you know 10 or 12 personal learning communities that we had set up did not meet regularly every month but there were some things that went on you know our lighthouse initiative uh some of our trauma-informed work went on and i'm sure we could report out on some of that but i'll tell you the truth what was going to be a recovery year this year did not turn out to be a recovery year it turned out to be another year by which we're going to have to recover next year which is why we didn't want to we didn't want to lose that time uh at the

049end of the day but that's that's the that's the truth uh rebecca it didn't it didn't it was not as robust as we had hoped and that's fine i think that um i i wasn't looking necessarily for that i really wanted it was also an opportunity for teachers to have some um talking about so i i hear what you're saying um but i i just think that it would probably be a good idea to to find out from the teachers on on on on what that was like for them and i think being transparent is important i and i value that so no i appreciate that very much but i i i was hoping that we could hear back from the teachers and i know in the past there were surveys done which would allow

050them to to speak you know for their voices to be heard and i just thought that that was important and some of the feedback we did get rebecca and it's gonna it's gonna lead some of the work for next year um uh the teachers were certainly they were feeling stressed this year so we we gave them some release and some relief but also one of the things they said is that sometimes a one size fit all professional development work you know that if somebody is highly skilled and trauma-informed you know why should they have to spend two or three weeks in a plc around trauma informed matter of fact they might want to teach that work so one of the things and this is something we could present one of the things that uh angie

051and brittany have been working hard on uh is next year to have a much more um much more elaborate uh self-directed we we always talk about students being self-directed in their professional development so are self-determined so there's going to be a lot more of that next year with teachers having some voice and choice in what they do uh so that but i think it would be nice for if not at this board level at the su board level to to give you some insight into what's what's what happened this year and what's happening next year [Music] we are that's on the agenda for the end of may good good idea [Music] i see amy's hand do you see amy's hand elizabeth sorry i've just been shouting amy i see your hand yeah i thought that

052would be what you were saying um david will there be the friday early release that we've had the last few years at least pre-topic yeah and that's what i that's what i meant amy that um we have the are you talking about next year or the or the last day of school um next year yeah next year yeah uh at the and i don't know whether you were at the meeting or not but what the supervisor reunion board with administrative recommendation went from one a month of those release days uh because those those release days are a little tough on parents they went down to one per quarter so there are still those known release days on fridays and that's another time for staff to collaborate and get together and to work on these initiatives

053so there will be some of that next year okay so um pre-covered the mountains got me school district was every friday [Music] yeah that that's exactly right so and that's like pre-pre-covered you're right and that will not happen next year and part of that is because you know now our school day remember that's a recent negotiated item uh our school day is now unified across the district so if in fact we would have every friday as an early release day every every professional staff member would have to have that and and i'm not saying that's why we didn't do it but that that that was that that was when each district could sort of make their own schedule okay thank you anybody else have any questions for david thank you david we now move on

054to our uh discussion section and at the top of the list is bumped up to the popular list is the conflict of interest so uh i will now bill i will now call on bill to ask his question and then i will step back and let him you're on the meeting um i i i don't really want to ask a question i'm wondering if the um if the owl can be muted um in between discussions because it's something is really interfering with our audio i i just don't know yeah and it is that and i'm just doing this and it's picking that up it's moving at home i think it's i think it's the owl i think bill's right i think we need now i don't know what happens if we mute the owl other

055than we can't hear people in the room uh unless you turn on your volumes but larry what would you suggest can we mute that owl for for some of this well since there's only a couple people i could i could leave i could have the owl is everybody experiencing what bill's experiencing because that would be good to know yeah absolutely yeah there's a lot a lot of white noise coming from the owl all right so let me uh uh i bet it's the air well let me yeah let me um yeah it sounds like an air filtration system or something it sounds like a fan it might be the air conditioner in that room is that better now that's better yes that's better thank you is the air conditioner on in that room larry the

056air handler's on the air handling i bet that's exactly that i bet that's a big part of it but i think if you keep your volumes where you are the owl is muted now uh i think we should be okay gal is not muted oh the owl is not muted maybe that's why we're still getting some white noise i can mute it if i can let me try to turn off the air handler i'll be right back okay and i i can mute it temporarily but that means we won't be able to listen to angie or any unless amy turns her volume on then we could do it no david you would just unmute me just unuse the owl i'm gonna mute the owl right now i can't unmute it but i can mute it

057all right yeah you can see the difference right that's a big difference can everybody hear the difference there right quiet yeah that's much better i the problem is angie and um and amy will have to turn their volume on and the other one turn it off uh as you want to speak um so i think elizabeth you are going to turn it over to amy go ahead well i think we should wait until amy gets uh so everybody in that room gets sorted right that doesn't work because the owl's volume i see what i see if that's going to be a problem we'll just have to deal with the noise from the owl that's that's fine maybe that's it so angie want to go turn the the volume back on for the owl david i

058think you muted it i did she's got i can't unmute it she has to okay i can only mute i can't unmute yeah we all have our limitations david it's fine i know i know how's that how's that that handler is off that's much better it is yeah it's way better thanks that was some annoying noise it was i feel so much better yay now we know where it was okay are we ready i think so everyone can hear me we will start the hearing or conflict of interest and larry it's all good that that was the noise for the next uh more being in 210 i'll make sure we turn off the air handler before we get on thanks or if everybody's here it would be useless right so correct okay thank you so

059conflict of interest we have a policy that was um approved july 1st 2019 and the definition of a conflict of interest is a situation when a board member a board members and its administrative designees private interests as distinguished from the board members and its administrative designees interest as a member of the public would benefit or be harmed by his or her actions as a member of the board so in other words the question is is elizabeth work as a state representative is it benefiting her private interests and daniel works if you are here if you wanted to reiterate your um your your charge on this sure i can do that um i'll probably keep my camera off just so i can keep my papers in front of me if nobody cares any who i ain't

060that great to look at anyway so i prefer to keep your camera on please i i will try uh just because i'll have one thing in one hand and one thing in the other i might bounce around a little bit but i will try to do that um so i'm gonna if i have the floor for a bit i i'll kind of paraphrase through the letter i submitted and then i'll i'll add a few other few other notes and details towards the end maybe five minutes maybe ten all right so i believe the conflict of interest here arises between elizabeth standing as a vermont uh house of representatives member representing windsor county uh while simultaneously being on the school boards here it's it's a conflict of legislative and administrative balance of powers overlap of jurisdictions

061and uh legislative and then uh administrative power differentials um besides also i believe being violation of uh vermont law on school board member conduct notwithstanding what the definition of the conflict of interest is in this policy so some kind of clear examples of this that i think make it at least to me as potentially a reasonable person obvious uh are just some of the bills that she's signed on as sponsored to through her you know rightful proper duty as a state legislator member of the state legislature but some of those that that are most notable i think are house bill 163 which is an act relating to enhancing equitable learning and workplace environments in public schools the conflicts of interest there is that that's a bill which would require supervisory union actions to be taken

062as well as curriculum level actions to be taken uh house bill uh 537 from uh earlier this year uh an act related to a statewide mass mandate i'll detail that a little bit more after i go through a couple other bills there is house bill 584 an act relating to the creation of an anti-racist education certification that has financial implications as well as school policy implications and um comments have been noted in the in prior meeting minutes about the supervisory union perhaps setting aside budget for for such things that may come from this legislation and elizabeth's kind of dual roles is the only reason uh she's able to make some statements uh greater than a school board member in and of themselves would otherwise be able to speak to and then another one is house

063bill 641 an act relating to public schools or public post-secondary schools mascots nicknames logos letterhead and team names i'm not saying anything about what i feel about any of these bills but in this one for example that's the state legislator um taking power that would otherwise reside within school boards power differential issues uh there are some others i know in the letter i'll leave them aside for now i'm pretty well have copies so uh per vermont law that i i say in the letter uh school board members quote shall establish policies and procedures designed to avoid the appearance of conflict of interest close quote it is my assertion that this is not possible for anybody to do simultaneously as being a state representative and a school board member uh some prior meetings where this this

064came up i think more obviously per the conflict of interest policy quote when a board member and its administrative designees become aware that he or she are in a position that creates a conflict of interest or the appearance of a conflict of interest i i emphasize that or intentionally there back to the quote as defined in state law or this policy he or she will declare the nature and extent of the conflict or appearance of conflict for inclusion in the board minutes and or abstain from voting or participating in the discussion of the issue giving rise to the conflict uh close quote that's certainly not been done in in general and a really notable example of that is a december 14th mount scotty school district meeting december 14th to 2021 uh in the minutes uh

065there's note that uh elizabeth burrows this is a quote from the minutes elizabeth burrow stated that she felt it would be wise to set aside additional funds for extra training for high school level restorative justice or other anti-racism measures whether a formal plan for training is in place or not that goes back to the house bill i mentioned where there is some financial implications when it comes down to the school board level and then less than a month later there's the house bill 584 and act relating to the creation of an anti-racist education certification that would have direct implications for the very funding that was asked for at the time and would also require the school board to take actions and policies so again just an example of legislative action that has direct implications on

066the school board level and the conflict in having a voting and disgusting role in both uh allow me to continue uh one other example i wanted to highlight is back to the the the masking bill i mentioned there was lots of school board level discussion about school board level policies for the schools about masking uh and these discussions were happening while burrows in her legislative role was actively sponsoring legislation that would have created a statewide mass mandate superseding the powers of the school board i don't see how anybody could possibly reasonably look at that and not think that there's at the very least the appearance of a conflict of interest uh besides there being an actual conflict of interest and a school board member is supposed to be an unbiased neutral voice on any of

067these topics for the schools i just don't see how that's possible while you're actively signing on to legislation that would override the authority of your role on the school board mostly this is the implementation uh section five in the conflict of interest policy where where uh where there's particular violation and it is my personal judgment based on the the scope and duration and ability for the public to reasonably kind of look at this that there's no remediation other than resignation from either the school board or the uh house of representatives one way or another because i i just don't think both can be done without there being a constant potential conflict of interest going on all right so there's a little bit more that closes my letter i'll share just a few more notes that

068are outside of that letter uh there's a current event of note uh that came out of the vermont legislator you know maybe ironically enough maybe not that uh vermont just passed senate bill 171 which is a code of ethics for elected officials uh and sorry an act relating to adoption of a state code of ethics is the formal name of it uh and there may also be a violation of that in play uh it would depend on your interpretation but something i pulled out of it uh this is a quote from the signed bill from the governor in the public servant's official capacity this being elizabeth as a public servant as a member of the state legislator in the public servant's official capacity the public service servant shall avoid any conflicts of interest or the

069appearance of a conflict of interest the appearance of a conflict shall be determined by the perspective of a reasonable individual with knowledge of the relevant facts close quote it also specifies that one more quote when confronted with a conflict of interest a public servant shall recuse themselves from the matter and not take further action close quote one other point from a different state to share and then i'll i'll finish up and get out of the way um there are other states that have more explicit laws about this uh and i saw one that was pretty darn clear out of texas uh again this is vermont so that doesn't apply but let me throw in there what another state legislator writes on this issue so this is a quote that i pulled that with a reference

070i can share uh after the fact the texas municipal league a guidance document on texas dual office holding and incompatibility laws made easy a section called conflicting loyalties incompatibility and the question they addre address there is if a person holds two positions or offices with the school board and a role in the state legislator both being defined as positions or offices what circumstances could cause a conflicting loyalties problem the answer given in that guidance document i'm going to read a bit of a block of text here conflicting loyalties prevent a person from simultaneously holding two public offices when the interest of the two public entities may conflict and when voting on behalf of one public entity would possibly compromise the interests of the other public entity in other words the official would have to choose

071between the conflicting interests of the two entities and thus would have conflicting loyalties for example a person may not serve on the city council at the same time that he or she serves as a school board trustee because both the city council and the school board may be adopting policies on some of the same issues break out for a second perhaps a mask mandate back into the uh architect there if the city council exercises its authority over school district property within the city the council member must be free to vote on what is in the best interest of the city which may not coincide with the best interest of the school district i break out perhaps you replace city with state back in accordingly the courts in the office of the attorney general have generally

072ruled that a person may not hold two public offices where the inherent policy objectives between the two offices are likely to conflict in certain areas the incompatibility doctrine quote protects the integrity of government institutions by promoting impartial service by public officials close quote uh i will close this and turn it back over to the board for good here uh in a moment i would like to put out there and this doesn't need an inherent answer but um i i did want to get this into the meeting recording all right and note in the prior meeting where the vote was held on whether or not to hold this informal hearing that there was one no vote as uh bill yates owned up to earlier uh not even thinking that there might be the appearance of a

073conflict of interest uh and he even said earlier in this meeting kind of shockingly to me anyway that he was proud of that i'd love to hear further elaboration how you can justify that no vote uh and finally for the other board members who voted yes i of course think that was the proper thing to do to have a a serious hearing here but it was a very caged yes and the comments made were essentially that the reason for the yes votes was to just generally take a look at how conflicts of interest are handled and maybe we'll look at the policy no the the primary purpose here is a serious hearing of what i'm presenting forward uh where you are to make a vote based on the merits of it so i just ask

074that this not be let's just go through the policy this is i think something serious to look at i i have nothing personally against anybody on this board or any boards i commend everybody who works in public service in all sorts of formats i make no positions on any of the bills or anything like that that i put in here i have no personal anemist or dislike or anything like that against elizabeth or anybody else on this board i put all this forward because i think there is a fundamental conflict of interest and if the mount scotty school board wants to keep the trust of the public from the outside looking in this kind of thing seems to me pretty obvious to uh not have in plain sight so thanks very much for uh for

075hearing me out on that i will mute myself turn the camera off and i i think that's probably all you have to hear from me for this meeting on the issue thank you um elizabeth before you start i would like to make a clarification in vermont law [Music] as far as there is a chart of incompatible offices and in vermont a school director can also be a select person um and in that chart of incompatible offices there is no mention of state representative or state senator that has not been part of the incompatible offices in the state of vermont so um elizabeth would you like to respond thank you amy uh i i did not prepare anything particular to say except that there are 12 other school board members who are legislators and on the

076education committee of the house of representatives there are three members who are also school board members i'm sorry there are 12 uh not legislators there are 12 representatives in the house vermont house of representatives who are school board members i didn't ask at the senate but uh we all i don't even serve on the education committee i actually serve on the health care committee and i certainly did look into whether it would be a conflict of interest before i wasted my time running for the house of representatives we have a citizen legislature we do not have a professional legislature we have a citizen legislature in which every citizen wears more than one hat we a lot of legislators serve in select boards and on other boards because we are people who are community minded and

077we sometimes volunteer on or or run for school boards and become passionate about what we do and decide that uh we would we would like to take our act to a a uh we would like to gain the ability to make bigger changes [Music] as far as my own personal gain there is one bill that i put forward that i could be seen to have had a personal uh interest in and that was the accessible bill or this accessible trails bill that i put forth during my first week of office which would have allowed me to get around on trails around our state more easily the bill was never taken up but i would definitely have benefited personally from it not financially or any other way but i would have been able to use trails

078as far as uh any of these the bills that daniel has brought up there is not a single one where i would have uh personally claimed um the mascot bill i did indeed speak out as a school board member on last week when i voted in favor of it but these are normal things that that legislators do uh if i if i were a teacher or there are there is a member of the um house education committee who is not only a teacher but also a school board member and she's a member of the house committee on education and she serves in all three capacities every single day um uh let's see she did not she did recuse herself from the pensions vote but she votes on everything else and presents bills every day that

079pertain to education that is what representation is when i come to an su board meeting i am not the i i do not hold all of the votes i am one person with one vote when i lead our our uh our mount scott new school district meetings i am not commanding you to vote in in any way i simply lead the meetings i i put on the agenda what anybody asks me to put on the agenda i simply um call on people when uh when they have a question um i don't have more more power than anybody else at the at the house of representatives i have one vote i may put forth the bill but uh i also put forth a bill that had to do with um the uh state u.s system because

080bill yates asked me to that's what representation is when somebody asks you to to serve their interests that's why i was elected to to represent not the county of windsor county but windsor west windsor and heartland um uh i i take what people ask me to i take up to the state house and and i i have bills drafted as far as the the um the anti-racism education certification um process i was asked to help with that bill because it was requested by a group of students from around the state who who had been very excited about um act one coming into the the educational quality standards from act one uh being completed and they wanted to to put forth something that would support that um and uh one of their their advisors invited me

081to help them uh see how exciting it is to to have a bill drafted in their honor the [Music] setting aside the budget the money in the budget i think everybody on this board knows that it had nothing to do with any legislation we simply wanted to uh it wasn't at the su level it was at our district level we talked about setting aside money so that um if we wanted to if the supervisory union moved forward with some of the initiatives uh implementing our anti-racism policy we would have uh money ready to go if we decided to take up some of those initiatives on a district level that was what we talked about we did not do it i don't believe but that was one of the options for what to do with the

082the budget surplus um uh let's see as far as the court of ethics um for state legislators in as a matter of fact i went to talk to the um i think ethics panel the house ethics panel and i talked with the chair of the house ethics panel who uh said i was putting myself at a great deal of risk by uh addressing the board today um but i feel after mucking over with with a variety of people that um i trust our community and uh uh the chair of the ethics panel said that we wouldn't have a legislature we wouldn't have half of the the school board members or select board members that we have if they couldn't serve dual roles in on both local and and legislative capacities because we don't have that

083many people who are willing to put this type of time and effort into supporting our communities we it's a it's a uh we get paid seven thousand dollar we net seven thousand dollars a year we um so most people either are retired or hold full-time jobs it is not uh it's not a power grab it is i i wanted to um be a part of the legislature so that i could uh help pass laws that would benefit students all over the state as well as you know as well as everybody else in the state but um one of the original impetuses was um was coming from my my role as a school board member and then that is not because i had a personal um personal gain that i wanted to ultimately fulfill and so

084that's it i don't really have anything else 12 you know you know it's not it's not a thing it's uh it's a regular everyday occurrence for school board members to serve in the the uh house of representatives and uh it's a regular everyday thing for representatives to serve on local boards thank you elizabeth i will now um ask david to put um oh i'm sorry i will take a motion to go into executive session so the board can deliberate so moved second was that you rebecca yes okay thank you um let me get to hold on um i will do a roll call of votes starting with bill hi davis aye nancy aye and rebecca hi it is the majority we will go into executive session and david if you could put us into a

085breakout room and when we finish deliberating we will come out of the breakout room we have now joined back to our public session and i will take a roll call vote let me hold on and the question is is there a conflict of interest or the appearance of a conflict of interest in elizabeth burroughs serving on the mountainous gutney school district board as well as a representative in the state legislature so moved [Music] okay yeah okay thank you bill and is there a second second there was a tie between nancy and davis so and i vote means yes you feel that there is a conflict of interest nay is you do not feel there is a conflict of interest and this will be roll call beginning with bill nay davis nay [Music] rebecca nay i

086amy also vote nay it is unanimous of the board members that there is not a conflict of interest nor an appearance of a conflict of interest with elizabeth burroughs serving on the mountainous gutney school district board as well as being a state representative so thank you everyone for taking that time and for the discussion and we will now go on to our with the agenda thank you everybody thanks for taking that time to to uh work it out um next on the agenda is the middle school model right as i as i said during my report um the the task force that has been meeting um is has one more meeting the end of may you don't have that date right in front of me potentially you know it'll be to look at the tasks

087at hand for next year we broke it into chunks what what will happen year one what will happen year two what will happen year three um and uh because this is going to be a slow rollout and one of the things i think that's pertinent to this board uh the mount scotty board is that that first year most of what will happen in grade six in terms of curriculum and instruction it'll be primarily contained at grade six there's not going to be a lot of mixing up or intergroup work with six seven and eight in year one and one of the things we spend the first action step if this holds up is that year one would be a time and i know we've talked about this a lot for uh the new interim this

088board to have those kinds of community engagements in west windsor to decide over time what would they be by either leaving grade six where they are or moving grade six over the mount of skutny but as we've said that's going to take some community dialogue and and we've set up that whole year or you've got a whole year basically to do that work because uh even though there'll be some times when there'll be assemblies and maybe field trips and maybe field days but on both occasions we can provide transportation and get the albert bridge kids over to windsor or vice versa um the real issue will be if we start to do any um you know integrated work multi-age work uh you know that those kinds of pieces um and i think that's when uh

089you want to get out we want to get out ahead of this in terms of what what the west windsor community thinks about um grade six in that in that town so that's kind of where we are right now um and we can probably share that timeline in much more detail form after we have that meeting in may but i i'm prepared to ask any questions i know that all the administrators on this call uh have been you know part of that task force um but i'll answer any questions anybody has about where we are rebecca i see your hand um david i i i've heard a little bit about the middle school model and i understand that there has been a task force working on this for some time um so i would imagine

090that there's probably notes and documentation about you know what's been discussed and and when and and so i'm wondering um if it's um just to maybe bring some of us up to date because you um if some of that information could be made available to the board just to kind of get some sort of understanding of what the process was so do you want to do do you want to know the process or do you want to know some of the outcomes i'm a little bit i mean i did share those common themes with you last time and i shared those at the su level and those are those are the pieces around you know everything from um uh you know common planning time more integration of the arts uh more collaborative planning time um

091you know so so we we talked about that uh and and again that's why we have to get some things in year one something's in year two some things in in year three uh and i'm just hesitant to share that plan until next month just because uh the the team hasn't had the final opportunity to vet that timeline yet and i also want to make sure that the interim superintendent has a chance to weigh in um but i could certainly share that common themes document again if you want that or i could i could share out with all boards because remember this is su wide with all boards as soon as we have that meeting i think it's either next week i think it's next week or if not it's certainly the week after but

092there's nothing that's gonna there's nothing that's going to impact the way we are currently structured right now the way we're rolling this out [Music] so you're saying that next year we would not really see any sort of changes with grades being combined or or moved in any direction other i mean other than bringing in the interim and sort of developing that middle school model more right exactly and we did that intentionally because we wanted to and it seemed like this was the way the monastery board wanted to do it as well and they hold the largest number of middle school kids you know uh if we define it according to the age group that that group wants to define it you hold the largest number of those kids so we intentionally waited a year before

093we did any you know serious mixing of kids what will happen is uh and i think this is important to know is that we've had some we've heard some 516 that have been operating in all of our building and those five six those five six teams as collaborators and staff members they they have to you know they're going to have to separate because um there will be things like common lunches common recess you know uh assemblies um advisories but they won't be mixed advisories but they'll they'll be they'll be straight grade six straight grade seven and straight grade eight and that'll be the case at heartland that'll be the case at wettest field so we are intentionally going slow uh sort of like go slow to go fast and uh i think that's that's kind

094of where we are next year thank you bill i see your hand oh thank you i i want to piggyback on what what rebecca said more with with what what i'd be interested in is um definitely after the next meeting to i'm not particularly interesting notes i'd like to see an actual the the actual written proposal um especially before it goes public um and and all the different steps so that's what i'd be interested in seeing after they've had their last meeting and are able to create a a finished product i'd like to see that too bill do you think that's possible yeah i think we can do that i think we can do that yeah i mean it's pretty much mapped out now um and i think we just need to make sure we've

095got you know the right things in year one the right things in year two and the right things in year three and then we can certainly uh we can certainly share that with the board we might even be ready uh we might even be ready by the fu meeting at the end of this month but i'll i've gotta go i've gotta go back in and look and see when when that task force meets again uh i'm looking right now it looks like it's on the 26th so that'll be after the fu meeting so i think in june will be prepared to give you an outline of the plan okay thank you but i think for the importance of tonight's meeting i just think it's important to know that there won't be any significant mixing of

096age groups you know that would that was going to be the impact that was going to affect mount scotty because we've got sixth grade unlike the other districts we have sixth grade in two different buildings so that that gives us some time to uh to work on that piece next year uh the next thing on our agenda is the interdistrict choice um jennifer aldridge are you ready to are you able to speak to that i can certainly speak to it so um we shared with you last time and i'm happy to try and share it again um just an overview of what other um districts have done other supervisory unions have done that we thought as a smaller team seemed to fit well with what we thought would work well and from there nancy's done

097a great job of kind of supporting some additional work in terms of doing a just kind of a frequently answered questions as well as just kind of a cover letter for what um the schools are um so here's the inter this intra district school choice policy one of the things we're still trying to figure out is some some things to do with transportation we've got this issue not just about school choice but some other things um within our supervisory union so transportation still one of those kind of big questions that we don't have all the answers for because currently we do have the capacity to get kids from west winds or over to windsor i mean getting them from windsor to west windsor is not something that is currently happening and so one of the

098questions is can we make that happen we're looking at next year trying to get oh my gosh i'm itching everywhere um trying to get two separate buses which i think could address the issue of getting kids from windsor to west windsor as well as what we've already got of west windsor to windsor we also are looking at the possibility of getting a school ban and that could also assist if we needed to so that way one of our concerns as a committee was we didn't want to make it so it was about parent capacity in terms of transportation or finances so we wanted to make sure it's equitable so we still got to figure out the transportation what that looks like we don't have that answer yet but we do have that in the works

099of what that could look like um so this is the draft that we shared last time with everybody and we're looking at hopefully doing this starting pretty soon because we've got kindergarten screening coming up may 12th and 13th between our district and it would be great to be able to share that out um one of our goals is to create a and here's the cover letter that nancy has worked on create sort of a a pamphlet that has not only words but images about the two different schools and what they have to offer i scheduled it twice on my calendar and both times got knocked off because of subbing issues but i have it scheduled again for wednesday so hopefully i will get a pamphlet out and ready to go that has um some of

100the awesomeness of both of our schools and some of the similarities and then nancy also worked on our frequently asked questions that we certainly can share out too and i've shared it with all the school board members at the beginning of this meeting you guys can look at it on your own and if you need to give feedback or ask questions we can certainly address those as is appropriate so that's where we are thank you i have a question not for you but for larry is larry still here yeah hi larry um how are we doing on the vans uh looking at getting a quote we we expect to have it for next year obviously anybody's been following the national thing about new vehicles you know uh but we we're pretty confident we can get

101a van so okay so i i mean i guess that the reason that i asked you as part of this discussion is can that be a legitimate uh part of the discussion but having the van is an option yes what she's talking about is a separate bus uh i would prefer using a van for that i just don't know if we could do that because if it's 30 kids the van won't do 30 kids so uh if if it's about uh albert bridge and windsor having the same stop time we would have to get another bus from our vendor uh i reached out to them two weeks ago from david and uh as we expected it was not the uh we were already under contract so if we have to go outside with the superintendent's

102charge i'll go find another bus company for this one bus run for 30 students if that's what uh the superintendent wants um it would have to be a different bus company also know that there are bus driver shortages too so whether or not i could even find somebody but that seems to be what the administrators want and that's what i'm going to try to fulfill thank you larry david i see your hand yeah we've had a little bit of a difficult time with student transportation of vermont i mean they they do a great uh job and mike gaudette who manages our district uh works really hard uh to accommodate us but one of the things remember we had a five-year contract with him and one of the things that i've been trying to explain to

103mike and his supervisor brian is that in the middle of that contract things changed we don't just have school choice now for the west winds or kids we now have a brand new school district and quite frankly in the next two years every single high school kid who comes or jun middle school and high school kid who comes out of albert bridge will need to be transported and that used to be 10 12 15 kids now it's pushing 30 by the end in two more years it could be 40 50 kids right essentially the entire school and i've been trying and larry's been working i've been working with mike that you either have to accommodate that mike with a run so that you now have that west windsor windsor run so that west winds or

104bus leaves windsor goes out to west windsor and does door-to-door drops just like they do for the windsor kids it's called equity it's called a single district it's called the way it works and it's hard for mike to get his head around that so what i told larry is look we'll give him you know a little bit longer to think about this and ruminate about this but if not then we may have to go out and subcontract with another bus company and i've i've done this before uh with a quick run that had to go from hartford tech center to to windsor and we had to go to bruce transportation i think that's where we went and and and just and just hire a bus a bus is about somewhere between 20 to 27 000

105and i know that'll be an expense that but i think it's time we bite that off now and make that happen and it's going to impact i think a lot of kids in west windsor because right now we're doing the same thing we did before we were a single different we're trying to get everybody to albert bridge that means some of the kids at windsor have to leave windsor early in order to get to west windsor on time then they bought that bus that's what they used to do when we weren't a single district and then they distributed throughout the west windsor area more or less and i just don't think that's acceptable anymore and i'm trying to make that clear to michael and i think the board has to understand it's a little bit

106of an issue and larry is on top of it he understands it and we're just going to give mike a little time to get back to us thank you david for for expounding on that um and i i hope we get an answer to that sooner rather than later because it really it's it's a crucial piece of all of this um does anybody have any questions for jennifer about intra-district choice rebecca hi jennifer it sounds like this is is going to happen as you just mentioned i mean that it's in the process of happening you you are looking at kindergarten students already and um is the community to get some sort of also a um a plan that this is happening that this will be effective that this so that they at least know that

107and some won't but at least um there's documentation that when this went into attack um they were informed that there was sufficient information um available for everyone to see and know and um and um just trying to be as apparent as possible so jennifer can i talk on that real quick um i think it's important to point out that what's happening now is we're creating a possible um exchange and that's what's happening we are in the middle of in jennifer and um nancy have done a great job putting in a lot of extra work on this but this board would have to vote on it before it moves forward so this isn't something that's just going to happen we have to vote on the policy and um in our in our committee meetings we we've

108discussed the real importance of getting this information out and getting it out clearly why we're doing it how it's going to work um beforehand jennifer if you have you're welcome to add of course yeah that's that's perfect i'm just gonna say we need the sports thumbs up to move forward and then one of our goals would be to a part of this brochure is to be very clear about the purposes of it and to make sure that we have an action plan for how we get it out not only to our new students but to the students who are all all are already there and one of the other goals i think we'd want to do is get some kind of data about um how the families who participate in these things are impacted by

109it so that way we could tell whether or not we have an equitable approach and whether or not what we're doing is actually worth the investment that we're putting into it the other really great thing is that we're not reinventing the wheel a lot of policies out there that have already been created and have been implemented had just a wealth of information that when we read through it's like this makes complete sense this is exactly what we want to do and and nancy globbed on very quickly about the um one of them actually two of them had the um the fact sheet on how it works not that we copied the faxi but just that format is really informative so you've got it it lists out questions that people have and then it gets to

110the answers well okay here's a question uh just working backwards is there any chance that we can get this done before the end of the school year i think the best possibility would be if the board says we like the basic proposal then i think we can take pretty quick action on the details of it okay um then uh i'm gonna put i'm gonna put it on our action our items for action [Music] but in advance of uh acting on it for our items for action um uh amy what do you think about all this sir what what do i think i i think it's exciting i think it's wonderful my my question because i had my hand raised um well you did i didn't see your handwriting i did i took it down because

111david answered my question i i wondered how kids from west windsor were getting to winter how that was happening now and how many and thank you david you answer without me having to ask but i went to maybe the first meeting and then my work schedule got crazy um and i think i think it's really exciting that there's a possibility of kids and families having a voice somewhere you know kind of a decision of where they want their younger kids to be and i think the proposal as it was written lining spelling out the um the positive aspects of albert bridge and the positive aspects of windsor what what environment would best serve your child i think that's really exciting so let me get this straight then um uh just so that i understand it

112i'm not looking at your your letter or any of the faqs or anything like that right now but are you are you presenting this to kindergarten parents or prospective kindergarten parents as here are your two options for kindergarten or are you are you presenting it as you live in windsor but you if you want you could go to why not why not do the here are your two options for kindergarten we could once we get there when kids start registering in kindergarten but right now we've got lots of openings at some point it will become primarily about being in kindergarten but right now we have right seven grades that could possibly yeah yeah yeah i know i know but but i guess what i'm saying is rather than looking at at it as a um

113uh an alternative why not have it embrace it as you know here here are the choices right yeah i think that's a really great idea and as we move forward i would love to have some version of a shared presentation on our district as a whole and what our options are and i think that starts with kind of this idea let's create a brochure but i think moving forward what we'd love to have is to say come to our windsor west windsor community here's what we have for opportunities right and that yeah like for some what that attracts that that uh movie that uh larry made the movie about why i picked why why windsor is that what it was called about windsor high school it was called i chose windsor that's right it was

114really good it was very good yeah i uh we could do we could do something like that and have it um yes and we actually talked about that and going to a um some some kind of local professional who does this stuff to help us just real not just our school and the k-6 but then really highlight the middle school because there are some options right from middle school and then to right so just do the whole big picture is and have that as a component of it and so that is a long-term goal that i would love to um support and help try and make happen in the very near future i think one of the the the things we have to be careful with is is especially in this beginning point is is

115having the kindergarten registration presented as a choice because it's not really a choice it's not too well you can either go here or here it because there's factors involved and it is it's because it it parents have the ability to apply to their non-town resident school and then other factors are brought in staffing class size where their siblings already go all that is laid out there and uh i mean i i'd love paris to be able to apply in in june sometime but um well i i just meant by the end of the year so that we could get word out to parents before the summer takes hold yeah i think it would be great if we could get word out to parents before the summer takes hold yeah yes if you could tell us

116what you need from us before our june meeting i'm pretty sure the committee could at least put some pretty serious effort into making sure we have that accomplished okay um davis i see your hand and then david baker davis and then david yeah i i don't have anything else to to add by way of suggestion but i wanted to kind of echo what amy had said and that i i think this is all really exciting i think that we have a lot of great resources within our district and uh allowing this degree of choice you know and i i can appreciate like bill said it's not a pure choice you sit down and just pick or choose but uh having more of a fluid relationship between those uh you know those buildings and the resources

117they have i think is really uh it's a good move it's a step in the right direction um i'm hoping the logistical issues with the buses are figured out soon but i have full faith that that's uh that will happen so yeah i appreciate the work everyone's done on this i i just it makes me feel really good glad to see it thank you davis i'm david yeah when people say davis i sit up straight because i think people are calling on me but uh but actually um i wanted to just support what bill said i think that you know the way this gets presented is really critical in most districts that have into district choice and there are other unified districts and other um you know merged to districts and other pre-merged districts that

118that do this that's where that's why we had all these resources but essentially what happens is it is it is by application there's a rationale that's stated it looks like a lot of that work's been done the problem is the timeline right now right i mean the the fact that in most places where i've seen this into into district choice those applications are collected either around march or early april at the latest because then you can look at your numbers you can size it all up and and move on but i think that the board during action items can just conceptually give approval it's and it sounds like from all the comments people have that then i think we can get down further into the weeds and figure out what it would take to either

119do a small pilot of this for next year or we just take that and move move into you know spring of 20 free and and get it ready for the for the year after i i think a lot's in place to make this happen thank you david uh let's see are there any other questions about intra-district choice or comments or thoughts okay somebody has a beautiful bird singing outside um okay the next item is windsor jedi i'm looking for my book rebecca do you have something that you can tell about the last windsor jedi meeting while i look up and see if i have any notes about the last ones or jedi meeting um sure um uh they well first of all they they had a very robust conversation um they are um in in

120the midst of uh uh developing their um what we would call their two-year strategic plan um and um under the town of windsor select board justice equity diversity and inclusion committee um and they were beginning to discuss um different ways that um the town looked at in terms of um how do they make an environment equitable and and and some of the issues that they talked about were um postings for instance um is that something that the town needs to um look at um i i i guess i really appreciated the piece where um what um there was a comment on construction posting and normally we see men at work and and so it was those things that we just take for granted and yet we've seen many women at these construction sites also so

121they're they're have they're beginning to have that conversation um and they're looking at how the town's website maybe could be more accessible to um to all folks um another thing they talked about is the um pride month which is coming up which is june and it just seems like they and although they're not uh facilitating it but they are part of it and there is going to be lots of different events in the month of june lots of educational um peace presentations going on um and um i think a calendar was expected to come out to come out soon and um on on their next meeting which would be in june it's their jedi committee plans on having uh someone come in and and talk about um the pronoun issues to try and educate the

122community on on you know what that means um someone raised the issue of i don't know what that means and i asked my child um what i needed to ask my child and my child knew but i didn't know it so they're hoping to take um um to bring someone in to talk to educate the community um around pronouns um that's that's a piece that jedi will be doing um um on that particular night on the evening that they have a meeting um i i think again it sounds like it's going to be a full uh um month of celebration and they really want to impart to the lgbtq committee that a sense of safety in windsor so um just get ready um i i think it sounds like they're um they're doing a wonderful

123job and uh i think that's it unless you had something else no i think you did a great job of of uh representing the meeting actually thank you very much for that uh does anybody have any questions or things that they would like to have communicated to the the windsor jedi committee um ways that we can kind of overlap what we can do as a i think i i sense that maybe over the summer we could uh without the pressure of um some of the school um issues needing to be dealt with immediately maybe over the summer we could uh figure out some more ways to work collaboratively collaboratively with them um davis yeah and thank you for uh sharing the uh the updates from what jedi's been working on um i i do know

124that um again and uh rebecca pointed out it's not jedi isn't the group that is planning the pride events but they are they are very supportive of them um and are part of the schedule events i know that um you know there's there are there are going to be ways within that you know that the school community is welcome to uh to be involved and take part um you know just to be involved in those efforts um so i think you know i think it would be i i think it would be a good idea for maybe that's a good point of collaboration is um for us to get information from them that we could pass on to the schools [Music] um i haven't seen a posting about june i do know that they're having

125a fly raising or they're planning a flag raising on june 1st um but i don't i don't know specific dates for anything else i just know of events yep so that um i actually got a message from somebody so the flag raising is happening the town approved that um and the schedule of events is being planned at the moment i think that the goal was to have it finalized by next week right a couple moving parts still because it is it's a pretty audacious goal to have an event every single day in the month of june yeah to some capacity so um i think once that calendar's out it might be easier for us to you know just take a look at it see how the school can be involved um i you know i

126i'm hoping that they're maybe the student groups who are you know who have worked on some of this stuff might want to take part as well i know there's openings for that um and jedi has really uh has a central kind of goal to reach out to students and have some youth voice involved as well um so and like i think well i think we'll just see what that calendar is i i i've seen it but i i don't want to say too much until the events really get finalized but um as far as you know i think there's plans to do some outdoor events uh book walks parade i i don't know if there's like the possibility of doing a flag raising on school property or some other sort of display that would be

127in tandem with that i know that that idea had come up um so those are all things that i think we could uh we could talk about i know we're not meeting again until early june so it may be tough together that's the thing right because i i i'm i know that june 1st is the date that sticks in my mind about the flag raising and besides that i don't know what time that is and besides that uh i'm i'm worried about um [Music] the month getting underway before we have our next school board meeting so um i just wanted to make sure that we brought it up let people know that it's on our minds and that we will pass along information as we get it rebecca i see your hand yeah thanks davis

128for clarifying that i thought i did that um that there is a pride committee and that they are they're the ones who are creating um the amanda smith uh represent who represented them at the meeting uh at the last jedi meeting and spoke to what is it that they were doing and um and and i and i did wonder about that i wondered how if anyway you know the school was involved and and i i didn't ask amanda but it sound like there were lots of things going on with the library and and so yeah i i didn't ask those questions but i wondered if was there any effort to reach out to the school community to the principals to find out if students were interested in in in just uh um participating one way

129or the other one thing that i i had planned to do um is reach out to um who who is the the faculty representative for the student um and i i apologize i'm forgetting the name of the student group it is the student social justice group at uh at windsor yes it's a social justice group [Music] is there is there a faculty representative that that could be reached out to or might be a good question our biology teacher okay catherine engle okay so yeah i think i think reaching out to uh to katherine angle and just you know having having them convey to students that this is going on and seeing where there might be opportunities for collaboration that could be a good start good thank you uh does anybody else have any questions about

130the windsor um jedi committee because i think it rolls naturally into the declaration of inclusion which i am pleased to say i did remember and i did write to the select board of of uh west windsor and i gave them all of the all the pertinent information i gave them i sent them the declaration that windsor adopted i sent them the actual um original declaration of inclusion i sent them the advisory from the vermont league of cities and towns and then i sent them uh uh some other are some articles about it including uh governor scott's um declaration of statewide uh declaration of inclusion so uh they were going to take it up at their next select board meeting which is tonight so we'll find out um what the outcome of that is and i'll

131hopefully uh if those wheels have gotten turning then then here we'll be able to uh oh and i also put it in the context of you know our board wanting to um have a our board or district version of it but not being able to without um westminster being on board so that's where that is and that is the end of our discussion items um we've now gotten to the items for action of which there are three the first is i will take a motion to appoint sergio simunovic uh who um act as a third principle in our our uh district our fourth principle i'm sorry fourth principal in our district the third principle at our windsor school amy um okay um bill how do you vote are you here hi okay nancy how do

132you vote hi and davis how do you vote hi and rebecca how do you vote hi amy how do you vote hi i'm i i'm an i so welcome to our new principle our fourth what okay if it's not a tri what's what happens after triumvirate it's a quattro what a what call it a quartet squad quarter tip quartet i like that it's got a musical ring okay um all right next is uh i'll take a motion to grant permission for the fifth and sixth graders at albert bridge school to go on their uh field trip out of state so moved exactly okay uh bill how do you vote on the hi okay nancy hi and davis hi and rebecca i and amy hi i am also an i and that leaves us with inter-district

133choice i'll take a motion to allow the entry district choice committee to continue to pursue that endeavor on our behalf how's that sound so moved okay second [Music] is that specific enough okay all right bill how do you vote hi and nancy how do you vote hi davis how do you vote hi and rebecca how do you vote hi amy how do you vote hi and i am an i and so we have adopted the appointment of mr simunovic permission for albert bridge school fifth and sixth grade trips out of state and uh inter-district-wide school choice and now we are at the next agenda um which we've agreed we're going to talk about the middle school model right or did you want to do that at the su level david we can't hear you you're

134muted sorry about that yeah i think we'll i i think that task force uh meets after the su meeting so we'll we'll do it i'll do it at all the board meetings in june including the su okay and uh let's see well let's maybe we could talk about rebecca i see your hand i would like um to see a breakdown of um where our high school students are going so i'm not asking specifically but i would like to know you know if you have however many are going to a four-year college however many are going to on an associate's a community college if someone is going um into the workforce and if someone is taking a gap year i i imagine they those numbers should be cleared by by then okay and uh let's see

135we'll have uh maybe we could have an update on pride month and in the context of jedi how about that um i don't know what did you just say i didn't have an update on the pri on the oh okay their presentation okay yeah uh nancy i see your hand an update on the intraschool choice yep [Music] um david i see your hand yeah i don't know if we already did this but just sort of do a little bit of planning for maybe a summer retreat in july or august and i know you've done that we've done it at the su level but we've also done it at the individual district levels too just a little more time to talk generally yep and uh yeah i think it was late july last year because that

136was the first uh event that i was with you all for right um right and we were at the outside classroom yeah we had yummy snacks and bill had river stones or something what was the one right before that elizabeth i'm trying to take a couple of notes here too the one right before the planning for summer retreat update on inter-district choice okay um do you think we could have an update from our principals as part of the report on uh how many teachers we lost and how many we retained for the next year pretty doable okay um okay nancy i see your hand [Music] i forgot to put it down okay and rebecca did you lower your hand too i i did but i i just wanted to ask um um your question is

137a good one but i i i'm just not satisfied with a number and i'm wondering if there can also just be a little conversation as to why we've used them yes i think that's great rebecca thank you for that um uh katie do you think we could get the same kind of status update um from special ed for our district um i can yes i think for the um it's somewhat we've we've actually lost very few or had people change positions excellent and i i can give general responses of of why sort of people go um but um we still are seeking several positions many we didn't fill from last year that we're still seeking so i think that that i can certainly do that next time and i think i have one ready for

138doing for the su as well plus hopefully some and some new hires which is a good thing good so uh and yeah and i know katie will do some of that at the estimated too so elizabeth is in my understanding that that could come under the principles report that type that kind of stuff good yep um all right let's leave it at that for now uh i'm sure there there will be opportunities to add other things but but we'll leave it for that right now and that is still the first monday of the month which will be what the um we'll go back to 6 30 if that's all right with everybody unless anybody has an objection okay uh let's play i think that's the sixth thank you [Music] next that's easy [Music] and i

139will definitely 100 percent positively be in person the next month just a moment second monday yes thank you 6 13. i was thinking we were the second but everyone was so yes we're the first that i thought i thought there was conversation amy though at some point yes for it to be on the first and i think we did so maybe i was on the first second because we wanted to have everyone at the meeting so are we the first or are we the second oh we were the first last year and we moved to the second because uh we in west windsor don't ever get to attend our select board meetings okay that was why june 13th it's windsor's eighth grade graduation from city siri elizabeth i'm sorry say that again on june 13th

140it's windsor's um eighth grade graduation from six to seven i have that on my calendar oh i would miss that meeting [Music] could we do the first for next month and go back to the second the following month i mean i don't know does anybody have any objection to that keeping it on six six sounds good to me six six two two does does david have another is there another school board that you need to be in on the not bad evening let me let me look and see but i don't think so six six did we say yes it's okay uh no i think we're okay okay so let's let's do it on six fix instead of the 13 and uh 6 30 instead of six and that's it uh all right i will

141do we need an executive session anybody okay i'll take a motion to adjourn told you to me nancy okay bill how do you vote i'm bill how do you vote hi and nancy how do you vote nay no i'm really i it's not even hi and rebecca how do you vote hi amy how do you vote i and i am an i and i thank you for all of your uh time and thoughtfulness and support thank you take care you too bye-bye