MASD Board Meeting - April 11th, 2022

001welcome everybody it's 6 31 p.m on monday april 11th and this is the mounis gutney school district regular old ordinary board meeting glad to be here the first item on our agenda is changes to the agenda and because because uh nancy pedrick is going to be late joining us this evening i'm going to move the [Music] conflict of interest question to a time rather than also sorry nancy kendrick is going to be joining us late and also uh bill yates is has taken ill and but he would like to be part of the conflict of interest discussion so i'm going to move it to a time of 7 30. so wherever we are in the agenda um if that's all right amy i'll hand it over to you at that point okay okay okay is

002everybody all right with that plan then we can pick up the rest of the agenda when we um when we finish that discussion yeah elizabeth there's one more change and i and i forgot to mention it to you earlier today but i think kate did does the high school want to present a high school language uh field trip yeah elizabeth's on okay so elizabeth is on so i don't know whether we do that early on but uh our kids have not traveled abroad in a long time and i think there's a desire for uh for uh for a trip with our world studies program well why don't we add it to the principles part and then if there's a discussion that comes out of it we can add it on does that sound all right

003great i don't know that we do we need to take any action on it well actually uh any trips that go outside of vermont the board should approve those trips all right okay all right uh are there any other changes or additions to the principal's agenda hudson's going to talk about um our ukraine yeah and in that he's going to ask if we can hang a ukraine class so there's going to need to be a decision so that should be added and that's my fault okay uh i'll put that on items for action and i'll also put the um the uh high school travel yeah well what was the other one that came to what was the other one that kate said uh a decision on whether they can fly the ukrainian flag um minutes

004has everybody read the minutes from our last meeting i make a motion to approve the minutes i second it [Music] okay um does anybody have any questions or comments about the minutes that was a nana that was a doorknob is that right yes okay um a hearing none um i guess i'll go down the uh put on the line here amy how do you vote on the minutes aye davis how do you vote on that it's like all right uh rebecca how do you vote on the numbers hi and i am an i passed uh the next thing on our agenda is public participation and i have something that i'd like to read public comment is not legally required but we believe it is crucial for us to hear from our member our community members

005about their concerns over issues through these meetings our board model for our students how to conduct public discourse and that the board and members of the community can approach controversial issues in a civil and constructive manner and can demonstrate mutual respect having said that please note that the board is here to listen the public comment period is not designed for discussion is there anybody here who has a public comment okay uh then we'll move on to the principles report oh rebecca roseman has a comment thanks um elizabeth i i i did want to i don't know if we've done this before but i i did want to congratulate larry dower who is the new coach um after the retirement of um uh larry um harry ledoux and i don't know we had a chance to

006acknowledge that um and i also wanted to um congratulate um julie elwood who i know is a dedicated teacher to the arts for for so so long um and um i i think i don't know where else they they um publish the student of the month or the teacher of the month but um i think that the community should hear um at least at these board meetings who these people are that's it somebody talking because we can't we don't have any volume we can't hear anybody larry there's no sound now we got it perfect okay so we'll go um just briefly over come some celebrations that happened in the past month in each school what's going on um within albert bridge the big idea of march tends to be our maple unit it's one of

007our full school place based units this first one we started we've evolved every year this year we were able to actually engage kids into some some more integrated learning so that they could work together across age groups which they haven't been able to do for a couple of years that was exciting we had all kinds of things from kindergarteners learning about how butter is made to learning about kind of the stickiness of different qualities of candy making through toffee with mr justice right clover has been voted on in different grades and each grade came up with eight different favorite books so that was pretty exciting and we have our new mascot is in so um albert bridge fox is rocking and rolling i'll pass it on to kate thanks uh so we've broken down toward

008k4 we had our spirit week and that picture there is kind of our was our second last day where each class had a color we did our rainbow week rainbow theme and we went downstairs and took a whole k4 picture we had poetry month which was spearheaded by tracy kohler and each class nominated students and they went to the office and they started off our day by reading poems a little class and i don't know if you got to walk through the building today but there's poems singing everywhere which is really neat and they're tracy's really thoughtful because they're actually at the level for the kids to see them instead of adults so i thought that was super nice yeah our kindergarten screening is coming out may 12th and 13th and lastly save the date

009windsor community dinner is going to be may 25th it's going to be a barbecue outside there's no home games on the calendar right for that day so it's going gonna be out by the high school fields barbecue done by craig and then working with parents who are thinking about maybe a whiffle ball tournament or cornhole or something some memes and then colleen is working with teachers and we're going to put on brief presentations about what collaborative problem solving looks like at each um of the levels k4 middle school and 9 through 12. so i hope we can begin um five through fifth through eighth grade uh did their pie in the face which was on friday and led by patty pomerleau um that was fun to be a part of average sixth graders are coming

010over to visit soon we're starting now so we can get two visits in um before the end of the school year and we did our seventh and eighth grade parent presentations it's just really nice to have people back in the building um it's nice really wonderful it is even when we did our last community dinner there was a parent there who has a son in my son's class of first grade and he had never been in our building before um so it's just nice to see people again it really it feels fun around here feels good yes um and 9 through 12 we have our upcoming nhs induction which is the monday when we come back and jen can you click on that link about sam oh yeah yeah i wanted to show you this

011news club do you know how to share the sound via the owl yeah i'd have to mute me out and then people online here so if you mute the owl and david and the other people online won't be able to hear would you have to do it on this oh what if she opened it in a cab and shared that other cat that would work wouldn't it no the only way it's going to work is if you do it on the app you can't do it only it's not a computer can i put the link in the check people just copy it awesome okay let's try that i will put it in the chat but the point of the owl too is it's supposed to be hybrid meaning the people will be joining but we

012wouldn't be on computers we'd just be doing our thing yeah so then it's a little over three minutes so we want to have people just click on the link watch it for three minutes and then we can talk again so i mean sam is one of our students and he's going to the 2022 world irish dance competition he's featured on wcax so cool yeah very cool so it's worth worth watching that video when you get a chance um and then i'm going to skip to the next two things and then go back to you our ajctc culinary arts um did a fundraiser which my kids are able to have dinner tonight because they're home eating the meatballs made by the ages ctc um and also they're have their invited some of our staff members over

013to have lunch on april 21st so good things happening over there we're happy to partner with them our theater arts performance is may 4th 5th and 6th at 7th um it's game of tiaras which i guess is a plan game of thrones and lastly we have a student here at hudson who's here to talk about our march for ukraine which was led which is totally student-led good evening uh my name is hudson granny i'm a freshman at windsor high school i'm here on behalf of the fluids and coalition for justice we are a student group focusing on issues in social activism i want to discuss something that is of utter importance right now warning rate windsor is held marched by william patwood in collaborations to the council and pennies for peace and drive that uh

014contributed funds to go to ukrainian refugees those events were incredibly impactful but beyond that i feel like that having an experience that ukrainian flag hanging on the windsor flagpole underneath the american flag it would send a message of community and strength within the community we are asking for funds to purchase the flag and permission to begin on the school flight home at a time there has been so much uncertainty coming together in solidarity with brothers and sisters like hanging in flag and rallying big cryptos um seems like um at least please consider it thank you that was also featured in the valley news which was just happenstance they saw it online and came but um now they gave us their direct line so we've called them anytime we have little excellent like that that's good

015happening uh can you tell me a little bit more about the march um it was so we all met down all right we all walked around the uh town square probably then we had a donation market we raised probably i think close to two hundred dollars a while to go to a refugee you know there's an exchange student in springfield and we're trying to get his family to be able to come over and they're gonna come to college do you have any other fundraising plans um not currently i do know that there is a raffle going on that will support him so not to be nice that would be great thank you for for telling us about what we've been up to i also want to mention that davis came and turned a walk and

016that was a really nice surprise and there's a lot to the kids yeah and i get a test it was a really fantastic event really well organized it was great just to see so many people out out and about and yeah can't say enough good things about it i think that's it we i do want to let you know that we're bringing back mountain day this year which is um really just kind of a signature event here that was started by donna ewald have a long within the 12 years i've been here was our first one and our entire k-6 heights and those hiking so k2 will go to mount tom 3-4 we'll probably we'll go to cardigan and 5-6 we'll go to ascutney we're looking to rename the day into something that honors dada

017but not necessarily dominate you all day so if anybody can think of anything like some kind of acronym that would recognize donna we're open to all suggestions it's really nice to see you nice to see you you wanna do the senior acceptances now or later we just started listing some of the colleges that our seniors have been um accepted to and we'll keep them we'll keep updating them as they as they come in um we just posted our jobs for our para educators within the last couple weeks and we had two um 2020 grads applied for this that's cool it's nice to see kids you talk i want to come back and work here yeah that's great yeah uh i see that rebecca has her hand up i do um so there are a few

018things i wanted to comment on um the first one was it was the culinary um fundraiser what what is that about um and and what is the funds that they're raising being used for and does that include the culinary program in hartford it is strictly through the culinary program in hartford so those students come back here um you know they sell to us which is nice and then they make the food so um you had a choice this time of cheesecakes meatballs or quiche and then it goes right back into harford's program okay all right my second comment was i i just wanted to acknowledge it's great um that the student who who led the march for ukraine um it's it's it's great to see our students just um into what is it that's going

019on and acknowledging it um and that that's that's that's wonderful hopefully we'll see more of that um apparently he spoke about a social justice program so um that that's great and i wanted to just thank him for that um and the third thing was um [Music] oh the third thing was regarding the post-graduation student plan um i don't know how that could be done but i would like to see if there's anything some sort of um done by a student as opposed to um an administrator only because um i would hope that they can speak to where their classmates are going and and and and that that piece just really um that process would hopefully bring them together in talking about where they're going um post high school i don't know if that's even possible

020and i'm not asking for a 15-minute presentation but i would love to see a student or a couple of students speak to where is it that their classmates are going to um after high school oh and that just uh reminded me one more thing which was just decided um within the last couple days this friday in winter high school's gym we have four student athletes who are signing their letter intents for the ncaa um elliot roof ben gilbert reese perry and peyton richardson so if you're around um it'll be quick nice to see though what time i'm not sure but i can look it up real quick okay while she's looking that up does anybody else have any questions what time seven thank you and it's in the uh gymnasium yes um does anybody have

021any questions for either kate or jennifer i'm sorry kate ryan or jennifer aldridge any comments okay thank you very much thank you thank you thank you uh let's see okay david baker you're up okay let me just quickly share my screen [Music] yeah this will be uh i can't see anybody by the way so if there are questions at the end i'll i'll stop uh sharing um but uh mine is not nearly as exciting or as interesting as kate uh but i'll just give some general updates uh we're still kind of monitoring the covert transmission i won't spend a lot of time on that i think our staff and our nurses have done just an amazing job artland the last couple of weeks seem to be getting hit the hardest uh but we're going to

022stay the course as i've said before the aoe is recommended we don't you know put masks on one week take masks up another week put them back on we we just don't want to do that we did send kids home this weekend and encourage parents to uh test next weekend before the students return to school that worked pretty well in february [Music] we have our equity rfp our request for proposals are out to 10 vendors uh proposals are due on april 15th we've already received two proposals uh and uh we are partnering with springfield we will talk at the su meeting about a process for reviewing those uh proposals um i was thinking maybe myself and the springfield superintendent and a couple of board members from his district and a couple of board members from

023rsu we could look over those uh proposals so far they're coming in and they seem to be very very creative in their approach um teacher and support staff master agreements are signed uh individual contracts are going to go out by friday if they're not out already at will contracts went out last week and i want to give a shout out to tina canfield in hr she's done a great job getting both the union and the at will contracts uh in uh in order she does a great job parent conferences seem to go well uh in all of our buildings and freelance wednesdays i think the staff is real i make sure that i'm in at least one of the buildings on every wednesday because that's pre-launch wednesday and i know craig lacano and the lunch

024crew they're doing a great job feeding our staff that was just a little benefit little support for the work that went on during uh during those crazy conditions in the last two years and last day of school will be a noon dismissal on june 17th uh the administrative team will meet next monday to talk about whether or not uh uh there'll be any particular changes to that or not but that's pretty much that that you can write that date down for sure and it will be a noon dismissal there's been some requests from the teachers to actually have the thursday and friday be noon dismissals but right now we haven't approved that so that's where we are um and i think that's enough for now i'll just uh stop sharing and um people are still

025trying to get into the meeting and then if there are any questions i'll be glad to take them david i've got a question for anyone i hate if you can answer it also uh elizabeth i heard all right now feedback i think the feedback might be coming from the owl is that possible no not if everybody's here yeah we all got our volumes off all right we've got some perfect and that's a nice good question too because that's tonight we like to have all the board members at the graduation if possible so june 10th 7 p.m would be great to have everybody there okay uh is there still feedback i don't i think the feedback has worked itself out all right um i'm going to move on can we hear about the costa rica david

026are you done is that the end of your presentation yes that's it for me okay can we hear about the costa rica costa rica trip yes thank you um so i've been talking with um senora claire our spanish instructor for seven through 12 um over this past two years about what we're going to do post covid for getting our students to travel again and my own children have gotten to go to costa rica to this praxis center where they do service learning projects alternative spring breaks um they also offer full semester-long programs and stuff and i've been talking with them and i'm just going to share this proposal real quick [Music] and i put the i put the link for the proposal um in the chat as well um so we're hoping to go to

027costa rica in either february or april um april gives us a little bit more time but february in costa rica sounds like a nice break from the winter um as i said the praxis center is um it's a language institute in uh santa rosa de santo domingo which is pretty close to san jose the capital city of costa rica it's a short bus ride away they have over 20 years of experience providing these cultural educational experiences for high school students college students also individuals go there as well they have highly vetted host families that they've worked with for many years and they provide the high impact service and cultural experiences for our students i also put in that proposal the uh the url for the praxis center if you want more information on them specifically

028um so the the proposal is that we would be taking spanish students that have completed spanish 2 and are either in spanish 3 or in spanish 4 during the academic year 2022-2023 we would expect that they would have you know a consistent attendance uh records um you know no behavioral issues things like that um that's a little further down as well that they would need to maintain a three or above for their spanish studies um and then they're going to be living with host families so we'd expect that our students could conduct themselves in the the language um right now i have the chaperones down as myself and singular claire um we would want to go for 10 days around february break or april break so we'd leave just a day before the break and

029come back a day or two after the break the purpose would of course be to have these students have the opportunity to use their language skills and cultural knowledge in a spanish-speaking country and then just learn from central america's history culture traditions uh during this intensive they said earlier there would be some academic expectations for these students social expectations civic expectations the cost is estimated to be about twenty five hundred dollars per student um just to kind of give an idea the spain trip that got canceled two years ago uh was going to cost about 300 more than that per student so it's in the same ballpark um it a little bit less expensive than our trips to spain have been in the past and that includes everything transportation airfare travel insurance all the interactions

030all meals gratuities everything the only thing that isn't included is the passports um souvenirs are personal shopping and then i didn't include in there the the chaperones um are going to the the cost for them is gonna be 750 plus airfare insurance um and we actually still have money remaining from our canceled 2020 trip to spain to offset the cost of this trip and then we would anticipate fundraisers throughout the next six months as we prepare for the trip um can just here's a sample itinerary there um we would actually plan on doing a day and a half of service learning with tutoring young children in english painting gardening the students would have the opportunity to choose which type of service learning project they wanted to participate in we'd go to their national museum in

031costa rica go to both coasts the caribbean coast and the pacific coast um go to the rain forest uh meet with indigenous people there learn how to make chocolate go to valk mechanic area visit some hot springs ziplining um so it would be a pretty packed full itinerary for those days uh we do of course still have coveted 19 in our communities um all the host families that work with praxis center are fully vaccinated um depending on what the regulations are students may need to take a cover test prior to the trip and also right now the the rule is that if you're in costa rica you have to test negative before returning to the united states um of course i have no idea how that will change in the next year but we would

032just kind of roll with whatever different rules applied the praxis center didn't shut down during covid so they have a lot of experience in creating safe learning environments in the midst of a pandemic um we would recommend this to be fully vaccinated prior to the trip and then there is an option to stay in um a guest house that the praxis center has or an airbnb type place if uh the host family's situation changed due to coband or some other situation anyone have any questions for me rebecca i see your hand i do thank you that was really informative i i wouldn't mind going to costa rica in february or april i hear it's just beautiful there and i've never been there um but i do have a couple of questions um are students studying

033costa rica before prior to this trip would it be that's my first question would it be required for them um to study costa rica and the second question is are is there an academic expectation so will students come back um and be able to share this experience with others either um on on a presentation night or something so that parents in the community can get a can understand why is it the value of um these experiences for students in high school if it is possible yeah thank you so um currently in the spanish classes they do uh study different cultural cultural uh areas of the spanish-speaking world so spain but then of course um mexico central america south america um and so i don't know if there would be a specific requirement to study costa

034rica by itself rather than just the central american countries um i think that you know it's valuable to have some knowledge of costa rica it's also valuable to not hyper focus on one place when we have an entire world um to to learn from but of course we could consider that if we wanted to add that as an expectation for students um and then yeah i think it's a great idea to have students you know present their learning experiences and their you know cultural experiences that they had um on a night after they return um they do have a time on sunday in the itinerary for doing some reflections of their experience together as a group and then i think coming out of that they could think of a you know way to present that

035to the greater community thank you amy i see your hand and then david baker um i just i i remember from previous students um traveling that they would upon return would give a very nice presentation to the school board that was also recorded and videotaped by windsor on air okay that sounds like a great idea david yeah that that's pretty much i was going to say what amy said that we've done that before where there are class presentations and i think there were one or two kids who actually rolled it into their capstone projects which which was great um um but also i think it's good to remind everybody to that pre-covert we used to do these international trips every every two years basically and it was between the french and spanish department we try

036to make it happen so it's just nice to be able to come back to this possibility again uh and if it's my understanding and kate or elizabeth can correct me we would try to fold it into what we call march intensives where the whole school is actually engaged in sort of special activities and hands-on activities and community-based activities i don't know if we can line it up exactly that way and whether march intensives will be in march or not but but uh but it would be nice and i i really thank elizabeth and hannah for putting this together i think it gives kids hope that this there's life after covert and that's great elizabeth i have a question as well and that is um do you have any kind of ballpark number of how many

037students are talking about so um we believe it would be between 10 and 15. thank you so one one more quick thing elizabeth what we've done in the past is and we can put it under items to action but any sort of a trip even outside of vermont but certainly outside of the country requires board approvals so that would allow hannah and elizabeth if the board approves the the planning uh that then they could start some other additional fundraising activities and start to collect kids and all that good stuff thank you david we would anticipate that if at this board meeting you were willing to have us go through with this proposal that we would have then a parent meeting coming up in may or early june with the prospective students um and we can

038talk more about specific fundraising and student expectations and everything else at that parent meeting rebecca i see your hand um yes elizabeth i do have another question and that is how many chaperones will participate and are they mostly parents and um with these chaperones do they also stay with um either their kids in a host environment family or are they in a separate environment so currently what we're thinking is it would be senora claire our spanish teacher um and myself potentially um my daughter does not currently meet qualifications to go with us um although i'm trying to get her to go back to spanish three next year so she can come with us but you know that's that's up to her as a senior at windsor next year um but you know i think we're

039definitely open to having a parent chaperone as well um the parents the chaperones would all be put up in the guest house of the praxis center so we wouldn't be with host families we would be with other community members at the praxis center and are you raising funds uh for the whole group correct correct we have like i said we already have some funds i don't have the exact number um i wasn't able to kind of pull that information together before this meeting but um then we'd anticipate that you know we would do a request to the the burn foundation and we would do group fundraising um and then there would be some expectations that students would do their own fundraising for a certain portion of the trip as well um so there would be

040both individual and group fundraising that that we would do together would you uh consider helping students who can't afford to the passport fee yeah i think that they're you know we don't want to exclude any student because of costs that you know we can work with some maybe early fundraising efforts or kind of look into what we need to do to make sure that everybody can get the passports um applied for because they would need to apply this spring or very very early summer to make sure that they have passports in time for us to purchase [Music] all right um sorry my dog's very loud that's okay um well thank you for all of that uh i i think we'll address it at the end of the meeting if that's all right um don't feel

041you need to stay around for it unless you were planning to already um we can let you know what all right thank you very much for your time i appreciate it we'll let you know elizabeth thanks thanks okay next item on the agenda is the discussion section and we are at 7 14 so i'm going to um again nancy pedrick you were not with us in the beginning of the meeting but i moved the discussion of the conflict of interest to 7 30. so that bill can join us um uh so what part of our agenda can the five-year maintenance plan be done in 15 minutes or should we hold off on that larry what do you think i can present it in 15 minutes if there's very little questions and it could be done

042in 15 minutes i think we should try to do it what's that i think we should do that do the maintenance please cool okay thank you larry all right so jim and i have been working on this uh director buildings and grounds we've been working on this for a while uh at david's behest he wanted a five-year maintenance plan including preventative maintenance and capital projects so what i'm sharing here at the top of it is the preventative maintenance piece and then below is the capital projects so uh just like your house preventative maintenance the more money you spend preventative maintenance the less big ticket items you're gonna have later on and uh specifically at um you know windsor uh has done a great job with their building it's a newer building obviously but they've put

043a lot of money into it over the years in preventative maintenance so we haven't had a lot of huge costs um so far uh coming down the pipe so uh everything you you see here is laid out this is your normal budget stuff that's in madison school district in your general fund year after year under buildings and grounds everything from alarm systems of fire to floors to painting uh concrete and then also jim and i worked on uh additional things we want year in and year out so for example uh bathroom upgrades and partitions in uh one floor per year out of a bridge in winter you can see that's the blue that's where the cost goes up all right so the first column is fiscal year 23. this is the year that's going to

044start this july 1. right that's year one year that's what you've already budgeted for year two and so on it's there what is the blooming so for example you can see in year three we put set aside 8 600 for the side entrance at winter down by the cafeteria that retaining wall needs to repair that's what that is included and you can see the blue down here tier 1 is what we deem necessary these are things and again this is not new spending you've already approved this the necessary spending needed but can be deferred so when i sat down over many meetings with jim and i asked him when we went live by line and what projects he wanted to do what could be deferred that's what the blue is so if we get to

045fiscal year 25 and there's a big budget crunch and we have to defer some maintenance that's what it would be um the the pink purple is uh the total for those first three years so i think that's pretty self-explanatory you can see the notes uh albert bridge plumbing upgrades for example in year two wood chips we do every year for the playground upgrades we have to do that um does anybody have any questions on preventive maintenance before i get to capitol projects yes uh how does the um yeah at the top right hand corner of the preventative maintenance maintenance plan now you'll see uh this maintenance plan is for the wsesu the left on the bottom the tab this tab i'm on is mount spenny district in may i'm going to present weathersfield i'm hoping

046to do heartland this summer uh once this is that's why weather still says draft and then i'll post this on the website once you give your approval now speaking to what you're talking about penny act 72 and 74. where we are right now jim's understanding is that not this summer but sometime next year it would be after the summer there will be people coming around and testing for pcbs only in older buildings so it would be albert bridge and hartman windsor wouldn't be tested because it was built 97. um we think weathersfield wouldn't be tested either because it was 2010 but it was part of the original building someone that's still there so we're not sure about that yet but they check for radon they check for pcbs uh i'm not sure if they're checking

047for in the valley news what you read the other weekend uh pfloas that's what cornish is dealing with right now but there's certain uh forever chemicals they call them where it wouldn't affect the school too much it would affect some money to uh take care of it but something like pcbs as as you're probably aware of inside they just literally close like you have to the kids can't be there if they find pcbs so everything here is pending at 72 and 74. okay so um the good news is we don't know anything yet and the bad news is we don't know anything yet so uh when you're planning five years out we're gonna see what what the state says when they come by hopefully everything goes off without a hitch and then we'll keep rolling

048along i think um because that because pcps are so um omnipresent that the state's going to come up with funding to help mitigate that yeah that was part of what i was what i was asking was kind of how does that fit into the plan like if there's things that are going to be done i mean i'm i can say with a certain amount of certainty that there will have to be some kind of mitigation at albert bridge um uh are there things at albert bridge in the main men's plan that can be rolled in at the same time so i i think what will make more sense to the pcb discussion will be around the capital projects not the preventative so this is the preventative maintenance this is things that we would do if

049if uh somehow pcbs were found and we'd get some money from the state to mitigate it then that would be great but i really want to change our we would do less painting that year at albert bridge for example but it wouldn't it wouldn't change the preventative maintenance budget too much right um so the capital projects i think it'll be a little more clear so as we go down um so that's the preventive maintenance that's the top part of this document at the bottom we have again the five columns of fiscal years starting with this summer and that includes these are the big ticket items these are non-preventative maintenance capital projects you currently have 911 000 and change based on what the voters um did last march and what we're in here some of this

050a lot of this stuff is not new to the public or to the board you've seen these the classroom speakers some of these are new a fire panel replacement out of a bridge that needs to be replaced that is uh a priority for jim this summer regardless of pcbs um we have to replace our fire panel so we're going to do that the kitchen floor uh that dunning hall we brought the price down a little bit on that we've been working really hard craig's done a great job getting multiple quotes and um we're going to do some of the painting in house to lower the cost uh we're going to change the um seating arrangements a little bit to save some cost so that's the dining hall design the eight passenger van and all-wheel drive

051that's there we i know that's been an item for discussion uh jim doesn't want to go another year on the scoreboards they're 25 years old and um they don't make the votes for them anymore so we're just going to keep losing bulbs and we can go on ebay and try to find them but it's probably a good idea to replace those scoreboards uh also um the vermont principles speaking of basketball vermont principals association has approved now again it has to go by the vpa but the the basketball coach associate has approved the shot clock in vermont so whether or not the vpa does that in year one year two we don't know what's going to happen but that would also we could kill two birds with one stone in that sense uh the theater remodel

052that was originally an sr3 but angie and i moved it into mascot capital projects uh for year two um and as you can see the outlets now the outfit school roof 150 000 jim's done a great job patching that roof uh and it needs eventually a big retail so we're gonna we're gonna do that we did it in year two and that's kind of related to what you're talking about you know we wouldn't want to do spend 150 000 on a roof this summer and get bad news next day right so that's why we're holding off it's the roof is fine it needs it needs work and we're going to do that work not this summer next time according to this plan and part of that's based on x72 and 74. uh as you can

053see in the out years we needed windsor's got many sections of roofing and uh the south and the west we're gonna do that in the out years uh four and five track respray uh because it's a five year plan uh we're going to revisit this every year and as we add the additional year and jim thinks that this would be a good target if it got pushed to year six that's fine the track is in great shape um so as you can see the total cost is 734 000 out of the 911 and that doesn't include uh any um additional surpluses in years two three four five and i i don't want to assume that you'll share this with us but would you please share this yes yeah and my hope was to uh um

054get some sort of approval at least of the work that we want to do this summer because we got to get contractors in place and then um and i was gonna put on the website i was gonna share it with you it'll it'll be a public document it's our five year maintenance plan i just um i want to make it part of the su so that's why i make sure i'm the weather's field tab it says draft and that so people won't assume things for weatherfield that aren't decided yet but jim and i spent a lot of time on the mount scotty plan all right i'm going to put it under items for action is that all right sounds great okay that's great but we can do that later thank you larry yeah hey thanks

055[Music] i think bill's here bill is here yeah i saw his this guy's name oh there he is okay all right well we're we're headed in just a little bit early but i think this is great timing um amy hi um so just a little bit of background information um a community member daniel wurtz submitted a letter of um complaint about a conflict of interest um it's a conflict of interest claim against solicit elizabeth burrows who is currently our chair and vice chair of the supervisory union board and let's see it is i'll just read part of his letter um and it will become part of the public record as well the conflict of interest is in between is between burroughs standing on both boards especially so in her leadership roles while also serving as

056one of our two representatives to the vermont house of representatives um this violates basic doctrines of legislative administrative balance of powers jurisdictional or overlap and power differentials as well as board policies and vermont law on school board member conduct and the letter goes on to enumerate the different bills that elizabeth has been um that um elizabeth in her representative role has been a sponsor of and so our we do have a conflict of interest policy and when there is a complaint the um the procedures that we follow is that when a conflict of interest claim against a board member and its administrative designees is brought to the board in writing which it was um the board number okay oh i'm sorry okay brought to the board in writing and is signed by another board member

057or member of the public and the board member against whom the claim is made does not concur that a conflict in fact exists the following board procedure will be followed upon a majority vote of the remaining board members or upon order of the chair the board will hold an informal hearing on the conflict of interest claim giving both the board member and the person bringing the claim and opportunity to be heard at the conclusion of the informal hearing the remaining board members will determine by majority vote whether to a issue a public finding that the conflict of interest charge is not supported by the evidence and is therefore dismissed b issue a public finding that the conflict of interest charge is supported by the evidence and that the member should disqualify him or herself from

058voting or otherwise participating in board deliberations or decision related to that issue as required by vermont statute and or c issue a public finding that the conflict events interest charge is supported by the evidence and the board member should be formally censured or subjected to such other action as may be allowed by law so at this point in time we will take a vote well first of all elizabeth since this claim is being brought against you do you feel that um there is a conflict of interest between your role on the school board and your role as a representative in the vermont legislature no i i do not in that case we will take a vote to determine whether to hold an informal hearing and we will decide a date to have that hearing it

059would not be part of this meeting so um i will go down the list of board members um let me just get first bill yates how do you vote to hold an informal hearing i vote no i do not feel one is necessary and davis i vote yes um i think it'd be a good opportunity to just look at the subjective conflict of interest and dig a little deeper into it and nancy padre i vote yes same reason rebecca i vote yes same and i amy also vote yes for the same reason it would it will give us an opportunity to um for all of us in not just the board but all of our community to have a better understanding of the conflict of interest um the policy and the laws around it as

060well as the the role the the importance of the roles of a person who is represents a population in the legislature as well as representing a community on a school board and if there is a conflict or how those two mess very well together depending on your um but your the way you would interpret that so it has been determined that we will have an informal hearing um could we have that as part of our next meeting um perhaps even scheduling the meeting early i think that meeting yes nancy you you have your hand raised this is just a point of uh information for that um for the request for the uh letter that was sent that elizabeth will not be the vice chairman of the board because she has already for the su because

061she had already declined that and we just haven't voted for a new vice chairman of the su i believe we have we did oh we had our last meeting yes mr gates so you're correct so the conflict of interest is between elizabeth's role on um as a legislator as a legislator and as the chair on the mount of scrutiny school board and i see that mr daniel wurtz has his hand raised yeah i think we cannot hear you so amy could i make sure i've got the i want to make sure i have the votes i have bill yates no davis yes rebecca yes amy yes are we missing one me nancy thank you and i will take a motion to schedule the informal hearing at our next board meeting motions to uh set up

062the meeting at uh in the informal meeting at our next scheduled meeting second okay thank thank you and i'll do a roll call i mean i i have a point of query yes elizabeth um the next scheduled meeting for this board or for the supervisory union board for this board and did you mention that we were thinking of starting the meeting early to accommodate that um possibly depending on what the what other items are on the agenda because i can imagine this might be up to half an hour sure yeah i could see starting it at six o'clock if that would uh allow us to uh cover that in our usual agenda items would be okay okay so i'm gonna do the roll call and i will start with bill i davis hi nancy i

063rebecca i and i amy m and i so um the meeting will be at the um next mountainous gutney school district do we do we have that date just so we can put a date in in the minutes um we can have that day the second monday of may which is the ninth so thank you everyone and i will relinquish my role in this meeting back to our chair elizabeth burrows the next item is let's see if we can find your maintenance plan the next item is the um middle school model and i have a couple of uh uh okay is kate coming back yeah okay uh okay um i spoke with alice stewart at the monoscopy prevention partnership as well as natalie thorne or nat thorne um who is a guidance counselor here at

064the windsor school she's a peer mentor she's a paramedic peer the reason that i contacted both of them was that uh when i was looking at the yrbs carefully i noticed that uh while the number four uh lgbtq students are um worrying uh school outcomes sorry okay um but numbers for the lgbts lgbtq students are really worrying across the board but um the reason i called both of these people was because uh there's nuance between middle and high school in which seventh and eighth grader uh risk behavior and uh suicidality and other other uh worrying behaviors is higher in seventh and eighth grade and so i asked them um and and of course we know that the yrbs was not specific to windsor school um the 2019 members that we had presented with but i

065wondered what we are not doing uh in seventh and eighth grade that we could sort of bolster as we look at the the middle school model um and uh there are a number of things that we're already we already have in motion but uh one of the things kate that um that i learned was that there was a group of students who had a um lgbtq club informal club or gathering in the beginning of the school year during lunch time and then like between 40 and 50 students came to it for the first couple of meetings and then somebody uh told nat who was the acting as the kind of staff advisor to the group that there had to be a permission slip signed by a parent in order for that group to be allowed

066to meet and the group totally disappeared and it went from like between 40 and 50 to between three and five in one meeting so two things um [Music] are clear from it one is that it's needed and secondly that uh having a there's a disconnect for the students involved with having a a signed permission slip and i wondered whether what the practice is at windsor school and whether a club is a club only after school whether it's really a club at lunchtime whether the same kind of permissions are required and uh whether the board can can take any action to make an allowance for those students to be able to meet so through for k.e for any club that we run after school reason with his own chess club gaming club any kind of thing

067so that's just standard practice um this club was all could also run in conjunction with our social justice club um it did the letter didn't have to go home stating you know a member of this community it went home with support we just don't like to run clubs in a building and in secret from parents um so it would go home with another one okay uh how how can we make it possible for this group to be able to meet because i think they felt that they weren't really allowed to be i mean i think this might be a longer discussion with the students involved in their advisor but we can send home a letter saying it's important at school this is what what it means these are some of the issues that we talk

068about this is why we just like we do the video games um so i i'm a little bit confused because i there have been other activities that have taken place that maybe they weren't clubs maybe they're just students gathering um with no formal um structure uh okay amy and rebecca and one more person hold on thank um so my question i have two questions i wasn't able to hear all of what kate was saying okay and i think that was rebecca and nancy as well but um in terms of having permission slips for having an organization or a student being in an organization when my daughter was in high school she and several of her friends started a gsa which is a gay straight alliance and there was not a permission slip needed for that

069that might have been at the high school level and i'm i'm just going with standard protocols i called the principal harlan principle of weather's film so what do you guys do for your pa clubs okay and that's that's again i i couldn't quite hear what was being said so yeah the the gsa that had been started was a high school group so that might have been the the difference there but i also would be cautious to writing clubs without parents knowing i mean i don't i don't want to take responsibility for that to be honest with you you're you're asking a lot of school employees to keep secrets and not give out the information of what the club is i understand the commander kind of everywhere these kids need support they don't feel comfortable going

070to their parents but our job as a school would be to help them get the skills to approach their parents not to run the club in isolation well okay um i guess what i i guess the question that i have is where the nuance is between a club and a not club i would say if a staff member is at the helm of that club and it is school stationed on school time i'm gonna send a letter so if there's a bunch of kids meeting and they're talking about the subject matter but it's not a formal club do you think a staff member should be present i mean if yeah i feel very put on the spot right now but if the kids are having a lunch conversation i mean a staff member is walking

071around that's different than we're saying hey come on wednesday come meet in this classroom we're having we're having a club these are the issues that we're going to discuss okay uh rebecca i see your hand and then nancy and then david that well that that was one of my questions amy brought that up and that was that i did not really um hear kate um well uh the second one was um you asked and that is um our students allowed to come together um around around a particular issue um are they able to do that independently or do they need to have um [Music] they need to have a staff member um at the helm of these discussions yeah i just want to talk historically rebecca on that on that issue um i think that

072there can be informal conversations like kate said at any time but once you designate a time once you designate a place and once you designate a subject area or i mean then i think you've got sort of more of a formal club or activity but what i wanted to say i don't mean to interrupt dancing my point was i think we're because we had this conversation at weatherfield the other night at their board meeting there's a difference between announcing a new club and informing the parents about a new club putting all the clubs and activities in your handbook versus requiring parental permission for a student to be in that club now i know there's that nuance between middle school and high school but i will tell you from drama club to math club to chess

073club you name it we have never required parental permission for a student to be part of a club we announce it we make sure the parents are aware of it parents can have their own conversations with their kids but we're not going to have any sort of a permission slip necessarily to be in that club but i think the nuance was this was new it's the middle school so i think uh i i i think both at weathersfield and at windsor i'm not sure about heartland but you know i think that that's where the distinction came it came from do parents even know this club exists it should be in the handbook it should be notified but i would argue against parental permission to be in that club my question uh for kate is um

074it is right now a uh gay straight alliance in the upper school oh yes i know there is a queer education club which is run by matt thorne um and then there is the windsor coalition which the um the gsa which was started by ryan kelly when she was here um merged into the coalition and then um if groups kind of split um so we could cover more issues can you repeat that please oh the winter coalition was the gsa was um the gsa and i believe there was another organization that kind of worked in part and then we came together during when we first came back and then in person and then we split again um mid-year just because we were we wanted to cover more issues okay and the you split into windsor

075coalition and what the queer education group okay and just to clarify we still have our middle school pride group it is running and i wonder i don't mean to correct after people but when we do stuff after school we do at least here require some sort of permission so that kids know what time they're coming you know parents and what time they're coming and going just like to do with athletics thank you rebecca is that an old hand or a new hand no it's a new hand um i i just want to um say that we already know the data has been um here that these students are starting um we have come off of two years where so many people are struggling and i just want to say that i hope that we don't

076walk away from [Music] because they may not be online but i'm sure that they will hear that we just don't walk away and say you know um we're not going to do anything i i don't you know i i i hope that we can come up with something that's going to work for for all parents and the community because i know that the community cares about these kids as much as we do but we need to make sure that we don't just walk away from a situation that is so blatant in our face um and and um and do nothing thank you for that rebecca kate is that your hand i just wanted to be clear that i would have liked to know that we were talking about this beforehand because we are still actively

077supporting this club when they're when you know the business is an outdoor classroom we found a classroom um in here and i'm not quite sure that it went down that it went from 40 to 45 and i feel that that kind of was a characterization of because you were requiring this letter when that's how clubs at the middle school age when all these kids could come together at work if it was a vikings whatever whatever kind of club a whole bunch of kids but it came out the first time and then it would have dwindled off so i'd like to be able to get accurate numbers and then updates in that vlog prior to our next video okay i appreciate that and i i did not mean to put you on the spot i apologize

078for that right um i i know that i put you on the spot and i'm sorry thank you and i also not only that caught you off guard and i'm sorry about that too thanks i appreciate it um uh and i'm i uh i wasn't there i am only reporting out the content of the conversation that i had with uh matt and alice but this goes back to our middle school model right because yeah seventh and eighth grade students and things are often treated as high school students and that's why and and i i uh and i appreciate that that's why i brought it up during the middle school model um discussion because i i would just like to make sure that um it's taken into account during the middle school model discussions and the

079other thing about the middle school model is i mentioned to um david earlier is that uh i hope that you guys will take advantage of the tarrant institute which um is out of uvm and it uh addresses it's free it's a huge resource and it addresses the creation of a middle school bottle at a school so it's there um and i'm sorry i don't know your name i'm and what's your last name hi can i is it if i make a comment uh sure um just as i am i do have connections with a couple middle middle school students and um i think clarification on you know why students may have dropped out i think it is fair to say with a because of the um the climate of the the club that some students

080may have dropped out because of parents um permission um i also kind of want to take into account where i heard from twitter chatter from multiple middle schoolers as well that they joined because it gave them an opportunity to meet with their peers that they would typically meet with during school day to have lunch so kind of broke them out of their pods um were they were they interested in being part of this group that's a question um and then when you know permission came to to go home to parents you know was it something that they was a priority of theirs to be part of these conversations or was it more of a social gathering for them too exactly to be there so i think you know facing the numbers that you said is

081a little you know off-putting um because there is no real data supporting why they chose not to continue with the cloud and then secondly i just kind of i want to highlight um again with the climate of the conversation and i hate to bring it back to a conflict of interest um conversation but i think this is where a lot of that um [Music] a lot of the conversation around the conflict of interest has come up because parents feel like they're losing their rights when it comes to children in the school and so um with you bringing that conversation up at this meeting and then with a conflict of interest with the bill that is being brought to legislation um i just want to make the board aware of that that it's kind they kind

082of go hand in hand which is a little concerning to a lot of parents so thank you uh let's see um just to clarify i um i was just reporting out what the content of the conversation with alice stewart and matt thorne was and i i don't know more than that um and i i see a group of kids swindling from 50 40 to 50 down to three to five as but for some reason for some reason we don't know why perhaps they needed that club where they it wasn't a club they needed that gathering and uh it makes me it makes me sad that they if they dropped off uh precipitously um if that's a normal thing i i have no idea but it was swift and if it was something that they needed

083it makes me sad for them that they don't feel they have access to it um amanda i see your hand and then i see kate's hand hey does that a new hand again no i'm sorry it's natural okay and there is another name and always enos so amanda thank you elizabeth and thank you to rebecca and david baker for their comments we have seen the youth risk behavior survey and the data that you were referring to is very serious these kind of meetings these kind of safe spaces are life-saving this has to be taken in that context [Music] there are children that are hurting hurting really badly and there are children that are at risk if they are outed at home this is a serious issue and it's not about keeping secrets it's about keeping

084kids alive i was a queer kid at windsor i struggled in middle school i would have loved a group like this and i can't say i would have gotten a permission slip it's really important to think of these children and it's hard to to be here tonight to talk even now to have people talk about being gay or lesbian or trans is something scary or something you need permission to talk about it's just an identity it's beautiful it's it's who many people are it's who i am it's who many of these children are and it's because it's been politicized it's because it's been polarized it's because it's been demonized it's because it's been made something to be afraid of they're afraid of themselves they're afraid of their school their home they should have a space

085where they're not afraid and no one should take that from them i don't know i just maybe you can figure out a way to have an open hours at the library during school where kids know they can come and talk about something some kind of work around but i think that making it seem like it's something scary something that is being done behind parents back some no it's just we have gotten data that children are trying to kill themselves because they don't feel that sense of belonging or safety and you're doing something about it because you're leaders so thank you keep it up and bring some joy into this conversation because it's also about celebrating these kids and all the wonderful things they bring because of who they are not despite it thank you for

086that amanda uh um i have annalise emma's next um uh ryan g please do not comment in our chat or uh during this meeting you are not a resident of our district you don't have permission yeah i i actually i just turned the chat off because that can get very distracting sometimes and i i don't want to have a separate meeting in the chat that's that's not okay but i i'll just say one more time and i know you've got a couple of other people who want to speak up and and kate i i realize you didn't have enough time to formulate the data and you know uh or any of that i mean i i also feel bad i i know it was not intentional to put you on the spot this is an

087issue that's coming up in all of our middle schools and in our high school and i think it's good to address it i think it should be addressed certainly at the board level at some point maybe more formally but again i would argue that we do have clubs we do have activities and students can participate in those we should advertise those clubs and then any conversation about whether or not a child should be in that club or not should happen in the home but i don't think we need to require through some you know secret mechanism that the child needs parental permission to have a safe space to talk about you know their identity the dungeons and dragons club the chess club i think they should be able to feel comfortable in their building safe

088in their school and be able to have those opportunities it's just that we haven't had that conversation deeply at the middle school so i think that's good that it came up during this conversation and we can continue with that conversation uh maybe even at the su because it's also coming up in the other buildings thank you david uh annalise ennis you are next oh see you left uh misty you're next um could you please put your camera on and identify yourself and now she's left again um misty yes sorry um i was just kind of touching on a couple of things that were said and you know i think there's obviously a lot of controversy surrounding this topic you know i i'm a mom of a middle school kiddo um and i would say that

089she's probably one of the most supportive loving caring uh kids you could ever think of like she supports her peers and she could care less if your hair was purple if you were gay she could care less if you rode unicorns i mean she's always telling me because i can be a little judgmental i'll admit it and she says mom you know what does it matter you know does it really matter and i'm like no you're right i guess it doesn't but that said as her mom i would want to know what she's doing in school to support her not because i'd be like oh i you're a horrible human you can't be in that club you shouldn't hang out with those kids but i i need to know what she's doing at school because

090she comes home and if i don't know what's happening at school i can't support her and i know that's not the way it is for all kids i know unfortunately there's not always those kids but there are lots of services set up in the community to help kids like that um i know caitlyn who's there tonight could give you tremendous resources where you can refer kids to that don't have that support at home and hopefully build um that family dynamic because you want those kids in those groups to form those relationships with their parents right because that's where their support really is your support is at home with your parents you go to school but they're home all summer long they're they're home all night they're home in the morning and if they feel like

091they can't talk to their parents maybe that's something more we need to talk about but not telling parents what their kids are doing in school is a very blurred line of education and parenting and i'm a hundred percent supportive i you know i know this is a different world for me and my kids and i learned from my kids for sure right so they teach me a lot about the world as it is now i mean i have my son do all my technology for me i have no idea what i'm doing i like i'm like you know i have no idea i'm learning a lot from my kids but i need to know what their day's like i need to know what's happening what groups they're in i need to be involved in that

092and i think most parents feel that way and i know that not all but most and there are services we can you know put you know have the counselors reach out to services outside of school get these kids connected with counseling with their parents i mean we have to also support like strong family ties because that's what they have at the end of the day when they graduate when they go into the community at the end of the day they have their family and so i think that it's very important and i don't say don't have these clubs don't you know i'm not saying that at all i'm 100 supportive of these clubs i think we have to make sure that parent we are supporting that bond between child and parent and don't always think

093that a parent is against it we can't assume we have to support those relationships and i do think that we have to come together as a community and we can't hide things there can't be blurry lines we have to be transparent and parents have to be in the know of what's happening and you set yourself up for a little bit of risk when you allow clubs that parents don't know about what happens in those clubs what's said in those clubs at least if parents know what's happening or that their their kids are in that club you remove you remove the risk and i'm not saying don't involve your counselors i'm not saying don't involve community services what i'm saying is you have to be transparent with parents because at the end of the day they

094come home to us and we have to have open communication with our children so anyway i know not everybody's going to agree with me but that's my thoughts i ask my kids every day what did you do in school but but not you know not everyone has that open communication and i can accept that but there has to be transparency or that relationship between school and home is just bored anyway that's my opinion thank you for listening i thank you uh thank you misty um i can appreciate what you're saying and i think there is a way through all of this um we just need to keep talking about it um hi sorry about i yeah i hit the wrong button um the thing that i have to say is this is first of all

095i want to remind everyone that being gay is not a choice it is part of who somebody is it's the same as somebody who is born female versus born male it's it's it's not a choice um i think it's incredibly important that these clubs are offered and i think it's incredibly important not to have them hinder on having parental consent because you need to provide a safe space for the children whose parents might have some questions about it and they need to kind of try out and figure out how does this feel the other thing about these kinds of clubs is that not everybody who joins them is gay a lot of friends of people who have peers that are gay join to help be supportive and make a really wholesome environment for school i

096really suggest people to look up the trevor project and you can see statistics of how important it is for children to feel inclusive in their um school setting in order to not have things like depression and suicidal intentions or self-harm um what people are saying in the terms of get them connected with school counseling stuff like that that's great but not always do kids feel comfortable talking to school counselors sometimes they feel more comfortable talking to a teacher or somebody who's leading one of these groups it's vital it's very important and it's our jobs as parents to make our households inviting so that if our children are feeling like they are you know questioning their sexual identity that they can come to us to talk to us so some of this is also on parents

097and being parents so i think it's great i appreciate what dr baker has said about keeping it open um thank you amanda for sharing your stories and that's all thank you thank you annelise um kate can you hear me or not i think you need to come over here so i just wanted to kind of bring this back in because i feel like we got a little bit off topic and i might have been a part of that by saying i'm not going to run clubs in secret i feel caught off guard here so i wanted to apologize i did feel off caught off guard and kind of accused that well went from 50 to 4 because you wanted to send a letter home i like what dr baker said about all of our clubs

098should be in our handbook and people should be aware of them but the bottom line is we don't have that right now so you don't even have that to fall back on and as someone who's in the building every day and on the ground running i do i do like to be transparent i do like to let the parents know what's going on in our building and i think opportunities of having in the handbook and when we get this middle school model up and running to have like a fair in the beginning of the year we can go around and see all the clubs we have at school because i would be if i didn't work here or my kid came home and said that he was playing video games at lunch in club i

099have a lot of questions about that why aren't you outside playing why aren't you doing what you're supposed to do so i want to be treat all the clubs equal but i wanted to spell kind of the tone that this took that we're not being supportive because we are um of all almost any club someone else to join and this kind of took a turn um of that we weren't so i wanted to clear up that we are very supportive of all of our students and the last thing i wanted to say is when you work here you're working this age and you work in a small town with 600 kids you do have an obligation to let kids know you're in a small town and if you're asking a lot of people in one

100building to keep a secret because sometimes they are and i hate to use that word again but sometimes kids say well you can call me this but only here and not on the loudspeaker and only in period three but not in period four once you let a couple of people in and i thank them for trusting me and stuff you're also running the risk that more people are going to know and no the last thing anyone wants to do is out someone who's not ready but i think it's our responsibility to teach kids that lesson also and to have to come up with the skills to to be ready so i didn't want to lose any of that and kind of what fell on a focus here of being supportive or not supportive we're all

101very supportive of all of our students i and and going back to the original subject which was just making sure that it's part of the middle school model discussion um i just think it's you know that the numbers are really clear about i don't the numbers are really clear that that that there are kids who are suffering and that also it's it seems to be more acute during the seventh and eighth grade and so originally my whole request was to make sure that it is included in the discussion middle school model because there seems to be something missing out but that that we're missing and i didn't not mean that as an implication that you're not supportive of i know and you didn't advise the meeting seemed yeah i think and i i appreciate you

102bringing this up and i appreciate the dialogue that's happened around this i think that it being a part of the conversation about the middle school model is incredibly important and i think that maybe at least in my mind it seems like there maybe is a lack of clarity around the exact policy about how these clubs work um i mean yeah that's why i was quick to say protocol before because yeah protocol versus policy and i think that that you know that shows that like this is something we need to talk about more i think that when we when we are talking about students who are part of the lgbtq plus community i think that i think more of a resource than a club right and i think that that's again when we're talking specifically about

103this one thing that's codified as a club we run into these protocols and policy issues but at its core we we need to have our school be a space that facilitates psychological safety for all of our students i mean it's important that students can come in and be able to be their authentic selves and learn in that way it's it's i mean psychological safety is kind of a newer thing that's come up the past few years and um all sorts of different institutions business education but fundamentally it's when somebody who's taking part in an institution can approach something authentically be themselves take things in at be critical i mean you have a better learning experience um i feel like i've got myself a little bit off track with that but fundamentally though it's having that

104resource having students who you know who aren't able to discuss this part of their identity that's part of their immutable identity at home who aren't ready to ready to be out um i think the underlying fact that i think everyone's in agreement here is there needs to be resources to to have those give those students a space to be their authentic selves uh and you know whether that's under in a club structure or not you know i think that's something we talked about in this model but you know it's it's incredibly important and it does save lives so uh rebecca i see your hand and then molly madison i also appreciate the dialogue that that is uh that's happening here um and and one of the things i pick up is um intense um a

105parent's concern and fear um i i think that was expressed clearly um and and i know that none of us here on the board really wants to put that out that said i i think that um we need to probably we need to address that also i think we need to find a way of communicating with you know parents be it creating a forum or a place or a time to share this very serious information so that it it's it's not like oh we've got the information and no one else has it so we're we're going to be making these decisions i think they need to be at the table um um and that that's really important i think it's not only important um for for um i think it's very important for the children

106to see that um that the conversation is happening that that that we're having the conversation together that we are not having the conversation in isolation um their investment is also so important to making our schools successful and our students successful so we we need to when they're asking you know we want to know more we need to know more what we we need to be able to say okay yeah we will we'll meet with you we'll talk with you let's let's let's come together around this i i totally agree rebecca and that was why one of the reasons that we at our uh planning retreat last august um one of the reasons that we had talked about having forms do you remember we've only had one so far so maybe it's time for us to

107have another one um [Music] uh thank you thank you for those comments molly madison would you mind putting your camera on and telling us hi yep my name is molly madison i have a eighth and ninth grader in the windsor school um you know you guys have mentioned a lot about supporting each other and everything and i live in and have grown up in this community and um i see nothing but support i understand that people need a safe place and everything but um everybody does you know there's a lot more there needs to be mental health awareness in general we're focusing on the lgbtq and i'm not trying to downplay it by any means i know that i'm opening a camo worms but um i mean we have kids cutting we have kids getting

108into drugs there can't be we have to focus on mental health in general there needs and not everyone has a safe place at home homes are not always a safe place there are a lot of places that summer vacation is when they don't get to eat lunch school is a safe place so it needs to be a safe place for everybody um i think parents are asking to be informed i mean you guys have to have my permission to give tylenol ibuprofen benadryl anything like that i'd like to have be informed about what's going on there's enough emails and everything else that goes about everything else um i think parents are just asking to be informed um and i mean you need to go back to treat others as you want to be treated there

109it's a golden rule we've lost touch with that everybody's looking down at their phones and worrying about social media and all that crap but um parents want to be informed and i don't really know what else to say on that but it's just um i don't know thank you i appreciate that molly thank you for for speaking up uh david i see my point i i just want to reinforce this idea of public forums it's come up quite a bit in the last month or so you know certainly brought about by some parent interest and some energy on the part of parents to uh to be able to have some dialogue and discussion with the board so one of the things i think we need to do and it's on the agenda for the supervisory

110union meeting on the 25th is to talk about just format topics how we might want to unroll these forums because actually a forum and we've said this before too and this is not to criticize tonight but sometimes it's hard to have these kinds of dialogues at a school board meeting where you know business is to be conducted but at a parent forum where there's a facilitator somebody taking questions making comments people can sometimes even submit some of those questions beforehand so i just want to support that notion i think it's i think it's great but and we will talk about that and i know the other boards are ready to go with some sort of form we've all been hunkered down and buried these last two years with in covert conditions we haven't even allowed

111you know public in our buildings it's time to open it up again have the dialogue we're not always going to agree but you can see that tonight but i think it's good to have the discussion and then the boards make the decision on on on how they want to handle x y or z so that that's all that's all i wanted to say and last but not least i did put in the chat the middle school proposal uh a model that uh and i know it's getting late we can move that to the next agenda if you want um none of those things are incredibly uh incredibly controversial and and this task force worked really hard to come up with these agreed-upon items and if you notice it does talk about um it does talk

112about you know equity uh across the schools and uh giving middle level students more voice and choice with respect to some of these equity issues i mean that developmental time is a really important time for kids and that's where they either get turned on to school well they get completely turned off to school and sometimes you can't bring them back after they after you lose them so anyhow look at that document i put it in the chat uh earlier before i shut the chat off but i think you can still open it and then uh we can put it on the next agenda for a little more uh because this was going to be more about some of the structural scheduling academic pieces and we don't have to get into that tonight thank you david

113i i really uh appreciated that that document that you shared um nancy i see your hand no question it it just it just cleared up i couldn't bear all the noise in the background and i hope anybody who's on this call on this screen would please make sure that their microphone is off all right it was just driving me nuts i'm sorry nancy we couldn't hear it over here uh okay are there any more comments or questions about the middle school model or the other subjects at hand okay uh the next thing is intradistrict choice oh tara howard do you have a question or comment i can't hear you at all oh can you hear me now can you hear me no no no we can yes we can let me try this one more

114time we can hear you did you say you can hear me we can hear you now okay um i just before you guys wrap up uh real quick and before i get off here i just i just wanted to say like just like on a positive note here um windsor school which um i'm 37 years old and i've lived here my whole life and i would just like to point out that i have never in my life seen the lgbtq plus accepted more than it is today and it's something that i'm proud of um to be a resident in this town and i'm really proud to see how far our school has come with everything it wasn't like that back when i was in school so i understand that there's issues with everybody regardless of

115what you identify as there's issues everywhere as far as mental health goes but i just think sometimes take a minute to just appreciate where we've come and appreciate the good that has come and i mean i just i feel like our school has really come a long way and i have a child in eighth grade and she is friends with people that are lgbtq i i always hear great stories and it seems that a lot of these kids are still living a fairly normal life i think that sometimes we need to acknowledge where we are and i know there's bad there's bad in everything but we have come a really long thank you so much for that tara tara is your thing i think that's still off goodnight okay thank you tara um you're absolutely

116right we we do forget about that sometimes so thank you for that reminder um uh okay now we are on to intra-district choice take it away all right so we were able to me we met three times as a small group which includes um parents community members and members of the board and we are at the point where what we'd like to do is talk about kind of a next year plan and then like maybe a two to three year plan and then maybe a five year ultimate goals plan um so what we get really excited when we get together which is great when we think about how we can really think about sharing um the capacity and the resources across our schools across um both both schools in the district and even thinking more

117broadly about the supervisory union but what we'd like to try and do is get something ready to go for next year that just allows some basic um shifting between the two schools in a way that gets out to parents ahead of time so they can make some choices and make some thoughts so what we've done is we've taken we've taken a look at a lot of model policies procedures and questions to be answered practices and what we'd like to do is we've just got some pretty basic stuff that we'd like to share just get kind of the juices rolling see if there's any big flags that are showing up so we can bring that back to our next meeting so i will i'm just trying to present it's pretty short i tried to make it

118um i took one the most concise ones and made it even more concise hopefully um so let's see so we're looking at um intradistrict choice so between west windsor and windsor so brownsville school in albert bridge school and windsor school can you make that a little bit bigger possibly let's see um oh are there slides okay it's just one big document okay never let me see if i can oh it's my fault go ahead yeah okay it's okay it's because i have the um names of people there all right okay so we're looking at um kindergarten through sixth grade students in both schools the basic um thing is we'd like to have parents have the opportunity so first and foremost your kid is guaranteed to go to the school that you're you reside in if

119you think for some reason it may be a value for a child to go to the opposite school for different reasons um then you can put in a request and what we'll do is between the two schools we'll look at class sizes and try and get balanced class sizes as well as trying to think about sort of unique needs of a kid depending on who they are and what resources might be available in the different schools because we still are a small school and we can't all have all of it all the time um so regardless of your residence as long as you are a windsor or west windsor family you will be able to have choice this is the proposal um before kindergarten through sixth grade um the big idea is we would like

120to have um kind of a cutoff date where you apply and maybe reserve a couple of spots in each building for transient students because we want to also keep equity um as a component and often kids with um you know who come from more transient families lose a lot as it is so really just trying to hold some space for that option i think something we're looking at but essentially what we do is at the end of a whatever time period um we'd be able to say to families you know put your name into this kind of pool and if you we have enough spots you go there and if not you'd essentially go into a lottery system so if we have too many kids um for one of the two schools we go to

121a lottery process if you have uh if you your child is accepted and you have younger siblings that that younger sibling would also go to the same school or you you'd be in that top list to get to the same school transportation right now we've got some pretty decent transportation going one way we're trying to figure out is it possible to make transportation going both ways so that there's also again equity issues so it's not about those who have extra resources to get their child to school but we have the opportunity to allow for all the children um so essentially what that would look like would be all students assigned to the original school if a parent wants to based on space available in each building and each grade level try to go to it

122the other school parents submit a form which you have some really simple models that we'll share with you guys when we're ready to move to that stage at a specific deadline and then so slots being awarded and here's the sequence um younger siblings would be the first so if you already have any fifth grader going to the school then you would automatically be like next on the list to go to that school um any individuals who are on the waitlist from prior year and if there are more spots to be filled we'll use a lottery system we'll keep the waitlist going we also talked about possibly in the middle of the school year there may be some unique situations where we may want to consider that and that would be something that the principal would

123talk through with the parents and the teachers to see if that makes sense and the idea would be that the goal would be that when they go to the school they would stay at that school but we also understand that sometimes that may not be in the best interest of the child for some reason at which point if they're in if they've gone to the opposite school then they can reapply to their original school and be on that same list and so thinking about planning for next year we've talked about um february 1st be a possible deadline obviously wouldn't be for this year but for following years by february 1st that gives us lots of time to do some planning as we're looking at making adjustments for um staffing and those kinds of things so

124that's where we are with the inter-district choice for next year excellent questions concerns red flags what do we want to do next year think about keep in mind rebecca i heard you're blue thank you um jenna i i i do have um a question um i i know and i may be wrong but i i believe that the curriculum in at abs really embraces the outdoors and um that probably allows for um programs that are not that we can't we you know when they're in town may not be able to do easily so my question is um even if a student is um in windsor and not at abs is there some sort of a plan or um thought given to making sure that those students that are in windsor have access to some of

125the outdoor um wonderful programs that are you know presently at abs yeah so let me talk about two things so first of all the curriculum the fundamental curriculum which is the what we want the kids to know understand be able to do is the same between the two schools it's part of the same across the whole supervisory reunion it's how we how we practice and present those that changes and that changes based on teachers too right even within the same school you can have different teachers bring different resources to teach those basic concepts so we're all getting the same fundamental curriculum um when we talk about place-based education the beauty of it is that you anchor it to the place that you live in and windsor does a really good job of a lot of

126that stuff they don't have the same quick easy access to the immediate outdoors in the kind of unprotected way that albert bridge does right when we have an outdoor classroom for every student or for every class at albert bridge you know windsor students have to go a little ways to get to the same outdoor experience but they still have their whole place that they can learn into um so one of our goals is we were talking about almost like the two three year plan is to really start thinking about ways that we actually have kids and teachers well so let's start with the teacher who is really passionate about teaching um you know life cycles through frogs and i mean like windsor has this beautiful pond right where you can really study that and maybe

127all the kids go and learn from that teacher about right the life cycle right the early right this time of year right and you go out there and you can really get get some really interesting um experiential learning right there and so maybe a teacher does that and all the students in the second grade let's say learn that um so that's one thing we're talking about when we're thinking about like our three-year plan is how do we start supporting teachers being able to do some of this sort of moving back and forth and maybe what we have like you know just for the front of it let's say um a fifth grade kind of round robin where fifth grade teachers go to the different classes i mean there's lots of ideas what we we get

128really excited about this but um we don't want to stop one thing slow everything down to wait till we get to that point if that makes sense so my sense is that this isn't the end of it this is the start of let's just get some balls rolling and get some some ways to celebrate the awesomeness that we are as a district right and allow some flexibility is i think one of the advantages we can provide our community um with just having some flexibility in k-6 and i think that's going to also lead us to more and more of this idea of our place is the windsor west windsor community and our teachers are all our teachers and our students are all our students and so i see over over time right our three-year plan

129then ultimately our five-year plan which i'll talk about at some point um really can be uh super exciting um and i don't know that we have the answers all the answers yet or the idea is hopefully out on the table yet but i know every time i'm talking with people more and more really exciting ideas to come thank you jen oh it's weird no i i thought that was a really uh thank you for that that was a really succinct explanation of um you know how in the short term the intro district plan would work um i i appreciate you there's thought given to like having siblings stick together if they are going to a school especially not in the town that they're residing in um and i'm excited to hear that in that long-term

130planning there's more thought being given to resource sharing between between the two schools in the district um i i know that you know we have our kind of broader sense of place in the windsor-west windsor community but you know definitely pointed out uh clearly there's there's access to some different modalities that come with being in that naturalistic outdoor space versus being in more of a tenant setting and i think uh you know that sort of exchange between those two buildings uh it's it's going to do a lot of great things for students so i appreciate it yeah you bet we're getting the band so it's more than you think or more than you might think well thank you for that yeah well thank you to everybody who participated in this bill and nancy rebecca we've

131got community members out there jumping in so it's really uh that's great that's great thank you guys and we'll do it again next month hopefully a good formal plan ready to run well that's right of course if anything comes up just shoot in my way you can adjust okay the last thing for now is the uh winter jedi committee and the declaration of inclusion and i apologize because i completely forgot to send out the declaration of inclusion um did you find it doing this uh yeah i download i i think i can actually share one of my screens here okay if folks want to see it um so this was uh the declaration that was made by the windsor select board and uh at our last meeting we talked about our board of adopting a

132similar equity declaration can you make that a little bigger davis yep yeah i just want to make sure we're not missing okay the second page is just contact info so yep that's how it works in box perfect no problem and here's the bulk of the text there can you read it i can read it thank you all right so this is the equity declaration i believe this is the draft that was adopted by the town of windsor so the town of windsor works to support and uplift hard-fought civil rights and is committed to eliminating hatred bigotry and discrimination in all town systems and institutions in order to improve outcomes for all strives to create a culture in which racial gender and other disparities are openly acknowledged and promptly addressed urges all to denounce prejudice and

133welcome all persons regardless of race color religion national origin sex gender identity or expression sexual orientation marital status age disability economic or housing status or any other protected characteristics commits to protecting all historically oppressed or potentially vulnerable persons to the fullest extent of law and calls on all of those living visiting and working here to ensure liberty and equity for all persons so uh unfortunately bill's not here but we had talked last time about our board also signing on to this do you mind stopping sharing sure um [Music] um uh amy what do you think about our board signing this um i think it might be better if we were to craft it so that it applies to the school and the great art community i agree and i would also i guess um go

134to west windsor and ask them if they would be interested in signing so i can share i'll send out to all of you the original declaration of inclusion that this the windsor jedi committee spent months tooling their own version of uh and getting it just right for the town of windsor the original declaration of inclusion so you're talking about the text that it's based upon or yeah all right fields okay looks like david's got his hand up too okay i know i i was just going to reinforce what would be nice uh elizabeth would be maybe to reach out to west windsor because remember mount scotty school district represents right multiple times yeah so i think i think that's a great idea and if you can get some sense from them i just want to

135you know maybe just kind of recommend the right order and then if then if we can get some cohesion there and the other thing too is i think at some point we could even talk to the other board chairs about going to the town of wethersfield or going to the heart not critical for montescotny school district but it's just enough it's another thought but i just wanted to support your idea of of talking to west windsor okay maybe that's the best what does everybody else think about that uh yes and i i think when when opening up that dialogue too that's a good opportunity you know i know that we um rebecca are you the liaison currently to the windsor jedi committee um yes i just started but yeah no i mean that's that's a

136resource for our community and they might be able to help us facilitate some of those conversations and and uh do that so i i know there's been some conversation between the various jedi committees in the state too so that they yeah the uh office of racial equity at the um in the governor's administration just rolled out a new plan about it so um yes and that includes al wakefield's declaration of inclusion so i'll i'll uh talk to the i commit to talking to the west windsor select board um in the next month about this original declaration of inclusion then i'll report back next month about what they said okay sounds good all right uh rebecca were you able to attend the last jedi committee meeting no no no i unfortunately wasn't able to either um

137i can go on windsor on air though and but i you know okay uh all right so that completes our items for discussion does anybody else have anything else they'd like to briefly well we don't have room on the we're through the agenda for that part we're now at items for action which includes the high school travel the ukrainian flag and the five-year maintenance plan i'll take a motion to approve the students being allowed to travel out of the country to costa rica next year well second why um this is amy i make that motion okay i apologize i'll still second hey [Music] okay uh don't make remotely okay um let's see amy how do you vote i okay uh okay and davis how do you feel all right okay and [Music] let's see nancy

138i see you how do you vote i okay rebecca how do you vote i i and i and i don't think bill's on here anymore i'm pretty sure the student trip to costa rica next year has been approved as far as the board is concerned next is the uh the five-year capital um how is it crazy well you also you also had the ukrainian ukrainian flag issue too i want to i want to bring that one up last okay your maintenance plan your maintenance plan includes providing maintenance and capital so do you need to do it for this year um i don't think we can do it for all five years can we no no i would suggest i would suggest the motion be to approve the capital improvement items for next year okay and

139then i think uh with the assumption that i will come back to the board once a year yeah and update i think springtime's a good time and yeah because i'll be working with jim all the fall so yeah because the amount of money that's in the capital reserve is fluctuating you're not i think that's a good way to phrase it the phrase of motion you that way you're not holding yourself down for this track respray in your five right but you'll see that coming i'll take a motion to approve the uh portions of the budget set aside for maintenance and capital improvements for the coming year so see me nancy make a motion and i will second you don't make a motion you move emotion is a verb so we move to do something okay

140all right and uh nancy how do you vote yes okay rebecca how do you vote yes hi and amy how do you vote i davis how do you vote hi and i okay and the last item for thank you yep thank you um the last item for action is the uh ukrainian flag i will take a motion to allow the ukrainian flag to be flown under the american flag at the windsor height at the windsor school i amy move that we allow the ukrainian flag to fly at windsor school and perhaps even albert bridge yes do i have a second i think we should discuss this because uh we have historically uh had other flags other than the american flight flying at the windsor school so it opens the door for all other flag discussions

141um rebecca um i i was i was not on the board at the time but um it was um all over windsor when um certain students in in town had requested that the um black um necklace matter flag was put up again i don't know i don't recall exactly what happened there but um it is it really is a um i just know that it just created a lot of discussion and so um i'm just wondering um you know i i don't know um rebecca what happened was we we never had a request from students to fly the black lives matter flag we had a request from a teacher to be able to have a black lives matter flag in their background and we agreed that that was fine because the teacher is the king

142of their dome or queen or leader of their domain um but as far as the school was concerned um we've never received a request to fly a black lives matter flag well that's right when this comes up that is that it's a question i i think it personally i i think that it's really important that students be involved in the political process and i i i very much appreciate that students have stepped up um to uh to speak to the issues that are going on in ukraine um so um i you know i don't know i mean how long how long do we um put it up you know um i i don't know i think that's a good question that's a question but i i think it is very important to to honor students

143involvement in in the political process thank you david i i see your hand yeah just quickly i want to reinforce what elizabeth just said this is really the first flag request that we've had we we haven't had a student bring a flag request to to our board in my time or in my tenure so i think it is important that you discuss it and i would also agree with rebecca if you are going to approve it it might have it might be good to have some time constraints or time bound it a little bit uh where at least you review it maybe you know maybe you do it through september 30th of next year and then you review it or i mean that's up to the board but those would be my two recommendations davis

144what do you think about it i mean i think i can echo what rebecca said is you know i want to be receptive to these kind of student requests um i do think that the understanding what the time-bounding of this is is fairly important um and i i i don't recall if hudson mentioned if there was a certain amount of time we were thinking or you know a date to start or anything like that so i almost wonder if if we might want to seek more information and work with the student group and figure it out um i i mean i i feel pretty supportive of that idea i think that it's you know supporting our students engagement in you know important world issues like this uh you know it goes a long way in

145a sense really strong message um but i also want to make sure that we're uh you know being very clear about what what we are doing the time frame that we're doing it in and uh and maybe have a little more dialogue with student groups before we make that decision okay and nancy what do you have to say about it i came in late so is this this was a student request and do they have a flag that was i no they do not that was the second part of the request that we get a flag um i i really agree with what davis just said that um i i really think it's a wonderful thing to do and to support the student group that asks but to get some more information because probably they

146haven't even thought how long should it be up or where do we get a flag or whatever and just get a bit more information but basically i'm i'm really for flying that flag and amy what do you think um i think as as far as at an initial time period perhaps between now and the end of the school year but talking with the student group would be good just to get their opinion on that i uh you know i have my problem with saying that we'll you know setting the matter of opening order the door to other fines aside my problem with committing to between now and the end of the school year is it saddens me because it means that we don't hope that this conflict will be over well i i'm not saying

147i'm not saying that it has to be i don't know having it until the end of the con i don't even like calling it a conflict but i won't even get into that it's it's an invasion but if if we're wondering about the the time period you know having it at least initially until the end of the school year when the students are there and they're seeing the flag um uh would any of you be able to attend like a 15-minute long meeting on friday afternoon about it so that we could uh kind of expedite it for them i mean we could have their group um come and meet with us and tell us everything that they know we can ask them questions directly we're on vacations david david yeah i was going to say

148if if if you want to have that type of student dialogue then we're probably not going to resolve this tonight so one thing the board could do is simply authorize the administration kate and colleen to enter into dialogue with the students to get a little bit further information and i am also saddened by the fact that probably by our next board meeting this conflict will not have been resolved but at least the students will know you took it seriously you want to engage a few more of them in the conversation and then you could make that decision at your next board meeting okay it's getting late i'd i'd really like to be able to um okay wait do we all agree in principle that uh we want to allow the students to fly at the

149flag i think we do so i'll take a motion to uh allow the students to apply the ukrainian flag pending certain details so that we can agree in principle and then uh kate if you wouldn't mind um helping filling filling in some of those blanks okay it's weird to see you across the room because you look like when you look over here at heart no no when you look over here it looks [Laughter] elizabeth amy has to withdraw her original motion and nancy has to withdraw okay okay with john and with john okay so i'll take a motion to uh to approve the flying of a ukrainian flag pending details of where the flag will come from and how long it will how long their intention is to fly it do we have any other

150details that that uh i think that's essentially yeah right yeah can you start when they plan to start buying the flag where the flag is going and uh so we'll approve it between whatever their start date is until i'm going to say one month because i'd like to naively think that we will not need to re-improve it but so for up to 30 days that's fair is that all right uh would anybody like to make that motion no move amy seconds and uh amy how do you vote hi nancy how do you feel hi rebecca how do you vote hi davis on the matter of the ukrainian flag hi i am i so uh could you please or i kate are you the point person for for uh hudson and kids okay thank you um

151all right and that is it for the evening we do have an executive session matter so thank you all for being here it is type title section 13 of title 11 i think it is writing definitely section 313 yeah thank you [Music] uh i'll take a sec is anybody here to second things questions davis okay okay uh do you how do you vote on entering executive session oh okay nancy how do you vote on entering hi and rebecca how do you vote hi and davis how do you feel all right