SU Board Meeting - March 28th, 2022

001okay there we go wonderful thank you so much um again i am amy mcmillan i'm the chair of the windsor southeast supervisory union and i call our regularly scheduled meeting for march 28th at 6 30. um i call it to order it is 6 34. and our first order of business is changes or additions to the agenda um i have one addition and that is that we will be um at our last meeting when we reorganized in absentia elizabeth burrows was voted as vice chair and she has very respectfully declined so one of our first orders of business well items for action that's where we will put that is we will we will nominate and vote for a replacement as vice chair of the windsor southeast supervisory union and the other change um i will

002item d um or no i'm sorry item f in items for discussion i will announce i'll discuss how the the boards are going to work with a complaint we received for conflict of interest so that will be item f in items for discussion and um david did you have anything more amy will we be discussing [Music] mask and vaccine or not vaccines but masking tonight um no that's that's not on the agenda um if if that would be necessary we could schedule a special meeting or there's also when we have public participation and announcements uh board members can make a comment to that effect okay just interested in light of rising case numbers i know i know yeah that that will come up under my i was going to say but but you know but

003again it'll be up to the board whether they want to discuss okay right and the fact that it's not on the agenda and it's such a big topic i don't feel it would be um appropriate to add i agree the agenda i think the superintendent report will be yeah thank you colleen okay um moving on we have approval of the minutes i will take a motion to approve the minutes from february 23rd 2022 and march 14 2022. i um hey um amy i do have uh i want to put in a motion to accept the the minutes of february 23 but for march 14th um i had a question about number seven okay um once it's been moved and seconded then we'll go into that fine thank you yeah you're welcome okay so rebecca you're

004making the motion yes and let me see i have nancy and i have elizabeth yes i'm seconding okay wonderful thank you so now it is open yeah and yeah elizabeth no we cannot hear you no it looks like your mic is on i think she's going to sign out and come back in okay rebecca so item number what um item number um seven on for the march um 14 minutes okay and what was that specifically um last year uh we have representation from all of the towns on the budget committee i think um colleen was on it with um jamie and i and this year and i don't know if it even matters but we only have two people jamie and i and i wondered if there should be someone from kartlin on the committee

005okay um that's a good thing we can take that up and items for action okay thank you yeah because this is yeah and that that's a good catch and we'll we'll discuss that thank you rebecca um we can't hear you elizabeth can you can you hear us elizabeth yeah you can hear us okay yeah it sounded like you almost we almost had you there i think she's trying again one more time to commit yep in the meantime did anyone else on the board have clarifications or corrections to the to the minutes from the 23rd or the 14th nancy this isn't a correction but i got a message that somebody people are using companion mode and that might be keeping elizabeth from being able to speak i don't know what companion mode is but it came

006up that find out who's using it and stop okay i i haven't seen anything for that effect so amy this is carlin hood i think the companion mode is because people are using it at i believe at the rec center for like multiple people in one setting like it's on a tv i think okay thank you carlin yeah and i don't think that would affect the sound for elizabeth that is whoever was using it it just said that they logged off of companion mode okay thank you you want to try again elizabeth oh well maybe you could maybe she could call in on her phone okay um in the meantime we will table the voting on the minutes and we will move on to public participation on items not on the agenda and i want

007to read a statement before we go there we are about to convene public comment the law does not require public comment but we have chosen to invite it because we believe it is crucial for us to hear from our community members about their concerns over issues having said that please note that the board is here to listen the public comment period is not designed for discussion accordingly please do not expect the board to react to your question in the comments tonight this is because we take your concerns and questions seriously and we want to have sufficient time to process and research abuse issues if need requires it we will however respond at a future meeting or have an appropriate staff member get back to you at an appropriate time we are unable to entertain any

008comments or questions about personnel in open session please know however that we take personnel concerns very seriously and on these matters we ask that you go through appropriate administrative channels our communities have become polarized on a number of issues that said we want our school board our school board meetings to serve as examples to our students that members of our school board and members of our community can deal with controversial issues in a civil manner and can demonstrate mutual respect in that spirit we will insist that all speakers and members of the audience maintain civility and respect any divergent views that others possess we ask that all speakers direct their comments to the board directly and not to the audience in the unlikely event that the meeting becomes unruly the board will recess and return

009once order has been restored and public comment i see that daniel wertz has had his hand raised so daniel thank you yeah let me put it down so i'm the one who submitted that conflict of interest complaint i'll leave names out of it for now but it's perfectly fine with me if it's um allowable i guess that that be published publicly my letter with my name on it and all that and i also believe that the board uh the wsesu board should hear that publicly perhaps as part of this meeting as an addition to the agenda uh it's pertinent to both boards and i don't see how both could avoid it um and then finally on on a unrelated topic that was briefly mentioned earlier for the love of god don't by force put a

010mask on any student again i'll leave it at that thank you daniel um the other person who has their hand raised is katie burke hi um i just wanted to um i guess ask a clarifying point um because i think all school boards in the state of vermont have to follow robert's rules is that true and this board functions under robert's rules as well yes we function under robert's rules and so i think it's helpful for people in the public to understand that the way that school board meetings are conducted are a result of um a whole host of rules that have nothing to do with anybody on this board individually um robert's rules is set up to kind of function from the top down um to so you so you can maintain order um

011i didn't know that that was a really important piece of the puzzle for me um when i did learn that so i'm not sure if that's helpful for anybody else out there um i also just wanted to ask the board to consider um consulting with the vermont department of health in light of our recent coveted numbers in our county and also in individual schools um we have not the the state of vermont didn't fall in line with the cdc for most of the pandemic in terms of the way that vermont carried themselves and and the rules that they abided by um and it feels like the department of health is pulling back the agency of vet is pulling back and now we're starting to kind of follow the cdc um and we all have and

012i by we all i mean schools all have a liaison at the vermont department of health and i would like to see us or see the board be addressing case counts covet counts and mitigation measures on a school by school case by case basis with the vermont department of health okay thank you katie i believe our superintendent report will cover a little bit of what's happening covid related so thank you are there any other public comments do board members have any announcements hearing none we will move on to the superintendent's report and you're on david it's a busy agenda tonight so i'll try to make it quick i will um i will summarize some of the updates i will share my screen here i would assume you can see that correct you can see that

013yes we can i can't see you that's the that's the problem we're seeing it okay good so just some general updates uh and again i'll i'll try to be quick but at the end if you want to save questions for the end we certainly can take it we've already discussed this tonight the covert transmission cases went up at the end of the week and and certainly over the weekend i sent out a quick email update to parents today [Music] that we have to stay vigilant and we have to be able to staff our buildings both of those things are critical uh heartland and albert bridge seem to get hit the hardest over the weekend um up those two probably heartland uh with uh five staff members and i think it was two i see christine's

014online but she could probably clarify but i think it was a total of five staff members and seven or eight students uh you know par part of the issue is safety of students of course but also it's um it's being able to operate our buildings right and again the transmission count gets high number of adults out it becomes difficult to staff and also as somebody pointed out it seems like the vermont department of health and we did reach out to them uh over the last couple of days and we do have a a person who is our contact at the vermont department of health and we also have access to the to the hospital as well um but they seem to have relinquished all of the categorical information to the cdc which is a change

015as katie pointed out we were we used to get a lot of guidance and direction from the vermont department of health and the aoe and we're getting none now so essentially the only the only quantitative piece of information that we have is that cdc rating by county and and last week it did put windsor county as high uh transmission uh and that changes weekly um and again the board can discuss optional masking versus mandatory masking but i think it would be this is just my opinion as superintendent i think it would be very uh disruptive to the school environment and to our children if one week we're in masks the next week without a mask the next week we're back in masks i i'm just saying that but if the board feels differently we can

016certainly uh talk about that when i finish these next uh few points did did somebody put their hand up uh amy do you have you the exact count yeah we we've had 23 cases in the last 10 days so i think we had 14 this weekend um two more today and 23 over the last 10 days yeah so heartland heartland really got hit uh and uh to christine's credit and to that staff's credit they you know we were able to keep the school open today uh but that is uh as somebody pointed out uh can be day-to-day based on the adults that are able to supervise uh those classrooms so it's it's it's a noteworthy topic but we had a long meeting two weeks ago we went optional with masks and that was the decision

017uh and and so that's where we are right now we can talk about it when i when i finish up here um if you want to uh the equity audit rfps requests for proposals i went out uh about eight to ten days ago we sent them out to ten vendors uh we are partnering with springfield school district on this uh on this equity audit uh the proposals are due back on april 15th uh we uh as i said we're partnering with springfield we do need a process for the for the for the initial selection of a vendor i'm suggesting and we don't have to talk about this tonight but we should i can reach out to the board cheers and see what they think too but maybe the springfield superintendent myself and two board members

018from springfield and two board members from uh windsor southeast supervisor reunion would review those proposals and make a decision i think the proposals are gonna even though we try to put the scope of work in the proposal i think they're gonna be very different in content and format uh so it'll be interesting to look at but essentially what we said we really wanted to look with an equity lens at our policies our procedures our hiring practices our curriculum and and our instructional practices and that's what the uh equity audit rfp stated and we're looking forward to getting those vendor those vendor proposals back by april 15th uh teacher and support staff master agreements are signed a lot of people on this call put a lot of work into this including bill yates who cheered chaired

019that committee and that team it's nice to have signed master agreements for multiple years it seemed like we were negotiating every year with our teachers and with our support staff the teacher contract is a three-year contract but this year is one of those years so that'll be a two-year contract essentially the support staff contract is a contract that starts next year july 1 of 22 and goes through uh to june 30 of 2025. um individual contracts will be going out soon i want to give a shout out to tina canfield and hr who's done a great job getting both union and at will contracts in order um we try to get them out certainly if we can by april 1st that's our goal uh if we can't certainly very quickly with uh with within that

020frame did i hear another hand amy no okay i'm not sure what that was all right uh parent conferences this thursday and friday noon release days both days um we want to make sure that our parent and there's quite a few on understand that because of uh the pandemic and some scheduling changes we had to make at the beginning of the year that's why those parent conferences operate the way they operate but i can assure uh certainly parents and and anybody listening tonight that next year we'll go back to the original parent-teacher conference format teachers want that administrators want that it's just that again those mid mid year shifts are are difficult to make but we're looking forward to those and those are being set up right now as we speak uh free lunch wednesdays

021for staff that was sort of a just a little shout out and thank you to uh to our teachers and support staff and administrators um and i'm told by the uh by the um food service uh craig our food service director that that they are going well um and last day of school is an i just just in case people are keeping track i think i put this in my email blast last week the last day of school for this year sometimes it's tough to keep track of those snow days uh it'll be a noon dismissal on june uh 17th um and i think i think that's it the task force our our equity task force will be meeting very soon to prioritize the action steps that we brainstormed before and i want to give

022a shout out or welcome to mary gannon who's here tonight um she's going to begin her work with the board tonight uh and she'll as soon as we're done with any questions for my report uh she'll begin so mary welcome tonight and i know the board's looking forward to hearing uh from you uh and i think that's it i'll stop sharing my screen and uh there's a bunch of people who want to get in so i'm going to stop presenting and if there are any questions comments or discussion feel free to do that now and i'll let you call on people amy right i see rebecca okay yeah rebecca yes thank you um david is is there a way um uh that you you're keeping up with um the covert situation in terms of if

023the county is sees a problem and and if they continue to see a problem um is that something that you're kind of you know happy the the action um committee has their arms around and are willing to at least raise it immediately and if we need to meet then we'll meet and discuss how to move forward yeah i think you know what what happens is the these the the it you know it lags right the spread lags behind the tren you know the the transmission if you will and and also we are our internal supervisor reunion transmission has sometimes lagged behind the statewide results and you can see there's disparity all over the state right and it has been for months around who's closing schools who's closing classrooms uh and now i think the real

024issue is going to be who's optional masking who's mandatory masking and i guess the simple answer to the question rebecca is yes uh i mean our our nurses are part of the kova task force they monitor this daily they monitor their accounts daily um part of the problem this week was that i i didn't my fault not the nurse's fault i didn't get accurate information before i sent out that friday email to parents because i was in that equity conference uh you know i was supposed to be in san diego it ended up i was virtual but it that created a little bit of lag time but basically i get a daily report from the principals and from the nurses so we could call an emergency meeting and and what i would say is that

025and to the board's credit in terms of optional and mandatory masking you've pretty much you've held on to the authority for that you haven't relinquished that particular piece in some ways i'm very thankful to me i mean i think it should be a board decision that represents all of those schools but yes we are we are we do we do get that daily count rebecca i see katie amy i know if you can see everything oh yeah i can um katie hi um katie burke i have three kids in your school i'm also a school nurse for another district um i spoke with um jill lord who's the director of community health over at mount us gutney this morning because i was just curious like the cdc has deemed windsor county um you know a

026high transmission county what does that mean like is mounis gutney stressed are they at their limit do they have people in icu um and jill said that their hospital is not seeing people coming in um there are in the entire state of vermont two people in icu 56 new cases today um she spoke with jill spoke with margaret worth who is the infection control person over there margaret said from friday to monday there were seven new cases of covid in windsor county um and so it was just interesting to me like i'm not really sure what the cdc is using to drive those metrics um and it just is hard i also called the vermont department of health i spoke with wendy walsh um wendy walsh said that after um april break the vermont department

027of health will be coming out with a new set of metrics um that schools will be able to report in um so schools will be able to it sounded like it was going to be like an if this then that sort of situation and that guidance should be coming out toward you know the end of april beginning of may um thanks katie better better late than never i guess and just so you know katy too we we also were in communication with jill we got that same information uh about uh and i and i think that's part of the issue right now both in terms of optional masking and transmission it's really you know not that people don't get sick because people get sick don't get me wrong but but uh it's really around how

028sick you know uh are they are they getting and in particular with juvenile cases it seems to be somewhat manageable but you know nobody really wants to nobody you know nobody wants to that's the book that's the bottom line and i would also just add this and i thought this was really interesting from jill she said you know because i'm just really frustrated as a school nurse that we don't have anybody giving us direct guidance right everybody's navigating in the dark and so hartford goes back to masking and that makes everybody who doesn't go back to masking fe look like they're going rogue right because the cdc is being county as high risk um and it's the same thing at the hospital level so jill shared that mount of scudny is following cdc guidance dartmouth

029hitchcock right across the river is not so it's everything in the same boat thank you bill you're muted of course i am i have to mute myself when i want to talk i just want to piggyback on what katie said is the fact that the percentage difference from medium to high was pretty small and i know that as as i'm mostly coming in because katie did mention hartford um and i agree with david and probably the general consensus here unless um you know it severely impacts staffing and that really is the issue at hartford right now um they're they're impacted with staffing and so i'd rather go on as david said if we have a real need just to convene an emergency meeting and take care of it as soon as possible as opposed to

030jumping the gun and bill uh just as a follow-up to what you said it's important to note that the aoes for covert related closures they are getting waivers so that would mean uh and again i don't know that we'd be able to call an emergency board meeting for this but i think i have the authority just like with inclement weather if all of a sudden christine born calls me on a on a you know either late at night or the following morning and says we just can't run today then we would have to cancel and and we would have no school at heartland we would be able to get a waiver for heartland but i know and we've got a lot of parents online that's a terrible inconvenience but it's also part of this up

031and down trend of this latest transmission piece so we just have to be ready for that uh i just again want to thank the staff they do yeoman's work in covering classes doing jobs they never intended to do but they're doing a great job keeping our schools open but i will tell you when christine just said it that in heartland we we were getting pretty close so as we have a pretty significant audience here i'll clarify uh for uh for a school date account there has to be a majority of students in the building which means that you have to have more than 50 percent of your students in the building for it to be counted as a school day and dave is absolutely right he he has the authority to declare basically a snow

032day kind of because of covet and then he david would apply for a waiver and the aoe can grant it or or deny it i mean they they could go either way chances are though um uh secretary french is pretty clear that they are accepting uh uh covet days um harford had a school this year that was below just one one day that was below 50 and so it couldn't be a school day even though they didn't close school but still thank you david yeah thank you david and again just a reminder to everyone who is in this meeting that masks are optional so any parent who feels that it's important that their child wear a mask they are certainly welcome to do so as a a parent who doesn't want their child to wear

033a mask they are free to do that as well and all staff if you feel more comfortable wearing a mask then absolutely wear a mask it's all what we believe are our personal choice at this point in trying to stay healthy so thank you and it will take a lot of patience and you know we're just working through all of this together were there any other comments on david's report without further ado we move into items for action and the first item for action we welcome mary gannon to explain the equity work that we are moving into so mary if you are here i am here i can see myself way down on the corner but maybe some of you can't see me so um i look forward to when we might actually have an

034opportunity to be in person again but this is this is what we need to do for now so good evening thanks for giving me some time um this evening with when you have a very busy uh board agenda and you know i know there's a lot going on i'm also a parent of a senior at keene high school down here in the southwest corner of new hampshire and maybe it didn't make the news up there but we're having some struggles ourselves so i just want to say if um first off for folks who don't know me and haven't heard about uh this conversation that i've been having with um the board and with david in this preliminary stage um my name is mary gannon and i have been working in vermont new hampshire and mostly

035parts of northern new england for almost the last 30 years working with schools and municipalities select boards around issues of diversity and equity i've done a lot of law enforcement training i like to say that if any if there's anywhere that people want to talk about diversity and equity and think about how to create welcoming communities and organizations or in towns i'm happy to be part of that conversation and we're doing the same work right here in winchester i live in winchester so uh that's a little bit about me i think there's more of a bio in my proposal folks are interested to hear more about what my background is and i i always like to say at the beginning when i bring these presentations and conversations to school board meetings into communities is that

036you know first and foremost i am a parent and i care deeply about public education and i really see public education as an equalizer for all of our kids across the board because i really see how public education can be an opportunity to uplift all of our kids and give all of our students opportunities to um to grow to expand their thinking to build relationship skills all the things that we know that we really want students to take out into their trajectories into their futures so i i like to say that out front because i'm also aware right now that you all as folks who are deeply involved in education as school board members as administrators nurses staff i mean i've been talking to custodial workers cafeteria workers across the board this is an incredibly

037challenging time and i also like to say that i do see equity the ideas of equity and inclusion as central to some of the challenges that are happening around the health crisis and i can talk a little bit more about that but i i did want to say to this full community who's here tonight that when i think of the ideas that equity stands for which is um a safe welcoming learning community where students and families staff and teachers can bring their full selves that everyone gets to be part of that and that the work is trying to figure out how do we do that when we live in a society that in many ways has divided us uh by categories in lots of different ways so there is an incredibly challenging um you know

038moment but i also like to think of it as an opportunity because the landscape is changing so dramatically i feel like every day and i live in new hampshire and i had just heard now from this report about what's happening for you all windsor county around transmission so you know we think about um our relationship as a as a bi-state uh community um here as well and i'm sorry to hear that that's happening so as i said i think of these ideas that i'm i'm talking about tonight and exploring further with this board it's really central to everything that has to do with education from special education social emotional learning to the ways that we build curriculum uh to the ways that we um think about lunch programs and who gets access to food right

039like there's so many different ways that we can think about equity inclusion i'm across the landscape of schools so my my charge tonight um and i want to just for folks who are from the community and are kind of wondering like what is this dei work that's happening and who is this person i wanted to just give a little bit of that background um because i'm also very much aware that we are in an incredibly divisive time and there's a lot of concerns about what is happening in public education what are children being given in public education and so i i want to take this opportunity as i'm talking with you the board about what we are exploring together in the next um professional development sessions and what the scope of work is is to

040really also give you an opportunity to ask some questions whether we get to all those tonight or at another time to really understand how when we when i but when we collectively talk about issues of equity and diversity i really believe that we are talking about all of our kids and that this is a body of work and a body of practice i like to talk of it as a practice also that is good for everyone and that everyone benefits from that so david what you asked me to do tonight was to talk a little bit about the scope of work that i believe we are settling on and my hope is that as we look at i'm going to share my screen in a minute just to share some of these bulleted points with

041you is to give you all an opportunity to think about how do you want to engage as a member of the board in this particular conversation right because what's really true about diversity and equity work and whether we talk about racism or we talk about um disability issues we talk about poverty which we know are all issues that impact all of our communities that we are all individually at different points in our understanding of this work and also the awareness that we have around it because we all come to this with very different lived experiences like i grew up in boston i had a very urban experience some folks had a rural experience so our starting points in these conversations about diversity and equity are all very different and we want to honor that we

042all carry our own stories and our own lived experiences of how we understand what it means when we talk about issues of racism when we might be a family or an individual who's had no points of contact with people of color or um for someone like myself i don't have people in my family who have particular kinds of disabilities and so that's something that i'm always trying to better understand so the point being that we each of us come to this conversation in different points of understanding but we want all of us particularly board members to think about where is your engagement around this so i'm going to do my best because i'm not so great at google meets and see if i can present i can screen share my hoping that it's not too

043many i have too many windows open so i hope this isn't too confusing can you all see we can see your screen mary okay hold on sorry folks yeah that's a lot of windows i know there's can folks see this document that says school board scope of work and timeline yes okay great and people can see it clearly it's not i shut down a lot of other windows of other documents okay great so i'm gonna um take us through this i don't want to take up a lot of time and i don't want to be a talking head so i want to you know also give the board a chance to respond and then i also had some ideas about how we can move this forward into our next conversation what i believe we came

044to was kind of three different bodies of work in the scope what i think is very exciting and a great opportunity i always like to say this to school districts is that there's a lot that's already happening in the school district around diversity and inclusion oftentimes more than many of us are even aware of and sometimes it's because our kids are actually practicing some of this and teachers are doing some of this in their classrooms but i love the idea that this school board really wanted to take this work up themselves and start where they're at a place where the governance and the policies and the practices you know really for a district begin with a school board so i think that's very vital and i like to say that out front because that's a

045very strong leadership model so what i have here is three different pieces of work that will most likely not sit in these vacuums that we will see some overlap and we will see some building upon each of these ideas and that these conversations will not necessarily be separate but what i think is important to begin with is a facilitated conversation with you all just to deepen the collective understanding of what is institutional racism um what is diversity and equity and inclusion like what is the language that we're using what is this idea of critical race theory that we keep hearing about and is it really something that um that we need to be concerned about is it really happening in our school so there would be an opportunity in some facility facilitated uh discussions which

046i like to think of as professional development but sometimes people get the ideas of professional development so i see them as facilitated conversations that will give you some time as a board to build your language and conceptual framework of what it is that we're really talking about and i say that because at the top of this document you can see that i put anti-racism and equity initiatives and you know when we talk about equity we're talking about a lot of different experiences of different forms of discrimination harassment oppression and also given the moment that we're in there's been a lot of emphasis on anti-racism so we're going to be looking at those two different terms and thinking about um how they are intersecting and how they build off of each other and that's why i

047put both these ideas of anti-racism and equity at the top of that so we will spend some time with a range of different activities in these sessions looking at some of this language and how do you want to begin thinking about how that language is matching the implementation of some of the policies and practices that you have constructed through the anti-racism policy document so that would be the first point and i'm going to pause i can't see if folks have their hands raised i was going to say davis mcgraw board member uh had a question or or a comment uh uh yeah marion thanks for uh for starting off there um i just got a message from someone who's got a smaller screen is having some trouble seeing the document um and just ask that

048you might like maximize it and zoom in a little bit so it really fills the screen um yeah i appreciate it thanks thank you for that i don't know if this helps does that help it's looking the same so far yeah that's better yeah that's much better thank you okay you could even go one more notch maybe but that's good i'm actually learning some things here okay this is good we're all learning right thank you okay it's fun to learn it's fun to learn oh goodness gracious that's too much oh you had you had it probably on two when you go one go yeah right there that's that's good perfect okay great um i'm going to keep moving and again i i really want to not be talking at you all the time but just

049to be clear about where we see the scope moving the second um piece of work that i think again as i said earlier there will definitely be some overlap here we're not gonna be talking about these you know sort of in these um compartmentalized fashion is to have a conversation as a board about what is the um what does it mean to explore the possibility of creating a diversity equity coordinator position for the district some of you may know that this is a position that there's nationally they have really taken uh taken off in the last uh five to ten years um and in vermont we have many districts where the work of diversity and equity is really centered in this um position in this particular coordinated position and sometimes the language of how we

050describe that position is different as well some of you might be familiar out there if you're in organizations or in corporations they call them chief diversity officers so i like to think of this person as the chief diversity officer as a for a district but some of them play different roles depending on the district the size of the district the setup of the school district one that i'm most familiar with right now is in hartford um with the diversity and equity coordinator who is about to finish her first year she's done an incredible job and um working in the different schools and and um that's a pretty um powerful role for that district in terms of how they are being able to sustain the diversity and equity work so what we would do as part

051of this conversation is spend some time thinking about what does it mean for your district to actually have this position and what would a job description look like one of the things that i think is really important to do at the onset of this conversation is does this seem like the right time for a diversity and equity coordinator is the district culture prepared for welcoming and retaining um this new position and thinking about the sustainability of it and then also like where would this position be in the organizational chart in the school district um and then again if this is something that moves forward um the work that i've done a lot in a lot of places not just in school districts but in other contexts is looking at the networks where you can post

052this kind of position so that you might create a really diverse pool of candidates which is also really important so that would be i think as we are beginning to think about what does it mean for this district because you're taking the work that melissa crum has done with you you have you know you have the town committee you have this anti-anti-racism task force you have a lot of structures in place that are really positive and foundational what would it mean to create this position and have it functioning in windham south windsor southeast sorry windsor southeast so that would be another piece of our work and we would um you know spend some time with that and i think that is also part of this third pro third um scope of work which is really

053spending some time with the anti-racism task force to look at what are some of the actionable goals um that came out of some of the work that you did with melissa crown which i've been looking at this afternoon it's very powerful there's some really wonderful um really important pieces of work that was done there and how could that be put into a three-year action plan or put in to a strategic plan and begin to think about you know not just putting it on paper but what does it really look like to implement that and i see that also as an opportunity to really bring some administrators and staff and board members together on that particular collaboration and one of the reasons why i like to do that is i think it gives people a sense

054of agency that they're included in the process and when people feel included it's easier for them to take accountability and to take some um responsibility for what happens so we would also talk about what that could look like sorry i've been talking a lot today what that could look like and um who would we want to bring into those conversations so my last piece for you and then i'll stop and hear comments is i'm thinking about next tasks and i think around the professional development piece which was the first bulleted scope that i presented to you tonight is to really we need to think about board meeting times i would recommend two two hour sessions for that initial piece of work i think sometimes i don't know about you all but i don't think we

055any of us want to be here more than two hours in an evening but it also gives you some time to absorb and think about the work that we've done the conversations and come back and be able to engage again in a different way and part of what i always do with groups is a very simple needs assessment just a quick survey on google or on another platform where it gives you a chance to give me some input on your sort of individual needs but what you think collectively would be helpful and then i have some other assignments that i sort of like homework that i give to you in preparation so that would be just around the professional development development piece which i think is the piece that we want to start with so

056i'm going to stop now and hear see if there's questions or clarifications or if there's more information that that is needed at this point and i'm gonna stop screen sharing thank you mary are there any questions from board members davis uh yeah and thanks for uh for writing that down marion for for blowing the text up a little bit there too um i guess i would just be uh i'd be curious to hear a little bit more about um about the needs assessment piece um if you have any examples of the types of the types of questions the structure the you know the format of that discussion um i know that can be a really a really powerful tool to use and i just uh kind of like to know what what's going on before

057i dive into it thanks yeah i'm i'm happy to answer that um i would agree with you i always like to say that i think the work begins in a lot of ways in communities and organizations when you start with the needs assessment tool because that's when people feel invited into the process so when i do this work you know in communities i think it's a uh can be really helpful because again it gives people some sense of like what i care about and what's important to me really matters and i get to give some input around that so that's exactly how i feel um in terms of providing this tool for the board is to give you all a chance to give me some intel and some input because really i mean i've been

058having these conversations with superintendent baker and this one other conversation with you but i might be making a lot of assumptions about what it is that you need or where you are at individually um so one of the ways that i do that davis is like a good it's and it's nothing extensive um in in the time of covid i've been doing a lot of google survey where i sent something out and with five or six different questions on a protocol it's nothing lengthy um asking for people to give me input um about what assets do they bring to this conversation what are their challenges what would they see so it's pretty basic in terms of just trying to get folks to help me think about how we design the conversation another way that i

059can do it that i really prefer and i will be doing this with a different district on a longer assessment is actually sitting with people and having quantum conversations and sort of doing something that's more uh dialogic like interactive and um i have found that to be really helpful and again it really gives people a chance to talk about something that they may never have spoken about before but they want to begin engaging in the work so for i think they serve a couple of different purposes needs assessments i hope that answers your question yeah no it largely does thank you and i guess the only other thing uh that i would wonder and uh you know forgive me i'm putting the cart before the horse a little bit here but um i i appreciate

060that this framework has enough space in it that you know we're starting with this kind of higher level board level cohesion getting together going through this professional development and then working working downward in our process um is there that needs assessment um is that something that you typically see extended to other levels of stakeholders to you know our administration teachers community members um like how do we get that kind of holistic view uh of uh of where you know kind of perception is on other uh in you know other stakeholder cohorts love i love that question um and it it it so yes love that question and yes um for the purposes of where i think the scope of work that i have that i'm contracting with you right now um i'm interested in getting

061as much input from you all so that we can do this work together in a way that is going to serve you the best and i did hear david talk about this earlier and have heard through you know different networks about the rfp that's being sent around for that type of survey data collection for springfield and the district in that particular context and situation i would absolutely if i were engaged with that one of the first things that i would be doing is is bringing in the community and thinking about who those stakeholder groups are and making sure that they're part of the process if there's something around this needs assessment that you as a board say you know what mary would like you to to gather some information from a different stakeholder group i'm

062totally open to that great yeah i appreciate the clarification thanks yeah thank you rebecca thank you mary that was quite informative and and very helpful one of the questions i had is um we uh had a group that um started talking about these issues some time ago david had invited the community and several folks had signed up and we we met on on on several occasions and and developed um talk went through some of the um um conversation some of the issues you raised sort of like what do we all bring to this um to the to this plate what um and and where are we in this you know and so i don't know if if david has shared that with you but i i'm just and you you don't have to answer that

063now but i'm just wondering if um you may either want this group to participate at some point um only because it it it was a it was a very valuable group and productive and people were very engaged so that's my question thanks rebecca for that i always say if there's information i mean i'll take anything that will help all of us you know really do a good job so if there are if there's information if there's conversations that have been recorded or that there's some way to to get some i don't like to call it data but the material that you're talking about or the substance of it i would absolutely welcome that if there's again and this is for you all to decide as a board if there were if there was an opportunity

064or an interest in having me speak with a different stakeholder group as part of our work together or something that happened previously as i think you're mentioning rebecca i'm very open to that and the other thing i want to say folks is i certainly don't want to duplicate efforts either right for all kinds of reasons mostly because of resources so and you know we our time is precious so if there are bodies of uh if there's prior work that has been done that i'm not aware of that we could bring to this conversation i'm very happy to to give that attention so thank you for bringing that up rebecca david and then elizabeth yeah and i just want to follow up on what rebecca said because the group she's referring to and they did um

065they did work hard they met over the course of a couple of years called it the anti-racism and equity task force it had some community members staff members administrators and a couple of board members too that sat on that i know rebecca and elizabeth for sure but you did refer to that i think in your scope of work tonight that um you know that's the group that worked with melissa crum and there is a summary document that i can send you mira if i haven't already sent it to you that outlines you know some of the summary of that work and then some action steps that we brainstormed we have not timelined we didn't create a timeline for those action steps yet but but the action steps are there so rebecca that's a good point

066we we want to tie that into mary's work and and so the next time that group meets and i'm getting ready to send out an email to that group there are a couple of things i want that group to look at and read but also i want mary to have a chance to meet with that group and get caught up on the work that we did so thanks for bringing that up and i think i'm embarrassed to say i think i have that document right in front of me rebecca so i think i know what you're referencing david yeah i might have sent it to you we'll make sure tomorrow it's the right document yeah was it four different groups like four different groups exactly but actually we took it from that i i think

067the document you've got is the group document that's got the group names at the top but we then took that and made a so i don't think i sent you the summary document i will send you that uh you know also but it but it's it's basically the same document just a little cleaner thank you elizabeth can you hear me all right can you hear me all right can you hear me yeah you need your volume off um i just wanted to add that uh probably the reason for you joining us mary is that having that group that rebecca's talking about and what david's talking about has it was really rich and and uh useful and we were able to dig deep into uh into this work but it also put half of our board

068on a completely different level of understanding than uh the other half of our board and that's part of the problem so we want to be able to make sure that we're all have a common language that's it thank you and this is amy i just wanted to make a comment an observation that i've had for a long time but it's become even more apparent in probably the last two to three weeks is that there's a a significant amount of intersection between our equity work and different groups that we're looking at for equity there's anti-racism but within anti-racism there's also how we care and welcome all groups of people such as our lgbtq plus population and there is significant intersection in both of those so um i just it's become more apparent in the past couple

069of weeks as um more is in the news and social media and um comments made in our community so thank you and amy just quickly thank you for that because again i think it is important that what we focus on is do members of communities who you know in my work i talk about it historically but also currently are experiencing you know discrimination we could certainly talk about that in terms of categories you know the legal protected categories of you know women different folks from different religious backgrounds etc creed color etc um and so if we can really keep at the center of this that we want to create educational spaces and learning communities where all of our kids can bring themselves and where they can be learning from each other because whether some of

070us like it or not the fact is that the demographic is changing dramatically and we are already seeing that in northern new england and we will continue to see that and so i always think you know when i'm feeling uncomfortable about a particular topic or an issue what i try to do is to put my kid at the center and think about what is it that she needs so that she can be you know a useful participatory member of society when she leaves public education and um so that's really what we're working on and there's no doubt we all have different perspectives about this we have different ideologies we have different opinions but i think at the end of the day just really keeping our children and the ideals of public education at the center

071i think will move the equity work where we need it to go thank you mary um we have caitlin gould with their hand raised yes hi sorry i'm on misty's i'm um at the rec center um so i just have a couple questions so i've heard you guys mention um different groups and you guys just kind of refer keep referring to groups and you're not specifying so if you could specify what groups it is you're talking about um and then um i guess my major question is is with this equity work how how are you going to collect the data to determine if if these these groups that you keep referring to um you know how is it inhibiting their their ability to access their education within the school um and you know is that

072is that the issue that they're they're not able to access their education or is it that you're there's just you guys feel discrimination amy would you like me to take that one um i would mary thank you i could speak to the groups part of it i mean go ahead david that's great yeah and then because i it might have been a mis some misspeaking that that that went on but there aren't groups out there that have been working on this there's a group it was established about two and a half years ago uh pre-covert had endured you know the two years of covet but it was the anti-racism and equity task force that was made up of some teachers administrators board members community members that's the only group that's been working intensely and focused

073on this and of course the other group is the board and i think what elizabeth was saying and i agree some of the board members were on that task force some were not and we want to get everybody kind of on the same page so there's not there are no groups out there there's just that one group that's done that work uh uh with melissa crum and one other consultant sorry mary good if you wanted to speak to the you know to the other piece of it in terms of you know what what's the ultimate purpose yeah sure and um i'm sorry was it caitlyn i'm not sure who the person was that posted the question but i wanted to make sure that you that that first part was answered for you around the groups

074yeah so um that i guess would be part of the question and then my second part would be what yeah what groups are you trying to identify with in this school you know to provide the equity work for yeah that's a great question thank you i appreciate um i appreciate you bringing that forward because it's true sometimes we talk in these ambiguities um when i also speak for myself in my work and um caitlin when i when i'm talking about so groups that we are um concerned or having um a experience where there's disparity in their uh ability to learn you know i think about that um with for kids with a range of different disabilities as an example so that would be one particular group of students or a community of students who are

075often um you know who often have a difficult time succeeding and being a member of a learning community because of the range of different disabilities that they might bring and some of those disabilities we know that they can get supports through ieps but that's not always the case and then we have other issues around mental health um as i'm sure we're all very familiar with you know um with this you know coveted pandemic so so that would be one particular group i also think of right now you know one that um is really on my mind because of some of the things that are happening nationally is students who identify as lesbian gay bisexual transgendered um with a transgender identity or somewhere on the um on somewhere on the gender spectrum who as we know

076nationally there's some significant laws that are being implemented that i feel in terms of their experience in an educational system are really limiting their ability to feel like they can bring themselves to the school community so that would be another example um of what i'm talking about um of a group and so i think your question around is interesting you know because there's lots of different ways that people or students or even staff and faculty have an experience sometimes of not being either represented in a curriculum or feeling that they're invisible sometimes in classrooms for a range of different reasons these are not issues that i want to say are are for the most part intentional on the part of educators or school leaders or community members right it's just that when we are often

077again when i talked earlier about what does it mean to come from the different lived experiences that we all bring to this conversation um that some of us may have more ease or understanding of what it means to have a few children of color for example in a classroom in a very rural white community and we want to make sure that the curriculum some of the literature that gets read if it's a younger k you know five level um the visual representations um in a in a school building reflects the children who are there so that would be an example of what it might mean for us you know to be talking about how schools um can make sure that the children who come there and the staff and faculty who come there feel that

078they're represented and it's hard work you know it's not something that happens overnight i think we have to give attention to um a lot of different um aspects of that i'll give you one quick example that i want to stop talking i have i remember i have several friends who are part of the disability rights community and i remember telling this one friend of mine who has been in a wheelchair since she was five years old that i was delighted as a mom who was pushing a jogging stroller that the disability rights communities had made sure that the sidewalk edges and curbs were leveled off right so that i was easily able to move my child around in a stroller and that was an example of how i think all of these accommodations or ways

079that we think about accessibility and inclusion really support all of us like we all benefit from it so i hope that's helpful in in terms of your question thank you mary um there's also um an item that i found a letter from the um associations vermont school board association vermont superintendents association and vermont principals association um back in january of um there was a conference where members from all of these associations came together and worked for about three days on a working definition of educational equity and so it's not this isn't work that has just begun in the last two to three months this is work that has been happening even prior to 2018 the state has been working on equity prior to 2018 and we are following um because it is keeping in mind

080what is important for students and for our faculty and staff to feel welcomed and to feel represented and how they're learning and also because we want our students to go out into the world maybe not forever you know come back to windsor and and work in our communities but the way a person can have a better understanding of the world is to have a an experience in their school that has equity that is looking at all um oh i lost my train of thought um but just takes into and gives experiences to all students taking into consideration a lot of different thoughts a lot of different ideologies and considerations so thank you and katie your hand is raised hi thanks so much um i don't want to discount anything that you've said um amy i

081do think it's really important um if a school board is following robert's rules that the moderator um mediates and moderates the meeting and i don't want that to be personal um i just uh [Music] i don't know maybe um i think your opinions are important but i think it's it's tricky because you have the position as moderator on the board and um i just want to express caution moving forward i guess thank you katie and i was bringing to the attention that this work has been in process in the state of vermont and beyond since before 2018 it's not something that has just been happening and the reason that it's been happening in the state of vermont is to bring educational quality educational experiences for all of our students and um bill your hand was

082raised um i was going to respond to katie and i've decided not to okay thank you and we have ryan g followed by rebecca royceman i think everybody else needs to turn their sound off in the in that auditorium thank you mr baker good evening wsesu board and guest speaker um i had a quick question for our guests um it's a yes or no question from what i'm gathering this board is going to you for guidance for a curriculum for our district yeah you know no i'll answer that mary no that's not true that wasn't part of anything she talked about tonight okay well thank you for clarification i was hoping [Music] we could get some more blunt and uh direct uh direction for what exactly what kind of curriculum we're talking about having in

083the district and what kind of discussions are going to be held with the students david are you taking that one or yeah yeah i can i can take that too i'm i'm not sure what if it really but i can take that one no this um again ryan you're way ahead of the game here there's no there's no efforts to to to work on curriculum now what what you might be confusing it with is the fact that we are going to conduct an equity audit which will look at our current curriculum and our current instructional practices and see if there are any inherent biases in those or any concerns about those from an equity perspective but there's no proposed curriculum there's no work done curriculum until we finish that equity audit thank you dr baker

084um so i mean i believe this audit's been going on for over a year now uh you must have some data to share about how you know what kind of data you're even using to to make these decisions ryan you might have missed the beginning of the meeting but we haven't even started the audit yet the audit won't start until probably summertime uh what we're doing right now is looking for for people uh like mary and other consultants and other companies that do that kind of work so it hasn't even begun yet thank you ryan next um rebecca um i i just uh wanted to comment this is an um that might be somebody volume okay now we got it okay i just wanted to comment i know that at some point in 2021 springfield

085um had a meeting with their community and their board and one of the comments made by a student an ex-student of springfield that um that uh that stuck in my mind was her comment she graduated i guess from springfield high school her comment was um and lives right now in in in the boston area um that she was hoping that she that the students today that are being taught in in in this in her school system will be prepared to go out and work in a diverse environment and in a diverse community um so it it sounds like the experience um she did not have but would have really valued in terms of preparing her for the [Music] job market thank you mary thank you rebecca amanda smith thank you amy and thank you to

086all the board members and thank you mary i wanted to just say i'm super proud that you are all doing this work it makes a difference i'm looking forward to hearing about the difference this makes for the children and the staff in our community as someone who went to and graduated from windsor high school as a member of the lgbtq plus community i can say that my experience at windsor was not always a pleasant one it was sometimes very difficult and some of the people that i care deeply about experience discrimination and racism and i know we can do better and it inspires me that you're doing the work to move forward so rather than being nervous or upset about this work i just wanted to balance it that there are a lot of people

087that are cheering and applauding and there are happy tears because so much of this work is so long overdue so thank you continue to be brave continue to have these conversations because we can we are a wonderful community and everyone deserves to feel that sense of belonging our children deserve to feel safe our children deserve to feel encouraged and welcome and i just want to say thank you thank you amanda i have megan reed with their hand up hi thank you i just want to speak on behalf of what you're doing and just say thank you so much for bringing this work and thank you mary for being here today and talking to us about it i really appreciate that by doing this work you are going to be creating a safe place for all

088of our children as they grow i hope that they are encouraged to have these tools that i know that i did not necessarily was taught growing up that will help them be able to deal with adversity and and kind make improvements in our community and really be able to include everyone i'm hoping that this empowers our children to have the education that i know i wish i had and we can make changes in our community so thank you so much for doing this work and i am just very thankful that this is all happening thank you megan colleen spence [Music] thank you amy um i am so glad to hear from public tonight um and comments from everybody and i'm so glad that you're here mary um i was just wondering if maybe as we

089have people bringing in questions and comments if they could introduce themselves and tell us how they're connected in our community and our school since this is a big group i just think it would be nice to hear that's it colleen do you mean before someone speaks oh as people yeah just before you say something maybe introduce yourself and just tell us true i'm sorry i should have asked people to do that i mentioned names as i was no and people are generally i just wanted to put it out there very formally okay thank you colleen i think next um we have daniel works hi uh dan wertz live in windsor father or two i a lot seems to be hinging on the outcomes of the equity audit and for that to be used as a

090piece of strong robust data um i want to caution you though that there's there's a logic issue and a kind of data unknown thing baked in there because even if an equity audit were to find some difference in some measurable student outcomes uh by whatever categories are it's broken into that itself does not mean that the school system has any cause to those differences occurring uh thomas soule wrote a wonderful whole book on this called called discrimination and disparities um i'd like to throw that in there for thought consideration even if there are findings that look actionable in such an audit thank you can i can i can i quickly comment to that amy certainly thank you i won't i know this is getting along but um daniel i think it was thank you that's

091i i'm very aware of that um piece of literature so i appreciate you bringing that into the conversation and you know it is interesting um about data collection because you know i will be honest oftentimes when i've been involved in like large you know audits or surveys um what were you it's sort of like the youth risk behavior survey that goes out every couple of years folks are familiar with yrbs you know and we get that information about what's really happening to our kids and every year that i look at that you know i what i see doesn't necessarily i mean it concerns me but i'm not surprised by it because what we know is that we are trying to hold educational communities in a system where disparities already exist right like we live in

092a society where those disparities exist institutions health care law enforcement across the board you know we have those disparities in our social system so i i think i appreciate your word of caution on that um and i think what's important for school districts to do those is to get a real picture of what the experience might be for voices and groups in those communities who don't necessarily always have a voice and yet oftentimes what we will get from it is um the kinds of disparities that most of us who are in education know exist already and so what i think is powerful about those tools is being able to craft specific responses to the things that these surveys will often find so you know again we are we are not windsor is in the state

093of vermont right and your school district is in is in a community so we are all connected and deeply embedded in all these different systems and impacted by them so thank you for that comment thank you mary bill yates you're muted bill bill's going to get his sound on here real soon yeah well i keep hitting the mute button and i you know basically i keep turning it on when i want to talk um [Music] a few community members have talked about being a a student of of windsor in which which i was and as an individual who basically checks off all the boxes of privilege okay white male educated come from a good home all those uh looking back and my experience especially of of of going to school in windsor and that in

094the early 80s the simple fact that the environment was completely non-welcoming of anybody who did not fit those check marks especially those of the lgbq community and i am extremely proud of the work that this district is doing to to change that to recognize the fact that what existed back in the past was an environment that was completely unwelcoming in in in damaging so many of my classmates went through hell and didn't recognize you know be able to took them years years to heal and i think that's the important things that we're trying to fix not damaging our next generation like my generation did thank you bill ann griffin hello hi um ann griffin i live in windsor i have two elementary school children at state street school uh i'm really excited about this i

095think uh you know i love everything that mary has presented and i think it's great uh i think my two children are so um how do i want to say it so aware of diversity already like so much more than i ever was at you know eight and eleven and i think they're extremely accepting of it and i think that this community does a really good job of that um already so i love it um as a parent of younger children i'm not i'm still newer to how all this works so i just want to make sure i'm understanding that what we're talking about right now is um evaluating the curriculum at school to be sure that we don't have any gaps uh where children might be falling through the cracks and getting the same

096education as everyone else um if i'm understanding it that's what we're the first step is and then if there are any gaps then we would be looking at changing curriculum in order to or maybe not curriculum but changing something within the structure of the school to make sure those kids don't fall through the cracks is that what we're talking about [Music] yeah i think and that was a good uh a good summary uh basically some of that baseline data though that you just described it won't be mary well mary could put in a proposal for that equity audit i mean she hasn't we haven't you know she she's certainly got her we sent to the rfp but it will be whatever group gets hired to do that audit will do that work but you summarize

097exactly you know and it won't be just curriculum would be some of our hiring practices our policies our procedures just to look at those with an equity lens but just to get some baseline data you know again given the questions that daniel pointed out and we would be then having those further discussions like parents and the public get to be involved when we talk about if there's curriculum that we're changing right and like without being really specific and i'm not gonna like i don't wanna like go off on some tangent because we're not talking about it now but just i know that there are a lot of parents that are when they're hearing like this the equity talk and all this or you know our brains are going to some places some of us that

098are like well what are we going to be teaching you know um so just that's what i where i'm coming from as far as like what are we teaching them i mean we need to make sure that everyone there is able to get the same education and that they're not falling through cracks because of any you know item that may cause that um but we're not talking about specific like curriculum right now and what we're teaching them right that that that's correct and to your point here when we finish you know when we get some of that baseline data and and mary alluded to this but uh i know this board's committed to community forums you know parent forums where we discuss that data and talk about where we go from here that that's an

099important voice at that table okay thank you and i just second just a second because i think this is important to drill on this point just a little bit and so thank you for bringing it because that we know you know sort of the elephant in the room here is that there's a national conversation that people are very concerned about around this idea of critical race theory and what our kids are getting right so we're not i'm putting that over here in the parking lot what i what i want to say about it is when we're looking at our curriculum what we want to make sure is that first of all it's meeting the vermont standards right there's some new standards in place in vermont around particular kind of cultural and ethnic representations that we

100are giving a full picture of of how languages are taught how history is taught so it's also really looking at does the curriculum that some of us were getting i was a kid of the 70s or the 60s um does it match what our kids need now and that can mean a whole bunch of things and that's for kids across the board right the other thing i'll say is a quick example of why this is so important i was just saying this to a school district up in maine last week there's a very similar demographic to windsor is it's also take a look at for example what children get put into advanced placement classes right and we know nationally that what we're seeing is it's a certain population of children who are being considered for

101advanced placement in high school classes when i know here in winchester the kids who are living in the trailer park or who live in some of the lower socioeconomic areas of my community are already getting tracked for something that's not advanced placement just because of their zip code so when we talk about equity and for all kids i want to say that those are things that we're talking about does everyone get a chance at some of those opportunities and not just particular groups of kids and that's really an issue around poverty and socioeconomic issues as well thank you mary katie burke um i just had a quick question for the board because i think this all of this equity work is is awesome and it sounds like it's needed it's been needed for generations i'm

102just wondering if the board has ever considered a student representative or student voice to be present on the board they don't have to stay for the whole meeting but just to like in some ways it feels like we're adults making decisions or having these conversations without the kids and so could there be student representation on the board around these equity issues moving forward at the mountus gutney school district because we have we're at k-12 there are a couple i believe a couple of high school students who have shown interest in participating on the board there's been a lot of different issues happening that the board has had to deal with so um as far as students sitting in on a meeting they haven't had that opportunity yet but there is interest and that's something that

103we have wanted at the mount of scotty school district for a few years now windsor when it was just the windsor school district we did have student representation who came to all of our board meetings and gave some sort of either input or comments or just letting the board know what was happening from the perspective of a high school student so thank you we're all ready yeah we're there too i just need to get like the student report right like what's going on in there what are they seeing in the hallways and what is important to them and how can we as adults step in and help them and advocate for them um so that's awesome to hear and i hope that we see students soon yeah exactly and it's it's a matter of a

104student um being interested available and not otherwise torn in other directions so it it is going to we're still working but we're in that direction so thank you rebecca um that that's an excellent point katie um i think the other piece that's really important is that when you have student representation they they are at the table and other students are watching that are you know um and so it is an important one that needs to happen probably sooner than later and um so thank you for that and maria and i just wanted to comment on your example of ap classes as a guidance counselor in claremont at the technical center and also at the high school level and also worked with middle school students it was so clear um that you were able to see

105at the ninth grade level who was going into ap classes and who was not and um and it would and and that is really sad because i think sometimes we we just use um and and you know daniel spoke earlier about data but we just use um numbers results of math english to push students in a certain direction and if you're not in that ballpark if you're not in that group you that's not where you're going you're not going to be encouraged to even consider going down that road and um and it does leave a lot of our students behind with us without us even realizing and um and it it's pretty sad so that that ap example was was a really good one thank you rebecca davis yeah and uh i realized i may

106have buried the lead a little bit with my initial question but when i was talking about about stakeholder cohorts one of the groups i was very specifically thinking about was with students and making sure we get student voice in uh as you know as part of any kind of needs assessment that we do because uh i mean that's why all of us are here um but thank you for for bringing that up more specifically um and i think just in general one one thing that really i find really heartening about embarking on this work and starting to build a plan and starting to look at what that process looks like is that we it gives us some sort of novel opportunities to really think outside of the box and how how we're engaging our students

107um on these issues right because it is tough students have busy lives just like just like anybody in the community does it can be hard to get to these meetings so maybe what are what are other venues where we can meet students and get that student voice um i mean i think that's a conversation we can always always be having but uh it's it's certainly of uh paramount importance in in any of uh any of this equity work so thanks for bringing that up thank you and just in terms i'm looking at the time it is 8 16 and we still have quite a bit of an agenda to get through tonight um does anyone have any more comments or questions for mary um and mary do you have anything more that you wanted to

108share no i don't have anything more specific i think um you know again i will send the document that i just shared um to david um to to share with the board in terms of you know the actual like concrete next steps tasks that we need to figure most of it's really around timeline yeah now that that's great and then amy uh you and i can work with mary around setting up those those meetings that because i think that's to have a concentrated block of time to do the work you can see how this and these are incredible discussions but uh it's tough in the middle of a of a business meeting so i like your idea of blocking out two-hour you know and certainly there'll be public meetings you know where we can start

109get started on this work great thank you i look forward to to getting all of that scheduled looking at calendars so thank you very much mary okay we are moving on to our next topic it's the mtss recovery update summer academy and i understand that brittany is not well today brittany if you are listening i hope you are in that you're recovering that you feel better soon but katie ahern is here yeah and katie between you and angie you can decide again you know it's getting late but what what what's the you know whatever you think is the most important we should get that done tonight angie i think angie you're talking but you're muted yeah right yeah you might be muted angie i think you might be having some uh microphone issues yeah it

110doesn't look like muted but it looks so we do have a presentation and the beginning part was some data that brittany had wanted to share out that we've recently kept and that is all accessible on the data dashboard and then we had been asked to do an update on our mtss process which has a little blurb on summer academy there's not much there but um angie was going to present the bikini part um still can't you don't think that microphone is a little we're working on technology here so i can unfortunately i don't i can't speak very well to the data i know the the rest of it but the data was definitely um brittany and angie's piece and i wouldn't want to miss that okay can you hear me now yes so i have

111two computers happening here so um i'm going to share my screen so that i can share the um share of britney's presentation on the recovery plan update oops wrong one hang on okay where is the meat too many tabs sorry while we're waiting for those in the audience who are wondering what is mtss it is multi-tiered systems of support and that is how we are meeting all of the needs for our students um so uh i sent my um oh britney would would have been here tonight but she is definitely feeling under the weather and so on her behalf i'm going to try to do my best um to present the data on the recovery plan we will send the slideshow to the board so that you can look more carefully at it but as

112you may recall in our recovery plan which you can find on the wsasu.net website under on curriculum um if you follow the links to all things recovery our recovery plans there in goal one we had an attendance goal um to increase attendance by 15 as is measured by our attendance records and unexcused absent risk factors include students with eight or more unexcused absences while this percent is higher than last year as shown on the right side of the first graph it seems to be remaining steady which means we aren't getting a lot of additional students meeting the threshold of unexcused absences at-risk attendance includes students with lower than 90 percent um attendance that means they are less than in attendance these numbers have gone down for several of our buildings so that is on the

113right side of the slide academic achievement by eight by june eighty percent of our teachers will report that at least 80 percent of their students have reached grade level benchmarks in numeracy literacy and writing as measured by local service survey data i would like to tell you a little bit about that goal the recovery plan goal was based on where we were a year almost a year ago we were writing that plan in may of 2021 and because of brittany's hard work as our data guru if you will we are now able to provide more concrete um data sets that we can actually compare from one um one data period to the next so when we do our um reflection phase three of the recovery plan which um is required that we look at the

114recovery plan at the in the spring in um may and we write a report about how we met our goals this particular goal we can now use um academic data rather than teacher perception this uh teacher perception was based on a survey that we gave because we you may recall last year we were not um we did not do have as much testing that we are doing now um this is a new graphic and i wanted to include this for the presentation as a result of the pandemic the discrepancy between students academic achievement is extremely broad it is important to consider the progress we are making and the rate at which we are doing so because not all students are going to be on grade level there will be a wide spectrum of learners i

115wanted to share our progress and the i this is in brittany's words um i wanted to share our progress rates from our track my progress scores track my progress identifies an average progress rate nationally at 1.0 this means that if you have a progress rate of 2.0 you are progressing at two times the rate of the national average as you can see and that is in this bottom part of this slide we have always progressed slightly higher than the average in the area of math but we are currently progressing at four times the national average we can speculate that this is because we were able uh this is because last year we were able to remain in school sorry i lost my place in school five days per week which was not the trend nationally

116this year we were able to remain in school five day days per week and full days which have made a massive difference this is the same slide looking at literacy and the same trend can be seen we are currently progressing at two times that of the national average on our track my progress assessment more students took the exact path assessment this winter than in the fall as you may recall there were um absences and and things that we were dealing with um in the fall as well as in the winter so we don't still didn't have a complete picture of this we had to extend the window for both exact path and track my progress due to covet absences which allowed us to ensure we got updated scores for more of our students kindergarten students

117also took exact path this winter and they did not and they didn't do that in the fall exact paths show slightly more students scoring in red and yellow than in the fall however it's hard to know if that was due to challenges with this particular computerized assessment for our kindergarten students this slide um shows the track my progress scores over time from fall of we um we typically you do conduct track my progress three times a year some years we didn't um so you can see that in this slide track my progress scores and math show that we have been we have more in green and blue which is proficient and above than in the fall and are meeting benchmarks similar to those in the past this makes sense considering our progress rates exact path

118reading scores align with math scores and are found to sympanel which is a reading assessment scores improve slightly so fanta simple now is a reading assessment that our teachers do in person have students read a text and they discuss the text together language arts exact path scores follow the same trend track my progress in ela shows a slight improvement though we still have more work to do to get back to where we were and again our goals were to be um were based on teacher perception and now that we have um a way of showing you actual testing data in a um easier fashion um that will be how we report it in the future we've had a few additional substantiated harassment cases this year so this is our social emotional learning mental health and

119well-being goal that we will maintain the fy21 rate of behavioral incidents as reported through behavioral data and anecdotal reports and that this slide shows that we've had a few additional substantiated harassment cases this year in terms of suspension data we have 47 suspension events in the fall and we have only had three added suspension events since then which indicates an overall improvement in the number of major behavioral incidents su-wide i don't think this should surprise the board we our principles were reporting increased challenges with student behavior at the beginning of the school year this slide show shows our panorama social emotional student competency and well-being measure so we gave the assessment in december and we will be conducting that assessment again uh in april in december our students took the panorama assessment which is conducted

120as a survey given to students in grades three through twelve panorama then breaks the scores down into these four categories which are supportive relationships positive feelings challenging feelings and emotional regulation the two colors indicate the two grade spans because we had a third through fifth grade version of the assessment and then a sixth through twelfth version of the it's not an assessment of the survey in the spring we will be adding the k2 teacher perception survey which requires teachers to report out on certain things um regarding their students we're happy to report that our overall our students feel that they have supportive relationships within our buildings we feel that this is the foundation that will help you support skill development um which will help support skill development in other areas emotional regulation was the area

121on the right most side that students reported having the most challenge with right now i will do my best to answer any questions that was a lot and of course you can um you can uh email me questions too okay thank you there is someone unknown if you could state your name and they have put their hand back down thank you angie i my question are you going to go ahead and go ahead amy i'm not hearing anything so i don't know if anybody's out there auntie can you hear now maybe not okay um so the question that i had while i was listening okay we shut that up go ahead thank you the question i had on that last screen angie answered with the um emotional regulation if that meant that um [Music] of

1223rd through 5th grade does that mean that they reported having more challenges and 42 of the 6 through 12 or does that mean they reported not being challenged can you hear me hear me hear me yes um just a second uh the that means that 35 answered favorably meaning that they had um that they reported positively on their ability to um regulate their emotions like not get angry if another child was angry not not be upset if there were other people in their space that was upset that sort of thing so that's that's all of these responses are based on favorable answers so that's why when we when you look at supportive relationships 87 percent of third through fifth graders reported positive relationships and 82 percent of sixth or 12th graders reported supportive relationships and

123it's not just limited to school because some of the questions ask them about any adults in their life as well as their friends great thank you um it looked like megan reed but then her hand went back down i will send my um question to angela another email thank you thanks are there any other questions for angie davis uh yeah and forgive me if this was on a previous slide but um sorry okay it looks like uh it looks like this is from from one one snapshot of the survey is there any is there any sort of visualization or uh or information about the general trend in this uh in this data maybe over the last last couple years or from from the last time was taken at this time oops you want to try

124again angie i think we might hear that it's baseline now we've got to try it again so this is the first time that we've given the assessment we'll have more data um by the end of april got it yeah thanks for clarity thanks are there any other questions okay thank you um next we're going to move to the rpsr3 plan and is that angie as well amy just a second i think that i think that katie was going to just talk for a couple of minutes about the mtss yes about the mtss system ah okay great and angie when you present can you keep presenting as i slide into mine i'm really struggling here with getting my sound right it sounds good now so katie i'm going to um can you can you hear me

125just give me a thumbs up can we hear you okay thank you so i just um want to point out that in our multi-tiered system of supports that we have various levels of um of support that start from the universal level or universal for all um that is the classroom that is available for all students it's the classroom teacher and any staff working in that classroom that includes best teaching practices our basic curriculum and instruction that meets the needs of all learners in the classroom um universal screening tools help us identify students who uh if they're making progress as expected we use an universal screening tool in the classroom that's tracked by progress and then we make as well as uh curriculum-based assessments like um little quick quizzes you might do uh quick assessments of

126students just teachers looking at student work etc and then making adjustments to the instruction in the classroom when students start to um struggle or show or perhaps they've missed a lesson they're showing that they don't quite understand something level two is when we give students another opportunity to learn and practice the concepts and skills this is happens in within the classroom again with any staff who are working within the classroom and it includes extra practice reteaching um also called double dosing where a student would get a lesson perhaps not in the same way that it was initially taught so that perhaps we can um hone in on their particular learning style we want to again seek additional information to make sure that we're understanding where students are at we can bring this information we can

127bring students up teachers can they meet in teams and they discuss kids and kid talk they consult with specialists with their special educators speech um occupational therapists physical therapists etc if they have a particular concern the next step level after that is targeted intervention and that's designed to close the gap from where students are currently to where we want them to be that can happen within or outside of a classroom it can be conducted by a variety of people interventionists the special educator parents um classroom teachers parents are brought in at this step where we're i mean in terms of really understanding the plan that a student would be on in terms of getting this intervention when we start thinking about is a student responding to instruction at this at level three then we start

128looking at what can we do more to support this student and we may develop a student success plan and that brings in the next level which is looking for more that's there's something that this student is not responding to instruction and that we need to start bringing in the special educator and this is where katie is going to start talking about how at this point we have uh our classroom teachers have worked with the student and the and the parents to try to figure out what's working best for this child and there is perhaps all these clues that the child is not responding to regular instruction and may need specialized instruction so katie at this point i'm going to mute and let you take over this thank you angie so um as you said a

129lot has been done up until this point and you've heard the use of the word data over and over again and that will inform the next steps um between level 4a and level 4b which there's a lovely chart that we have going that we have been refining over time we would look to refer a child to what we're now calling a child fine team children are not lost um they are children that we need to find out more information about and this team sits um with our school psychologist as the chair and other specialists as well as the parent classroom teacher and they have a discussion about what do we already know and what do we want to find out to inform us on next steps sometimes that leads to an evaluation for special education

130sometimes it leads for a 504 plan which more is more about um accommodations and modifications other times it leads us places we didn't think it was going to go um but that is a conversation that we've put in within our mtss system the assessments we use at this level uh are based on what students have already received the data we have and we're looking for gaps in that data we're actually getting more refined on being very specific and it's been wonderful as we develop an mtss system to be able to use more and more of the authentic assessment that children are using and teachers have been using and we see the results that way versus some of the standardized tests that we use which are really only a snapshot in time versus the longitudinal data

131so that's a shift we will be making um the who's doing this we have a referral form because without it we have a wonderful paper trail um and we're continuing to refine not only the form but our process and this also dovetails exactly into what special education losses we have to do and we've managed to find a way so it makes sense for our mtss system good for the next one angie an individual education plan which many of you have heard as an iep in order for a student to be eligible for an individual education plan they need specialized instruction that is not necessarily available to all students and what we are going to find um and this is part of the byproduct of 173 and the new rule changes in the state of vermont

132which would take another 24 hours to explain so the short version is um we will be looking more at what our mtssd system is doing for students and the wide range of use of interventionist and strong classroom instruction in order which is very different than 10 or 15 years ago so the need for specialized instruction will become a very important conversation to have and that includes special instruction from the special educator a speech language pathologist or other specialists um but it's not becoming uh how do i put this as specialized as it once was because we have a lot of special specialists before we even get to this point um which is pretty cool um the data collection we it's are still part of the rule changes for the state of vermont this year um

133within goals and objectives kept by special educators plus other professionals there's a lot of uh accountability in this particular system when you reach this level and i think the last slide is oh nope the last slide ongoing assessments um which just is what we will use special education assessments as well as whatever assessments the general education classroom is using so we don't exclude students we include and then they get some extras next one angie so we do have a very small population of students that need something very different we talked about this i believe at the last board meeting at some point when we talked about students and our programming for the future for windsor southeast looking at alternative programming within our community as well as some students at certain points in their career do

134need something different that we don't have in our range of services including therapeutic placements or other collaborative programming almost without exception all of those decisions are made in tandem with community partners such as our mental health hcrs sometimes dcf easter seals and several other mount scotny we frequently work with physicians so those interagency teams are critical in those situations and focus is always on students getting what they need at that time but also on reintegration into the community so it's an interesting dynamic to plan for a student to go someplace and at the same time plan for them to come back um and i think that was the actual last slide am i right angie um rebecca thank you katie thank you angie um katie i just wanted to ask about the special education piece

135um you just commented that it's definitely transitioning into a different kind of uh um process um and it's been one way for so so many years that's probably how most parents understand it um and i'm just wondering if one you are in the process of is that transitioning occurring and um if it is has have parents been notified of it and and two do you plan on trying to you know notify not only parents and but the community that there there are these big changes going on that as you said so many of us are familiar with the way it was done 10-15 years ago but it's very diff it's changing that is a fantastic question because we spent friday and all day in service with all of the special education staff it was wonderful

136and part of that was to roll out all of these changes it's been quite a year trying to figure out from the aoe what's actually coming some of the things might be delayed how the impact of 173 by the way we're in the middle of a pandemic um trying to get all of these i understand all these pieces so to answer your question i'm developing um with some of the special educators in way that we can explain this not only to the admin team we just talked about it actually today of being able to give the overview then to all of the staff as well as parents we just recently um as part of our focus on involving more parents we're looking at developing a distribution list so we can invite parents to things like

137this it's a pretty targeted list of families that are involved so that we can explain a lot of these rule changes in a way that we all understand them as well as the impact of mtss and how it all fits together so it will be over next year a lot is coming very quickly as of july 1 that changes some significant pieces in special education and if they are not paused there's two rule changes in particular that might be delayed till 2023 to my knowledge as of today it hasn't gone through the senate education committee if i remember correctly and someone else might know that more readily than i do um but it was at the end of last week it hadn't so to we will be working with folks we're still learning what those

138changes will look like and how this all fits together um so we'll be it'll be excited about it more excited about it after friday less scared um in all honesty um and we'll have to bring folks along um on this journey it's pretty pretty neat so thank you for asking that i'm glad i have a good answer for it too after we've made some plans um and um another question i had because i i know that in your focus on on budget and and hiring specific individuals and for specific um has some of your hiring pers um sort of compliments or sort of supports part of where is it that you're transitioning to our advertisement and plan yes our actual hiring is impacted right now by shortages for example we are fairly certain our mental

139health hires that we hope say yes um as we look at we've had some options there where within the teaching realm we have not had as many people so the plan is there and we hope the hires come so i that's um that is our reality right now um and that's statewide from hearing from other special education directors that is our biggest challenge with mtss for all um from the from classroom teachers from interventionists to specialists that is our struggle right now it's not the plan it's truly the staffing so angie and katie was there going to be something more on summer academy so not really we had just sent the letters out to the initial wave and we put it in we decided it didn't really at this point warrant any separate slide as

140part of our recovery plan and our mtss system it's very similar to last year's format except it's four weeks instead of five because of where fourth of july fell this year and um we think it was a little over 210 brittany was the one who had that number etched in her brain of students that were eligible in either literacy or math according to tnp scores so letters have gone out we've had very favorable response as well as a favorable response from staff interested in working good chunk returning from nick from last year plus some new folks so it will also still be centralized at windsor like it was last year as well but i think i'll put a plug in that we are continuing to support students in any of the programs that happen afterwards

141including windsor wreck heartland rec getting them there as well as the program weathersfield is planning on running an enrichment steam program in the afternoons so that wherever students decide to go afterwards we can get them there great thank you and it's nice that to hear that there are staff additional staff who's interested i think there was um a lot of positive feedback from last year that it there wasn't drudgery that some people might think there would be that there was more you know learning is fun and so thank you you're welcome thank you we look forward to hearing more me too are we now ready for arp sr3 i hope so and i hope you can hear me now because i figured out what was wrong with my headset um i i i sent the

142board the arp esser plan which ha is posted on the website and i thought for the benefit of our uh community um i will walk you through the steps to find the plan i'm not going to read through the plan with you um i think you can do that on your own if anybody has any questions you can reach out to me directly but i also will show you where the comment form is a requirement for our best or three funding is that we create an arp and yet another plan um that shows how we are spending the money and breaking down the money in certain areas because 20 of the recovery funding has to go toward academic um improvements uh for students so academic supports for students so i will just show you that

143and share my screen and we will start at wsesu.net for the next few weeks this banner at the top of the page is going to be directing you toward the arbester 3 plan found on the curriculum side of our website so if you click there that will bring you to this page which tells you all about our our pastor plan and if you scroll direct down if you also at the top you can see our recovery plan our our bester plan is designed to support the goals of our recovery plan our recovery plan is designed to support the goals of our strategic plan there um and if you happen to be noticing uh school-wide plans windsor and heartland both have school-wide plans and we presented on the windsor school-wide plan last week and and this

144week we will be presenting on the heartland school-wide plan and again those are all informed by the uh strategic plan so if you scroll down on this page you'll see that our our pastor plan is open for public commentary through april 15th and you can either email me or you can click the link to the comment form which also lives if you scroll down you can see a copy of the plan as well as the projected budget for the next two years our bester funds are for fy23 and fy24 and they must be expended by september 30th 2024 so we have a little bit of extra time after two school years so um then i included the recording of this of the um our besser of the our passer slideshow and then the recording here

145that we did in february and if you keep scrolling be patient the comment form is right there so i just wanted to point that out to our um our community members as we have received one comment which was about the um how the 20 for student um i'm sorry i'm forgetting the exact words if you click here click on the plan it should open right up into a bigger window for you i'm going to share that window and there's some demographic information uh some other links to other plans on there and then other funding sources as best as we could capture that data um and then this is the part that i the 20 reserved to address the academic impact of lost instructional time the um students that were particularly impacted by kovid we designed

146our recovery plan to address the needs of those students and that includes peer mentoring at the 912 our recovery coordinator much of this meeting and the data that has informed our process is because of our recovery coordinator she's working very hard with our teams in the buildings to develop an mtss system our teachers that we have hired our transitional k teacher and paraprofessional as well as two teachers in each of our in each of heartland weathersfield and windsor school to decrease class size those are our major investments for with the our pastor funds to reduce the impact of the pandemic and lost instructional time for our our particularly vulnerable students and then summer academy is here again i invite you to i'm going to stop sharing this i invite you to send your comments and

147take a look at the plan that's all i have amy that was a wealth of information thank you angie yes a lot and that's great because it thank you for walking us through on the website so that the community who is participating this evening can see where this the information they can find it directly um thank you rebecca um i wanted to thank you angie i did have an opportunity to um read through it and and i i found it um accessible meaning that um i i think that um um you laid it out in a way that people can see um spend expenditures and what they were for so i i think when the community does um look it up they they will be able to understand it so i wanted to thank you

148thank you you there were a few changes since the february 9th presentation that we did and the budget that was presented then has changed slightly we added in staff mental health supports some funding for that over the next for this year and the next two years um as well as a few other things um to improve our technology response ability to respond and that sort of thing so thank you rebecca are there any other questions for angie hearing none we will move on to the next item on the agenda again thank you angie um and that is the calendar and early release days i david is that you or is that angie as well or i think that's me right angie we we but we both are prepared to talk about it's really quick well

149it could be quick we could spend a lot of time on it but as you know this year partly because of recovery efforts partly because of all the work that you see that we're engaged in that that time for staff planning staff professional development continues to be a real need this year we had one noon release day a month uh the change that we're we're proposing to the supervisor reunion board uh uh because a new release is disruptive to you know a family you have to organize it figure it out you know but you you know enough ahead uh but essentially the recommendation of the administrative team is that we go with one noon release day a quarter so we'll reduce that by quite a few of those noon release days but it is important

150it is important work and the other thing we'll do next year you don't have to get into these weeds but we felt that to always do them on fridays it always impacted the same classes especially at the high school level but even sometimes the middle school level so we'll probably look at that calendar and we'll spread those those four noon release days those quarterly noon release days out over different days of the week one maybe on a friday one on a tuesday um so whether you want to take a formal vote or not uh that's up to you if you just want to give us some sense of consensus because we we have not put those days in the calendar yet and uh and and will want to do that we've published the calendar but

151not with the sooner parents can know when those release days are and this is early still the bet the better off they can plan are there any board comments um rebecca i only had one but i think it was answered last time when we talked about um these uh the calendar um shared up with hartford technical center um to make sure that our students were able to get there at the same time i think bill you took care of that yeah yeah that was a concern yeah a year ago too but no we we've we've matched those up now with the calendar so thank you the vacations most of the vacations that that's what's critical the start of the year is always off by a couple of days but we work that out because we

152provide transportation for those tech center kids but all vacations match all holidays match so it should it should work out thank you um so do you david do you have an idea how if you would have those early release dates by our next meeting yeah we can we can have a as long as i've got some and and i'm taking the silence at some level of consensus that dropping from monthly to quarterly is okay and what what i'll do is i'll just put together i'll work with the team we'll put together that final calendar and we can bring it back to you at the next meeting okay that would be great um are there any board members who are concerned about going from [Music] going to that for day early release schedule and it does

153not sound that way so um thank you david we will look forward to getting that information at our next meeting yeah i'll send and i can even send it out to all of you ahead of time obviously sure great thank you that was quick and we are moving on to our policies um the first policy is c14 policy on section 504 and ada grievance protocol for students and staff and that is our first reading and usually with a first reading [Music] it's just discussing [Music] if there are questions or concerns on that policy and then it goes to the next meeting for a second reading are there any questions concerns on that policy phil is is there any way we can get it cleaned up you know uh with the actual get the actual information

154in it yeah that that would happen at the next reading bill okay thank you david yeah exactly thank you um any other questions regarding okay so we will move that to our april meeting for our second reading next is a review of pupil privacy rights and let's see were there any questions or concerns [Music] so that that was the revision was adopted in 2019 davis so i just want to make sure that i'm understanding um what what this document is saying correctly um it looks like for each of these eight uh eight items there there should be a corresponding policy to those areas correct um [Music] you mean a corresponding procedure yeah sorry yeah that that's correct that would show up either in our handbooks or yeah and the revisions were pretty pretty slight on

155this from 2019 but but you're right and and you'll find those things spread out those parental rights pieces spread out through other documents and procedures in the district thanks um just out of curiosity and for our public who is um participating would it be possible at our next meeting not so much to have a conversation on the administrative procedures but to have something pinpointing so someone who wanted to see those procedures doesn't have to go digging digging digging in the website well you know it's it's it's interesting that you mentioned that amy because right now if you went digging digging digging for procedures on the website you wouldn't find them most of those procedures like i said are spelled out in in handbooks but the vermont school boards association i don't know if you're aware

156of this or not but uh that they we've aligned our policies pretty much with their model policies we've made some changes obviously based on our discussions but they just published model procedures that align with those with so so we're reviewing those now and i think probably if not the next meeting the meeting afterwards we can not and again boards don't have to adopt procedures but it would be good for you to have the fyi around those procedures so that's a very timely question and we'll make sure that that happens that would be helpful because i'm sure that any community member who is looking at this policy is wondering the same thing that davis asks exactly where are the procedures and and who who gets a handbook that kind of thing exactly yeah um davis you

157had another question or comment yeah and uh amy you sort of steered me in that direction i think you might have read my mind a little bit but would it be possible to even go a step further and and draft some sort of companion document that could provide those cross references um because i do know you know that's it's nice to be able to tie what all of these eight items are to to where they live if folks are interested in seeing them yeah i think it would be possible davis and i think that that's pretty much what that prestigious document does and then and and then we could we could you know put put those also on the website so you'd be able to cross you know you go to this policy it would

158link you right to those procedures and yeah i think there's a way to do that yeah that'd be fantastic thank you it's just going to take us a little bit of time to pull all that together sure great thank you were there any other questions on people privacy if not we can revisit that at our april april meeting as well just to see where we are on the procedure thing and moving on to a21 public participation at board meetings and we have been working on this one for a few months now and i know i have it here in my stack of stuff um so our first reading for this policy and there was a significant amount of discussion if i remember correctly was in january so ha are there any other questions or comments

159on public participation at board meetings hearing none i will take a motion to adopt the policy anne marie yeah sorry i was just tucking the kids in and i i did have a comment on the public policy um it was um where is it uh if a participant exceeds the allotted time they submit their fuller remaining comments to the board in writing i just thought that that sentence needs to be reworded just a little bit like maybe if it said if a participant's comments exceed the allotted time they may submit their full or remaining comments where where is that uh thunder number three there's three and then underneath number three it's number two um i agree with you that the way you stated rephrasing makes a lot more sense it reads much more easily so

160ann do you want to repeat one more time how you think it sounds better to you sure um if a participant's exceed the allotted time they may submit and then the rest is the same okay got it i agree that's a good change um did anyone else have um davis so looking at um and under that same three section 3.5 um the board will not comment on public participation and then what comes after that um i guess i just wanted to be clear i know that to me this section and a couple other points here seem to indicate that we would be sort of sequestering the public comment time from board discussion and i just want to clarify if that's the intention of that particular note because it doesn't seem to reflect how we've done

161things um so i just want to want to maybe poke at that a little bit this is referring to the um the part in the agenda public participation at the beginning of the meeting okay specifically correct okay correct um so if for instance when we were talking about um the equity with mary gannon we took public comment and we responded you know as far as clarification etc but if new points of information or questions come up we won't be responding to that you know we would say thank you we have to look into that it will be on the next agenda or something to that effect okay yeah i appreciate that clarification i just wanted to to be sure because i think that it's it's really beneficial on those agenda items to be able to

162engage in some discourse with that with the public it comes and just want to make sure that that wasn't necessarily saying that or that we weren't adopting a policy that we were then flagrantly like not following so uh but that's nice no and even for instance with the when we had the public discussion on masking um we were listening not necessarily engaging because we do we we did and we do want to hear how our community is feeling about a particular topic but we won't always be engaging in a back and forth conversation got it appreciate it um there probably will be times on particular topics that we will hold a community forum and then we will be having an engaged conversation on particular topics so where there will be back and forth conversation but

163that's the difference this is a business meeting that is a community um community forum nancy i move that we accept this policy second mark were you raising your hand to second i was okay well david's bring me to it thank you um so i am going to do a roll call if i can find my do we edit this nikki do we edit that to include emery's comment memory sentence yeah correct yeah that that is what you meant nancy yes correct okay good okay thank you nikki who seconded amy mark no davis all right we're gonna give it to davis got it okay going down our list of board members um how do you or is there any further discussion i'm sorry i will now take a roll call um anne-marie beth colleen spence i

164davis mcgraw hi elizabeth burrows hi she's standing right next to mount oscatan in the echo yeah um coming back i like amy jamie turner hi mark youngling i nancy pedrick i nicole buck i rebecca royceman aye and have i got everyone with the exception of myself i vote i so it is unanimous thank you very much and we have adopted our public participation policy thank you very much and thank you elizabeth and a few others for all of the work that you did to put this policy together and to help us work through so that we can best hear the thoughts and concerns of our community as well at and at the same time have a business meeting that unfortunately this one might last until but not all meetings will be lasting until 10. so

165thank you um moving on hold on sorry yeah you had mentioned uh amy i i put it on my copy of my agenda but so you you were just going to explain the the uh conflict complaint and and oh yes yes thank you it's just looking for my agenda that i have here um so yes um item [Music] f in um the windsor southeast supervisory union received a complaint of a conflict of interest by community member daniel wartz and in um and it was regarding [Music] mount us gutney school board member elizabeth burrows and according to our conflict of interest policy the procedures for this when we receive a written complaint is that it will go to the board who will then vote uh as to whether or not they will he have an informal

166hearing and because elizabeth is on the mound of scottny school district board um actually let me go back i'm sorry everyone who sits on the windsor southeast supervisory union board does so as a function of their elected position on their local school district board so when there is a conflict of interest it will then go back it will be heard at the local school district board because that is the community that elected and placed that person on the board and who that person is representing on the board so at our next madison school district meeting we will vote to entertain whether or not we will have an informal hearing that will happen of course elizabeth will not be part of that vote i as the vice chair of the mound of scrutiny school district will

167conduct that voting and if we determine to have an informal hearing that will happen at the following meeting however because our communities our districts all work together as a supervisory union and we i believe we have a very good working relationship across our district and we will keep all of you informed on how on on the outcome on the progress of the complaint that mr wurtz has brought against elizabeth burroughs are there any questions on that hearing none we move on yay to items for action um the first item for action at our last meeting elizabeth burrows was nominated and voted as the vice chair and she has declined so i will take a motion i'll take nominations and nancy pedreck you have raised your hand yes i nominate uh bill gates and um rebecca

168hi second and mr yates i believe you are here unlike elizabeth you have the opportunity to accept or decline the nomination i accept it okay are there any other nominations for vice chair um let me see i will do our roll call once again um [Music] beginning with anne marie hi and oh my gosh colleen spence i davis hi elizabeth hi jamie turner hi and oh my gosh mark i nancy i nicole aye rebecca hi and i am and i so congratulations bill you are the vice chair of the windsor southeast supervisory union board and thank you elizabeth for your brief time as the vice chair that's what happens when you do not attend a meeting you get voted into office but that's that's not fair because elizabeth was not feeling well so thank you

169elizabeth for for serving all all that you do thanks um next on the items for action is the esp contract ratification is that the support staff right all the boards you know the support stuff all the boards we couldn't i i there's a part of me that thinks we did do this but we couldn't find it anywhere in the minute so we want to get it documented uh you know just so we've got it there i mean it was we went all because i remember going over the changes all the individual boards have gone over the changes which is why i don't think we need to do that tonight but if somebody wanted to make a motion to ratify the support staff we would get that into the record i'll move that we ratify the

170support staff contract all second okay so that was nikki and mark youngling with a second are there any other comments or questions um i will go through our roll call again anne-marie hi dan phil hi colleen hi davis hi elizabeth hey hi jamie hi mark i nancy i nikki hi rebecca i and i amy m and i it is unanimous thank you everyone and david the 403 b for at will employees yes i will and we don't have to necessarily vote on this tonight but it was uh but we did we did negotiate for both the support staff uh and bill certainly was a big part of that uh uh uh and for the teachers a 403 b uh contribution uh we never really talked about at will employees which would be anything from a

171building principal to uh you know business manager you know and currently right you know they there's nothing in their contracts that that allows for that 403 my recommendation would be that we do allow that and we allow it at the same rates as we designated for teachers but i'm certainly open for feedback and we can actually if you want to wait push it to the next meeting if we need it to but bill you have a comment i'm in favor of it um and you know we deal with equity in many different levels um and it was really important to me going into the um support staff that uh negotiation that they had the same opportunity for this as a teaching staff and i i think an at will employee should have that same level

172of opportunity mark i'm gonna completely agree with bill on this uh it seems like we've been talking about this for two years uh it's an equity issue i think everybody should be on the same page uh if we're working as an su thank you are there any other comments would someone like to make a motion i was gonna say if you make a motion and i would be specific bill just because you had so much uh you know input into this i mean if you wanted to make the most you could but i would just make sure the language is in there that it parallels the teacher uh the teacher 403 b contribution language that's all yes so i i'll i'll make a motion that at will employees um have access access to the same

173403 b contribution as teaching staff would that include the same caps yes yes thank you nancy did you second yes david do you have it i do got it okay our fine and dandy roll call one more time anne-marie hi beth i bill aye colleen i davis i elizabeth we'll come back to her if we need to jamie and mark hi nancy i nikki hi rebecca hi and let's see if elizabeth is available [Music] hi wonderful thank you and i amy m and i so it is unanimous our at will employees will have the same access to 403 b as our teaching staff so thank you very much and we are at our favorite part where we set up our next agenda actually amy i wish we were but we've got one more thing we've

174got to do because you had mentioned the beginning about what somebody did about appointing that third budget committee member right oh yes yes well that can be that can be quick and that's quick um what community heartland portland did not get mentioned right and i'm going to beg colleen to do it again but that's up to colleen yes i'll do that thank you colleen excellent thank you colleen unless anybody else wants to i i don't think anyone is going to push you out of the way it's good i like doing it great thank you we are now setting the next agenda um so i think we will probably have oh do you know what we never did because um i think elizabeth you had some comments or something on the approval of the minutes we

175did not that is still that's an open motion elizabeth i'm terribly sorry for all of this this uh cavalier but i was wondering there okay it's a little bit complicated now but i was trying to signal that i i would appreciate it if the two sets of minutes could be separated because i was only there for one of the um one of the meetings and i can't vote on that set of minutes so i would have to not vote on both which is fine um but i am comfortable voting on the first set of minutes but there's already been a motion in a second so that that was my original comment okay um i do not recall who made that was that nancy i think it was nancy correct yeah it was i just removed

176that motion and i moved that we accept what's the date the 314 is that the first one no the first one was february 23rd i x i move that we accept the february 23rd minutes is that our second second was that davis correct yes so nancy and davis and um so it's not i i still have to go through the roll call okay were there any clarifications or corrections i think we were good hearing none anne-marie hi beth i'm gonna abstain i wasn't there okay thank you bill hi colleen hi davis hi elizabeth hi jamie i'm going to stain i wasn't there okay thank you and mark hi nancy hi i think you called my name hickey hi what did you call my name i did somebody sees me or something i think it's david

177recovering from covet you can hear that huh thanks yes rebecca hi and i amy m and i so those minutes were passed unanimously next i will take a motion to um approve the minutes from march 14th so moved second okay that was mark and [Music] nicole are there any comments or questions um clarifications needed uh so elizabeth has her hand up i think i think that was a legacy hand thank you and so i will begin the roll call anne-marie bye beth i colleen i davis hi elizabeth abstain i abstain okay thank you jamie i abstain mark hi nancy hi nikki hi and rebecca i and i amy m and i so thank you very much with two abstentions our minutes from previous meetings have been approved now we get to set the next agenda

178for real um i think we still have equity work bill um i just have a quick topic uh kind of related to what we voted on earlier about admin contracts i just want to have a quick quick discussion about doing some research on admin salaries at in our district compared to other districts okay so admin salaries and um the vermont school board association has a recommended policy um on transgender and gender non-conforming students that like i said it's a recommended policy so i um suggest that we have it for a first reading at our next meeting and david i'll get that to you yeah just send it to laurie and i and then what what's the title of it it is transgender and gender non-conforming students got it okay thank you um did i say

179equity work no but we should probably at least get the date square uh and maybe we can do that another way but yeah so we'll just put down yeah i think that's good the equity update basically is good got it okay and are there other the calendar thank you and any esser and summer academy updates yeah by that time we should have a pretty good read on summer academy so that would be good and and i think that will be a full meeting oh yeah and david you wanted me to have a report for that oh yeah sorry that's right and that's part of what what did we title that report larry that's uh financing an operations report yeah finance and operations talk we'll put all those together esser and uh finance and operations okay

180got it excellent and that meeting is scheduled for april april april 25th monday april 25th at 6 30 and it will be a hybrid meeting meaning that there will be some of us in person at that meeting elizabeth your hand is raised thank you amy um i wondered whether the calendar will be set at the next meeting or whether we could have a discussion about a couple of facets of setting the calendar are you talking about the calendar for next school year yep yeah actually you already voted to approve the calendar and it's already been sent out parents so yeah this will just be those release days okay okay do you think there's a time there could be a time when we could talk about the calendar before it's uh set without our input yeah

181yeah sure i mean usually usually i send it out ahead of time and we do we we try to have a discussion about it but i you know if if you've got ideas or there are thoughts and we want to just have a general calendar discussion you know for subsequent years that would be that would be fine i i think it might i'd like to talk about holidays um and so not a huge long discussion topic really i mean realistically but i into that elizabeth can i just jump in amy real quick certainly okay just uh quickly it's probably good to keep the optics open on this because um the hartford school district is full bode going into a full discussion about that elizabeth and as we're it really is important to many of the

182board members and many of the students how closely we uh follow hartford i think that's a great idea elizabeth the kind of but also to keep the ear to the um the road about what they're doing as well yep thank you for that i appreciate that and as we have already um approved the calendar for next year it's not a pressing matter but i i just don't want it to fall off the radar oh and i think that i agree with bill i think that would be a good a good we could do it at that since we've got calendar on the agenda we could kind of get these ideas flowing and thoughts about holidays and other things uh just i i also wondered amy whether we could put on our agenda for next time

183just a very brief update on um [Music] uh discussion discussions with surrounding supervised reunions and where the state education committees in the but the house and the senate seem to be headed on uh seo consolidation certainly as long as it's brief and we don't it'll be like a two minute long update it won't be a long update yeah it's just it has to be an update and not a oh this is what we should do otherwise no i think it would be a total agreement one meeting all on its own yep or 25 minutes on their okay wonderful yeah no it'll it'll be like a two minute long update one way that'll be great okay great thank you thank you and [Music] nicole i was just thinking with um it moving into the april meeting

184that um i feel like i haven't seen all of you guys in a really long time and that we need a retreat and i was also thinking that mary's work and a retreat kind of seemed to fit well together um and so i was wondering if we might talk about a retreat date or throw some things out there just get it going and craig too because we like craig so put that on the agenda is what you're saying nikki right to have a retreat discussion yeah i don't want a long one but i feel like we should try and find some dates okay yes i think you're right so thank you and let me see i um i see beth you have your hand raised yep simple question just with going to hybrid meetings is

185the expectation that board members are in person um you can be in person or at your home because it is hybrid amy am i correct that the only uh requirement is that at least one board member is present correct right yeah and um just i recommend so that the one board member isn't all on their own um that at least two people yeah it's just been my experience with hybrid is that um it works a lot better if everyone's in one place or the other in that when it comes to board discussions and things like that so just trying to make sure we're not all spread out everywhere um so when we have when when we were hybrid before we went to because there there was a brief period of time that we were hybrid

186and we used the owl at the um supervisory union office and i don't know about you but i was there in person for a couple of meetings and i was at home and i felt that it all worked rather well um both there um i agree it did work well and i think it's fine if we're home or there doesn't matter yeah i think it's how we're comfortable so amy i think really i would love love love love love for all of us to be in the same room together um but again it's what each one feels comfortable with well i think what we've learned about hybrid meetings is it does allow certain members of the public you know who don't have good access to transportation if they want to come into a meeting and

187we've gotten pretty pretty good at it as you can see tonight we had some glitches but i think to have that hybrid option if most of the board members could be there in person i think that's great what i'm really concerned about is location because we were meeting at the su office which was convenient for the board we didn't get much public we've been getting a lot of public but if we got a lot of public the su office would not work really well so uh i know there was a time when we moved the su meetings around you know uh and so i don't know whether we want to start in our central district at windsor and use room 210 like we used to i don't know larry whether that would mean moving the

188owl or whether we have an owl at windsor but uh i would recommend a larger room just in case i don't think we'll get 60 80 people at a i but i think they'll probably be you know there could be eight to ten that you know that want to show up in person and that would require a different room than than that office is is two tenant windsor okay with everybody okay and larry you and i can talk about the technology there we'll figure that out great thank you so we have a very full agenda for our april meeting and at this point in time we can plan on it being hybrid and the physical location at windsor the high school side room 210 got it um are we in any need for executive session

189no we are not not not for me thank you thank you thank you um i will take a motion to adjourn motion to adjourn second okay so rebecca and was that beth okay excellent i want to thank everyone for the robust conversation that we had i think we it was um particularly the the equity conversation and i want to thank the public who participated and who provided comment as well and i hope everyone has a wonderful evening and a wonderful rest of the month of march have a great day everybody thanks thank you thank you thank you thank you guys bye thank you bye good night you