SU Board Meeting - February 23rd, 2022

001so i will call the meeting to order good evening everyone i am amy mcmullen the chair of the windsor southeast supervisory union board it is 6 34 and we are holding our regularly scheduled meeting for the windsor southeast supervised reunion and let's see changes additions to the agenda david i think you yeah i have i have a couple um i wanted to add the equity audit because we have to make a decision on that and katie's going to talk very briefly about special education procedures that the state is requiring that we adopt so we should probably put that down as an item for action as well okay and we were going to have just an update on masking correct yeah and we could i was going to do that under my report but we could

002put that under discussion as well it's up to you would you because mary gannon is cannot be here tonight she had a family emergency so we could we could put that discussion yeah could we have masking at the first item for discussion okay that's good we can do that as the first item yup okay great okay there any other changes additions hearing none i will take a motion to approve the minutes from our january meeting on january 24th um mark i'm just gonna say so moved but uh somebody else was was that colleen i think it was rebecca are you seconding okay well second then thank you okay are there any changes or um clarifications necessary on the minutes hearing none all those in favor of approving the minutes oh i i have to do

003a roll call sorry about that okay um let me just go down here um first on my list is anne-marie i bill yeats i colleen spence i davis mcgraw hi mark youngling aye nikki buck abstain scott richardson hi and uh rebecca rebecca bye thank you and i amy mcmullen vote i as well so one abstention and the rest i thank you everyone okay next on the agenda is public participation on items not related to the agenda this is when we would hear from the public not hearing anything is this about the mask or is what is it on this would be on an item not related to the agenda and masking is on the agenda okay all right thank you you're welcome are there any announcements from board members rebecca uh yes i would like

004to announce uh that the vermont school board is sponsoring a webinar you probably have received the information on equity on march 3rd between 4 and 5 p.m and um it's it's available to all board members and it would probably be valuable um just to help us understand more as we continue in our work with the around equity wonderful thank you rebecca that's an excellent reminder and all board members are encouraged to look at the vermont school board association website it's at vtvsba and there there's a wealth of information as well as um the the links to register for their workshops many of which are free because we are members of vermont school board association i have an announcement this is our last meeting of our currently configured vermont windsor southeast supervisory union board because next

005week is town meeting and some people are up for re-election others would be but they are not running so i want to thank everyone who has put in their time effort and spent long nights at board meetings for the last year few years and i want to wish everyone well and those who are running for reelection thank you thank you thank you and we hope for good good news after this next tuesday and i believe scott richardson is one person who isn't running for reelection scott yeah that's right amy i'm gonna turn on my thank you and i had a housekeeping thing that related to that so i'm the su treasurer and i was just looking at the site to figure out that i confirmed that actually i was so um the board will just

006need someone to do that for them for a month until you reorganize yeah yeah we'll we'll get that figured out i think i think there's a backup signature so oh that's right it was nancy pedrick i think yeah yeah i think so sorry about that nancy we also there might also be uh a writing campaign for you scott no there isn't raised bill monday night i was uh approached i was going to use accosted but i was approached by chris ganja and the price chopper really upset with me because i wasn't running but i just want if this announcement i am running i just didn't get my paperwork in time so i not on the balance so just want to make sure everyone knows that he seemed very upset that i was not running yes

007so bill yates is running a write-in campaign so keep that name in mind when you go to the polls on tuesday um we have someone unknown with their hand raised is it too late to run or to be on the ballot it is too late to be on the ballot yes okay i think that's it for announcements superintendents report it's all yours david okay i'm going to share my screen and um i'll try to do this this quickly and in in the in my report there are a couple of other people who are going to report out uh so i may share screen and then stop sharing screen if somebody else has to do that so just hang in there for a second um and we will get going here yeah so amy you can

008see that correct yes i can i can even read it without putting my face right up to my screen yeah that's great i can't see anybody so you know um we'll get through the uh we'll get through the presentation as quickly as we can and then one of the things i know and i i i know there's a lot of people on tonight will be i'll talk a little bit about our masking position right now and what our covert task force would like to do as we go forward but then when it gets under discussion certainly you know the public can the public can weigh in but let's let's try to get through this um uh so families uh you know continue to cooperate according to all protocols so we've been very fortunate to uh

009have a you know a very supportive community we've managed to keep our buildings open not all the schools around us have been able to do that but we have been able to do that and again hats off to the entire communities the staff the parents the kids especially on nurses who have worked you know and and again i think you know part of what i'm sure people are interested in tonight is we do see a little bit of light at the uh at the end of the tunnel and where where we are we are hopeful we were also hopeful at the end of last year and we got sorely disappointed uh with within that hope but we're gonna stay hopeful and optimistic as we uh go forward i want to just give a shout out

010to withersfield school and the scotty fire department uh because they ran uh two clinics and they're actually going to run a third clinic in in march i don't have i don't have the exact date anne marie i don't know if you if you have that march date or not but i'll no i don't know it yeah dr baker brian you've got it yeah it's march 12th good thank you yeah mark march 20th 10 30 to 1 o'clock 10 30 to 1 o'clock march 12th would be the third one because what happened at the last one is not only did folks get their second shot but there were also some new people who came on board to get to get a shot so they wanted to do another one on march 12th to provide again for

011a second for a second uh vaccination so thanks to both of those organizations for teaming up and and doing that and brian you had a pretty good turnout last time right again yes we did we had great turnouts both times that we've had the vaccination clinic at the school yeah that that's good so thanks for that brian and uh and uh send out thank you along to the chief for chief spalding as well um we still kind of we run day to day it's it's getting better now as uh as the positivity rates uh go down but staffing has always been an issue but as i said earlier we haven't had to close a building and that's because the staff has pitched in to do jobs that sometimes you know they uh they you know

012they haven't done in the past but you know if they have to cover a class or you know cover a lunch or or you know they they do it and they step in and i and you know again that's why i want to give a shout out uh there uh this is what i was talking about earlier we do need to make some decisions about continuation of the mask mandate after february 28th uh that's when the state mandate um sunsets uh i don't know whether there'll be a press conference or not we do not have any solid official uh guidance from the agency of education or the vermont department of health those are the two big agencies that that we pay close attention to and we try to follow the guidance as closely as we

013can i'm expecting to get some guidance uh this week and and we'll talk more about this under uh i items for discussion um but i think it's important to know that uh you know that uh the the general sentiment of the covert task force and we we met again today uh is to just just just go slowly with this but be deliberate be careful uh you know and and and to take our time maybe start to to to unmask in certain areas uh i know that the covert task force which is made up you know of the nurses and the administrative team also uh you know is feeling hopeful and optimistic about about um about the you know the weather patterns as the weather gets better too so you know we can get outside more

014i remember in the spring of last year and in the fall of this year we did a lot of things outside phys ed can go outside uh actually all classes can can go outside if they want to we can also have pe outside it just gives us a lot a lot more a lot more opportunity i think the thing that we're going to want to keep our eye on and the kova test force agreed with this is not so much vaccination rates anymore i think we found with this with this omicron variant and and the variant that's coming in behind omicron that um while the vaccination can certainly uh help with uh the intensity of of illness that it doesn't necessarily help with spread i think what's happening with these strains and these variants and

015this is very typical this is what happened with flu it's what happened with common cold that as these as these mutate and these different variants come along that what happens is the strain our immunity systems build a little bit stronger and also uh the strains become a little bit less virulent and and and damaging uh to the body but sometimes they are more contagious so we just we just need to be careful and the last thing i'll say and i'll say it too when we get to the discussion part of this uh that we have to remember that schools are what what are called in in in the business world and industry world non-transient uh non-transient uh businesses or institutions which means our client it's not like a bank or a restaurant or or a

016store where you go in and you come out the bottom line is once you're in the building uh you're in the building for at least seven and a half hours for staff six and six plus hours for four kids and it's compulsory everybody has to be there those who work those kids have to be there by law and so again i got the sense from the task force today uh that there's certainly an openness to and and a willingness uh to to uh to to get us to a point you know reasonably soon where we can uh we can uh unmask but it's not like we feel strongly that on february 28th all mass should come off and we should go back to uh to know that was not the feeling and we can certainly

017again take questions and discussion uh when we get to that part of the agenda other general updates all budget warnings are posted and we had our first school annual school informational meeting last night in heartland uh christine and uh and nicole did a great job there were a few questions but not many uh tomorrow night is the mount scottny school information uh meeting and uh and then on saturday morning and that one is virtual tomorrow night and on saturday morning at 10 a.m the weathers fields uh school budget information meeting that is both in person and virtual uh and uh you know we we always look forward to questions uh and uh and participation uh the the budget booklets you know uh are printed and are out and about in town but also all of

018the warnings and all of the town reports are on the school website and i think they're on the town websites but i'm not absolutely positive we finished up the second round of exact path and tracked my progress um and it took a little longer than we thought but anyhow like it is done that's our assessment tool to kind of monitor how students are moving along and this is especially important in this year of supposed recovery it didn't turn out to be a recovery year it probably turned out to be more of a year we're going to have to recover from again and i think one of the things we're going to do in march is give a give a deeper dive into the data report on on on those two those two uh instruments and

019also talk about looking more toward student progress then actually who's below who's above standard but uh angie and brittany will will take a deeper dive in march um mary gannon has you know signed her contract with us she was going to be here tonight to discuss with the su board uh her uh her recommendations for a work plan uh she had a family emergency so she couldn't be here tonight mary gannon is going to be working with the supervisor reunion board on issues around equity she's going to help us put a job description together uh for uh what a diversity equity and inclusion leader in our district and she's also going to do some staff development and professional development with our supervisor reunion board when mary uh emailed me about not being here tonight i

020thought that maybe that was uh that was probably better because as was mentioned uh we'll have our reorganizational meetings and we'll have a new supervisory union meeting by the union board by the time we get back on march 28th so it'll probably be good that that board gets involved in mary gannon's uh work um and special education procedures um i know katie you're going to talk about this do you want to do that now do you have slides i i do i have a i was going to do a little bit of a few updates and then talk about the procedure so it's some more in some details let me stop i'll see is that on the agenda yes it is it's it's it's uh down down at the bottom you'll see under items for

021action i mean bill you might not have been here but we added it we added that bill the beginning part is just what david had asked me to do as part of the principal report to update a little bit in special ed or superintendence reports the second time i've done that today um the superintendent's report the other is i will just preview um what david's talking about for the procedures so i'll try sharing my screen um window not that's all um sorry you have to actually click on that window katie when you when you open it got it share that all right there you go you got it so um dr baker had asked me just to do a little bit of an update on what's new in special ed since i haven't said anything

022a whole lot lately because we've been pretty straight out so one of the things that was in my town report that i had put in this year and last year was the rhetoric that all students are regular education students first and in addition some students receive special education services we're really working on internally to change the narrative and rearrange our adjectives one conversation at a time to move us towards a more inclusive environment by talking about students first and the fact that they receive special education services they're not special education students so that's something that you will start hearing more and hopefully infusing that language into our regular conversations um a couple of things around that you might have seen this is about four feet by three feet and it's on every single playground um

023in in the su so all four buildings have one it is a picture based communication board it's intended for students who need assistance in identifying some language whether they're currently having a moment not being able to find the words or they're an individual that is non-speaking and uses this in general for communication in school we are i believe one of the first playgrounds in the state to have one um we did a little bit of outreach to local news outlets i didn't get any bites for anybody yet to come do a ribbon cutting and celebrate with the fact that we have this tool for everyone to use but it's by the fence and heartland we're going to put a second one up in heartland because their playground's so big and takes up so much square

024footage the one in weathersfields by the brick wall near basketball court the one in windsor school is in the main playground area and the one at albert bridge is sort of near the little gazebo um so that's pretty cool um we had a local printer do it too but that was kind of nice we were able to keep it all pretty local the other uh exciting thing that's happening um and thank you to jim taft a big shout out to him as behind the scenes we are working on bringing unified basketball to windsor school um and it'll eventually be a whole su piece but um unified basketball originally started as part of special olympics it is now a vpa high school sport and there's also unified sports for younger students because of covid and getting

025everything up and running and lots of logistics we're offering a modified version this spring and it happens on the shoulder season in vermont where students with intellectual disabilities referred to as athletes and partner players students that may not meet that criteria um assist and work with um the athletes in playing basketball there are we have locally hartford has a team springfield has a team another i think there's about six or eight teams totally total in vermont um we'll be practicing three days a week with the middle school through high school students i don't know how many yet we're just getting names but it'll give us a taste of it get kids interested so that next year we can be full participants i can't see anybody so i've heard something ding so i didn't know if

026i should stop to answer a question no that was that was keegan just saying that this is that's such a great idea okay well we're we're pretty excited um i'll share i have a a daughter who participates and has for years and it is a phenomenal program and once we're up and running and we can have people visit and see our scrimmages we are playing going to have some scrimmages with area teams um and it's just it's an amazing program so i'm very excited that we're bringing it to the su and we'll start small and work our way up to being bigger the other just a few other notes someone had asked a little while back of sort of our art of district students and what we're doing looking at bringing students back to our

027community currently we have approximately five students transitioning back to being in our home-based community school and we approximately estimate next year we'll have about 19 students being out of district placements which is significantly down i believe when i came we had close to 40. lots of reasons one of the main reasons is we are really building our internal capacity which is the next couple of paragraphs to have students remain in the community schools so we're actually placing students as needed where they need to be because that's our requirement and that's what we want to do in the best interest of students at the same time if we have more opportunity for continuum of services in-house that keeps students within their community for example i know you've heard me speak before about the academic program for

028the middle and high school students for our more intensive needs students who need a more community based alternative curriculum program we now have students from all of the districts that participate in that program sixth through tenth grade as our current age range and we are finding we are seeing an increase in students who are on the autism spectrum as you know we have three full-time board certified behavior analysts we actually have three of those positions filled this year now with the addition of one person who came on about six weeks ago we are looking at building our capacity in one building so that we're going to have a small intensive applied behavior analyst program analysis program rather next year in one building to meet the needs we're see a bubble of students coming through the

029su so it's another way of building our capacity and we're really excited about staff's willingness to learn and do some professional development around that on their own time as well as the individuals we already have on board um i can say yes i'm sorry this is amy um elizabeth burroughs had a question is the aba the only program available for kids on the autism autism spectrum it's not the only um probe it is a we're look at this um aba is not the only approach and program um an aba is pretty broad um in terms of its application depending on student needs um but we have a need to look at a group of students who are entering um in such a way so we have other students who receive services in different ways more

030inclusively or in separate their own individual programs within the district so it is dependent on what the student needs so it's not a one size fits all does that answer your question elizabeth yes thank you welcome um okay and last is this is referencing what we'll see later um when we talk about the policy this is related to the policy the board already passed earlier this year i think it was december the manual that policy references was published february 8th which is after we passed the policy but that's the order of operations the aoe did things in um so now that that is passed the manual is published it was sent out um that's on the order for business later to um look at that and hopefully make a motion to adopt it um and

031just the brief the aoe all of us every su has to adopt either individual policies addressing an extensive list of special education issues and it is extensive or adopt the manual basically the aoe created the manual that mirrors the regulations but the manual meets the requirements that we're all required to have according to the um federal office of special education so it's a necessary piece and so we have two ways to do it um the most expedient and um clean way to do it is adopt the manual so um at least for for now is what we've been um what i'm suggesting so and we can discuss that further obviously later um but that was the end of what i had to present tonight uh yeah rebecca has a question uh amy and you can

032stop sharing maybe keynote because i'll pull mine back up um my questions for katie um katie is this a new shift um to include children with disabilities in different ways you you talked about the communication board you talked about unifor unified sports and you also spoke about aba and i think that they're it's it's all really good stuff but i'm just wondering is this a new shift um from the um board of ed or or is this something that you've been the department has been working on for some time um in terms of the first couple of things the the communication board is definitely a shift in the field to have more inclusive playground environments we will also be adding some of those boards in other areas of the schools um cafeteria um gym more

033public areas where sometimes our students may not be carrying their devices we have students who use communication devices that serves the same purpose so that's more of a field shift the unified basketball has been around for a long time i think that's probably more of my own experience with it and wanting to seeing in the opportunity that students would be interested in it the other with the policies that's definitely from the aoe part of our monitoring and requirements the agency of education has received a lot of feedback over the past couple of years of where our vermont special education is in compliance or non-compliance with what the federal feds say that we're supposed to be and a lot of it had to do with do we have policies written and accepted by boards even though

034a lot of the policies out are exactly what the vermont state regulations say we're supposed to be following you know the law we're just basically reiterating that we're going to follow the rules of the law but now we have to have policies that explicitly explain all those pieces and parts it's redundant's not the right word but it is pretty close it mirrors maybe um so i think it's a it's another assurance that we're committed to the rules for all students um best way i could put that one thank you so just sort of the general to answer rebecca's question as well a little bit um because rebecca worked in uh on new hampshire quite a bit vermont has been working on inclusion for a few decades and what katie has gone over is is just

035a a continuation more and more of the school day and different things are becoming more inclusive and i think it's a great direction thank you bill and thank you katie for your presentation yeah we hadn't heard from katie in a little while and i thought especially since we had special education procedures on the on the agenda we we should hear from katie and uh i also want to thank her for the work especially around creating some of those pieces that you know that we we didn't have and uh and uh and and all the excellent work that goes on with that entire department um and bringing kids home our philosophy is to try to serve kids as close to their homes so they can be close to their friends they can be on buses with

036their friends uh and so it's not easy i will tell you that it's sometimes it's difficult but i think it's a worthy cause um equity audit update uh we can talk about this later on um it's on the agenda uh we do want to get this work started um i i don't know how many of you know this but we were gonna partner with springfield i'm still working with zach on whether we do that zach is moving on to another superintendency next year so it's really just a question of whether or not we can we can work this out in time but i didn't want our work to get held up and i would really like to get the rfp out so again it's on it's on the agenda uh item a we put it

037we put it on uh earlier so we'll talk about that later uh equity cohort uh some of you who have been on the board for a while might remember this but the equity work certainly that that i've done over the life of my career culminated a couple of years ago with my being accepted to a to the deeper learning uh national institute equity cohort so kovitz saw we we this is a a small group of people who really get to experience some of the some of the real deeper learning that's why it's called people learning around equity issues and and and um it involves three uh was supposed to involve three trips uh we did one down in new orleans it was an incredible experience i think way back when i did some presentations to

038the board uh and then there was another trip coming up march 28th april 1st uh we're going to try to move that forward with um they're going to try to get that going again uh for uh for the cohort cohort number four uh and i'll talk more about that at our march meeting um middle level work continues we'll talk a lot a lot about this at our uh our individual boards local boards each building is a little bit different but we did come up with after several meetings what we're calling some common themes or common indicators that we'd like to see across uh the su and i'll be sharing those at the local board level but uh that the entire middle school team when you get everybody together we were probably a team of 25

03926 educators in in several administrators but again stay tuned because we'll do that at the local level uh second quarter financial update um i can uh i can do that uh maybe i forgot to add it um amy but we can do that under items uh for action um but let's not let's not do that right now let's we can put we can make that even e on our items for action i do have it uh and you mean items for discussion discussion excuse me thank you items for discussion uh and last but not least teacher contract is completed and signed support staff negotiations completed and we're reviewing the drafts uh negotiated agreements go through 2024 with teachers in 2025 with support staff thanks to bill jackie and scott for all the hard work in

040that negotiation uh process um so in the interest of time i'm going to stop sharing and stop presenting um and certainly if there are any questions if not we i know that some of these things are going to come up later on as part of the agenda thank you david um were there any board questions on david's presentation rebecca i saw that your hand was raised again are you okay you're good okay so we are moving on to items for discussion and the first item david if you could explain a little bit more on masking yeah so uh you know we we've all heard the from from the media sources and to be honest with you we don't have any official word like i said from the aoe or from the vermont department of health

041but it's the understanding that the the current mass mandate sunsets in the state on february 28th and i think there have been some political comments and pos made by uh the governor uh around um around making masking uh uh voluntary and not mandatory so that you know that quite frankly a lot of those announcements came out just before our vacation and during our vacation so we didn't have a real time uh to process that before we left for vacation but we spent some time with the administrative team right before vacation and today we spent some time with uh with um our our covert task force so um i i see a hand bill do you do you want to make a comment well i'd just like an opportunity for some of the board members and

042some of the public to uh yeah to chime in here a little bit about that there will be bill okay yeah yeah once i once i finish i shut up and you guys because i one thing that i have stated firmly is that i think you know based on uh based on positivity rates and some data and feedback from both staff and and our our community and family the board has to really have these discussions and make make the make these comments so i just wanted you to know that that right now our covert task force that has been meeting for the last two years is not opposed to following suit with loosening up the mass mandate and making it more choice but they want to go slowly with that and they want to in

043at the same time keep an eye on the positivity data as as we move as we move uh forward um and we've got some ideas that we don't need to share to tonight but ways in which we can we can move in that in that correct uh that correct direction we did do a staff survey angie's got those results if the board wants to see those you can ask us and and we can present those results from a staff survey we do intend also to survey uh you know our parents and public um but again with the vacation we haven't had time to really do that and as always we find out about these things sometimes at the press conferences and we don't get a lot of uh we don't get a lot of uh

044uh up front word so that's where that's i think where we are no opposition but certainly um certainly want to be careful and and and go slowly because of the fact that we're a closed environment and a non-transit environment but i do think the board needs to discuss it and give us give us some direction and marie your hand is raised i think your volume might be off ian sorry um i missed the last couple of uh governor's press conferences um did he is there still the 80 threshold or did he get rid of that as well uh he he is uh you know he he doesn't use for you you're talking about the schools right yeah i mean the um the 80 vaccination rate within the school yes yeah yeah that that is that's

045still talked about and but but mostly it's you know it's again it's not it's not it's not firm guidance it's really just recommended but the 80 is still bounced around as a as a possibility but i think the sense that i get from the vermont department of health and and from the governor's office but i pay more attention to the vermont department of health is that we're moving away from vaccination rates and we're moving more toward positivity rates but again we haven't got the official guidance yet um uh and the 28th isn't even really here yet but but uh but 80 is still talked about and i don't know if anybody else uh has any any information on that 80 rate well i think the 80 rate was also based upon the mandate so once

046the mandate goes away that 80 percent threshold goes away because there's no more mandate based upon the state it's all localized localized decision um but i want to disagree with something david said that it's not so much they're moving away from vaccination rates they're also starting to move away from positivity rates as well and beginning to pay more attention to hospitalizations and deaths and i think that's probably the most important threshold because this is not going away covet is not ever going to go away it's going to become part of all the other respiratory illness that we have in the most important factor is not whether or not you know we have 20 or 30 infections it's whether or not their hospitals are in regular working condition and there is room and personnel available for

047within the local hospitals to handle the very rare case that students with medical attention bill if i may elizabeth yes uh today um casenum our hospitals are still totally overwhelmed even though we have pretty low case numbers so i think yes that's but i'm not saying our hospitals aren't overwhelmed yeah we're still not out of the water yet i know what i'm saying is that solving the hospital issue is totally separate or not totally separate but not as linked to solving the pandemic mystery as you might think the hospital issue is something that was made much worse by the pandemic but it's also its own really hairy problem well it's real i i'd have to agree and disagree with you that yes it is its own problem the medical um that uh issues were there

048before but at the same time the real issue at in schools i'm talking about my own personal opinion is that with some science base it's not whether or not kids are getting infected it's whether or not there is a the ability to deal with the real rare case that students need hospitalizations and hospitals have not recovered yet to the point that um beds aren't quite available i think we're on the right track last week uh hospitalizations went down 30 percent but that's still hospitals are not working functioning at an expected level yet so basically what i'm saying is that i'm agreeing with with david for a different reason than looking at infection rates i'm agreeing with david that we have to take it slow so that the capacity is there to deal with infections i

049understand my my my point is that the capacity is only partly caused by the pandemic the capacity is actually be caused by our workforce being down our hospital and healthcare workforce being down 68 in vermont right but i never said that the capacity was caused by the um pandemic i said that okay the capacity has to recover and there's there's more to all of this than just the the the chance of a child and we do care that our children could possibly be hospitalized but we also care very deeply that our teaching and administrative staff would be hospitalized um and with that i am going to i have three hands raised first is rebecca then david then davis so rebecca thank you amy um david i have a question um and that is on your

050uh on the task force that is working on this um does it include local medical professionals because our hospitals here see um the children from the community and and they can also give input on what they're seeing or what they're not seeing yes it does rebecca it has um it has um two members of the of the mount scotty hospital team one pediatrician and one uh person who deals with uh these kinds of situations in the hospitals and also as a background immunology they were not at our meeting this morning uh but they have it they have attended uh pretty regularly david am i next amy oh yeah david you are mine is really really quick the the reason why by the way i don't dispute bill i think hospital rates will be of an

051important factor but why positivity for schools is so important is because if our positivity rate increases what whenever we have a positive covert case if it's a staff member they have to stay home if it's a child they have to stay home so our capacity to run our buildings depends on how many positive cases we're getting in any particular week day month a year so that's why because we're a closed environment we depend on people coming every day we have to be attentive to the positivity rate that that's why that's so important to the task force thank you david davis uh thanks amy and actually this seeks pretty well off what uh david was saying um and amy i appreciate you bringing up that you know a large part of this is keeping keeping staff

052healthy and as david pointed out when there is a positive case that pulls staff out of the building i know that when this all started you know schools had to go remote um and that was that was an emergency measure you know we we didn't really have the capacity to really do that in the most effective way possible it was kind it was something that we were forced to do um and to me just looking at taking it slow working with our local kova task force following kind of like state recommendations i mean my my goal of summoning the sport is to make sure you know there's a lot of things i want to make sure but making sure the building can stay open because i know that that's the best way that we can

053provide education for all these students um so that's that's high in my on my concerns here um as i i don't want to see us having to start closing the school it's amazing that we haven't yet um and i want to keep going on that track um i appreciate you know discussions about how interconnected our institutions are with healthcare institutions and other local bedrock institutions but uh it's it's i i don't think that the importance of the schools being able to stay open and operational can really be overstated thank you davis elizabeth your hand is raised thank you amy um i just wanted to make a pitch for um the importance of community members being able to go back inside the school buildings and to have the students interact with community members i'd much rather

054see that happen before the masks be um removed like if it's a if it's one or the other or the other i'd much rather be able to get inside that school and and walk around among the students um having having a mask on who doesn't if the mask would enable me to be inside the school and would enable everybody to to uh stay healthier or have a better chance of being healthy i'm i'm for that until we're totally sure that we're in the clear thanks thank you you make a really good point that there are a lot of places that are now allowing public because they're requiring masks i also i want to say that that is not an original thought that thought came from annelise ennis and so i'm parroting her i don't want

055to take any credit for annelise's beautiful thoughts oh well thank you for thank you annelise and thank you elizabeth for sharing it but just there are so many more opportunities that are happening now in our communities there are theater productions that are happening and everyone who is going to these is wearing a mask and that is allowing us to have these opportunities as well as keeping our ourselves and those around us safe bill your hand is raised a couple points i want to point out i think it's important to to recognize the desire for people to have schools unmasked um and and and that their desire is a valid desire it's not something that shouldn't happen that's really our end goal i think as a as a as a school board we would just like

056to do it as safely as possible the other thing that about taking it slow is that claremont is unmasked and i think that allows us to have a beta group to look at to see what happens to them and what are the consequences of a a a school district so close to us who has gone uh without mass before we have and that's going to provide us with a lot of good data um that if they're successful then there's probably no reason why we can't be successful if they're not successful that basically shows us that we're correct to go slow thank you bill that brings up another really good point we do have a lot of information that we can glean from other districts and we have a public uh misty vote um i don't

057want to mispronounce your name so misty your hand is raised yes thank you it's misty okay thank you thank you i just want um how how many minutes do we have i'm just curious i i timed out my speech it's about six minutes um we are giving people two minutes okay i do have people on the call willingly willing to give me their two minutes we are not we're not doing that um everyone has two minutes okay then i'm going to step back and let other people speak i'm not going to use my two minutes at this time okay thank you rebecca i i just want to also comment on what bill um said in terms of looking at other communities i know that um when the select board met um i think it was

058till um had brought some information and it was in it really compared norwich which is a town similar in population to windsor who had chosen to um mandate mask and and clearly showed that as a result of those statistics there seemed to be a higher increase in windsor who did not have a mandate as opposed to norwich i and i don't want to i want to be clear with that um but i i think that that was what was um brought up at the select board meeting so the idea that bill mentioned and saying we have someone right across the river who just recently um made it optional is is a good idea is a good thought thank you and there is currently a mask mandate for the for in public places indoors in the

059town of windsor and i also think that looking at the positivity rate is a very um it's more based on science and it because there are so many people who are against vaccinations it keeps us out of that argument and bases it more on who is currently infected and also there it keeps our our staffing levels we we would have an idea of what is happening with our staff and keeping our staff safe and it would there's also a threshold that we have to maintain as far as student population to have an actual student school day david i just want to go back to what elizabeth said what what we talked about the task force today uh was some of those things that elizabeth mentioned uh because we are all concerned i'm sure everybody on

060this call is concerned you know about the emotional and social emotional mental health of our students that's really what's key and this has been a tough year for adults and students and families but we talked about as we scaffold this and roll this out there are things we'd like to even start to do first like for example uh crossing pods right now there are kids that have friends in fifth grade they haven't really been able to spend a lot of time with those friends or maybe that you know a cafeteria open up our cafeterias get volunteers maybe back in our building start talking about field trips uh drama music the kinds of things that elizabeth was mentioning i think that really also contributes to the mental health of our students and uh and i think

061we could you know we can certainly do some trials around positivity while we're doing that and just keeping an eye on that masking and unmasking and just seeing what effects it has on that positivity the key is always to you know to have kids interact to be healthy but most importantly to keep our schools open and i think i i again i think we've done a good job but i want to continue to do that but i just wanted to go along with what elizabeth said earlier thank you mark youngling did you have a comment um yeah i posted it in the text box but basically i i think the success of an unmasked school um really has to take into account the impact on the community as a whole i i don't think just

062how many of our students end up in hospital is a good measure of it of the entire impact of it we know i i just contracted it uh i'm very happy to say that i am now negative but i i lost a week that could have been vacation and i'm almost always masked we know how transmissible this is but um i was inconvenienced um and i think for the unvaccinated family members of pupils that are bringing this home it's a completely different story so i think i think the the broad spectrum of what the impact is of getting rid of the masks has to be considered more than just the individual impact on the students thank you mark and i'm glad to hear that you are feeling better and are now negative were there other

063comments there are two hands raised first kelsey o'connor and then misty putin hi i'm kelsey o'connor and i'm the parent of two kids in the windsor school and i don't have a lot to say about the mask issue just that i am so proud of our school boards um and our su for the incredible work that you've done the last two years and i just put my full trust and faith in you all to make the best decision for my children and for the children in our community so i just wanted to say thank you i think you've all done an amazing job so keep up the good work thank you kelsey misty bhutan hi thank you sorry i kind of had to reconfigure things a little bit um i i had a couple of

064things i wanted to point out but i think i'm just going to skip right down to what my family endured i'm gonna hit a story about my son first i think the point is my seven-year-old was vaccine injured um when she was two months old so she suffered a severe vaccine reaction that's important for you to know because it's a huge reason why my family decided not to get back vaccinated my son is unvaccinated he is an athlete for the windsor school he's on the basketball team when they first started the season the whole team was told that they if they all got vaccinated they could take their masks off this was false information but at the time my son didn't know that i don't believe it was the coaches intentions i do however believe

065it was the false information that trickled down from the top with continued pressure for all kids to get vaccinated my son is believed to be the only player on the team who is unvaccinated i'm sorry it put a tremendous amount of pressure on him feeling like he was responsible to get vaccinated so his teammates and friends could take their masks off if you can understand how this may have made him feel discriminated against for a choice that he made for himself i wrote to this athletic director and had a really great conversation and i do believe that this was a mistake on the coach's part i do not believe it was malice but we have to understand that we are causing hate within our school and we are pitting one child against the other and

066leaving them in situations to feel like they're responsible for their peers in a sense that is out of their control now my son chose not to get vaccinated because he understands the consequence that can arise from vaccines even though it's minimal and it's small it does happen and he needed to make a choice for himself what was right for him but when he was told that if he got vaccinated his peers could relieve and take off their mask which they all want to do whether they say it or not i have boys teen boys here all the time in my home i know how they feel about it he felt pressured to get a vaccine he didn't want to get and then vice versa if you look at the team now looking at my son

067saying well if you just get a vaccine i can take my mask off and how do you not think that creates hate how do you not think that pits one student against another we're causing division we're causing hate and these masks are part of that and continuing to tell kids though if you get vaccinated take your mask off if you get vaccinated if we get to 80 if we do this we are hurting our kids and i had a whole written out speech and this is kind of falling apart and i'm just kind of going off the hip but i felt like it was important to understand that we continue to put pressures on kids and it does impact them and i just wanted to say that to you thank you misty and i'm sorry

068that your son experienced that and that is one of the reasons that i feel it's important that we move away from looking at vaccinations because there's there are it's created so many divisions in our communities and looking at positivity rates instead because that impacts that has a direct impact on the health of our staff and the ability of other of children and their classmates vaccinated or not to attend school so i think it's positivity rate that we need to be paying more attention to thank you and we have unknown with a hand raised hi guys how are you doing today um i'm just i put my hand up because it's just it's funny that you guys had the meeting today um but i was just so fed up today because i was speaking to my

069my daughters i have eight years old and i have a six years old that go to windsor and i asked him i said how's the mask you know every day i get complained every single day there's no a day that i do not get a complaint from my child um they don't come home with burgers all over them and then the weirdest thing that i heard today is that the kids get three strikes um they get told three times and if they don't somebody would yell at them to put the mask is up and i just pray i truly pray to god that's not the truth but i'm just trying to figure out is i see all these grown folks i see all these different adults around windsor not wearing masks not not worried about

070anything when it comes to mass but when it comes to the kids we're so so so worried about the kids though we're not worried about the grown folks that's doing it but like they might the kids finally got to go outside with no mask i guess they finally said they don't have to go outside with masks but they're so subjected that they still wear masks just to go outside and i think that's so messed up for them just to go outside and breathe the air and then they've been wearing masks to come inside to wear masks the only time they tell me they don't wear masks is when they get to eat and i just don't know how you guys are saving these kids i don't know how these are helping the kids and they

071get cold they get covered every other day they can stay at school they have no problem staying in school taking a stupid test and they can just stay in school and somehow that's not considered spreading but wearing a mask is okay that's what's what's preventing all this stuff and if you have kids at school you know the feeling that you get every day from your kids there's kids with pimples everywhere there's kids burgers everywhere they're literally crying because they can't breathe half of the time in school but you know what we're not worried we're not worried for the kids we're worried for our grown self because if we're worried about the kids we actually listen to them we'll hear them saying these masks are not doing nothing it's only for your fear it's only for

072adult fears around them it's not the kids like the lady said before that she knows what the kids are saying and she knows the other students that's feeling same thing for me i see a lot of kids they don't care they it's not that they don't care they don't want these masks but it's mostly adults want this for them so really if you're really thinking about the kids really think about their kids and ask them what they feel ask them what this makes them feel not what you make what makes you feel but what the kids so but thank you for listening to me and i pray this god you guys do it by february 28th if not we're gonna have to do something okay thank you allison cluff hi um i have a kid

073at school i also have previously worked with the supervisory union um i i just my comment was um that what i understood from the uh governor's press conference was that uh public schools were enmeshed in that mandate listing so just for my understanding that means that the once the february 28th comes up it's now optional is that am i incorrect david could you answer that yeah no no that's not true the agency only issues guidance but the local districts and the local district school boards have by law the duty of care so you set your own you know your own policies your own dates your own mandates are no mandates uh the the state the state can't do that once the state mandate is lifted then as bill i think said it's totally local control

074after that you this board that's why it's important to have this discussion tonight around how fast or slow to go with lifting that mandate so it's just up to you few people on the board and that's it's your your call that's correct um so we would do that in with consideration and with information from our cova task force as well as from our our teaching and administrative staff because there there's many many considerations that we have to look at okay just because i mean all right okay thank you thank you tara howard okay i'm sorry i'm having technical difficulties can you hear me yes yes i know this is a touchy subject at this point there are studies and data that now support both sides i would like to read to you really quick the

075cardboard card that comes in the package of masks that i send my stepdaughter to school with every day this mask is not a medical device toy or personal protective equipment offering protection from covid19 or any other airborne particles this product is not intended as a replacement for medical grade personal protective equipment or other recommended measures to stop the community spread of covid19 including social distancing washing your hands and refraining from touching your face i think that this nonsense need to end i think that our kids deserve better i've personally witnessed my stepdaughter go through several things from being forced to wear this mask every day while she's at school um i think that you know kids kids are the least susceptible of being hospitalized and or dying from kovid i really think that we need

076to let our kids be kids you get one childhood and we all know how fast it goes please let our kids be kids that's all i have thank you thank you and meredith kelly good evening i just want to clarify um procedurally how this decision will come down is it from the supervisory union board the local board or the kova task force it will be the supervisory union board but we will be getting information from the covet task force and we will also be taking into consideration our um staff and administrators yeah and i think i'm not sure exactly meredith if this was your question but the supervisory union board has been the controlling board in terms of protocols and procedures uh going all the way back to the first emergency order that the governor

077that the governor announced back in 2020 and the reason for that is that we have a unified staff contract for both support staff and for um and for professional staff so whatever we do in one building we have to do in another building so the boards have relied on the supervisor reunion board uh to make these kinds of uh of decisions this is a unique decision because it does involve you know a state a state lifting of a mandate that's why we're discussing it tonight up until now the board is authorized and this was a while ago the board authorized the superintendent which was me on the advice of the covet task force to make any and all decisions we still do that now but i felt we had to we had to discuss this

078tonight um because there was going to be as you can see tonight some some public uh pressure to use the february 28th date as the date to to make masks optional and that's all i need all i need to know from the supervisory union board tonight is that at least at present you agree with the covert task force that we we go slowly we look at some of the other uh issues that we think are even a little bit more important like opening up you know uh theater programs and field trip programs and crossing parts and cafeterias and and we and i'm not saying we wait months but i'm saying we we get that part done because february 28th by the way is monday and and i don't think there's anybody on that cover task

079force or anybody at least in the staff interviews that think it should happen that fast so that's all the direction i need from the board tonight is uh uh are we are we okay with where we are right now and no we should take the mandate off all the way not little by little um excuse me this is a meeting of the board thank you our children go to your school though right and this is about the kids it's about the kids this is a meeting of the board to me when don't brought the kids and we are making this decision based on information and scott i see your hand raised there are a number of hands raised scott thank you but we will make this decision based on information from our covet task force

080as well as our administrative and teaching staff and basing our decision on positivity could also allow for differences between buildings as well so um that that is where we're leaning at the moment and bill i really don't care about these people [Applause] are we uh we ready for me now i yeah i at this point um i think i'm more willing down the line to discuss what to do about the masks but at this point um i don't feel comfortable um voting tonight to to change the path that we've been on um i i really look forward to the time in which students can go to school not have masks on to be able to enunciate to be able to see the teacher to be able to do all that but i think there's a

081time and a place to make transitions and a an arbitrary date of february 28th um in which the state has lifted a mandate a recommend a a a recommendation is not a catalyst to change course um and i know emotions run high there's a lot of emotions behind this but the simple fact that our responsibility on this board is not just to the education of the children it's also for their safety and yes that's our main responsibility but we are also responsible to the adults in the building so um i don't think amy i i don't think we need to to to vote on anything tonight okay thank you for your time yeah thank you um catherine angle hi i was wondering if we could hear the results of angie's survey of the staff and

082faculty that is a wonderful idea when david mentioned it i thought oh we should hear that um angie are you still here and can you share that information yes i can hang on a moment and i will share my screen this was data taken um earlier this afternoon for a survey that we put out to our faculty over the weekend uh and our support staff on monday we had 193 staff responses to the question should wsesu discontinue the masking requirement in our schools after february 28 if we are close to 80 percent vaccinated the survey response was yes at 35 and almost 36 no at 41 not sure at almost 11 and 12 fine either way i tried to encapsulate some of the comments that people emailed me there were six people that six individuals

083that emailed me and this summarizes some of the comments one teacher did ask her high school students how they felt about the masks and their concern was that if it meant that kids would be able to stay in school if they were masked because uh they were worried that if we were if they were unmasked other children children would be positive and not be able to be in school they don't want to see a spike in cases after removing masks that that teacher also shared the idea that close to 80 percent is ambiguous i had a few staff say they weren't comfortable saying yes to that question or no to that question because it was not um more specific um and then there were many questions about how well in the six responses how the

084eighty percent would be uh calculated for a building would it be what would happen if a say a building total was 80 but my classroom was only um or how would we do it for example in our pre-k 12 um school where vaccination students eligible for vaccinations varies across the building there's concern that lifting the mass mandate would have more students missing school and concern for staff who see multiple grade levels in a day do remember that we have specialist teachers who do serve multiple grade levels some may see as many as five six or seven grade levels in a day thank you that's all i have amy thank you angie next with their hand raised is meredith kelly sorry i just wanted to go back to my question about who's making the decision um

085i believe amy you mentioned everybody but parents and who's making the decision um i just wanted to confirm that also this was not um on the agenda if i'm correct so parents did not have an opportunity um or fully warned that this was going to be on the agenda tonight so i think there probably are others out there that would like to listen in on this conversation well the recording will be up on the website also we're not voting on this it's a discussion and we will be having the discussion further even if we have to have a special meeting after all of the town meetings or before our reorganization for the su meeting in towards the end of march next hand raised is caitlin gould sorry i figure out how to use my microphone

086um i just questions um dr baker i know you had mentioned that the and i don't know angie if you could answer this too as you being on the task force um had mentioned some of like the step-down protocol for that you guys are starting to think about is that something that you can share with us so that you know as a parent i you know can can make an informed decision you know or have a informed opinion i guess on you know my thoughts about what the school is doing to to support my child who is you know doesn't enjoy wearing a mask um you know does have some some social barriers around that as well and it's just really really struggling you know as as it being her first year in in a

087public you know as a kindergartner her first year in school and this experience um it is really taking a toll on her mental health and her social well-being in school um so you know if you could just kind of touch on what your thought is on your your your process of kind of opening things back up and just you know another point that my husband and i were kind of talking about is although we we really you know you guys were talking about you know wanting to see you know how claremont operates with this with the mask mandate no longer being there i think it's important too to recognize that many local businesses within the area that have much more staff than than the sau um have opened up um and are no longer requiring

088masks um you know hypertherm being one of them which is a very large corporation in the area that has a large population of people traveling in and out as well um you know i work in the claremont area i see what that is and i think it's important to recognize that the two communities that you're you're thinking about comparing are very different as well in the way that schools are run and then just the um community populations as well um so just when you when you think about comparing the two i think taking into consideration you know what exactly is being compared um and then i think you know if we can just as as a group and as the public kind of made aware of you know you say you're not voting today but

089you know when will this vote happen um you know i understand that monday is is coming quick um and i think that it is a high emotion um you know topic but if you know as parents if we can be made aware and and as a public you know being made aware of when you're thinking this vote will occur i think would set a lot of people so thank you thank you next scott richardson thank you amy i i was going to take out the conversation back to david's mention of the policy um the modes of instructions during covet 19 and um and i was just reading it while this discussion was happening and it's got an important bullet that says that it automatically sunsets when the well david knows what i'm talking about when

090the state of emergency is over so it's obviously not a functioning policy right now but most of all i guess i just wanted to bring our attention back to you know how important it is that the board um support the administrators and it's sometimes really hard and the administrators speak of the responsibility of the board and the board sometimes liens on the administrators and especially our superintendent as our as our chief operating officer and uh sometimes it's confusing for the community but the community doesn't want the school districts to to to um [Music] schools to be run differently you know every every town meeting day when board members come and go so that's why we have administrators and i i think that um it's very bill's spot on that um we shouldn't have a vote

091tonight that would be my opinion too i'm not sure a vote is is necessary at any time but we need our superintendent to know what we think as trustees of the communities that's it thank you scott and we are certainly hearing loud and clear from the parents who are attending this meeting that they would like to see masks off of their children and we are working towards in in that direction but it's not going to happen overnight and there there's more to take into consideration there's health of all the children and there are a number of parents who feel that it's important that their child as well as their classmates wear a mask when they attend school and we have people on both sides we have people who are who have had themselves vaccinated we

092have had people who say absolutely not there there's so much division over this and we do care about the children in our community we care deeply or we would not be here this evening we care deeply about the health and well-being of our staff and administrators as well there is so much more to this than just whether or not on march 1st your child will or will not be wearing a mask caitlyn gould yeah i'm just um i the questions that i had um nobody kind of stood up to answer them so i'm just curious if those could be answered yeah that that's why i had my hand up caitlyn i wanted to make sure i i realized we we didn't answer your questions um and and i'll do this really quickly just because we've

093got so many online the simple answer is no we don't have a formal step down plan yet but we just started talking about it today i don't think it's going to take long to create one i would get maybe maybe within the next week we could have that step down plan ready and and certainly produce it uh to our board members and and then eventually to uh our community i think what we all have to realize is is we were on vacation last week and a matter of fact right before vacation is when we learned that the governor we did not know we thought that the mass mandate might be extended for for uh another month at least till we get by these vacations and and got to better weather but we were as surprised

094as everybody else and i'm not saying it wasn't a good decision by the governor i mean and i don't even know yet what the governor will do exactly on the 28th i think there's a news conference scheduled but it did catch us off guard so we didn't we weren't we weren't ready really to to put into play you know uh uh a concrete step-down plan we knew we would have to eventually and we want to do it eventually but we just want to do it carefully so that that's the simple answer katelyn but i don't think it's going to be months i think it's going to be weeks and then like amy said we'll either have a special supervisory union board meeting uh to uh uh to discuss the step down plan if the board

095doesn't take a vote tonight and i agree they they should not uh then everything will be status quo uh going going forward but but that doesn't mean that we're not working very hard on a step down plan uh which will include some of the things i mentioned uh earlier and get us hopefully you know i'd like to say by the end of march certainly no later than the beginning of april 2 where we might we might want to pilot uh uh going to to mask choice because remember eliminating the mass mandate doesn't mean kids and adults can't wear masks they can still wear masks it's just that you won't be mandated to wear masks to come into the building and that's that's a that that that's a big decision that we want to make carefully

096and thoughtfully thank you dr baker and i you know i just you know it is kind of you know hurts my heart a little bit to to hear you say that you you thought that you know they were going to extend the mass mandate for for vermont i think that just it you know it kind of gives you a little bit of a bias um and i'm not i don't want to you know come off as as rude or anything like that but you know as a parent as you know as somebody who does you know watch the news and in the science of it all but to hear you say that you thought it was going to be extended versus just listening to the facts that came out that is a little disheartening um

097and knowing that we as parents and as a community you know we don't have a say but as to any you know people on this this meeting i also just want to make a point that um the parents that have put a lot of things in the chat that are are upset about not being able or not feeling like they're feeling heard or um that their voice matters is you know when when town voting day comes up that is that is your chance to really make a change in and take into consideration you know who is on this board and are those people going to be hearing your voice and willing to to speak up for you so thank you thank you bill yates um i know we have of course another meeting we have

098to set an agenda as well but um i think it might be a really good idea to actually get a parent survey to see um an opinion of what parents have about masking not just the several individuals that showed up here tonight and and in their opinion i mean because you know with 1200 students you did the quick math is you've got you know 24 hundred parents out there with with opinions um i don't know angie if if that's something that you'd be willing to take on or um or maybe larry i think it would be good to hear you know basically very straightforward and i agree with amy 100 and just get away from you know uh vaccinations in the survey what do parents feel about masking in school very simple um and then

099take that into consideration and have that data you know for the next meeting the other thing is sort of reading some of the comments that keep popping up just i want to point out that in loco parentis is a legal term in which the school district is substitute parents legally for when students are in school that is our legal responsibility and i respect what parents want for their children but at the same time we have that responsibility when they are at school we are legally responsible for them in substitute of their parents that's what the term uh term means and so we take that role i know all the administrators the teachers take that role very seriously to look out for the safety of schools and i just wanted to point that out even though

100it's quite clear popping up that not everyone agrees with me or understands what i'm saying but yeah i'd love my son to be able to take off his mask but he handles it pretty well his first year in school um most students do handle it well not all but most do and thank you for your time yeah and amy just saw just to answer bill's question yes that is part of our plan to uh survey uh our parents you know i think that's that's important we we just want to make sure we we put the survey together correctly because even the staff survey didn't do everything we wanted it to do so we just want to think about that but that'll that'll happen by the end of the week beginning of next week we'll we'll

101get that data that's part of part of what we want to know great thank you carrie jewell yes thank you i'm just wondering if angie is able to share the data of the survey per school district through each school i mean sorry no i am not i did not ask for um staff to identify the school i mean so it's it's a sorting thing i could take the 193 and sort it by the where i know they work but that would take me probably a couple hours is that something that we could have at um a future meeting or via email that would be up to dr baker yeah we we could consider that carrie i'm not sure what that would give us since it's going to be an su decision but we could we

102could do that i mean if you think there's some value in that i think if it is done and i'm not saying it should be done um i i think moving away from the 80 portion of it because i think that was a major portion of the of the survey rightfully so because at the time of the survey that was the biggest guideline one of the biggest factors within what the state was saying but seeing the mandates gone and the will be gone and the fact that the 80 percent because it's tied to that mandate will be gone then it would be interesting to hear what teachers say about just masking regardless of what the vaccination rate is thank you bill um anne-marie thanks amy um i also just wanted to bring up of course

103what bill said is totally true that we are legally responsible for the children not just sitting here on the board but we are also legally responsible to our taxpayers and to their money and um i don't know if dr baker could go into it a bit but i seem to recall that our insurance company will not cover lawsuits related to kovid so if someone was to get coveted in one of our schools and we had relaxed policy and someone thought it was too soon that we relaxed our policies we could legally be sued and our taxpayers would have to pay for that our insurance company would not yeah anne-marie's correct we were given written notice by our insurance company that they you know based on our protocols and they've had to approve all of our

104protocols that they wouldn't cover any covert related liability suit uh should anybody say that it was because we either didn't follow the protocol or we didn't have the right protocol so and that's an again why this is so quick right we haven't had time really to go back to our risk management company uh we don't even have the guidance from the agency yet that's really critical uh i'm i'm expecting it soon but all we've got is the understanding that the date is february 28th for for when the last mass mandate sun sets but that's why i think we've just got more work to do in the next couple of weeks here thank you david davis and then molly matson yeah thanks amy um i i appreciate what bill mentioned earlier about the possibility of doing

105you know doing some sort of parent survey i think it was bill that said that i apologize i'm mis misattributing that um but i mean i generally i think sounding out are the parents in our supervisory union um sounding out students i mean i i want to hear from the population that this board is serving um and that's the best way i think that we can get that information um i think that you know having seen in in this meeting and other in other local meetings where these topics come up and the kind of discourse around that you know something that i see over and over again is this idea that the idea that the meetings themselves are aren't accessible or it's unclear when they're happening um and i honestly i think that that's really

106valuable feedback because it to me if there's the perception that it's hard to find these meetings or it's hard to find ways to attend i i want as many people as possible to attend these meetings to have their voice heard i mean that's why we that's a big part of why we do this um so i i know that as a board member i don't have as much ability to directly do that put the rubber of the road in in getting those communications out but i think it's always a good opportunity to look at to look at how our board meeting announcements are going out how what modes and methods of communication we're using to make sure that people are aware because it is vitally important and uh i know that folks do a lot

107but i think that you know even when i hear just the perception that there's you know things are being kept secret or we don't want people to participate i know that personally that is the very opposite of my goal on the board so uh you know i think just taking a look seeing if there's anything else that can be done i think that that's always a valuable thing to do thank you davis molly matson hi hi everyone um so i think you are hearing the population that you are all serving um and i think you would hear even more if this meeting um if this topic actually you know it's kind of conveniently added to tonight's meeting rather than tomorrow night which a lot of people a lot of people were notified about however um

108you know it was for the moment that we found out about it tonight um so you are hearing the population you're serving and you would hear even more however you guys have gone round and round um you know you've gone with needing the school vaccination rate to be up to 80 percent for mass to be able to remove well that didn't happen um so here we go round and round again this kind of sounds familiar with the whole sports spectator thing we opened up to some not to others junior high totally got you know kind of screwed out of that deal got to see the last two games that's not fair um and then as far as um you know parents are clearly speaking out and it should be an optional um to wear masks

109and um what really bothers me is that my 13 year old doesn't have a problem wearing a mask not because she's afraid of covet in the air she's breathing but more of an image issue that uh you know it's covering their face they don't have to show their facial expressions that's the world we're living in now that's how that's are we changing our culture it's a little um i think this is crazy and again we've spent how much time discussing this going rounding around you are hearing the parents speak out i think you need to take a look at what we're saying and uh have a little i mean uh i think you should count our opinion towards what's happening because you are taking care of our kids you spend more time with my our

110kids than we do ourselves because we're at work providing for our children so you are hearing us so please take that into consideration and everybody go out and vote thank you molly and um so just a clarification the meeting tomorrow night is the information meeting for the windsor southeast supervisory union board and that has been warned oh my gosh probably about a month ago and that has a very strict protocol as far as the the way the items in that meeting are discussed there's a moderator who calls the meeting to order and we go down from article to article to article and it is i believe article 9 that it is open for any items that could be discussed on the floor of a town information meeting the rest of the items on that article

111deal with the budget and they will be voted on on tuesday from nine until seven and the reason this was added to this meeting tonight as opposed to being warned is um earlier is because this meeting was warned a week ago prior to vacation and prior to vacation we weren't all aware that the governor was going to have his press conference where he discussed lifting mask mandates so thank you and bill yates you're muted bill i've been paying attention to the to uh the chat here um and um i'm a data guy as you all know and i have no problem uh surveying the students at well as well you know having their input and how they feel about masks will just help us to understand their perception um but i also want to talk

112about you know a comment that was made earlier that we are hearing from from parents and our constituents and our constituents um you know what's our 10 000 basic constituents because public schools are not just for parents and for students public schools are made for society in the community and you know i would like to hear from more people than just the um basic 10 individuals who are in the chat um and the few individuals have who have expressed their opinion i'd like to know more you know before i say that this is what my contest my this is what parents and people of windsor and west windsor want um i don't know what they want you know there's only so far only 12 people have participated in the chat and some more people have

113participated in the discussion this is just a very small sample size i'd like to hear more thank you bill at a certain point um we do have the rest of our agenda that we need to get to um i have i will name the people off whose hands are currently raised and we will go through those names and then we do have to move to we do have to move on with our agenda because this is a regularly scheduled meeting and i wanted first of all i want to thank all of the parents who have attended this meeting and who have provided their provided us with their insight as to how they are feeling and how their children are feeling and we will certainly take that into consideration when decisions are made regarding masks and

114so the names that are up right now and that will be the end of this item on the agenda we have meredith kelly followed by caitlyn gould followed by elizabeth burrows followed by unknown meredith kelly oh hi this is actually patrick kelly we're using the same computer bill i i'm surprised that you haven't heard from more people i think you're you're i don't think that's going to be a concern i think you're going to hear a lot of people um speaking out about this um my question and i think some people in the district might be in other schools other than weathersfield we have two kids in weathersfield school but you might be surprised to learn that they are wearing masks outside and i just want to know i i really want to know from

115everybody on the board who thinks does somebody think that's a good idea like where is that coming from that decision to have our kids wear masks outside when i don't think anybody else on earth is doing that you know by choice or in a public setting uh or in a business where is that coming from and i i think it needs to stop that is a decision that could be made overnight rather than kicking it down the line a couple months because it's absolutely ridiculous so i i'd like answers uh it's my understanding mr kelly that uh and i met with the principal at weathersfield today he's part of the task force uh and that was an unfortunate confusion because that was not part of our protocol masks outside were never required according to our

116protocol so it's my understanding and somebody from weathersfield can correct me if i'm wrong that effective today that has stopped and it stopped in all of our buildings that outside this is also clearly not part of the step down because it was never really a universal protocol but um we we really need to stop that and my understanding is it has stopped if somebody wants to correct me on that they can but i think that you are absolutely right yeah i'll go ahead and chime in dr baker this is brian martin's principal at weathersfield school and yes we did have that discussion today at our staff meeting and that practice and some of the other things have been loosened up at the school so that has been taken care of and rectified all right i

117appreciate it if it's still with me i won't take up a ton of time here i appreciate the answers and i appreciate you addressing that i just want to quickly address something that was said earlier about this not just being about the kids but being about the community at large and families i just want to point out that everybody almost everybody five years old and up has the opportunity to get vaccinated they have the opportunity to protect themselves to wear masks if they choose to we can't ask these kids to be responsible for everybody on earth at some point this has to stop you know it you're you're asking them to do too much if you want to wear a mask in school great um you know and nobody is saying that if the masses

118work if the vaccinations work then that's that's beautiful we're glad you know our our family has been following the guidelines for almost two years but at some point enough's enough and and we've you know it seems like we've been following or we've been told that people are following the state guidelines the education guidelines their mask mandate ends monday all of a sudden we're not going to follow them why okay thank you caitlyn gould uh yeah so i just want to circle back to something that um bill had said that he you know he wants to hear from the public so bill what would be the best way for community members and the public to share their opinion with you um if these meetings are you know time is very limited for some people and i

119feel like a lot of um opinions were put in the chat so what would be the best way to formally um reach out to the board members about um our our opinion on some of these matters and then i also just want to make a comment on something that dr baker just said that um you know mass not being required outside at any point in time um they were required outside um i just want to correct you on that after after christmas vacation um that was the one thing my daughter came back with after christmas vacation at asking her you know how her day was and that was like the one thing she said is we couldn't take our masks off even when we were outside and they had to wear their masks for the

120week after after vacation yeah caitlin you're absolutely you're absolutely right and that's when the positivity was through the roof and we were sending 25 to 30 kids home a day so you're absolutely right and we did it for a week but and i and i you know it stopped after that but you're absolutely right that's why positivity is critical so uh caitlin addressed me personally so um caitlyn my email address uh is is on on the su site um and anybody is welcome to email me i also would look forward to um a a parent and even a a well i really look forward to a parent survey um to be able to look at many numbers not just those who thankfully take the time would take the time to to to email me so

121that's that's how i would look forward to hearing from parents uh through my you know issue email and um from um from a survey i i read all my emails i read emails all day long but yeah but i'm a data guy that's i'd like to see data and either it's anecdotal uh if parents want to email me or um from um from a survey and i think mr kelly mentioned something that i was going to write about about you know what what mr kelly is talking about is the endemic where this just moves on and cove becomes a just another respiratory illness and i i look forward to that day i i agree with you we we need to we need to get to there thank you though thank you elizabeth you had your

122hand raised did you still want to i i was just actually going to remind you that you don't have to hear from people more than twice including me correct thank you and um after elizabeth's hand went down alan howard well unknowns hand went down and then alan howard's hand came up so i will hear from alan howard and then we have to move on with the agenda alan howard hi yes um it's hard to go last because a lot of the other parents have basically been saying a lot of my feelings uh i had a whole speech of data and studies and i'm not going to bore you with that because it when molly i believe molly mentioned something about when she asked her child how she felt about the mask i could be wrong

123on which parent doesn't matter um i asked my daughter that i believed this morning and she's like um it's okay but i said are you afraid of catching covid are you what are you afraid of she goes no i like to hide my face and i'm like why you're beautiful and that got me onto this part of what i was going to say after the whole boring part of all this data and things um the negative impacts that this is having on the reduction of the ability to communicate and pitch in particular loss of mimicking expressions and the essential tools of non-verbal communication um to be able to understand positive emotions such as laughing and smiling become less recognizable negative emotions get amplified it's also been shown it's most it's likely uh exacerbates the change

124uh chances a child will experience anxiety and depression which are already at pandemic like high pandemic levels now and this isolation like i was so disappointed that she wanted to just to be like like hiding herself really more more than like she wasn't afraid of covet or anything like that um and i'm just asking i'm just wondering with the children having and even everybody being live vaccines and therapeutics and and all this knowledge and now the omicron variant was more susceptible but yes it's less deadly all this and that um is it really worth all this other negative on something that's really what what are the kids have over a 99.9 survival rate of something um i just that's just my question i keep going on and on over and over again um the negative

125impacts that we don't talk about we're always talking about catching kovid and death and this and that but what is it really doing to our kids um i don't want to take any more time but that's just my final final thoughts thank you and again we have um i want to thank all of the parents who have attended this meeting and who have spoken out and provided your your thoughts and your concerns for yourselves and for your children and we certainly take all of that information into consideration when we make decisions moving to our next item is the fy23 calendar and friday early release days yeah you know the more the more i think about that item and given again the time uh that's going to take a little bit of discussion and uh and

126it might be good too we've got some new members coming on the issue board so i'm okay moving that agenda item to our to our meeting in march unless anybody has an objection there's no rush on that um bill you're muted that's a pretty um pretty important topic so i i agree with david yeah that should take some time right okay um elizabeth your hand is raised also i was just gonna say amy that maybe it'd be a good idea to push all of the first readings to our next meeting because we'll we potentially will have we won't have scott i know we will potentially have you know um some new members here so uh okay um but please leave room that's my special request is because i came in late and i didn't get

127to be part of the public comment or announcements and please leave room at the end of the meeting to uh fawn over scott thank you okay yes um so let me see um i i think how about i will take a motion that we set aside the policy discussions until our meeting when there has been reorganization so moved i'll second who is oh that was nikki okay and i will do a roll call um so let me see i wrote down all of our board members who are here um anne-marie hi bill hi colleen spence are you still with us i'm here hi wonderful thank you davis hi elizabeth i mark i nancy nancy pedrick might have left us um rebecca hi scott hi and i amy vote aye so you forgot me baby you

128forgot me mickey who nicki hi nicki how did i how did i miss you just talking away yeah you snuck in and nancy yeah nancy votes yes she's trying to she's mimicking it in her little photograph there okay excellent okay thank you so it is unanimous thank you so much so that reduces the length of our meeting considerably um moving on the equity audit yeah so i sent out uh i sent out under uh a separate cover the request for proposal we had the opportunity to partner with springfield that still may not happen but i wanted to get the authority from this board to get the request for proposals out we have several companies that we can send these to um and so i just didn't know if people had any comments on on the

129actual uh rfp that i had sent out if not then uh i think it is ready i think it is ready to uh ready to go um i can put i can put the uh i can put the actual in case you don't can't find it right away uh i can try to put the link to the audit uh proposal in the chat i see rebecca's hand i think amy's you might be muted i was i was muted rebecca hi david um i i did have a couple of questions but i i think you answered one of them already i was asking what was holding up springfield and you commented on because there's been a change maybe in administration so um the second question was is this um proposal in line with what vermont school

130board um is is uh has put out or is asking of their schools that's a great question rebecca and actually it is because we we use the vermont school boards association and their the the the group that they've been working with to help us draft this uh to draft this proposal so it's very much in line because they helped us they helped us put it together quite frankly thanks great bill your hand is raised um yeah thank you um this is delightfully simplistic david i i it's i i like it um i would like to see and maybe you have it ready is to uh to be able to see the summarization of springfield school district um as well in the beginning um in case they do so we could see the springfield school district

131blah blah blah blah serves sort of similar to the windsor southeast supervisories as well do you have that done or no it is so you've got the background but you didn't include any background yeah no district no the original meetings that i was having with zach and then zach got caught up in in quite frankly and rightly so in candidating for for his for his jobs and employment next year that stopped and in reaching out to him over vacation uh you know we weren't we weren't able to link up so but he would put that information in there and i could certainly before we finally send it out if in fact you know because i'm assuming we meet on friday and i'm assuming that at that point we'll make a decision to fish or cut

132bait with them and i think we can do this we have the we have the financial wherewithal to do this on our own um but i'll i'll i'll resend it if in fact he puts that data in there okay thank you thank you um what would be the consequence of us tabling this until we have word from springfield yeah i mean you certainly could do that the all that that would mean is if you go down to the very bottom of the proposal you'll see a timeline right and the timeline just because this is such uh an undertaking and and some of the folks we've talked about that helped us put this together that know about these kinds of audits say that a lot of these things can be done remotely so they're not too

133worried about that but i think we'd still have time we would just move those dates down the bottom up a little bit with but we'd continue to i think have the start date be july 1 or august 1 22. that would be the only consequence amy okay thank you elizabeth your hand is raised well on the other hand by july 1st um zach won't be here any but among us anymore he'll be among the living but living somewhere else um and so you know in a sense it doesn't matter whether springfield is with us or not because um if we waited one month is of course always two months this time of year um because the march meeting isn't the march meeting so if we wait until april it's as good as waiting until june

134which is the end of zach's contract a new person the new person won't be coming in and so you know i think we should i vote we'd do it whether zach's with us or not i agree with elizabeth i think we should give approval to this regardless um of if springfield's in or not so that once we get an indication that spring feels in or not david could move forward regardless yeah and i think that's after i said that i started thinking wait a minute amy geez um so i could take a motion that we accept this rfp so moves as long as um it's understood that if springfield wants to join us then they will and it'll be written as such and if springfield doesn't want to join us then the springfield will be

135removed and we will move forward without springfield so so moved and i can put that in the body of the motion quite frankly who who's making the motion i'm taking minutes here as well but who's making the motion bill second and a second second that was davis that was davis okay yes thank you um so i will go down the line um or is there further discussion on this sorry don't forget nikki i i've got mickey on my list anne-marie um i just wanted to uh make sure that the cost for this is being covered with um esser funds or yeah yeah that's a good point anne-marie that's that is that's the plan right now yep that this would all be covered through that's the funds because we had we had put money for equity

136into the esser agreement including hiring the dei coordinator but we're now a year and a half out so we've got money left in there i mean i will have to sort that out certainly with angie and the essa funds but that's that is exactly the plan thank you davis uh yeah i only have to say that i i think this is a a a tight document that i think gets us the information that we need to need to have and i'm just happy to see this process start to move forward so thanks for uh putting this together it is exciting and you're right we i think we need to move forward um are are people ready to vote okay starting with anne marie hi bill i colleen i davis hi elizabeth hi mark i nancy

137is she okay nikki hi rebecca hi scott hi and amy is i great thank you everyone um next we are there was the special education david did we and katie did we need to vote on that yeah we need to the state the state's requiring that we you know adopt that manual essentially or we create our own manual and we did not want to reinvent the wheel it's very thorough almost too thorough so that would it would be nice to have a motion to adopt special ed procedures as recommended by the state of vermont yeah just so everyone know i have read it and it it it's pretty tight it's it it's well written i did have one question about um the residential placement piece um and maybe katie if she's still here can answer

138that is that something new that um the um secretary can create a residential placement uh task force for each residential suggestion it is not new um it's been part of it it's one of those things that unless you add to have you have to go looking for it and know about it you don't know that it exists um and if actually as i have found out sometimes only involves one person um but um yes that is that is real okay i i i'm not doubting it but that's the one thing that stood out to me as something that i wasn't aware of um but overall i'd have to say we just adopt this it's tight it's well written um and if we try to reinvent something else we're just gonna mess it up i couldn't

139have said it better thank you bill because that's exactly the the general feeling of all the special ed directors that are in the same position and as you saw me nodding my head vigorously when we said that we need this um we have till march 15th that i have to submit a signature page saying that you've adopted it and technically we have it in policy but you've adopted something that you never saw um and so i wanted to make sure that we can then show these meeting notes so on march 15th when i turn in all of my monitoring and all the stuff we don't get dinged because the aoe has said there are not going to be extensions even though we just physically got this so i i would like to move that we

140adopt this i'll second was that nikki okay um rebecca you have your hand raised um i also read it and i have to agree that it is pretty tight but i did want to ask katie a question i just wanted to be clear did i hear you say earlier that our residential placement went from 40 to 19 not just residential are out of district placements we have a combination of students who may be in residential placements and and almost all of those are a joint mental health school it's or department of children family services for those and students at um therapeutic day programs or other programs that are day programs that we don't run so it's a combination of those um and our numbers just keep coming down because we're not sending as well as

141um so the students are matriculating out so i i would like to i'd like to thank katie for the work that she's done okay because because 40 is way above what would be expected of a district of our size and now we're back to what would be expected uh you know 19 would kind of be what you would expect of a district of this size so katie thank you very much you've done a fantastic job you're welcome we're still over what we're the aoe and the feds say we're supposed to so it was almost everybody else but um it's it's i appreciate it and it's a joint effort there's a lot of people involved it's not just me very much an effort thank you katie davis your hand is good yeah i just want to

142quickly underscore how how wonderful it is to hear too that we've have increased and are in the process of further increasing our capacity to you know to keep students in inclusion in our district as well i mean that's just hugely important you know obviously out of district placements come up and sometimes they're very necessary but you know it it really makes me happy to hear that our district is focused on that and keeping our students uh in our in our local schools and with their peers because it really makes a huge difference so thank you thank you davis um are there any other comments or are we ready to vote this is to adopt the manual let me read the motion yes thank you yeah the motion by bill and seconded by nikki that we

143adopt the special education procedures manual as recommended by the state of vermont thank you beginning with anne marie hi bill hi colleen hi davis hi elizabeth hi mark hi nancy i'll take that as an i um nikki i rebecca hi scott hi and i amy vote hi so thank you very much and nancy has no audio so thank you nancy and thank you katie for your work we are up to our favorite part is setting the next agenda our next regularly scheduled meeting is i believe it was march 28th yeah march 28th and as bill said earlier if if we feel we need one sooner than that because you know we have a more formal kind of step down plan we'll we'll um we'll let you know but march 28th is the next scheduled date

144okay thank you and we and that'll be our organizational meeting as well so that should be item number one right we'll put the policies back on and policies uh calendar release days um and we also have that uh recovery and data report okay recovery and data we've been married can we put our best or three plan i will probably have submitted something by then i think i have to submit a link like not the formal plan but that we have our coveted protocols or something on the website can't remember exactly but i'll give the board an update david i think that day aren't you in san diego uh that's a good question right march 28th yeah that's march 28th that is the date that i am there and um so that would mean that we

145i i was hoping anyhow that we could i you know angie is a licensed superintendent usually if i'm gone that long i would just uh announce to the district as long as the supervisor union board is okay with that that she would be in place we could either move to the week before that or angie could could handle it or in these virtual conditions that we live today i could probably be at the meeting virtually um so where are you going to be david i'm going to be in san diego at that equity uh deeper learning equity uh yeah so i i would imagine that 6 30 our time will put you in the middle of your conference in san diego time yeah what are they are they behind three hours behind or behind right

146so it would be 3 30 our uh yeah yeah um and and angie we love you but would it be a would it hurt your feelings if we tried to move it to the 21st not at all i don't know plus that might also give us a l you know that that puts us a little ahead of the game in terms of uh making final decisions on you know on the on the mask step down procedures and all of all of those pieces so we can give an update on that as well um i i know i brought brought the two things up of uh doing a parental survey as well as doing a student survey it's do you guys think that's possible oh yeah just really simple yeah really simple and we had we

147had planned to do it with parents we hadn't talked about students yet so you know we'll have that conversation but you know i don't know about you know it would be probably age appropriate maybe you know in terms of how we do that but i think we could get some feedback from students yes yeah i think it'd be great to get those voices yeah so uh so we're gonna move it yes we are to march 21st at 6 30 yep and believe it or not i actually would like to be there so if people can get word out that i am actually running i apologize for my lack of vision and getting paperwork done so we don't hold that against you bill oh you shouldn't because my wife does um bill just to let you

148know if you have people who can stand far enough away from the entrance of a building with your name on it for school board okay you're allowed to do that they cannot be inside the building but they can stand a reasonable distance away from the building i'll talk to my siblings and i'll let them know you can run for school board unless you stand out with a sign with my name on it you get them to vote we're gonna be fine i think and um you know amy the other thing i want to say in both places sorry but both west windsor and windsor david yes no i was just going to say to the public since we're moving the meeting to the 21st because i know we had a lot of people on here

149you know uh and now uh we will make you know we will make the you know masking protocol update an official part of that agenda so we'll get we'll get that word out um amy was right we just didn't we just didn't anticipate it right before vacation so the agenda was out it was posted on the website and that's why we had to add it tonight we're not allowed to to add it once it's posted so we'll we'll take care of that and i put mary gannon on too elizabeth um do you think i i really think that uh having the masking thing should be a separate meeting i do because i don't think we're gonna i think we're gonna because this is a reorganizational meeting with an agenda on top of that and good

150point it's a terrible mistake yeah it's a good maybe a masking update no i think we should we can have another meeting we can have a separate meeting okay um and that'll allow us to give the mask issue it's due time i mean it needs to have more time and not the challenge um it will have to be after our reorganization correct or we have our reorganization and mask information and then all the rest goes to a different meeting is that too many things to think about too many variables it is for me yeah i don't i don't want to wait long i don't because this is this the public is interested in it people have spoken people have actually come to meeting and spoken which is something we've been asking for and so i'm

151not disagreeing with elizabeth that say it should be a another meeting or the other way around we do reorganization and mask either one of those is fine with me but we can't wait another month to address this oh no of course not oh right i know you're not saying that elizabeth but yeah no i'm just saying wait i mean if we get into another place where we have uh you know the reorganization and the all of the agenda that we weren't able to attend to tonight and and uh a uh discussion about the mask mandate which has been properly um advertised to people uh you know it's it's gonna be a a meeting that i don't want to attend because it's going to be a long right is it paul okay let me let me

152throw is it possible to do a reorganized meeting on the 15th and that's it and then and then do an actual school board meeting the only thing we have to make sure is that all boards have met uh because when you have your reorganization meetings at the local level you'll appoint your su members right so right when is the last board when is the last board meeting in march heartland is gonna have to meet twice because we're meeting on the first before people are officially and so we're meeting under the regular board on the first and then people will be certified in the election on the second and then we'll have to meet again to reorganize prior to meeting on the 15th so artland could be looking at four four meetings whose idea was that

153normally kidding um so what we could do uh i'm looking now mount scotty is on the seventh weathersfield is on the eighth if heartland could go the 9th or the 10th we'd have all those done by the time bill stayed we reorganized which would be the 15th or the 4th i think it would be the 14th at that point uh you know and we could try to do as much as we could get done on surveys and you know i like what somebody suggested do the organization and some of these agenda items and then do masking separately i think that's a good idea so you know the more the more that we talk about it the more i think that it might be a good idea to do just the um reorganization and the mask

154stuff right on one night i think that's a really good idea actually okay and that could be on the 14th if i'd like to push no i'd like to push that back yeah yeah the four on the 14th and then that'll make members of the public have to sit through the organizational part um because we really can't have the uh the discussion without without having the organizational part right but at the same time elizabeth i agree with you either way it really doesn't matter to me but i i really for the masking meeting i want that data beforehand i really do yeah i agree on that i think i think if we're going to do a survey oh yeah yeah yeah having a second meeting yeah having a meeting on the 14th is yeah and

155a matter of fact we get that data yeah and just to be clear we also plan to survey the staff again because we felt that some of the survey was misleading we were using vaccination rates when we dug into the details with the task force today we started talking about positivity rates so so i think it's got to be simple and maybe not even include either of those and just get a sense of you know how to how are people feeling about you know eliminating the mandate the mask mandate and that can be parents students and staff again but it's going to take a little while to collect that data and get that to everybody i don't mind meeting on say the 14th and 15th and just doing the reorganization i think that would be

156a you know a nice short meeting in in to get it done um right and then whoever is chair will have time to prepare for the mask discretion wait are you taught are you now talking about having three meetings no no i hope not no but i i it i think we should yeah you could go ahead but don't don't look yeah no no not three meetings that we can have a masking and all the other you just have um the reorganization meeting on the 14th i think that's what david was talking about just get it done you know it's it's it's very early it's three meetings it's colleen i i didn't raise my hand i'm bad won't that make it three meetings yes no no and when are we going to do the agenda

157stuff i think we do that on the same time as the masking i i i think we do that that's a terrible idea okay but it is an idea um don't do that you're taking no one thing out that's easy and putting the two hard things together that's a terrible idea yeah that's terrible we're gonna have i mean the look hey i never said all my ideas are good the people who want to comment on the mask thing need to have their own evening we need to be able to give them all the time that they need to say everything they need to say and not have any other agenda hiding behind it um it's a it's a terrible idea to to uh put all those things on the same night i'm telling you um

158we have heard from brittany preston that the 14th is just a little bit too close to have the data and i think davis did you say that you wouldn't be able to do the 14th yeah i do have a conflict in the 14th but 15th would be fine so why don't we split it down the meeting split it down the middle do reorganizations some of the agenda items and then masking and all the easy agenda items no no i think elizabeth is right that um the 14th we are not the 14th i'm sorry um the 15th we have reorganization and we have the masking on the 15th i yeah reorganization doesn't take that long okay you you you could do both of those i think the reorganization and the masking on the 50. no no

159no no we can't have the masking on the 15th because we won't have the data if yeah that's true i am so sorry okay so reorganization and masking on the 21st you can't do that either because why not why because you have to be reorganized we have to be reorganized that that's what i'm saying we reorganize on the 21st and then we have the masking at the same meeting okay and then do agenda items afterwards on the 28th that's that money and again i won't be there but i think you can do it way up okay leave it to amy to come up with the answers which one are you not gonna be at dave so so i and again i i will make every effort to be virtually i think i can be um

160you know uh i you know and if not i know that angie and the administrative team can back me up extremely well especially if uh especially if we have taken care of the masking issue i think that's the one that you know i i don't want you know i need to be with them i think i need to be at that meeting just to share the data just to talk about the task force results and to listen to the parents and you know that that sort of stuff so so let me make sure i understand this then on the 21st right on the 21st we are going to do what are we doing we're doing the reorganization zen masking and then masking correct correct i'm going to call it mask protocol ah lovely and then

161and then what we'll do after that is march 28th if i'm hearing everybody correctly i just want to get this right for the minutes march 28th we'll do the other agenda items is that correct correct yes which are policies calendar early release days recovery and data mary gannon and the esser stuff and anne marie you have your hand up yeah i just wanted to um ask david if he can make sure that for the meeting on the 21st he um will you be able to talk to the people at risk management before that meeting to um our responsibilities are with that yeah we will and by then too they will have been able to uh absorb the data that they get from the agency of education vermont department of health so we'll just be in

162a better place than you know to make a final decision in the meantime and i think this is good for any parents that are left on it's the intent you know to as brian martus said at weathersfield you know to be you know to begin to loosen up start to you know give kids a little more flexibility and and then we can make this final decision uh on the 20 on the 21st or at least hear about the data davis yeah and david you can uh correct me from wrong here but i just want to kind of reiterate and clarify too um you know for folks who are still listening we've still placed the uh we've still given you the ability to to guide this policy in the meantime so us not having a vote

163doesn't mean that that things won't be rolling out in that time you know as more information gets out and as conditions change that's correct when the governor removed the emergency order this was over a year ago this board decided to um uh to delegate the authority to make those day-to-day decisions to the superintendent and and that's what i've been trying to do it isn't easy believe me but we've been we've been doing it and i've got a lot of good people around me helping me do that um so that'll continue absent a vote to change that and then on the 21st we may have a vote to do that we may not but we'll i'm not yeah on the 21st and and just for the folks who are on um and then larry maybe raise

164his hand to address this but just uh kind of running down how how this information is getting out just so we're really clear on that larry yeah i was gonna actually talk about something else real quick but um i can speak to that in a second uh david you wanted you asked me to do a report on finance and operations uh for the march meeting it seems like you guys have pretty full agenda you want me to push that till april would you like to do yeah we can push that to april yep okay so i'll do that and then as far as disseminating information um i can make sure that um you know we can make it more clearly on the website you know maybe a black bar we've done that before for special

165meetings so you just right it's it's uh we called the nav bar so like right when you get to the website it shows up right away um social media is also a good time to you know put out notices um so i can talk about that and um and if people like the idea of a robocall we don't normally call for regularly worn meetings but if the board would rather do a robocall we can do a few days before out maybe three or four days out david yeah we can grow a message that goes out to everybody so we can do whatever robo between the robocall and the uh nav bar on the website i don't think anybody's gonna miss the 21st yeah that that'll work and i know that was a that was a

166suggestion uh that was put in the chat earlier and we can do that i i mean there was i just want to make sure and i know the board had no intention tonight nor did anybody on the administrative team or the covert task force to you know uh have decisions made tonight or to have this be a surprise we just we just learned of it uh just before vacation so we'll make sure we know how important the issue is that we get the data through surveys and that we also uh give the public uh ample notice that that's a special meeting on march 21st and it's my understanding that meeting is for reorganization and mass protocol and then everything else is happening on the 28th we're all in agreement with that okay good yes we

167are just one more one more video yeah sorry one more quick question i guess um so i i like the idea of doing the robocall for i think for a special meeting that's totally appropriate to make sure folks are aware of it um the the website banner thing having the black bar go um i mean is that would that be too arduous to have for every time we have an su or or mount scotty district meeting um just thinking of ways that'll get more people aware of it um if that's a fairly easy thing to do i think that could be something we could just do every time it's it's easy um let me see if i can find the best way to do it i mean i my fear is that it would get

168lost it would just become part of the webs if you get it all the time it'll just be part of the website all the time and people so you want to make it special and you want it to pop um so let me let me see what i can do about making making more obvious when the upcoming war meetings on the front page without doing the black bar do the black bar for the special meeting on the 21st but going forward and see what you're saying let me think more about that i i agree with you davis i just don't want it to be part of the culture of the website i wanted to pop when it's important yeah no i i really appreciate that larry because obviously we don't want this to become informational

169white noise for folks exactly i don't want to just be another drop down you know just another place that meetings have been announced um are the weekly updates that david sends out there's always towards the end you know have been the meeting dates and kate ryan your hand is raised yeah so typically i put the links in with the parent update but that can get lost and all that so it's a very easy fix to just put the email in the subject line meeting links and dates and do it as a separate email i think that would be useful and that's easy that's what we've been doing the problem tonight was that in the links that i've been giving out because i wanted this meeting on january 28th and then two email blasts after that

170the problem is the agenda didn't have the masking protocol on it because we didn't know about it so this time we'll make sure that everybody knows that's the agenda item and uh and and uh if you want to weigh in show up maybe by then people who have been surveyed might not want to but they certainly have the ability to do that and they should know about it so we'll we'll we'll we'll do that okay um elizabeth i all i ask is that you make it really clear that it's also a reorganizational yeah it'll be on that agenda that's correct thank you okay did you have more i forgot to take my hand down okay um it is 9 21. it's been a lovely night so i want to thank scott for his years of

171dedication to the heartland school board and to the windsor southeast supervisory union board you have stood up for your town and for all of the kids of all of our communities not just heartland um you've been a very strong and steady voice and we will miss you [Music] and you're always um welcome to senecan thank you amy i really appreciate that it was very nice and i i just and i have such a high respect for all you board members and uh and school leaders that we see here on a regular basis and this is it's been a great growing experience but there are lots of capable people in our communities and so i i don't have um i don't feel bad at all that just i think it's healthy too so yes well thank

172you um again let us let us know what life on the outside is like would you oh yeah i will come to our media and so we could all click the guy in person good job sorry i didn't hear that nikki i i wish we were all in person because it feels really weird to be waving goodbye to you on a screen so please come back when we're in person so that we can all hang out again it'll always be a moment yeah we'll go down to bg's and get a coffee [Laughter] thank you and thank you for being a voice of reason and and again a strong voice for all of the kids of the windsor southeast supervisory union well you're welcome yeah thank you and you're welcome are there other people you'll be

173missed yes there are other people who are leaving just do it i don't think so bill yeah bill if he doesn't have a good day on tuesday could be just kidding but other than that i think we no i think everybody's back whether they'll get back on the su board you know i mean i know it's a very highly sought after position um but uh you know it's really up to your individual boards to appoint you to the su board so make sure you tell them how much fun it is i think the chairs are generally automatically part of the su board but then the other two members are appointed so thank you and monoscotny has their infant budget informational meeting tomorrow night correct and then um weathersfield on saturday morning yes and that that's

174another i wish everyone the very very best on town meeting for elections as well as budgets um it's really important that we are able to continue all of the good work that we've been doing so thank you for all of the work that all of you have done and best of luck on tuesday and without unless we want to talk until 9 30 i will take a motion to adjourn our meeting so moved nikki thank you and oh um all in favor