001hey i'd like to call to order the weather skills school board meeting for tuesday november 9th it's 7 p.m and you know like to stand for the clutch [Music] indivisible with liberty and justice for all remember the lyrics okay do we have any changes or additions to the agenda brian you know yes i would just like to be able to meet in the executive session to discuss a personnel matter okay thank you anyone else raise your hand okay i don't see anyone um we have oh um we have approval of the minutes from october 12 2021. um i sort of glanced over him i didn't have a good chance to read him really well did anybody really would anyone like to make the motion to approve the minutes from october 12. okay jamie's making a
002motion to approve the minutes do i have a second well second it's kristen all in favor say aye aye opposed that's unanimous next up we have uh there's any public participation or announcements um so that is the principles report so thank you oh hold on all right well welcome um here's our lead learner report for november 9th so we'll go ahead and get started first off just want to give you a little bit of an update on our seventh grade presentation that we saw last month at our october 12th meeting so our [Music] board here in weathersfield got to see our presentation through safa tv so they invited our three groups of students to present at the select board on november the 1st which was great at the firehouse that's where we had the meeting
003at and they now are going to look at it for the planning board as well so pretty awesome opportunity um to be able to have our students show what they're learning in school and be able to present it to our community tonight we do not have any student it's because we did have a student set up and then she got a little stage fright so we said okay we can do it next month so we went ahead and scratched her for today all right so leader in me lighthouse team has been meeting um we do have a day set up on november 19th where the entire school will be working together it's our next early release day and so we have time for us to work together as a staff to look at those next
004steps again ms cole has been doing her sl sel lessons which have been great and it's really nice to start hearing that vocabulary around the school i know when kids have been coming in they've been talking about being proactive they've been talking about begin with the end in mind which is nice those are some of the lessons that she's been working with so that whole lingo is starting to get in there with our students and they're starting to really understand and live the leader in me life which is a great start to where we're going and our motto is to go slow to go fast all right enrollment in attendance for october 13th through today so our total enrollment is up to 231 um our average daily attendance is 93.41 and we just added three
005new students within the last couple of weeks and then we have i believe three more that are coming in so if we lose one or two then we're gaining so we're up one from where we were last month so we lost two but now we're up up three so positive one which is nice um continuing on working together so um brandon goldnick who is our town manager and olivia savage who works within the town they came to judge our door decorating contest that we had during red ribbon week and the final day of it was on the 29th of october and so all the classes participate in the theme-based anti-drug decorating door decorating contest um they had some type of message that had to do with anti-drugs and um we had set up i think
006brandon and olivia were a little overwhelmed because i created a being a teacher an educator of course i created a six-point rubric that had four scales and so the i told him originally it would take him about 20 minutes to judge all the doors it was about an hour and 40 minutes by the time they were done and they really took it serious which was nice they had a lot of time here and then they narrowed it down to three winning doors um they had one that was just a great door which is actually miss smith's up in the library this was her door right here and then let me go back sorry and then and then we had two other doors we had in um miss kay's class in sixth grade they had a
007great harry potter theme including music and floating candles and then in kindergarten we had um a don't huff and don't puff don't do um that stuff it was a whole three little pigs theme and the the winnie motto on there that i think that it was drink water not soap or yes and so it just cracked me up and made me laugh in the minds of kindergartners and where they're coming with but it was really nice to have brandon and olivia here and spend part of the day with us on the 29th to get to see some of the festivities that are going on at school um oops i'm going the wrong way now all right so again i mentioned there because we're working on that building community piece brandon goldnick and olivia came seventh
008grade students we met with the budget advisory committee today to talk about our budget with um some members of our community um continuing our monthly conversations with chief spaulding about fire safety when we talked we because of covet obviously they can't come into the schools to be able to discuss fire safety so we're hoping for the spring um but it's great to have that communication between our fire department and our school and then the last thing that's pretty awesome and this builds us through the whole state of vernon vermont not just within our own community is so the state of vermont had a name um the plow truck contest and so we were one of one of the winning entries and so we have big bessie which is named for weatherfield school so we have
009our own plow that will be coming here and um they're going to do the dedication next wednesday on the 17th so we'll get to have a picture ops with big bessie so really excited about that um i i'm just like again just something different um that i've never experienced before so not only did we get a file but i guess we helped to get the name apart no we never had to name a file contest um so or if it was a file maybe it was like i don't know no we didn't have any type of clouds so really it's exciting to have big bessie coming here next week um so we'll make sure that we take lots of photos of big bessie and give the students the opportunity to um see the plow um
010parent teacher conferences we finished up most of them the official days were last thursday and friday where we had um early release days and i'm trying to get a use of that because i keep saying minimum days it's where i came from those moon days they're early release days here the teachers really made a good opportunity to try to reach out to all the families so that they could have a conference and then i know some teachers like our middle level teachers are still using some of that time um i was not a stellar parent and i forgot to book my conferences so mine is now november 22nd the day right before we go on thanksgiving break so met with one of my student one of my kids today on a different and we made
011that into the conference and my daughter's conference so she's nervous now between now and november 22nd so but i she shouldn't have anything to worry about okay so staff joins in on some of our red ribbon week festivities so in the office so um if you guys don't recognize that cowboy that is uh brian woodbury our wonderful custodian and so people when i first got here we they couldn't they decided they couldn't have two brian's in the office because that'd be too confusing so they started he went by he's going by the name woody so as soon as he said he wanted to go by woody i was like halloween costume here we go so you're gonna be woody for halloween and everybody told me there's no way he's going to dress up he dressed
012up and so bj was bo peep woody was woody and then he even had the little pull string he had a ring on his back so we could do that the only thing i couldn't get him to do was say that there's a snake in my boot but i worked on it but we had a great time being able to dress up and i know the students did too so students in all grades have the opportunity to dress up so k through eight we're we're one large family um these two kids happen to be mine i always know that they're photo cleared so i can use them um so students were creative in their class yeah charlie brown and lucy students and staff had a great time and we even had one student in fifth
013grade that dressed up as mimi open which was pretty awesome it was did you get a picture um bj has i think bj got the picture but we we shared yeah because she shared something with jean marie so that was awesome that we were able to do that um here's some more staff members and other people that got to to join in um i believe that is mrs small that's mr o'brien up there and then there's the office crew and then i was i was buzz and then emily it was the one that was rex there in the middle um and then um that's that's shadow our panther there we're never sure who shadow is our mascot and then one of the amazing things that um the students or that students do what laura berry
014does for pe is she puts on an incredible incredible obstacle course and so i and that last picture there where there was my daughter she broke her arm we went to go teach her how to play she went to go learn how to play ice hockey was on the ice for like five minutes program long story but you know it is what it is and so her first day that week she just had the cast on was to do this obstacle course so i asked her so so what happened to p today and she's like well you know they had an obstacle course and i said well how was it and she's like eh it was okay no the thing was amazing she had lights in there she had blow ups in there she had
015video games in there so it was an incredible pe opportunity so we do have a video that we'll share out later of the actual obstacle course and laura does this all on her own and spends hours on the weekend before just to prepare for the kids and it was the most extraordinary obstacle course that i'd ever seen in my entire life so i was so impressed and what she did and what she did for the kids so i'm gonna get home that day with my daughter i'm like what are you talking about that thing was amazing she's like well i didn't get to do it so it wasn't that amazing to her so she has something to look forward to next year all right i'm still working on our mission vision core values so we're
016working on that student and community input that's going to be part of our subject for community with our next coffee talk so that's actually going to be november december because our next coffee top talk isn't scheduled till december 1st because it's usually the last wednesday of the month but we're in um on thanksgiving break trying to finalize that and then we'll hopefully by december we'll be able to present it still it's a work in progress but we're getting there so but it's something important we want to make sure we do it correctly because it's something we're gonna work with okay so here's my new thing all right so we have a space upstairs next to the library that is seldom used and that is our computer lab so computer labs and schools aren't typically in
017existence anymore and so i think you guys probably remember when i interviewed back in february we talked a little bit about maker spaces and bringing the whole steam education within um to weathersfield so what i would like to do is to start taking a look at building a makerspace into that space we can look at where we can fund it from how we can do it but to give us a little bit ideas of what exactly we can do so for those of you that don't know what a makerspace is it's a place where people with shared interests especially in computing and technology they gather together to work on projects sharing ideas equipment knowledge so it's an awesome opportunity for our kids it would bring us up to that next level so what's nice is
018tara smith our librarian a media clerk she's already been starting to look at it because i started planning that seed with her um about two weeks ago she's already taken a workshop or two workshops she's already started to dive deep she's gotten some ideas we had jim taft from the su come over to take a look at the space to see what we can do we also have older computers in there that are about seven to eight years old so i would like to be able to wipe those clean and give them out to families in need so they can use them so they can we can put them right back into our community but those aren't being utilized at school so it's a big space up there that is basically not being used um
019so i have tons of information there's benefits of maker space i'll share this with you as far as um different articles on it on it and then we're starting to talk to some companies so we'll have a little bit more plans developed before next time if that's something that we want to start taking a look at to see if we want to go in that direction okay i may have a couple of things to donate too okay awesome so um and then here's actually this so these are articles in here and then here's one of the the companies that does do some makeup face so this is basically just a couple formats of some furniture so they gave some ideas we'd obviously have to dive a little deeper into what we want and really take
020a look and measure the space and these are just some different labs or maker spaces that they've set up i also want to you know we've checked in with um because heartland has one and so does windsor they have a space we looked at those and then also claremont as i drive by they have a public maker space and then to be able to take a look at that one as well to see what we can do and then i can use my knowledge that i have from california with building a couple maker spaces to be able to see what we can how we can do it and so it would be something that would benefit all of our students here at school k through 8 which would be nice because right now that lab
021is just not being utilized at all and then it's just it reaches those students that don't always learn a traditional way um upcoming events veterans day celebration is this thursday if you get an opportunity to go there it's at the square in perkinsville at 11 a.m um hopefully it won't be too cold and i've narrowed my speech down so it should be less than 10 minutes um because i was told to judge it by how much what the weather was going to be like um early release day is um november 19th and like i said before we're going to discuss the leader in me thanksgiving holidays coming up and then our next virtual coffee with lead learner me will be on december the first okay and then we have started to record those sessions as
022well so i can give you the i'll attach the link to this one um when i share out my presentation with you guys all right that is it for the board report for today thank you all right next up we have the superintendent report david yeah brian i sent you mine i i sent your mind uh i can do it either by sharing my screen or if you want to do it like you did yours brian absolutely let me get on to my email and i can share with you and i sent it to your to your email mine is not quite as exciting as brian's uh the truth is i love to listen to the principal reports because it's all so kid-based and also you know just you know friendly to to what's going
023on in the buildings and there's just so so much exciting stuff that goes on even in the middle of this crazy uh pandemic time i think teachers have made you know they've really made the most uh they've made the most out of it to be honest with you did you find it brian it's buffering so just give me a second here okay there we go you got it i got it you can you can share your screen there you go okay great so we are in november believe it or not covert update real simple uh less quarantining in general um if you just hit enter brian each bullet will pop in we are dealing with the winter athletic protocols and excuse me i do have a cough i've had a cough for a while it's
024one of the reasons i'm not there but i have been tested negative for covet so it's not covered it's it's just a bad cold it's going around um we've been working with the athletic directors uh we are going to have a sports season in each of our districts um there's not going to be a lot of sharing that has to go on the numbers are strong i see jessica here tonight i don't know if we is that later on on the agenda uh an update yes i think it is yeah so jessica can talk more about her numbers uh uh we we're going to start the high school athletic program um december 6th right after uh right after the break uh i'm sorry yeah right after the november 29th sorry and then the 7-8 program
025will start on december 6th and then we will start our k-6 folks we just need a little bit of time to work out logistics within these buildings and you know especially at the k-6 level just to just to be clear about are we going to go by pods so we're going to hold off and start that on january 4th or 5th right after we get back from vacation so high school starts on november 29th then middle school on december 6th and then um and then k to six in all of our buildings will start after that um we we will put together an athletic covert handbook it's already almost done uh and uh you know we had a few things we had to work out about uh you know masking and you know whether we're
026going to have spectators or not we haven't decided yet completely on on middle school and elementary high school we're going to have very kind of limited spectators so we'll you know we'll see how that goes um but jessica can fill you in more maybe when she uh talks a little bit later on test to stay uh we're just now waiting for the test kits to arrive in the buildings uh and uh we are um your parents have to secure permission online to be enrolled in test this day uh you'll be getting more information on this toward the end of the week but i think we'll pr once the kits arrive hopefully by the end of the week we can start as early as next monday and what test to stay does i think you all
027know this anyhow that essentially it really prevents a lot of the quarantine for those unvaccinated kids they can test on day one three five and seven with the antigen test and as long as that test is negative they can stay in school so the hope is to not have to quarantine any classes as i said we've done a lot less quarantining in general anyway and that's thanks to administrators you know teachers families who who are just following the protocols and i think it's really working i'm listening to some districts around us uh and uh there are some districts where it's it's a nightmare and there's still a lot of quarantining uh going on so i'm proud of our staff next bullet i think uh brian if we hit yeah vaccines for kids i've sent out
028a lot of information on this um uh in my email blast essentially uh weathersfield is open on november 22nd and december 13th so we've got some time to plan uh it's a two dose shot so that's why we've got two dates set up for these vaccines um right now i'm working with the nurses on uh because they threw a little bit of a curveball at us and they instead of making these closed sites just for our kids they opened them up as public sites so they're working on it on their end we don't know if we're gonna have to handle a couple of folks from public but right now there are still slots available at all three of our district sites and uh and our nurses and principals will work out a good system for
029getting these kids gently and professionally down to the vaccine area we don't do any of the vaccinating the department of health does it but it was an opportunity to just bring the vaccines closer to us we think that there are going to be some shortages of the pediatric vaccine and these doses are going to become limited so that's why we jumped on early so that we could open up our sites there's also a public site from 12 30 to 4 at the windsor school november 19th and november and december 17th i'll put this out again on friday to everybody but that's a public site for adults boosters and kids so if you didn't want to let your child have their vaccine without you present you could sign up for those public sites and take your
030child with you and of course any child that's getting a vaccine we consider that an excused absence and we've already had several kids late to school because they're getting their vaccines and and we encourage that i know it's tricky for parents because at those young ages it's only an emergency use authorization and there are some i'm sure some parents that are going to be cautious about this but we'll take our time we'll do what we can to at least make it uh available and then um and then after that we'll see whether or not we need to do more after the holidays because we'll we'll we'll continue to provide whatever our communities want us uh to provide and we've gotten a lot of good feedback on this from from our parents and from our public
031uh next slide brian surveillance testing is probably not that should say not going to happen we just can't do surveillance testing and test to stay at the same time quite frankly over 90 95 plus you know other than the few people who are on religious exemptions everybody is vaccinated adult-wise uh 62 percent of our high school kids are vaccinated over 50 percent of our middle school kids and we're hoping to get our elementary school kids so i think the surveillance testing will be moot with test to stay that that's my hope next slide brian our anti-racism task force still continues to chug along we're starting to transition to what i think is a diversity equity and inclusion uh uh task force um certainly racism and anti-racism is critical and we want to make sure we're
032we're uh we're alert to all those factors that that lead to the wrong you know to the wrong understanding of of sort of racist activities but but the bottom line is uh we also realize that uh we have a lot of areas especially in vermont where diversity uh equity and inclusion are critical uh you know i i know oftentimes katie hearn says that her job basically as a special ed director is to make sure that you know that kids are included included in in whatever they can be included in and that that's what we want we've always been an inclusive school district in vermont and we want to continue to do that but that task force still meets we're taking the policy now and we're adding action steps uh two uh two uh ten uh
033ten indicator points that uh dr crum pulled out of the policy and we should have that ready i think for the supervisor union board if not by november 22nd certainly in december and as brian said i think with our anti-racism task force work and our anti-racism work in general we're going slow to go fast we just think we want to be careful as we roll uh all of these pieces out there's also a large group of us who are working with dr lavelle brown who's a superintendent in ithaca new york he's been a superintendent uh for about 14 years working with diversity equity inclusion he's a internationally known speaker and we've got the we've got the benefit of having access to him for an hour and a half or plus per per month uh and
034that's been that's been great because he he's able to show us and teach us uh how to implement uh you know diversity in our school district without alienating people he's been really working hard at doing that um and if you ever want to listen to any of his his he you can just google him and a lot of his youtube videos will pop up but he he's done an excellent job with us next slide brian the budget overview local budgets are in the early stages of development brian's going to kind of give you an overview tonight of where we are with the weathersfield budget and then the next bullet brian is uh the su budget we had our final meeting with the su budget committee uh jamie turner has been a great member of that
035committee she's been faithful to i don't think she's missed a meeting we've probably met five or six times and we had our final meeting last friday i think we're going to have a recommendation to the su board on november 22nd um uh you know the the assessments uh are i think i'm biased but i think they're reasonable i think especially katie hearn did a great job this year with a special ed budget to try to keep that within a reasonable increase um probably half of what it's been in the past so i really think that we do have a few decisions we have to make on the 22nd uh including and the su board members will recognize this but including how we're going to bill out for the food service program and we and the
036committee had a a very healthy discussion about this and decided that the food program really the issue board has to decide how they want to build that do they want to build it by adm or do they want to build by equalized people and we're going to give you the pros and cons of both and then the board can make the decision but thanks to that committee for the hard work uh on that budget next slide brian the essa forums you could see tonight brittany and angie finished the last s3 virtual forum tonight we had one amount of scottny one in heartland and one in weathersfield i think we find in general and i don't think this is surprising given where people are today in the business of their lives that uh you know the
037forums are not always uh as well attended we'll probably try one more shot at some kind of uh you know some kind of feedback that britney and angie and i will will certainly talk about with the administrative team but we've we've already gotten we got some good feedback on the last survey and we've gotten some good suggestions at these forums and i just thank brittany and angie for all the work they put into that and all the sessions well i think at least two of them recorded i know we recorded the weathersfield one and did all three of them get recorded angie yeah angie's saying yes so we'll get those recordings up also uh on our website so that people can at least get the overview of so3 i think a lot of what we
038want to do is dispel the rumors that started early on when this federal money became uh available uh there were numbers being thrown around in all three of our communities uh you know what are you gonna do with the 14 million i heard 14 million i heard 40 million the truth is it's it's about four million dollars with all of that esser one two and three and the uh in the earlier version of the art money so um you know not we don't to sniffle it four million dollars that's going to help us and as angie said tonight that that money takes us right through uh 2024 is it a 25 angie september 30th 2024 okay good so that's a good use of money and last slide i think brian uh negotiations yup um and
039i don't know if jackie made it here or not tonight i know she was uh gonna be a little bit late but she's been again a very active member of the negotiating team she does not miss negotiating sessions or meetings uh the teacher mediation we're going to come back to the mediation table again in december the mediator felt that we were close enough to try one more time and i i agree i think we are close enough to try one more time because after mediation if we can't mediate an agreement then it really becomes a little bit more costly and a little bit more aggravating to be honest with you on both sides with the teachers and uh with administration because you have to go to fact-finding you wait 10 days for the fact-finding report
040to come back i i won't get into all the details but it it's a very cumbersome process and quite frankly i think you know uh our school boards are very teacher friendly and our teachers deserve a contract and we want to try to get we want to try to get to that point where we can and what we're trying to do is more than a one-year deal i think both teachers and administrators and board members quite frankly are tired of coming back year after year after year to the table it wears on everybody's um emotions and and and climate and attitude and i think we've been you know we've been fighting through a difficult time and having a contract will i think you know boost morale so i'm trying to look at the glass half
041full and be optimistic and we'll see what happens i think it's december 11th but don't quote me on that and then last bullet brian i think is the support staff um again barb thomas is the lead negotiator she actually happens to be working this year in in wethersfield uh the board is prepared we have our proposals we have our salary proposal all of our language proposals not a lot we want to keep it simple and again our support staff deserves a contract and we want to try to deliver that to them so i'm going to stay optimistic about the support staff contract as well i told barb jokingly the other day when i was at weathersfield i and bj2 is really instrumental in helping on the on the support staff side but i'd love to
042see a couple of negotiating sessions and we're done uh and again maybe i'm being too optimistic but uh at least the support staff right now have a contract through june 30 and we'd like to negotiate that contract uh uh so that we have numbers to put in our budgets and we also uh have uh a a more content staff that knows that they have a contract i think that's the last slide brian if you click it goes back to the powerpoint yeah you can just take that down if you want if there are any questions i'll certainly answer them if not that is uh that's that's my report that's what i that's my story and i'm sticking with it okay um i don't see any questions if anyone has a question raise your hand computer
043hand not your physical hand okay i don't see any so um we'll move on to items for discussion and first up is winter sports and i see jessica's here so i'm going to turn over the mic to you hi everybody so david covered it i think mostly i just wanted to give a quick recap on the fall we had 139 fall athletes that's with cross country and soccer combined 18 coaches and volunteers um i think 139 just speaks volume with what is our total 231 brian um that's just pretty significant number of athletes we will be having winter sports as david said and we've been working to try to figure out how that looks i know that elementary athletics likely won't start until after january middle school will be starting december 6th as david said
044with just practices for the month of december with their team and then hopefully starting games in january and we will be opening up registrations this week closing them the week after thanksgiving to get a number we're not sure what our numbers look like for junior high yet um but hopefully i think our i know our girls teams look robust and like we might have to split into two teams because we have enough numbers our boys team we might have to combine with some windsor athletes so other than that we're looking good for hopefully a smooth winter season [Music] okay and then next is the does anyone have any questions for jessica oh christian what's up hey jess um so did we cover and i think i was getting mixed messages from parents about spectators have
045has have we determined what's going on with that yet or is that still up in the air great question kristen so for right now just for practices for the month of december for junior high it'll be just um athletes and coaches only hopefully we'll be able to reevaluate that in january but as of right now just the practices are closed practices so come play leave and then we'll reevaluate in january after the holiday season okay yeah if i had to give an opinion not that anyone asked but if i will take it yeah um and i don't know if board members have an opinion or if i'm the only sports fanatic um i read the guidelines i think it was like the end of october right that it came out and um i mean it
046says like if there aren't any major outbreaks and i don't think weather shield has had any i don't i mean i then i would expect that we could even maybe allow in january or february some of our younger kiddos to play other teams i mean i don't know how other people feel about that but i'm just throwing it out there that if we i mean if especially if these younger kids can get vaccinated um then we shouldn't hinder them from being able to to play other teams that people watch yeah kristen i think that that's the plan um where david correct me if i'm wrong we're we're going to have a sports program for the k through 6. it's just going to start late unfortunately um and i think we're going to use the middle
047school as kind of our yep let's see how it goes we're definitely playing other teams i've already scheduled other teams starting in january for junior high i've already scheduled other teams for k-6 actually um in the hopes that we'll be able to play those so everything's already like planned and ahead of time so if we are able to do that we would love that and then i just i don't think it's necessary for us to have spectators at practices but should we get to the point where we are hosting home games i would really love to have some some or very limited number of home spectators what some other schools are doing is permitting sorry um my kids are barking um is there permitting um just home parents families there so i i actually have
048a meeting tomorrow with springfield chester ludlow cavendish and i'm blinking the last school but we have a meeting tomorrow night to talk about what it kind of looks like for the other schools so i'll have a little bit more information on uh what other schools and area schools are doing that we play for the k through six level yeah and jessica i would say let us know you know how you make out at that meeting too because it would be helpful for us because you tend to you tend to organize with a little bit of a different group of teams you know that tend to head that way then heartland heartland does would be good i don't know whether you got the message the other day that um you know we are going to allow
049our kids to play new hampshire teams too i because originally we were saying maybe no but did did you get that word there yeah i got that for junior high and i've scheduled um actually scheduled junior high games with plainfield so all right good yeah so kristin i think that those are great questions and i think what we want to try to do is just see what the holidays bring get the practices under our belt i mean it's definitely going to be a program barring some kind of a crazy outbreak and then really it'll be a question of how comfortable are the you know other principles essentially with uh you know additional adults in the building spectators in the building i i i think the compromise will probably be with some some especially at the
050middle school level some limited uh number of spectators but uh you know our kids are ready and i think our parents are and i could even hear it in your voice kristin people people are ready to get back people are ready to get back to some semblance of of normalcy but uh but again we have to the thing we have to keep in mind that was different from outdoor athletics is that you know it does start to open up buildings to the public again and i know that we have we still have some compromised you know staff members we still have a bunch of kids that aren't vaccinated and i mean i don't wanna i i certainly wanna stay away from the hype of all this but but i think we'll i think we'll just
051watch it and uh i think you're you know i'm glad you spoke up because i know i've heard heartland had the same question windsor you know you know even with limited spectators you know i mean windsor is a sports town right and they would they would jam that gymnasium if they could and and so we're just trying to be reasonable and compromising and honor on of that athletic tradition but without compromising our school day right i mean that that's the hard part but but i think i think we'll work it out and jessica has worked really hard to i think once we see those numbers too it'd be great if we could get those numbers up again that would that would be good hey thanks so i just have a few comments to you know
052piggyback off of what kristen said and and what's been being talked about so as a parent um i really hope it would be interesting to see what other schools are saying about their visitor policy for other um for visiting families coming to games so i think that's important when we relay that information to our athletes and parents of athletes that we sort of include that like other schools are other schools aren't because i think some people think it's just our school that's not allowing that right so i've already heard that like you know you know can you believe it we're not going to be able to go watch our kids play sports blah blah blah i'm like let's be happy we're playing basketball so i think that's sort of something for whoever makes that announcement
053you know to sort of keep in mind um on the flip side of that if i'm going to drive my kid a half hour to a sports game and then sit in a parking lot while they play their hour game like that's a little discouraging we don't have buses to you know bus our kids to away games so [Music] i think that's another thing as we're making our decision to sort of keep in mind like you're gonna have a parking lot full of people that can't come in and watch your kids that are just sitting there totaling their thumbs especially in some of these towns that have nothing to do so those are sort of my comments as we you know work on this and you know figure out our game plan yes that's great
054that's great thanks for sharing some areas that were able to participate last year um rec centers because we weren't we're not we're in that weird bubble of wreck versus school area rec center is actually live streamed their games for the visiting teams that were not they they actually weren't permitting home or away spectators at any of the games just the kids so i thought that was a really nice option i know ludlow did that and springfield did that so i'm hopeful that if we aren't allowed to have spectators at away games that something like that will be an option so just just know we are thinking about it and we understand parents are driving and dropping and not being able to see and cheer but if we're able to at least live stream it that's
055better than nothing yeah and jessica the only other thing i'd say and those are those are good comments jess i will tell you that we tried to get the superintendents in the southeast region on the same page but that's like herding cats i mean it just it didn't work really well for and your point is a very good point like in woodstock even at the high school level they're having no spectators nobody's getting in that gymnasium at least till january at the end of january and then you've got hartford just down the road a piece and hartford's letting everybody in the gymnasium so it runs the whole course and we're trying to find that that middle ground to some degree and what we have said in our coveted handbook is that we follow the home
056team rules right so if the home team says no visiting spectators then there are no visiting spectators for home games i agree with jessica i think if a parent is going to bring a kid to to a game you know that we'd like to be able to have that parent not have to wait out in the car you know while that game's going on so stay tuned and we're going to try to get this together you know you know sooner than later uh meredith kelly hi y'all um i just wanted to add i i wonder um i have older children and i'm happy to send them into the school unattended but i'm curious on folks who have younger children how they're going to feel comfortable um with that decision so that might affect the numbers
057of the younger kids um you know having them go into a parent or somebody they don't know for an hour for practice might impact that um but i'm happy to have it back i just hope all things are considered when making the decision on the k6 as well as 7-8 thanks um any more comments questions okay i don't see any so we'll move on to the budget for fy23 i believe brian has a presentation of course i do all right let's do present mode so it's big all right so here's our proposed budget for the fy23 is that big enough for everybody to see i was not let me do this now hold on all right well i'm going to stop sharing every share pardon me sorry technical difficulty legit that there we go that
058looks better all right so here is our proposed budget for the 23 school year so our budget goal is of course alignment of budget with strategic plan continuous improvement plan and education quality standards for one student success and engagement leader in me comprehensive assessment plan developing of the middle school model co-teaching an interdisciplinary approach to teaching and learning student driven learning and universal design for learning implementation goal 2 culture and student wellness student advisory boards and council we're working on getting student council up and some student advisory boards as far as also with even looking at our mission vision and core values diversity and equity work restorative approaches mtss health and wellness mental health services our school counselor our hcrs clinician and our we are hope and panorama child nutrition at no cost to families
059and just our overall school schedule and so information and communication and we are engaging the community through weekly updates and newsletters through our website through social media if you're not following me on twitter please do um our data dashboard which will be coming soon um limited community events we are planning a community event as far as a where we do a drive through dinner right before our next board meeting and then leader in me as well all right so here is our weathersville school district budget as it's based on from the su for our su assessment so locally 77.5 percent is done here within weathersfield and then the other 22.5 goes through our different costs through early childhood admin and operations special ed and food services all right so this is our overall wages for
060everybody and that number the numbers on here um so wages is one million seven hundred sixty two thousand four hundred and twenty one or about twenty six and a half percent of our overall budget benefits 605's 605 000 95 which is about nine percent and then you can see the comparison between previous years contracted services which is point six seven percent which is forty four thousand and so that stayed pretty static actually went down just a little bit from last year maintenance repair making sure everything's up and running with the school which is 1.7 of our budget or 113 000. transportation love it when it goes down so and obviously that is taken care of by the su primarily and then we do have nine thousand dollars because we do have transportation slotted for next
061year for athletics with the hope that we'll actually be able to visit other schools and not have to have parents driving and waking in the parking lot so we do have money in there but it is nine thousand dollars so it's a small amount but it's in there and then communication insurance and postage which is 35 000 which sounds like a lot to me but as far as what has been going on and that's about half of a percentage and then oops sorry well too quick i got too excited and then tuition this is for our um high schoolers so 9th through 12th grade um and that tuition cost always goes up and that's 31.8 of our um because we have the high school choice so that is 2 is the expected budget for that
062so that's a huge chunk of our budget every year gee this thing is sensitive today um travel expenses pretty minimal 1200 um local assessments 1.4 million almost 1.5 million dollars for 22 of our budget supplies and textbooks and you guys have the breakdown of the okay so all right um about 45 46 000 energy costs and this includes not only our power but it also includes our wood boiler or another boiler our chip to burn so and that's always expensive but that's eighty one thousand miscellaneous equipment about three thousand dollars and that stayed static dues and fees ninety one hundred dollars oh that's our deb did i skip one oh dues and fees i did not add it in there but dues and fees is about 9100 so i missed that one in there i
063apologize i don't know what happened to that slide and then our debt service is um our bill that we still owe on this building that will last for about another seven years and that's and thirty 350 dollars so a grand total of six million six hundred and sixty eight thousand two hundred and ninety three dollars and that breaks down right here so you can see exactly where everything's going a lot of different colors in there and that does say maintenance and repairs it just cuts off weird so it's not that i spelled maintenance incorrectly that gives you sort of a visual there where all the money is going so over half of our money goes between wages and tuition for high school and then benefit system or assessments and then benefits is the next big
064one in there all right so i met with the budget advisory committee and so here's a couple of things um one of the questions that came up is their field maintenance in the budget to maintain playing fields for sports there's a small amount in there um our fields are in pretty good shape and so we are usually able to take care of that locally athletics are we combined with other districts for teens no we're not we are still we are just weatherfield teams this year which is awesome um and so one of the things on the detailed budget we have about twenty five thousand dollars in um substitute costs for substitute teachers and someone asked if we really need that much that is about the average cost over the course of the years of about
065twenty five thousand dollars last year i think um when we talked about we used about fifth was about fifteen thousand i think they said today when we talked to ed it was about fifteen thousand we used but it's also harder to get subs right now because the cost of a sub is a hundred dollars um so we can get subs early childhood numbers for this year those numbers were 20 i think we had 21 students in the early childhood for that amount of the money um right now we missing two pair of educators for general ed and right now they're not in the budget so one of the suggestions was to possibly add those back in there they would like to make sure that we add a world language position back in the budget which
066i know is a goal of ours as a board and a school want to know about the projected class sizes for fy23 um hopefully we're going to keep the class sizes about the same we've already had that discussion a little bit and i do have a proposal for class sizes where we should be keeping our numbers about the same i would like to add on that because we're missing a third grade teacher this year to make sure we add that teacher on for fourth grade for next year so that we can give those students a little bit of a break and so we may have an increase um of one teacher so we're gonna probably have to lock that in there so this is like i said it's a rough draft um they'd also looked
067at saying let's add drama in the budget as far as drama production not drama like chaos um that exists already yeah so um and then equity and after school programs um transportation be offered so if we're asked we're offering um after school programs and with kids have to travel back to school it should be offered um that was a good question um cost of electricity is there any cost savings from solar and as i was explaining to that our solar was actually that we didn't purchase the panels but we are getting a reduction of about 10 to 15 of our electricity cost on those so thank you for that clarification questions on food services i said food services was amazing because it really is um i also comparing it to california but what they are
068able to serve our kids and we still have that farm to table initiative so that we're using local vendors for our food and it is all cooked lunch is all cooked here breakfast is some of the prepackaged stuff but not so bad but um my daughter swears by the strawberry bagel she loves those snacks and then um what is the charge of the bc um really just to help me with that budget process to be able to give me that insight which was some great information today by being able to discuss that with our budget advisory committee and then be able to share that information with our community to make sure that they know what we're doing here at school i think it's been great that we've been so transparent as far as exactly what's
069going on and sharing all the wonderful things we're doing here at school i know that was fast but all right questions so i'm going to quit sharing so i can see people's faces [Music] we are like right now currently we're one percent above last year that number could fluctuate and become a little bit more if we add some of those extra positions but we can we can look at those and make some adjustments there were a few comments in the chat and a question okay um okay well jessica our athletic director is very excited to have the possibility to have athletics transportation have been back into the budget yeah that's a possibility yep uh meredith kelly asked how many fifth grade teachers are budgeted for the next year two and um kelly o'brien how much
070did the budget go up from this year so that's currently about yeah it's about one one percent little over one percent like one point two percent or something it's really yeah it's it's a 1.44 does anyone else have any questions david had his hand raised and then becky okay david yeah first of all i i again i don't want to give him too big ahead but brian has really done a great job getting his hands around this budget and being a first year vermont principal you know kind of working through all of this you know with ed and uh and and even having that initial meeting with the budget advisory committee and i think the news generally i mean we we're not going to know so those numbers come in with you know i think
071it's good that we look at the expenditure budget first before we look at you know uh you know tax rates because sometimes tax rates are affected by things we have no control over you know we've we've learned that over the years um but i will say that that that one to two percent increase 1.44 which you know could become two once contracts have settled and you know trust me it's probably not going to go down it's probably gonna go up a little but and that's also conditional on us being successful in budgeting with those sa3 monies right now i think it's two of the teachers at weathersfield to help protect those class sizes are being budgeted through the essa grant and the plan is to continue to do that you know and that's and and
072weathersfield is not the only school that we did that but i you know so i think we'll be able to do that as as we go forward um i just think we ought to you know we ought to meet get the and it looks like you're going to get those answers to the questions the budget advisory committee asked we can also get a tentative number on because we used to do some after-school transportation i think we could we could go back a couple of budgets and see what that cost us um and and uh and just project out but i think the board's probably at their december meeting we're gonna have to get you know pretty serious around the expenditure budget in the detail with that expenditure budget and what we want to add and
073what we don't want to add so that by january i think bj will tell us that somewhere in january this is the crazy part about this you know we have to have that that town report ready to go to print so um yeah that that that's it for me but i just think the initial slice uh that brian did is is is certainly a good one becky um i just wanted to know what the total budget was and maybe uh bj could just mail that to me in the email or something or if there's a form that says uh just so i can put it in the minutes i can share that with you and i just wanted to thank um for helping out she was amazing to help out and then i was able
074to bj also able to be with jean marie too to get some grasp on it but yeah thank you thank you again bj for all your help with the budget um any more comments on the budget questions um one thing that uh just keep adding things to add to the budget but uh one thing that i was that i know a lot of our community members uh were upset about was the cutting of our summer program and um for you know that we give that we have here at weathersfield not to be confused at the summer academy but our weather skills on our program um so i know that that's fairly inexpensive it was around 10 or 11 000 and served uh 20 or more kids i believe um so i don't know if that's
075something that could be squeezed into budget or not uh the one thing i'm always confused about david maybe you can answer this is how does like the i know we had a lot of extra money that wasn't spent from last year's budget because of not having the one third grade teacher and i believe about a couple other positions that weren't built um how are we are we able to do anything with that money or uh or the 5 000 that we saved on transportation for the algebra kids um that money being able to be used for anything else or yeah we can double check that ann marie but i'm pretty sure i think that the end of uh last year right as of june 30th i think you basically broke even i don't think there
076was a ton of carryover i mean brian that might be a good thing for us to reach out to ed and just verify that one more time so there wouldn't be anything to apply to i mean the good news is we don't have to cover a deficit either but we don't have to i don't think we've got much to apply to a uh to a surplus i think those amounts around summer programming though and you know those other issues around transportation i think we're going to find out that even that after school transportation um it wasn't you know it wasn't you know tens of thousands it was it was in like you said anne-marie the 10 to 11 000 range i think we could look at some of that and see if this would be
077the year to put some of that back in [Music] i was actually not talking about last year david but this year like the five thousand that we're saving for the album oh this year oh okay yeah so yeah so so the sorry i misunderstood yeah so this year those savings i mean we could certainly look like when we get the second quarter financials we could look at that and then if there are some let's say you've got you're carrying a 200 000 surplus uh you know you could look at you know certainly supplies equipment things like that that you might want to do you know this year that you would could so you wouldn't have to defer those to next year but you can't take the balance from this year and then apply that it
078doesn't it doesn't roll over you have to wait one year so any surplus we have this year won't be applied till the year after next [Music] i don't see anyone's name okay we'll move on to the update about pix pickles and i see diana's here diana are you going to give that update i am thank you anne-marie uh so at your last board meeting you put hicks nickels on the agenda and um after the your last meeting i sent out the application i updated it um to have this current year on it and i had it i sent it out to the staff members uh teachers and support staff personnel bj helped me um i asked her a big favor she could somehow get it out to the towns people i did have a couple
079email from townspeople just wanting clarifying some with some clarifying questions about what's the use for it we had a hicks nichols committee meeting last night and we have one application but we wanted more information so we tonight we do not have anything to present to the board uh we're waiting for some more information on that application we we might be able to present at your next board meeting the application [Music] um also dr baker the committee members asked last night um how how do we know how long we're on the hicks nichols committee because when it was originally mentioned the previous year there was one year two year or three year term how do we know what term we have yeah that's a great question um because i haven't really tracked that hicks nickels i
080i know the bylaws do talk about one year two year and three year terms bj do you know how we might be able to figure that out i think we might be able to look back in the minutes because i thought i remember them saying in the minutes of a meeting when we uh nominated or you know prove the um members that it was uh a term limit with those names okay yeah let's let's brian you and i will we'll look at that diana who's on the committee right now um and here i'm going to get in trouble for mispronunciation of names that's okay it's uh i'll start easy jessica brown uh taro smith will hunter kristen brusso amy beth maine and janine sarah yoso yeah that one close enough yeah i like that so
081then it sounds like six people right so that would mean two of them have a one year two of them have a two year and two of them have a three year you think that's how that works i know you asked me but i'm asking you now but what we need to we need to know who actually has those terms though right right and i know when i i can speak for myself personally when i put my name in the hat as i did i asked for it to be a three-year position but i don't know if it was or not yeah we can go back in those minutes i mean my my guess is nobody's going to fight you for a three-year position and i hope yours was the three-year position because it's just
082you know we need to just have some consistency on that on that committee it just seems like the last year or so it's run much more smoothly you know than it maybe had in the past but it that so we'll we'll find that out and get that information out to the committee members who's up you know for election this year okay thank you [Music] okay up next um oh sorry becky oh i was just gonna say for that the committee the hicks nichols it was also based the terms were based by whether you were a teacher a community member it was like categories too so you wanted to make sure you leave you left like the one two three it was split up between the um categories of the people i just don't remember all
083the categories i just remember teacher and community yeah i recall that too and hopefully that's all in a minute so hopefully we'll get all the information um up next we have a teacher negotiations which i think david already did right so yeah yeah um items for action i don't think we have anything that we need to act on um and then next is setting the next agenda so our next meeting will be the second tuesday and then december [Music] december 14th december 14th so it will be december 14th at 6 30. oh only six okay i was going to have to experience it yeah okay december 14th at 6 pm and um i know um is just still here yet i know we'd like to get another um sports update just to see how things
084are going and how the signups went and everything and what our numbers are are they choosing okay you can let her know yep absolutely um and of course the budget is going to be the big thing for next month that's why ann i leave a lot of time for that budget discussion yeah um so i don't know if anyone else has anything else that we need to add our customer three i'll do that uh update um with davidson okay so that'll be highest yeah okay let me ask your three and with the superintendent's report um does anyone have anything else they'd like to discuss okay so i think we'll leave that then um if anyone has anything later they can email me but i think the budget is going to take uh and then i
085guess next would be executive session so um we'll need a motion to go into executive session to discuss the personnel matter [Music] james making the motion do i have a second kristin seconded