SU Board Meeting - October 25th, 2021

001today i want to call our the regularly scheduled board meeting for october 25th to order and some do we need introductions i don't care so because we'll um changes additions to the agenda i have one edition i sent people an email shortly before this meeting um about a let me see vermont school board association sent out a new required policy for [Music] monitoring requirements of special education and idea and they have that model policy so i sent the extreme skeletal draft of that policy so people can look at it and we'll we can go over that items for discussion when we get there i have a update on [Music] do you have any changes or additions no under my report i'm going to cover a few employment changes in the office we had somebody who

002gave a two-week notice we have a family medical leave so but i'll just i'll mention that when we get to life so i don't think we need a separate agenda okay sounds good um where are we now okay i will take a motion to approve the minutes from september 27th um okay so one of you elizabeth you can make that motion and who called them at the same time was that you scott the political scott yeah yeah i think so so scott will be second are there any changes additions clarifications necessary for the minutes [Music] in favor of approving the minutes from okay anne marie hi colleen spence i davis mcgraw hi elizabeth burrows hi amy turner i mark youngling hi nancy pedra i nicole buck rebecca royson hi scott richardson hi and i am

003in a melon so hi thank you everyone next on our agenda we have public participation on items not related to the agenda and announcements if anyone has any of those i do not see any hands raised moving on the superintendent's report we have a guest and that is where we're going to start and that is mary bannon elizabeth would you like to introduce marijuana yes uh uh this is mary gannon she's over there and the others that's pregnancy the owl will find her yeah as soon as she starts speaking uh mary and i know each other from the social equity caucus of the vermont legislature and where we both work on uh issues related to social equity and i it took me i think probably six months before i realized what you do professionally [Laughter]

004then i heard this happen and i heard all kinds of wonderful things about you um from [Music] various school board members and other legislators and so i and and i think you reached out to me and i had mentioned that we were implementing this anti-racism um uh policy and so we've been talking about how she can help us with things like training our board and helping us prioritize the procedures and and uh um steps for implementation take it away all right also i should say i i emailed all of you uh mary's bio earlier which you shared with me yes hopefully you got it um but okay take it away thank you and that was a little bit late i just remembered you and i had spoken about that which was only last week but

005feels like it was weeks ago so thanks everyone for making some space to welcome me here tonight and um i appreciate the time and what i was thinking was um just on my end i would speak for a little bit i you know have sort of a um kind of a summary and some bulleted points after speaking with elizabeth last week that i think would be most helpful in sort of crystallizing what it is i could do and how it could be helpful and um and then take some time for questions or other comments if people have those or if that's appropriate so i didn't want to be on the agenda for too long um so i first wanted to say uh that yes as elizabeth was saying this is a body of work i

006think of issues of equity and diversity i call it a body of work and a body of practice and i'm pretty intentional about that because i feel like there are a lot of ways that these ideas of equity and diversity are often seen as soft topics that they're not taken as seriously or that there isn't a sense that we have to uh necessarily embed the content or the knowledge into what we're doing in our everyday professional and personal lives and i also feel like there's often um uh sociocultural and other forces that are often um uh using this i the ideas of diversity and equity in ways that are not intended that in some ways i would i don't like to use this whereby right now at 6 30 i can't think of something else

007with this idea of weaponizing the way we that this work gets weaponized and what i'd like to say to people is that if we really you know drill down to it i spent a lot of time today with your anti-racism policy and the procedures and also melissa crumb who's a colleague of mine um and it's really impressive what lives in these documents like there's so much good here in richness and very much sort of positive uh you know uh ideas and ways to think about how we move the needle forward so i want to say that at the outset um and i think we are also very particularly when i know you are as school board members that we are at a particular moment where we have a lot of of um of misinformation i

008would i would call it and i would also say mischaracterization and just a lot of concerns about what it is that's happening in public education across the board um so what i want to do tonight is share a little bit with you about what i think is really powerful about school boards taking up this work why i feel like it's essential when we look at also the ways that school districts and school leadership and then how it trickles down to faculty and into staff and into special educators and the cafeteria workers and students um you know i think this work really shapes and impacts everyone's um experience in schools and school districts one of the exciting things in my field and my work right now is um i feel like in the state of vermont

009there's been a lot of energy in the last several years around school boards really taking up this conversation there's been um lots of efforts in schools for in vermont for you know several decades to think about ways of integrating curriculum or looking at recruitment and retention of diverse candidates for these positions um in school districts um so there's been sort of pockets of that but what i do feel like is happening in the state is that there's this real concerted effort to create a network across school districts um i've been very fortunate to work with the hartford school board and i'm also um working with the superintendent and their new equity coordinator i've worked in burlington i have worked in brattleboro uh waterbury so i've been able to sort of build a picture of what

010it means when collectively in the state like ours this work is happening in school districts and where people can exchange resources and really press kind of cross-fertilize with each other which i think is really powerful and um i definitely feel that this district given what you already have uh as i said earlier with these really powerful proclamations and then this list of procedures and then also looking at melissa i didn't read all of the full summary but i will um and also that you brought jameson and as well who's also a dear colleague of mine that you're positioned really well to think about what the next step is you know oftentimes what happens is i will enter a district and there's none of this in place so we're really starting at this bottom you know

011at the bottom of the barrel and uh i think it's exciting that there's some really powerful opportunities here so one of the things that i like to start with when i do work with boards is i feel like our own education is really essential is to have a collective conversation with a board with board members about what your core values are in your work collectively as school board members and also just individually what keep what brings you to this work as a school board member and to begin to see how your core values of what you care about and what brings you to doing this work that's laborious and not paid to begin to see how it's really aligned with the ideas of equity and diversity there's a real alignment with these ideas of how

012to how do we create learning environments in school communities where everyone who is engaged in those places can be welcomed and that's not just with students i really feel that way with staff i feel that with faculty school leadership that everyone feels like they can bring their full selves to a school district so we spend a little bit of time if you know so if i were to paint a picture of you a particular session what we i'd like to talk about is to have you some time give you all some time to talk about the core values of your work and then begin to see where it's aligned with these pieces that you have already outlined and then begin to and dive into yourselves a little bit and think about how do i understand

013these actual issues of equity and diversity and how do i define this language like what does it really mean are we only talking about racism are we only talking about gender identity you know is diversity the same as equity so we spend some time really building some clarity around that um and again this i offer this template but oftentimes there is some of these conversations that have already happened amongst awards i don't know that's the case here but we could certainly um you know adapt this as depending on where you're at in your own conversation and one of the reasons why i think board education and sort of doing some of the self exploration if you will or these conversations is how it really models for the rest of the district that you are also

014engaged in this work and one of the things i have found when i have worked in districts which is not so much the case but years ago it was really hard to get to school boards like there was oftentimes like a principal would call or a special educator would call and say that they needed help but it was hard to get a school board to understand why they should be involved in this conversation so i feel like it's really important in terms of like how it gets embedded into the fabric of the district but i also think it's really powerful when school leaders and teachers parents like all your stakeholders see that you're also having the same conversation and that you are also committed to understanding how you are situated in this conversation so so

015i think there's great value in that which is why i think it's also essential um the other piece of the work really is to take this work that you've already crafted and begin to see what um where can be implemented and i know that um you know through your work with jamison and melissa that you really allayed a lot of the found of the groundwork for this and you know what i would want to do is as i look through for example the anti-racism procedures what i see are um some low-hanging fruit like things that you could really get at sooner and then other things that might take more time that you'd have to build on one of the things i always say and elizabeth we know this because we listen to it on sec

016and we know it just from our work is that engaging in equity diversity conversations and work in the school district in the community is really a marathon it's not a foot race it takes a lot of time it takes energy you're asking people particularly homogenous communities and it's not a situation where i feel like people need to feel badly about this or feel um some shame around it but what most of us who are in homogeneous communities have never really had to think about this or don't have to think about it in our daily experience right so it takes some time to really build what i describe as like our own literacy our own language um on how around how we talk about these issues and how we um think about how to implement this

017work into the school district so i see this as sort of like a long-term sort of ongoing process with you all where you're laying all these different aspects of equity and diversity particularly from your policy and your procedures which are so again really um specifically articulated onto all aspects of the education all aspects of the district and i feel like particularly the policy really gets at that because you're not only just sort of talking about like governance or hiring you're really also talking about curriculum you're talking about school climate so i found that to be incredibly comprehensive um let's see so so again i think if i were to just kind of get to logistics oftentimes what i say to school boards is i think two sessions is helpful because that first session can really

018be about you as a collective board getting a sense of how are you speaking with each other about this where are you as colleagues around your comfort level your understanding of the language your understanding of these two documents and also melissa's recommendations um and to kind of build that platform with each other and in the second session it's really getting more like what does it mean for us in the positions that we're in to begin to roll these different um procedures and the policy out that have been described here um i want to say there's not one formula for this which i think is probably obvious to all of you but um there's lots of ways that school districts do this there's lots of ways that the work can work in subcommittee can be delegated

019there isn't you know one template for that i think there's a lot of design by the district designed by the needs um but again i i really want to say to you all given my experience with a lot of organizations districts state police um if you look at my bio i've worked in a lot of different contexts you have a lot to work with here which i think is pretty exciting and so the questions become you know as we do the board as the board education um begins to take foot where you feel um like you're able to as i said earlier like get to this low hanging fruit and what are the other things that you would need to bring to like this like david you would bring to your admin team to the

020leadership and begin to think how that's getting rolled up and i also want to say i don't want to make assumptions here some of that may already be happening in the district with individual teachers i don't know the district well enough yet but so i'm going to pause and see if there's any questions further or if there's more you'd like me to say at this point does anyone have any questions for mary just quickly i want to add just a couple things one is uh one of the pieces of this uh policy that i was really impressed with um which makes me think that in some ways we can move through some of this work together you know if i were to do this with you um more quickly is you have a whole piece

021in here about definitions and language which is a remarkable and also i'm really impressed with the language that you brought into to that list um and the other thing that i would say is i'll come back to it and you know one of the things that i wanted to say to the board members who are on board we've got sort of a three-pronged approach to this like elizabeth and i explained this to mary right one prong is to go through uh melissa's recommendations and try to come up with some action steps the second prong was really to try to draft an eventual job description for a for a dei or somebody who might coordinate or organize this work but then the third piece which i think is where i'm hearing mary might start was the

022was the board piece was clarity on the board to the development of the board getting clear on the definitions the belief statements uh and all of those things that align from a board level because we haven't really as a board you know other than as we work through the policy we haven't really talked at length about what are the ramifications and implications of having a policy like this and then having you help also shape the administrative agenda to some degree once we we put all of that together so i mean i i mean i'd love to see mary have some time with the board whether it's whether we use board meetings or some you know concentrated time i think that you know i think that could be helpful the only other question i have to

023marry was just in in in working with boards like this i mean typically i heard you say two sessions but obviously it could be more than that but would it could it be incorporated into a board meeting and just have an hour of development time or or would you like them more of an extended period of time yeah so i know that there's public meeting law around this as well right once they get together yeah that's a warning it's a warrant meeting so um what i did i'm thinking of another district i was just in i think somehow they were able to maybe it was waterbury where it was warned but somehow they said it was bored professional development right which kept the public um so my preferences i mean i understand all the and

024i understand you have a lot of other you know things on your plate as well um my preference is to start with a bit of a longer session where we could um you know really begin to i think kind of parse some of this out you get to have some conversations with each other and to really even maybe begin the conversation about where where in terms of these procedures or the um the priorities what are those and you could begin that conversation and then i'm happy to think about we'll do this in all kinds of different ways right like i could come for an hour and you could do other board business you know it's a lot to ask people to come out on another evening or saturday morning so i'm very aware of that

025i think the bulk of the work is really on that up front and then um you can see ways that you all might decide how you want to roll some of that out and do it a different way so that's you know one that i have done saturday mornings which i know it's hard so i don't think there's any good time for people who work 10 hours a day and then have to come somewhere at night or have families i understand that um but i'm pretty flexible around that i do think that there are ways to work around public media although yeah okay we have one person with her hand raised rebecca um thanks for being here mary um i think david um did ask the question um that i wanted to ask because i

026i did want to say that some of us have been engaged in this conversation through the anti-racism committee but it has not been the entire board um and it would be great for the entire board to all be using um similar language when we're talking to our community and um and just being clear with them um so yeah i i um i i think the idea is great and and my question was similar to david's and that is would it be a special um time for sort of like professional development for board members or would it how would that be and fold it into the the time situation [Music] we could possibly have it similar to a retreat right and a poll could go out with several days and times we could find out when

027mary's available and then send those days and times out to everyone and whoever is able to with the most able to attend that is what we would go with and we would just depending on how early or how late and i'm like hey um we would certainly have some snacks so we could have refreshment and sustenance because that always helps with the work yes nikki i think we need to make sure that we include all the board members of all the individual districts as well because um the policies at the su level but all of the board members are going to be responsible for how it gets implemented so i think yeah i developed the district's individual districts need to be on the same page and using the same language and definitions etc so absolutely

028do the doodle poll with everything and when you say every time about like heartland weathersfield yeah windsor and westbrook okay correct or model yeah um i have one quick question that um that i think rebecca um raised i did see something in here about a um community anti-racism committee but you reference something rebecca about a a racism anti-racism committee is that in the district that's the task force yeah it's not a committee right it's a task yeah it's a task force that's made up of some board members some community members uh a lot of a lot of staff and administrators right teachers that's embedded within this district that has representation from all these other schools and that's that's the group that mostly mentions that with melissa okay wonderful great god do you have a question

029did you just call my name amy yeah okay thank you um mary thank you for being here and i heard the word governance during your you were saying and could you could you just expand on that it might have uh i might not have picked up exactly what you were the point you were making um well there's lots of ways i think uh we reference governance in boards and on boardworks i think about the boards that i'm on we talk a lot about governments being sort of processed how decisions get made how policies uh often get crafted and then um you know who's responsible for holding uh the organization of in this case the school district accountable around the policies which i think is an interesting piece that is laid out here somewhere about accountability

030um and then i was also referencing that uh scott in terms of uh which is more i guess human resources i was thinking about you know what is the what are the ways that as a district is putting efforts out to try and diversify in all different kinds of ways it's staff and faculty what are the processes that a human resources department is using to make sure that that's those job descriptions are getting to places that would not typically the outside you know that are outside of school spring for example so that's different than governance but yeah government is more around policies procedure and accountability okay well it got my mind swirling honestly and um i have found it to be quite a conundrum to be a school board member and to simultaneously be concerned

031with governance change and it's something that this that this su has been through with some change but not perhaps not a lot of change and it in my experience doing this work we've board members are largely uh um uphold the laws of the land where they are and and you know and and that being a a champion for change is kind of almost it's it's real i'm not sure it even goes with being a board member frankly um so it's been a personal challenge of mine i would just share i'm not sure that it's even possible to be a board member and and to fight for governance that truly um provides an opportunity for equity in vermont education um you know i'm talking specifically of school choice which obviously and without question serves the most

032privileged um members of the community across the state of vermont there's no doubt about it and you know to to be a board member and [Music] and and find a problem with that is uh it's really a conundrum so is there anything you would add to what i'm saying uh well i feel your pain i guess to start with and i hear this a lot um you know from school boards who are you know again also uh uh you know expect you know your what your charge is is really around um you know fiscal health and also you know the budgets of course but also making sure that policies that are part of the district's you know governance are being enacted and then feeling like you may not have a lot of say in some

033of the larger kind of state uh decisions that get made so i i feel like around the work of equity it isn't a lot of times boards will say to me they're not really sure what we're supposed to be doing with this and it's different than what a teacher is doing right who is or a principal who is committed to equity or trying to bring forward embedding an equity framework what i have found powerful particularly in this given moment that we're in where i feel like a lot of educators and i think school leaders are particularly feeling well incredibly overwhelmed and often wondering if you know who has my back who's really there to support me uh and so i think that if a board can wrestle with these ideas even though it's not always

034a perfect process it's really hard work and then it might push on people's individual ideology or individual feeling about like how who i am as a human being in the world for example or some other kind of personal opinion but the reality is that what we're really talking about the way that i like to frame it is that at the center of the conversation is always the students and how we think about the learning community that we're trying to create and what we want to create is learning communities where kids can bring their full selves and are they able to come into a school and get a full picture of a curriculum that also meets them where they are in a range of different identities or developmental and so you don't necessarily have to worry

035about the day-to-day curriculum but are you supporting a district that is uh taking this forward as one of their priorities and i think that can be a really powerful statement when a board does that and yes i would agree with you scott it's change is hard and these things definitely take time there's no doubt about it but again i think given what you all have already worked on it produces a lot of good foundation here if i might just add on to what scott was saying that if you consider governance and the the question of choice and how that has to do with equity and you bring up the topic of equity in any of the towns in vermont i would say everyone is oh absolutely we need equity and then you bring up the

036idea of choice and this wall comes shooting down and says well not if it has anything to do with my losing choice and so that's that's a very um touchy touchy topic and conversation but it is one that i feel absolutely has to happen in our states yeah thank you yeah i mean in many ways if we just were to talk about privilege and just work from that that is i think really the hard conversation right so people will say oh yes absolutely but then not in my backyard yeah sorry yeah so it's more um to when you were talking about our low-hanging fruit that we can't start with choice because that just shuts the whole all of the work down so we have to start where we are and look at how we're supporting

037a curriculum that yes promotes what yes our values are good thank you scott it's a hard conversation are there any other comments or questions so it sounds like the place to start would be to get some availability from mary and just kind of talk about your parameters and sure even just some of the logistics or the specifics around contracting and how you like to work that out yeah maybe you and i can reach out to each other and figure that out then we'll do a doodle poll see what people think about extended time versus a shorter period of time send out a bunch of dates and see what works for everybody to do this board work and we'll include the other board members as well so it sounds like it's uh it's a plan for

038now um thank you i would even argue when we include the other board members when we're looking like um i think everyone can have equal weight like i don't want to just wait the su board members as like if they can come to the meeting i think everybody that we invite needs to have equal weight because i think that it's just maybe even more important to get the members of the individual boards that are not part of the su board because within this group we've had a lot of anti-racism discussions um not as much as the task force but more so than the individual boards okay thank you nikki okay stare more as i said i think um i mean what's exciting and i i think elizabeth you would agree that you know what what

039we see when we're on those calls that there is this collective um energy and also kind of collective commitment across the state and so you're a good company and um i think your neighbor is ones is it wcsu yes or nbcs yes sir so i i outside does some work over there and you know just feels like there's like a wave that's happening and i think there's a lot of good support and ways of sharing resources particularly among superintendents but i'm not sure that everybody is aware of everybody else i know that's yeah where they were referencing um one of the participants was referencing uh uh their policy that they were implementing and they'd be glad to share it and it was it's just it's the same it was also done by james some people

040yeah they're they're working all over the state but it's not like clearing houses yeah that's sure yeah well i thought it was at some point a superintendent's gathering um so in november they meet monthly and the superintendents yeah the vermont uh school board association and superintendents are having their um conference on the fourth and fifth and there will be a discussion yeah that's a member of a lot of that yeah yeah and level wow excellent oh wow that's great yeah so this conversation has been happening yes oh my gosh the vermont school board association and superintendents association met my gosh four years ago maybe and we've created the definition equity definition i mean this has yeah we've been working for a long time on this it's yeah just as other social events have happened in

041society it's gained yes momentum as well as getting sidetracked yeah well it's interesting because right now uh it could be just be totally transparent i am working i'm contracted with the vermont superintendent's association in the bpa and one of the things that we're talking about is what does this actually look like when you see this teachers say that a lot teachers want to say what does this look like how do i know when this is actually happening right and so we're trying to step forward like some benchmarks around what that could really look like and it's interesting how that shows up in data or not so anyway nice to meet you i'll see you again uh david justin you know if i don't this is actually i'll email you pretty busy actually yeah yeah i'll

042just send out that particular email okay yeah i'm gonna walk her to the elevator and go to the selection i'll be right back moving on with your superintendent's report right so um i'm gonna i'll go over just some general topics uh and then uh we'll we'll save the su budget for the end of my report and then we that goes right into items for discussion i guess so it may all kind of blend here uh we'll see um first of all i wanted to pull up one of the pull up for everyone the financials for the su ed sent me and sent me two attachments that kind of give us a sense of where we are i'm going to share my screen with everyone uh and we'll get that going here hold on just a

043sec make that a little bigger for everyone so this is the central office budget quarterly first quarter to date um and i'll just leave it up there uh on your screen uh you you should be able to see it essentially uh as always ed tends to encumber everything to budget uh and then he did so in the su and this this includes curriculum technology and the superintendent's office so that would be the business office and superintendent's office so essentially uh when all is said and done and i'll send out a copy of this to everyone when we're done here um it shows that we have a surplus of 100 if you go down to the bottom that highlighted part we have a surplus right now early on in the first quarter of 116 and that

044of course if we could end up with a surplus impacts uh it impacts um our our assessments essentially but even more dramatic i think is the special education assessment uh and again if you look at this that's the biggest part of our su assessment is special education and if you look at this you'll see that ed basically encumbered the uh the revenues to budget but as we get down we're really looking at uh a variety of other um a variety of other services uh and i think where you see you know we where you're gonna see some some interesting and not surprisingly but you know our we haven't we haven't been able to hire to of our staff i mean katie is continually looking for uh for um uh staff members so you know that's

045that continues to be a a little bit of an issue but but also i think the way we've organized things like uh speech pathology and uh psych services a lot of those right now and i don't know that they'll stay under budget but they're very much under budget now so if you and and in all fairness to katie she uh ed just got this to me uh over the weekend so that's why i i just didn't even get it to katie yet but that's showing quite a surplus in special education i don't think that'll stay the same i think it's got to be vetted but right now in special education we're showing 826 654 to the good and that's on the on the surplus side so between between the central office business office and tech

046services and special education we're upwards to a million dollars surplus and part of it is because we've been able to put some things uh you know into answer but also because uh as i said the being able to to hire doesn't always uh has been a challenge did you want to yeah i just wanted one thing weird don't wait can you come on you um sorry for the training i'm talking to the owl now um we are just receiving some of the bills that for tuition and out of district kids we are we just got them a couple weeks ago or a week ago so that that will have an impact but staffing yes we're pretty steady or lacking but um that seems to be really late this year getting some of those what what

047it's costing us for kids elsewhere so that should we know what to expect we just haven't seen the actual numbers yet yeah to encumber the pos that's good and katy i see in psych services do you think he's combined a few things there's like that's where we're really over is that that is 604 000 is that just a different model yes so all of the bis seis bcba's school psych all got lumped into psych services what we've done for next year is put it under teachers under support staff under 5171 but it had to do with how the function codes and putting everything in the right spot so i think it'll make sense when we look at the budget but no we don't have six hundred thousand dollars worth of psychologists on the ground it

048would be but i asked the same thing i'm like who was in that line yeah so it had to be anybody who was not it's its function codes were driving who let me get out and stop presenting what katie and i decided because we also uh i think it was mark who asked the question about the summer services and i know we did a brief overview of how the summer academy went we looked at enrollments uh but i i think in our november meeting uh will katie has agreed to do a a more detailed report on where we sit with special education uh this year but i i i think it's uh yeah so so that's that that's that's the plan so hang on tight that was just something that was given to me in

049a preliminary form and i thought we all ought to look at that and i'll send that out to everybody so you'll have it and then november when katie comes back and does a little more financial report on special education and including summer academy will uh you know will will have that um i did want to say that uh we have uh basically the same covered restrictions uh you know and we're still you know we're still quarantining the state let up a little bit on having to quarantine kids who are close contacts outside uh and on school buses it's only kids who share the same seat so that's given us some uh you know and i don't want to jinx us but we've done pretty well with quarantining in the last couple of weeks but the

050bottom line is it's something that's always on our mind and we're always thinking about it i am working with the vermont department of health because as you know the the uh both the booster shots for those who have had the moderna the pfizer uh or the j are available and so there are there's a november date a december date i think a january date for booster shots here locally and i've i've been putting that in my email blast and we're also trying to work with the vermont department of health and the springfield office with heather we need to to set up uh uh clinics for kids the children between the ages of 5 and 11 just to make it a little more approximate a little more convenient for parents to be able to access uh

051a shot for for students at that age of course parental permission only it wouldn't be forced on on anybody but it would bring the shot uh the vaccine to the child rather than having to take the child to the vaccine amy a question on the restrictions and testing and such um and i can't remember if you brought this up before but during one of the recent it might even have been our um the vsba regional meeting the secretary of education um mentioned test to stay so that kids aren't being sent home to quarantine right instead can do the test are we anywhere yeah i can't remember the status of that no it is it is it is a it's available uh there was quite a bit of paperwork the aoe had to do to do

052that because you're actually becoming uh in some ways a state-run local lab because you have to you you actually do the lab work right at the school so yes we are involved in that i put out a few blurbs on test to stay in my email uh blasts that go out every week but essentially we will be participating in that uh the nurses are working hard with uh with myself and uh all the rest of the administrative team and the vermont department of health to make that happen and also lori brown has been instrumental so yes i'd say within the next i'd say i'd like to say within the next couple of weeks i don't want to be too aggressive here that we'll be able to do that and that's so that of all students

053who have been in close contact with a positive case uh would be able to do what's called a rapid test on days 1 3 5 and 7 under the jurisdiction of our nurses and then those results would be processed immediately and if they are found to be positive they'd have to go for the more of the pcr test and if they were found negative uh then they can stay in class so that's what we want to do is we want to keep kids in class that's the essential uh key to this so i really appreciate the work all the nurses have done on that as well um i'll just get through these and then if there are questions we can we can talk about negotiations we're still in mediation with the teachers uh and uh

054we are setting up a date in early december uh to try to finish that process i think we've made some headway on both sides and some clarification bill and scott uh and jamie have been i'm not jamie but um jackie thank you uh too many jays here jackie are on that team and uh and we'd like to bring some good news back to folks in december that we settled and we will be starting with the support staff too they reached out to us we've since reached out to them we have you know basically our proposals uh ready for for that crew too so that's a it's a lot of work but we we've got it done those who want to go to the vermont school boards association conference i know some of you have been

055contacting lori laurie can help you get registered i don't know amy if you wanted to say any more but you heard it's going to be all around equity and anti-racism lauvelle brown who's an excellent he's working with some of us in this district this year he's going to be the keynote speaker but did you want to say anything about that amy um well the sad part is that he hoped for in person like maury it's not gonna happen it's not gonna happen so i have to wait longer to get back to lake morris um so that must have been a recent decision yes yeah that happened like just almost two days after elizabeth had asked me if it was really going to be because it was and then suddenly it wasn't yeah and yeah that's

056too bad yeah because the the state clerks and treasurers had a meeting there were probably 200 people at lake mori granted it was only one day but as far as i know there was no super spreading of anything and they had things pretty well under control but i also understand yeah absolutely and we've had some incredible positive numbers lately yeah so so i get it yeah so do you want to like no if yeah no you'll have to go on line to vermont bsba to see the the schedule but it's a lot more user friendly for those of us who work and or have other meetings perhaps scheduled during the day so it's it will be an easier time of it and the meeting um the psba annual meeting is that going to be virtual

057too yes it's all virtual and we did that last year and going over resolutions and voting on resolutions i think it was probably the smoothest that that has ever happened in my entire time of going to bsba meetings so i think um okay it'll be good so if you haven't reached that now that you know it's going to be virtual if that makes it easy if you just reach out to laurie laurie will get you registered uh and we'll and i'm sure those renewed times like games that are on the on the dashboard at the vspa so that'll be that'll be good yeah and i recommend i highly recommend that people attend and just to hear what is happening across the state because being on the school board is more than just your community we

058are serving all the kids across the entire state of vermont so i hope everyone can go i'm going to be a panelist all right yeah our very own elizabeth is going to be a panelist for one of the workshops so yeah it's it's always a great time so talk to lori um i did want to say last but not least before i before i turn over to the end he's going to give us a quick esser update especially for esser 2 um but i did want to and and then larry's going to walk us through the budget but um i did want to say that we're under a little bit of stress here in the office because we have two people that have requested family medical leave for personal issues uh that are going to

059keep them out of the office for an extended uh period of time um uh in one case it's more intermittent where they're in and out the other case there they're gonna be out for a fair amount of time uh and uh and so that gail who does uh uh who takes care of our payables and and and kylie who is our purchasing agent kylie tagg and then hayden goins who's done such a great job for us she's our payroll uh clerk payroll coordinator uh she uh is moving to maine so she gave her two week notice last week so right now when we're you know luckily there's a lot of cross-training in this office where people can cover for each other so they can keep it going and they will keep it going um but

060in the case of of payroll we had to decide what we were going to do and we we definitely see payroll as as part of an hr function we talked with tina canfield who is our hr coordinator and she is going to cover in the short run for hayden but she also she understands payroll a lot of what aiden does comes through tina anyway in hr so what we thought about is rather than hiring another uh what could in the end be a more expensive payroll coordinator we're thinking about just getting an administrative assistant who can work with dina and probably could do some of the data entry some of the other pieces that tina is doing and then it would be uh we just saw it as an opportunity to be more efficient in

061that office and so you may see an advertisement out there that crosses uh that says administrative assistant that's not a new hire that's replacing uh hayden who is who has given her notice to go to the great state of maine um so i think that's it i'm going to ask angie to just give a quick update on esser esser a2 uh and and sf3 i guess because we've had at least one forum so do you want to talk for a minute about that um i uh have been working on the sr2 budget i have to have submitted by the end of the week a fully budgeted esr2 um application and um so it's we didn't quite spend everything so i've been i figured i'd kill two birds with one stone and get um get uh

062as many of the amendments that i could in there we are we have had some uh savings due to positions that we were unable to fill so um moving some funds around so that we can fund more uh mental health supports um as well as more equity and inclusion uh work um so i will give a full budget um overview in november so if we make sure that i would love to do that also looking at sr1 i'm hoping that i can get esther one fully uh spent and then uh we will be able to free up some funds from sr2 by putting some things in sr1 again realizing some savings there for positions that um well the as the summer academy numbers came in we had some adjustments there you always try to over

063budget a little bit then under budget you don't want to um be caught under budgeted so um those things i am working on arp esr3 brittany and i had the first um forum at heartland we are asking our staff to watch the recording of the heartland forum of course they're always invited to the um weathers field and manoscatting school district forums that are in november on the 8th and the 9th and the arp esser3 plan that we have to submit asks us to have a few things it has more compliance um kinds of things that we have to do which includes uh like for example there's a checklist we have to do that shows different things we've done with our reopening plan reopening because do keep in mind that many schools across the country were

064not back in person unlike vermont most of schools in vermont were in person at least for part you know for part of the week um so those are the kinds of things that i'm working on and of course i think in the strategic and recovery planning section right he's going to talk a little bit more brittany did you have some data that you wanted to share yeah i was just going to give a brief update and then share some of the attendance data that the board had asked for at the last meeting whenever you're all ready and we could either do that now or i see it under items for discussion for strategic slash recovery plan we said we would monthly talk about the recovery plan so um which would you prefer um and the

065budget discussion is under items for discussions in the chat yeah um let's see how about yeah i guess we could do it now and then we could just move into budget and spend more time on that okay do you want to talk about it now uh brittany and what you are working on i do have a presentation if i can share my screen quickly that's okay i take mine down i think i did yeah yeah okay let's see here all right so i did make this pretty quick but if you have any questions i'm happy to um you know answer those so last meeting the board asked for some attendance uh data so what i did is i ran the percent of average absent per day just in september over the last couple years so

066you can see kind of where the trends are there most schools have increased significantly this year whereas last year they did decrease you know there's i'm sure there's a variety of reasons for that um but i thought that was that was kind of interesting this is the percent average annual daily absent by academic year um so it's actually a little bit all over the map and didn't follow the trend quite as much as the last slide i showed you so i thought that was that was also interesting some of the schools certainly increased this year versus decrease last year whereas you can see hes actually had a higher percentage last year than this year so you know we we're still or sorry two years ago then this year um you know and i'll run the

067exact same data this year and and we'll kind of see where we fare at the end of the year any questions about those two slides and we can we can send you this powerpoint too so you can see it and spend a little more time with it all right um so quick update as you know from last time i kind of organized them based on goal area uh we are currently finishing up some of our assessments tmp just closed exact path closes on october 30th fnp closed i think it was friday actually so we're just working on kind of gathering that data and organizing it a little bit so i'm hoping that possibly at our at our next meeting i'll have a little bit more data around those those certain those testing areas and then

068um the mtss team meets again this coming thursday actually and we're going to be talking about kind of separating the team out a little bit into a coordinator's team that's really going to work on the systems development and training staff and a data team that's going to work on you know taking all of the data that we have and then working with teachers on how we're going to be effectively using that moving forward so i'm really looking forward to that and i think that the team that we have composed is is actually really excited so i'm hopeful for that i thought i heard a hand anne marie yes i was asking do the absenteeism numbers include quarantine students i just wonder if that was a factor in weathersfield being so high this time yeah it

069does i'm sure it is unfortunately within the system it's you can't easily run that data specifically for quarantine students so it definitely includes that i have no doubt that that's a large component of why those numbers are high and it's hard because since we didn't have an easy way to track it within the power school system where i ran the data you can't compare last year to this year around quarantine so i can't say this many students quarantine versus this many not i'm sure individual schools might have that data separately outside of powerschool but um i have no doubt that that was a major impact there thank you i have a question what is f and p that's fontesom pannell it's a reading assessment um so that teachers work individually with each student the students

070read to them and they they have a scoring system that they use and then this year was the first year that we actually required all teachers input that into a data spreadsheet so that we can upload it into our system called performance matters where we're hoping to get all of our data collated so that we can easily manipulate that information and pick up on trends okay thank you all righty um so panorama is a social emotional learning assessment we are going to be getting that out shortly we had some glitches uh getting it set up but we are working through that and we are hopeful that we'll get some baseline data and then we'll take it again later on this school year so we hope to get it out sometime in early november uh so

071i should have the data ready by by december but that's that's all kind of pending and then our leader in the lighthouse teams have been meeting and we actually the admin team as well as the lighthouse coordinators met with barbara from leader and me today and teams from several different other schools uh to to work through some some resources that they have available to us that we can keep moving forward with that and then the the last thing is um from our strategic plan information and communication uh the curriculum instruction and recovery team which is myself angie and patty we have been putting out a newsletter i'm happy to share a few copies of that with you all so you can see some of the resources that we're giving out to our our staff and

072then as you all know we have our upcoming forums heartlands was the other day on the 19th um we did not have great turnout but we are hopeful for the upcoming meetings uh at the other school districts and we'll be posting those on our website and uh with with a feedback form so that hopefully people will watch the video if they were not able to attend and be able to still provide us feedback um just a question or a request if the matas got me school district information could be sent so it's in tom marsha's newsletter yeah that would be really yeah also helpful also uh my quick comment is that uh davis mcgrath was able to secure the town public meeting space the welcome center welcome no not the welcome center but um davis

073take it away uh yeah so um we uh we have the municipal space in the municipal building they use for select boards uh reserve they have a whole they have a big screen set up in there um and their own beanie owl type system uh winter and air is going to help get it recorded so uh so that's great we'll have an in-person spot for community to attend as well well so is that the select boardroom okay cool so um is someone able to maybe email me that information because i know i did not know that and i want to be sure that it gets onto the um advertisement that i sent out to the principals tom marsh and the tom marsh but yes it it needs to get out to uh to be on

074the fire foot yes we'll send it to you is there anything that i need to do to further schedule that also i mean i know the owl is going to have its own link so you can see i mean i know it's super small the i believe that actually is the forum ad for modest gutney school district and so it specifically has on there the link for the google meet that i created so i want to be sure that i get the owl meet out there um as well so i'll need all of that information maybe britney the best thing to do is davis and maybe brittany and davis if you coordinate then but just make sure that everybody gets the right information and especially yeah let me let me get you looped in with

075uh with paula down at windsor on air too she tends to do a lot of the coordination around these things in the technology coordination um so if we all the three of us get a conversation we can uh we can get this figured out fantastic and that's coming up on the eighth um so definitely we should try to get that figured out this week yep okay awesome thank you yeah but the sooner the day let's see um let me go hold on sorry um rebecca you have your hand raised and then scott um yeah thank you amy um brittany uh i wanted to ask will you be able to put all the results of these um evaluation tools that you are using which is great um once you do have all of the data in

076um and will you be able to get that will we be able to see that those results yeah actually um so as the information has been coming in i've been updating the data dashboard which i believe data david sent out to the last board meeting so if you scroll through the tabs there should be one for fmp well i say that but that one's not quite dead yet but i'm getting there um but the tmp should be updated in there because that assessment has completed and as as they come through i'm trying to update them um each individual school has their own data dashboard as well the principals have those and can certainly share those out with their boards the only caveat to that is that sbac still has not been released to the public

077yet so we still only have the the tmp fmp um i'll get panorama in there once that's completed so so it should be a pretty complete um assessment dashboard once as things can get completed with the schools okay thank you and the second question was with regarding the agenda for the forum i i don't remember if we we came up with an agenda is there one and um for madison school district yeah all of the um forums are are follow the same format um and they basically go through the three different recovery plan goals and we review each of the individual strategies as well as the funding sources for all of those strategies and then after i kind of get through those angie gives an update on sr3 kind of describes what that is actually

078all of all of the essers answer one two and three um and then we'll go into providing feedback i don't know if christine was at the last one and angie as well if they want to add into any of those when i'm done talking about the funding sources then we open up the floor for comments and questions about what's working what could be tweaked what could be changed what could be left out um that kind of we want to engage in that kind of dialogue to hear from our community did you have a good turnout we had three people at the heartland community forum two were board members one was a parent who had some questions thank you we'll keep fighting the good fight yeah scott yes thank you i just wanted to say um

079how much i appreciated the newsletter brittany i think it was angie sent that an email to board members i'm not sure exactly how i got it but that's what i think um and i it's good full of great information uh links time frames um pictures and is it is it a i would just think if it's i didn't find it on the curriculum website that's what um i would encourage you guys to make it available there if um or else i just didn't know where to look but i think i i haven't posted it up there but that's a group that i think we intended to do that and it totally fell off my radar yes i have been sending it to um ford members thank you we'll send you that other we'll send you

080that other data link too that that rebecca uh mentioned so so you'll have that because that'll get refreshed and updated and that link will always take you back to the refreshed page absolutely i think that's it for me unless there are other questions thank you thank you thank you nancy you're welcome so now we can go to items for action i guess that's one of them we can start with a bunch of discussions up in the budget just quickly uh larry is going to present the su budget this is a very important budget for all of us because the numbers that larry's going to talk about tonight are the ones that get translated into your assessment of figures for your local budgets so everybody has a central office assessment what we call the general fund

081and then the food service budget is a separate fund but we included it all because it's it's a it's an estimate of what each district might have to subsidize the food program so i'll uh i'll turn it over to larry just also again thanking jamie and uh and colleen and rebecca for the time that they spent we probably met four or five times and put a fair number of hours into this but i'll let larry kind of walk us through it okay so i've shared it out to the uh google meet and here is uh what david just mentioned the budget committee uh the su board uh pick three representatives from each of the three school districts to uh you know the budget committee david was there katie myself obviously not on here was uh

082the department heads who we worked with because a lot of them make up the su budget including angie ledoux and the business office at connors was very helpful with giving me everything i needed for this and uh we you know we started out talking about what is the su uh the su is us it's not of them and basically why we have it is you know an efficiency by labor and resources so the labor piece is pretty simple uh it's rather than wettest field having their own curriculum director and heartland having their own curriculum director and so on so forth we have one curriculum director and you pay for each portion of that including the curriculum department same thing with technology and instead of having three superintendents you have one so the labor one is

083more obvious i think the resources is is less obvious and um i was reminded in the first meeting uh colleen asked uh spence who was on the committee you david mentioned uh asked to go back when we put capital equipment at the um su office under technology what what happened since then and i had to actually go back and look because uh we um you know colby kind of took our eye off the ball as far as like you know doing trend lines over time of capital equipment so uh in 2018-19 when each school was buying their own tech capital equipment under their own budgets and yes you had a smaller one we spent 194 000 and change dollars almost 200 000 as you can see every year since then you know can't make you

084know one make promises for fiscal year 24 or it's gone down some of that is the price of equipment has gone down but some of that you know can't account for all of it um some of that is just deficiencies uh instead of buying four projector bulbs we buy two because we keep them all stored locally in one place so when we need one we go get it and uh and you're having more eyes on supplies and equipment et cetera so and this right here is the proposed number in the budget 121 500. so that includes all the things like chromebooks networking infrastructure where this field doesn't have to buy a switch if windsor has a switch stuff like that and those are more expensive than computers uh so that's just you know another example

085of the su efficiency by labor and resources that's a resource piece as david mentioned there are four parts of the esu budget the early childhood program administration and operations sometimes called the central office but we called it a lot in the budget committee meetings administration operations because some of those people don't work in a central office uh you know for the techs do not work in myself right technically right now don't work in a central office so uh we we use that name for it instead uh special education obviously is the biggest piece of the su budget and then food services whatever is not covered by revenue is assessed out as part of the esu budget and then we wanted to give an idea of how much of your local budget is local and how

086much of a csu and you can see this is one example this is using fiscal year 22 and fiscal 23 assessment so it's not a perfect mix but it's really close and if you approve the assessments if you approve the su budget as you roll out your local budget it's not that this pie chart will look a little differently but it's not going to look that much different this is not a scuttany and as you can see 12 and a half percent of their entire budget is uh special education under 10 is admin operations two and a half percent of early childhood food services so 74 of every dollar is spent locally uh for windsor and west windsor as you look at the other as uh school districts you're gonna see now we're gonna go

087to heartland next it it's it's about the same you know it's one percentage higher locally um one percent for food services and so on and so forth so everything else went down for the su for harlot so harlan pays the least amount of their local budget they ask you that's a product of their size relative to the other districts and same thing for weathersfield weathersfield pays the most um of their dollars go to the local budget if you remember back to the amount of scotty one it was seventy four percent so seventy four cents of every dollar goes locally in westfield it's almost 78 cents of every dollar goes locally um and then so on and so forth so that's just giving you an idea of how much of your local budget is yes you

088that's all that was for getting moving into fiscal year 23 we had to make some assumptions because when you're budgeting you know nine months out obviously some of it is guesswork and some of it is uh you know trying to budget correctly so there's no point in uh if it's something we can do we budget for it so for example uh angie and she can speak to it if there's any questions about it we uh we are hiring an ell teacher this year and so next year we have to budget for a 0.6 ell teacher we uh for some years oh ell stands for english language learner right uh for some years we don't have pll students if we don't have the all students we don't need an all teacher but when we do have

089ell students we do need the yellow teacher um we budgeted ten percent increase in health insurance that's the number that ed and myself are most comfortable with uh wage increases through negotiation just like how you negotiate wages um for example in special ed where most of the labor costs are we have to pick a number uh that committee that david talked about with jackie and bill yates and david they haven't settled yet but when they do settle we have to have a number for that um so that's what the wage increases are for uh adm assessment for food services you're gonna notice that i'll get more into the details on that but that was an assumption we made for next year so what is we currently budget the assessments by ada uh equalized people equalized

090people is all the students whether they go to tuition high schools or windsor high school uh adm is the actual students in the building and we change the assessment formula for food services to adm as a matter of equity and fairness in the sense that craig lucarno who's our food service director is not planning a menu for hartford high school he's not feeding springfield high school students that would obviously affect some of the assessments there's also in our goal to keep flat staffing at the administration operations level other than the ell teacher we have no dei coordinator in the budget and we have no program coordinator for food services in the budget that's an assumption so looking at administration operations sometimes like i said called central office we're looking at i'm going to compare the

091three years going back to fiscal year 21. curriculum you notice it's 0.5 but you know you have a full-time curriculum director because half of angie is paid out of title monies so if you look this year 21 this year 22 fiscal year 23 curriculum went from 0.5 0.5 to 1.1 that difference is 0.6 that's the ell difference if you go down to the bottom 12 and a half three and a half 13 half i'll get to that in a second the difference between 13 and a half and 14.1 is 0.6 that's the ell teacher i.t services we have five people in it we have five people the following year which is this current year and then fiscal year 23 we budgeted four did we get rid of by an i.t person no we've moved myself

092as part of the september first reorganization down here to operations so you have zero zero one officer superintendent it's obviously david and lori that's two two and two that's standard business office went from five to six that was uh during coven we budgeted for um kylie taft who david mentioned early purchasing agent now went from four why did it go from four to six to four but the number's the same it's because we moved hr we broke hr of the business office again part of that reorgan september first and then because hayden gave her notice when she did we also moved payroll down under hr and that's that vacancy we currently are trying to fill that's not a new position that's just a change so you can see personnel services in hr went from zero

093zero to two operations myself zero zero to one so if you see 12 and a half 13 and a half that was a purchasing agent and then the difference between this year and next year is that 0.6 ell teacher that's the only staffing change we also want to make sure we tied as much as we can to the um strategic plan going by our three goals now one thing that's different is i i think you should keep harkening back to it's that original pie chart you saw 74 to 78 cents depending on the district of every dollar is spent at the local level that's where most of the action is when it comes to money uh most of the esser funds are being spent for local teachers um so just keep that in mind now

094a lot of the leadership obviously comes out of the su but um the money is a lot of it's in that local budget but there are things we do at the su there's a lot of stuff we do with dsu for uh support strategic plan in fact most of us are the ones charged with it so uh leader in me uh is curriculum department it's basically curriculum department and the ad team but i had to pick su the comprehensive assessment plan uh the middle school model that david is driving the ell teacher we just added this is goal one student success and engagement project-based learning curriculum and the centralization of curriculum materials and software that is in the detail budget that the budget committee has met more than four times over they've had access to

095uh since last september also since we're using google sheets uh every change we made in in the budget the detail budget the general fund budget was updated at a moment's notice so the board members on that budget committee all along for the last month or so saw the updates the next one is culture and student wellness that's a goal two uh again where students aren't paying for food uh or breakfast and they launched a breakfast they haven't since uh coveted it uh diversity and equity work that uh david is the one leading that work that's out of the su the health and wellness team uh school nurse is stiping it as a local school nurse but that's you money that is stipend um in trauma informed schools again i think that's the work with uh

096dave hellman uh the champions group goal three information and communication david has been sending out his weekly updates uh website and social media it services which is part of the su does that you just saw the presentation that uh brittany gave um she is currently not local money so she's not in the fiscal year 23 budget she's being uh expense out of esser for this year but in fiscal year 24 i believe uh goal three the data leader is is supposed to be locally funded um upcoming forums again brittany and angie just spoke to that digital registrations was included in the budget uh we've cut it out the last four or five years every year we cut it digital registration just simply means you know those paper packets you get every every school year and

097then if somebody's phone number changed you got to write out the new phone number or they changed the dress or the guardian change or whatever and then it would go back and then they'd have to update in power school that would all be done uh digitally also for lori brown for new enrollees it would all be that digitally they would just uh scan their birth certificate and everything's right there in that file and then it goes into a holding tank we call it and then lori brown would push that person through the power school without having to shuffle papers uh the last part at a goal three is david was tasked by june of 2023 to tap an information communications leader um as part of the 911 reorg that is myself so that's i'm tasked

098with deliverables with inside goal three that are future out years that i'm going to be responsible for uh special education uh katie will speak to this um similar to last year we're following along with as natural attrition with power professionals to increase professional level staff and that's going to go along with as act 173 which is focused on multi-tiered systems of supports that's the mtss piece looking at interventions done by professional level staff and that's um heading into next year we're not exactly sure how act 173 is going to impact everything but um we're getting ready for that um we have seen more time for special educators to be within the classroom to provide direct instruction which then alleviates the need later for paraprofessional and more support so we're really emphasizing that at the younger

099grades and a couple of buildings weathersfield in particular we increase decrease their caseload size so we can increase the amount of time special educators are providing direct services within the classroom for students um we had to include the 10 increase in health insurance and the wage increases and that actually overall was probably one of the biggest um increases in the special ed budget we didn't um at we added back in a position um and the only and i actually just realized and put that up there um my former position as assistant fed director was out all last year we didn't have it in we put it back in this year as a coordinator position primarily working with mount scottney and the scotty district as well as our out of district folks because we had one

100of our out of district case managers leave so it ended up being kind of a wash for this year and it's in the budget for next year um building capacity um again with act 173 in mind building udl universal design for learning and our capacity in our mtss system embedded folks in this in our classrooms which is helping with in-house programs so one of the things that's different in our budget we had a decrease in transportation costs that was a big decrease i think a little under 200 000 if i remember correctly um and also a decrease in our what we're spending for students and out of district placements and both are related because if we don't have a lot of kids out we don't are transporting them but the emphasis is on as much

101as we can even if we're creating in-house programs that are not as inclusive as some of our inclusive programs they're students not being sent out to the community and so we have created a life skills program at the middle school high school over at the windsor school for example that has students now from all three districts and we're also doing the busing with them with tk and trying to be as efficient as humanly possible with our transportation larry and i have worked a lot on that um so our next we're also working with which is part of a little bit of our esser funds with the regional special ed directors and superintendents on looking at other ways to um build in some collaborative practices and maybe some more collaborative programs so we are part of

102that conversation early childhood it's pretty exciting we just met last week and within our current budget this year both for early and i'm starting at the bottom ecp is the early childhood program and ecsc is the early childhood special ed folks we within our existing budget opened two pre-k classrooms at the windsor school with one full-time special ed teacher teaching one of them and then jennifer sprague as a early childhood teacher teaching the other so we could work on increasing the number of students and we also increased the hours next year our goal is to have at least one of those classrooms as a full day um we're going to use some of our our idea b money which is different than our esser money because it all has to spend respect our early childhood

103money for that we want to spend on it to fix the sprinkler systems and something else in order to have nap time to kids stay but that's part of our big goal is including extending the day and increasing our attendance and capacity to meet the local need for early childhood um both you know we can't be eight to five but we could be you know eight to two eight to three as long as the school day so that's but that we didn't we did that without increasing the budget um or staffing so because we're doing it together so that ended up um being something people are pretty excited about we what it will exactly look like we do plan on surveying families and getting some more information on what models we should go for but

104so that's early childhood um increasing capacity is excellent because we all know that there's just a major need for early childhood and locally we're having for early childhood specifically and we all know about our shortage um they're experiencing a really big shortage one of our major partners for um in early childhood was closed for a while and now is only open two days a week and so we're trying to support them and as well as families and doing as much as we can creatively for students who have need services as well as just children who need daycare as well or probably pre-k so um i think regionally we'll see some more opportunities from partnerships with our partner programs i think that was it for my slides right yep all right so now we're moving on

105to the big drum roll for the the big fat number at the end of the general fund before the assessments it's not so bad ten million seven eight nine thousand that represents a five percent total increase uh you know almost three fifths of which is special ed and two fifths of which roughly is admin and operations now to put some context behind that number because it is such a big number um i went back and looked at the difference the dollar amount increase from fiscal year 19 to 20 and then so on and so forth until we get to next budget year so right here you can see that the dollar amount increase was 1.4 million in one year almost a million right here 900 000 and then a million last year's increase this year's

106was half a million that was that represents the dollar amount increase so again to provide more context we threw it into percentages so you could really see what the percentage rate of increase would be and you can see that the rate of increase a few years ago was 20 and then double digit increases year after year and then this year a lot of it due to the work of katie it was uh the rate of increase is down cut more than half so that's uh that's where the su general fund budget is that ten million seven hundred nine thousand that number is a that's the five percent increase we spoke about how does that mean for your local assessments um so all right this chart right here so if you look at fiscal year 21

107equalized people all right equalize people percentage that's the percentage of all kids so when you hear equalized people think all students whether they are tuition out or not and this is what were you doing this year forget about these columns right here for now now here you can see heartland went from 32 to practically 33 so what that means for heartland is regardless if the budget was flat what would happen to heartland's assessment it would go up right because they're paying a higher proportion of the assessment all right now now it's got me it went down a little bit not much and uh weather still going down about half a percent so that makes up for the difference that the one percent roughly that heartland is gaining so again assuming a flat budget no increase

108whatsoever that's what the assessment would bring for those schools now adm these last two over here we spoke about that earlier that's the food services so if you combine the students in the building the actual students in the building and we always use the previous year for equalized people and for adm heartland is at 267 uh 600 and 214 that's obviously combining albert bridge and windsor together now you can see the difference in the adm percentages so relative to last year mount scotty is going to pay more for food and uh and heartland less everybody follow than uh than they would if we use legalized people again which makes sense because we're not charging heartland and weatherfield students that are not there now the assessments for heartland now these are the dollar assessments um you

109can see early childhood is up and administration operations we spoke about that earlier is up special education is up a little bit and these are the assessments now you're going to see a total at the end so right now this is what i uh david shared out last wednesday to the board these are the same tables amount of scuttling if you look at the uh programs and then the difference why you know um you can see mount scotty paying more for food than last year because of the adm switch food service did not go up by 30 we know that because the total budget was up 5 weathersfield same very not much uh change you know um and then again a lot of the credit go to katie hearn in the special ed department now

110if you look at the total assessments by district so you throw everything into a pile and what does this represent for a change that five percent su fund general fund change comes out to a four and a half percent increase for heartland a three roughly a three and a half percent for mount scott me and weathersfield again relative because of their size relative to the other districts is actually paying less assessments if if you approve this budget for fiscal year 23. so um i want to thank the budget committee katie angie and ed connors at the business office for all the work um they've done if they'd be amazing questions or david wants to take it from there i just have a couple of comments i appreciate that you were able to tie the budget

111discussion to a portrait of a graduate to show where where we're spending our money that it's towards what our goals and values are as well as you know not only the boards but the community because how they can put down the path and this was just a very informative discussion presentation so thank you thank you thanks that was what we were hoping this is this is what we were hoping for yes the budget committee yes um and then um and we've heard you the last few meetings talk about uh linking the strategic plan and trying to stay as i don't want to say lack of numbers heavy but because he has no way to do it without presenting the numbers but as much as we can do it with nomenclature and less numbers right and

112this will make it easier going forward when each district goes to put our community presentation together to um to present and support the su budget to show where it is that we're working together and how the su provides for the districts i think that's very good and there are two comments in the [Music] in the chat um and marie says excellent presentation thank you and nancy pedrick is much easier to understand and let me see rebecca has her hands here um i i have a a question regarding the ell teacher this may be um angie may be able to respond to this one um it is do you keep an ell teacher on staff or do you only hire one if needed and does it so let me give you a little perspective rebecca i've

113been in um the curriculum position for four years this is my fifth start of my fifth year i've never had an ell student until this year and when i the first year i started i looked at i found a box of paperwork of some ell reports that probably predated my predecessor who had been here three years prior he may have dealt with it his first year so um we have not had uh english language learners in our district now we do we have identified students that need the support of an ell teacher and because we are required by law to provide that it was impossible for us to predict um that we would we would need that during budget season last year so hopefully i mean i'm hoping 0.6 is adequate we might find that

114it's it's not we'll see you just said the students does that mean more than one student oh yes so yes we have um i i don't uh not by school um uh four students are they and we have more coming up through pre-k are they more than one school awesome and they're across a couple of schools four students in three of our schools and i i believe just for some history on ell teachers when i started on the school board so we also had superintendents at each of our schools um but i think there were probably ell teachers at each of the schools even though and probably working full-time even though there wasn't necessarily always any other ways of that and as i know at least some of the students in the winter community as

115they gained proficiency in english speaking there was no longer a need and there was a significant amount of um oh what's what's a good term um there there were some strong feelings when that program when it was demonstrated to no longer be needed yes uh does the does an ell program or this ell teacher work with the families as well yes i've learned more about ell in the last two weeks than i ever knew um it one of the things we have to assure is that if the family requires translation um you know there are districts in vermont that have 50 languages spoken and what they have to do is make sure that anything that any text-based um information that's sent home is uh translated uh so we're trying to determine the level of translation

116that's needed for our families so is is a 0.6 right now we are um working with a consultant uh she is a ell teacher in northern vermont and she thinks that 0.6 is adequate for our students needs and what's interesting about ell is it's not an exact science it varies very each student uh you could have two students that look like they would be require a similar approach but because of the family situation because of how long they've been in the united states how long uh there's all these factors that really make each child um each child's situation unique so it's it's fascinating and the way that um they approach english language learning is not i mean it's an advantage if our like our ell consultant is fluent spanish so she can speak with one

117of our families um there are other languages that are very difficult to even find in the state of vermont so um it's really fascinating it's fascinating i i i'm learning a lot so the 0.6 might not be one person um um if not it might split between some consultant work and you know depends on what they were available they're not really awfully available so we've been lucky we've got we've got a great consultant and yeah and so just can't come down here and deliver services no she's too far away so um how cool that's very cool and those four yeah and i would think there would also be a difference in the the needs because every student has a different need as far as how they learn yeah that's right i know for any english

118speaking person who is learning another language we learn differently we have different needs so but also we have so much better technology now too yeah yeah yeah so exactly that's something yeah just saw some very exciting about google google there's a new translation app that just translates forward oh that's great i received uh while i was giving a talk i received emails from excited song let him know that christine and wendy i'll share the presentation obviously david shared the budget details with everybody the committee's had it for more than a month the line by line uh david shared it uh with all of you wednesday the assessment numbers and then friday the budget detail uh so the presentation which you just saw i will cheer out yeah it can go on the website i'll put

119on the website uh under uh finance operations yeah that's great and i think you've really i think the board's got a choice tonight really i mean i think the work was excellent and and and this was one of the most committed budget committees too i don't want to embarrass pauline and rebecca and jamie but they they gave up a fair amount of time to really spend with larry uh and i uh and asked great questions there have been some changes based on their questions um so i think you know you the sooner we can approve an su budget the sooner we can lock in that assessment number it's always an estimate uh for your local budget so you you're welcome to vote on it tonight if you want to wait till november and vote on

120it that that's that's fine um i think you know i certainly think it's been scrutinized enough to to have a vote but you're the board and i also think the other thing the board should decide uh is um the dei right now the diversity equity inclusion coordinator or director or whatever you want to title that position there's already there's some s of money's budgeted for that so i don't think we have to work there's some extra money is budgeted for a consultant right so it's not a full position no but it's all but in three didn't we in three say we could move on right now i'm not sure i think in three we said we might be able to move that but but more importantly because we did have this discussion uh you know

121a little while ago as an su board and that is you know whether or not the time has come to look at program coordination for the food service program too we we had given you a job description we had talked about that we have a culinary coordinator do we want a program coordinator that would work with kids and families and setting up special events and dealing with the wellness part of our food service program uh some people got really excited about that uh so again uh you know that would we would probably add another seventy to seventy five thousand dollars to the budget if we wanted to do that uh and that would be divided three ways just like we saw today with the equalizer no idiom that would be divided by the by the

122by the adm right because that's tied to the lunch program that's exactly right thanks rebecca so i i i'm not clear on on that position um because i know we talked about having a health educator and so i wondered if that position would be different than a health educator for the entire uh supervisory group or would that be in addition to a health educator i think the way we envisioned it and the way the job description was written that it would it would do sort of a little of both right it would it would be it would it would lie primarily on the food service side with just whether it's community dinners or uh you know you know fresh fruits and vegetables grant management but then it would also be going into classrooms working with

123kids around health and wellness and nutrition and those pieces so it was sort of the beginning of a health educator in all of our all of our buildings um so it really uh but i really think that should be a board decision if somebody wanted to you know to direct us to look at that and bring that back we could we could you know uh and there's that's what it would do to your assessments again we did actually yeah i don't know if you can see that but so if you approve the food service program coordinator as david described um it would it would change the assessments but again to refresh your memory this is what it was 93 101 100 in the black so 93 101 4 000 give back to 115 149 12

12412 9. so the assessments will go up to five and a half percent five percent even and a little less than one percent for weather seal once we decide to vote on this the only thing you would need to vote on is to vote on that bottom line a budget number that would have been the 10 million change that uh that larry had up there but if we added another 75 000 you'd that would go up by that amount i don't know if you changed that amount larry or not but yeah if you wanted to make a motion i could look it up so you get the right number it's up to you i have the number um scott yeah hi amy thank you um first of all i'd like some more time to think

125about the budget i don't want to vote on it tonight that's my personal feeling second of all the the idea or the concept of not paying for the food because meals aren't served to kids that go to outside high schools um excuse me not paying for the food the same way you know has now evolved into i think i just heard larry say that [Music] the directors of these programs are also in that adm format both craig and perhaps a new position i don't agree with that we i think that's a that's a leap from what we were talking about months ago that was really the mechanics of ordering meat and potatoes and so i don't know how it got there but you know it was the equalized pupil um assessments were that was a

126big deal for our supervisory union to arrive at that point and work together and i i don't i want to protect that and make sure that we don't get too far from it [Music] so so scott just to make sure i understand so the food service coordinator you feel should be done by equalized people but not necessarily the cost of the food program itself do you agree with avm for that or well i think the whole board was throwing around the idea of counting actual students for the actual cost of the meals i think that someone like the director or or the coordinator perhaps you know you're talking about valerian benefits and and results that are perhaps uh unmeasurable right there so these are these are district-wide approaches when you have these positions and i

127don't think you could um we like to argue that it had something to do with you know when these students were um eating meals each day yeah great [Music] thank you um does anyone have any other thoughts on what would be i'm sorry um scott can you repeat the last sentence that you said you were you said something each day and i couldn't quite hear what you said sorry elizabeth um students eating meals each day okay thank you wendy hi there thanks i would just say you know as a um community member for mount scott need i agree with the same idea that scott's presenting in the sense that i think it's fair and reasonable to use the adm to calculate the cost of food and obviously that's attributed to the exact number of people

128who are able to be fed but as far as the resources of craig and the other staff maybe this other position i think that the equalized people is a more fair way because obviously they're working just as hard across all the districts um you know quite frankly some of the other districts are taking more resources maybe in some ways because they're utilizing the program more so i think an equalized pupil calculation in those cases is more appropriate to the way it really works [Music] thank you wendy um would it be possible to have that broken down larry which one it would be very hard it would be very it would be very hard to change saying the labor of the food services program is equalized people and the food itself is adm i think that's

129one thing that this is what the budget committee came up with but if the board wanted to change it from adm's equalized people i think that's one that's one route you could go i would i think it should be one or the other well and as far as a program coordinated position if it's going to be in the classroom right or mostly in the classroom um i think you could make an argument about but then i think you should pull it out of food services and put it somewhere else um if it's going to have instructional components that's that's a big instructional component and not simply once a month or something if it was going to be a person that was in the classroom a fair amount well what you could do is you could

130do what we talked about originally and that is put 0.5 of that position say in angie's budget and put 0.5 of that position in craig's budget because there would be some fruit service specific i do agree with larry hill i think it would be very hard to pull labor to pull the labor out of food service and charge labor one way and charge food the other way because it's it's all one fund and we have to be able to demonstrate to the state that it's all coming into that one fund it's all going out of that one fund so i think what the board would have to do is decide whether they want equalized pupil or whether they want adm i don't think you could i think would be too messy from an audit standpoint

131and from a state reporting standpoint they have to have it both ways i think we have to make that decision i think we need to see that comparison david yeah we could we could certainly look at that comparison at one point we even had it but we could certainly bring that back next week and see i mean i think i don't know whether it could be done quickly now maybe we don't have to worry about it now we could do that as how much longer you guys yeah if everybody is that we're going to move the final decision which i i have no problem with that at all to to next month i think the bulk of the work has been done uh you know it might give a chance for that committee sorry rebecca

132and colleen and and jamie but to get together maybe one more time to look at the differences between equalized people and adm uh from from a food service perspective and what what impact it has on the assessments i think larry's trying to scramble now to take a look at that um uh and it's not going to affect the bottom line it won't affect the bottom line it'll just affect the assessment it'll just affect the assessments and you approve the bottom line yeah and and i understand i can argue both sides but i know i know um what scott's saying and i also know that the board members who have brought up in the past the fact that you can argue with all of our other programs including special education even the central office because the

133central office does a lot of work with our high school students in other high schools we have to do all the residency requirements we are the lea for all of those special education students because just because a kid a student goes to hartford it goes to woodstock it goes to springfield we're still servicing them in fact we spend a fair amount of time on those kids uh in a bunch of different ways you know trying to verify uh residency trying to follow uh with you know performance scores serving their special ed needs but to larry's point tonight and he's not advocating one way or the other we don't we those kids who choose to go to woodstock choose to go to springfield choose to go to hartford we're not feeding them in any way we

134did very very briefly last year when we delivered those lunches uh during the during the absolute height of the covet uh pandemic but other than that we we don't and and craig doesn't think about them doesn't have to worry about them uh and you know for especially for heartland that's a fair number of kids you know of your 300 plus high school kids you've probably only got about 30 at you know at windsor and i i i i always feel bad about that number but it is it is the truth and i don't think nikki's on either tonight and i know she was one of the ones that was advocating pretty heavily for adm versus equalize so it might be better to just take it up i think we're ready to vote i just think

135we need to solve this one last and so the two the two things i need to know so david i'm sharing it with their screen right now okay let's give you one two things we need to know is you know we'll consider a program coordinator and we can bring it back that way and then we need to know the adm versus equalized people those are the those are the two big ones so this is what i would do to your assessments it would um when you go up with that yeah so 120 so heartland would be up 123. 5.9 and uh mouse county would be up 63 000. so mouse companies will go down heartlands will go up and uh weather skills will go up roughly eight thousand they were getting four thousand they're paying

136four thousand less now they're paying four thousand more so if you compare that to this number right here um in one second there we go so 93 101 4 000 less 93 101 4 000 less 123 63 4 000 more that would be the difference if you decided to go to equalize people for food um elizabeth that's very interesting yeah but just one moment i am not sure that we are ready to vote on this now since it was only presented and we do need some time to kind of sit with the numbers um and elizabeth uh i i want to know why the dei coordinator has been left off of this budget well we just look it's been left off this budget because we have at least right now we have budgeted in esser

137funds eight about eighty thousand dollars for the dei quality so it doesn't have to come out of local revenues in f1 this is a local general fund yeah an fy23 so we didn't put it but it's eighty thousand dollars because we committed to not just hiring one person we committed to hiring a whole i mean as per everybody we've talked to it should be a whole department and not just one person having everything done i don't think you do i i know we've talked about that i don't think we've decided that though really i mean i mean that's another conversation you could have i mean i've always i've always thought that you have to have a department a job description where you have to have a a coordinator and a job description and then you

138kind of build the department from there i i hadn't i hadn't heard that we were gonna you know hire any more than than one but okay well we'll we'll get up with melissa and she will absolutely she'll set you straight yeah but because we're a small you know we're not chicago and we're not in new york city yeah you know what i mean so i think that we just need to think that through but but i believe i mean we but as such i i almost think oh i don't know if 80 000 is enough enough uh yeah um that's what's in essel right now for fy23 and that's a tentative budget because we can't we should not technically budget it until we've had the community forums and also yeah um but also is that

139because when you said that about when you mentioned that the reason that it flew right by me was that uh i my understanding was that that's the total amount of money that could be spent on that in next year right well there may be some like angie said and we're going to look at this more next month which is probably why it's good that we move this too we may have a little bit of carryover from two right because we didn't spend anything on the dei in two uh or in one so we you know there may be a little bit more money in there to talk about right so in other words if we wanted to have uh we have talked about having uh different kinds of high quality training come in um uh

140if we wanted to use some of the funds for that would we be digging into that person's imaginary person's salary i mean i think depending on the carryover right i mean that's what's in there for 23. i i'm not really comfortable making any like it's it because we have a tentative budget there and it's not it's it's big it's over what we have in there we just kind of looked at what we had this year and thought about what it would take to be to keep keep this year for the next two years and so there are other things added in so i can't i don't really feel comfortable saying that i have yeah so i think to elizabeth i don't know if everybody can hear me but to elizabeth's point i mean that's another

141thing to consider that's why we pointed it out in the presentation if we wanted to put a little bit more in this su budget for diversity and equity then well yeah so it's not in that so we could do that i ran the number so here's what it would look like this is an idea and the uh the budget committee has seen this is are you sharing your screenwriters it's not sharing this oh i got it here we go all right so now you see it so if you let's let's assume for the sake of argument that you uh approved adm for only food services then this is what the assessments would do if you had a food service program coordinator so if you remember 93 101 and then four thousand back now it'd be

142one fifteen one forty nine thirteen if you hired only the equity coordinator 119 136 13 why is mounis gutneys so much more than the food person it's because that's adm with it's it is equalized people so we have to use those assessments now if you hired them both this is what it would do 141 184 and 30 000. six and a half percent up for heartland a little more than six and a half six three quarters six and a quarter up for mount scotty the weather field up two percent that's if if you kept the assessments the same adm if you decided people wouldn't change okay so this is for both yeah and this is with the food program coordinator coordinator and then the dia uh no i'm sorry with the food program coordinator and

143food service adm you got it and the dea under equalized people equal ice and one of the things we might do again i i'm you know i want to be sensitive to everybody's time but i we have had this committee's worked hard and i think that we could bring this back to the committee including the equalized people versus adm uh and uh i mean we've been equalized people for probably because i remember when we had that discussion it was a lengthy discussion and it was a very trying discussion scott is right uh and we came to a decision um and we've been doing it now for probably five or six years we've been using equalized people just last year a couple of board members you know uh and rightfully so mentioned that that maybe adm

144is for the food service because now we're all involved in a fairly expensive food service program that we would do that so maybe we could just go back to small committee with those two issues right what do we want to include and then you could speak to your board representative so mount a scrutiny board would email or talk with uh rebecca uh the heartland board would send their thoughts uh to um to colleen and the um where the school board would send their thoughts to jamie we've got time because our next su board meeting is not until november 22nd which is uh a monday night and it's the week of thanksgiving but that's the fourth monday of the month um so we've got some time to talk about this um but i do think that

145by november we have got to have a firm number uh for uh for the budget and the truth is how we allocate the assessments could come up after you vote on the expenditure of you know you can have your bottom line and then debate equalized pupil versus versus adm but we we will have to have a bottom line by by next next olympus i think by this coming november so i think that's where you have to have the conversation about the dei you know and elizabeth's concerns which are understood around whether there's enough in there or not i do think we're going to commit some of esther to a dei because it's in our strategic plan it's part of our portrait of a graduate it's sprinkled in all throughout so i mean that's why i

146know we put some money in esser two and three actually one two and three but not so much with the program coordinator that was a relatively new idea that was sparked by talking to some of the other districts around and also some very local talent that we have that gave us some expertise on writing a job description so if everybody's okay we could send this back to committee and debate those issues what do people think the question is does anyone have any comments on sending it to committee personally i feel that that is a good good step good next step thank you i would this colleen um i'd be interested in hearing what people feel about it too if you want to send me note about those issues calling you me yes adding not adding

147adm versus equalized pupil what we'll do we'll push off the committee meeting until maybe not this friday but next friday so that that'll give people a couple of weeks to get your thoughts and ideas either in email form or to colleen rebecca and and uh and jamie i um i wasn't positive that we had decided that we were going to hire the food we we didn't ever take a vote on you're right you did not take a vote on it why wasn't it in the budget what's that probably was which is why we never really put in a form those are the assumptions we made you know uh keep current staffing except for the ll teacher which right which we are already going to hire regardless because we have to we want we were trying

148to stay staffed you know level staff but it did come up and people some people got it got excited about that idea because it's the other half of what we're trying to do in food service but so i think the two things you've got to reach out to it's colleen i think it might help to hear more about that position again or you know what are some of the benefits what our expectations would be if that role and the things that that person would do i don't know if that's something that you could speak to now or if well absolutely but i think if you recall what we were talking about and and i can send the job description out again because i think i did send it out right before that no we talked

149and it was really just looking at all of those uh first of all there was the wellness piece right you know which is why we could talk about putting half in instruction and half in food service because part of it was you know bringing you know fresh fresh you know the fresh veggie of the month and all the things that happened sometimes in some schools not always in every school but we wanted some equity around those kinds of instructional pieces nutrition wellness taste testing all of those pieces that we talked about for classroom work then there was another piece of it where um you know i think craig was excited because there are some things he wants to do programmatically uh you know uh feeding senior citizens being able to do more community dinners to

150make the cafeterias look more inviting more like dining halls than institutions so uh so that part of it got that craig pretty and and some of that work with the state and some of the funding and grants that are available so so that was the stuff we talked about that's one of the things that i think would i don't know be on the list of value is having somebody that can work through state grants and [Music] programs that are available for food i think that's probably time consuming for someone who's also feeding everybody every day it probably takes some time so here's a blunt question um i apologize for my bluntness i need one but uh does the job description um is the job description written by the person that you intend you would intend

151to hire well what that person well first of all we don't intend to because we've talked about that too it did tend to get wrapped around a person that helped us put a job description together but i mean what we certainly have talked about is if this position becomes a reality it has to be advertised it has to be uh it has to be um posted in-house uh you know we have to go through a pretty extensive interview process hopefully with a couple of board members and administrators on board so the person that did consult on putting that together because that's part of her current job uh didn't write it but gave us like templates to work from so yeah what do you mean templates in other words examples of other uh uh other jobs

152like that in the state right with self operation food service programs that have sometimes they're called you know like for example there's one place where there's a food service director like greg and that person's got three assistants that you know one handles program one handles food one handles finances so so there was sort of a pulling all that stuff together while we were looking at it right now craig's craig and rodney rodney does the culinary work but but craig and rodney because of the size of our district you know you know we're just not big enough to have two or three assistance for craig but we we're too small to have just one or two you know we're right in that middle ground pretty much it's hard but i think you know again they're doing

153a great job just the way they are but it would just be value added much like with the dei piece that you mentioned right i mean you can you know you can get it off the ground a certain way and then build it or yeah it's hard it's hard making those decisions hard but i think it should be your decision well i mean with the dvdi piece we as a large group of people are writing a job description for it and i i was concerned that there might be a conflict of interest no yeah no i i think that's a good question i i think that night it might have felt a little bit like that but that was not it did yeah i'm sure it did yeah yeah i'm sure it did so yeah

154sorry to be anal about that sort of thing no no that's okay i i i i am okay so it sounds like people are in agreement that we go back to committee right that we've got we're going to look at two things basically well three things you know the dei position right one two would be the program food program coordinator position that's two and then the adm versus equalized people split for those services or any other services at this point so i saw ann marie typed in a chat that she she was saying that she thought i can read it here she says yeah anne marie said i thought food service coordinator was going to be at least partly paid for by excess food service funds which it is so what you're seeing in here

155is just a projected you know that i i think the food service can only be down because we're we're projecting the you know a higher subsidy right because that that's the amount after all the revenues come in right and right now we've been blessed because we're not having to sell food it's all universal and we're and we're billing by plate right so it is that program does generate a lot of funds a lot of revenue and then uh anne-marie said i disagree with scott regarding adm i think it's fair not to include them i assume we mean high school students for food service costs i also think there may be some other services that should be done that way too like transportation um and again that would be opening up another whole can of worms

156but it's something we can consider as we go into into committee work i think but we've got to decide right now uh the the advantage to food stuff why we can do food service different than all those other pieces just organically is that they are two separate funds we have the general fund which includes you know all those central office services special education business special transportation but food service is an absolute separate fund it's audited separately it's tracked separately it's budgeted separately has its own revenue resources or sources so and the difference is what you're assessed and the difference is what you're assessed exactly exactly but i i think we can go back and talk about this i mean rebecca and colleen and jamie were hoping they were not done it would have been a

157very boring four weeks if you give me a fair amount of time on the front end i could probably come up with a way to compare if you compare it all in one thing so that they will be efficient with rebecca and jamie calling and bring it back that means larry they just have to then you just like you give you option a b and c on one page yes and then you guys just choose yep i i i get uh i hear what scott's saying and i understand how much the history behind the heavy lift that was to get to equalize people at the same time i i do get um the argument for adm so i can i can you know i think uh it's much harder to argue adm for katie hearn

158which is why we don't it's much harder to argue adm for david which is why we don't or diane i'm sorry lori uh which is why we've always used equalized pupil um but food service is one thing where there's there's no springfield high school students walking through that line but but i i i do think uh the one benefit of equalized people is it's all our kids and i think that's important too so it's a tough call it's like it's a call in the board donation and i'll be able to emerge just you know i'll be able to speak a little bit more clearly about transportation i don't want to i just don't want to mislead people i want to get the accurate information and then and then come forward because i i understand we

159don't transport high school kids to woodstock but but i don't transportation isn't the general fund yes it's in the general fund and i don't think our contract would i think your contract is only for what it costs you what this field and and in other contracts built on all three buildings and the kids they're transported so i i think it might be rude but i don't want to say too much until i do the research or we do the research on that and then we'll come back on that one hey david and that's also this category tied to that too right yeah david yes scott yeah is the adm a three year average like the equalized pupil number adm no last it's 80 m is last year's students in the building elizabeth rolling average right

160so i was just that's correct i just want yeah that's i just wanted to bring that up because so there's more to the um discussion you know so the the equalized pupil as a mechanism in this respect you know has a a really good um it's an average it allows communities it allows communities to know what's coming yeah so i think the the benefit i think what you're saying it's kind of equalized people is that there are less peaks and valleys yes for example heartland and that difference only went up and there's i i can i mean christine can speak to it i could speak to it if next year if if you did adm for all your su purchasing and did not know equalized people just for a thought experiment i we know in

161the buildings right now today which will be next year's adm uh heartland because we're reporting on it right now is not 267. we we know that so if if mount of scotty goes up a little bit which they have it would uh it would dwarf any of the gains that equalized people would show so i think again if that that's one of the drawbacks of adm the the the pro is that there's logic to the high school tuition piece the con is that you could have much bigger dips in spikes with adm you have a lot less equalized people is much flatter um the most we got for example this year was less than one percent difference if you think about which is pretty amazing among your three districts heartland went up last year well

162to see other districts less than one percent and then half the percentage went to mount spending half roughly went to weathersteel because it has to go somewhere and uh that's a benefit of equalized people so yeah yeah it's important thing to think about scott if you take the logic out of it you could say there's a benefit stabilizing stabilizing assessments right and that's and to be honest with you that's what we talked about when we discussed equalized people was stabilizing the assessments we didn't want big spikes one year and then big drops the next year yeah yeah okay anne marie have your hand raised yes i didn't hear you coming in um i just i also wanted to ask about um so how does it work with the million dollar surplus that we have for

163the past um fiscal year would that be um you know would that come into play at all with the future yeah that's the year you mean the year we're in right now anne marie right yeah yeah yeah and we just reported on that tonight and yeah it would impact that because what we've done yeah at the end if we're if we have a surplus we return money or we credit you toward next year's assessment and we do that by equalized people right because that's how we that's how we at least up until this year with the adm discussion we've done it but yes you're right it it it would it would impact next year's assessments if if if it stays if it stays if it stays a surplus correct unlike your local district surpluses which

164have to be voted on by the voters or board action capital we have to wait a year to wait here this you can use next year right away and i think what ed has done traditionally is credit you on your assessments for next year yeah rather than just send money back that doesn't make a lot of sense and then the surplus shows up in your budget uh event eventually um when would we know uh how much that's going to actually be like do we know that before town meeting or no you'll you'll have a better each quarter you'll have a little bit better idea but but you probably won't know till after town meeting yeah close to june yeah um one thing i would say uh to the board members and to the principals who

165are watching this i will share about the presentation it's a google slide so as we make changes it's not like a pdf it's not static so if after the committee meets i may update some of these things right so just be aware that as you build out you'll be able to presentations for town meeting that you don't use old slides just a heads up great thank you um after nine yes it is i think scott tess one more question yeah thank you i was gonna say this before but i didn't get anyways i just didn't want to leave um elizabeth hanging out to dry with the tough subject of conflict of interest um with the work that we do and all of us board members do and and the honest the truth is that um

166i had similar concerns when that when the food service coordinator job was spoken it was probably two months ago now i don't know i'm sure when it was i'm kind of losing track of that but um so [Music] i i just wanted to make sure that um david and the other board members knew that it was not just one board member that was concerned about that and um it's always always that we all have to keep in mind and [Music] yeah i don't know what else i can say but uh thank you for bringing that up elizabeth yes thank you scott and thank you yes that was a concern so um let's see we are so there is the tuition policy the second reading um adoption um i think that was in your packet yes

167it was good bye auntie thank you um does anyone have any questions on the tuition yeah the first line it says the towns of the windsor southeast district and shouldn't that be the districts the districts yes the next sentence it refers to the districts that pay tuition wow so let me pull it away all right i asked for it to be towns because uh we are still paying for uh what our students to the district we're playing that's the district right right right yep that's true really right because you're not paying yeah so that could change the districts right i will change it right now yeah thank you scott good point so i'll say the districts within the windsor southeast supervisory union that sound right correct yeah got it and i'll put that in bold

168just so you can see the change we did change the residency voucher we talked about a couple of these things last time second reading tonight right so elizabeth for the for those continuing payments from west windsor um do those monies come only from west windsor taxpayers i'm tired just like everybody else yeah and we can we can either adopt this tonight or we can move with the third reading if you want to it's really up to you i think it says what we wanted to say now though unless anybody else has anything they want to add and then katie just told me that the region the policies that amy was talking about is being discussed in the whole southeast because they want to have one policy that kind of covers the whole southeast right it's

169going to take that vsba model and then apply it to it but we'll we'll bring it back next time we'll have that the the policy you wanted to add at that oh yeah about special education right now this this one i think it's up to you but it probably is ready okay um does anyone have any other questions or concerns on this policy do we still have a corn yeah we should check that i think we do yes okay one two three four five six seven eight four nine ten more than a quarter yeah that's left right okay so getting back so if everyone is okay um so i had talked about the other the policy on special ed and i sent the um kind of the skeletal policy from vsba so people can take

170a look at that and it will be on the agenda for november for the first reading that will give us a chance to have our second reading and approval before the january 15th date um [Music] so moving forward we will go to items for action and the first item for action would be approval of the tuition policy if people are ready i will take a motion to approve that policy it's all moved is there a second second all second so is that mark okay and and nancy was the the motion so i um any other questions i will go through our roll call and first we have anne marie hi colleen spence aye davis hi jamie i mark i nancy aye rebecca hi dad hi [Music] and i vote i which makes it i think

171we're unanimous so thank you everyone and i believe that was it for items for action that is it okay so right setting the next agenda i would in my notes um there will be bsu budget um the su budget um information on negotiations um the full esser budget report correct and an update on the sr community forums uh perhaps more information on the recovery plan well yeah yes that will be part of the sop and then also the i think katie wants to do a uh sort of a summary of the of the budget special education budget including you know the summer academy we'll have some data on the summer academy by then too okay um and there will be an update on the um the anti-racism social justice work and i think that will

172be a full meeting that depends on the fallacies and i don't know if you want to list a separate amy but uh brittany did mention that wanting to bring back the testing data coming next month that'll be part of that yeah right that recovery plan including when i say academy data i know that one of the things that they are doing is that they're tracking those summer academy kids to see whether or not those scores you know whether or not it made a difference essentially right so david do you think we should have that separate or do you think that would be a whole recovery plan special ed i think it'll all come under that one category basically okay thank you wendy for bringing that up and making that clarification um that will be a

173full meeting um plenty of discussion so do we need will we need executive session no tonight correct no no okay we don't need to follow up with the thing that you talked about the last time no not right now it looks like we're making progress okay so i want to thank everyone for all of the rich discussion that we had budget and equity and anti-racism work that we're all doing in our communities and i will take a motion to adjourn so it was elizabeth is there a second second second um okay i'm gonna go through the roll call because it's just so much fun and maria are you ready to me too okay davis hi [Music] i nancy good night hi hi rebecca yes [Laughter] we'll be in touch uh it'll probably be a week

174from this friday so hang tough just what you wanted and everyone at our next meeting you are also going to be charged with letting us know what the main dish for your thanksgiving meal is going to be yeah there you go that's how we'll start so have a wonderful month happy halloween um take care stay well and we will all be in touch good night