SU Board Meeting - September 27th, 2021

001welcome everyone to the regularly scheduled meeting of the windsor selfie supervisory union board and let me see are there any changes or additions to the agenda we're going to be talking about recovery planning it's where um i think david where strategic plan is right yeah we can move and actually strategic plan uh actually you know we might want to make recovery planning d underneath uh my report i thought strategic plan was under my report but let's do it that way so we can move strategic plan i mean we can move recovery reporting right underneath uh the covet update [Music] okay are there any other changes or additions we are going to need an executive session briefly at the end okay yeah okay i will take a motion to approve the minutes from our previous meeting

002that are there any changes corrections clarifications needed in the clarifications category i wish we could somehow note on those minutes that it was a retreat kind of we kind of explained why we started at five yeah matter of fact i think we'll call it board meeting slash retreat how about that scott that's fine i was imagining that the the b line would be changed to rate for supper then c goal setting [Music] that sounds pretty good um break the break was uh before goal setting right yeah after we voted okay got it [Music] okay were there any other all those in favor of approving the minutes from our previous meeting as amended by scott [Music] elizabeth burrows hi mark young hi and mobile and sorry we can't just raise our hands because now that we're

003um the emergency order is done and we're in that library we have to do a roll call that's open meeting sorry um nancy pedrick i i thought you already called me okay hi [Music] rebecca [Music] and scott richardson hi thank you bill yeah hi and i am and that is the only time i'm going to use last name i just wanted to introduce everyone i'm an eye too did i know these hybrid meetings they're just um next up we have public participation and announcements does anyone have are there any public who would like to mention something that is not on the agenda are there any announcements i saw ryan uh just turned his camera on ryan did you want to make a comment [Music] i don't think you might i don't think your microphone is

004on ryan just down the bottom click that little mic [Music] i don't think i can turn it on [Music] it should be down at the bottom of your screen it should [Music] probably yeah there you go no sir i just lost signal so i was just jumping back in thank you all right yeah good thank you ryan thank you i have one announcement for school board members on wednesday this this coming wednesday at five o'clock it is the vermont school war association regional meeting for windsor and wyndham regions and you can go to vermont btv to to register and get the link to join that meeting what we will be discussing first is a quick regional a meeting where we will be voting for another one more representative for the windsor area and then or

005windsor region excuse me and then um we have representatives from the vermont agency of education to deliver some information and we will talk a little bit i believe about the resolution process and what to expect at the annual meeting in november so i hope everyone can attend us again it's this wednesday at five o'clock just go to btd to register and to get the link to join your meeting elizabeth do you have um i've got a question about that and also well i do will we be able to just show up or do we need to register in advance and what's the latest we can register um i believe let me i should notice off the top of my head i would imagine you could register because it's a virtual meeting hold on i'm looking

006hold on okay so yes you will need to register to get the link and [Music] it is oh it's at six o'clock not five o'clock i'm sorry so i'm glad i went um at six o'clock and it's very easy to register i imagine you have to register if you want to get the link anyway but then you can also vote right right you'd be able to vote for the representative i just i wanted to uh just very quickly highlight um the springfield district's um vote last week which was on a resolution banning a teaching of critical race theory and or as some people like to call it history um uh they had a really that the process began in august when a parent had a um brought a uh concern to one school board member

007which prompted the school board member to draft this resolution which was largely copied from a website and uh it was it was content very narrowly by a vote of three to two um and at their uh meeting on thursday about 200 people showed up online um and about 50 between 50 and 60 people gave testimony um many more students and parents a couple of teachers and a teacher from there's a really good article about it in the eagle news or is that the name of that paper they go legal times eagle times uh and so there are a couple of lessons in it i think one of which is um the whole process sidestepped our regular protocol which is uh that a parent with concerns should approach a teacher and then the principal and then

008the superintendent and then bring it to the board so the board member should have uh said bounce them back down to the teacher level but they didn't um i think it's informative for us uh i haven't been on the board when um something like that has ever happened but uh but it it's it's good to um keep aware of things like that and secondly um the um the legislature and the vermont school board association the social equity caucus at the legislature dan french several other legislators um all the vermont uh superintendents association and uh vermont principals association all came weighed in on it um and there was an a very good hour-long um broadcast on uh vermont edition on vpr if you have a chance to listen to it it's actually worth listening to the

009whole hour because there's some really good students weighing in at the end so it's hard to know whether the um the attention that was garnered by it will be useful for um boards around the state but it's good to um stay informed about what's what's happening to to other boards i think we're entering a kind of hot zone so um but i think it's good to keep it in the conversation and keep ourselves informed that's all thank you elizabeth any other announcements or comments i would add that it was very um from the radio broadcast that elizabeth was mentioning that uh our neighboring district to the south their superintendent zach um mclaughlin mclaughlin help me with his last name thank you spoke very well and he pointed out one of the main problems with the

010uh with the language of that resolution that was defeated that he didn't he didn't know at the time of the radio broadcast or the interview how how a school leader would put that into action though it really was an upside down process that like just like elizabeth is pointing out that it didn't the point where the resolution wasn't even something that the school district could could use i think that's a good point scott thank you for pointing that out i was not able to listen to the vpr so thank you davis for putting that for the putting the link in the chat i think i will try to listen to it in the next couple of days are there any other announcements or comments moving on to the superintendent's report right i may switch up

011the order here just a little bit uh and i'm also going to make a a even though it's um even though we wanted to talk about goals that might then be related to budget i mean i am going to mention where we are in the budget the su budget process uh that's you know i think probably at the end of my report um but i wanted to just start off in general with uh the opening the opening day report you've all pretty much at your local board meetings gotten the opening day report at each of your local school districts uh because we're through september now and uh i think all i can say as uh as your fearless leader is i you know we are very you know we're very blessed to have the administrators

012that we have and it was challenging times to open these buildings uh it was once again a position that we didn't want to find ourselves in uh starting another year um and uh i think everybody pretty much rallied and that includes staff students administrators parents families uh in terms of you know once again another list of of protocols and procedures that we had to follow because we are at a little bit of a peak uh maybe a lot of a bit of a peak in in in the pandemic so um i think that being said and i think i could speak for anyone who walked around those buildings on those first couple of days there was just a sense of peace and order uh you know a little bit tricky with arrivals and dismissals but

013that always that always happens because we were instituting uh again some new pickup procedures and some new drop off procedures that were a little different than we ended last year couple of bus route issues that always come up every year uh as we try to get those bus routes uh evened out and and lined out but i think uh our administrative assistants april sykes bjsd kristen and and uh uh at uh and uh i just had a brain cramp um at windsor and uh terry thank you i was gonna say tammy but i knew it wasn't jimmy terry and and linda at uh um at heartland i think they also did an awful lot of uh work you know getting getting getting ready for uh for the year and in the end it paid off

014and it's still uh i think a tribute to our kids especially that even right down to the littlest three and four year olds they come in with those masks on they probably about four to forty times a day slip below their nose and you've got to kind of ask them to bring them up above their nose but uh they're they you know they're compliant they're cooperative and they're respectful uh so i again i just think that that needs to be uh that needs to be stated and and reported so um i thought it was a good opening day considering what what we had to uh face i will tell you this is sort of tangentially related to the covid report but uh we are facing uh an extraordinary number of absences uh every day and

015it's putting a lot of a lot of pressure on the rest of the staff and on administrators as we're trying to find subs and reassign people for certain periods of time in the day uh essentially it is covert related because we've asked people if they're symptomatic uh going home and and because we want to protect uh those who are experiencing symptoms uh from uh from uh any infecting of the rest of the population and that's happening we we do have a few what we might call perma subs but essentially what's happening because we don't want a lot of people in and out of the building are it is that staff are covering for each other and principles are covering the staff and support staff are covering for teachers and sometimes vice versa but again i

016think it is a spirit of cooperation i would not be transparent or truthful if i didn't tell you that it's exhausting uh and um we're just hoping that we're reaching a peak and that we can begin to uh we can get the case count down on the other side and and that we can start to lighten up on on on a few of the the protocols and restrictions but we're going to play it by the book until uh until that happens um and then that that's i i see hands going up so i don't know if it's related to that specific issue but feel free to to interrupt and ask questions um amy i don't know if you want to call on people or you want me to um i will if that's okay elizabeth

017your hand was at first then rebecca thank you it's just a quick question um the protocol that we have in place right now does it include um if if a student has been um exposed to covid and they are um now at home does it include uh siblings who are either in the school or in the in a different school i'm remaining at home as well yeah thank you you know i see several of the administrators shaking their head no because essentially what that person becomes is a third party contact so they don't necessarily become uh you know considered quote unquote infectious so it doesn't necessarily uh uh carry over um i know that'll you know i know the nurses certainly encouraged that they that the household be be tested and and uh and i

018know that most of the families do do that but uh but essentially uh the answer is is no elizabeth christine i noticed you did you want is that is that correct that is that is my understanding if you have um if you're considered a close contact you are supposed to then quarantine and be tested and so the other members in your household do not have to quarantine they can come to school wait so just to make it so that i can really understand what you're saying because i i i don't really understand the logic there um so if a student in a classroom um comes down with kovid no no if that's not no i'm sorry elizabeth if a student is exposed okay to cover so if someone in their classroom yes if a student

019in the classroom is expressed positive comes down with covid then all of the um students that they've come into contact with in their class stay home and their family members also stay home of the student who is positive or the person that is positive yes but not of this is not the class not the siblings of classmates why are they not considered um because they're called they're called third-party contacts um it's not not likely that the student that's exposed is going to come down with covet in most instances because they're masked and following protocols at school so that is what we've been told yeah we follow that vdh guideline and what they do is they they basically identify you know those different degrees of contact and uh but but i i guess the answer to

020your first question though elizabeth is yes if somebody in your household uh it becomes a positive case uh then you that whole family has to at least for school purposes has to quarantine okay i've got one more question and that is that uh i think at our last meeting at the retreat we said we that were rather you said you were going you david dr baker said you were going to look into what exactly remote learning means and and there was a question angie said that it meant uh for the whole year and david you felt that um that wasn't the case that there would be no remote instruction and you were going to look into what the aoe actual guideline was has that changed so that it's more is clear or now or um

021i i noticed on your your uh notice this afternoon that it said that the classes at weathersfield were going to be remote but is that uh we hadn't really made or there wasn't a clear decision on that yeah so so the way the way the aoe defines this and i did i did get clarification we don't have the detailed guidelines that we had last year around especially around issues like remote instruction but what what we are being told is that as long as half of your building is in session then that's considered a legal student day so if you have 25 percent of your students out there just out we excuse those absences because if they're all quarantining or if they're out because of a coven instance and in a case where it's just two

022or three sprinkled in a classroom we don't have a a really good hybrid approach we'll provide some work but if an entire classroom is quarantined like an entire second grade or an entire sixth grade then that classroom goes remote and that's not so much to count them for attendance purposes because remember the school's still in session they are the schools in attendance uh that's more just to make sure that as much as possible they don't fall behind in the class can continue to do the work the aoe says we can't count that remote group that second grade remote group as part of our 50 percent in attendance 50 in attendance means 50 in the building have to be in attendance and i'm told that sometime in the next two to three weeks the secretary of

023education is going to get uh permission from the state board to allow for waivers for districts that can't complete 175 days for example springfield was out today uh you all know that and i don't know uh and and according to the current aoe guidelines springfield would have to make that day up at the end of the year unless secretary french were to waive that day under the authority of the state board of education and he's going to seek that authority because he thinks that the level of of exposure and in transmission right now is at a high enough rate even without a governor's emergency order that schools need to have some flexibility in terms of of the number of legally uh required days so but that's still the jury's still out on that so just

024so everyone knows the um that fifty percent is nothing new that's that's always been no exactly exactly [Music] um so david my question is um um when you mention absences you were were you um talking specifically about um covered related were you were you talking about um instructors staff or students um yeah no i'm talking about staff uh and so my the second part of that question is what what is the attendance um of most of the stu of students at this point are you experiencing students that are are not returning regularly or um and and if um and and is there remote learnings when students are quarantined are they provided with remote learning yeah well and i'll answer the last part first because that goes back to elizabeth's question if the entire class is

025quarantined and we've had several of those then remote instruction is provided on a regular basis until they come back if it's only two or three students we send work home we try to check on them but it would be like any student who was you know out sick that they did they'd get work and help and some catch up when they when they get back i think attendance in general you know for those students who are not quarantined you know has been okay i don't want to say it's great because you know parents are being cautious if a student wakes up with a sore throat or a headache or sniffles they tend to uh check in with the nurse or not but they'll keep the student home until they can like get that get a

026covered test but um maybe if there are any principles on the line that's a good question in general for those kids who are not quarantined what does attendance look like this year [Music] i don't have that right in front of me so if they're not quarantined attendance looks pretty good except as david said parents are being cautious if people if kids have symptoms they're staying home um you know when we've had exposures at heartland and we've actually had some students who've been vaccinated and if you if you've been exposed when you're vaccinated you can still attend school as long as you don't have symptoms so we've had kids that have come to school when they have been exposed if they're vaccinated as well yeah and i told bill's comment too yeah i mean we just

027we weren't prepared to do that tonight but bill said we can run a power school report that indicates what what attendance looks like in general for the non-core and quarantined kids but uh but but i i haven't i haven't heard that being concerning or alarming it's more about staff with our administrators because when staff are out then it then it's a matter of it's a domino effect and you've got to start to create some level of of of coverage and uh and that's become a little bit of a of an issue dr baker i'm not a principal but i do do the attendance so i can talk to it a little bit if you'd like yeah sure um it's actually on our front i think it's actually really good i mean i'm obviously families like

028you said are being cautious when they need to be but overall people are attending every day and that's a huge adjustment for kids who haven't been in a full day of school for a really long time so i'd say that you know their families are feeling confident about sending their kids every day and they seem to be doing a great job you know being in the building all day long and taking all the necessary steps so i think oddball here and there but nothing major yeah wendy's one of our attendance offices and i would say that that's a good example because mount uh which would include albert bridge and windsor they have not had to quarantine any any students or well let me back up any any full classrooms of kids so i mean there's

029been one or two kids here or there that have had the quarantine but no full classroom so they that that attendance report that wendy just gave even though it's it's uh it's it's it's qualified by we you know it's not firm with the data but i think she's right that my guess is that kids kids are wanna they want to be in school they were isolated for a long time some of those kids were remote since march of of so i think i think i think that's been pretty good but the one other hand i thought i saw one other hand [Music] but then she took it down okay nancy might have gotten her question answered then [Music] no i didn't have a question okay um the other uh the other covert details i've been

030trying to keep the community updated in my weekly email blast in terms of where we are i mean there are probably families and parents and uh that that probably you know get a little tired of those updates but i also think they want i get good response on those updates i think they like those updates i know the state is really scrambling right now uh to try to come up with an alternative to just general quarantining and using the pcr test to be able to return and i put some of that in my last letter and uh and i think they're feeling optimistic enough about the ability to do that in the next week or two uh that they uh in order to bring that online or to bring that up to uh uh up

031to all schools or schools that you know certainly want to want to do it uh they've put surveillance testing this surveillance testing has been a pretty interesting uh phenomena and lori um brown my administrative assistant has done enormous work only to find out today that because they're trying to get these other uh testing methods up and running uh that they're gonna put surveillance testing on hold uh until further notice so i have no idea what that means but we are not gonna be doing surveillance testing with kids or staff because the state doesn't have the capacity to do that and try to figure out those other testing remedies that will hopefully keep kids in school because right now if you are exposed you have to be quarantined and you cannot return until you get a

032negative pcr test and i don't know whether you're following the news but essentially those p first of all getting an appointment to test usually we can work that out pretty quickly but getting those those pcr tests returned the results returned is another story altogether because uh you can imagine those labs are those labs are overrun with tests and they have and i think they're doing the absolute best and they've brought in some reinforcements but right now we can wait as long as three to seven days to get the results back and that you know and that that keeps the child and or staff member out of out of school so that's why this test to stay program which seems promising they use it in massachusetts uh i think we're going to have to have a

033little bit more research on it and and and and establish vermont's protocol with it but essentially what that does is it says that if you've been exposed not if you're positive but if you've been exposed there might be an alternative that you could self you could self-test at school there's a protocol for that outside if you're negative you come inside you can imagine it'll be time-consuming but if you're positive you have to go home and get a pcr test but at least that would keep for example at weathersfield right now that might have kept the bulk of our fifth and sixth grade our second grade might have kept them in school because we would have done that tts test or that what's called a rapid test and we would have only sent those kids home

034who tested positive in the rapid test so it's it's still in discussion stages i think they hope to roll it out as soon as the end of next week but i'll i'll keep you posted on that the reason i like it is be and again if this is not from a i'm not a doctor or a nurse and i think you know some of our nurses and clinicians are nervous because the rapid test is not is not as accurate as the pcr test which is why the vermont department of health wants the pcr test ultimately but uh but it it will help to keep kids in school and i think our goal this year this board set the goal and i certainly encourage that goal to try to keep as many kids in school as

035we can throughout throughout the year and uh and and so that's what we're trying to that's what we're trying to do the other piece that i'll say publicly and i've made this statement to a couple of you individually but i also think that we need to keep reaching out to our communities to get vaccinated i mean i you know i understand it's a political issue and they're and they're you know i've certainly had my level of debates with my own family members uh with other other folks but the bottom line is i just read an article uh today that transmission rates are much lower if you have a mask on and obviously if you you know if you're vaccinated so that's a big part of it and right now uh there are certain areas of

036our county of windsor county that don't have a great vaccination rate right now and obviously if the county or the town doesn't have a good vaccination rate then you're going to find that those kids who are coming to school may be more likely uh to be to be uh exposed or or or test positive so that's uh that's that's the critical pieces i'm even seeing it up here in the northeast kingdom because the northeast kingdom right from essex county right on down to to caledonia county isn't does not have a great vaccination rate and they're closing schools you know in in by by the day and again as the community goes so goes your school so so i just think we have to be aware of that as we as now maybe once we come

037out of this peak and once we come out of this you know this high point will be in better shape but right now these levels of transmission by vermont standards are are pretty high and uh and i think it's part of what we're experiencing in uh in a couple of our schools right now anne marie [Music] yes i just wanted to um say a couple of things about the um sorry the situation at weathersfield and just the uh the massachusetts model um i have received some feedback from some of the staff with regarding um your mentioning of that david and a lot of them aren't comfortable with with that they feel like um well the it's not recommended by the vermont department of health uh the cdc or the nurses association um and like you

038said the rapid tests are i don't know i've seen as high as like you know it's like it's like you might as well just guess yourself if you have it or not um so uh so that scares a lot of the staff right um so i would like for us to really and for you to really be um cognizant of that and just to really you know make sure that you make that decision with a lot of thought and uh yeah and i think ann marie the reason they're not rolling it right out is they're trying to get the vermont department of health and the agency of education on the same page and i think what they want to make sure is that the protocols around this are are strict enough and strong enough that

039that it it it you know belies any of those fears so we'll we'll just we'll just see i mean obviously it it you know it won't come from me because that's above my pay grade but i think we just have to keep an eye on it and and follow it and if the state decides that it's in conjunction with the vermont department of health that it's a legitimate protocol then i think you know we need we're going to need to consider it but i would keep you all posted on that before we jumped into it i just wanted to let people know that that that the agency is trying to find ways to identify kids who are high risk or high transmission and still keep them in school because you know and as i got

040an email today from a parent uh and it was a weatherfield parent not surprisingly right anne marie that you know maybe we should just go remote well the problem is the state doesn't have a remote option this year and every day we're out we have to make that up at the end of the school year and i'm just trying to avoid that at this point we don't want to do that if we don't have to yeah i'm wondering if um if in weather's field since there's kind of a high transmission transmission but a high case count weathers field right now and i don't know about if the other schools think it would be necessary at their schools but um if we shouldn't start stepping up some of our other protocols i know we've last year

041there were a lot more protocols in place as opposed to this year and i know some of them can't be done because there's not the space to do you know the six feet distancing in all the classrooms but if there is the space why aren't we doing that in certain classrooms and um how about uh the health checks in the morning i think that would be a good thing to start doing again um yeah and i'll be honest with you and i think that's probably you know something we uh brian and i are meeting tomorrow morning i think you know that that may be some things that we think about specifically you know where this field i mean what we don't want to do is we don't want to you know necessarily intrude or impede

042you know on on on on on schools that aren't having to quarantine classrooms but i think you're right anne marie we're getting to a point in weathersphere where we may need to step up the protocols and figure figure that out i mean i've heard just uh you know anecdotally from some a student that i might know that a lot of the kids um with the noses out yeah and that's you might as well not be wearing a mask yeah so i think the teachers and staff really have to step up on making sure that the kids are keeping those masks on properly as well as the um the mask breaks i don't know [Music] my informant also told me that those are like 15 minutes long and there are a few of them sprinkled throughout

043the day i know that just with before delta was around a 15-minute exposure with the regular covid was considered enough to get covered from someone so why why are we having this 15-minute break especially now with delta and who knows what the transmission time is for that so i think those should out of here i think that's really how you can hold their grades because i mean the kid it's it's not a big deal to wear your mask all day i did it for many months at work and yeah yeah yeah i know everybody's that you know staff is staff is doing it and kids are being asked to do it but i think and maybe again if there's a principal on i don't want to keep i'm looking at christine only because she's right

044in the middle of my screen and i raised my hand on that my one is mask breaks inside should be extremely limited except at lunchtime but even at lunchtime i you know at times we're trying to get the kids outside for lunch if we can i mean outside my understanding is that most of those mass breaks are taking place outside but i think your informant you know maybe may be correct at times and we need to keep an eye on that is that what you want to comment on yeah they mass breaks only happen outside unless they're eating and most of that at least the hardest it's not true at least it's it should it's supposed to be should be yeah well we'll we'll we'll uh without disclosing your informant remember i said i have

045a meeting with brian in the morning so we may need to we may need to step it up a little bit elizabeth thank you i apologize for peppering you all with questions but but uh david how many um how many religious exemptions do we have and um if we're not doing surveillance testing at the moment how are those with religious exemptions getting their their tests yes so the answer to the first part of your question we have 13 uh staff with religious exemptions um wow yeah three of those are teachers um and then uh and then ten of those are support staff members we have no medical exemptions right now i think we might have i think we might be waiting on somebody who's asked their doctor for a medical exemption but we have no

046officially approved medical exemptions right now to answer the second part of your question uh without surveillance testing and by the way it started last friday they have to produce the results of a negative of a negative test by friday morning at 9 00 am for them to be able to work the following week and i will tell you the truth that uh i'm not the one collecting that data tina in hr god bless her she's collecting that data and she said friday was a long day for her because she had to chase some folks who didn't have their didn't have their um their test results by uh 9 a.m and so i'm about to send out individual emails to all of those people who have been exempted and tell them that if you know you

047know we'll we'll give them we'll give them one pass but we're not going to chase you that you know that if this happens again then you could stand to lose your religious exemption because it's an undue hardship on the organization uh uh yeah uh and or you know we're gonna have to have a different protocol with with with that person yeah that that's more than we anticipated but when you think about it when you've got 300 employees you know it's it's it's certainly you know it's it's less than you know it's certainly less than uh ten percent it's probably five percent right maybe less than five percent so again that would indicate and and by the way there are also two or three people i'll be honest who are not vaccinated and who said they

048are not applying uh for uh an exemption and those folks know that they've got until october 29th via your vote to to change their mind and uh and if they don't uh what we've been told by our attorneys is the first step is to put them on unpaid leave and you know and that's just the way it's going to be but it's going to be with the 13 exemptions and the three or four non-vaccinated non-exemption folks if we lose all of those people it it and i understand we're gonna you know we have to do what we have to do it could very well the organization because some of those people you know are are working with some of our more vulnerable kids we've actually moved some of the unvaccinated people away from our vulnerable

049kids because uh well you can imagine why right because we don't want them with our vulnerable kids and and uh and so that's i know katie hearn has worked really hard on that because i would say of the 13 probably nine of them belong to katie because they're support staff members and she's been working hard to make sure they're assigned to low-risk areas and they have to follow all the protocols we've given them you're muted sorry david are there any plans for in-school vaccination clinics i'm glad you mentioned that scott right now i'm working with the springfield office of the vermont department of health uh to uh do two things one uh set up some something locally and centrally and probably the most central is windsor it's also the biggest building but again we have

050to be careful around our protocols we have to make sure it's a closed area where we don't have a lot of other traffic by kids and or staff and what we would use that for are two things one of the potential to bring these booster shots closer to uh closer to um our our area as you know you know the booster has been approved um so we would want to do that and also with of with parental permission that wants the the vaccine for ages five through twelve 5 through 11 becomes available uh we would also maybe be able to centralize our our site and again this would be mostly out of convenience for parents and families and only with parents and families permission i remember it's interesting i remember this is going to give

051away my age but when the polio vaccine came out and by the way i was too young to know whether or not that got politicized i don't think so because i remember lines around our school of people wanting to get that little sugar cube with that vaccination and uh and that that was done in schools i remember because it was done at my school so that we're going to try to do that scott to answer your question [Music] bill thinks the polio vaccine was politicized too that's good see he's more of a history buff than i am so i wouldn't be surprised plus my mother had polio oh really okay so you know the deal david emery put a question in the um chat that i think is a good question okay i didn't uh

052see that but let me look [Music] yeah so that's so anne marie's question is what what is the reason people are giving for a religious exemption uh because it is uh anne marie's understanding that no major religion is encouraging their people to not get vaccinated and uh and that's absolutely right in dialogue with our attorneys there's institutional belief in institutional faith and you're right all of the institutional churches that i know of and i'm pretty active in one myself um that that yeah anyhow to make a long story short uh all of those institutional churches and the leaders of those churches have basically said that their congregations get vaccinated don't you know there's no there's no real christian or biblical reason you know not to but that's institutional faith what our attorneys are saying is

053you also have individual freedoms of faith right you may not follow an institution you might not even define yourself as a particular sect or denomination so essentially you then you know you're still covered right uh uh uh under the under you know the freedom of religion act so you can express that you're a christian or you know and and that's what quite frankly that's what most of the folks did they they talked about you know being christians and being you know their bodies are temples of the holy spirit and and all of those those pieces without ever mentioning a specific religion because once once they did that i mean somebody must have you know either been coaching them or whatever because once they did that you could debunk that in about 30 seconds because there

054are no major religions that have that have indicated they don't want you to get vaccinated um uh but anyhow that's that's been the rationale but remember two standards for getting the exemption one standard is that you claim a particular faith and belief in in in in you know in in a power beyond yourself and the sec but the second and perhaps more important is that uh the exemption can't cause undue hardship to the employer or the organization and i think what we're finding in our first week and that's why we want to give it a little bit more time but not a lot more time is that it is it is causing undue hardship uh to to uh to the employer uh because it's creating certainly time crunch for people that need to be doing

055other things and also it's created in some cases extra exposure to kids that aren't vaccinated and that's exactly what we we were worried about so uh you know i i i ha i met i was with the attorneys today for another reason but i i mentioned this to them and they said well you know just give it what would be considered a reasonable amount of time and then we may have to pull them but i will tell you pulling them as i just said uh and i think the administrators at this meeting tonight would attest to this that pulling them will also cause an undue hardship on our organization because right now we're not getting applications uh for these jobs and and uh yeah so it's it's a it's a real catch-22 and it's a

056real double-edged sword but as with everything we'll we'll work through it we know clearly how the school board feels you've you've made it clear to us that that uh almost 201 you believe strongly that people should get vaccinated and you believe strongly that people should you know wear masks so we're trying our best to uphold those protocols that you approved back in early september or end of august but it's not easy believe me it keeps me up at night [Music] thank you david i think so we have two more items for your report and it's 7 25. yeah that's why we should we should keep going right and uh so i'd like to do larry if larry i want to give the update on the camera system because i thought when i i was in

057larry's office the other day and larry's still in the windsor building uh he will be moving to the central office so we have to move some people around but but i i saw this screen up there with all these camera shots and camera photos of of of all of our our buildings and i said larry what's that he said that's basically our new updated camera system so larry do you want to do you want to talk to everybody about that uh and what's going on okay um can everybody see my screen yeah we got it okay all right so this is uh camera system update so for years um the camera system was maintenance or i.t it's kind of like the phone system like the phone system always used to be maintenance and id just

058did it years ago when we got on the fiber land we've sort of done the same thing with the camera system and uh so uh especially in windsor um there was a lot of uh the principals really wanted a new camera system and we didn't want to do something just for windsor we wanted to look at the entire su and find out the best way to do this and build it out over the long term so we're on one system so first you have to understand the problem and we have four different systems none of the systems can talk with them the proprietary system so you know whether scale got one when they built their new building um you know uh albert bridge has their own windsor had different versions of one um some was

059the original from 97 some of it got updated as years went on but they didn't speak to each other and heartland is a similar vote uh also low image quality almost all the systems were not high definition so like you know um you know you know sometimes if you're watching tv and difference between 480p and 1080p it could be striking well it makes a big deal when you're trying to figure out faces and everything else especially from a distance so we needed a 21st century high definition images with minimal delay and night vision um very few of the cameras had night vision um so that was a must for us and uh minimal delay i can't go into specifics but uh it's very important from the uh police standpoint that there be minimal delay between

060what's on the camera and what you see when you log into the system don't just say that they're also difficult to use only building maintenance had access in most schools and they were unable to use and view off campus it was difficult to make clips quickly so we we had two options really i mean it's there's different versions of each option but basically you have two options you have a vendor management system which you'll see a lot of times with maintenance or buildings and grounds does a camera system and then you have an in-house system so option a vendor management system or bms you pretty much paid for camera we looked at eagle eye networks which is like uh the standard and a lot of k-12 education small business and they charge 15-month per camera

061that sounds pretty good right 50 a month per camera it seems like it's a good idea vendor handles the server updates it requires less expertise so again your chances are your maintenance department doesn't have the it expertise so they trust somebody to come in and do everything and they just show them how to log in uh it could get expense over time you know because you have to pay per month for each additional camera so we're not talking about 10 or 15 cameras like a small business uh we're talking you know windsor for example is a huge building and um and heartland's a very big building long and uh so that could get expensive over time you so you pay a little bit up front but it could be more expensive over time option b

062in-house you purchase a server a camera software and cameras so you have a larger upfront cost you have to have people on staff to maintain and deploy it and um however it is easier to expand in multiple locations so we costed it out and we will save over eighty thousand dollars over five years with option b and this is made possible by the expertise we have in the id department and the fiber land that you all invested in back in 2009 uh it was 2010 and then we built it to that so i remember those those days anyway easier problems to solve back then uh but we uh we had four different isps running to each building now we have one but because we have that we can buy one camera server and everything can

063um run off of that so if you look at the really light those two stack charts on the left side the white is the vms system option a the b is the in-house server system so we paid 15 000 this year we and the gold on the top it adds up for the money you save every year so again you can see option a is a better deal in year one but it by far you save them four thousand dollars option two uh option b less a option a less so in year two and then so on and so forth you're just racking up the savings um so to continue the savings of life of the server i only put five years there we're hoping to get five to seven years out of a server

064that's typical if it's a one mission we call it one mission server a server that only handles one job at a time like cameras uh you hope to get even more out of it so we're hoping for seven years but i think five is is very conservative and again if you look if we're safe we're down four thousand year one we're gonna buy more cameras for weatherfield and for our bridge in year two that's the speeder 23 and then we don't need to buy any more cameras meanwhile with option a you keep paying 15 a month for camera 120 cameras uh also we funded forty two forty four thousand two hundred ninety nine dollars out of that fifteen thousand we funded out of e rate and potentially more from the s or three funds if

065if we can get that reimbursed on the s or three side we could save an additional uh seven thousand dollars for the camera server we put that in the sr3 budget um the camera system but we that's a reimbursement if we do great that's the goal if it doesn't we funded some of that every rate and some value your local equipment budget this is a picture of what uh david was talking about earlier um some of this is obviously night vision you can see heartland and windsor there we'd want to take a picture when nobody's around you can see the cafeteria it's hard to make out in the small boxes so i showed you a picture of what it looks like when you click on it i mean that's high definition you can see the

066red on the um fire you can see the water sprinkler head clearly uh so it's that's uh really good and um and then just again just showing you you can look through it on each floor so this is a heart this is one heartland wing and you can see a hallway you can see the slate uh lobby uh the front entrance of heartland for example is there that was taken at 9 25 p.m at night and you can see it's night vision um and it's uh already paid dividends in heartland particularly so that's pretty much it here's a timeline so we did windsor and heartland this summer and our goal next spring of summer is to do weatherfield and albert bridge and uh that's all i got yeah good job larry um yeah and and

067it has already paid uh uh paid dividends uh and the other piece to this is that it it'll be on you know anybody who's authorized it'll be on this cell phone so you can you know you can be uh keeping an eye on those buildings uh late at night which i know is what christine bourne plans on doing uh starting soon um so anyhow i don't know if anybody has any questions for larry but if not we'll move on uh i just thought that technology was neat and it also exemplified uh you know the the expertise of rit department who installed all the cameras set up the server you know it's it's it's just amazing what uh what they do uh the recovery plan i know that one of the things we've talked about at

068the esu level is coming up with a regular way to report out on our recovery plan and our strategic plan uh and brittany and uh angie have been working on that and i think brittany you're gonna just share a little bit with us about what uh what what the su board has to look forward to in terms of reporting yeah absolutely um can i present my screen is that okay yeah you should be able to yep all right let's see maybe while you're doing that i will just tell everybody the last item on my agenda is budget and i and i uh we don't have anything to report tonight other than the fact that colleen and rebecca uh and jamie turner who are your representatives to the budget committee we've met a couple of times

069we're starting to go through the budget now uh our our our plan is to have a draft budget to the su board for uh for the october meeting and we will not need any sort of final approval until we get into november so if we have to have a couple of meetings in between we can do that but uh we're hoping that you know you just continue to uh certainly within reason trust the work that um that rebecca and colleen and jamie are are doing as we as we kind of comb through this uh budget one of the things we're waiting for is uh no doubt special education they've got a whole new routine this year for how they're reporting the service plan which outlines some of the expenses for special eds so um so

070that's that's kind of uh held us up a little bit by katie's working really hard on that and i think we'll have that i hope uh final numbers on the special ed end of this which is the biggest part of our budget maybe by the end of uh by the end of this week okay brittany did you see that comment to maybe email this to everybody too uh which will will help yeah i plan to do that afterwards um gathering everybody's email addresses can can you all see it when i'm i changed which tab i'm on can you still see the presentation yes yes yep okay perfect so i'm just gonna go through this quick i'll explain a little bit how it's organized i organized it by aligning the strategic plan and the recovery plan

071together and then reporting out on our different action items that we have within the recovery plan since they both align um so i'm just going to go through it quick let you know where we're at with each of the action items and then i have some data to show you towards the end here so if you have questions feel free to just interrupt me along the way and angie will chime in if she has anything to add so in terms of engagement and truancy our staff we were able to increase our staff student ratio by hiring five additional teachers spread out across a couple of different buildings in order to reduce crop class sizes leader and me we started that training and then there's some implementation going on right now within the buildings but we're

072trying to get get everything figured out and make sure staff feel comfortable with it before we um roll it out to kids because part of the idea behind leader and me is that staff feel really comfortable using it themselves for their own personal lives and their professional lives and then they can model that for students so we've had a lot of training around that prior to school starting we have been able to increase our academic and mental health supports this year by hiring one additional interventionist we have a few open positions as you know hiring is really challenging right now so we're still posting those and hoping to find some qualified individuals for those positions we increased our we are hope um in terms of mental health supports and hired an additional mental health commission

073clinician i think i need to brittany i've got a question yeah i'm sorry um why were parents given an opt-out for later in me that was just for the survey it wasn't for a leader and me as a whole it was just and that that's part of the program is they don't require people to take the survey if they don't want to but that doesn't mean the students won't be exposed to it within the building okay great thank you yeah all right so another part of this was ongoing training and collaborative time for teachers as you know we we put in place the collaborative practices um calendar which is at the end of the school day after students dismiss um that's been a little bit of a slow rollout um some of that was training

074for mtsf processes some of it is getting people set up with their choice committees as well as making sure we have everything completely set and ready to go and structured so that they're mo the most effective they can be we did a new mtss rollout this year a team met this summer for the full day to really refine and develop our mtss processes sewi and make sure that they were we i trained the team the train went out and trained um their staff we did sort of some small basic rollouts and then um over time they will get more and more training and kind of perfect that practice the choice committees were um staff were able to select which committee they wanted to be on and the team ad team actually today just worked on

075finalizing committees make sure they're there's equal representation and that we have leaders for each of those committees and the vertical and horizontal team planning is still occurring we're going to start that rollout in mid-october any questions on any of that so far [Music] um yes uh brittany i have a couple of questions um my first one is um what is this student teacher ratio because it was indicated that you've hired a certain number of teachers yeah so what is that i have that data you can you can send that data in with with this i mean i just wanted to make sure that we would we can get that data with um with this writer and and so rebecca excuse me um i am going to share with you a link that will of the

076recovery plan update of just this section of the recovery plan itself uh a pdf of it i'm going to put the link in the chat and that has the the ratios for the classes that we were able to hire for um for example at weathersfield i think we had 85 students with four teachers sixth seventh and eighth grade and we reduced that with five teachers so they're down to whatever that is 16. i do that off the top 16 or 17 15 to 16 yeah so um it's i have that information in that report okay okay and and my other question is um are these um positions that you um hired are they are they grant funded or are they full-time positions of um all the teaching positions are grant funded all the teachers that

077were hired with sr2 funds were um we're told that this is a grant funded position and that funding would come to an end um the school-based clinician was hired um with pot we're going we're going to try to um pay for that position out of our esser um i d e a b sorry it is like what s or 3 is for general education there's a pot of money for special education um in the american rescue plan and katie is going to be putting that extra school-based clinician in those funds or else she has um a bucket of money for school psychology psych school psych um support services um our help uh is locally funded at this time so um that's i think that covers it oh oh i'm sorry we have a few um

078consolidated federal program grants title positions that are not um we have filled two of those positions at heartland we still have two openings at um windsor and uh halftime opening in that funding at weathersfield i saw a question elizabeth had brittany uh when you say new mtss system what are some of the basic changes uh from what we did in the past yeah some of the changes are one that is common across the entire su which is really helpful for those those people who are shared across the different buildings the other piece is how we house and collect the information and how we set goals and collect data around the mtsf plans uh those are the big ones just to make sure that we are providing everything we possibly can for students and that's based

079on the data that we're collecting versus you know setting a goal and just having it be oh we think this will work it's very very specific um the other piece to that is the organizational system is a little bit different we've really expanded our use of how we're housing the information within google via shared drives for each building so those are all set up and i'm able to actually track the information across the entire su which is really great the other piece is having a su-wide mtss team so that we can all make decisions based on our individual buildings and that we have representation across the su [Music] did that answer everything i'll move to the next slide i think that's it brittany all right um so when we look at the academic achievement i've

080talked a lot about the mtss leadership team already which is also our part of our recovery team process that is required by the state we developed that this summer as i said and we're continuing to do that every month we actually have a meeting tomorrow so we have teams that are working on developing mtss handbook that's common across csu a website and a leadership guide and in intervention guide for for the entire su so that'll be a year-long process would be my guess the other piece that i'm working on is trying to develop a consultation plan with local service agencies so talking with them regularly about what they're seeing within the community what our plan is and how how we can work together to help you know bring bring us back into uh past this

081recovery area so that's what that's going to look like um the plcs we talked a little bit about that but the biggest part of that is that we are working on the data piece and making sure that people are using data to make decisions within the plc's um and that we're we're using it as a training process for all staff [Music] the transitional kindergarten was another area we obviously have hired and we have students participating in that program um the biggest area that we're working on now is planning for assessment options how are we going to know if that is that program is working or not working and then making adjustments the summer academy program served 99 students this summer and we are working on collecting that post-assessment data right now through our tmps which

082should be done within the first week of october i believe we also did training on exactpath which was another you know our instructional intervention software where we trained and we most people have been working through that initial assessment so we're collecting feedback on how that's going and then we'll use that data as well to input it into a system to compare data across the su um does anybody have questions about that piece all right um the next piece i'm going to present here and i hope i can click and you'll actually see this but maybe not [Music] there we go so this is something i'm also going to share with you all to give you time to look at on your own this is a data dashboard that i developed which collects all of the

083information across the su from tmp sbacks exactpass panorama will have um smps in here and we'll have attendance data in here eventually it's just it's a work in progress but um i'm not going to go through all of these tabs i'll let you kind of look through it but you can see i it's by grade and when you scroll down you can see comparative information that's available um between grade levels uh the state has not released the uh last year's s-back scores to the public yet for school-wide information um so i'm just waiting on that to be released and then all of that will be put in here as well as you go through you'll be able to see i broke it down to compare it by gender as well as um free and reduced

084status so again all of that will be the in here i'll put in the summer academy work as well my goal with this is that we'll be able to put it up on the website for people to see everybody to look at that you'll be able to track the information live as i as i input the information across the throughout the school year yeah and then and then brittany just a quick question so in terms of the supervisory union board and and i spoke the individual boards but i think if we can you know use the supervisory union board as as sort of a reporting board because you know that the plan belongs to all of us but do you plan to highlight certain set like you know certain sections each month that that kind

085of that kind of come up as as we get gather the data yes absolutely um the other thing that will be helpful i think um once i get into this a little bit more deeply right now it was literally just inputting numbers and press putting up graphs and doing a lot of colors but once we get into a little bit more i'll be able to look at actual trends and figure things out um currently like i said it's just numbers every school is going to have a dashboard for themselves as well that that looks similar reports that in the exact same data as well as any data that's requested by the principal so that they can report out to their individual school boards work in progress but yeah and i agree elizabeth typed excellent work

086in the and for the short period of time to be able to get this much codified in in in a in a certain spot i think that's that that that's great work it's something we've never been able to do at an su level before you know so that that's good i mean some of our principals were looking at data but it was in data in isolation you know as we look across because we do share a lot of staff we share a lot of kids uh and i think that's that's really important so uh nice work thank you and i don't mean to like kind of breeze over it but since we can't really get into all of the details i think it would be a good idea to just share it out with all

087of you so you can peruse it on your own and certainly email me questions or ask at the next board meeting but i will i will continue here because i know we are short on time social emotional well-being i mean these are things that we've kind of already talked about other than instructional rounds is something we're going to be doing angie myself and patty will go in and work with the principals on looking at how are students getting voice in choice and leading their own learning within the classrooms so we are developing that currently to start actually next week um and then the counselors uh are all really working hard at developing our panorama assessment because that will be implemented next month [Music] see the last thing i have to share with you real quick

088and i'm not going to go through the whole thing because i will share this out with you to look at on your own but we did the community input survey uh this summer and we got 163 total responses which was fantastic i was i was impressed i mean i'm not like it could be better but you know we're working on it um i thought this was really interesting data the number of students that reported that there are a number of parents that reported that their children had issues with social emotional mental health impact as well as difficulty with academics so that you know that's overall data and it's just a snapshot but i think if we broaden that i think we're probably going to see the same across all students in the su um i

089was pretty happy with this that people were actually kind of feeling like they understood our action steps and our goals for the recovery plan i did find that those who thought that some of those who thought that it did not address our student needs maybe it wasn't explained very clearly because some of the comments they had definitely were aligned with what our recovery plan meant but there's a lot of educational jargon in there too so i think really what i took from that is we need to do a better job communicating with our with our community about what's going on so i'm going to work on that these were some of the top takeaways a need for mental health supports in schools really that we're on the right track a lot of people identified areas

090of concern that we were addressing or we will be addressing in the upcoming school year and that we also need improved communication around our recovery plan and future spending just to start out i did create a question and answer and i posted that up on our website just to answer some of the questions that that people had because there's certainly um certainly concerns certainly questions about uh what what things are like leader in me so i tried to identify some of those and and make them a little bit more clear there's we did a student survey recently actually to get information from them about you know what they they hope to see moving forward so i included that data in here as well um just what what they'd like to see moving forward and i

091will share that out with the principals because some of it can just be taken care of at the school level fairly simply and i think we we should work towards that just to give students more voice [Music] and then the last thing um well there's actually two more things so i apologize it's getting long but we are working on a communication plan moving forward to get get information out to staff parents community members um in a more organized fashion so that people have the information they need moving forward and then i'm actually going to let angie if you want to jump in on this last one we are hoping to to do a couple of community forums one of each of our buildings that we would like some input on from you all yes i'll

092so part of the our pastor three requirement is meaningful consultation which um basically means that you have made every effort to solicit the um the participation of your community in um in the creation of your arp esser plan our pastor three the plan is related and and it adds on to the recovery plan but there is actually its own document um with questions and areas that we have to address we are thinking we would like to have a virtual meeting for each district i mean 153 responses over the summer for our community survey we were pleased with getting that many but it was clearly not representative of all the all of our community members so we want to give our community members another opportunity to um ask questions um basically it would be we're thinking

093the format would be similar to the format that we used when when um the survey was put out where with discussing briefly what our recovery plan is looking at how it aligns with our strategic plan and then asking allowing the audience to have an opportunity for q a um is there anything i missed on that brittany uh no i don't think so i think it's just a matter of dates and if people have other opinions about how we should uh organize those we were thinking a virtual meeting for each district so we'd have one for weathersfield one for mass companies and one for heartland and uh we would really welcome the board's um ideas um and on that idea and we would like to have these in october and early november at the latest the

094arbester 3 plan i think is due november 30th so maybe we'll talk about that at our individual board meetings and and see what might be good times uh to to do that and each district has their own little way of getting people out some have more active facebook pages some have great newsletters so but uh but again both uh both angie and brittany excellent uh work thank you and i'll be able to get all of this information out to everyone um i just have to make sure i have everybody's email addresses but i'll get it out here we'll send it to me and i can i can get it to the answer i'm putting it um the link on the to the um page in the chat to our webpage that has the report i

095prepared the copy that i gave you guys is i had added more information so um a paper copy here for the folks who showed up but it's not complete the one on online is thank you great i think that's it thanks great thank you next we are going into items for discussion so it kind of feels like we were there already um first up is tuition payment policy yeah i i j uh just prior to the meeting um i sent out uh i shared with you all a document uh this was really just for first reading this is a tuition payment policy that pertains primarily as it says in the header to heartland and weathersfield because they are our tuition districts for high school purposes if you operate a school then you're not obligated to

096pay tuition anywhere right so that's also why uh it's it's come up and there have been questions that have been raised by the courts as the as these religious cases move through well what about elementary students and ka students but vermont law is very clear if you operate if a district operates a grade level then you're not responsible for tuitioning that grade level so anyhow this is only uh first reading uh and uh and a matter of fact it was really just a draft in our format of the vermont school boards association recommended policy um and uh i see nikki's on there a few other people on there but essentially number two is the one that caused this to be written and it says essentially that payment of tuition is made subject to the condition

097that the approved independent school cannot expend funds for religious worship so at least right now pending pending uh any additional court action uh we um i just messed that up we um we uh we we can uh in fact uh you know pay tuition to a religious school as long as they can assure us that their funds are not being expended for religious worship but that case our our particular case right now on this tuition issue and and religious entities is on hold it's on pause because apparently there's a big supreme court case that's being heard very soon with respect to this issue and the uh the decision was made by our attorneys and the attorneys of the uh of the plaintiffs to uh put this in a hold pattern until that decision by the

098supreme court has made i think it's a i think it's a case for maine that's going to be decided by the supreme courts uh but anyhow what i would suggest for tonight uh is to look at it look at the changes i've already suggested um because our parents don't necessarily apply for tuition what they do is they they fill out it's an application but it's it's really a tuition voucher which indicates residency because if they can prove residency and the school is in fact an approved independent and or public high school then we pay tuition that's the bottom line the difference is we pay more to an approved public than we do to an approved uh independent depending on their st their status so if you have any other thoughts or suggestions uh this is

099a live document i think i gave everybody edit edit if you want to put additional comments in and then what will happen is laurie laurie will clean this up uh and bring it back for uh i guess what you could call second reading next month [Music] um there are two people who would like to speak first nikki here and neil so um just looking at this david i guess i feel more comfortable if we said um something like the uh tuitioning towns of the windsor southeast supervisor reunion or the um not high school holding towns or something like that um when we start the sentence off because um it just felt weird to me to say the windsor southeast supervisory union because the windsor southeast supervisory union itself is not paying tuition right it's correct

100it's just not it's just not working for me so i guess i would say something like and we can choose the words but um the the tuitioning towns of the windsor southeast supervisor reunion heartland and weathersfield school districts will provide tuition for the picture yep yep and then i would make um a similar edit on bullet one and i don't know how i don't know the legalese of how we want to call the tuition in towns but [Music] and then i would call out part 11 mother scale you would or would not i would in that first entry paragraph but then below i would not so i would call out heartland and weathersfield and i would make it a comma though not parentheses so that it's clear that we're the ones paying tuition um and

101then when you get to bullet one i would say um tuition will be paid to schools attended by legal pupils who are residents of the tuitioning towns in the windsor southeast supervisory union as defined by blah blah blah i i would just like to point out this is elizabeth i would just like to point out that west windsor is still a a yeah that pays tuitions for some of its high school students and we were in that lawsuit yeah it's true do you guys pay tuition is it two or three years about another two two years so we probably should include it i agree well i i think you shouldn't because uh we're only doing it for two more years and then we'll have to just turn around and strike west windsor that's a good

102point you know i mean how do people feel about that we don't i we didn't obviously include it in the initial uh draft windsor is not paying close enough scotland's the district's pay tuition right it would be easy to um go back in two years and just amend the policy except we can't we won't be accepting any new students so i think that for tuition so i don't think it should be mentioned i disagree nancy i i think that uh we we have had a family that has tried to transfer their student to a religious school oh yes we should i i also agree that um i think all districts should be mentioned in this policy and then once uh west windsor along with the ascutney board no longer pays tuition then we can just

103change it elizabeth your hand is raised yeah i just wanted to quickly point out that um the author of the change was our lawyer pietro lin [Music] there are a couple of ways to do this one way is to um you can make it generic in that first paragraph and just simply say the towns in the windsor southeast supervisory union that tuition students right will provide tuition for students attend right i mean that that sort of clarifies it it covers everybody that happens to be currently tuitioning and then and then you're done you know and then this one could say the same thing then you'll never have to change it again really because the policy only addresses those schools that tuition that's good i think that's good i think so me too other documents to

104talk about yeah okay i don't think you need to specify any districts it's only those that tuition [Music] i don't think you need 9 through 12 in there either because we we'd say uh in accordance with state law and the criteria listed below i think that's enough that's good david would you feel comfortable with people putting comments on the side yeah yeah i'm gonna make those two big changes and i've already made some other changes throughout but yeah put comments on the side and then we'll you know lori and i will clean it up next meeting we can have a second reading david one other question at the end the number six talks about making sure that the receiving school independent school private school is regularly reminded of this policy but what other is there

105any other form of policing you might say you know about as a superintendent that's going to make sure that these rules are these policies are followed could you repeat that one more time scott just so i understand your question the last line in the tuition number six i think it says um that the receiving private school will be regularly reminded in their with their monies received that this is the policy they'll probably they'll probably uh put it in their files and keep track of it but besides that and as a regular reminder how what is the assurance that our communities have that this policy will be followed by the private schools [Music] well i i think you i think the simplest control that you have is that is that a check doesn't get sent out

106right and they don't get paid we just had this happen just last week i mean we you know we we discovered a student that had an incomplete residency voucher but it was already in attendance at one of the local high schools and we basically uh realized the reason it was incomplete is because they didn't have an address in the sending town so we we immediately notified the high school and we stopped payment and notified the parent that you're now unless you unless you register where you really live then uh you're uh you're you're you're on the hook for the tuition yourself we're not paying so i think that's your only control okay i should clarify i'm sorry i'm really speaking to the yellow part and um because that's really what the um late breaking news

107in the tuition policy in my opinion so so a town like heartland is going to be paying he's now obligated to pay tuition to a religious school but it's not supposed to be used for right [Music] yeah religious ceremony or i forgot worship is the word yeah yeah and what we do is we send we do send that letter that states that uh and we also say that uh that uh payment is subject to change you know depending on i don't have the exact wording in front of me but depending on um you know the uh the current legal legal status of religious schools so that that we've started doing that this year on the advice of our attorney yeah yeah but but still i mean there's nobody out there making sure that that happens

108am i correct yeah except my office okay but you're but you can't be at all the private religious schools no oh i see what you're saying okay i see what you're saying what you're saying is uh who's making sure that the monies that is being sent are are not being used for religious purposes is that what you mean yes correct thank you for yeah okay saying that wait i should have yeah okay yeah that it's it's it's one of the caveats and quite frankly the reason we we didn't move on that particular issue is because the state was supposed to be developing affidavit that those schools would have to sign but it's part of that court case so that affidavit and the aoe regulation or the aoe protocol around that affidavit was put on hold

109so our attorney said since there's no required affidavit from the state level you know you don't really have the authority to to to uh instigate an affidavit on your own so we stopped it i mean i i that was the advice of the attorney but you know i think that would be the simplest way scott it would have to be self-regulation that the religious school would have to sign something that states you know this to which the money will not be used for religious worship and our purposes but um part part of the part of the reason why i think this one on hold is because of the fact that there's really there's two there's two parts to this law one is one is use and the other is is purpose right just that you're

110going to use the money it's really to what purpose and that's what this supreme court case is supposed to spell out but it's pretty complicated legal ease quite frankly um so we i've just been doing whatever bill ellis the attorney who's representing all three supervisor reunions that are involved in this court case we do happen to be one of them as elizabeth said and so we we do what the other three do david elizabeth made a good comment as far as having this document open for comments if you could instead of you and lori integrating the comments you know revising the document with our comments as we go along if you could leave them and then we can discuss those comments at our next meeting yeah that's fine that's fine yeah because i i'm looking

111at number six and quite frankly i even wondered whether we at this point needed number six but i think i put that in there not sure we need this yeah so yeah i think then we would just go through it and discuss the comments exactly at our next meeting so that everyone can see everybody can take a look at it i sent it out today can we do both can we have them clean it up a little bit and keep the comments yeah i could make a cop i could make a copy of it and then and then clean it up based on the comments exactly there's a lot of those comments but we do have to show them oh yeah yeah otherwise it would keep them to show them but then yeah clean so

112that we can expedite the reading of it and not be editing the document during the meeting yeah which is why i am asking exactly to be able to comment otherwise we will be here longer than at this meeting and next meeting because i have a question yes how soon do we think that the supreme court ruling is going to happen uh alex thought our attorney alice thought that it could be by the first of the year does this document change potentially when that happens yeah it could it could change without a doubt yeah it could change and is the lawyer recommending that we do this make this change he thought we ought to have a policy for right now based on the vsba outline and regulation but then we would change it you know uh

113okay this was a model policy developed by the vsda with respect to that court case colleen i think it really is in number two that the payment of tuition has made subject condition right so we've made the payment conditional and that's what he said is critical to get in the in the policy so if those conditions change or if you know the court case says something different you could you know that's the line do you want to consider tonight the first reading or do you want to just consider this the the draft [Music] um let's consider this the first reading okay [Music] it is now the first reading [Music] thank you all right we're next good we have goals [Music] you know just quickly on the goals and i'm not trying to rush this but

114i think that was part of you know also what um [Music] what you know what what britney was trying to do was to outline the fact that we've we've kind of called through that strategic plan we've got our recovery goals now i don't know whether or not the board wants goals separate from those or you want to highlight a couple of other goals i just want to get clear on what the su board wants to do since we've had that retreat now and we're moving forward i see elizabeth's hand up [Music] thank you um i i had a couple of suggested goals that i thought we might consider one was uh and we talked about this where we touched upon this at our district meeting but i think it would be a good idea for

115our board to um [Music] have training in some of the things that we are asking the administration to implement like have the board trained on leader in me and and uh some of the other things that sometimes we get presentations on them but it's not the same or cps sometimes we get presentations on them but it's not the same as the board actually um internalizing what the um what the program is and i think it would really and and also some of the the uh racial equity stuff that we've been learning i think it would really help us to um first of all it would show that we're really you know walking the walk so to speak but also we could be more fluent in um in our discussions about about some of these things

116and we can really uh the programs that we are becoming excited about um we we could really um being trained on them actually will make it possible to explain to taxpayers why they're valuable and not just using data but also you know having having internalized them um and i i'm not saying that we should devote a you know monthly i think to but um but i think it would be really valuable that's that's one suggestion and another one was after having talked to bill yates on friday [Music] well two things um uh i think paul mentioned during our our retreat the value of having a um an eighth grade writing test and i'd like for us to think about exploring that um and the third thing was uh to our board being trained on certain

117matters um uh i shared with rebecca um a short about 12 12-minute long video on what racial literacy actually means it was developed by two kids and um it's actually really excellent um about uh how how students um need to learn contextualization of some of the social equity things that you know however the curriculum is developed and implemented by teachers we should know what that means as well and uh yeah sorry to be so unarticulate i apologize but i think those are two goals that are that are kind of worthy of exploration [Music] yeah one of the goals at the su board retreat elizabeth you mentioned uh we've done is um well two out of three uh you wanted to add the valley news eagle ties and vermont standard to all news items that come

118out of the website well we've done it for the valley news and eagle time still waiting to hear back from the vermont standards yeah we found a link between the website so that once they went in and confirmed it now we're spamming them essentially with everything uh that comes out of our website so that is done uh is a short goal short lived goal but completed excellent yeah so okay never mind i think that having the training in the programs would be really good um and again having a a way to report on that um deciding okay leader in me and then having whoever is going to be training us at least in the um the fundamentals of leader in me let us give us some dates and so that would have to be either

119another section of a meeting although we have so much to discuss in all of our meetings that having a training period would just make our meeting last until 11 o'clock that would need to be another time but we could all decide on when we wanted that you know based on it again if it's important then we say um okay on wednesday i have training and that's what i have to do um so and then at our next meeting after we've had that training then we schedule training for the next program that is being implemented but we have to decide at this point is having the board trained in leader in me more important than having our board trained in what is happening with our anti-racist policy and such that just the different programs which which

120is more important what do we want to have first and rebecca your hand is raised um so amy what um i was wondering i i know that um there's professional development for um um for staff and i i wonder and the principals may be able to speak to that if there are specific specific dates when there's pd for um staff on leader and me or or the other initiatives that the schools are pursuing would that be an opportunity for board members to participate in that um i i'm just trying to think of different options that would that could be available to to the board besides as you mentioned adding another meeting or having it during one of our um um [Music] one of our board meetings where other work needs to be discussed um and

121my okay my other comment was does the board is is it required for the board to have professional development hours the answer to that question is is no other than there's a statutory requirement in law for the for the chair of the board to get a certain number of hours in training to be a chair um and most of our chairs have been through that training not all of them uh and it does get updated a little bit every year um yeah i i think it's the annual i think it's mostly annual yeah we've done better some years than others i thought christine's hand uh we have a virtual platform for leader in me that has videos and trainings and i'd be happy to look through that and see if there's something that we could

122share with the board that would not be overwhelming and super you know our training to all day trainings so and the seven habits training was really a three-day training cut to one so i'm thinking that i might be able to provide um access to some information that could be done on your own if you yeah asynchronous learning and then we as board members would have to say i have participated in this training right so i i will take a look and like that'd be great what kinds of things are we going to do yeah and if there's anything for any of the other initiatives that are being implemented that would be wonderful i will um reach out to my artists and their coach on this like how do they recommend bringing boards up to speed

123my guess is so net in year two their family um and community engagement starts thinking deeply and my guess is is that our kids we chat yeah so as we're building their leadership skills okay christine yeah i was gonna say a similar thing but i can also share that our action teams you know after the training we are tasked with implementing action teams which every staff member serves on and we meet twice a month during collaborative practices time so um if it would be helpful we can report out at our local meetings on what we're what we're doing um specifically in our schools around leader in me i i i like the idea of the virtual training because i think our board members you know many of them work many of them have and i'm

124not saying we would never do a a training internally but uh it might be a good way to just if we can cull through and get the real life sized version of of of some of this it would be it would be good then you could do it in your leisure and then we could have maybe each board meeting have 15 to 20 minutes of conversation questions around you know leader in me or collaborative problem solving or you know because i thought we could do some of this by video right and then the goal would be okay in the next month everyone be sure to complete the leader in the virtual training and then we can talk about it at the next meeting we can do that once we have that virtual training thank you

125auntie you're very helpful christine yeah just one more thing um you'll probably see coming out we are sending out a survey it's called mra or measured results assessment to parents students and staff um and there'll be some questions that might help you get get a flavor of the program and and help us rate our schools and how we're doing as well so you should be seeing those in the next month great and could that be sent out to board members as well since there are a couple of them sure yep yeah a great idea [Music] excellent elizabeth what was the other the anti-racism yeah that's going to come up later i think on our on our agenda um so we heard we heard we heard three goals basically right and i know wendy's busy writing

126them down but it sounds like uh poor training is a part of it right and let me see i'm just i'm looking back at the minutes from our retreat when we talked about goals um so increase community engagement we could have that as an item on our agenda just to discuss at meetings where we are with that what have we done and we do have those forums planned for next month right but again not so much to talk about it at this meeting but to have that as a goal decide okay what how will we know that we've achieved this goal um or yeah i recall one of the other goals that seemed really important was to have regular reports on uh on progress with our recovery plan and strategic plan that's part of what

127the adventure team took to heart and i think that's part of what brittany was trying to outline today ways in which we can report out you can have all the initiatives in the world but if you don't have a way to track those and and see if they if they're making a difference then it doesn't make any sense so i think that was an important goal exactly and to have just um it doesn't have to be a long discussion but something that is sent to us in the in our meeting packet on the budget and then just stay short this is where we are yeah are there friends but i think it's important that we do that every month yeah those brief monthly uh financials yeah and just to have it just to have the

128spreadsheet with the numbers and an opportunity to ask questions i know i know larry and ed are working on a simple format to make that happen we're hoping to start that in october we're going to do the quarterly's in october and then yeah that and then start the monthly show january after the quarter's up yeah that's the goal okay so larry larry is there any way that you can um present the numbers using pivot tables well yeah we can not with not if it's the financials right so the financials are sort of like where you are now when doing budget stuff with the budget committee actually kind of did a little bit of that when i remember when i showed you if you cut the software that remember i took that 50 000 away what

129that would do to heartland's assessment that's kind of a pivot table in a sense so yes but it's easier to do with budgeting with financials the numbers are you know you don't want me to show you what would happen if you didn't cover this you know no no no i i just meant uh we we tend to like at the um our uh budget numbers our budget tables um for example at manuscript new school district i mean if we're looking at the whole su budget um we often get vertical a vertical document and it would be so much easier to look at and absorb if it if it had pivot tables instead i can look i can look into that we'll see what when we do the financials starting in january for the monthlies then

130we'll start looking at uh a better way to present it i'm sure there's a bunch of options we can do um you know so it's not as dry um one thing you could you could do give it enough time would be to show you uh just percentages on the right side you know so it's not just the numbers of what's encumbered but where you are with your budget you could say you know you're 80 within budget based on encumbrances and stuff like that that would be one thing we could do yeah and i think i think elizabeth because i think you had emailed me and i talked with larry about the whole pivot table idea i think what might also help us especially in the budget process and it might be a little late for

131this su budget you know to to sort of design some level of pivot table but if you if you if you've had experience or you give us a visual of what you know of what you're thinking uh or an example even off of a website that that would help us a little bit because there's a thousand there's a myriad of definitions of pivot tables so it would just be nice to know yeah but i i i guess what i mean is that like instead of having a vertical table where we see that you know using the example of uh of moniscutaneous school district because it has two schools we we uh we have to scroll down through and then click back and forth between um between spreadsheets um and i think it would be much

132easier if you could scroll over a cell and have that pop out into a separate table oh i see what you're saying yeah i'd be glad to provide an example of it maybe there could be some ways to do that and my goal uh would be for monthly financials would just be have a simple report on a pdf or something and and uh and then maybe do quarterlys where they're more digging down uh you know because i think you could you could get lost every meetings because remember if they're doing this monthly that would be every su board meeting you could get lost in those in those numbers so i think and overall and then but i see exactly what you're talking about and that's kind of what that's kind of what i did with

133the su budget committee um i showed him a few examples of where you can explode out from a cell and say if i did this this is what that would do over here if i did this this would do it i know you're saying about the tab so i could i could look into that definitely thank you for long term yep rebecca your hand is raised yes um one of the things um we also talked about was a philosophical budgeting discussion um as someone on the budget committee and and someone um it's taking me a while to just get my head around some of what i'm looking at and i'm thinking um i i understand some of this but i just wonder um if if other stakeholders outside of um a small group that's focusing

134on it would understand um the budget number numbers well i i did choose to go online and also investigate other school boards to get a flavor of how they present their um budgets to the town and i i was you know i was impressed with the way that um um some did where um they they they spell out changes so that the other stakeholders can at least understand that there have been certain um changes in in the budget lines but um i i think it would be valuable for all of us to have that that discussion um um on the budget um it for me it's a new learning curve and and larry and david have been great but it's definitely a lot to wrap your mind around rebecca one thing about that david and

135i talked about it and i don't want to send you running for the hills but uh one idea was to have not changed budget committee members every year have you on like a tour you know so like a two or three year tour so you're not relearning what an assessment is and relearning you know what makes up special ed and what a service plan is and and all that stuff and what makes up the central office and all you know i think i think you you have a lot more knowledge than you think you do rebecca and i think having to lose that expertise for the next fiscal year 24 budget cycle it would behoove to keep that colleen jamie and rebecca together for at least another budget cycle or two and then maybe you

136bring on new you know people who are learning so i think i think that's important and what i meant by the philosophical discussion was you know we we uh we often look at these at spreadsheets and and we know or learn what the what the lines are on the spreadsheet but we don't look at um how how that how the items in our strategic plan our costs it actually costed out and for example the [Music] amount of professional development or the the collaborative time that as larry um costed out was about eight hundred thousand dollars for our supervisory union that's a big investment um but you know we we should be able to um talk about uh how how some of those things um are expressed in the budget [Music] so that we can say

137to our our taxpayers we've we've invested here and here here are the outcomes of the investment um we've we've gone down this road with with uh i don't know personalized learning plans um or with a leader in me we've invested this much money and leader in me and uh here's the outcome of of that you know so we can actually point to improvements that are that are being made from the investments right um so to it occurred to me as we were since we are in the process the very early development of the budget and our budget committee has met that perhaps a goal for this board is that every october meeting we devote time to having a philosophical budget discussion as members of the board will change the needs of our districts will change

138um and we saw drastic changes happened because of kelvin and none of us had even taken that into consideration two years ago so um having an annual discussion right around the time that budgets are starting to be developed that could be a goal so every october on our board calendar there will be a philosophical budget discussion yeah that might you might want to do that one in september or this time yeah because by time october rolls around we're pretty deep into the journal yeah so september because august sometimes yeah but this year it will happen in october so getting ahead of myself that will be on the next agenda i just want to remind you to amy that we do you know we are going to need that executive set take 10 minutes i'm not

139trying to rush it but i just want to be sensitive to um would people feel that with a recovery plan discussion coupled with a strategic plan would you feel okay to move on from that to the anti-racism update yeah the only thing i wanted to mention is we do we did get the updated copy of our strategic plan from battelle it's a cleaner copy i'll put the link in the chat so you can see it on our website that's where i'm going to direct you uh yeah so do you want to go on to anti-racism now um yes please yeah so i just want just quickly and then people can chime in here you know again we want to thank that uh that task force that's continuing basically to meet and a smaller group that's

140been working hard i think we have a sort of a three prong approach to this now wanted to have a smaller group working on a a potential job description for a dei uh coordinator advisor director uh diversity and equity uh and inclusion uh person and that group is going to be meeting relatively soon and then the second thing the second prong of our our plan is to have the the uh the original task force get back together again and um and i think i think that first meeting is tomorrow not everybody can make it but uh and uh dr crum gave us an uh a nice summary of the work that we did that's about 16 pages worth and so we we have to digest that and come up with an action plan uh with

141that task force that will share with all of our boards but especially this board and then last but not least and maybe the board members can speak to this that are on the task force uh we felt that there may be some need for you know again an additional board training board instruction board collaboration on what we mean by anti-racism racism equity you know some of those basic uh definitions that we've spent the whole summer really diving into our policy and looking at that but um it might be good for the whole board to to really know what what what's ahead of us and what we have to still uh confront so if any board members wanted to speak to any one of those this would be the time i mean the good news is

142that the work is continuing [Music] and i think it and we you know can't stop whether it's anti-racism or just equity in general it's got to continue [Music] are there any comments rebecca well one is david i i wanted to thank you because i read the um um [Music] the email that you sent out to parents and uh and other stakeholders and um you're we're engaging them and they need to be part of the conversation and we need to be transparent and so i just wanted to thank you for reaching out to them and letting them know this is what's going on and um we want your comments um so i saw that and i really i thought that was that was important um and yes we are meeting tomorrow and i thought and i

143but i don't remember recall but i thought that um there was discussion around um us the entire board meeting but i don't know if it was with dr crummer or it was with um someone else um but i i may be i may be wrong i just don't remember i um about having the conversation with the board and and i agree i think that um dr crum made it clear that this isn't something um that we pick up and go to a workshop and um and that's it that it's going to be ongoing work um and um i think um if we want to be able to comfortably converse with our constituents and our stakeholders and um parents we we want to be um not only informed but um aware of what is it that

144we're talking about and clear on on what is it that we're talking about um [Music] i think i think that was what we wanted to talk about just briefly tonight what does the board as a board want to do i mean we've got the internal task force we've got work with our community but what does this board want to do in terms of setting some direction getting clear and i think i don't think it was melissa but i think there was a person that elizabeth suggested might want to meet with the board and just talk about what other districts have done or other boards have done um [Music] yep steve she uh just presented to the hartford board last week and uh she can her name is mary and now i can't think of her

145last name um but uh she can tell us about what's going on in the rest of the state what wards are doing in the rest of the state and also uh give us a brief overview of what we're talking about and and she can also help us to develop the plan um that's what she does professionally and um she's very very highly regarded and um [Music] and works all over both vermont and new hampshire and who is this again elizabeth oh mary yeah you you ha you you you would give me your name but i don't have it right in front of me i named it hold on what mary gannon is her name again [Music] yeah and we could i think next next month uh not that we shouldn't do this but the the

146agenda will be pretty full but if we wanted to have you know a conversation with i don't know if she's going to be available or not but that's a possibility yeah she said she she would be available next month she wasn't available this evening but um we didn't put her on the agenda anyway this evening so it didn't matter but uh she said she'd she was available next month feel comfortable reaching out to her having elizabeth reach out to her [Music] she said she would be glad to um do it at no cost for for uh [Music] half an hour discussing with her [Music] yeah and i would start with that just get sidetracked exactly okay i'll ask her yeah it could even be part of my report [Music] but go early in the meeting

147right if you'll ask her and then if you want to give me her email address elizabeth and then i'll uh i'll follow up your thing david sounds good okay so i think as far as the anti-racism update um we're moving in a positive direction we certainly are not letting it we're not saying okay we have a policy we're done with that we're figuring out how to move forward and bring it out to our communities um so i think we'll move on to items for action i don't think there are any other than it sounds like we're going to invite mary to our next board meeting and i think we're good right now okay so setting the next agenda we will have a philosophical budget discussion we will have go over the tuition payment policy we

148are inviting mary gannon i think those are three um all we need probably for our non-routine because we're always at least for now we will have a covered report we will have strategic plan update and we'll also have some somewhat of a draft budget ready for everybody then too so that can be part of that philosophical budget recovery planning reporting yeah that will be strategic plan recovery plan reporting and you know with the budget and mary gannon that might be a full agenda to be honest with you extremely full if we add more then we'll be um be over capturing all of ourselves not make the most out of our discussion about budget and our discussion with mary gannon one more comment about mary gannon and that is that she has also been working with

149melissa crum yeah which is great that's a that's a positive [Music] we'll mention that to melissa tomorrow night well we're not with melissa tomorrow night but that's a good point elizabeth [Music] great thank you so i think we just need a motion to go into executive session right so i'll make a motion i'll take a motion to go into executive session [Music] and then nancy seconded all [Music] call anne-marie hi colleen spence yes i okay totally into it davis hi nicole hi says hi [Music] we are going into executive sessions thank you administrator too [Music] thank you so much