SU Board Meeting - June 28th, 2021

001good evening everyone i'd like to welcome you to our windsor southeast supervisory union meeting it is june 28th and it is 6 33 and do we need any introductions i don't believe so i think we're good okay are there any changes or additions to the agenda hopefully not it's hot no i don't think so we do need an executive session just uh at the end but nothing to add to the public agenda elizabeth you had your hand raised never mind sorry okay okay so i will take a motion to approve the minutes for may 24th so moved second and who was that for wendy okay were there any changes or clarifications or corrections to the minutes from may 24th hearing none all those in favor of approving the minutes from may 24th say aye all

002opposed abstentions wonderful thank you we have public participation on items not related to the agenda elizabeth uh well it's an announcement and i'd just like to announce that guerne jost has stepped down from the manuscript new school district board and therefore also from the uh windsor southeast supervisory union board we thank him very much for his long long long years of service and loyalty and thoughtfulness wise cancer [Music] yes indeed an editor [Music] yes are there any other announcements or public participation thank you elizabeth um we will move on to the superintendent's report and that is david yeah i'm and i'm going to be fairly brief just given the given the conditions uh tonight um but i will say that our summer food service delivery system kicked off today there were some um there were

003some glitches but not anything major and so craig had to redesign a couple of the routes i saw that he sent out an email today i think that got blasted to the people that needed to get blasted to in terms of those in terms of those changes but again i really appreciate the work that goes on again we were just joking before the meeting was called the order about jobs that you don't want to have in this kind of heat and actually preparing food in our kitchen which really the only form of air conditioning is to open a door which doesn't work as you all know so hats off to all the people who are putting those meals together and and delivering uh those meals uh and i think i didn't get the number from

004craig today but i'll certainly get that out to everybody once once we uh we do get it summer academy starts on july 6th i see katie here i don't know katie whether you wanted to uh you know just give an update on on on where we uh on where we are uh with summer academy um we had our first uh well second big staff meeting with everyone today um people are going in the buildings this week to start setting up and um we have the busing all set food program all set hcrs morning and afternoon program set um this will be a busy week i think where all the pieces are coming into place i'm sure there's pieces and parts we'll have to figure out next week but um been thrilled we have still about

005100 students attending from all four schools and approximately 45 to 50 staff including our hcrs um partnership as well so um it's been pretty busy yeah i i see nancy did you want to ask a question about the the academy nancy yes um are you uh going to contact parents um to let them know how and when and all of that stuff or has that been done um emails have been sent out to all the parents i think they either went out friday or today i remember reading them um letting parents know about drop-offs pickups um and bussing so that all did go out i received some clarifying emails from some parents so i know that that's happened if you know of anybody who didn't get the email that thought they should get it have

006them reach out to me so that i can follow up and send it to them great thank you yeah and certainly the transportation was a little tricky because we do have to provide some door-to-door service because uh if that is you know if that's in an you know and an iep as a related service then we have to keep doing it throughout throughout the the summer uh we are i sent out an email i don't think i copied board members but i did send out an email after the governor lifted the emergency order because our academy will be filled with a lot of kids and what we're doing is uh basically following the aoe vdh and cdc guidelines that we are um certainly uh requesting that those unvaccinated persons which would include students uh you

007know would would continue to wear a mask but not requiring it and the same thing with adults uh that adults who are not vaccinated would uh would continue to wear a mask but it's a request not a requirement uh because the aoe has told us that we can't impose restrictions that are stronger than those that have been proposed by the vdh or the cdc or the aoe so i think the summer will be a good test we are keeping the numbers small and the pod structure small partly because we want to be careful but also because the recovery effort is pretty intensive this is i mean even though we want to make sure that the kids enjoy their time this summer it really is focused on some pretty pretty serious instruction and trying to move

008kids especially those kids who are struggling all year uh along the the spectrum of of performance so uh so i think uh i think that's our our game plan and we'll see uh you know how how we do we're certainly going to be taking a lot of data throughout the summer and we'll continue to do that right into the fall bill bill yates did you have a question i didn't i did i see your hand go up on though no not did did a hand go up um rebecca and then anne-marie thank you amy um that that was my question i um well i had two questions one was um is there gonna be uh data that is going to be taken before and after and will we have an opportunity to hear um what

009you found at the beginning with the students and um what what sort of um um advances were made during the summer and the second thing was um if i'm not mistaken you said uh the the academics would be in the morning and the recreation or social emotional will be in the afternoon is that correct yes so to answer the first part of your question rebecca we are giving all of the students the summer tmps um within the first week the first two day uh second and third day and then we're also asking teachers to supply work samples or data based on how much students are you know let's say independent reading or a writing sample that they did or some sort of project throughout the five weeks we're looking at reducing the amount of regression

010that typically happens over the summer which means as we compare as students come back in the fall and take the fall tmp scores that that group of students looking at their rate of regression hopefully being less than the students that did not attend summer academy but also remembering that we also have the most significantly the students who needed the most help are the ones who are at summer academy so already starting fairly um some of them starting fairly low so we'll be able to compare themselves their scores from the beginning of the summer to the fall the second part um is the hcrs camp and the two rec departments um we have and i don't have i know we have 20 students going to hcrs i don't have the firm numbers in my head of

011how many are attending the windsor and the heartland wreck but those were the only three options that we had available for students in the afternoon so that would be more of the social emotional camp kind of activities that they'll do in the afternoon and to that point too rebecca we had hoped to uh you know i and i i give credit to btg bridging the gap that's our organization that has worked with us for a lot of years they they tried heroically to find a director this summer and they they just couldn't do it and uh and and so we were going to try to provide some more on-site kinds of activities our staff and again i don't blame them you know they many of them did not want to work a full day i

012mean that's just the way it is and i understand that the summer goes by quickly and they've had a tough year so we didn't push it so we do we i think by the time we look at those who have registered at the wreck and and the hcrs folks i mean i think we'll probably be serving almost half of those kids that are that are in the camp but we we had hoped to serve them all and and and and and that uh that didn't happen um i see and amy do you want to call on people i i see anne marie's hand yeah go ahead and marie i think you might be muted anne-marie sorry i just want to make sure the rest of the su board members knew because there's something that we

013kind of found out at our weathersfield school board meeting um because we had all been under the impression that the summer academy was going to cover the same students that our summer school had in previous years and it turns out that that isn't true um summer academy is mainly in fact i think almost 100 percent for special ed students i don't think there are very many that are not special ed students so um as far as like covering like social emotional help over the summer for regular ed students this isn't providing that um and we were sort of we were told that the same students that they would be covered under this academy and they're not being covered so i just wondered if and if the rest of the boards knew that and understood that

014i also i would love to see the data that rebecca requested as well as the final cost of this and the number of students from each school serviced by this at the end of it yeah we can provide that uh kate do you want to talk uh katie do you want to speak to the the special ed versus the regular red students i mean i know you said you're going to be serving about 100 kids do you know are they 100 special education students no they are not we the students were chosen initially the first round at the the students were identified at the bottom 30 of their tmp scores that was the only criteria we first used and that's how we gained almost three quarters of the students then we went back and any

015other student that needed to be identified not based solely on tmp scores for other factors which may have included iep students and and largely that was by design students who are not doing well on their tmp scores are students who may already be in special education but that was not the criteria part of our recovery plan was to address students who had significant loss or were struggling and that's why we used why we use the tmp scores because that did not um pick out or draw out particular students so in rita to address that i don't know in the past what scores that weathersfield used i also understand they use tmp scores um we didn't limit it in any way anyone who wanted to come to summer school could come and so to to that

016question too any child and family that has asked since we had room we have been able to accommodate um no matter what the reason has been um some siblings have joined that because one's child was identified and their other child wasn't we've done that um we've had other families because of other reasons been remote or whatnot and as long as they could attend the majority of the summer program at least four weeks or four out of the five days because part of what rebecca asked about data we need to have the students enough to have growth or to have to maintain the skills they have so we we didn't turn folks away so there were several as i said the the tnp scores then um iep and then any students or family that the school

017identified as well we were able to accommodate i don't think most people knew that about you opening it up to others i certainly didn't never heard of it i have a student so we we didn't we did not put an um because of limited resources for staff we did not put an all call out we couldn't do that what we did is we relied on the principals and teachers that brought other students or parents that asked and we ended up being able to keep our goal of no more than 10 students in a class and accommodating that way so you're right we we didn't put an all-call out um we were that would have let us let us down a path that we wouldn't have been able to accommodate all the people um i think

018we ended up being in goldilocks terms in the just right spot yeah i think yeah i think um too the two things that wade certainly staffing was a big issue i mean we and and some folks when we remember we started this planting pretty early in the spring and and actually before we knew what covert was going to be like in the summertime and what all the restrictions would be about so so that was part of the planning process and staffing some of our staff members changed their mind part way through uh partway through the you know through the process and so that did you know that did limit us you know in terms of how many students we could um we could serve i know that uh and i don't want to you know

019speak specifically to weathersfield but i think do you know how many students you're serving from wethersfield do you have that data with you tonight katie or no no you are on mute i think i can go count if you give me a second i think it was over 20 the last time i looked we've gotten more paperwork in since the last time we had a meeting and i think anne maria would be a good thing you know at the end like you said to do some comparisons around data and also to look at you know how many students and what students were served because we didn't serve anybody last summer right but to go back two summers we we would need to go back to summers and and see who we served um i mean

020i mean i and just like in comparison to some other summer programs like the um the woodstock uh i believe it's called soap or something like that um where it's they're just they're a lot more open to and they this just seems a lot more geared especially since you have so many specialists and like it's almost a two to one ratio um student to teacher in this that it's much more of a special ed type program than to service regular ed students um i mean a lot of these programs with having to do with social emotional and stuff like that they hire you know high school kids to help out and so forth and this seems like we're hiring all very high level professional type people to service um just seems like the cost is

021very high for the number of students served well the other thing too remember that what katie did was and correct me if i'm wrong katie but what she did is she integrated with the summer program the extended you know the extended summer services right and and those specialists that you're talking about you know and i think you're probably talking about speech language pathologists and you know pt folks and ot folks if they if they need it as part of those extended summer year services those are coming out of the special ed budget not out of the not out of the summer budget katie would have been budgeting for that stuff anyway because again this year maybe a little more so because of you know it's not surprising me at all that those kids that uh

022really made the cut and those kids that needed the most intense services were those kids who who struggle anyway and that that that was sort of the criteria but but but i understand it i think we have to look at it at the end of the summer look at the data and then and i i think the extended year services or the extent of some esy or eys i always get that wrong but um you know that's always going to occur and how the special ed department builds that you know they build it right and i think then the other the other part of summer programming and summer school you know i really think again during the budget process school boards have to look at how they want to how they want to serve service

023those other kids because that's what we've always done in the past um so to answer there's 24 weathershield students from pre-k through 9th grade 10th grade actually attending plus we have some high school students as well i don't have that list and that's part of what the high school is running and many of the students that are coming that are on ieps would not have necessarily qualified for esy services we don't service nearly this number of students so it just those are the students who are identified by their tmp scores as regular students not through their esy for um through iep purposes so i guess that's part of all students were treated as regular ed students first and what they needed based on regular our regular measures um and that not through the iep process

024so that that's how we address it and you're right we're different than soak in windsor or excuse me in woodstock we're not an established program they've been running that program for years and they also do a blended approach for students as well for some students for esy i hope we can get that good in five years from now and we can look at this and learn from what we do this year see what everyone wants to do next year and beyond um but this is new that and we've got a lot of bumps um to figure out and i think that we can look at other models and see what other places do um but i think you would be surprised to look at many of the programs woodstock being one as well as up

025in rivendell how many students would similarly meet the same criteria our students do it's just not under such um strange circumstances with esser funds and with the goal of using our recovery funds which i bet you angie's already chomping at the bit at to talk about that that this had to be part of our recovery plan and that's that's what makes this a little bit different than what traditionally so or the rivendale program um provided so angie you look like you might have wanted i don't want to step out of turn but um i just would like to have seen social emotional yeah i just would like to have seen social emotional be a little more a part of this than what it seems like it is yeah and i think those are yeah yeah

026no i i get it ann marie i get it and that's part of what hcrs is doing with those 20 or 25 kids in the afternoon those were the kids that were identified with in pretty intensive social emotional needs but but you know it's it certainly isn't perfect angie did you want to say something and then i don't want to i don't want to do it because we're also going to get into the recovery plan and some of that summer uh planning later on in the agenda i don't want to i don't want to get too into it right now angie did you want to say something yes i i just wanted i just is that good now um elizabeth and i are trying to figure out our microphone situation here our sound situation so

027um by i think that uh anne-marie's concern about uh social-emotional learning um not being addressed in the morning part of the day is is not exactly um the way it's going to be because the emphasis for academics is on project-based learning and that by its very nature is a um is a more nurturing kind of approach to learning there may be some what you might consider more typical traditional instruction there might be some skill recovery there might be some use of um some worksheets but we really we have asked teachers to um to look at project-based instruction that is um high interest um and uh for for for for our struggling learners so i do think by the nature of the instruction that's being designed the social emotional is indeed being addressed in the morning

028yeah the other thing too is i'll just make one last comment and this is certainly we're not trying to be competitive here but i've i i'm going on my 10th year and i don't remember us ever serving over 100 kids in the summer i i don't care where that you know i'm talking about combined now i mean i know there were you know 20 or 30 here and you know maybe 10 or 15 there and but but so i mean again it these were difficult circumstances and and i think i i what i where i agree completely with anne-marie we got to keep an eye on it and we've got to watch it we've got to look at that data and then we've got to decide what we want to do next year if we're

029out of if we're out of the cove woods then we've got to decide what part of this is going to be sy and what part of this is going to be just good summer programming and figure out the you know the best way to do that whether we do that together or each board budgets that separately you know again we can we can go in multiple directions with that and have that conversation um so the the if there aren't any more questions the last thing uh i see under my under my report are resignations and hires we can we can talk about that now uh in terms of seo employees and of course most of those supervisor reunion employees are katie's katie katie's employees so and and angie but i'll put katie on the spot

030again do you want to go over that now in terms of resignations because i see that under my under my report i have that chart that i made that i can share my screen and show or just walk our way through yeah it might be good to have a visual i think just so people can see uh where we are right now okay this new google thing has all the new different buttons so forgive me as i try to find the right one um where does it say share your screen now it's right next to the hand to the right of the hand that's the picture thank you uh two weeks off and i can't do anything let's see um resignations and new hires okay here we go can you see that we can see

031that okay so what i did was um just listed our resignations first and we received either letters or emails from folks um and i just gave the reason next to it um this is a kind of accumulation from early spring up until now donna hatch has resigned as a heartland special educator and has joined the heartland staff as an interventionist um so we still reap the benefits um liz barker was our lea working with our out of district students um you recognize her name she used to be the former fed director many years ago and came right before her retirement to help out which was a big help this year so she's actually leaving for retirement julia lachance i just realized i spelt her name wrong was our speech-language pathologist her first year in windsor

032she's moving diana scott same thing for speech language pathologists in early childhood special education is moving closer to where her kids go to school laura bald has resigned as the early childhood special educator but is staying on in an sei position in early childhood working in our second pre-k classroom next in the fall and chloe balch hes special educator has also resigned and our new hires are uh the following um sarah wellman will primarily be working in the mount of scottny um buildings as well as being the out-of-district lea replacing liz barker sarah bullos is coming on as a special educator at heartland that was an unfilled position from 2019 2020 we just it's not replacing anybody right now it just was never filled last year stephanie murray is coming on as a special educator

033also at heartland she's replacing dana hall who left mid-year naomi goodwin is coming on as a special education weathers field we're trying to address getting those caseloads a little bit smaller over in weathersfield and working on early intervention she'll be working with the k1 students and that was based out of what we talked about last year as we by attrition lose paraprofessionals um filling those positions as needed with special educators if possible and so this was three pairs unfilled from a year ago we didn't fill this position and so the need was at weathersfield chris keith is coming on as a special educator in windsor he has been a long-standing behavior interventionist in the district and he's pursuing um his special endorsement and almost through with that so he's coming under a provisional he's replacing

034janice mcguire who retired at the end of last year who we did not fill last year ryan labella is coming on it as a board certified behavior analyst those of you don't know all those letters he will be in windsor two days a week and in weathersfield three days and he's replacing vanessa perry who left mid-year and our last new hire is patti acadia who's coming up from virginia as an early childhood special educator replacing laura balch um so those are the new teaching positions um sorry i just had ice cream delivered apparently it's that hot out um it's a good deal i i it's good to be at meetings apparently um so katie from on the on the teacher level or the professional level do you still have positions that are open we do

035we we have one speech-language pathologist position that's still open we have two special educator positions that are still open um although we're trying to figure out how we can creatively work our way through that because i will tell you that we're not getting any bites at all no one is special directors around us we're it's crickets um no one's getting bites and the other is a part-time physical therapy position we thought we had that failed and that person decided not to sign their contract so we may be working with two rivers like we did this year with their pt because they have a part-time one as well um so those are the those are the main ones the two teachers the slp for early childhood and the pt yeah that's good and how about and

036i see rebecca's hand um and how about support staff do you i think there are still a few uh paraprofessionals we need to hire correct there are um uh let's see last count six we were very fortunate right before vacation thank you christine bourne who's here she had an ad out for position there and a couple of those people were also interested in su positions so we ended up with two wonderful folks that are coming on um and i'm starting to get a little bit of interest from folks who are returning to the workforce now um i'm going to ask the principals to send out within their letters asking if anyone is interested in becoming a support staff member that in the past has yielded folks who are interested in either working in their kids

037school or at least in general in the su so not very many positions we had very low turnover this year in support staff only a few people um i don't think we were more than four by the end of the school year for people leaving to go back to school so knock on wood that i was very pleased with that very low turnover uh i don't know amy if you can see everybody's hand but rebecca has her hand up yeah i saw rebecca go ahead um i was just wondering when you were seeking new employees um do you reach out to the colleges um i mean you know students are graduating and um they're looking for jobs i'm just surprised that you just even the support staff it's a way into the school system yeah

038we i can tell you i have a direct line to uvm and to castleton as well as a couple of the other colleges for speech language pathology and they're scooped up um just to give you a a window into it my daughter was the only person who graduated from uvm this year with an early childhood special education degree um as an undergraduate one so and her she was in masters levels classes and everyone in her master's level class who graduated there were six of them they already had jobs so we we are asking knocking down doors using um all of the resources that we can think of and that's actually networking with regional people too we're all doing the same thing teacher education programs are not turning out teachers very quickly um their numbers are

039significantly down so um we did have some good luck trying to recruit some people from out of state actually christine and i interviewed several a couple of the folks that we snagged couldn't find housing really they backed out because they were not going to be able to move that happened on three different candidates that we offered jobs to um so it's a confluence of um factors i think any suggestions and networking people would like to do it happily give them ads and um but it's it's a tough it's not like it was 20 years ago when i went into teaching and you would get 50 to 100 applicants for regular positions maybe 20 for special ed um we're lucky we get five once when we put ads up in um february and march and we

040did start in february and march um with anticipated ads um so um and i i was just wondering um i know that um that i i don't know if that happens in vermont but in new hampshire when there is a shortage of a particular um um discipline individual in a particular discipline sometimes what they'll do is they will try and make it available to someone who doesn't have a specific special education degree but it's something that you as a director can work with um to help them get caught up in the area i i'm just saying i don't know if that's something that you look at but at times like these i mean you know maybe it's good to start thinking okay you know this may happen again so what do we do the aoe

041is cracked down on our provisionals um which includes that 21 credits of their education has to already be in special ed which is practically a masters as you know then there are no emergency special ed licenses i will tell you um woodstock is looking and starting a program with castleton to grow our own locally and we are looking as a regional group how to expand together with that plus um not only in coursework but internship experiences and i've been a part of a conversation with the aoe as well so the flip is the federal government has really cracked down on provisionals and their requirements for special education teachers there's no wiggle room um and same thing for slps and others um but so we have to so and then therefore our aoe has for a

042little while there there was some gray area um but not anymore dr baker and i have had some conversations about yeah um yeah i used to work and hire it i don't know people know that but that was my job and i was most recently until the end of june i was on the standards board for professional educators and it was that board with aoe that approved provisionals and as a board that board was tightening up restrictions because it had been kind of loose and we realized that it wasn't the best for students yeah but anyhow i think you know katie the list you just shared i mean given all all the folks that you know were moving around that's another phenomenon with with you know with you know these generations they they tend to

043move around i mean you know my generation took a job and stayed for 10 years 20 years 30 years that's not happening anymore so you have to be responding constantly but we are looking regionally and that's i think that's the best the best we can do angie i don't know did you have anything you wanted to add to around around new hires i mean we've already announced brittany preston as the recovery uh coordinator did you have anybody else yes i just wanted to announce that um regina davis was our literacy coach and she retired at the end of this school year and we have hired patti gray she's a former second grade teacher at heartland elementary school and she is coming to serve as our literacy coach primarily in grades k4 but we'll expand that

044to grades um through grade eight yeah which then leaves an opening at heartland so that's i i see christine born smiling there but that's it's sort of a little bit of a domino uh effect um i think i think that i think that's it for me just in the interest of time i do have some things in executive session that i want to talk about uh and maybe some comments under other agenda items but i'm okay with my report now amy okay great thank you david and katie and angie moving on we are two items for discussion and the first item this evening is the third reading of our anti-racism policy yeah we've been i i did not attend the last meeting so i don't other than watching the tape i don't have the uh

045i don't have the background with this but i in terms of the comments that we made last time and the changes that were made i do have the newest one or the most updated one uh here third reading would be today uh well i guess it's really what what's the pleasure of the board i know that uh we got to it really late last time we had a late running meeting and we decided that we would push it off to push the vote off to this meeting so that we could take any public comment that uh people wanted to make yeah so maybe that's the best way to go uh in terms of public comment the only other question i had for those members who are here tonight that are on the anti-racism task force

046uh you know we we're this summer uh we are you know kind of diving into this policy looking at this policy in terms of just you know kind of getting a better sense of what some of the words mean and as the person who's leading us through this dr melissa crumb said it's it's hard to state uh your belief system around anti-racism unless you understand what racism is all about so just kind of understanding those definitions that language uh and uh so i'm i also just didn't know whether people had strong opinions about whether or not you know we needed to get through that work first before we finally adopted this maybe not but we can certainly take public comment or board comment yeah i i would take board comment right now i wish we

047could up uh just run over um what were the changes that were made last time elizabeth or somebody um referred to some changes maybe it was david i don't think we made any changes last time scott okay i think we just we talked about it we talked amongst ourselves and uh uh i think we had a general agreement that we were ready to pass it but then we held off to this meeting because we didn't think it was fair um to because it was like at 9 30 when we were right it was right really late so rebecca is that is your hand do you still another comment shouldn't have been good yeah but i'll take the opportunity to comment um i think um i did see a couple of on the policy statement i

048don't know if that was the prior meeting but there were some changes that were made um um on the policy statement number two it's it apparently read the four opposed teachings that perpetuate supremacy superiority and or privilege and it was changed to oppose teachings that perpetuate white supremacy superiority and white privilege yeah i think you'll see that in bold right okay so i think that was made it was another comment made and i it must have been at the prior meeting but i do remember i don't know if it was richard scott i don't remember who said it but the superintendent shall identify outcome indicators as necessary to monitor this policy and shall provide a quarterly quarterly status report to the board um and that seemed to be another change i and and aside from

049that my senses from our conversations and also from some of the um statements that we make in this policy um this is going to be an ongoing conversation we're hoping that this is going to be an ongoing um um discussion and conversation that it's not going to be a policy that that that's going to go into a um folder and um at least that that's how i walked what i've walked away understanding this process to be that it's that it's going to be an ongoing process um even after um accepting it um and and i think that that is the way that it should be um that's it right um rebecca thank you and i agree that this isn't uh a policy that is just going to go into a book and set up on

050a shelf and that's why we're going to have quarterly updates on implementation and how things are going um so yeah thank you bill you had something i think you're on mute bill i clicked it too i must have missed it by that much you got it um so i just wanna rebecca said mostly what i want to say the fact that my feeling towards this uh a policy hasn't changed i think it's well written i think it's simplistic and i think that because of its simplicity and directness it will allow that once the district gets into the reeds and it begins to to to implement what's in there we will be able to revisit if there is a need to make changes so that's it great thank you bill would people feel comfortable as this

051is our third reading um would someone like to make a motion to approve the anti-racism policy who was that elizabeth sorry elizabeth and and who was this little i think yes okay did mark have something to add yeah mark did you have your fingers no no that was just gonna be a second but bill beat me to it okay so it has been moved and seconded to approve the anti-racism policy is there any further discussion yeah i'd speak up again the um it just might been my understanding from the from the point when the su board approved the um seeking of a coach or an assistant and then um the announcement was made shortly after that there was that would be dr melissa crumb and i've been trying to educate myself about her methods ever

052since then and i've also heard here about her um this probably oversimplifies it but you know her real methodical or go slow approach to this topic in a community and so i only bring that up in just um that if we're there seemed to be a question a minute ago whether whether you're consultant because i'm not on my committee your consultant um would think this was a good idea to approve tonight to hear specifically that in fact that was a good idea you know i i don't think and i don't know how others feel i don't think the work we're doing with dr crum uh precludes us passing this policy tonight i think really what we're trying to do is you know dive into some of those definitions look at some of the some of

053that work and then decide how to go forward i've got some thoughts either after we adopt this i'm assuming the board will vote we'll vote to adopt this but i have a couple of quick questions after that in terms of our work going forward so but i don't think anything's nothing that she has said scott would indicate that we we would need to stop this process right what my understanding of what we're now working on is to work on definitions and our our understanding so that by passing this policy and then when someone says well what is this policy we can say this is exactly what it is and we'll be presenting the policy to the community colleen i i would say the same thing i had thought initially when we first started the work

054with dr crum that um that we might run into some things where we we wanted to second have second thoughts some about wording and uh but but i've since kind of realized it's a solid document you know we may make changes through time but we're going to um dive into it that's our kind of final piece of this workshop is to really dive into piece by piece the policy each group is going to take a piece to really know it i don't think it's to change it we've actually gone through the and of course she has but we've gone through the document to a degree in the workshop elizabeth thanks colleen sorry i was jumping the gun okay it has been moved and seconded we have discussed all those in favor of approving the anti-racism

055policy say i are there any opposed any abstentions i want to thank everyone um our anti-racism policy has been approved this has been a lot of work by a lot of people a lot of really late nights um we still have a ton or five tons i don't know of work yet to be done with our communities that we have a policy and we're moving forward so i want to thank everyone for your tenacity for your courage and for all of your thoughts just careful consideration as we move forward so thank you i just wondered whether uh there had but i i know that we just passed the policy uh but i wondered whether um oops sorry i wondered whether there's whether david you've looked at all into hiring a an equity coordinator well that's

056good that's exactly why i raised my hand so uh so uh great minds think alike so here we um yeah first of all i do want to i want to just acknowledge along with amy this was a courageous move because passing the policy is one thing adopting and implementing the policy is is another uh to your point elizabeth and that's what i wanted to talk about with respect to this policy uh the administrative team has been talking about because right now we do have the equity coordinator uh i believe anyhow unless that changed in in in the esser funds is that is that correct angie that's in there right now is that in esser or is i think i think we put we have a placeholder at nasa 3. okay so an idea for sr3

057i'll talk more about that process yeah as as we go hang what the administrative team elizabeth has been talking about just because of the relationship that we've built with dr crum is we take the first step and pretty much you know and this probably is more about my role in this but the administrative team feels that responsibility is establishing those indicators so that we can measure the outcome of this policy and see how we're doing you know we talked about a quarterly report and i think those indicators are going to be critical and i know that that is some work that dr chrome has has has done and i was just you know we we have our administrative retreat coming up in early july i think it's july 12th or 12th 13th and 14th i

058think we'd like to put together a proposal to maybe extend uh you know dr crum's contract into the fall so that we can at least get those indicators written and get those measurements written get clear on that language and and then and then you know move forward and i don't know how the board feels about that or how you feel about that elizabeth but that's what we've been talking about i i think that sounds good david um i also just want to remind you that there is a ton of money in the vermont community fund for this specific very specific purpose so maybe use the essr funds set aside for dr crum and then use you know find that or get vermont community funds because there's there's a lot out there right now rebecca um

059i'm i'm thinking david that uh maybe also uh consideration um can be given to um as opposed to creating a document that is going to be and and um a description for someone um maybe the principals can look at administration can look at having someone who will work with doctor be in that position and be brought along as opposed to putting someone in the position after the position has already been um defined for them and and i and i don't know if that's the case but what i'm saying is that as i mentioned before this is going to be a process and and we're it's going to be ongoing there's going to be a lot of discussion community conversations wouldn't it be in some way valuable to have whoever is going to continue um promoting

060that position part of that conversation part of that process part of that discussion it's just the thought i i you know i i i think it's it's really great you know that the administration is looking at how's the best way to implement that but i'm just thinking about giving some thought to do you want to bring the person along with in that process or do you want to just plunk him in after you've defined something and and had your conversations with dr crum which i i think by the way is a it's a great idea i think she's been a great um consultant and and and i have also been awakened to so much information as a result of our interaction and contact so i think that's a great idea [Music] thank you rebecca elizabeth

061you had another comment i just wanted to agree with rebecca i think it's i think it's really important to uh try to get somebody in or start the work of getting somebody in place because uh and then you know let it naturally come as it will work with dr crum to and or and if you find the right person have that person be part of the dialogue but start the start the process so that we're not caught without anybody thanks thank you i agree that we need to be working on the process instead of waiting okay look at what i did thank you um is there anything more anyone wants to say with regard to the anti-racism policy hearing none we will move on um i need to move here so next up is board

062goals and let me just i have to move location while amy's moving i know that uh all of our individual district boards you know have set some semblance of a retreat to look at their own individual goals and to set some goals it's always a question of you know that you can before the egg or the egg before the chicken i mean do do we let those things happen in july and then we come back and set su goals a common understanding of those goals or do we just talk about that tonight right now i don't know that the su has enough a retreat quote-unquote scheduled we haven't talked about that at least i haven't talked about that but i'm open to any way we want to do this but it would be nice to

063have two or three goals that that we wanted to hold to this year sounds like we might have won around the equity around equity and in the anti-racism policy well what i was looking at what i would like to see us do as a board yes hold on here yeah i think you might have froze a little bit amy not as good as a moment until the rest of my family now you know you're back oh my yeah am i okay yeah i can turn off my video off yeah i'm gonna turn my video up that might help um so what i am thinking is just to have on a regular basis at a meeting um to have regular data updates and student progress how our districts are doing in the su to review i

064think we lost you again amy implemented the anti-racism policy okay um now we got you okay i'm gonna turn off my mic and my camera but i will i have to move to a different room in my house so i'll be right back okay you guys can continue talking as far as um other thoughts um yeah a board retweet and se re an su board retreat so i will be with you in a moment so just so everybody knows what i heard amy say is uh she'd like something around data management right and that's around you know academic performance and probably some social emotional stuff as well you know i have a regular segment quarterly maybe for that to happen and the second thing is the implementation of that anti-racism policy which would coincide with

065you know the hiring of an equity coordinator potentially and also coming up with those indicators how we're going to know we've made success or that we've you know that we're being successful with that policy in making our schools safer and braver spaces do anybody else have any thoughts or comments about particular goals or how we might want to go about finalizing these goals elizabeth i was thinking more that uh we might consider the way that we um the way that we evaluated you this year david we had a set of standards that we that we looked at and uh those standards will be standard standards that we evaluate you on year over year and create goals for you year after year based on the same set of standards and i was thinking that uh not

066all of the standards necessarily apply to the board but we might consider holding ourselves to the same uh four of those i think four of the standards that we evaluated you on we could evaluate ourselves on and therefore great goals from that was all i was thinking yeah those were well spelled out elizabeth i think that's a good idea because we are we never look at ourselves we never take a look at how we as a board are actually doing or right we never set long-term goals like we want to be number one in you know 3d printing in the state but even though we are yeah yeah i was going to say but manuscripting school district is yeah but i have long term goals like that that we that we have to i mean

067i guess portrait of a graduate is but it's rather broad as a as a goal it's a more of a you know right and it's not a guiding document it's not a it's a whole community it's the schools but i think if we have we have articulated pretty clearly as a board that we want to um keep our policy book up to date yep yes and that's so you're right scott so part of the the policy thing that i was talking about is to review older policies but also to see how we're doing um let's say um just uh not necessarily an off-the-wall policy but one that we don't really talk about in here let's say it was our weapons policy maybe twice a year to see how that policy has been implemented if there's

068been any challenges if we've even had to implement it or let's say it was our dress code policy how is that being perceived by students that kind of thing and to see how we are working with students working with our communities and how those policies are being implemented so having a report on either a quarterly or semi-annual basis but it also goes to say that we see a policy that is three years old do we need to update that policy so keeping things up to date so that we don't have 10 years from now a policy that's 10 years old and no longer necessarily applicable uh i see anne marie's hand amy yes ann marie yeah um i don't know if the like board goals but i just would like to see us take more

069of an active role in um keeping an eye on the su budget and uh you know just making sure that it's that money is being spent you know because it seems like things come to us sort of like here and there and we approve little things and like as far as like the weathersfield school board goes we keep an eye and we and we're involved in like trying to get the budget passed and so we're all very involved in it but as far as the su budget goes it just seems like we really don't do that much so i'd like to see us have more active role in the budget yeah i think we need to have at minimum a quarterly update how about every every other month have an update on our um our

070budget and what's encumbered and where we stand on it so that we're not cut by surprise which we haven't really been lately but there's also been i feel a little bit of lacks in our budget reviews on the um on the su level and bill you have your hand raised i think one thing that's really important about when dealing with money and budgets and things like that is is to establish what your goal is first and then to to drive the budget in line with what the goal is basically if we're getting a a yearly or quarterly review of where the budget is that's kind of playing catch-up you know that is where we are what we owe what are we paying um but i i agree with the concept in which you know that

071the the su budget has to be should be better managed than what i think it is now but i think the first step is to establish issue goals and then those goals will then establish what sort of spending that we are going to incur um yeah and those goals are a portrait of a graduate and a strategic plan but then we have to look back at each portion of the strategic plan to see how that is being you know where are we have we met what are the indicators that we want for a particular quarter for a particular goal and we we get really close to that figuring that out and having it and then we get distracted by something and fall short and then we don't get back to looking at a particular portion

072of the strategic plan if at all at the strategic plan until it's time to oh we need to create a new strategic plan so i think having a portion of every single meeting devoted to a section of the strategic plan so that we know where we are and how whether or not we're meeting the indicators our goals for the strategic plan and if not how can we improve it and [Music] just if we happen to be meeting that particular goal can we move forward can we can we do even better but i i don't feel that we're even properly addressing on a regular basis our strategic plan elizabeth thank you amy um i agree with that and i i feel that we often just hear reports on different areas we don't really discuss whether we're

073actually meeting goals because we've never made goals before but we don't we don't actually have a discussion on uh some of the things that we uh among ourselves as a board some of the things that we get reports on and i think i think it would be really useful to at least talk about them and as you know my other idea was to uh think about having when we have our quarterly report on the anti-racism policy to have uh just consider having a full meet a meeting that's just public participation um and so that we can engage our our communities a little bit better than we have okay thank you are there any other comments oh rebecca your hand is raised sorry about that that's okay amy um well a couple of things i wanted

074to bring up um i know that i was nominated um for the budget committee as a budget committee member with um colleen and jamie turner and and i and i just wonder i don't really know what what that group does but i wonder if that group can be part of um helping to make um as anne-marie ask the the budget a little bit more transparent again i don't know what that looks like i don't know what the committee does but i that's one thing i wanted to mention and i also agree um with the fact that we have a budget um but and we passed it but then that's it until the next budget comes around so the idea of like really um zeroing in on um its connection to the strategic plan and literally

075coming up with cents and dollars that may be hard at the beginning but i think it's it's that i'm sure the community would love something like that um so i think that's a great idea and and one of my id my suggestions as a board as a goal for the board is to really look at how do we connect with the community um and um and clearly our attendance and i don't know what it was before but it just wavers it's it's up and down and um these are just really serious um decisions that we're making here and it impacts on our community um not only our school community but our kids go home to their parents and um and and so i i think it's really important for us to find a way to

076try and reach out to the community and connect with the community in a way like we just haven't you know i i don't know what that would look like but maybe we really need to you know think of ideas and ways and i i think dr crum spoke to that and and shared suggestions but i i think we really do need to try and reach out to the community um and and and have them in in involved in what we're talking about okay thank you mark just in agreement with rebecca i think the more transparent we can be with all aspects of our work um the more time we're actually gonna save and everything that involves a public forum as far as not finding ourselves on the defensive um i think the more we more

077proactive we can be and say here is the information did you look over this before allegations come the more time and goodwill we're going to save ourselves thank you i it sounds like having a board retreat an su board retreat to set up some of these goals and to discuss as a group what does community engagement mean what can it look like what how can we have it on a sustainable basis because that that's a key and we all have our individual lives um so to have something regular yet sustainable as far as engaging community also to see where we are on the strategic plan um and to set quarterly goals of where or every meeting to have a calendar for our meeting that we're going to look at this part of the strategic plan

078next meeting you know like um september this goal october this goal again just to have a regular update to see where we are on the indicators and if there happened to be indicate um goals that the indicators are somewhat good i think that could also be part of our retreat discussion i don't know when anyone is available for said retreat or where we would have it or if we would need a campsite with all of our sleeping bags to get out get through all of these items on a retreat but i think it's certainly worthwhile to discuss does let me say rebecca's hand is still raised and mark your hand is still raised no rebecca took it down mark took his down yeah i think that's part of the challenge is trying to find a

079date when because i don't think these kinds of conversations happen well in the context of a regular board meeting i think establishing those priorities and goals once a year would be better if we had some extended time you know two to three hours much like we're doing in weathersfield and heartland and and and and mount scott need to just kind of get those goals set and established you've you've listed about you know six or seven items that i know right that i wrote down which is good i mean i mean all of those are are important but i think we need to establish the priorities some of the indicators the strategic plan from an administrative standpoint the strategic plan is our guide post that that's what we we spend almost every administrative team meeting looking

080at that analyzing that trying to set up you know so i and i and it's nice to hear tonight that nobody wants to stray from that because we we put a lot of time into that it's just getting good community input finding the proper form to do that and setting our goals so that we then can do those quarterly reports one last comment about budget and this is rebecca colleen and uh and jamie uh especially i think jamie's on i thought i'm sorry yeah there's jamie um yeah there's been some talk about trying to start the budget process earlier we've had that conversation before to give us time to really do some analyzing and i think it is better analyzed initially in the in a small group rather than a group like this that that

081that's difficult so i i've talked to ed about trying to get things started you know in august which which would be early for us we normally don't start till toward the end of september and then we can currently start the local budgets in october early november and but i'd like to start the cycle earlier so that we could do that really take take take a look at that we're going to talk some to that in the individual board retreats so that people know how the su money is being spent uh and but i think to get because there's two parts to budget right there's budget development and then there's budget management and the development and developing that budget has to you know it needs to be an inclusive process and it can't be run by

082you know just by by by wit and win we we need to have a process and um there's a lot of money now that's housed at the su and and uh it's um and that's why i think we've had great attendance at rsu meetings but we need to take a look at this budget early and really analyze it and see where it is i mean it sits most of that budget is servicing all of our schools and all of our kids so we just need to know how that's happening and why that's happening um so my proposal to colleen and uh and i just talked to ed about this uh colleen and rebecca and jamie is that we get started we'll reach out to you about dates here available and to just just have an

083initial budget session where we you know we line up the strategic plan we also look at you know last year's budget any recommended changes and just get a draft so the board could have that by end of august early september i think that then we could have a couple of sessions as a board about what this you know how this is going to how this is going to un unfold but i think retreat date is critical i just don't know that's the problem summertime gets difficult for for folks but if there's a if if you want to take a shot at it um or we could doodle pull something laurie's worries we've got a new doodle poll yeah i i think that would be good and have it following the individual district boards so that

084there can be a spokesperson from each of those boards to say this is our our district goals and how does that fit into the su and it could be that as we're all sitting there when weathersfield says these are our goals and heartland and mount us gutney would also say well those are our goals too so they then become a greater su board goal i and i think having that discussion at a retreat and then looking at how we can monitor the strategic plan and are where we are financially on a regular basis would be good topics uh as well as the community engagement so i think um [Music] the other thing is when is the the weathersfield and heartland when are those being done weathersfield is uh july 6th i think if it's tuesday

085it's the tuesday july 6th christine do you know or i don't think mickey's here when is the heartland retreat it's in july i want to say it's the 15th 15th of july okay yeah i think colleen can confirm that sounds right that's right i just looked at the calendar okay did that tomorrow scotty did we set a retreat date i have no idea i was going to ask elizabeth yes we did i think it's like august 4th like check old hold on hold please it is oops that's july it's the ninth of ninth august august okay yeah again i'm not suggesting this but we have traditionally not had an su meeting in july probably because all these other meetings are going on and people are vacationing and we're getting those board goals done at the

086individual districts and then we could do something in in mid-august and set our goals for the school year for the upcoming year right because all of our individual districts will have had their retreat and we could have just a a mega meeting sv meeting in august to discuss those retreats and scott hates mega meetings now we should meet regularly even in july if we can get a quorum we should do what we're supposed to do yeah we can do it i i i'm fine with that it's been it's been a little bit of a struggle in july but we could try it yeah i wasn't i wasn't saying mega meeting as in all of the board business i met mega meeting as in our retreat to go over all of these things but if we

087met in july then we wouldn't have so much of board business to do in august our regular july meeting would be let's look at it here it would be [Music] one two three four would be july 26th okay and and i know i'm i'm fine with that i don't know people have different vacation schedules if people are okay with that then we'll just stay we'll stay with that you know i tend to agree with scott if nothing else that would be a way to finalize and plan sort of our our retreat our retreat agenda yeah yeah okay okay but we need to yeah we're we're on board goals now not setting our right agenda so let's not get distracted um so would everyone be okay with moving on with our current agenda knowing that we're

088going to at our july meeting we will discuss the topics of our retreat and now we could move on to the recovery plan discussion yeah and i think angie angie you're going to lead this uh this conversation correct well i am i i thought i said to myself you're going to love what i have to tell you about our passer 3. so um anyway uh i before i get started i just wanted to give you some updates our recovery plan draft um is still in the process of being reviewed uh the same team member that reviewed our esser ii budget approves the recovery plan our sr2 budget was approved but just like our sr1 budget those budgets can be amended for a certain period of time our sr2 budget we can amend i think until

089september 30th 2023 so esther one i think is um at the end of well i have a table in my presentation so i'm going to share my screen so that i can um share with you a powerpoint a slideshow that i put together so that i could remember all the things that i wanted to share with you so let me present this our besser stands for the american rescue plan elementary and secondary education relief fund it is the third bucket of money that we are receiving from the federal government to help recover from the pandemic i thought you would appreciate this slide because it provides you with the period of performance or basically the the um begin date and end date of the of the each grant period so you know when monies can be

090expended through sr1 all of them started when the shutdown happened march 13th 2020 and our applications our application process you can see that um 20 march 2021 was when esser 1 was due esser 2 was is not completely due until november 1st and then esther 3 has yet to be determined um the date of the fund return what this column is telling you is if we don't spend our funny funny our funding um that would be when we would it would start to be well is that i don't think that's what that is i'm sorry i don't know what that column means um and then the amendment deadline is is um right here and then stakeholder engagement is the process that the um aoe and the federal government have outlined for us and it's only

091required for our sr3 so that being said we have three plans that we need to that we have started completed and have in various forms of completion the aoe is doing the best they can to keep to to align these things because they understand the amount of um effort that has to go into these plans so the recovery plan is an uh agency of education mandate it was our um plan was submitted on june 16th and it we're still awaiting approval public comment meaningful consultation or board approval was not required although we did open the plan for public comment through june 10th i do intend to put those frequently asked questions there wasn't a lot of questions in the survey on the website but i do intend to put a frequently asked questions um page

092up there so that those the people that took the time to respond get some answers to their questions um that we included stakeholders in the recovery team in this way our team included our administrators from all our schools um it included staff through consultation with our union representatives and through a survey we met um with the union representatives pretty much weekly the last few months of school and last summer and through the through the fall i think we also were meeting with union representation and also surveying staff during the winter months on their wellness students were represented through the survey and community members were represented through the comment form and we understand that we can do better on this moving forward and i think you will see how this plays out in the arp sr3

093requirements the reopening plan you're probably thinking reopening well we've been reopened since last september and that is true but keep in mind that there are many uh schools across the nation that never did go back to full in time per full per in person and so we because these are federal funds the reopening plan is a u.s education department mandate we have to have a plan for the safe return to in-person instruction and continuity of services in fact we have a plan we just don't have it called a formal recovery plan just like when when we had to do a plan when after the shutdown we had to do a continuity of learning plan we we don't have like a formal reopening plan because dr baker was sending out weekly updates about what our plan

094would be and then in the fall we really did have a very um a concerted effort to share with our community our efforts for keeping children safe and what drop off and pick up would look like what the classroom structure would be and we developed a handbook uh that would describe the ways that we were going to approach uh cases uh when cases were reported and communicating with the community etc so all that information is available on our website but you really have to dig for it and that's really what the agency of education wants us to do is to um have it easily access and eat and organize in such a way so um i am planning to do a separate page that will just address reopening that'll include links and resources to the

095things that we've already provided so that our public can have opportunity to see it all in one place and then there will be a google form on that web page so that public can comment on any of those any of the information that they see on that page the aoe encourages it encourages us to use the existing recovery and reopening plan and they've provided us with a reopening plan checklist based on the interim final rule which is what the law is from the u.s department of education um the leas which is us windsor southeast supervised reunion central office must make information available on our website in an understandable and uniform format to the extent practicable written in a language that parents can understand or if not practical practicable orally translated upon requests by a parent

096who is an individual with a disability provided in an alternative format accessible to that parent they want this information on the website i think the deadline that they wanted it on the website was 30 days after the release of our passer funds wsesu are received our received our allocation that doesn't mean the funds were in our bank account that we received our allocation notification march may 25th and we completed phase one which was just to write one line in the application basically saying that we intend to use those funds and then phase two is what we don't have a deadline for although the u.s um federal government has said 90 days which would make the arpester plan due august 23rd so those timelines i think you'll understand the the crunch of those timelines and they

097seem very fast approaching and have and are going to make some of the things i say coming up a little bit more challenging this one website i wanted to show you from orange east the good news about this is that our you know everybody in the state of vermont's in the same boat so people are sharing their um the things that they've done and this is what the reopening plan our reopening page might look like i think i will copy it exactly the same format for our community very straightforward and it includes some of the information that's already on our web page so i will be looking through that to create that webpage so finally what is our esser three it's a u.s mandate it's um specific to these funds from our esser 20 has

098to be set aside to measure and address learning loss um which is lost instructional time meaningful consultation during the development of the plan i'll describe that a little bit um we need to plan this meaningful conf consultation before august 15th so when you were talking about dates i um that's what i was thinking about we need to have public comment and input we need to post the plan with a google survey form so that's one way that we'll get input what i'm going to ask from you tonight is ideas for how what would be best for our communities to offer as a way to have meaningful input it's due within 90 days that of the arbester award and that would be the august 23rd date although the agency has not agency bed has not confirmed

099that that is a hard date for us i think they're looking for some flexibility on that because this is the summer months and they recognize post-pandemic summer people are taking advantage of being able to move about the country phase one allotment they did not fully fund the our passer we got 1.723 million and of our 2.6 million that is um our passer funding um phase two of the rpester has not opened yet so when is the application for s or three funds openness came directly from um aoe guidance we have um what we have right now is the two-thirds of of the final what we have right now is two thirds the final one third of the allocation is tied up with the state plan so this will not open until we have this last

100third of the allocation so the what the federal government has required states to do they're still trying to figure that out they have not hired i i read today that the agency of education has not hired any additional staff to deal with the additional workload of managing these funds what they've done is repurposed positions for people to be able to manage the funds as soon as they have the money they will open up the application once the money is in the bank um the application is due um so this is what they said the date's in flux right now until the last third of of our besser is um figured out with the aoe state plan we will be able to give you a much firmer set of dates in july but i would not

101anticipate that you will need to submit your application by august 23rd in other words we don't think this will be a hard and fast due date it's um so that's important for us to know as we figure out how to best engage our communities in this conversation for our bester funding and what will be best for our community so allowable uses and i'm going to go quickly through these slides but i just wanted to show you what some of the categories of uses are for our besser they are it's basically very similar to what we could use um the other escher funds for um elementary and secondary education act that's all the title grants individuals with disabilities education act of special education adult education and family literacy um carl perkins which is career in tech

102ed coordination of preparedness and response efforts because think about these funds were are post dated so anything that we spent since march 13th 2020 we can apply with the our apply our pastor iii funds to those expenses um whoops whoops okay activities to address unique unique needs of low-income children or students children with disabilities english learners racial and ethnic minorities students experiencing homelessness and foster care youth and that gives me an opportunity right now to talk about um our summer summer activities i it might say this i think it does just a second wait till i get up there systems to improve preparedness and response training um and sanitation for our staff purchasing of supplies for sanitation coordinating and implementing activities during long-term closures hopefully that will not be an issue in fy22 purchasing educational

103technology that will serve especially our under our underserved students low-income and children with disabilities mental health services and supports planning and implementing activities related to summer learning and supplemental after-school programs so here i want to tell you that they specifically mentioned that it includes addressing the needs of low-income students children with disabilities english learners migrant students students experiencing homeless and children in foster care and so katie and i were looking back at the numbers and i want to invite katie just to say tell us what we um found out in our data and sorry we didn't have this ahead of time for tonight's meeting but katie do you wanna unmike and unmute and tell us so about this year's summer program in terms of percentages yes so um out of the 116 students we did

104some math behind the scenes um only 40 percent of those students are identified i'm not sure she's still on because i can't see the screen can you hear me yes we can hear her yeah okay everybody else could hear me but you couldn't angie sorry so 40 of the students um identified in the summer academy are on ieps and out of those 40 out of those students only half of them were identified as students through the iep process so our process of identifying students was approximately 80 percent of them were identified through our regular recovery plan process through tmp scores or teacher identification so i just wanted to to bring that up um we hadn't spent a lot of time trying to disaggregate iep students versus non-students because that's the whole point of the recovery

105plan so um good questions that we had earlier angie and i did as i said did some leg work behind the scenes so that we could hopefully um show folks that this is a recovery plan for all students all students are regular students first some of them may also happen to be also on an iep but that's not how they were identified for the summer um and it's nice to have the data behind that thank you okay sorry that was a little clunky um so um this is address allowable cost to end which really goes through the the bulk of a learning loss addressing learning loss for all students administering administering high quality assessments uh and the evidence-based activities um providing information assistance for parents and families to to help support those children and then

106tracking student attendance especially during distance education hopefully again that won't be an issue for most of our students next year other allowable costs are facilities repairs and improvement indoor air quality improvements public health strategies for implementing public health protocols and activities that are necessary to maintain the operation and continuity of services so that being said just considering all the wide range of uses for the sr3 funds i thought well what is meaningful consultation and meaningful consultation is something that we've had to um had to participate in um for the federal um monies for title funds and i have to say admit that haven't we haven't been very great at it um covid in particular this last year um having uh family engagement evenings and opportunities for our title schools which is heartland and um windsor

107to have family nights where they were where we were inviting our families in to talk about the program we haven't been able to do that and that is and a goal for next year for me excuse me a second it's hot in here but the every student succeeds acts defines timely and meaningful consultation as a excuse me a sec opportunity um for all students this is this kind of goes into non-public school students and teachers participation equitable services that's for a another category that i have to think about for for um federal spending but what i wanted to point out in this slide the lea must schedule consultation with sufficient notice and time for preparation for both parties the consultation should occur well before the implementation of services and continue throughout the implementation and assessment

108of services meaningful consultation is consultation that provides a genuine opportunity for all parties to express their views and to have their views seriously considered as well as to discuss options for effective programming based on the assessed needs now this is saying non-public school but it's for the same it's basically gives you the idea of what meaning meaningful con consultation needs to provide it really makes me think of the process that we followed for our portrait of the graduate where we had all four communities represented in a room together we had students we had community members community leaders as well as residents we had people with children in the school people with children coming to the school like who were babies and infants and i mean babies and toddlers and who weren't in school yet so

109i think that's the example of what meaningful consultation could look like for windsor southeast and then this set of questions would be something that we could um potentially ask in a a forum of sorts um how we communicated our needs clearly so it would involve presenting data for for um the participants and then getting their um feedback on that and their ideas on that are our goals clear how is it clear how our actions will help us achieve our goals and i think a lot of what you guys were talking about earlier with this with the um su board having clear goals this meaningful consultation seems to align very well with that excuse me a second then of course being clear about resources and how they support our plan and what our st what our

110concerns are for example one of the questions that a community member had on the recovery plan um it might have been on the s or two plan was um this person noticed that there was no additional um uh hcrs clinician on on the s or two funds and that doesn't mean that we aren't adding additional lesser to i mean additional hcrs school-based clinician support we actually are it's just coming from a different funding source so we can't be thinking that the esser um grant esser funds are only the only bucket of money that we're using to support children in this post-pandemic time we're using all kinds of all our funds so one of the things i wanted to point out to you is some changes that i made to the curriculum and instruction website um

111i will first go to the recovery planning part portion of the website and i have added in uh an updated draft of the esser plan and you can still the comment form is still open there if uh our communities want to make comments on that and then what i added that's new here again shamelessly um to using the same format that middlebury roxbury public schools used i did check with the superintendent there and got permission so i just liked how they laid out all the information about what esser funds are and what i though you can i'm not going to spend all night more time tonight going through the website i think it's very well done it gives you links to additional information but right here in this section gives us some ideas for how

112the the middlebury roxbury um school system was thinking about meaningful consultation and at the top of the page it just starts with this message that the wsesu will be seeking to engage with the community this summer regarding plans for sr-3 funds please read through this webpage for information about esser and to find important next steps to providing feedback on sr3 funds so their process and this is only an example and i hope that i made it very clear that this is a very tentative list of activities to be planned for summer 2021 all pending su board approval um based on tonight's meeting in mid-july um so i just took the time frame from middlebury roxbury the su administrators um are conducting or will be conducting a needs assessment to align the district goals in relation

113to how to spend so three funds the good news is we've done a lot of this work already for the recovery plan in mid-july we'll review a presentation of the needs assessment and district goals in relation to how to spend sr3 funds and provide feedback via a public survey both of this information will be posted to our webpage in late july we'll attend a public input session potentially a family style dinner at one of our schools you know how much craig loves to do barbecues um and if you feed people they welcome out open to all members of our community and it'll it'll be advertised in our social media um see there's middlebury rps i missed that one but i will take that out um on this webpage and through our other communication um avenues

114that we have and then in early august um our school board a meeting of the school board directors will be to present um the plan for our sr3 to the board and then we'll have they were planning a second public input session in mid-august so that was one at the end of august and one at the in the middle of i mean at the end of august as well as at the end of july um so a lot to think about and i think what i wanted to discuss further with the board was potential dates and and your ideas about a process moving forward i certainly um respect that it is important for us to get this input from our communities it's a requirement this is our community's children and we want to make sure

115that we are all on this you know all together on this even if we don't always agree on what the best way to proceed is so um at this time i'm going to stop talking and let you guys ask any questions you might have or ideas well first of all so david i see your hand but first of all there had been some comments prior to this meeting that courtney mckegg from mount us gutney hospital had some comments she wanted to make in terms of i think the recovery plan or something along those lines so courtney if you wanted to um unmute and just provide the information that you wanted to yeah i don't necessarily have information to provide hi amy and hi angie thanks so much for that really thorough powerpoint that was excellent

116because like i don't know what all those acronyms mean i received dr baker's email today updating some agenda items and i thought oh this might be a good opportunity to start having this discussion um as many of you know i anchor in [Music] family work prevention in particular i sit at a lot of community tables where the concerns around [Music] child family well-being is being discussed and how how that might uh how we might collaborate as communities to heal together we've had a collective trauma so there's no one who didn't experience it so i don't necessarily have anything to present i just thought this might be an opportunity for to open that discussion and and to learn more about what what schools are already planning and what opportunities there might be to bring in all

117the resources that would be available to the school community as a part of the health system so like i said there's a lot of discussion around this specifically around housing and basic needs uh as well as you know the trauma that uh school person you know personnel have encountered personally and what that does to how they interact with their their classrooms and then it just really i think for a lot of us uh helped us kind of think through this idea of how there's no more us in them you know there's a lot of us in them unspoken in the cultures of systems and this is an opportunity where we've all experienced something we all are in the same storm and uh riding in different boats but we're all kind of coming to shore at

118the same time in this quote-unquote new normal as we move forward and so uh i was i'm here just to kind of advocate on the part of some of the group think that i'm a part of in the community around how do we maybe rethink the idea of community engagement and family again engagement around the collective trauma are there ways to rather than having separate in-services for school personnel that all adults who are in the school including those who are carers who were doing remote or hybrid or various other ways of teaching their own children from home coming together and kind of in that shared humanity way to think about how do we heal and in that healing process hopefully we would have enhanced uh learning recovery so i don't i don't have anything to

119present i'm just here to advocate for us all doing it together thank you courtney yeah thanks for acknowledging me yep david yeah and this more or less speaks a bit to courtney's point but also to that previous discussion we had as an su board around establishing our goals you know some level of transparency throughout our budget process kind of those reports on our strategic plan as angie was speaking i was thinking i don't think this summer maybe i'm wrong you know people are going to come out to 405 forums i mean i think if this work could integrate so that you know whatever we establish you know we could gather whatever data we needed to gather if we had a couple of if we if we could set dates for a couple of craig's special

120barbecues and and and and wrap that around some of the s or stuff but also kind of indicate you know the the the supervisor reunion board goals and where we're trying to head and the strategic plan and i mean again i i don't know that we'll get 500 people i don't know if we'll get 50 people we worked our tails off during that strategic planning process and we were able to get 60 people in one room but i'll tell you that was three months worth of work of of of reaching out and sometimes almost harassing people but but i i think anything we could do to dovetail this work what courtney's talking about what angie's talking about and what this su board is talking about in terms of our four communities coming together around you

121know a common a common goal or goals i agree courtney uh one of the um initiatives or ideas that's on the table with the dartmouth trauma interventions research center is to have a regional-wide forum um i know this idea of i mean there's just so much to do and everyone's feeling exhausted by what we just all went through but i'm wondering if there's a way to kind of um designate some sort of conduit like myself who could bring what's happening or at least some sense of the ideas and goals to some of these other tables rather than trying to collect everybody in one place i'm a part of a strengthening family's network initiative we all know that the mental health needs right now are above and beyond what's available in terms of capacity so we're

122talking a lot about peer support um and so what we're wondering is you know there's uh the community health improvement plan work groups that have been working now for three years the one that i'm a part of strengthening families network is uh promoting uh strengthening families which is a framework with five protective factors all of which relate to what we're all doing um so enhancing the number and quality of play groups available to families with young children as well as the circle of security parenting course and while those are not direct service those are definitely forums where people can come and get support so informal access to mental health supports um so because our core aim is to enhance social connectedness and then the pandemic hit um we really have been pivoting and pivoting and

123pivoting as you all have and so i'm wondering if there's a way to bring some of the questions or opportunities to provide public comment to some of these other tables rather than trying to collect everybody at once because that seems very challenging i just i wanted to say courtney um that the our pastor guidance is we can reach out they are encouraging us to reach out to our community organizations but also even as far as a state level organization so any the networks that you're talking about um i'm just i would be totally appropriate for us to be working together um how that what that looks like and i do think that you touched on it a very important point is how what the communication plan is so we need to know identify the communication

124plan and um because we know that the best of intentions don't make things happen it's it's when you have a really strong plan and people behind it who are making it happen make it happen thank you angie and courtney rebecca your hand is raised uh um angie i do want to thank you that that was a a pretty powerful power point um and lots of work i i just can see um how you just got your hands full and just really trying to make this um work um i i thought your idea of engaging the community um and and i know that you try and do that through letters to parents um and and i was thinking that maybe one thing that we can do i don't know what that looks like or but it

125is different i know that at this point the facilities the school facilities are open to the public so it's possible to um to have folks um come in not necessarily um um um going through all these um uh questions before they walk in and rather than just getting that information putting the information on the website and why can teachers who've been hired to work with students at this point when they're having that contact with parents that immediate contact sort of just maybe even share that document with them and it doesn't have to be a very in-depth document but it can be a document which speaks to we want your input we want to know what you what you're thinking and be and and not only would i give them i i know this is a

126lot of work but i would probably also give them an envelope so that they can take their time and write down what is it that they would like to um um say um as opposed to being rushed i'm just thinking that's one one thing i i know that i attend the recreation center in the morning and i at eight o'clock i i'm seeing all these parents drop all these kids off um wouldn't it be great to have someone there and maybe it's an opportunity for even a board member to be there and and sort of like hey you know i'm i'm now i'm a board member we're in the process of trying to get information trying to get parent involvement community um input on this um i'd like to give this to you you know

127it's an explanation of some of the things we're thinking about and we you know you can write your comments down or you can even you know but connecting with the people um we haven't talked to them in over a year we haven't really had that physical contact with them um we've had these roadblocks and justifiably so because of covet so it's not like they were able to come into our schools or anything so we were really limited in whatever contact we've had with these people so it's been uh on a website which is okay i can go through a website but to be honest sometimes i go through this website and i'm like oh you know let me just get to the bottom you know what what's the bottom line here and i'm sure for

128parents with all of their other things they need to do it's like you got to be kidding me you know get to a website and and do all this but i'm just thinking how's about trying to engage the community in a different way than you know or maybe just adding another way of engaging them i really do like the idea of having some sort of something i don't know if it's a barbecue or something but inviting them and saying you know this is another opportunity to talk about what's on your mind um i i think we want to connect with the community as courtney mentioned there's just been a lot of assault on the community overall and we've been physically separated and i think that and i don't know if everyone's going to be comfortable

129with that but i think it's time to get at least a little bit personal with them so i i i i'm all for what you presented thank you by the way thank you rebecca i think as we at our next meeting as we talk about goals and how we want to engage community at our retreat but also in between now and then would would it be outrageous at this meeting because of the dates kind of the um the deadlines that angie has if we were to put a subcommittee together to work out uh what a a small forum would look like or how to implement something like what rebecca was saying having a couple of board members at the rec center or at wherever just handing information to community would that be outrageous elizabeth hi

130uh i have an idea it's very a short a very short deadline though which is uh what about the fourth of july the the celebrations that are taking place by the fourth of july can we is there any way to get people out there to talk to people i mean that's a big couple gatherings few gatherings well um that makes sense there could be i know uh heartland old home day there will be tables out on the field so perhaps there could be a supervisory union table and just have information to hand out um with the understanding that the person who is at that table um is only one board member and cannot make any decisions or say oh yeah that's you know about all one board member can say is thank you for the

131information i will relay it and we'll talk about it as a board i mean that's that's a very important reminder that one board member cannot make any sort of claims or statement saying yes the board will do this but i don't know what people's openness i'm already at a table at heartland and i cannot i cannot muddy those waters so um it would have to be other people you know the other thing i was thinking amy and angie you know we you and i haven't talked about this but you know and that was a great powerpoint and this is very complicated i think what we need because one of the things i i heard in what you said is that you know any communication has to be understandable by the public right and you know

132there's a lot of jargon in there and there's a lot of acronyms you know i i i think one of the things you know you and i can talk about angie is whether or not there's a way and you know and courtney if you want to help us whether or not there's a way to write like a very brief executive summary you know one paragraph two paragraphs it just kind of outlines what we're trying to do and the goals we're trying to set and and then again that could be disseminated at the fourth of july it could be disseminated at the rec center you know if somebody wanted it wanted to do that but but i think that would be small committee work and availability of of people to do that and i do think

133it's important uh you know for to be either a board member or a community member right um but we andy and i could work well i'm saying we could potentially work on some sort of an executive summary that could be handed out could be discussed without as amy said making decision points or really just getting feedback maybe providing some sort of a link at the bottom or a you know a three question little survey on the back just something that gets the conversation going two things that come to my mind are that um what i've noticed is that the um i guess it's the it team but there's there's more use of the school's um twitter handles so i just think that going going with your information where where the public is where the where

134the communities is are so in this respect i mean social media platforms is a good one number two um obviously the meal program is about to get going and hopefully there's a lot of families from the area coming every day or a few times a week do that so that would be i like a the i like a handout idea you know maybe a regular employee could just say hey we got this information over here this central office got ready for us so and lastly um as far as like old home day goes people pretty much know that i'm only gonna talk about school board stuff and they steer clear of me so i'm not gonna do that thank you scott and marie you have your hand raised yeah um weathersfield doesn't really have anything

135like that i think planned for summer i don't know if any other weathershield people on here know of something but i can't like we can't just go to a rec center here or to uh we don't have like a big planned uh fourth of july celebration so it would have to be something um designed specifically for uh you know a community forum um and it would need we need to give people notice you know for what it would be and so i think the sooner we can kind of work this out as far as angie's schedule went you know the deadlines she has went seems like it's coming up really fast so um i'd be willing to be on a committee to help solicitate that are there any other volunteers for this subcommittee but i

136i also think that a what courtney just put in the chat and what scott said was having information handouts for community meal drop off when the lunches are being dropped off because that's happening i believe in all of our communities i think that could happen no there's not a ton of participation i mean i don't know maybe i'm wrong david but my sons did it today and they said only two people came and got lunches to the one drop off here in mother's field so i don't know that's going to really get the message out that much yeah yeah who knows really i mean this was day one and like i said there were some schedule changes but i mean it's just another it's another vehicle to you know to see and by the way

137i think all of what we're talking about now in terms of getting information out is in addition to some sort of a formal you know i think what ange is saying is we are going to need some sort of a formal form to get that feedback but that's a whole different point but i think a small committee would be good at only two three four people we've learned how to do these things virtually you know so it's not like we have to all get together somewhere if you want but uh i think i'm hearing courtney say she's willing i heard anne marie say she's willing is it is there anybody else that would be willing to to join this happy group with angie and yeah and i can do it but only if it's this

138week and then and then that puts a time limit on it that's uh i think someone from each district would be nice of each town would represent yeah well right now we've got weathersfield in west windsor because courtney's from accord you're in west windsor right or am i messing that up yes she's in west windsor so we need a windsor and we need a heartland rep i i can rebecca okay so we have rebecca that's good so that's that takes care of mom scotty and windsor uh and then we need a heartland rep i'd also be willing to reach out to the parents at the recreation center angie that's great that's one of the things we'll we can yeah all joking as i'd i could i could do that um i'm assuming this is an

139su committee so it can't it's not just any district board member so that what i hear um but yeah it's a it's an su subcommittee but of course we want reputation reputation representation from all the communities of the supervisory union i think we have a heartland rep i think i heard scott volunteers so yeah angie what's your schedule this week i mean i'm in tuesday and wednesday sure are you in tomorrow oops sorry whoops here we go i'm in um through a thursday okay good yeah so maybe you and i can sound like we've got that i'm here i hear ann marie i hear scott and i hear rebecca so i don't know if you wrote those all down angie but uh you and i will talk in the morning and we'll see we'll reach

140out to the for you and see if there's a way to get the initial information out to people in a readable form at everything from fourth of july celebrations to rec centers to lunch drop off i think that would be a good start and then we'll then i think we need to think about a warm date and i don't know when we want to talk about that we don't talk about that tonight but we we will need some sort of a uh another another place um would be to give to it the questionnaire to everyone that goes to the summer academy yeah yeah and i think that's what somebody was saying that earlier that we could you know we're going to be interfacing with 116 students and we know their families and i think we

141could figure out a way to get that executive summary out with and ask for some feedback and those are the kids that are you know like we know that those are the kids both academically and socially and emotionally are are in need so yeah we could we could use that vehicle as well and rebecca let's see if i can am i let's see yeah you're on nancy now you're muted but you are okay uh rebecca i go to the uh rec center daily and so if you ever need any help i'm there both uh prick pick up and drop off we're usually a little late though i can't believe that answers yeah and courtney also um mentioned in the chat that information could be dropped off at the local libraries and then placed on the

142tables for the porch side pickup so it sounds like we have a plan or at least a plan for creating a plan and i look forward to hearing updates so if this if this subcommittee could meet soon with angie to help angie out and then if david if you could get back to us just to let all that as you know yeah that would be great thank you yeah so i think we are ready to move on and that would be items for action and we've already done some action we approved a policy and we created a subcommittee to for community engagement on the esser etc so i think we're done with action we might accept i don't do we need to approve those new hires katie i mean do you i mean i don't

143think you have to put the list up again but do you want to do you want to read those names again or or i i was not at the last su meeting so i don't know if they were i'm just talking teachers now not support staff but i can i can read them again yeah just so wendy can get them in the minutes let me pull them back up okay so we have um special educators sarah wellman sarah willman sarah bullis how do you spell bolus b-u-l-i-s okay stephanie murray naomi goodwin and chris keith and pad patricia acadia those are all the special educators and the last one is ryan labella as a bcba okay and i think we could do that as as one motion uh amy okay and i also saw in the

144chat that wendy was going to ask katie to put those names either the so she has them spelled correctly and that i guess how to cut and paste them and put them in the chat that worked for you all right now you're just going to find where that is again new things okay right so i will take a motion to approve the appointment of the afford-mentioned teachers and um staff for the supervisory union so moved is there a second that was rebecca second yes okay are there any other questions or comments all those in favor of approving the appointment of the staff by um for the supervisory union say i are there any opposed abstentions thank you they are approved thank you katie thank you and we are i think it's just to go into

145setting the next agenda but i think we already did that pretty much um yeah talking um the a okay yes the update and on um oh my gosh the subcommittee update and the and the retreat update and the retreat update and then anything that comes up in between yeah and i think we we would also add the budget update just to keep just to you know ed's anxious to give the year-end summary and to talk about starting the new the new budget process okay i think that's enough if we're going to get two we're going to talk about the retreat so we don't have a mega that the retreat will be our our mega time together okay um and that meeting is july 26th correct hold on i think i just i sent i just

146sent out the invite so i think it's the 26th yeah yeah 26th okay and we have to have one group member in person just to remind everybody and then i certainly we can work that out before we get there i think it's better until larry i think i've said this in my email but until larry gets that hybrid equipment i think the the the lesser amount in person you can see even with just angie and elizabeth there uh it's it's hard to keep that mute button joggling back and forth so i think it's better to stay virtual everybody else okay um so thank you david and thank you everyone who is here um and now i will take a motion to go into executive session for the purpose of negotiations so moved second all those

147in favor thank you everybody for attending wendy i'll send you out the final time i don't think it's going to be too long here but