MASD Board Meeting - June 7th, 2021

001okay i'm going to call a meeting to order at 6 45 p.m halfway between 6 30 and 7. um i do have a change in the agenda and that is to add resignations to um okay we have two i have a quick item too that i was going to do last time um that so if you want to add that to what was that nancy well it was from the people's bank and um okay it's uh money that we disperse to students okay that's not a hot topic so it's a good one to do okay uh all right um and okay we have two sets of minutes from the last meeting um did anybody have a chance to read the second set of minutes which is actually the um from our um april from april

002from the not the sign something meeting but the actual official regular old meeting from april did anybody have a chance to read through those minutes yes okay um so i'll take a motion to pass a minute from april 24th i believe it is so moved okay second seconds uh all the favor of passing the minutes from april 24th please indicate so by saying i hi is that april 5th it could be yeah sorry um are there any abstentions yes i'm an exception abstention okay uh let's see and are there any uh are there any is there anybody who wishes to vote no okay now the second set of minutes um i don't have the agenda right up in front of me so if somebody could call out the date from those i would really appreciate

003it that's may 3rd okay neither many minutes thank you very much um i'll take a motion past the minutes from may 3rd still moved okay second um is there any discussion about the minutes from may 3rd hearing none uh all those in favor of passing the minutes as they are currently recorded um please indicate so by saying aye aye are there any abstentions i'm staying okay is there anybody uh who is not in favor of passing the minutes so both sets of minutes have been passed the next item on the agenda is public participation um is there anybody here who has something that they'd like to have addressed which is not related to an agenda item and we could somebody put their hand up yeah colleen put her hand up yeah i was just going

004to say should we come back to that one when after seven o'clock yes we'll we'll circle back on it look at that uh okay um principles report on the end of the year would you like me to share my screen yeah that i think that would be good jen it's a few more steps to sharing a screen that you i gotta find the right button now right yeah yeah they move the controls around that's the biggest problem they did move them around all right i'm gonna share my screen usually a tab is good right um i tried the tab it didn't want me to do that so i'm gonna go to there you go okay all right and i'm happy to you guys good can you see everything perfect yes everybody okay yep okay so

005um we're asked to talk about end-of-year activities and summer program we've asked katie to fill in some about the summer program we have a slide for that and we'll share with you the um end of the year stuff so i'm have passed this part off to kate or colleen so i am happy to say uh we just completed our 8th grade step up and just walked in the door from that so again beautiful evening similar to graduation on friday night we do have some photos following this slide of graduation our senior night scholarship evening was wonderful i believe the not the number of the amount the amount of money the given away in scholarships the year of this year i don't have it off the top of my head but i know it's eighty two

006thousand nine or eighty six thousand nine hundred dollars in um scholarships that went to students this year so it was really really nicely done uh award ceremony and there were some new award honors um for some of our coaches who passed away this year so there were some nice dedications at that evening evening event for our seniors um we have also some pictures of the senior honors breakfast with covid we used to use the community to do some of these venues but this year we did everything at the school and it was done very very nicely and our food services team did a beautiful job with breakfast and all the food and the decorations with um ms hague and ms ambrose taking care of a lot of the details which was really nice we had

007a spring drama production here at the high school the students did um the i'm going to say the name wrong but it's the extraordinary brothers grimm stories of the brothers graham i believe and um ms aileward and her class um presented it in about about seven events seven um showings of the play two small groups of classes one sixth grade we didn't get the sixth grade in from seventh grade through twelfth grade that's okay and we had the grand march and the prom on may 22nd we talked about that last time we had some lovely pictures everything was outdoors which was again eighth grade step up night outdoors graduation outdoors so everything was more coveted friendly which was great and allowed us to have more audience spreading out socially distancing and and being able to

008join us uh okay i'm gonna let okay through six step update we have just um i believe every classroom had met their teachers um k through six for next year and we even had some of our new teachers who are coming from different states zoom in to meet the students which was really nice for step up day and a lot of our classes there might be one or two classes left who are finishing a field day tomorrow or or a hike in paradise park or at the fairgrounds for their accommodated mountain day and field days so so far all the weather has been beautiful for all of those events what do you mean by accommodated meaning every year we take the students to a mountain mount cube musa lock a scuttany and a whole class

009k through 6 climbs their next mountain to their next classroom heights and ms ewald our retired pe teacher always organized that but with pretty much no field trips was kind of our decision at the beginning of the year because we had all the requirements with buses and how many people on buses we did all of our field trips this year within walking distance so the teachers did an accommodated field day mountain day event and we also kept our mountain day t-shirts for all of our k-6 students because last year we delivered them to all of our students to their homes and they sent us pictures of their own mountain day with their families so some of them still might do that and yes somebody chimed in an amazing kindergarten screening i think in all the

010schools in the seo but um windsor did theirs for four days monday through thursday two weeks ago and it was very very successful very organized and thank you to angie dower and the team of all the specialists who organized all the stations for the kindergarten screening okay and just a little bit about what's going on in elbera bridge each grade has done a celebration of learning they were all able to do it outside which was great um short but sweet and maybe a pattern that we follow in the future for some of our concerts so they're not marathon concerts lots of fun there and this weekend the money that you guys approved for the royal hinton fund supported the tycho drumming group and they came over and they shared with us um about an hour

011and 15 minutes worth of music before the storms came blazing in also a lot of fun super shout out to the partnership with the library um it's been great working with them we're looking forward to more collaboration there um walking bike to school was a success we had both um our school resource officer paul favreau as well as chief frank join us and support the kids as they came in lots of um good connections were made with our community during that time our sixth graders did um kind of their class trip which was really a local trip so they stayed overnight well they were going to stay overnight except the weather was not going to cooperate but we did end with the um a great activity around the campfire and some trust and confidence building

012with them and today they did their trip canoe trip excuse me down the connecticut river and that was a great success i'm going to see if i can't mute myself well i can't see my screen i'll pass this off let's see i can't sorry do we want to go back to some of those pictures of uh yeah there we go so these are some of the um highlight pictures from graduation i'm not even sure who took them i'm going to guess they were mr taft from the back of the space but elizabeth had joined us and amy had joined us and it was i think a lovely evening again beautiful weather and amazing speeches all around all evening and it was really nicely celebrated for our seniors and a special thank you to mr jim

013taft and his crew for the grounds they were beautiful uh this was our senior breakfast in the morning at school and then them rehearsing and the next one is our couple things that were happening in the last couple weeks our first grade was doing uh different special days each each day in the last two weeks and one of the special days was camping day with the first grade so the teachers created tents at every desk and every child had their own tent in the classroom and then they went to paradise park for campfire and some adventures and we also had all of our high school classes 9 through 11 do their individual underclassmen awards with their teachers in each pod and they celebrated here in the theater and then we had a couple well we

014had one of our fourth grade pictures who were doing some of their fun and game events with their field days a little twister outside in the outdoor classroom wait jennifer i'm here if you hey good i was just gonna thanks um i could do the update on the summer academy sorry i still had this at seven o'clock on my calendar so i'm glad you were right um people joining us right now katie we we started the principal's report but most people i think will be joining us now i see some of our student reps getting online um so our summer academy is coming together nicely um it's starting to feel like we're it's taking shape which is nice um our theme is passport around the world uh there's talk of us decorating the entryway like

015a um tsa screening so that might be kind of fun so there were lots of ideas flying around so you might come into if you come into the school in july um approximately a hundred students attending we're still getting a couple of stragglers in which is good we have some a little bit of room in a couple of classrooms not a lot but um been able to be responsive to just about every student that's still identified we have 14 classrooms with class sizes ranging from 5 to 11 students um so we really tried hard and i would say the average is between is the still the 9 to 10 number um a couple of classrooms we decided to split because it would just tip over to 11 or 12 and the dynamics of students and

016keeping that class small class size we decided to do that so we err on the side of caution that way the final paperwork's coming in about who's going where in the afternoon so we'll be able to get a better handle on numbers of whose has been able to participate in the windsor wreck the heartland wreck or the hcrs we have rough estimates but i didn't want to come with numbers tonight without having definites um so that's pretty much uh teachers are getting their official classroom assignments this week so they'll start planning and doing some of the curriculum work around their grade levels and it's pretty exciting um i think everyone though is looking forward to a couple weeks off before we jump back into this um it's been interesting trying to plan this with teachers

017and finish school at the end at the same time um i think we'll be able next year to learn a lot and be able to do it a little bit more streamlined i have a question can i ask my question um who uh is the wreck being paid for by families or by the school um if families requested financial assistance for the wreck we had put some monies aside for financial assistance for part of the wreck in the afternoons so um and and we had the wreck had known that as well both rec departments had known that so there are some families that have reached out for financial assistance and we're able to do that those numbers have gone up though katie huh i mean i know that it last week early last week we're

018around 75 so it looks like people are either starting to change their mind or paperwork is just rolling in yeah paperwork is rolling in we have a color-coded system and as of today we had more of robin's blue egg students than we had um not colored uh and as i went through so and we are fully aware that sometimes we have to chase parents down paperwork because it got lost in the shuffle despite multiple reminders and other things um so that it is and we are still taking on a few more students so um we think we'll land i think total we had 140 students that we had at least identified and asked that number might be a little larger but at least on paper from what we tracked so having the hundred would be

019fantastic and it's just the right number for the staffing we have sounds good i have a question katie um what are the grade levels of the students that are participating in the summer program or do you have any idea yep um we have um it's pre-k all the way through entering ninth grade and we have i can say that our six those are seven and eight are combined um the entering no the entering eighths and the entering ninths are combined with um fifth stands alone but we and we have a pretty robust pre-k in k group so and it spread all the way through i think our largest numbers were in second third and fourth grade um off the top of my head and the high school is also doing a small program for students

020there who are working on finishing their proficiencies and that's also a joint effort with folks so the high school students are being taken care of as well but just not part of our program but doing something different yeah overall there are um six teachers working with the um high school students doing credit recovery um i i've got a question and it doesn't have to do with the summer programming per se but um uh where are we with um the summer meal program yeah the uh the summer meal program uh is on track this year uh it's being coordinated completely through the food service program uh wendy moody who's on uh right now she used to be the the designated coordinator in the summers but craig craig felt he had enough help with his staff to

021to do that so there are i don't know how much uh i don't know how much um information has gone out um to parents but i know that there are there are two or three stations in each of our three districts where food will be uh available and then of course we're also going to be serving we're going to be serving these 100 kids that are in the summer summer program so i know that there's i i know that heather who is the lead cook at wetter's field and craig and rodney are leading up that effort i i could have invited craig to be here to give you an update but was there a specific question elizabeth or i wondered whether there was going to be food coming over to albert bridge uh i jen

022do you know if that's one of the stops i don't know last i talked to craig we're hoping to find volunteer who could come do it right now we don't have anybody who's willing to volunteer their time to come do it on a regular basis you mean to come and be at that site yep i can follow up with him elizabeth i i know that the retired seniors organization sent out a request for volunteers to be at the stations that would be providing students with lunches and they were looking at only three stations um i think what i i don't remember al um west windsor um i'll check i know kennedy pond is a drop-off point i know the rec center i think is still a drop-off point and i know that the uh oh

023under the bridge there the uh can't remember now what what they call that but uh yeah there are three sites in windsor i think oh and the bandstand uh so i know that's happening i know weathersfield i think has the fire station and the school and then i think um heartland it was the school in north the north heart the north heartland mobile park so i i feel strongly that there be at least some effort made to get it over to west windsor since coming over to windsor for one to to pick up a lunch it is a little bit onerous yeah and maybe it does it's possible jen that because in order to have a site he has to get at least a volunteer or we can even pay somebody if we want to

024but i think he has to get a volunteer to be at that site right is that is that the issue that's my understanding and right now i don't have anybody who will do that who will be at the lunch site correct i mean he can deliver there and maybe we just do it without anybody being there and we just we've done that before we've just set the cooler out and you know we put the lunches in the in the in that bag and then the driver picks it up on the way back i mean that's a i'll follow up elizabeth and see what we can do yeah i know that these sites i know he likes to have them manned or women woman or whatever they have somebody there but i'll check on it if

025you'll excuse me for a second i have to go off camera that's okay was dr baker was the um lunch program summer program was that starting as soon as we were done with school the following monday or is it starting during the summer academy it starts the week after so i think it's the 26th so it starts the week at least with those drop-off points it starts the week after um we get out um and then it goes i think it goes to august 20 something august 21st um but i do have a meeting uh tomorrow i think with craig where he was gonna we were gonna put the final word out to everybody but i you know i i sort of he was leading the charge and i you know i didn't follow up

026he said he had he said he had sights in all communities but it sounds like he doesn't have one in albert bridge right now thank you for following up with that david i appreciate it um uh are there any other questions about the principles report all right thank you very much principals and excellent excellent year thank you thank you so much that was a good one i hope i hope it was an eye-opening year for you all will you be taking time uh after your break to kind of after you unwind to have a backwards look at at this year versus last year or are you so over last year that uh it's way way way way back there agreed as an administrative team to take time off until the summer academy starts right right

027right right but after that will you have a will you i just wondered if there's going to be any kind of there was a flow between last year and this year uh thanks in part to the way that the agency of education um came rolled out their guidelines but but i wondered whether you um i guess for the sake of posterity have made any sort of inventory of uh what worked and didn't work during the shutdown and and whether you're going to i i'm sure that you did that at the end or the beginning of this school year but whether or not now that you have another weird year under your belts whether you could go back and look at that same inventory and uh look at it with different eyes and you know in

028case we ever have another shutdown uh or you know dramatic event like that yeah i think that's probably something um we think about reflective practices a lot lately with our work with dave milner particularly and so i'm sure as an admin team we're all going to spend some time during our retreat really finding time to do some of this work um i think one of the challenges is to do this with the staff too who have so much of the um important information and i'll tell you i i don't really know how to do that yet but hopefully we'll figure out some way of getting their voice into it in a in a reflective way after they've also had a chance to take a breath i mean as we were working as we were working

029on the calendar for next year and the schedule for next year we did do several surveys to the staff you know what worked well what didn't work well what do we want to preserve what do we want to hold on to and we did generate a pretty good list and i think next year's schedule but this year though that was for this year though yeah you mean compared to the the the year we weren't in the crash and burn yeah oh no yeah the end of last year oh we've just tried to forget that year right we we have not reflected on that year at all well i think it might be worth i mean worth touching on and also um uh touching base with teachers about how the ones the teachers who were uh

030uh the most apprehensive about going back into the classroom i would really love to know how what their adjustment was like and uh how they managed it and when it became okay for them and how it became okay for them and things like that uh yeah no we have we haven't done that yet that's interesting we have talked you know in negotiations bill and kim i know kim was on the line i think he's there we have talked about how we might codify in policy what we do when there is a governor's emergency order whether it be a hurricane another pandemic and and what the procedure would be to outline the protocols uh and we've thought about you know that might be good to develop a policy around i think that's a great i mean

031we we did that at the state house we have uh the policy for the moment that the governor issues an emergency order yeah now we know what to yeah what kicks in and when yeah we have not done that reflection on the year before last add it to the list yeah you're right rebecca i see your hand yeah i i think that um as jen was saying it's probably given everything that's going on um you know it's it's it's a good thing to do but how how do you get that in and where do you get that in but how i think it would be extremely powerful for teachers to be able to um to hear their voices through um be it um sort of like um a story storybook or i'm not sure but

032an uh an opportunity to submit uh uh an analysis of what their experience was is um and moving forward um because i'm sure that many teachers did not have the opportunity to share with other teachers what was on their minds although i'm there was those conversations going on but it would be really wonderful for teachers to be able to hear what the experiences of maybe other teachers were um and just be able to know that they were not alone in this extremely challenging time um you know just to you know hear the fears of others the concerns of others the and it's a way of honoring them you know and just hearing their voice but i i think that would be a lovely experience for them for for the community and for um for the

033leaders to also kind of get a flavor um i was just gonna say and also the the principles you must have you you sure had a lot going on in the beginning of the school year and uh you you wrote it all really marvelously but uh i don't know how you did it i mean you must have also had a lot of apprehensions yourselves and um not to mention changing things up and uh uh you know boy i mean i really i really handed to all three of you um colleen i see your hand i was just going to say i think we planned and planned and planned and we asked our covid safety team for a lot of meetings before we started the school year and i think there was apprehension to actually start

034and take that first day and then we i think we delayed it just a few days to start a little bit later than what we had planned and i think what i'll speak for me and my partner kate what we found when we actually started school that it was easier to handle the concerns once all the children were in the building and we could see that people were happy and they were happy to be with their teachers and we were teaching them all about safety and it was it was less anxiety for us once we were here versus the worry about the unknown without them here so it was good to to take the step to make it happen and start the year thank you thank you for taking that big step that was that

035was huge that was really and you you did it marvelously and gracefully thank you uh does anybody else have any other any other questions or comments um all right uh david baker yeah and i i can agenda yeah yeah right and and and i can be fairly brief um one of the things i did think at graduation at the high school graduation um that relates a little bit to the question you were asking elizabeth is i i think what made the transition so smooth uh also was that the students really stepped up you know what i mean i mean i i think i might have joked with some of you last summer or the yeah as we were preparing to open that you know you just didn't know how they'd respond to remote instruction or

036whether we'd be able to keep the masks on the little ones or on the seniors but as i but as i said you watched it unfold and you know they basically with some exceptions at times but not very much they did what we asked them to do and that made it easier for the teachers to do what they needed to do which made it easier for the administrators you know to think that kids had to go from a lot of movement around the building and specials to being in these pods and being masked all day and distanced all day i mean they just really stepped up so i mean i i saw that from k right through pre-k right through grade 12. so so that was that was helpful and um one of the things

037that happens to my life during this week great starting basically tomorrow is we also do all the other graduations across the district tomorrow night uh weathersfield graduation at four o'clock and then heartland is the next day on wednesday these eighth grade graduations wethersfield has now been scheduled for inside gene didn't want to risk it heartland's still going with outside and then albert bridge has their sixth grade uh send-off uh on uh on thursday morning so it's it's always fun because it really does kind of bring the culmination of and it's amazing the work that goes into getting ready uh for these uh events so um you know i just think that you know the planning that goes into these graduation events the senior breakfast the it's just it's just beyond belief and it's always just

038good to make the rounds and to and to see the kids and i really felt like i didn't i tend to be one that's in and out of the buildings a lot i didn't do that this year mostly because i wanted to you know play it safe you know for some you know for some personal reasons and and but but also i didn't want to you know i considered myself part of the public so i to some degree so i tried to i did get in but it was not quite it was not quite um as much i'm sorry just quickly to clarify i believe the albert bridge graduation i mean i hope it's on wednesday and not thursday it's on wednesday good morning i hope i did thank you that's good good good reminder

039let me make sure that i've got it right on my calendar that was a good catch um hold on hold on hold on and that starts at nine right uh yeah that's right yeah i've got it right so why did i say thursday that's crazy okay we got it um thank you elizabeth for pointing that out since we are public here um also i i really wanted to i wanted to do a quick shout out to the anti-racism task force i really think that an equity task force that group has met three times now with dr melissa crum and she's done an incredible job of of feeding us resources and and and having us acknowledge you know that in order to be anti-racist you really have to understand what racism really is and she's brought

040us i think a lot deeper than i thought we would go and we have one more follow-up preceded by a fair amount of group group homework to do to really dig in and unpack the policy even further than we have so so that's been i think that's been uh really really helpful um i've got a question about that sure do you know whether she's planning to dig into the procedures at all we she and i have not talked about that um and that's a good question no i don't know and we can bring that up certainly i know right now the assignment was around different sections of the policy but um i don't i don't i mean i think what i'm hoping is that once this group comes together this one last time that there

041is some energy of that keeps her consultancy going for a little while longer i think we need her into the beginning of next year i don't know how the board feels or how other members of we do have money in our s or funding for uh for a um a anti-racism coordinator or racial equity coordinator um but we didn't have any date when we were going to hire that and i don't know whether we could apply some of that money to continuing with her consultation but we we can have that conversation after we finish that last i think there's also quite a bit of money in the vermont community fund i know there is right yes too right for this kind of work yep yeah um and the the only other thing i know that

042we uh and i don't know elizabeth whether or not you think there's anything that's really critical uh you know in terms of the outcome of of this year's legislature that you you you thought should be reported out on i know that's under my report but you're probably i didn't i didn't think there was any i mean there's a i'm having to do it directly with uh that we haven't talked about before no i don't i know the vermont school board association is having a kind of um discussion or presentation on uh legislation but we've we've talked about it as we've gone along um and it looks like they're the legislature is not ever going to take up the question of um where right or whether funding uh whether districts have to pay for religious instruction

043um because it looks like that's been solved for us coming through the courts yeah so uh yeah i don't i outside of what we've already talked about i don't know that's what i thought so i didn't i didn't know of any update the last two things i i don't know maybe we're going to talk about this later on i think we probably and this gets back to the reflective piece i think all of the boards all three districts are planning a retreat so i think at some point we should set a date uh you know in july maybe or early august for a month school district retreat and maybe you had that on your agenda and then the last the last thing is really just that information trickles in still rather slowly from the agency

044and uh the governor's office around certain guidelines related to covid and you know for example we didn't get you know we just got on june 1st another update around uh end of year activities and also some of the things we can look forward to next year which is essentially if you want to put it simply but you know a normal opening you know that will look very much like we've you know we've we've done in the past but there'll be no more you know there'll be no more asynchronous days or remote days unless they're driven by another emergency uh and uh uh i think there's something in there about an inclement weather where you can you can you can go remote as long as you can meet the guidelines of 51 attendance and they define

045attendance but uh but i know angie's got that link for next year's guidelines i don't know if you if we need to share that or not angie we could put that in the chat box but unless there any questions i think that's it from my end most of the other stuff's on the agenda thank you david um okay so let's since it's 7 28 let's return now back to public participation uh to see whether anybody who's here on the uh in this meeting um has something that they'd like to talk about that's not related to the agenda uh let's see anyone i can't see your hand so just shout out if you need me hello hi uh so this is not on the agenda it's not school board related it's um i'm wondering if somewhere

046on the district or ascutney school board website if information is being planned or could be posted about uh the structure of the after school programs within the district and even within the su possibly as a parent um i couldn't find any of that information um and i'm assuming it's not quite organized yet so i'm wondering if that's available i know there were some discussion about the program at windsor for abs students and whether or not busing would be available or not so that's my question or concern no i i think it's a good question bill and i think you answered it uh pretty much for yourself and that is that um that it's a work in progress right now because those agencies that provided you know you know the rec centers bridging the gap we

047had an agency sort of partnership for the pause program in weathersfield we're in the process of really working with them there they had to restaff you know to to be able to you know because they they were shut down for 18 months so it's really we're in touch with all of those programs and directors and i don't think transportatio i think once we get something up and running i don't i don't think transportation from albert bridge will be an issue but i think we've got to get the programs up and running it's part of what slowed us down with the summer academy because we thought some of those partnerships were gonna we're gonna come forward for summer and for example bridging the gap btg just couldn't find a director this summer they think they have

048one for the fall and i know katie whether you have an update but anyhow it's a great question i think stay tuned i think by in july we'll have some information and we'll get that out to parents as soon as we can thank you does anybody else have any questions or comments not related to the agenda okay um then we will let's move on um first in our items for discussion we have inserted nancy's comment about the people's bank okay um we gave out three uh scholarships uh we gave um and um we gave the first one of two thousand dollars uh from the district's bloomfield scholarship to haley horton is that the one yep and then we gave um eli scholarship to miranda tote and that was for eight hundred dollars and the last

049one was the busher scholarship certificate to madison bowers for 500. that's exciting thank you that's great now that i'm on i wondered where did we get the 84 000 in scholarships that went to people a lot of those were um vsac scholarships there was i think quite a few gilman scholarships which are six about six thousand a year for the four years of school those are nice ones there there were quite a few scholarships i don't have them all in front of me but there's a long list booster club pizza chef romantos elks club lions club rotary just a lot of different scholarships vpa golf yeah different colleges in memory of deceased coaches that was wonderful thanks uh does anybody have any questions for nancy okay thank you nancy um the next item on our

050agenda is student rep and i'd like to just talk broadly for a minute about um uh i would like further for us to talk about not only student representation but also teacher representation on our board um not in both cases not voting but having a voice in and and also buy-in in uh where we are headed and uh uh giving us feedback about how how things are are moving along um elizabeth this is david i think that yeah we could we could think and flesh out the teacher rep piece uh we have not we haven't done that in the past only because historically you know the the the association you know has always appointed a couple of teachers to be at every board meeting that may be why kimbring is here today it might be

051why uh chris osgood here it might not be but i know in the past they've always made sure there was at least one teacher at the board meeting but that doesn't necessarily mean that it's a teacher that brings voice to to the board well i i invited kim to come actually this evening um uh because last year dur when we were doing the finishing touches of portrait of a graduate he and i had a discussion about how important it was to get all kinds of how not have this be a directive from the board how it's a push from the community it's a push from teachers and students and community members and everybody has to have all of their hands on it and uh um and everybody's voice has to be part of the uh

052part of it i don't want to mix metaphors so um but uh uh i think it's important to have have uh feedback and input both from from all of those groups um so anybody have any thoughts about it anybody rebecca i think it's a it's a a very important idea and um and and and i i think we we should strongly consider that um i've i've really felt even when we've been on the when we've talked at the anti-racism task force um i've thought where are the students here you know where's the voice of students where where is the experience of students we do have teachers on that committee but i think you do need to have all the stakeholders in the conversation and and what i'm seeing is we don't always get a large

053community participation on and so when if you don't if you don't have that and the only ones that are really attending these conversations are the board and um an administration um those are the voices that are gonna make um that you're gonna hear so i think that's a great opportunity it is a way to get different stakeholders um from the community engaged involved and um and and hear their input um so i i think i'm really excited i think tonight we're going to hear the voices of students finally and that i'm i'm excited to hear that and um um i would like to hear teachers also participate in this conversation thank you rebecca elizabeth did you have thoughts about what might be the right vehicle or the right protocol i see nancy's hand went up

054to our nancy said she agrees or maybe kim i don't know if anybody you know thought about what what might be a good you know a good format for that well i do have an idea about that actually and we'll get to it in just a little bit i do uh but we have to first agree in principle that it's a good idea colleen i see your hand well i i just wanted to say that in our buildings we have regular connections with our union representation from mr brink johnson as one of the presidents and the principals and we did a lot of work as an admin team with all of the union presidents this year so we were thinking of maybe there were some ways to to have more of those meetings su-wide kind

055of like did this year to maybe have less of in the building just our building and our not that i would give that up but i'm just saying more more of us that are hearing the same message it was it was nice to have those um those together and anytime we could free up another meeting is always great so but it was one of the things i really appreciate about kim and katherine working with them is that they they do work really well with kate and i and and they are asking us questions like this is just for information purposes we just want to make sure we're answering it correctly and that we have got the right information so there's a i think a very nice open door between the two two groups to um

056have open dialogue and get um straight in straight answers to everybody i appreciate that colleen i i have talked with uh i mean i i know i've brought this up before um and uh i've talked with teacher friends from across the nation and they all say it's not a thing that it's a regular that you know that it's a regular thing um teachers have uh the ability it's not a it's have the ability to give input when when they're when the district or supervisory union is moving in a new direction it's not the same as talking about your contract or talking about you know this or that it it um it pertains to everybody so it's a stakeholder thing um anyway we'll get there right now we have the luxury of having a uh one

057student or more than one student well we have ms gogan here who has presentations for multiples i'm going to pass it over to her and she's going to introduce bryce and we're going to hear from a couple of students through ms gogan's resources and bryce excellent okay thank you hi guys uh it's kim gogan the flexible pathways coordinator um so i did put together a presentation and primarily my presentation is an update on what students have been doing with flexible pathways because that's what i do and bryce is going to share with you his experiences with that because that's what he does as well he's done a ton of them probably more than most students so i'm excited for him to share and i'm sure i think he's going to share some other student celebrations

058and information as well i have a powerpoint that i made but it's pretty long i could probably talk and share student voices for um a long time i they have a lot to say i had one student who i asked to share their thoughts who gave me a seven minute video so i was told me so what i'm gonna do is i'm gonna put the link to that um presentation in um the chat and you can open it and download it and have it so that you can look through and see what some of the students have been doing on your own time because like i said it would take a really long time for um us to get through all of the student voices but um i just put that in the chat while

059i'm talking try to do two things at once and then um if folks want to open that up so they can take a look at it i can share it as well if that's okay um i'll just run through it quickly because i told bryce that he was going to have the majority of the time to just talk talk about his um his some of the things that he has done um boy that my this is really bogging down my computer so um as you can see that with this the presentation that i gave you it's really just an update with a list of all the different things kids have been doing to personalize their education and to choose the things that they want to do that help them be better prepared for post-secondary so

060as you can see there's lots of different things that kids are doing and this is even during covid most of this has been the last two years but we have such a great flexible pathway system that allows kids to do so many great things from community-based learning work based learning passion projects things outside of school where that they get involved in what we give credit for um like i said there's a bunch of student voices in here a couple audio recordings video recordings and students sent me written voice things about that some of the things that they've done i'm going to let you go ahead and take a look at this on your own so that we can give bryce um the the floor and let him talk about his flexible pathways bryce if you

061want to do that i will go ahead and put up those pictures that you gave me and you so that you have them there while you talk if you want to do that good evening everyone i'm bryce moody i'm here to give you a little bit of an update on what flexible pathways has done for me and multiple students that i go to school with so i have done at least on that list i read off three of them that i'm currently part of at the moment and so i am currently part of the red river think smart it program through this summer to learn a little bit more about information technologies as that's what i'm going to go into for career and get my degree in i am part of the norwich police cadet

062program i spend numerous time during the summer those year around we do different training skills and events new learn aspects of leadership last spring when covid hit i decided to obtain a pe credit using the vermont academy training standards so i was able to do that all throughout the covid pandemic by my on my own which was pretty cool and a different experience i also take criminal justice through springfield votech river valley tech tech center and i love it this is my first year there so that's another benefit is that i i get to choose what i want to do and it's something that a lot of kids enjoy i know so many kids that go to hartford you know they enjoy their schooling so much more when they have a passion and it's what

063they want to spend their time doing it means something to them to be there i can't stress enough how much i enjoy all of these things so in the top right corner is a picture of the new hampshire police cadet training academy that i have attended the last two years and i leave next wednesday to finish out my final year on the bottom on the right i'm doing a push-up for my last spring on the left i'm doing a 5k supporting law enforcement over in canaan new hampshire just to the right of that i'm doing cpr and aed training which i redo every few years we've done scenarios and cases and looked at trials and different judicial systems through tech school and it really all around it really allows you to open up your schedule

064and decide what you want to do with your own future it's pretty awesome bryce what is that picture in the middle um it looks like maybe you're making a casting of a footprint or something that is exactly what i'm doing we did that though when someone leaves behind tire marks or footprints or something to that effect we have a specific it's almost like a clay but you mix it up yourself you add water in powder form you pour it in there and you let it sit and it'll come out with the footprint so that you can keep that as evidence it's pretty cool not something you'd usually get to see and you can even use it to clot different parts of other things so it's a really cool substance that you learn about when you

065get to be part of the law enforcement and you know the criminal justice system that is really cool bryce you really have uh i can see that you're knitting together uh quite quite an interesting future for yourself i can't wait to see where this takes you nancy i see your hand yes uh bryce what year uh can you start flexible pathways and when did you start it so i don't think there's a specific year more about that than i would but i started mine i've been in the program with the cadets since my seventh grade year and i've gotten credit for eighth grade ninth grade 10th grade ellen and this year will be 11th grade and i'll be in it right up until i turn 18 and go to part-time police academy and does that

066take place during school nope it's after school on the weekends on holidays we do parade events and different types of traffic events i mean in the past other than this year the cadets have always been doing the graduation traffic event for the school and we've done different events as far as in the spring we go and help clean up veterans yards as a volunteer service and there's a lot of volunteer service that really makes a difference in the community that it's really nice to be part of i'll answer a couple of the other questions um as you can see from all the different choices in a flexible pathway system some of them are more appropriate for older students like the the cte and early college and dual enrollment typically they do as junior and seniors

067same with the virtual learning just because the amount of self-direction but we have other kids that do extended learning that are really interested in getting involved in the community or doing projects outside of school um that i i do start working with them i have ninth graders i'm working with i have eighth graders i'm working with so we don't say there's a year that you can start um it kind of depends on which choice in this system that we have is the appropriate for the kid and which one they're sort of interested in pursuing i do meet with all the i start to meet with the ninth and tenth graders and kind of talk to them about ways that they can personalize their education and they start seeking me out generally um ninth grade but

068then we have some have older siblings that have done some that seek me out a little bit earlier and kids do for some of these things as you can see just based on what you're seeing there they're appropriate to have a day period in their day like virtual learning or dual enrollment but for most of the extended or expanded learning opportunities that you'll see on that list and the powerpoint those are anytime anywhere learning opportunities that don't fit within our semesters or even within our school year or day and most of those kids do them outside of school on their own time over the summer over the course of multiple years if that gives you a little bit of understanding about that it's so broad in the number of options that they can choose to

069personalize that it's not a one answer question it really depends on which option they decide and what what happened um get mid midway and and it's not a great fit for them how and they want to choose something else can how do they do that um we have that happen we have some kids that have some good ideas and they don't quite come to freshen or they get through them and maybe we lose a community partner um we try we we're flexible pathways so we try to adapt and adopt and change as we go kind of like choose your own adventure with some of these expanded learning opportunities um some just don't follow through and see it too but that's very rare usually when they're coming to me they have some sort of a passion

070whether it's music or dance or like bryce you know cadets or something and most of them are pretty highly motivated they're not we're not telling them they have to do these so they're seeking me out because they're really interested in them but we've had them where they just didn't pan out and we find the next best thing that that we can for them i mean part of my job is if a student has an opportunity in mind to help bring that to fruition but if they have an idea and they need help finding a community mentor or a program i'm also the one that goes out and finds that opportunity for so the first one doesn't work out and they still want to do something my job would be to find what something that will

071work for them so kimberly i have a couple of questions um and one is um i know many times students don't really know what's available in the community they really have no idea what is it that they want to do um so one is there um an interest inventory that all students are sort of exposed to early on to get a flavor of maybe where their strengths lie um and two um is does the schools provide some sort of either um career opportunities for students that you know um that align them with community opportunities where they can just go and get a sense of whether it's not so much whether it's something they would like but just to find out what it's about yeah i also you know because you said the career tech cte

072only allows um juniors and seniors and i know that many years ago there was really a push to try and have some sort of exploratory classes for ninth graders because we know that that really is the time when students are either moving into a pathway and if we don't really catch them then they they they tend to flounder so i'm just wondering if those sort of um supports are there to help you sort of guide students and and um yes yes yes and yes i guess the first one that you asked was about um an interest inventory our ninth grade academy that's really part of what they do i'm not sure this year was called idl i'm not sure if it's being called seminary but the components of what they've been doing um embedded in

073that is career exploration they had been doing it recently with roads to success uh i have a curriculum that they've used some of the things you know the same sort of interests um surveys we have several options so that's the first one yes it's happening and our ninth grade yes it's happening in the tenth grade but in a broader sense we've been trying to expand all the career um exploration opportunities the year 2020 we were supposed to do an 8th grade job shadow with career cliques in the upper valley um i also do a lot within the building when we're not in a pandemic to bring people in from the community uh that we had like a speaker series where people they would be able to sign up during their academy time and go visit

074with people that uh you know i did like a trades or an arts that sort of thing i also collect all the information around people that are offering tours they've taken kids to hypertherm and to weyland and dartmouth and hoping that once we get through this pandemic we can go back to some of that did a summer opportunities fair brought kids to job fairs so i'm working very closely with our guidance counselors starting in middle school to to expose those kids to those career options and opportunities so that they can start to narrow it down so by the time they get to see me as a freshman sophomore and junior that we are really getting them to think about post-secondary not by the time they're junior and senior but earlier on so that then i

075can start to line up the appropriate opportunity for them whether it's an internship or work based learning opportunity or expanded opportunity whatever that um opportunity might be that's appropriate for them to personalize their education but yes i would say out of all the things that i do career exploration and expanding those career exploration opportunities in the school um is something that i've spent a lot of time doing since i've come to windsor did i answer all your questions because there was quite a few of them oh yeah yeah yeah i i wanted to get a sense if there was a holistic approach to helping students explore careers and whether it was happening really early on because the research is saying that we really want to do this as soon as possible we don't really want

076to wait for them to get into the high school we want them to really be thinking about this as bryce commented seventh grade you know we want them to start zeroing in on getting a sense of where their strengths lie and and i and i the uh the opportunity for students to even participate in an experience and then say ah this is not what i really want to do i think that's a great opportunity also because if nothing else you walk away knowing what you don't want to do so yes thank you for answering all of my questions yeah and we've like i said we started building what you see here with making sure our students have access to these opportunities in our flexible pathway system but this is really only our third year at

077this and you know for a year and a half we've been in a pandemic so some of it came to a screeching halt but there were lots of conversations we were backing it up to the eighth grade and then yes we've had conversations i'm hoping to continue that we would continue to back that up with a variety of different programs doesn't matter which one we do or if we do it in house all the way like you're saying starting at a much early age so you know now that we're sort of moving into a normal year we can hopefully continue those conversations so thank you that sounds great i've got a question or a couple of questions that sort of so does the flexible pathways program dovetail with uh personalized learning plans i mean i

078think theoretically it should right yes and so is there a second dovetail with uh college counseling and readiness as far as that you know uh and step after that um yeah i would say that um who is the college counselor at windsor and do they work with you or is it you no um so i i'm basically part of your the student service department so i would say our two student services advisors uh jessica and greg they kind of take on that and the uh college uh exploration you know doing those field trips and bringing those people in i work really closely in fact we probably meet once or twice a week and we work together um to support students needs so they're regularly meeting with their students when they have find out that they

079have a kid with an interest or something that might fall in my wheelhouse they'll send them to me we work together to make it you know make sure it's appropriate and good for their future plans so i would say we kind of all work together i they really got the college piece down and do it really well and a lot of the pieces aside from cte and dual enrollment we didn't really have well developed prior to a couple years ago so i'm really trying to build those because having worked in new hampshire um where they've been doing elo's or extended learning opportunities for quite a while i had some that experience to sort of bring to the table along with work-based learning um so i would say it is definitely happening i don't think it's

080any less than it ever was and it just kind of complements and sort of brings it full circle you know it's more well-rounded it's not just college it's you know i i'm trying to connect people in other ways to to trades to to whatever it might be um in addition to and supporting them with their college goals so if it is college that's their goal then i'm going to send them in the you know dual enrollment early college you know that sort of or internship direction in in cooperation with their student service advisor did that answer your question well i guess that was sort of part of my question was whether uh whether the outcome is um predetermined whether it's go to a trade school or or uh uh that pat word um i don't

081know i'm picking the wrong words or if the last minute the student wants to takes all of that experience and decides they want to go to a liberal arts college with it um you you're able to pivot to help them to okay absolutely and i mean i think you have to and i think um someone mentioned it earlier sometimes finding out what you don't want to do is just as important as finding out what you do and i definitely have a lot of that you know i've taken kids to dartmouth and they're on the they think they're on the career path for you know even as juniors for the medical field a bit they get there and they realize after going with me you know to these experiential days that they can't stand the smell

082so we we pivot we definitely look at the next thing so absolutely i would say adaptability and pivoting is something that's happening on a regular basis for sure i've had lots of kids you know come to me like oh i want to be um a hairdresser and by the time they've done some i have a self-pace that they can choose career exploration that involves job shadows or they can do one online they get ton and they're like nope that's not what i want to do i want to do this and that that's happening actually one of the videos and there is one of the students that took one of the career exploration classes with vhs as a senior who thought he wanted to go into hospitality and now he's changed and he wants to go

083into something else so you'll see in some of the videos too the kids talk about that pivoting kind of process of elimination but at least they're doing it now and not um once they get to college so i think i think it's we've come we've come a ways in that respect i i just want to also say bryce i think what you're doing is really great in terms of i know that more colleges um are looking and i'm not sure what your your plans are for the future but more colleges are looking at students that have had that hands-on experience um and and a combination of the academics they just are looking for a more rounded student there um the student that purely is on an academic track and and doesn't really um sort of

084uh have any experience other than just um classroom experience um that works it that works but a lot of colleges uh i was seeing at least in my latter years as a guidance counselor um really valued those students that that did well with the academics but at the same time um we're out in the world tasting and feeling what it's like to um interact with people interact with the community so um um kudos to you bryce and um it's gonna serve you well um in whatever you do it really is one of the greatest things that i think our school has taken on is flexible pathways i mean i've thoroughly enjoyed and it's one of my favorite parts of school is being able to choose what i do and like she said you think you

085have one career and you totally change i never thought that i would be interested in i.t or anything with a computer and technology i was thinking a criminal justice major major and then i swapped it right over and now i'm part of the red river i.t program so it really is an awesome program to be a part of and be able to have that experience before you make big decisions and spend lots of money to do something you don't end up wanting to do in the future excellent i i just just i apologize amy oh you lowered your hand amy you hide your hand up and um yeah i did and i i do need to say this i was thinking uh it doesn't matter but it does because we had the perfect example of

086flexible pathways in just a slightly different direction at graduation we had an extremely talented young lady perform at graduation with her cello and those of us who have spent any time at windsor know that there isn't an orchestra so for this person to become as talented as she is there needed to be more than just a parent taking her to cello lessons it was a number of people in the school who supported her she said i want to continue playing cello and there were some people who said well let's figure out how we can do that and they supported her and oh my gosh was she amazing or what it just brought you know all kinds of chills all kinds of feels you might say um and also our flexible pathways has come so far

087since five years ago when act 77 is that yeah flexible pathways um because i know students who said well i want to do some photography but their their schedule of classes didn't fit with the photography class and they were told well even if you have free time because the teacher can't meet with you you can't do flexible pathways photography and that made me feel very sad so i'm i'm really really really happy to be able to tell a a young person that hey if there's something you're interested in let the school know and they will work with you and help you make it happen so thank you very much thank you amy i have one more question um how many students take advantage of this well it varies um i mean i have right now

088probably um 37 on my list for the summer but some of those are are ongoing they've been doing them for a couple years passion projects i have one in the student that does irish dance i have one that started um in this spring she's carrying it over to next year i have one that's doing around music so the eos typically they don't fall within a semester you know so um it's hard to say for sure but um i'm happy to share what i do have is i have a spreadsheet with all the data from the last five years so i can share it i call when i think you have that but i'm happy to share that with the board um i'm not sure i could put my fingers on it without making you wait

089but i have everything and then it's broken down to exactly the different categories that the kids did so i've been trying to disaggregate that so we can see and we've actually you're right amy we've seen it just it's growing exponentially and when i first came kids were like i don't want to do flexible pathways you can't make me and now literally i have kids coming to my door i would say every day not every day but a couple times a week i've got kids this time of year because school's getting out there thinking about summer i have a lot of kids just dropping by to see me on a regular basis with ideas and to talk about this and talk about that and you know some of them i have like a tickler file that

090i put on um i think the year before glass when we weren't in the pandemic i had about 85 students in the whole year that did a variety some of everything we're talking internships to online to dual enrollment to uh i'm not counting the cte kids just things that i would oversee because cte is kind of its own thing so just the one that i would help facilitate well also just one more thing and then i will really be quiet um five plus years ago the interest surveys i would hear that why do i have to do this because it's not going to go anywhere and there were even teachers some who are no longer there but they would say oh don't worry about that it's just going to go into a folder but now

091i'm so so happy to hear that interest surveys are all part of the foundation and that all the kids are getting support to follow their um their desires their and create their futures thank you i worked really hard um along with just their interest surveys i actually reach out and connect with each kid and ask them to do a survey and then i take that data and i follow up with each of them some of them as groups saying here's what you need to do with dual enrollment but if they've told me they have any sort of interest in anything i'm like hey do you want to come down and have a meeting so but we've all had to work together cooperatively with the teams and admin and everything to make this happen so i

092don't want to take all the responsibility for it but that personal connection with each kid like working with student services who've been extremely supportive working together has made it kind of happen and and grow as quickly as it has colleen i see your hand yeah i was just gonna say kim has worked so hard and with the student support services um i do believe that students are just they're just learning they're hearing it from their upper classmen word is spreading the cool things students are doing they're seeing um seniors do their capstone projects they're seeing that they're connected to a flexible pathway or an elo they've done an extended learning opportunity or an internship and i would say after this year where we had a lot of flexible pathway options during the covered year because

093of students not being in the building in the high school then we had students after doing that saying gosh that remote learning was really hard now i really know exactly what i want on my schedule for my next one or two years and i need to make it fit for me and so i'm hearing more students thinking about internships that are specific for them and they just check in with ms gogan and or one of their school counselors and everybody works together to make it happen so thank you to kim excellent thank you um and i understand that wendy's hand is raised as well though i can't see it wendy is your hand raised yes i was just just briefly going to chime in as the parents that kind of behind the scenes seeing this

094happen and when bryce initially started cadets um i was sure that he would just continue on and go into college for straightforward criminal justice and it's been through this process that with kim and chief frank and opening their uh his eyes to more experiences being in washington dc and jeff just the variety of experiences has opened his eyes too that there's so much more and i never would have thought he would have gone the path of it but that he is recognizing you know through experience and through conversations with people that are in the field that that's where the future is and so he made adjustments himself and then was able to get the support of kim and others to help him kind of navigate okay well it's changed a little bit now what is

095the next path what can i you know what can i take advantage of along this route now so you know easily you can change paths and even if it's sort of the same general scope you can still kind of bend and curve and and take different miniature routes so the fact that there's plenty of people in the building that are willing to walk that walk with him has been really good so that he knew all the options that were available to him and then made the choices that worked best for him so we've been very pleased um obviously he has a great start so i'm very thankful for that um and and bryce is dedicated like he's spent a lot of his own personal time nights weekends vacations it's very little in school time to

096make sure that he has these experiences so um we're feeling very lucky that's great thank you thank you for sharing that experience and thank you bryce for sharing your experience excellent and i encourage you to look through that powerpoint that i put in there because there are other students voices that you can hear their stories too and some written ones because we'd have to take a lot more time and i've already taken quite a bit for you to hear all of them but i just they were unsolicited i just put it out there and said if you want to share with me and that's what i got back so i think um i think you'll really enjoy them that's great thank you very much uh kim i just quickly kim i noticed when i opened

097the powerpoint maybe you've already gotten requests for access but some of those videos you you needed access to be able to get at those videos so there may be a way you can go in and change your settings on that powerpoint you don't have to yeah i thought i had done that i'll try to do it might just be the videos themselves because i'm pretty sure the powerpoints that set that way but i think the video okay i will see what i can do to um i'm not a techie guys but i'll do my best if not i'll get them to colleen and make sure you guys get them that some way some way shape or form nice yeah i know i was going to say i'll just go to one of the kids because

098they're the ones that help me all the time with that lice can help you yeah yeah where i should hear that you're you're helping me [Laughter] all right thank you both very much i that was that was excellent um uh does anybody else have any questions or comments okay the next item on our agenda is oh thank you for being with us both of you um the next item is uh manuscript new school district goals of the things that i uh and i wrote a note to amy about this earlier but i i had a talk with coach chrissy um who is a i think he's the board chair in hartford and he told me that they have switched to in order to gain more public participation they have switched to having two meetings a

099month they had they previously had one two hour meeting and now they have two one-hour meetings they're able to get a lot more done because they can split the agenda into two parts one which is just regular board business like the presentations and um budgeting and and that sort of stuff and then the second part which is uh uh agenda items which the public may want to have input on um and i wondered whether we would be interested in in splitting that up it sounds uh heavier but i have been assured by not just coach christie but i poked around to see whether other boards do this and it's supposed to be a lot more efficient to to do it this way and we could um we could keep our regular meeting time for one

100of them and then have a uh um we could even move the time of day if we wanted to for the for the other one um uh but i think it might be good to as i believe that we're going to start going back in person um uh i think it would be good to have a way for to encourage more public participation and that was what i was also going to suggest um with regards to a teacher and community and student input that maybe that would be the place for all three of those groups to um just so they don't have to wade through some of the discussions that we have on other matters that we could we could keep it to one um when kind of separate meeting time it'll be easier for

101students to uh manage and parents as well said nancy i see your hand yeah i'm just worried that it'd end up without a strict end time and then we have two two-hour board meetings so uh i i i don't know we we do get into conversations and uh this repetition and um i i don't know um in theory it sounds great if we could hold to just an hour and zoom makes it easier because there's no um drive time because once we get so one thing we could do is have one one hour meeting in person and then the second meeting on zoom well that is a good idea because once you add the driving you're already over an hour i know yeah no uh does anybody else have any any thoughts anybody i am

102i'm i am not trying to make this a heavier load i am trying to make this a lighter load i really am um but i'm also trying to encourage people to attend our meetings um which prior to the pandemic we didn't really have people attending our meetings so and and we need we need uh we've had a robust um level of discussion on on various levels and and we we need that um as we enter this next kind of phase of portrait of a graduate and and uh bill i see your hand at this point i'm just processing the idea all right it would take me some more time to wrap my head around it um i do know that shorter agendas tend to be more efficient though anybody else i can't see anybody hold

103on amy but yeah i thought i heard a couple of hands go up a minute hold on uh rebecca i see your hand um it's funny i was over the weekend i was talking with a community member who um who shared with me that um a little bit about her impressions about um schools and she says i really can't get in there i mean and and i said well we we have meetings she says well that's not the only time i can make it um and and we we just chatted a bit and and she said you know maybe one way for the school board to get more um community participation is is by opening up you know the school maybe in the summertime when kids are at their um a tour for community members

104to see what it's like in the building because it other because we we really don't know what's going on in there um so i i think it's just an appropriate conversation to have how do you get the community more um more involved and um in these conversations which are so important and we're making such um some some extremely difficult um decisions um that affect everyone in the community the children the parents the community our budget um so i you know like bill i i'm also trying to wrap my my mind around how do we do this but i think that we definitely do need to do something and so um this this may be a way to um to try something different um um i i i do also want to say uh um that

105one of the things that i also enjoyed regarding our um anti-racism um committee conversations was this came up it it was how do you get the community in the school and um um and and so yeah i i think it's really important so yeah i think it's a group i i think it's a good idea i'm just not sure um how that would work but i think the idea of maybe one hour in person and a two-hour meeting on zoom well i i was just thinking that if we if we were able to collect the parts of any given agenda that our uh stakeholder parts and then have that be kind of separate so that again um people who don't want to you know we we tend to put the presentations at the beginning and

106save the discussion items for later and that's that's hard for people to have to ask so um anyway it's it's a thought and i i hope that we consider it uh as far as board goals go um is that something that david you thought that we should do during a retreat or is it something that we should talk about now or no i i think something that's that big a change give people a chance to let it sink in reflect on it i think that would be a good board retreat agenda item you know first of all board goals would be a a retreat agenda item uh you know which would be consistent with you know our strategic plan and an update on some of that at a retreat but then also then talk about

107our meeting structure i think could be part of that um because i know there's been a lot of questions from administrators around remote versus in person and have we had more success remotely than we have in person in terms of public participation i know your question was a little different around twice a month versus once a month but i think this remote in person is also a good conversation uh to have and we've talked a little well i'll just leave it at that because i know we talked a little bit today about hybrid models whether or not we could set up something that was both remote and in person and i know we've struggled with that in the past but maybe there's a technology that would allow us to but i think a retreat is

108a good time to talk about those things i also feel i mean i think we uh we can also agree that it's a lot easier to get some of this work done in person yeah right it could be and the only other thing that i think about not so much for myself i mean i i did the commute for nine years prior to the pandemic and i'll i'll do it again i mean i mean i've appreciated being able to be uh online but sometimes i do think about the other administrators like i know colleen and kate for example um you know they've got you know basketball a full on work day and we're asking them to be here until 8 30 at night i know yeah i know that's just another thought you know and

109it's a lot to ask but i also say that you don't have to i'm not asking you david or you colleen or kate or jennifer you don't have to do it i mean i um it's not not a requirement um i think we can we can handle it and you can watch a recording if you you know we can work that part out too um i think it's worth the conversation i certainly like the idea of shortening the meetings two one-hour meetings a lot better than two two-hour meetings i think so i think so i think it would make it uh i mean it might take a a a couple of times to get it whittled down to one hour but i i'd be willing to put in the um the possibility because they're easier

110to schedule they're easier to remain focused on and there's a lot of advantages to them just saying amy do you have any thoughts chris do you have any thoughts no no comment okay chris are you still here i'm still here yeah thank you i'll see you up there i haven't been voicing a lot of opinion and you know the reason why um but i i think you're i think you're uh i think if you really can stay to a single hour that it might work though it makes it more complicated for people uh for people like like me i have other evening activities that meet at various times and things like that so it's sort of like now now you're adding it maybe only an hour long but it's still another meeting in another evening

111yeah that's part of the reason why you know no i agree i agree but we could also move the time of day too if it's only one yeah yeah somewhat that would make it that would make it somewhat easier but obviously you're you're gonna wanna you're still gonna try to accommodate the public and and the timing for them um and what's a good timing for them for them and then i look at somebody at you you say we could do these meetings without david and without colleen and with um but that i think is even more of a challenge because if it's a if it's something that the public wants to talk about they need we need people who have the real details to be at the meeting so i i'm i'm uh i'm a

112little bit uh well i'm this way now anyway so a little bit skeptical of trying to find another meeting and add another meeting to my to to to life but you know because because certainly colleen has worked all day long but so did i so it's not like you know yeah yeah i know i haven't also and so do you so i mean you know it's not like it's yeah i think it would be nice to have a one-hour meeting though oh it would be great yeah but could you have a one-hour meeting i mean i think we are a uh how do i want to put it we are a fairly verbose group so some groups some you know the folks in in in hartford i don't maybe they just uh talk less and

113it works but no amy well what i was going to say along those lines is that we have a hard time keeping our two-hour meeting to two hours right we would have to have it scheduled to we're gonna spend five minutes on this and that is it and you'd have to be able to say nope five minutes is up we're moving on to the next agenda and we all know how our public can react to that if any of you were at the su meeting that we had last yeah whenever that was yes so it's it would have to be a really tight agenda and the agenda would have to be followed very closely and just uh chris were you on the board when we did have two meetings a month um i think so

114i've tried to forget it but yeah so we used to have meetings that they heard mondays of every month and they were but they were an hour and a half long at least so that yeah it would have been those and those were agendas that had this is what time we're going to do this this is what we're going to do that yeah so and we still didn't stick to them completely and and we had a couple of talkative board members myself included so yeah colleen you're right timekeeper yes yeah and that's what we did that for a while and that that did speed up things a little bit right yeah you were the time keeper it might have been at one point and bill was the timekeeper y'all were the enforcers uh okay um

115i just wanted to bring it up uh and i i guess we could talk about goals at our retreat which is the next agenda item um is there a i'm really not available until the end of july i except for the first week of july so i'm i'm out of town for a couple of weeks all right uh so when are you back uh elizabeth i'm not back until sunday the 24th sorry now july sunday the 24th we leave on the 8th and we come back on the 24th and how about the other board members are there any absolute times you're just not available i'm not available on wednesdays and fridays well maybe on fridays i think the administrators are going to take the end of june and then as somebody already said i think

116we're back in this you know most of them are back in the saddle when summer academy starts and so i think july and early august i don't know if there are exceptions to that uh we could meet on monday july 5th i mean i could that day can't meet on the 6th and i really we leave on the 8th yeah i think the 5th is technically the holiday right amy noted that she wasn't available for anything until august okay that's helpful well maybe we should look at that first uh or second week in august any administrators that can't do first or second week of august so that would be uh actually we meet with david is the vermont principal's association conference that's that first week right yes yeah so we better the second week i

117do know there have been times amy can correct me if i'm wrong there have been times when we have not met in july just because it's such a crazy time people want to get vacations the vacations are all over the place so then we could meet you know we could just do an extended retreat time in august maybe the second week of august and and those have usually started a little earlier we've sometimes done a potluck we've sometimes just had it you know we've had it catered we've sent out for pizza i mean so if you want to look at something like that and that's a good time to just have open conversation update on strategic plans those kinds of things talk about next year's board meetings um i've got a proposal uh well uh

118let's forget about july that's a good proposal then in august um i mean we have a place where we can have a nice picnic and and uh you know hang around outside and have it outside an actual retreat we haven't been in the same room with each other in so long i think that would be great so we're talking about the week of the nine [Music] not at our house at my but it is in west windsor um but it's at my mother's you know the property that my mother lives on but it's not at her house either i think that's great bring your own meat cook out meter salad we can work that out those are details so that i know that's what heartland's going to do that's what weathersfield's going to do and

119that would be the week of august 9th we'd have to pick a day in there that worked how about after today what's that about august 9th how does that work for everybody anybody that it does not work for what day of the week is it monday monday you can do it nancy sounds like going once going twice okay all right so the ninth and i hope you mind coming to west windsor but it'll be nice no i think that that that's fine i mean that's part of our district right so let's do it i mean so so elizabeth you and i can work on so some of the details i guess and then yeah i you like i said usually if we're gonna do potluck or some sort of a you know bring a dish

120we start around you know a little earlier four o'clock 4 30 and just work right through eight so we get a few hours in yeah that'll be great right also i'm going to send out an invite just so people have it on their calendar and say that high school graduation decorations we're not talking about since the high school graduation has already taken place uh staffing patterns is the next final discussion item yeah um one of the things that uh i'm just trying to get this invite out hold on one sec here and then i'll be right back with you um uh all right i think we're good there all right we're not there everybody yeah we're almost there exactly all right here we go i'm gonna send this out now it's gonna invite i think

121that went to the right date i don't know let me go there is that my screen yeah okay we're good um yeah so anyhow i'll just introduce this topic in the sense and then i'll turn it over to one of the administrators it you know we've been doing a lot of talk about about middle level and how we want a staff middle level um whether or not we want middle level to be six through eight or five through eight uh and just kind of looking at you know if we really want to have a robust middle school what would that look like so that was one conversation that was going on and then all of a sudden that you know uh sort of not totally last minute but more or less last minute we had

122two uh two teachers uh resign or leave one well one did not sign the contract the other left at albert bridge so uh that uh provides opportunity if we were going to do anything with staffing patterns or we were going to talk about that it wouldn't involve necessarily a reduction in force or somebody having a teacher having to move so what colleen and kate and jen did was they just wanted to kind of well we wanted to look at the numbers and just see what you know before we go out and hire a teacher whether or not we wanted to talk about this and i think this is strictly a board conversation it's not i don't want anybody to take any of this as a recommendation or here's what we think um you know i

123know the four of us have thoughts on it and we'd be glad to express those if asked but so i don't know uh what who's gonna is it gonna be jen or colleen who wants to i'll share my screen we can share the talking through it okay good and we did by the way there were two people i said who we we have already hired one because we do certainly there's nothing there's no talk of anything grade four or below but the real question is five six and what we want to do with that so jen do you want to talk folks through these numbers sure so all we did was put it out there in a couple of different scenarios based on the numbers that we understand that we are projecting anyway for next

124year and the years following so this first section is simply staying status quo what we planned back in october um following through so in grade five for algebra before but you guys can see the numbers one zero grade five would have 24 kids um sixth grade five in at abs 27 windsor seventh grade they're already blended so there's total of 35 and grade 8 is 55 at albert bridge school the planets was back in october to have a combined five six so there'd be nine kids in that group so that that would be a status quo staffing pattern right yep so this is status quo staffing pattern this is back what we planned in whatever it was october when we did the budget sorry i tried to make that easier to see and i just

125lost my place all right so that's um at abs that would be a nine to one ratio but again recognizing that's one teacher teaching all eight subjects so two grades four major subjects um 127 kids in the sixth through eighth which is their figure configuration now 18 or 19 to one um 18 to ones staff ratio and the 7th and 8th and that's just to say that the different ratios are if the classes are blended if it's a 7th and 8th grade mix or a six seven eight mix or a five six mix versus a straight fifth grade or a straight sixth grade that everything would look a little differently so we tried to just put it out there in a couple different configurations so that's probably that status quo i've done it both ways

126sorry dr baker no i said that's the status quo option yes okay the next possible option is taking sixth grade students from albert bridge school and putting them in the windsor schools next year that would leave four kids in grade five at abs we'd have to think about what to do sorry she is not used to beating again bill i see your hand you're muted oh yeah you have your mute on bill i i thought maybe everyone could read my lips no we're crying we're done um i think this is a good discussion to have at the same time i would be interested in in seeing configuration of abs with the sixth grade gone configuration of abs well i i i wouldn't be particularly interested in seeing configuration with fifth and sixth grade gone i

127think that transition in one year would be a little bit much but i i i would look at it and and consider it um i know so that i mean i guess what i'm saying is it's hard for me to imagine or visualize what this would be like without both configurations in other words yeah i see abs has four students windsor has 24 students what would the the rest of the grades at abs look like and also i mean uh there are a couple of a couple of fine points which are one that classes below that are robust at albert bridge so they're not this is one year when it's a thinner year number two uh both of these classes have uh quite a few um students with uh special needs and uh so that

128means two things one they need to be they ought to be in smaller class sizes um but also to change them to for their families and for the students to put them in a totally new school suddenly with a dramatically bigger class size i think would really be well one of the one of the things you know one of the things we would have to do if we were going to do anything and i don't think we just to your point bill i don't think you would just do this with fourth and fifth grade parents i think you'd do it with k through you know four parents you need to know what the parents think about you know this idea what's on the screen right now that jen those are the numbers uh projected in

129the other grades you know coming up um so and this would i don't think this had to be i don't think this is a purely numbers decision i think this is also i think it's i think it's a decision you know certainly that west windsor has to has to weigh in on and those parents need to weigh in on when we talked about it meaning jen colleen kate and i or whenever we've talked about it it's much more around you know programmatic which i think bill talks to what you're saying is what would it look like what are the configurations if you took six what are the configurations if you took you know five and six and how does that make it better or how does that make it worse programmatically not so much in

130terms of whether somebody wants to travel to windsor or not but where can you how can you provide the most opportunity to those kids that that's really the question right and and and this this plays into uh something that really got interrupted by the pandemic along with many other things is the fact of you know discussing what it might look like to have a preschool within albert bridge yeah you know what what it i mean there is a need in the area for preschool placement and in in in day care coverage to attract individuals and or another transitional k we we've talked about you know the need we could probably stand to have three transitional case in our supervisory union yeah we have talked about that you're absolutely right what prompted the discussion tonight is

131that we are searching for and jen has a few names i mean i we hired a 3-4 teacher because obviously you're not going to pull third and fourth out of there we have not hired a 5-6 teacher yet jen has names i don't know whether or not at this point we found anybody licensed but we're working on that but it just got us thinking you know we've got nine kids we'll have 11 the year after that we'll have you know 13 the year after that i mean you know what that was it just in terms of is this a good time to talk about configuration and see what parents think or want to do or should we just leave it and hire a teacher that's that that's really the question i think i think it

132would be wiser to uh to yes have the discussion with parents sure but have have it not be in response to what's coming up next i mean this is very uh to me this is very uh numbers oriented and uh uh it's not an intentional um contemplated move and i i don't think it's a good idea to i mean it's not going to be on you can't undo this move no you want it you wouldn't right it would be a poor it would be a poor choice to to do it and then undo it i think this is a wonderful discussion but it is i don't foresee it being possible to accomplish it before the decision there's no way you're going to accomplish it before the decision has to be made okay and so and

133there's no way it's going to accomplish even before the start of next school year um and and so i i think david and and and and jennifer you're definitely on the right track at that this consideration brings up the topic of what is configuration going to be like is there a better program for um for the the combining services of these two schools and what is our mission and that is probably something we should decide upon as a district goal for next year just come up with with with the data the the input from the the community all that stuff over a year or two this is not something that is in is any way going to um get resolved next year i mean we're not even meeting until august yeah right i mean right

134uh jen i don't want to put you on the spot but what um uh i know the last time you sent me the applicant pool um we certainly had that outstanding candidate that i interviewed today but then the others were you know provisional licenses maybe no licenses couldn't get licenses with where are we with that similar to the one that you had which is they have a license from someplace else or in some other area someone's a special educator um in vermont one has an expired new york license um i think what the other ones are one does have a vermont license that recently came in that we're interviewing next week for this week we're in this week already yeah um yeah and and again you also ha i think to to jen's credit i

135mean we certainly got the ads out as soon as we knew um you know uh the pool is a little bit thin and the other thing that's a little bit difficult is i don't know how all you feel but i like to be transparent with candidates matter of fact i think one of the reasons our current can there were probably a lot of reasons but i think one of the reasons our current 5 6 candidate left is because um they saw that you know there was this middle school move afoot and that there could very well be i i don't know if that's all of it or some of it but but it's hard to hire a teacher and say you know um you you know we're we're working on this and maybe you don't

136say that maybe you just i don't think that's why that's not why he left he left because he had a really fantastic opportunity that he really couldn't turn down that's why he left it didn't have anything to do with any other chatter about anything at all yeah and jennifer made a really fantastic hire last year and so and that was right in the middle of the pandemic when we didn't have any idea what it was going to look like uh and so um you know let's not well that's not what he told me but that's fine i'll go with what you say that's fine uh and i'm not talking about this year i'm talking about last year in terms of why he wanted to leave last year so that you know i'm just going by

137my conversations with with the gentleman maybe he talks maybe he gives different stories to different people i don't know it's also a year later i mean that's right it's it's not the same school that's correct opportunity different role and uh it doesn't really matter david oh it doesn't point is that that jennifer my point was that jennifer was able to make a higher right middle of all of this and it was a wind up being a really good fit chris i see your hand and then and then colleen chris is your is that a legacy hand i'm sorry you you there was a gap i didn't hear the crisp part sorry um but i i would agree with bill uh you know you could do this i mean from a from a purely structural standpoint

138it seems like a good time to make the transition if you think the transition is what you want to do but but if you want if you want the people in uh i mean i'm just guessing because i'm in windsor but the people in if you want the people in west windsor to get behind this to at least be okay with it rather than against it you need to you need to show them why there's value in changing this and right now you know the average person doesn't understand that necessarily what the pluses are of having more students with a teacher or more or access to more to more uh to more things they they pretty much only think about well i want my kid close by and i want my kid to have a

139teacher and the small class small single teacher with a small class seems like the best idea but if all you're offering is just that one situation maybe there are other things but in order to in order to have buy-in from people in west windsor you're going to have to do more you you can't you can't do this do this this year bill's right there's not time enough um you know if you want to just do it uh but then we end up with that feeling that people get sometimes whether it's true or not that everything comes down from the top and then we can blame the school board and and make it their fault um but yeah i don't see i don't see any but you've got to also make a concerted effort to start

140figuring out a what we want to do as a board or what the board wants to do um and then and why and then what's the value of it because the reason we were talking about reconfiguring things was not just because uh it was easier it was because there was value in re in reconfiguring things and so we have to get clear on what the value is and then you have to be able to present that value so that people can at least go oh all right well it's not terrible you know if you can get farther than that even better but i don't know if you get everybody you if you can get 75 80 percent of the people to go oh okay that's all right i can deal with that then that's something

141but if you do it right now if you do it this year you're going to get probably 75 80 going you guys are wrong and you're bad and you're making me you're making my life difficult you're ruining my you're ruining my child's education there you go amy here um just bursting in i am with chris and bill i think that doing it right now with any sort of good will that we have had for the last three years that would it would come crashing down every fear that anyone has ever had that some big something is going to be taking over and taking things away that would be kind of feeding into that into that fear so we need to be very careful and i really like the way you phrase that chris that we

142have to communicate the value of making the change and the people who are affected have to agree that that is a value colleen i was just going to say that i know for albert bridge staff there's been a lot of flexibility over the years because it could be a two three classroom one year a three 3-4 classroom the next year and then back to a 2-3 and one of the ways we had planned to think about that similarly here at windsor to plan for bubble years because this year we had the large second grade and we due to covid had the ability to make a great change in staffing so that we could have that third classroom but we planned to hire a primary looping teacher whose role would be to always fill the bubble

143and know ahead of time that the position is a k bubble this year a second grade bubble the next year a third grade level so that was a flexible plan we came up with and i'm just wondering if the flexible plan that we do have some personnel in our su who are hired as su employees or mount scrutiny employees and not just windsor and not just albert bridge employees if that's a place where we think we can gain flexibility too that's a great idea yeah that makes i like that i love it well well the good news is any anybody who's hired right for us is a montescotny school district employee so they and the seniority is accumulated by district we can move people around if we want to move them around so that that's

144a good point colleen we can we can certainly take that you know that into consideration too let me raise another hypothetical what would happen if and again looking at the candidate pool jen says she's got somebody that just came on board i know the last time she and i talked there wasn't there wasn't a ton of candidate out there but what would happen if we could develop the rationale based on the the work we've been doing around middle level and we did put that rationale in some sort of verbal form and we did survey the parents k 2 five and 75 percent thought it was a good idea then what would we do do you mean k six k six yeah well six is going over anyway so i'm just talking about the current k5

145parents i'm saying if you're gonna survey parents you'd survey the parents that are currently in k yeah well next year's k-6 right next year's k-state you would survey next year's k-4 because we're not going to get this done before this year i mean that's just a reality so um and i don't think it's just survey i think it's you would have to um the board and including myself of course would would have to set up meetings and public input and we really would have to vet out what our goal is and some different ideas um to present this i mean i i don't think we're even ready to say oh let's send out a survey about what parents think about a b and c no no we're not even ready to do that yet because

146we don't even know what the possibility is well and then and then exactly yeah then people decide what the possibility is before you even tell them right and it's usually a negative possibility so unfortunately because we don't have anybody we don't have any any vocal at least not that i know of vocal uh advocates in in west windsor to moving everybody over to windsor again chris i missed that i i said we we don't have those we don't know that you don't send out a survey hoping for 75 of them to agree to to agree with what we'd like to do unless you know that you've got at least i don't know 25 or 30 percent who are already thinking in that direction and at this point i wouldn't see i i don't expect that

147there are there may be some people that are okay with the idea in west windsor but there are probably a lot of them who haven't thought about it and the others are probably set up against it so you need to show them that there's some reason first and i so i would again agree with bill you've gotta you gotta prep all that if you just send out a survey all you do is start bad rumors never ask the question unless you know what the answer is yes can i just chime in for a sec because i just want to agree with that but i hear you ew kate had kate had her hand up can you hear me yep okay yeah sorry i just wanted to chime in with that point that chris said because

148i'm getting the vibe that you guys i think or there might be a feeling that this is coming totally out of nowhere based on numbers it's also coming from my and jen and colleen's experience that we do actually get lots of requests to go to one school or the other and we've held tight with saying no unless that it's educationally sound but i think you would be um surprised at the number of fifth and fourth and fifth grade albert bridge students who have a sibling in windsor that we get that request and vice versa we have requests from people in windsor who asked to go to album bridge for the low numbers um and we've actually started we've worked together really hard this year because a lot of those requests have come like mid during

149a school year after like a not a lot last year they came like during the school year when there's been like a bad interaction or something like that something that they didn't feel good about and they won the request but at the beginning of this year we got more requests just basically on the siblings over in windsor and it's just a lot easier for me and that's the experience i want or i want the i want to pour the small class side of albert bridge so we've actually worked on a document we've held tight to our reasons of saying no um because we don't want to be the ones nor is it our responsibility to be the ones to open up that can of worms of moving back and forth until they're set conversations and

150surveys and protocols so i just felt that that should be known yeah you've got we do have an interdistrict policy which is good that's worked for us where we have special consideration for kids and we've and we have had a couple of kids you know we've had kids i'd say probably about two maybe one one from west windsor who came to windsor and one from windsor maybe went to west windsor but what what i think what i think is going to be important for us and maybe the retreat is the time to do it i mean and i know the pandemic got in the way right but we we we had this conversation and by the way even back 18 months ago it was sent at a more around middle level because i think there

151was some strong feelings in windsor and in west windsor about transporting really young children distances and you know and so because i remember that i remember we had a board meeting where we had parents show up from windsor and west winds but i just think we need a maybe we need a process or a protocol i mean again we i i saw an opportunity before we hired a you know an employee to just whether or not we wanted to at least put our fing toe in the water and it sounds like we don't so that's fine um i feel yeah i just feel a little bad as a superintendent that we would hire somebody um and maybe it wouldn't be maybe maybe like colleen said that would be a swing teacher or i mean you

152know if if in fact we're going to have this discussion but we've we've done that before and we can do it again and i i just think we need a protocol or we're going to all be just you know discussing this middle level scenario and opportunity for the older kids both in windsor and in west windsor you know if we don't move on i think we have to move on it at some point and decide whether or not it's it has any value or not and we did have a com we did start the conversation three years ago i i remember that i don't know we called it at that point but i remember we had a committee set up to do that then the pandemic hit and that wasn't that that was that was

153tough uh i think amy has her hand up no okay not anymore okay okay uh kate do you is that a legacy hand for you yeah i feel like the unmute and hand button should be one in the same so that when you unmute your hand goes down on zoom you it is on your uh you just press the space bar yep see send that to google i will um it's got potential okay uh and i can't see everybody on here and so i don't see either nancy or rebecca do nancy or rebecca have any comments or questions about this they're not here okay no i really appreciate it though what kate mentioned um apparently it's a discussion that the principals have had um so um some of the suggestions they are making are are

154um or that are being brought up or not um coming from basically just as a result of of a number issue on the other hand i i think that yeah you do want involvement from the stakeholders um meaning the parents of west windsor that it will affect them okay anything else on this subject matter no okay uh items for action we have uh chris do you want to uh chris has chris has decided that this is going to be his last meeting yeah i've been i i resisted for a while even even uh voicing my opinion but i couldn't get i couldn't help myself after after this long um i looked it up i was just sort of curious but i started in 2008 and the only one that's still that's that was here before

155me was amy and i my hat's off to you my dear that you've been able to see this and you've done so much and i you've been my inspiration for most of it and they're certainly the reason i got on in the first place and uh i i was trying to stick it out as long as you did but i'm sorry i can't i can't do it anymore i i i appreciate the the work that we do and the work that you guys are doing and i also know that i've reached a point where for whatever reasons and i'm not even sure why it completely i just don't have my heart's not hidden anymore and most of the time i look at the clock and go can we get this done um and it's not

156like that's not a crisp criticism of what's going on it's just that yeah i've reached that point and i'm you know i'm reaching that point with a whole lot of stuff but uh so yeah i've i've uh i i came on i stuck out when we thought that i thought i was done in uh back when we had the last vote but uh then amy turned around and changed the rules i know i know you did it um so that i had to stick around for another for another vote but i'm not gonna i'm not gonna wait another till another election so i i thank you all and i continue to appreciate all of all that you're doing so that's it i guess we're certainly going to miss you chris yep you will be nice

157yeah thank you thanks chris and thank you thank you all thank you chris good luck and i will stop in every once in a while if you have a really good a really good juicy subject especially if you put it at the beginning of the meeting i will come around and you know voice my opinion because certainly i have a lot of opinions so uh yeah come for the picnics thanks chris and normally what we do is we we simply get the opening out on the website we get it out on facebook we get it out on on on the list serves um and then you know people express interest to us who may be interested we've also been known to recruit right rebecca we know how to recruit and pull in good people um

158so if you know of anybody that might like to serve that would be great reach we had at least one or two one or two other candidates when when rebecca came on that would have been yeah yeah so uh there are other possibilities i don't know if their situations are still the same but yeah neither one of their situations are the same but uh luckily we got rebecca and we'll we'll find somebody to do oh yeah but thank you so much chris your your uh your voice has been really invaluable thank you well and and i'm and you know as i'm always open if you want an opinion i always have one so you know you can you can call me up or email me but you'll have to be persistent because you know i

159don't read my emails as often as i should so oh i how can you would you please email me your regular email address yeah your personal yeah for sure yeah yeah i'll send it out just to yeah we can keep in touch that'd be good to have it because sure we'll close out the wsesu at some point but it'd be nice right have your personal address so elizabeth because i know it's getting late but do you you know do you want to uh you know work just work with me and laurie and just figure out a way to get this out we'll get it worked out okay um and we have the two other resignations do we need to to uh vote to accept them yeah yeah we should probably uh and then we had

160a request for a leave of absences i think that's on the agenda right yep so i'll take a motion to okay so uh jennifer eldridge are you still here i'm here can you describe the other uh resignations please or when sure so we have um andrew wood is leaving as you mentioned to take a position that for him seems like a really good fit martin butler is retiring and um tony picker menace our librarian is moving on to try things in a different way so i think okay so i'll take a motion to accept with great regret all three of those that's like three quarters of the male staff at albert bridge yeah um with great regret uh i'll take a motion to accept all three of those resignations we're so moved and also thanking

161them for all the work that you know all their contributions to the school community thank you same uh they've all three of them been really really uh great for that school so did we have a second i did second okay okay so all those in favor of accepting the three albert bridge resignation please indicate by saying aye hi hi uh and then we had a leaf of absinthe as well uh maybe the colleena kate do you want to describe that one that's from uh oh sure i can do that um rob johnstone who's a high school ela teacher's wife is going on a two-year trip to dubai i believe and he wants to be able to go visit her he discussed it with us first we thought that a larger chunk of time would be

162you know not half a semester so either a semester a year so he would like to go the second semester of the upcoming school year and um we already have a plan in place to uh cover his leave so we gave him our blessing and i believe david did too i met with him he's been a a good player in our building and i think it would be great great experience they'll bring a lot of those experiences oh yeah he teaches world led so like come on it's like a perfect fit so this will be a perfect opportunity to and and a leave of absence doesn't require any payment any you know he so he knows that all he does is he guarantees himself a job when he comes back and so we think we

163should we we owe him that so so i think the board would just approve rob jones leave that would be a motion so i'll take a motion to approve rob johnstone's leave of absence second and all those in favor of approving rob johnstone's leave of absence is the key by saying aye aye and uh that's it we're at the end um we do we need to set an agenda right now for the uh for the retreat i think it might be good to capture those big ideas that we were talking about right like um strategic you know review of strategic plans setting goals i think you know those would be two reviewer strategic plans uh and recovery plan setting goals uh board structure you know a board meeting structure 21 22 [Music] and then we

164might want to we might want to at least start that not start that conversation but keep that compensation going around you know you know middle level opportunity staffing patterns we might have more information at that point about hires for next year and you know well that would be under goals right that would be under goals exactly so yeah so i think that's good i think that would be enough to get us going all right um all those in favor of ending this meeting yeah we need an adjournment a motion to adjourn i think would be it yeah oh sorry i'll take a motion to adjourn this meeting second and jen colleen and kate just hang out for a minute and katie i can call you in the morning i heard i saw that text i'll

165call you in the morning all right one minute yeah exactly uh thank you for the meeting thank thank you chris