001she could put her camera on if this camera is on okay amy's camera is on and we are now recording so now you may call it to order amy good evening everyone i would like to welcome you all to the regularly scheduled windsor selfie supervised reunion school board meeting i am the chair amy mcmullen our first order of business are there any changes or additions to the agenda i don't have any i have none as well um next i will take a motion to approve the minutes from march 22nd second is there a second second second okay so that was nancy and rebecca no i don't know who who's moved it was elizabeth oh elizabeth okay yeah i just there was an example of not knowing and i recently took minutes for a meeting where
002everyone just kept talking and it was really impossible so when anyone speaks if you could just state your name before you speak so that the person taking our minutes can kind of keep track yeah and a matter of fact i just realized that wendy said did wendy wendy here she had a softball game and said she might be a little late but you know what we're recording so i can send her the re she'll be here but i'll turn to the recording right okay great thank you okay so it was moved and seconded to approve the minutes from march 22nd are there any changes clarifications corrections that you would like to see done hearing none all those in favor of approving the minutes from march 22nd please stay hi opposed abstentions wonderful thank you next
003we have our superintendents report right and i'll i'll i'll try to be up to you um for a couple of reasons one many of you heard some of these uh items at your regular board meetings so i i won't repeat some of the things i would have reported on um are on the agenda tonight so we'll talk about them when we get to them on uh on the agenda um i did want to just give a quick uh shout out to uh the three members of the board who are who are negotiating with the teachers right um bill um and uh scott and uh jackie i don't know if jackie's here or not but um but we are still in the process of negotiations we have another session on wednesday night our goal is to
004try to finish negotiations with teachers certainly before the year ends we'd rather not go into a year without a contract um as we had to do last year mostly because of covid and trying to get the group together but this year there should be no excuses i know that uh bill yates has been working really hard on uh on proposals and counter proposals that are really are really helping us you know we've we've very uh succinctly and practically have you know we've stepped up the game a little bit and i think a lot of that is due to bill's organizational skills his ability to work through spreadsheets uh and to put some proposals on the table so i really uh thank him uh for that there are um a couple of uh legal pieces and
005elizabeth i see elizabeth also represents us on on the legislature and i only have four that i'm going to speak about really quickly uh and then elizabeth if you have anything else that you think we need to know about um uh then let me know i did by the way uh amy just um daniel warts just put a note in the chat did we skip public participation and i don't know did you i i lost track because i was trying to get people signed in and signed on did we do public participation i see people shaking their head no so we might have inadvertently skipped over that so maybe when i finish my report we can go back to public uh participation if that's okay with everybody does that work for you amy i think
006she's frozen amy might have frozen okay she can sign off and sign back on everybody else is okay with that though at this point well you know amy's back here i am um yes i am i apologize profusely for having skipped over that so as soon as david finishes his report we will have public participation right and that will be for items not on the agenda so um uh the pieces of legislation i want to talk about uh first of all we had s 100 the universal meals bill that was going to get i think uh put to more more study but we got good news uh at least we think it's good news that the uh the department of agriculture the u.s department of agriculture has approved universal meals for one more year so
007that means that uh through federal support and state support we will continue feeding all children breakfast and lunch uh through the entire uh 2021-22 school year i think that'll give the state a little more time to work on that universal meals bill i think uh certainly uh it's something that uh we would support but it has to be affordable to local communities as we as we go forward but we found that it's really helped uh this year with the universal meals because number one it does provide more food for kids who who may uh may need that and also it has eliminated the stigma of having to you know self-report that you are at it at an income level that requires uh free and reduced lunch so uh just stay tuned but next year everybody
008uh does uh eat um h is this started as h81 it uh it has passed now uh into law the governor didn't uh sign it this was the health care bill the revisions to the health care bill it mostly related to support staff um and uh and the support staff as i understand uh now uh healthcare will be uh um uh divided down on a sliding scale uh elizabeth did you wanna talk more about that it looked like you had uh whimsical look on your face did sorry i'm not sure what billy you mean david it started it it was called the it was the health it was that it was the revision of the health care bill right that it was the one that removed the superintendent from uh from that statewide negotiations oh
009from the negotiations i'm sorry yeah this was related to health care negotiations yeah sorry about that yes and that's fine and so it so what what health care is now negotiated at the state level and uh and so um there was some concern that some of our support staff who are the least paid in school districts throughout the state uh were having to pay a greater percentage of their salary because they had to live with that negotiated deal so now there's a way to prorate of the benefits and the state will take care of all of that and will tell us how we're going to do it and we don't have to necessarily worry about it um s 114 that's the literacy bill my understanding elizabeth unless you want to correct me my understanding is
010that that's uh that's going to pass in in a rather scaled down form i think there's going to be some money available for for pilot literacy programs um but i think there's also going to be some more study at the agency of education this summer on that did you have anything else to say about that bill elizabeth hold on let me put my pen on ah there you go theme patch here uh okay um the the house committee on education is actually discussing that bill this week um and the other there's a there's also a very miscellaneous very wide uh miscellaneous bill that's supposed to go up this week but the thing that i mean it has all kinds of different fixes but one of them is that it should uh fund act one which
011has been um which is the ethnic studies bill um and they've been waiting to get funding but so they can sort of move that process along at the state level um and that should finally um provide that so right and and while you have your pin on elizabeth the last one that i had was the waiting study and my understanding was and this is around how we weight students for um for the per pupil block grant uh sometimes called the equal equalized pupil uh formula and there was some uh recommended changes to the to the way we were going to figure out those weights and and and my understanding is that that is probably just going to go to a study committee this summer is that your understanding they're not going to tackle that this
012year it's not a study committee it's an implementation committee okay so it's not it's not gonna just vanish it's actually trying to figure out how to and and it had the bill has an amendment which was i believe passed though i need to check that after we move from this i'll check to make sure that that's absolutely true but um the bill had an amendment that asked that um uh that the waiting truly be towards um most needy uh prioritized by neediness and not just by town size okay um and so i believe that amendment passed it was anyway it's supposed to be i think it starts the debate on that starts tomorrow and you're interested you can watch online if you feel like devoting your data that sort of thing yeah and that could
013have a pretty big impact on some of our districts that's why yeah we want we want to pay attention to it and my understanding i talked a little bit to john harrison who's on the education committee and he said that one of the things they're suggesting is that it get rolled out carefully and slowly and that they maybe maybe they look at the poverty weight first and and and see how that impacts and then go to the some of those other weights around rurality and some of the other pieces but uh but again so much of how we figure our uh tax rate is based on how we calculate that equalized pupil so we'll we'll pay attention uh it will be changing and i believe that all of our districts will benefit from this change
014uh yeah that that's the way it looked in the initial in in the initial draft of of the legislation and again the the um the com i don't know task force or whatever it is is an implementation task force it's not going to change anything about the about the law well that's good so it is going to be implemented yeah yeah that's good to know yeah because it does benefit us uh the last thing i want to i just want to uh talk about tonight is and because we've been working hard on this christine's going to help me because i think christine's going to share her screen the administrative team uh and uh and a group of of teachers uh and support staff we've been meeting on a regular basis to look at we call
015ourselves the scheduling slash restructuring task force and we've been working on what next year's schedule could could could look like and we the reason why we've taken so much time is we set the general parameters which i'm going to share with you tonight but then we had to make sure here comes mark youngling then we had to make sure that each school could live within those parameters and could actually schedule the academic time that's recommended in in the outline so uh uh christine do you want to share your screen or are you having trouble sharing your screen you good i'm just going to do this pretty quickly uh yep i'll share it right you have questions they certainly can ask questions um we also looked at the educator quality standards so that we could make
016sure that we had enough instructional minutes in the day we also are assuming that there will be some basic restrictions uh that uh we'll be dealing with um uh next year uh you know we're hoping with vaccinations on schedule that there'll be less restrictions but the general consensus from the agency of education and the vermont department of health is that there will be some level of masking there'll be some level of distancing so again we just want to make sure that whatever we plan we plan it carefully much like we tried to do this year and that we have kids in school as much as they possibly uh can be and at the same time keep them safe and keep teachers safe uh and paying attention to which we'll talk about later to some of
017the recovery efforts that uh that need to go on so do you want to go to that first slide christine so the first thing the committee looked at there's only two slides here so this is not going to take a long time um one of the things we wanted to look at as we as we went about this as a committee is we wanted to look at those things this year that we felt really worked uh and because we you know we entered into this quickly uh we carefully but quickly and what we found was some of the things that we did for covert restriction actually worked well for kids and we saw uh uh the climate and culture in the buildings uh was was was quite positive we saw a tremendous reduction in uh
018in office referrals and discipline referrals we had a very limited number of uh hazing harassment and bullying complaints of this year uh and and and just in general uh and i've been in all of the buildings as carefully as i can be in those buildings it was just a general peaceful atmosphere that really worked for us and uh and kids seemed intentive and and engaged and and and also some of that was due to the class sizes uh because we had some kids that were out in the remote environment but that helped really well so the assumptions we made going into the scheduling is that the things that we wanted to hold on to you can look at them right there fewer transitions having more of family style lunches in the classrooms um we think
019next year we'll want kids to experience the food line and be able to do a little bit more selection especially as they get older but we think they can still bring those lunches back to the rooms and they found that it really built community it really helped them to also make that part of the instructional day in terms of how people you know how they hold themselves during during a meal time and how they treat each other and just some general manners um the other thing that really worked is keeping kids uh uh in partner teams and pods over time so we we we wanted to hold on to some of that teaming work that went that that went on this year uh we did really seem to experience some great success with integration of
020the related arts embedded into classroom activities matter of fact the unified art arts teachers the art teacher the music teacher um you know they they reported to us that uh they really liked getting to know the kids in not just by coming to their classroom once a week but actually being involved in some of those projects in in the actual classroom a little bit more flexibility of how court time is used trying to maintain smaller class sizes in those pods again the staffing with partner teams allowing for additional collaborative practices and times throughout the day this was a big one that next to the last one there the fact that we if if in fact we're going to implement our strategic plan and we're going to call for more uh collaborative based work and integrated
021work place-based work project-based work that needs team planning it needs teachers need to have a have time every day together so that they can do some of that planning within those pods they we did have that this year to a limited degree we want to do it on a on a greater scale uh next year and then in order to do that that last bullet means you have to have some common prep time during the school day to make in order to make uh that happen uh so now if we go on to the next uh slide christine so this is what we're not done with nine through twelve yet but nine through twelve will look i think somewhat similar to this schedule but this is for our k through 8 students essentially arrival will
022be between 7 50 and 8 o'clock we're going to try to have a little bit of a structured arrival just because it seemed to keep kids more calm a little bit safer again we think we're going to be dealing with some of the some of the the covert restrictions next year but students will arrive and then from 7 50 to 8 o'clock and actually probably right into that advisory and morning meeting we'll uh we'll have the students settling in we'll have the school uh we'll have the universal breakfast program that worked really well and again being able to integrate the the advisory activities with uh the the meal with the breakfast meal really uh seems uh to work then what we did is we had basically throughout the throughout the day uh three core blocks
023but the way we want to do those core blocks is we want to team a math and a science teacher together and we want a team or somebody who has a math and science sort of background and we want to team somebody that's got more of a social studies uh and ela background and and during those course one at 8 30 to 10 one from 10 to 11 30 uh and then the then the one right after the lunch resource recess would be from 12 30 uh to two uh that during those course that's where the integrated work would happen that's where the project-based work would happen lunch and recess also would be part of those again kids would be part of those advisories and pods for that piece we also found that we were
024able to in the good weather combine lunch and recess outside rather than inside and that really worked well especially um in the um in the early fall uh it got a little trickier as winter crept up and then from 2 uh to 2 15 would be our our standard delivery and that still leaves time in the teacher day for all of the collaborative work that needs to go on in the afternoon from 2 15 to 3 15. our teacher day basically goes from 7 45 to 3 7 30 actually it goes let's put it this way it goes seven and a half hours by contract is is the teacher work day so in order for teachers to be able to have time uh to do that that shared planning uh to be working on all
025the initiatives that we've got going there we we want to every single day carve out that uh you know that that hour block uh for those uh collaborative practices if we go to the next slide and then i'll take questions at the end if we go to the next slide this might give you an idea and i don't know is angie on row angie if you want to uh work folks through a little bit of what that 2 15 to 3 15 staff time might look like okay sure so um because uh recovery planning as well as implementing our street strategic plan requires us to have access to our staff where they can be available to um to have these important conversations to look at data to learn the skills to use data to improve
026student outcomes um we have we are looking at a weekly to a monthly meeting schedule we have our strategic plan and our recovery plan ouch sorry my cat is attacking me as i take her out of my neck sorry about that people um she the so some meetings will only have to happen once a month but some meetings will happen weekly or bi-weekly some of the meetings will be building based for sure and probably that would be a bulk of the week will be building based but we do need to have opportunities for staff to meet across the supervisory union and great alike teams as well as in vertical teams um to look at language arts literacy um math science social studies instructional practices and so on so this is just an our initial outline
027of what that how that time could be spent we want to be able to show the staff how we're going to get the work done and this is really key for us to be able to map that out for them yeah and i think that collaborative that collaborative work is what schools often times are missing right that time where teachers can get together and actually do the work that we've outlined for them and i think that this uh you know this should work the other piece you should be aware of is that they will be during that that last hour of the day there will be and we just started talking about this within the last week there will be some intervention work there may be some tutoring work that has to go on we
028are we are working with all the partners we had pre-covered uh for after-school type programming you know the rec centers uh bringing back bridging the gap btg i've been meeting with uh with mackenzie who's coordinating that program now and they've made a commitment to start back up in the fall again a lot of this depends on the restrictions and it depends on the covet environment but we're trying to be optimistic in thinking that we will be able to uh use uh you know additional resources to to make this work so essentially and from an instructional standpoint it adds about an hour to our existing day you know we get out now around 1 15 this will get us out somewhere around 2 15 but it also does build into the contracted day with teachers the
029time necessary the creative time necessary to do uh to uh to do the work um so that's it and i'll i'll certainly answer any questions anybody uh has but i know we really wanted to uh certainly uh run it by the supervisory union board tonight but then also uh i know the community really they have to do their planning too they need to know how it works we also expect that more kids will travel by bus next year than drop off but there'll still be a fair amount dropping off we think both in the morning in the afternoon less than we have uh uh today but i think that's uh okay so i don't know if you can see all the hands angie and you might be able to stop sharing now christine i think
030because i think we can unless we need to go back we'll go back if we have to but i see colleen's hand and i see anne-marie's hand hi um i had a couple of questions is the schedule this is a schedule change from this year of course but it's also a scheduled change from our from the schedule we had before this pandemic kind of turned us on our heads are we contemplating a new schedule that will keep going forward or is this in our recovery year a schedule yeah do you know yet no that's a great question colleen and the truth is we don't know definitely yet i mean we'll we i think we're gonna just see how this works in that recovery year and see how it works for you know for students and
031for staff and for uh you know uh the community but we we figured we think it'll be a good transition i mean some school until we got the unified school day which quite frankly we didn't have a unified school day across all four buildings until the last contract was adopted in both the both the both the union both the union and the um both the union and the school boards worked hard to get that unified day so we had some buildings that would start a little later than you could see proposed there and they'd get out a little bit later we had some that started a little earlier and get out now the idea is that we have a unified school day so things were going to have to change anyway a little bit post
032covert and even if we hadn't ever had covert we were going to have to work on this anyway but i think what we did is we took the lessons from covert and then took that unified school day and worked with the union and worked with the teachers and said you know will this work so we we can guarantee that it would be for the full year next year and then i think we'd assess it at the end we'll you know we'd be gathering data around student performance and teacher performance you know community feedback uh some you know some of the continuation of this i think will depend on community programs and after school programs that uh because you know some parents still even when we went till 2 30 or quarter of three uh you
033know we had after school programs where kids would stay till five because because parents use youth school sometimes also as a as a bit of a child care situation so we want to i i'm more interested in getting back to that and building up uh i forget anne marie helped me out at withersfield i think it was called it wasn't called bridging the gap but what was the after school program called at weathersfield uh you put me on the spot i forget now too it's been a long time um yeah i can't remember the name of it either okay but but maybe we have a wethersfield person that'll remember that but but i know we've you know we uh pivot pause yeah thank you laura and i'm sure that's an acronym for something or oh
034yeah maybe it's not but but yeah but we understand that you know one of our goals will be as the year progresses to just keep building those those also those after school programs because i know those those are important for folks some people have good child care and they can work it out and they don't have the problem but we'll we'll we'll keep a close eye uh on that and actually when i said colleen the first time i i meant colleen duchamp but i'm glad you spoke up colleen but i had colleen deschamps hand i saw and amy i don't know can you see everybody i can see hands when they're raised and colleen spence followed by anne marie i have not seen colleen deschamps hand raised i didn't raise it okay you you did
035not colleen okay she did not all right that must have been colleen spence then all right so anne-marie i do see your hand though um yeah i just was wondering um how do the middle school students fit into this um because you have three classes here and middle school has the four classes that they go around too and that's just part one that's more no that that's a good question and and we're going to try to do the same thing with the middle school and and the middle school teachers in all the buildings including at withersfield said that they can they can they can put teachers back-to-back math science and social studies english so they'll be those cores throughout the day at the middle level that where for example you could break a core into
036two you know two 40-minute periods if you wanted to or math science could do a combined project or unit that would work during that during that core block so so the schedule you saw tonight also works for uh the middle school okay um and like what about um like band practice and stuff like that would that have to come out of the core time as well no no we're we're hoping not i mean we a matter of fact uh and i don't know if zach shambo is on or not but he was one of the ones that took a lead on this and i don't know christine if you want to help me but the idea is that there may be some instrumental lessons as always that come out of but but we're going to
037try to find those periods of time when we can do the ensemble work without having to interfere with uh with the academic uh portion of the day if anybody wants to add to that feel free because i know we talked a lot about that i can add what some of the thinking was which is what we call wind time what i need time would be an ideal time for kids to be pulled out as opposed to having to choose between something like ensemble and recess or ensemble at lunch which is often what happens in schools where the music programs tend to crash and burn so as zach was thinking about in weathersfield they would do it opposite wind time i don't see that on the list here though of times it's it's not on that
038general schedule annemarie it's i'm sorry this is christine it's um it's embedded in the local schedules which all look just a little bit different yeah and we did talk about um i don't know if you noticed on the on the collaborative practices schedule that was the last slide i mean we had a we haven't flushed it out but we did have a creative time on friday afternoons and we we have discussed maybe maybe across the su you know there's a time where kids can get together to play which is pretty exciting i think so definitely uh work in progress in that area yeah but but it would but the idea other than again with instrumental lessons it's hard to completely avoid academic times but we're thinking the ensemble work we can we can i wish
039zach were on tonight but i didn't ask him to be here but he had an idea in weathersfield where he could avoid academic time uh to make it work and also along the lines of what christine just said in marie we each of the buildings spent a fair amount of time getting a detailed schedule for the local building and we thought about showing those tonight but it it just didn't seem right i think what we'll do next month is we'll we'll show those local schedules that have more of the things like christine just talked about the wind time the you know the the actual uh core time spelled out and a little bit more uh detail because each building went back and did that okay um and what are other districts doing like i mean
040it seems like since we're shortening our day i just don't know if um you know parents are going to feel like they're really getting their taxpayer dollars yeah no better than everybody else's yeah i know i i think it's a legitimate question i'm not sure what other districts are doing or how how how ahead of the game they they really are at this point but i think that i think that uh you know we uh you know we we are just going to have to be you know sensitive to what what's going to work what's going to work for us what's going to work for our kids and our staff and our in our communities i have not heard of any major models yet i know that for us one of the things and why
041it didn't have to change dramatically is because we already other than the kids who are remote we already had kids in five days a week right you've still got some districts where right we've talked about this before where you've got uh you know some kids in on monday and tuesday then nobody's in on wednesday then the different groups in on thursday and friday i think they're going to be struggling to get back to five days whether they go with a little bit more of a shortened day or not i i i don't know you know by adding that 15 minutes on at the beginning and going all the way to dismissal by the time they dismiss it's 2 15 it you know for the teachers it doesn't it's not going to shorten it at all
042because the work is still there to do but for the kids i mean you know you know most of our schools even under the old system dismiss somewhere between 2 30 and 2 45 um you know that was there was a you know it varied like i said because we didn't have the unified day yeah i think it to me i guess the difference would be um i think the kids usually at weathersfield were at school by like 7 before and uh and then they were out like you said around 2 45 i think so it's not that much shorter but um it's a little bit shorter on both ends i think well here's here's what used to happen right and i can take weathersfield as an example but in all of our buildings you
043know the day would quote unquote start at 7 30 and then we had to be careful around once covet hit around that but but a lot of times kids would not go right to their classrooms at 7 30. that what would happen is they'd be in this multi-purpose room you know driving themselves crazy and driving the staff crazy i mean the the difference here is that when the students arrive they go right to the classrooms and and whether it's advisory instruction or or you know because by the way advisory is not like just let's hang out and let's play games advisory is a specific it's it's it's it's it's directed and and those teachers have a curriculum an advisory curriculum and that works itself out over the course of the time so i think if
044you looked at our schedules in the past and you factored in things like that the transition times going between periods i know in some schools it was upwards to three or four minutes changing classes and getting a kid from point a to point b we're really going to reduce that next year and and i think that if you added up the time in schools that kids were actually in front of a teacher for instruction i think next year you'd see more than what we had even pre pre-covered because of all of those transitions that that's just my personal opinion i don't know if the any of the principals want to speak to that but that we talked a lot about that did you have more anne marie um no i think that's all for now
045yeah okay um so scott and then rebecca and then jamie thank you amy can you hear me okay if i just speak like this yeah that's perfect okay thank you so i want to go back to the beginning of um david's presentation and quickly um uh point out something that kind of makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck but and that is uh in regards to the universal meals this is um david repeated an assertion that i've heard in the statewide media several times and that is from both the principal and the superintendents association the concern that universal meals is great but we have to be careful of our budgets and that is um it's a kind of a seesaw assertion that you add universal meals on one side and the
046budget goes up on the other side um but of course that is bunk because it fails to understand and speak to all of vermonters that students are vermonters parents of students or vermonters caregivers are vermonters and so we're all in this together and that assertion from these two statewide professional groups of school administrators is is a real problem i think and it's it's really kicking ourselves in the foot and it's the moving the financing of meals for food programs from children coming to school with money from parents or from their allowance and moving that to a community wide contribution builds the kind of sustainability into food systems is ex that is exactly what we need and what other school districts need to be able to you know you know um make quality systems go year
047after year the equipment we need the employees that we need the quality food that we need you can't base that on on the ups and downs of and the fashion that you know that blows through this society that makes people choose food programs or not and whether they're gonna be in the system this week or not and send their money to school or not if it's not sustainable and so where we've school directors find themselves in in moments like this all the time where they feel like where they're faced with a donation you might say and should should we take that donation or should we should we build a sustainable program a lot well obviously cash from home is not a donation but but i'm all for the sustainable financing of food programs and i
048so i don't like it when i don't mean to point at you so much david i know you're reporting from the superintendent's association but that's just i gotta stand up in defense of the parents and caregivers and students in our system that you know they're all vermonters and we're and and we're taxpayers too and i don't have kids in school now but those parents are they're sending cash to school and paying their property tax into the statewide education fund so we just need to continue to make this fair and spread the costs across the whole state and i think it's it frankly is just so political it just plays to the aging demographic of vermont to talk over and over and over again about you know the concern of the school for the school budget
049and i just thank you no scott and i think i think to just make a comment based on your comment i think that that's what the legislature legislative legislators grappled with this year when they looked at that universal bill and that is what is the most fair and equitable equitable way to do it i mean i think what we saw this year was if you get the reimbursement rate right because remember we're operating under the summer reimbursement rate which is higher than what happens during the school year if you get that reimbursement rate right and you serve lunch to enough kids from from a universal perspective then you may not have to subsidize the lunch program anymore i mean there were times when heartland or windsor you know had to kick in 40 50 60
050000 to subsidize the lunch program anyway this year the way it's operating now at least the the early you know the early financials are showing that we may not have to subsidize at all and that's because more kids are eating the quality of food is getting better and i think we've got the reimbursement rates right so i agree scott i think if we can work this out now we've got one more year uh no pressure on elizabeth but for the legislature to figure this out and see if if there's a way to do this and spread that burden across you know all the taxpayers in the state of vermont i think they're actually they passed a bill about it um from the senate to the house i was just looking to see whether i think
051they're taking it up in the i know that the house education committee is is looking at that bill right now yeah uh i don't know if they're i can't remember whether they're taking testimony on it this week but scott i would urge you to uh consider testifying on that because that's a very powerful argument seriously agreed who was next was rebecca next rebecca is not can you hear me i can hear you rebecca um david can you just clarify uh for the public that when you when you say buildings you're not talking about only windsor schools that um this board really encompasses several communities some people may not realize that um here in in town yeah good good clarification yeah tonight we're at the supervisor reunion board meeting you know for those of you who
052may not have known exactly what meeting you stumbled into tonight and the supervisor reunion board you know represents all three districts weathersfield school district um heartland school district and uh the school district and what we're finding which is why this meeting is becoming more and more important and attendance is really good i think we've got just about every board member here tonight and a lot of community members on because what the state has done slowly over the last couple of years they've moved a lot of programs and practices and initiatives to the supervisory union level so everything from you know universal lunch to transportation to special education uh to curriculum and instruction it's all um it's all part of of of what we all have to do together and and so uh we are representing
053all three districts tonight good good good point rebecca jamie i know you briefly touched on the after school programs and i can't speak to any of the other schools because i'm not completely familiar with theirs but for weathersfield we have paws and that was pretty much staffed with staff so has that been taken into consideration now that you have dismissal and then you have an hour that staff is going to be preoccupied yeah that that that's part of that jamie that's a great question that's part of what we're working on right now is what you know what part of the staff uh if we were to you know if we were to you know reinvent that program what could that look like because not all staff members because remember also we have support staff members
054too who could who can be involved in those after-school programs it doesn't just have to be instructional teachers and licensed teachers so it's really just kind of looking over the over the whole of the staff and seeing what what what could be there and how often they would you know they would need to be there so that's a work in progress to be honest with you jamie and and we don't we don't have it you know completely locked down and it might be something that kind of evolves over time as we as we open up uh next year because again part of it like anne marie said is going to be looking at the general state restrictions looking at you know what other programs can do whether or not we can have volunteers in the
055building or not that was one of the things that really slowed us down because some of some of the folks like the fall winds program and stuff that was all volunteer driven but but stay tuned because what the point i wanted to make tonight is we understand that uh a lot of our communities in weathersfield weathersfield's not the only one depend on some form of after-school care and uh and and it's my understanding that some of the esser monies are going to be able to be devoted to after-school programming and whether or not it has to be the exact same staff in the future or not i think we can work on that but it's a good point thank you rebecca did you have your hand raised again okay i think in the um looking
056at time and where we are in the agenda i think we need to be moving on unless david you had more in your no and i just want to thank that team that worked on that because i'll tell you it was hours and hours of of work scheduling's not easy in a in a in a normal year but it was it was really helpful and especially shout out to angie and christine born who really helped with this a lot as we moved forward no that's it for me and remember we're going to go back right amy to publication so thank you david um we will now go back to public participation and this is primarily for items not related to the agenda if people can raise their hand and i will call on you okay
057seeing none um we will move on to our items for discussion and the first is the anti-racism task force right um in the anti-racism task force uh and and i'll take this because nikki buck and i talked a little bit earlier today she uh she dealt with the external uh beginnings of this of this task force because part of what the task force was supposed to do early on was to get a draft anti-racism policy that we're gonna deal with under section d tonight so we won't necessarily talk about that with with respect to until we get to that section but um there is once we got done with that external work in the board work uh we then had a group of probably i think there's probably 30 people quite frankly who expressed interest
058early in the year then covet hit a matter of fact even last the last spring uh had had said that they would like to be a part of um once a policy is written figuring out ways that we could uh implement that policy you know in a very uh organized and and structured way certainly in a in a in a careful way because when you talk about these uh subjects um you know they can there's a lot of different opinions and a lot of thoughts out there so that task force really didn't meet much all year because we were doing the policy work and they checked we checked in with them a couple of times throughout the year but i will tell you that they were eager to start the work and they did start
059the work on on friday night uh and uh we had a meeting from 4 30 to 6 30. i will tell you it was almost perfect attendance i think at one point we had upwards to 30 people at that meeting um and uh we had an outside facilitator working with us because again this is very delicate work uh it can it can um it's very fragile work because you don't want to offend anybody you don't you know you want to make sure that everybody is understanding uh the common language and the purpose and what we're trying to accomplish so uh the board authorized the expenditure uh out of uh out of um our professional development monies of of up to ten thousand dollars to find a consultant and we did find a consultant uh dr
060melissa crum who works for the mosaic educator network uh she was a facilitator on friday and i don't know if anybody who was at that meeting want to make comments but i thought she did a great job because what she did with all of us is she really slowed us down she really wanted us to take a breath and to really decide what all of us remember these are people that are passionate about the ones who originally are or who are now on this task force you know they're passionate about equity and they're passionate about um making sure that everybody you know feels safe within an organization and what she said is when you start using words like racism and racist you know you have to be really careful and uh and she's an african-american
061woman and she really pulled us back and had us go back to you know definitions and purposes and again it was the initial meeting but i thought she did an excellent job of facilitating we did some small group work and some breakout work uh throughout the course of the meeting it was only two hours because it was a it was a friday from 4 30 to 6 30 but i thought it was interesting that even on a friday night you know you had that many staff members and that many community members willing to come together and and talk about how we are ultimately going to roll this out to the entire community because that's going to be that's going to be the role of this internal task force is figuring that piece out so they're
062off and running i thought they did a i thought it was a good meeting if anybody else won wanted to make a comment about what happened friday night feel free uh but i i i think it uh it it certainly i think melissa is the right one to guide at least this stage of the work right now and then we can we can get on to the next phase did anybody else have a comment i thought she did a great job i really liked her work this is colleen spence um and maybe we'll talk about it a little more at the policy part um she's challenging us on some of the words that we have in our policy so i wonder if we're going to go back and you know make any significant changes to
063our policy document as a part of our workshop as a part of the workshop work and that's not a question as much as i'm wondering you know kind of i think it's a good point i i'm not i would not be surprised if we if that doesn't happen i also appreciated the way she challenged us looked at our policy and redirected the questions to us in small groups to discuss and what she really made clear to me was that we are representing everyone in our community when we use this language so she's making sure we're very clear that everyone is included and what does the word inclusive mean so i thought it was a great start rebecca did you have your hand raised sorry about that i was fooling around with the hand gesture um
064i thought um dr crum did a uh a very good job of um helping us understand the language in our policy um it's it's not language that we are used to um used to we're not having these conversations they're they're um they they are a lot of the languages is new to many of us um and i thought she did a good job of asking us to examine these words um and understand exactly what they mean she and she gave a great analogy by um speaking to um an athlete and or once someone begins to do physical activity and they're not used to it and at the beginning it hurts because they're just not used to it and um i i think that um she left us also with the reminder that uh these words
065need to be put into action that they need to be role modeled and that that we need to live them so um it looks like the beginning of a um of a journey um and so i thought i was also impressed with where she took us friday evening colleen did you call colleen de champ did you want to speak again i think she put her hand hey um i see elizabeth yeah i see elizabeth but i'm going to jump in just really quick because i have yeah and then it's you elizabeth um what i really appreciated and i'm still thinking about was when we were talking about the difference between a safe space and a brave space and when we were talking about to just get very clear in our minds what we think the
066the difference between tolerance and inclusion and what it is that we want our community to stand for that it was just such a powerful conversation with everyone and the small groups we were there there was just some amazing conversation so go elizabeth yeah i was just going to say that um just to add to all that um that she really seemed to like she seemed to help us create uh common definitions and common ground like the we hear the use i hear the phrase safe space thrown around a lot without an agreement on on uh what it really means and so we sort of talked through that which i think was also really helpful yeah um she also gave us a fair amount of homework which we're going to be working on over the next
067couple of weeks we meet again in may but but to colleen spencer's point uh you know and i think we can discuss this when we get to the policy because colleen i i had that same thought the way she's trying to help us unpack that policy again we want to go slowly we want to be careful with it i don't know what the implications of her work with us have on the actual you know words we're using in that policy whether we want to slow that down a little bit you know tonight and we can talk about that later but i had the exact same thought colleen as she unpacked that policy a little more clearly and i think it's always interesting uh you know her perspective as an african-american and also you know try
068trying to you know just be careful that while we're trying to acknowledge you know that level of of of brave and safe spaces for all that we aren't also you know she said this a couple of times alienating another group that doesn't come to the table with you know with the same perspective of the same set of values so again i don't know what that means for the policy development but i know it was uh it was a it was a great um eye-opener for me on friday night okay thank you um i think that is since we're going to be moving very quickly into the policies uh we have financials with ed i think i saw ed's name somewhere here that you are in our meeting ed is here and last night he sent
069out the financials ed's going to share his screen and kind of just go over this with us um [Music] ed are you on mute or can can you we can't hear you so uh yeah yeah last night i sent out uh i think it was uh three or four pages long summary of the uh financials for the end of the third quarter which was march 31st what i have up right now is the first page which is a summary of all the different funds uh excuse me yeah the different funds so just to be clear when i'm talking about this this all encompasses the general fund and in the general fund when you're talking in terms of assessments what what powers the general fund is the central office and special ed and those are the
070two assessments that are dedicated to that as you can see from this the central office is right about at break even and special education is uh running about uh 386 thousand dollars into the red and then over here is another fund and that's the early childhood fund and the early childhood fund is running about 39 000 in the red the early childhoods program is running in the red primarily because we budgeted for uh we're getting more preschool kids taking advantage of the tuition that state has mandated we spend on early childhood kids so we budgeted uh i believe we budgeted about 330 000 and we're we're running about 43 000 over right now now those uh we've seen we've noticed or i've noticed as we've gone through the year they tend to go up and
071down so that number includes the what we expect to spend over the next um three months and uh what these programs do is they bill monthly and we've had a lot of kids coming and going so that's that could go down as the year progresses because some of it is encumbrance or what we anticipate spending in the next three months um special education is down significantly i mean is running a significant deficit um again it's we've got three months left uh i'm going to the summary a couple things i want to point out is i'm being pretty conservative here and by that i mean these are the two main reimbursements that we get from the state for special education the special ed uh reimbursement intensive is every dollar that we spend every eligible dollar that
072we spend in um special education we get a 56 and a half cents um reimbursement so for every dollar we get 56 and a half cents roughly it runs between there's decimal points but that's about what we get and then this extra right here is the money that we get for students that run at an expense of over sixty thousand dollars for every dollar spent over sixty thousand we get um a dollar for dollar reimbursement so as you can see well i'm showing that we're going to be spending uh we're going to be getting 523 000 less than what we had um budgeted uh i think what we're seeing if you look down here you're starting to see some of what what's happening here is that this service plan was written by karen and implemented
073is being implemented by kate and there's two distinct philosophies from what i can see and this is just my take on this so uh karen's philosophy was more of a we will tuition out students we will use uh out of district placements as a significant part of the budget that's why you're seeing up here in her budget she budgeted enough that when the state came back with their estimate based on her service plan they said that based on the service plan you're going to get 747 000 well you can see right now we got 169 and that reflects uh hates katie's um emphasis on building internal structure so that we don't have to get kids out um in addition to that uh we've had some kids that didn't need to be that that moved on
074or didn't were no longer students in our district so if you look into here you're seeing a bunch of changes to what when i highlight this role these are the the positives that means we've spent we're in the black for 804 000 and we're in the red for some of the other stuff uh don't know whether i can explain this as well as katie so i'm gonna turn it over to her at this point if she's she's on because i think that this is a little bit more nuanced than i'm sure clearly showing you a financial comparison um what what this is telling me is that there's more to it than what i can tell you so is uh katie on yes she is i'm here ed okay okay so just to to go back
075to what ed was talking about about out of district students we've been hit it's like the triple whammy this year um as ed mentioned we have fewer students who are outplaced we had several students who were at high cost placements who because of kovid decided to graduate early instead of staying up to their 22nd birthday for example we had a couple of those situations we also have had a lot of students who are functioning remotely so we're not hitting the 60k mark because between their tuition and the non-existent transportation they're not getting there so that combined with we really haven't outplaced anybody this year it's been very very low as compared to other years and of course karen wouldn't have known any of that when she wrote her service plan in october of 2019 because
076i guess that's just so to be clear does those service plans are written almost you know in october of the previous year so um as far as what we're doing in our in the spreadsheet that ed showed how special education is looking right now what's in the red versus what's in the black um at the very beginning of the year you may remember that i talked about how um hcr sbis which used to be in a line under special education um were now going to be in-house so that would be taken out of a different line but when all of those positions were encumbered to our budget they were actually encumbered to the psychological services line so that's why that line looks way overspent when and what we need to be able to do is
077move the there's a line under special education which is almost dollar for dollar it's 461 thousand yeah 461 000 um instead of that overage so there's some not that line sorry what i have to do on my orange sheets in my hands um it was it's come that line actually has in the black 483 thousand hundred thousand dollars we have so that big giant number is attributed elsewhere so um and the other aspects you know speech therapy is a little bit over and other things are a lot under so we've been trying to keep to the budget but as we didn't anticipate especially the reimbursements being so low right now i anticipate that would go up um the other thing that we both betsy and i have noticed as betsy and i are the first
078line of getting our bills that we then send over is some things are trickling in later than normal um tuition bills as well as transportation um so i anticipate that you know we'll probably be pretty close to the end of the year before we have a full number of what students will go over that 60. um but i that's in a nutshell learning from this year making sure that we have things staffing in the right lines it articulated pretty well um our service plan went up last year from this year about two percent and the state will allocate based on that with our lower numbers so they'll give us a better idea i hope a better guesstimate um because i do think some of it is a guesstimate of what our reimbursement will be um
079heading into next year um but they're i we're not the only ones i think that it's it's been a guessing game and how this is how covet hits special ed and that particularly in that area yeah everything else we tried really hard to stay within our budget yeah and i'd like to pick up on what you just said katie because i think that's i mean obviously you don't have to look at this for long to see that this is not well it's not an expenditure problem if you move a few of those lines around it's really a revenue problem right and and to add to ed's credit because we ask ed to do this be conservative on those revenues my point katie is i wonder if at some point it may not happen but do
080you think because of covid and the fact that you know we've got kids that we're in placements that are now home and we're not using transportation for a lot of these kids i mean do you think there's a chance that uh you know that those revenue receivables will come in a little higher or maybe not i mean i know that's a guess so maybe it's not even worth guessing but but obviously we've got a we've got a shortage on revenue of um you know over over a million dollars right i think we we are now seeing almost all of our placements are in person and more students have gone back so transportation will increase um but at this we do still have students who are taking um all of their coursework remotely and so um
081i don't know i i think that that's a it was it's definitely an unknown variable um i'm not comfortable making too much of a guess and i think that's right being conservative and being happily surprised at the end would be really nice um but um i we've seen more costs and transportation go up that's for certain but we're not seeing an increase in students outplaced um in fact we're seeing a little bit of a decrease in that okay now that's helpful you know we still have legacy we've got three months to go so having said all of that and having discussed this the various areas are there any specific questions that people have about the the financials at this point i think we're good yeah i'm not seeing any hands raised thank you thank you
082thanks ed stay tuned thank you ed thank you yeah summer programming right yes we do yeah summer programming and we're going to put i think we'll put katie back on the spot again katie's been working really hard with a with uh with a couple of uh summer uh summer programming coordinators uh on trying to put our recovery program together for the summer i mean first of all our data you know and and katie can speak to this too maybe but our data and maybe it's because we were in five days a week i mean we are a little concerned about those kids who were remote but our data showed that our kids you know didn't lose as much as you know we thought they might lose but the bottom line is they have lost some
083and we do have to target some of those kids that need that uh that extra help this uh this summer so katie do you want to just give a quick update on where we are with summer programming yep um so um patty pomelo jenny duranso angie and myself have been meeting almost every week uh to plan the summer program we had our first wave of letters go out to parents and we're now in the process of making sure we have it all aligned with contacting parents on students who are on ieps so this could also count as extended school year we anticipate between 80 to 100 students um that we got a a a slow first response and now it seems to be warming up a bit um and that's for our morning academic program
084we're also just being aware and cautious of staffing levels too um so that we can match and keep our low numbers the idea was that ten students with two teachers um and keeping with that so that's moving along lots of letters coming out if you hear of anybody say you know we're in process it's was a pretty big test to undertake right now the afternoon programming we now have three options and they're all limited capacity that's something that um i explained um that we want to be really clear about the rec departments will have their cap of what they of student numbers that they can have both at the heartland record the windsor just because of numbers and they're still waiting their covered restrictions of what they can do for summer programming hcrs will be
085offering services for students in the afternoon as well small groups for clients of theirs so that will be another option for students and the btg program which is the after school program at windsor is also looking to have an afternoon program that our students can participate in and that's in the works so we're planning on partnering with all three of those to give students the options that they might want or not want um so that's where we are hopefully by the end of next week we will have everything solidified hcrs as a go the rec departments go it's some of the nuances that we're still working out so i think that that's the latest and greatest that we have um i uh busing is but i know there's busing in the morning is there busing
086in the eve afternoon for all three programs the busing will go um in the morning and then from the after the academic program parents will need to pick up their children for whatever programs they decide they're doing in the afternoon so because they'll all have different end times so the wreck department btg and hcrs parents will need to pick up and i think the earliest end time is three and then you know there may be later end times depending on what program um students are in but we will if they if the child's not going to do anything for the afternoon they're going to go home we provide busing back at 11 30 to be back at their home school by 12. um so parents can pick up midday thank you you're welcome anne-marie um
087so the busing is just from the home school to windsor it's not you won't be picking up kids at their homes or on the bus routes we are the the um logistics because of so few students in so big of an area to cover we decided that having students get to their home schools was about logistically what we could do um given the um and dr baker you're the one who talked to the bus company but um just for the sheer volume of buses bus cost and everything else it just didn't it didn't make sense um to be able to do that how does this compare to the previous year's weathersfield summer program like is this covering all the same types of students or some kids not being covered now um we the first cutoff
088was the bottom 30 of students scoring on the tmp um and that was similar to if not exceeded school programs that were kids who were identified before and we're going to make a next pass on this april's tmp scores and open it up to as many as we can so i would say yes we've we've met or exceeded the students that we've identified before any other questions katie do you have an estimate of the total number of students we'll serve or maybe you said that and i missed it um right now we're looking at i think going last numbers we're about 65 we're still getting the the rolling of students identified through um yes through their special ed programs so conservatively 80 um and we had thought we could handle upwards of a hundred i'm
089not sure due to staffing if we can get that high we're working on putting those pieces of the jigsaw puzzle together it takes a lot of spreadsheets um so conservatively 80 if we can serve up to 100 we'll open it up that far yeah and keep in mind the summer programming also includes uh the the food program right there'll be the summer food program uh which again because of the the the need to identify a centralized location that allows us to serve you know all kids uh that'll be based also in the in the bigger kitchen at windsor and it'll cut down on transportation i know that last year i think they used to have to go and get the lunches from from heartland and wethersfield but all those kids will eat before they go
090back to their afternoon programs or home so david i have a question on that um so kids who are not participating in the summer school but are participating in the individual town rec programs let's say heartland kids for instance the lunches will not be coming out to them no we'll still service because we're going to be in that summer meals program mode again we'll still even if a student doesn't come to the summer program they can still have access to the summer meals and there'll be a a system for some of that delivery that that that that craig and heather are working on and rodney uh so no everybody everybody that qualifies should be again it'll be centrally you know you we can't do the door-to-door right yeah but there will be central locations in
091all three towns where lunches can be picked up okay yeah that thanks for that clarification does anyone else have questions on the summer program i think it's amazing what is being planned i it's really exciting so thank you katie and um angie and who else several other people patty and jenny patty jenny duranson yeah so thank you for all that work it's fun we're looking forward to having fun this summer with everyone thank you and well thank you for putting together a program that isn't the uh i have to go to summer school it it sounds more like yay i get to go to summer school so that's and i think that's how it should be it's because learning is fun and include include all the libraries [Laughter] um next up we are into the
092policy section and it says first read or second reading but i believe at least for the anti-racism policy that it is we're considering this our first reading yeah i think we were going to do those for maybe all three consider it first reading yeah okay so let's begin with the anti-racism policy you know and i think before we start the general discussion uh i know that every you know we certainly have have published that publicly now people have gotten a chance to see it i wonder if given the expertise as colleen said and and elizabeth alluded to the the workshop work and the and the work that we're doing with with dr crum uh whether or not we want to have a general discussion about um do we just stay on course do we slow
093this down a little bit what do people think about that um i this is amy i do not believe that slowing down is in our best interest i do not believe it's in our community's interest i think we have had this conversation long enough that now we need action if we are going to um to have the community that we want and what this anti-racism policy will allow will allow us to do i think slowing down would be saying okay we're too afraid i i think we need to acknowledge and just be strong as we move forward colleen spence i agree with you my expectation is that we'll want to make some changes to some of the wording and the policy based on the conversations that we're going to have going forward with dr crum
094but that what what she's going to do is help us get it right so i don't i don't think they're going to be word changes that um huge right let's slow things down i think it'll be i think there'll be the right word changes so i think we can move forward with the expectation that we have a final reading when we get past all of the work that we do the bit what's it three more weeks thank you colleen rebecca um david i i'm not sure um if everyone has had a chance to read i know that the board has had a chance to read it i don't believe um i don't know if the public may have had an opportunity to read it yeah i i know that i sent it out with my
095weekend update so i know that all of the parents have gotten a chance who wanted to look at it and i think i i don't know but i think also i think it's on the website but maybe we haven't made that clear enough or announced that clearly enough that that that's where it is um and i could i could ask it you know we could figure out other ways to get it you know more globally published um i just wanted to say something first and then elizabeth um i think it it's good for our community to see it but we also have to remember that it is the supervisory union board that will be approving it um elizabeth thanks amy um i think that just kind of weighing in on the the uh potential of
096changing or changing the time frame of of uh implementing it i think that uh the whole point of having the like however many months long discussion that we had preceding friday was to make sure that we had the policy that we were comfortable with bringing to the board uh which we did and to make sure that and that and the hiring of um melissa was to uh have her help us implement the policy that we gave her not have her critique the policy or um uh so i'm a little bit confused about why we would um go back and re-hammer the policy i mean outside of the of course we would have a discussion about it on the su board and and um you know it's obviously not set in stone but for the su
097board but but uh i i feel like david you're advocating for people outside of the su board to weigh in on it when that's really not uh that was not my understanding at all yeah no no i i mean maybe i'm not being clear in what i'm saying i mean the you know the public certainly can attend meetings and and and weigh in on any item that's on on the agenda so i don't think i i don't think that's what you're talking about but i wasn't i wasn't i wasn't um uh i wasn't trying to say that you know we need a whole lot more input on this i was just saying that given the i was so i was sort of reiterating what colleen spence had said earlier and i don't want to put
098words in your mouth colleen that we are breaking we are unpacking this policy to a point where i think we're understanding some of the words in the policy better than we might have before we started that process and maybe that's all that needs to i mean i i've read the policy two times again today i mean i don't based on what dr crum did with us on friday i i don't i'm not advocating in any way shape or form that that anything changed dramatically i mean the supervisor in your board will make the decision about adopting this policy uh i just want to make sure that you know the definitions that we've had you know may at some point you know may need to be revisited at some point but i'm i'm not suggesting that
099right away i just i'm gonna say just a little bit here colleen spence and then um to elizabeth's point i interpreted the conversation that we had with melissa on friday that she wants to help us in communicating this policy so she wants to make sure that we understand and have a community use or understanding of the use of the language that is in the policy so that we're all talking as one as opposed to saying well i thought this is what this meant and it just so that we're all in agreement of how we're going to move forward yeah now colleen and i think i pretty much pretty much agree with you although um the conversation that we had around safe and brave makes me wonder if we want to revisit the way we've used
100the word safe in the document some so we could i don't know where where it fits to talk about that if you want to i don't know discuss it offline or dive in now or and i don't you know in general i think that the wording is the i i agree that she is helping us understand the document as it is am i the only one that took it that way well the conversation that we had on a safe space versus a brave space was probably the most um i wouldn't say murky but it was probably the most challenging part of our conversation because brave means at least in our conversation is that yes it is going to be painful for some people to hear and [Music] but it's still going to be a supportive
101that you know supporting people through that pain i could be wrong in that interpretation it's been a couple of days since we had the conversation [Music] so i am going to turn my mic off um and hand it over to mark and then chris um i guess i just have one suggestion and as far as the anti-racism task force goes did anybody else have any issues with wording with a policy other than that one line referring to safe versus brave and if there are no other objections i say we keep moving forward uh on whatever it is we have to do and then simply tweak that one line uh if we all feel it's necessary um i i don't see this the wording of that one line being enough to stop us my understanding was
102that she was going to help us roll this out and question i mean i i didn't feel that she was questioning the wording i really felt that she just wanted us to make sure we were all on the same page so that's my suggestion thank you thank you and brave spaces is one of the definitions so um it was in the definitions yeah brave spaces um chris if you can unmute yourself as as someone who wasn't at that uh meeting and given the structure of first reading this is the time to discuss this i think um and it it doesn't stop anything all at this is the perfect time to say oh we need to change this word or that word that's what a first reading is about or or that's part of the process
103we look at it we say okay i want to change these little these these uh editorial things and then there's a second reading and then we vote and we you know and we approve it but so this is i i i don't think we're slowing down if we're having this discussion of reading of the of those of those words and if that's the only words that are coming up that's the that's the purpose of the first reading in my mind and i would like to know what those death you know i need to hear more discussion of it because i wasn't in that in that conversation i'll just say that i i think maybe it struck me um uh strongly in the in the workshop that we can't guarantee that someone won't be hurt in
104a conversation that arises around racism in the classroom that if there's someone who is touched deeply by the conversation or someone that says something that's hurtful then we as much as we can have control over it we don't have a hundred percent control over it and i i like acknowledging that i mean i don't know i think i think it's a word worth considering being not being mushy about um you you can't promise that someone's not going to be hurt in in conversations that we take on about racism exactly and that's where the brave space comes yes that we need to acknowledge that there um there probably will be hurt and then to acknowledge that hurt and not discount it in any way because all of our experiences are different are how we um uh
105not interpret but how we um the lens through which we we live our lives is different based on our experiences and if i am hurt by something and someone says ah they didn't mean anything that hurts me more so in a brave space we acknowledge and say can you talk more about your hurt so that i can be a better person to support you and to not hurt you further i i think if i may um i think part of it was also sort of mirroring life in life we can create safe spaces for ourselves but we're not always going to be safe and that you know part of the role of education is to give us tools to be able to cope with those times when when uh when we need the tools to
106cope with them um and this was sort of the the same this sort of a microcosm a thematic microcosm in a way or that was what i took away from it right thank you um rebecca um i i happen to um find the language um provocative but um one of the things that we we talked about was trying to provide our educators through staff development um with those tools and um the direction on how to handle these sort of situations when they arise in the classroom one of the things that um dr crum talked about was um that brave spaces um spaces where people engage in storytelling but she also talked about tips for a productive discussion she talked about creating um to give grace as amy mentioned and others mentioned there will be times
107when people um may say the wrong thing or understand the wrong thing and how do you create an environment where you turn that into a lesson an educational lesson um to speak from one's own experience with honesty to use the i word and i think that these are things that uh ground rules that educators can lay out to help children create those sort of um places to have these discussions but also seeing that there are boundaries um so part of me i i feel that the description of brave spaces um in the second page is um is is the perfect description it's a non-physical space within a school designed to help create an environment that allows individuals to engage with one another over controversial issues like race diversity and social justice with honesty sensitivity and
108respect the intention is to help reassure those who feel anxious about sharing their thoughts and feelings regarding these sensitive and controversial issues and we're gonna have children who are gonna come in and uh not disagree um and and that should be all right as an educator the the whole goal is to to help these children one be able to speak about issues that can be uncomfortable but also do that in a place where they can be comfortable um i think it's going to take a while for that to happen but um hopefully the school will provide ongoing staff professional development so that it's not um a one one shot or and i'm sure that david and angie has already spoke to that and said they're looking at ongoing professional development so uh annual so that
109staff are being reminded and also assisted with with the language and keeping the language alive in the school you rebecca chris did you have more did you have another question um i see sandy soho from the community you have your hand raised sandy yeah um so i can uh suggest something in the pot i'm sorry i haven't gone to these meetings before um and i agree with everything that everybody said this is really hard work and it's not something that's a one and done and it's and we have to show grace to the teachers as well because this is something that is very hard to to learn initially and i i liked the idea of the exercise where at first it's hard but as you go forward you'll you'll be able to to to do
110it a little bit easier but um i appreciate the fact that windsor is doing this the um the third statement i oh no it's not the third one the fourth one i was i would suggest changing the last part of it it has the impacts of white supremacy white superiority and all forms of racism and i think you could put white supremacy slash white superiority and add in white privilege that's all thank you that is a consideration so that was on the fourth number four under purpose is what sandy was referring to right section four number two section four policy statement right under one that's where i saw it and uh yeah you could either do the slash white supremacy slash or or you could change you know you could even change spider i guess
111white superiority and white privilege are two different two different things really but yeah so on part four policy statement number two has opposed teachings that perpetuate white supremacy superiority instead of and slash or privilege we could say and privilege yeah and actually it's interesting because under the definitions white supremacy or superiority are put together as one definition yeah yeah that's interesting so maybe we could i hadn't sorry you know when things are really brought to your attention um perhaps we could go with white supremacy slash superiority and privilege and then put that separately is what sandy was saying yeah right yeah i think whatever we do we ought to be consistent so where we say that in in the purpose it order reads similarly in the definitions and then similarly again in the policy statement
112correct go rebecca did you have more thank you sandy for bringing that to our attention i don't know how to put my hand down just hit that hand again and it'll go down i'm gonna make a copy just so i can make note of the changes okay yeah thank you were there any other comments there have been hours upon hours upon hours upon hours put into this policy and the conversation and many many many hours of meetings so i want to thank everyone who's been a part of this and also well to all of our administrators and the many school board members who are part of our supervisory union and are dedicated to creating this anti-racism policy so that we have a a community that stands for anti-racism and with that if there are no
113further questions or comments we will move on to our second policy for the evening which is english learners and we did the first reading for this policy at our march meeting yes we did the more i think about that we did and this by the way came right from the recommended policies from the vspa so are there any other does anyone have more comments or questions on the english learner's osa delegates bill we lost my back yes now you're going again no now you're back can you hear me now yes okay so just quickly i wanted to point out that the contents of this policy allow the district to follow the legal guidelines so i didn't find anything in the policy that really needed to be changed yeah i would agree with that bill were
114there any other comments since this is the second reading and there are no um changes we can move this down to items for action when we get there and we can approve this policy next is the equity policy um any comments or questions on the equity policy elizabeth you have your hand raised i do i have a few comments on this policy actually okay you ready ready in that uh wait a minute pull it up where are you where are you um okay i believe it's the second bullet point under implementation which is provide every student with equitable access to high quality and culturally relevant instruction curriculum support facilities technology and other educational resources that represent their individual identities cultures backgrounds and experiences i think that this is quite you know related to my other
115um comment which is regarding the bullet point number four incorporate the voice culture and perspectives of students staff families and communities and so on and here's my problem my problem is that it forgets it it it's making an accommodation for the or um yeah it's making accommodation for the variety of cultures that exists within the demographic that is in a classroom or at a but it lets out the fact that uh our students are going out into the rest of the world where there are lots of other uh cultures and influences that uh um interact with each other and have history and add interest and creativity and um and uh combined purposes um with our students and so my problem is that um this seems to reflect whoever's in the class and i think that
116uh part of the reason that the ethnic studies program the act one is so phenomenal is that it brings everybody a an understanding of the other cultures that exist in our country in our society and and um in doing so gives them inherent value it doesn't just see them as as sort of accommodation it sees them as being um part of you know what what's inherently good about our country and now i'll step off my soapbox i apologize but i think i think that it should um yeah did you have an ad specific edit elizabeth that would uh uh so it says incorporate the voice cultures and perspectives of students families and communities that reflect the student government demographics and i i have a problem with that i don't think it should reflect the student
117demographics i think it should reflect uh you know a much broader suave than i mean one point i hear what you're saying yep so perhaps that it reflects um society there or world demographic i don't know maybe even leave out the word demographics what about that reflect the reality of the world yeah yeah but yeah i think that not only encompasses now but that it won't need to change five years from now because the world yeah we have to change with the world we have to be flexible and not just look at our a classroom demographic particularly let's say we have a small classroom right 10 or 15 kids but also likewise in the in the um bullet that says provide every student with equitable access to high quality and culturally relevant i mean again
118the whole purpose is to broaden what what our our uh tiny white community's definition of culturally relevant is right so to high quality and culturally diverse instruction curriculum would that respect their individual identities as well as those of the world i see some funny faces being made on the rest of the um the screen though so please give us give some more input okay um rebecca has her hand up and just to be clear while we talk about this we're on the fourth bullet right underneath so this is the second bullet and the fourth bullet okay i just i want to follow along the fourth is the one that starts incorporate the voice cultures and perspectives and the second bullet was provide every student with equitable access right got it so if we're going to
119make changes just let me know because if they if they're minor i mean it doesn't prevent you from passing this tonight if it's a major revamp then we have to but i i didn't mean to interrupt you rebecca go ahead oh that's right david i i just wanted to um uh comment on what elizabeth um commented on earlier regarding and and also amy giving our students this worldly understanding and i think that if we don't do that we fail our students because they're going to go into a very competitive international work environment and if they're not sensitive aware understanding of others other than themselves they are really going to fall behind quickly so i that is really important to to incorporate as we move forward in our curriculum thank you chris and then scott so
120i i hate that i i'm a i'm a uh i'm a writer i'm an english major i'm an english teacher i'm wanting to know i wasn't here for the for the first for the this is this is the first reading or the second reading i'm not i think it's the second reading of this one too second reading okay because so so i wasn't at the last um at the last su meeting uh i don't believe um but i guess i'm not clear well i have two questions first question is where did this policy come from is this something that that was suggested by the um by the sba or yeah okay okay so exactly yes it's one of their required ones okay so i would agree with with everything that elizabeth and rebecca said about
121about what our goals as a school system uh should be when it comes to making sure that our students have all of these have all of these opportunities to experience things beyond their own cultures and all of that but i guess my sense of the policy just in in reading it tonight and reading it actually a lot earlier tonight before the before the meeting even um was that it was here to safeguard things that we weren't leaving people out or deciding that things were less important if there were only a few people that that that had that cultural experience rather than being a policy about giving our students a broad cultural experience and i'm not i'm not against either one but i think i'm not sure that what elizabeth is suggesting meets the requirements of
122the of the policy rather it expands the policy into something else and that maybe then if it does then we need to alter the whole um the purpose of the policy i guess and that's that's my sense of it it doesn't it seems like we're we're now broadening definitions for the for the purposes of making um overall better education decisions i agree with everything that elizabeth's saying but i'm just not sure whether this is the place to do this that would be my question yeah so i think that making this policy stronger in the way that elizabeth and rebecca suggested in it and just making those two changes and then combine this policy with the very strong anti-racism policy and we have some very strong policy going forward that will be reflected in all of
123the actions in classrooms and curriculum in this is how our schools are run and does that answer a little bit chris um i would say a little bit but i guess i'm not sure that that it i think it's challenging to when you start trying to suggest that you need to reflect society or something like that you start getting into you start getting into very fuzzy areas that um that it ends up to certain people certainly and not necessarily to me but to certain people it's going to start looking like your your defining what's the good stuff and that's that would be where i would find it that it may be difficult i understand but don't you think that that don't you think the policy does that anyway does it i mean it's it's about
124speaking to making sure that everybody has everything that they're that they're it's an equity question so it's bringing everybody up to the same level and being and having everybody feeling like they have their their place but then why specify why specify the demographics then can i chirp in here on this very same topic um well actually scott has this scott would you mind if bill jumped in or would you like to speak first no bill can go ahead he'll go ahead if he's good thank you scott thank you scott i i i think i agree with chris on the point of what is the purpose of this section the purpose of this section i believe what the purpose of the section is is to make sure that um that the perspective of an individual in
125the class with a different ethnic background is not ignored it's not to say all the cultures must be followed because i this is an equity piece now i also agree with elizabeth that you know this section is very poorly written and it because it's so poorly written it implies that all the demographics must be covered within the classroom you know basically the purpose of it is to make sure that somebody's ethnic background is not or or backed demographic background is not ignored because it's in the minority or or it could be um as i think it was jameson who said i mean what we don't want is for whoever in in whatever form their identity take whether it's you know people who wear glasses or people who like the color blue or any any piece
126of the many many facets of our identity that that we we don't have to uh have one purpose one person represent an entire group of people unless they want to and i think that's that's part of it but it's really poorly right but i think the important part is that this this policy is not in place to dictate the curriculum right yeah so i think if you begin to look at talking about well we should be looking at backgrounds f all backgrounds but this policy isn't really dictating that we shouldn't be looking at all backgrounds it is it is an equity policy to make sure that somebody is not left out left out yeah yeah and that's that's where i counter actually i counter because uh by by including everybody in the classroom you're still
127limiting this the scope of of uh uh it's welcome to make sure you include everyone in the classroom but that's different no one is excluded i mean that seems like a fine point but it's the point yeah the purpose of the policy is to make sure no one's excluded it's not to make sure that everybody everything is included included yeah and and that so that so but i'm i and i'm not saying that that having everything included is not a great idea but it it changes the function of the policy in my mind if you if you if you now look at it and go oh wait a minute you didn't include this and this and this what you're including is everybody that's involved that's everybody that's in the room and say that i still
128object to that because like we're talking about i'm talking about the kids at albert bridge where there's you know sometimes six kids in the class and uh you know that would be a pretty limited it might be a pretty limited scope of what there is by the policy the policy is not suggesting that you need to that you should only you that you should limit what um what's available to the students that um you should limit it to just the the demographics of the students that are in the room it only says that you shouldn't ignore the demographics of the people that are in the room defining what demographics means per se like does that mean speaking it i mean it the policy speaks to the set to the concept of the individuals should not
129be left out that's the um i'm not i'm not against changing the the the where is it uh i haven't changed anything there was a yeah i mean this is one of those great statements that is way too long just to buy the purpose of including all of these things but it's that it's that concept of it's committed to the success of every student regardless of that's that's that's to make sure things aren't excluded and as a it's it's almost like you don't need that statement i'm not gonna keep it but i mean it's almost like elizabeth when you're talking i mean i don't know why that we're talking about the fourth poem not the second book i don't know why that fourth bullet couldn't just simply say incorporate the voice culture and perspectives of
130students staff families and community and support and enhance student success in other words leave out that reflects student demographics because it's almost not needed it makes it too wordy because what you're trying to do in an equity policy is make sure you don't leave leave somebody's voice out of the conversation you don't leave somebody's cultural perspective out of the conversation i don't know what that means to reflect student demographic is that free and reduced is that poor rich is that i i almost think that's a statement you don't need personally yeah i would i would agree with that i agree with that too david because if you incorporate the voice culture and perspectives of the students staff families and and communities you've done yeah you've done it i'm striking that right now okay thank you
131chris scott [Music] hey thank you so i am going to look at the policy myself i'm switching tabs here so three things and i'll start with my little points and then i'll join in the conversation that we've been having number one i'm so happy i just wanted to say that out loud here that we have the minutes that we have and that they're so succinct and that i was referring to them and you can clearly see that it was second reading on these two policies and that was just really nice that the minutes provide that so clearly number two at the bottom of the equity policy last time there's a statement at the bottom one sentence we did we talked about that a little bit there was a suggestion and i think now thinking about
132that for a month that the two things come up um this is the kind of discussion i i don't know but i would suspect would be part of an administrative team meeting most any week i'm not sure how often those happen but they have almost all the time i think and so we maybe the word biannual is not rigorous enough and maybe it's not that hard to have this more regular than that for instance the financial stuff that ed provides us is is more often than biannual i don't know what this perfect uh period would be but my suggestion is maybe biannual's not often enough or rigorous enough second thirdly thirdly now this conversation that we've had in the last couple of minutes i just if we go up to the top of that the
133bottom of the second page implementation and the statement is to realize this commitment to equity comma the district will colon and so when i saw elizabeth's uh when i heard elizabeth's suggestion on bullet four below that you know i think we've talked ourselves out of that perhaps at this point but it sounded like maybe elizabeth and board that the board could put itself in a tight spot where its staff needed to reflect the world and of course we want our staff to reflect the world we don't always get candidates from that reflect the world we try hard to um so you know we don't want a bullet in this equity statement that could perhaps get us in trouble because we don't have deaths that reflect the world um you know that's maybe a little stretch
134on the way it reads but you know the word staff is there and so i don't know if i'm happy with the latest suggestion either because it seems well i don't i'll just leave it at that those are my comments thank you i'm sorry amy was there still a problem with bullet two or did or did we take care of it by cleaning up bullet four what was the issue with bullet two you lost track elizabeth had mentioned that one too provide every student with equitable access to high quality and culturally relevant instruction blah blah blah and other educational resources that respect i think it was their individual identities cultures backgrounds abilities and experiences no it was culturally relevant okay okay and your question wa about culturally relevant was who decided yeah who decides what's
135relevant what i mean it you know can i can i uh comment on scott's comment sure certainly um scott i think you raised a really good point about the the bottom of the second page and i think that um the anti-racism policy requires that we also come back and i can't i i haven't memorized the policy um so so i don't know how how often we're supposed to be but i think those two things should definitely be connected because it requires that um that policy requires that we also come back and check every so often to make sure that we're meeting whatever goals we set forth for ourselves so good eye i think um but we should before we approve this policy we should make sure that those are connected to each other yeah i
136just went back and looked at the anti-racism policy and it it doesn't doesn't mean we can't but right now it doesn't have a annual biannual reporting mechanism but we yeah i mean it's probably implied but not stated explicitly but we could clearly if we do that with equity because i see the two i and i agree with scott the administrative team is going to be looking at benchmarks and indicators and data to see how we're doing as we work through this work and i think the equity and the anti-racism will integrate so i think whatever we say in equity we could say you know we could we could say in this one i agree with that and i i think if we're going to have a a um i can't remember the name of that
137because i'm tired the title of the staff that we're we we're talking about hiring um so equity coordinator right coordinator um uh i mean we we could easily have them as part of their their thing come as scott said every quarter and report to us on on how that's going i mean the the hope being that they work themselves out of a job anyway right i agree yep right and until we have that person then it will be our administrators who report to us on a quarterly basis well as the policy reads now it's the superintendent do you want to leave that language as is for the equity policy yeah and i'm going to put that in the anti-racism policy too so um wendy yes i think so just for that the superintendent is responsible
138for all of this anyway and superintendent has the power of delegation so even now although he would be responsible to identify outcome indicators i don't believe he'll be doing that in a vacuum and he could very well ask one or all of the administrators to create a report for us yeah you know what it is i i just realized what it is it's not the policy it is the um the other document the implementation document for the anti-racism policy that might be in there no no it always sets that out and of course we wouldn't read that as a policy because it's not a policy but it's an implementation document actually i don't think it's been circulated to our support but it really should be because it's a big commitment yeah but yeah we could
139we just didn't i don't think we wanted to mix that up with the description of policy but i agree with you we need to look at that without a doubt um i i'm looking at bullet two again i'm just trying to uh procedures thank you yeah so we can do that for our next meeting right now is not a good idea i agree i agree no no but we can but just to clarify those did come out they were sent out with the rest of the packet and there is no timing on that but i did make a note at the bottom of it for the notes for the minutes for david yeah so that was the procedures you mean yes yes the procedures document and just to back up to your other bullet point
140on number two what if you added the word worldly culturally relevant so that you're specifying a wider range yeah i i think the issue was more around relevant who determines what's relevant what i was going to suggest is that we say uh provide every student with equitable access to high quality and culturally diverse instruction curriculum support and facility you know what i mean rather than somebody's determining you know yeah i think culturally diverse does it because that's what we want right we don't want one perspective we want diverse perspectives brought to all of our instruction essentially so that people feel comfortable to to have does that does that make sense or no i'm not trying to simplify this but um i think it does chris has his hand raised and has been yes uh well
141two things one i think i think that makes sense because the truth is that bullet four answers the question of looking at the specific cultural perspectives and all of that the voice and the culture so that the bringing up culturally relevant isn't necessary i would think um the other my other question was just a clarification um that amy you said uh quarterly and the policy currently says biannually so i want to make sure i know i'm all for quarterly but we hadn't stated that i don't i don't think i wasn't sure are we moving are we changing into quarterly is what i'm asking only if we all agree on that and if and to elizabeth's point and whoever else i can't remember at this point um so that it coordinates with our anti-racism procedure in
142procedural implementation etc so do we want quarterly i think quarterly is a good idea and then we can always change the the procedurals in the to match that yeah when we get to it why don't we just pin them together and that way uh when we pin this policy to the to the procedure so that if the procedure changes we don't have to have a whole change of policy we could just change it no you you just yeah i agree thank you sounds good rebecca you had your hand raised uh i i i like the idea of quarterly also because at the beginning this is language that we we want to have on a regular basis because it really is on some degree new language for many of us so this will just be a
143reminder okay thank you um i think given some of these changes in this equity policy that we will put it off one more month so we can all see the final product yep we'll get that out to you okay thank you um in light of the time we're moving on i have so many pieces of paper here um coved updates if we could get something really quick please yeah actually that can be very quick because we you know we did cover some of that a little bit earlier but uh we are the and actually these next toyotas kind of go together we we're we're looking right now at end of year activities in light of the most uh the most relevant or not relevant but recent sorry uh guidelines around covert looking at the governor's
144vermont forward initiative and um we have not changed a lot right now even though we know there are there are some things that we could do we could go from six feet to three feet and that's but you know we have done away with health checks in the morning just because the travel restrictions are no longer that critical we've asked people to just be diligent and take care of those health checks themselves at home we're hoping certainly that that that happens and we are right now i don't think we're ready to report out now but we are right now we'll probably spend more time in detail at the individual board meetings talking about end-of-year activities and what those will look like uh in the in the cover that that's things like graduation you know school
145dances proms end of year dinners that sort of stuff we're very close but i wouldn't want to say much tonight until we we'll we'll we'll bring that to each individual board i think that combined i think that combined end-of-year activities okay sweet thank you um did anyone have any comments or questions on that in light of time okay items for action we do have an item for action i will take a motion to adopt the english learners policy so moved second chris chris moved and either nicki or nancy we'll give it maybe we'll give it to nikki huh give it is there any further discussion all those in favor of approving adopting the english learners policy say i i i i i i think you almost all said it at the same time it was
146like where did that go are there is there anyone opposed anyone abstaining thank you we have english learners policy approved were there any other items for action david i think that's it okay setting the next agenda we have anti-racism task force and anti-racism policy correct we have more coveted update equity policy also equity policy amy yes i would like to present to the board our recovery plan draft at that time i will be um where i'm working on the initial needs assessment and i'm going to be sharing that with the staff and the board um probably tomorrow just so you can see what our data it's very interesting what our data is is showing us but it's not really ready for tonight and it wasn't on the agenda so so i'll be sharing that i
147want to also go over the recovery plan with you and and the purpose of sharing the needs assessment is to get your feedback if there's anything that we're missing okay great a little bit um amy our next meeting is gonna have to be our reorganizational meeting oh my goodness yes correct that is true because heartland heartland has a big day tomorrow no saturday night no tuesday okay what next tuesday next week between reorganization and what we currently have that is going to be a full meeting oh i was i was wondering if we could just briefly just very generally talk about the possibility of the board setting goals for itself next year as part of our reorganizational discussion it would be good to do that before summer hits like if not next meeting june for
148sure because that would also dovetail with my goals which i know we still have to talk about that but yeah yeah we don't want to talk about what the goals are at the next meeting i see i was just thinking we could start with a broad conversation about i want to do that yeah then with reorganization and talking about broad goals not not not talking about broad goals broadly talking about those we're probably talking about well even broadly talking about goals that is going to be a very full i mean it's already taking up a lot of time good agenda i i also have some bad news for the monoscotny board members i just need you to stay on for a couple of minutes after um i mean with no decisions it's not a meeting
149it's not worn but i just have a couple i just have a couple of uh one update that's critical okay are we having an exam i don't think we need i need an executive session the one thing i was uh questioning is that we often do a retreat uh for an su board retreat in june and that seems like a good time to less broadly talk about our goals and i don't know how we want to tackle that retreat well that's good i think that's what we're doing that we talk about how we're going to talk about them so that's i like it yeah that that could actually be more of the conversation to find a date to have our retreat right this group needs a retreat indeed maybe like a three-day overnight or something
150with a lot of trouble i'm kidding colleen it doesn't sound relaxing to me i know i do we'll have a virtual retreat and we can all use our own backgrounds like we just put everybody have palm trees okay so are we agreeing that there is no need for executive session no we don't okay so we just we can just have a motion to adjourn at this point yep i will take a motion to adjourn i'll move nikki aiming before you adjourn i'd just like to always say publicly on the meeting the next one i'm assuming is may 24th at 6 30 yes correct correct if that is the fourth monday of may it is yay thank you scotty folks do not sign off stay with me here all those in favor of joining this meeting
151say hi and great bye bye everybody good night everybody i give it up the recording i'm gonna thank you nancy i'm gonna stop it