HES Board Meeting - November 16th, 2020

001and i and i couldn't i couldn't scarf up a a minute uh somebody to take the minutes tonight i feel terrible about that but um i know wendy came and did it last time and i know some of you had some suggestions but i never nobody ever said anything to me so christine you couldn't find anyone no i haven't asked him yet it just slipped off my radar so uh wendy's uh when did you check here good okay just left ah what a life saver there she is that's good yeah well i just assumed you were uh you were out of it but that's great thank you very much wendy we're so happy you're here beth is particularly happy um okay so meeting to order at 605 um and we have no public today is

002that the case appears to be the case that's why yeah i definitely use the agenda not the uh calendar you're very busy around the holidays yeah um okay so approval of the minutes did everybody get a chance to read them okay okay maybe i have a motion motion to accept the minutes that's fast beth we have a second second second okay i'm gonna go with scott okay okay is there any discussion with the minutes there was i actually had something and now i don't have it up i'll start i'll park because i had something really really minor really probably nitpicking the um at the top where it says somebody was a little late i don't know it's just an uh uh degree of information that maybe doesn't need to be there yeah watch it okay

003i i mean i'm talking about like for because we're all in we're in an evolution of minute protocol now i guess you'd say yeah so as long as we're here we're here is okay with me yeah how would you like me to the reason why i put that there is because the initial vote was a 4-0 and then the others will be five to zero so do you want me to put their individual names or how would i i don't know if you care about discerning who was missing for that initial vote um you could just say you could leave it as colleen was absent but then as long as she's in attendance up above gotcha with absent for this vote maybe that's okay yeah i'll put it down thank you i'm sorry and i

004guess i am in the anti-racism task force update um and the last note is it was noted that there's some level of white supremacy in our board um i felt like that statement was strong but i don't have another one and i think i don't that would have come from either me or colleen or christine because we were the only ones that were that are on the task force um does any do you guys have a suggestion on how to edit that well i think board culture is ultimately is a is a is um white supremacist kind of culture in some ways yeah um so it's more of a culture issue in that in that way versus the board is not white supremacist but the inherent culture or the inherent structure of boards tend to

005be yes okay if that makes sense yes thank you beth and i do remember you were the one that made that maybe that's fine yes um so i spent a lot of time wendy can you do you mind changing it too it was noted that there's some level of white supremacy in the culture of our boards or how about based on the inherent structure of our boards there's some level of white supremacy how's that done even better thank nice you okay awesome that was that was all i saw scott you know something else yeah not something else i'm just trying to understand that because i i'm interested in what beth is saying so are you saying that it's been your experience or you or your belief that public i don't know what you call public

006boards in general tend to be that way or our board the structure of having a board and the people that are usually on boards and the people that are usually holding the power and things like that are usually white and usually upper upper class and so the way boards function and the way the rules robert's rules and these kinds of things are not always inviting for bipolar communities absolutely and that's a good that you brought up robert's rules because who who came up with robert's rules my gets a white man that's a good discussion i just i'm just um sticking on this point because we were adjusting the minutes and we still left the word power in there is it fair to well i guess you could leave that in there because our board is

007the public board so either way yeah would you prefer the word just be school boards yeah it just occurred to me i didn't think of it until this moment but it just occurred to me that is there a difference between capitalizing white supremacy and not capitalizing white supremacy um i i you know when i see white supremacy capitalized i think of it in terms of organized white supremacist movements and organizations and i i you know i mean i i want to acknowledge any um any level of it that we have here in our board i want to be absolutely open and transparent but i wonder if lowercase white supremacy might be more in line with what beth is talking about but i don't want to put words in your in your mouth either no you're

008right yeah and supremacy is a strong word i mean it really is i mean i don't know whether you you want to consider white privilege or would you ra or do you want to stay with white supremacy i don't have a problem with it but that's yeah it is i mean it's an uncomfortable word and i'm okay with that on comfort um but um yeah wendy i'm just fine with it i see what you're saying david but i i guess i'm okay with it yeah i know if you're okay with it that's fine um and the word i'm okay with that um wendy i did want to say that i i love these minutes and since so far i have loved your minutes they are just concise and capture exactly what's happening without um too

009much extra and so we nitpicked one sentence personally this is your board so i wanted to reflect what you wanted to reflect so i'm not it's not personal i don't take it that way okay good well i did want to say um to you directly though that i these are just fantastic they're so easy to read they help you remember the meaning and they convey exactly what happened perfect okay is there any further discussion so we'll move to a vote all those in favor of approving the october 19th 2020 minutes please signify by saying aye we're waving ahead i okay that was five to well any of stains there's nobody left so that would be five to one okay um i saw some uh david you're presenting i just want everybody to see the agenda

010okay um so ed are you on the call digitally and on the phone or is there somebody else on the phone hey it's edge okay okay great okay just trying to understand if we have public hear or not and i know that you frequently call in so um okay uh so ed you're here should we um rearrange the let's let's look at rearranging the agenda um we'll put is everybody okay if we put ed first sure sure okay um that would be the budget first um can you guys hear me yes yes i just check in my mic sorry okay okay so um so we'll do the budget first and then we'll go through everything else in order except i'm going to move the strategic plan to last um okay and then there is a

011tentative a tentative executive session warned um and we're gonna have an executive session um as it relates to budget planning for next year well so that will happen okay ed you're up it's um i'm going to present actually yeah okay i've been working with christine for the last two weeks and uh she just asked me to be here kind of in case some question came up so with that i'll turn it over to christine awesome thank you christine you're the one that asked for the executive session you're good with some presentation and then yeah i'm gonna present um yeah all right i'm just trying to get to where i got to get all right take your time and we can stop presenting how about that good and i'll present and i'll just start by saying

012ed's been a wonderful um partner in budget planning he's been slowly training me in e-finance which i appreciate knowing how to find answers without having to bug him i don't know if he appreciates that or not but um so we've been working together and he's here um to answer questions that are far beyond my budget knowledge so let me just present and can everyone see the screen not yet does it look like it's scrolling in not yet but it will okay just let me know i'll try again if i need to i wonder i don't have to give you permission right now i don't know christine looks frozen i wonder if that oh yeah she does okay going back in christine let me just exit presenting hold on okay let me try again am i

013unfrozen now yeah now you want to vote okay let me try again share yeah there you go there you go okay you can see it now yeah you got it okay good okay all right so this is our uh preliminary proposed budget actually you're on your own absolutely no i can't see you can't see the budget what do you say the only one i'm seeing like a blurry version of my screen oh hold on maybe blur is still on hold on one second let me just go back here oh go there it is oh now it's gone no yeah no blur i have to turn the blur off hold on i can you gotta show me how to do that too i will boy this computer is just okay there we go all right now

014i'm not clear now now you can see my you can see my budget presentation okay hold on now you can see it right pretty close not yet all right yes no no sorry that is what do you see i see a like a blurry version of all of our faces that's oh hold on a minute hold on like you're sharing the wrong screen sharing your own time yeah i am hold on try that one more time you're also frozen again well now you're not you're not frozen that's good i'm gonna stop well sorry about that guys hold on are you using you're using your chromebook right oh no no i'm not i left it at school i'm using a mac sorry that's all right i'm gonna do send it to me and i can share

015it christine if you want i can i can just call it up because you emailed it to us no i didn't i didn't email this to you all right do you see it yep okay sorry about that i just hit the wrong button okay so this is a um proposed fy 22 budget and not knowing what next year's gonna be like it was a difficult task but i think we've got a pretty good plan um just so you know the way that finance makes us kind of categorize things reflects elementary which is kasich secondary is 712 and then location-wide is all-encompassing uh like art music library is that a change again from the previous no last year we were kind of the guinea pig in in ed ran we were in efinance but we reported

016out in different ways so this is um this year we're using e-finance exclusively but it has been a transition so these are our estimated enrollment numbers for next year i know with um home study without home study students were at 254 with home study i'm not sure all of those will come back or not some of them were home study previous um to covid but we'll see not not not many were we we do we did we are enrolling two new students at the moment so i think it's um a number that's going to fluctuate i can say that there are there are a lot of houses that are selling in heartland um rapidly so that's just a point in time right now that's what we have and that's what we're going to base our

017budget on for the moment um these are our high school numbers as as best we can calculate who's going where you can see our our majority of our kids are headed to hartford again next year and our hanover numbers are are con are still um are still falling so we're graduating 46 seniors and we're sending 35 8th graders on to high school and this i'll share this presentation with you this is a breakdown of where they are by grade level which school they're at and this is really helpful for adding kind of estimating uh high school tuition numbers all right so for for the budget i mean we didn't make a ton of changes this year based on not knowing you know where we're going to be next year what what school's going to look

018like what state funding is going to come in but we have reduced supplies by a pretty significant amount that is you know one of the places we have some control in the budget and the staff is aware that we're going to try to just be really frugal again make sure you know make sure we have what we need but not do any of the extras that we sometimes do um we've reduced one regular ed bi for a total of seventeen thousand dollars and um reduce some oops sorry that's my [Music] phone ringing sorry about that um and we do some some staff training that we had in the budget for this year and we're not able to um implement based on covid so we're just going to hold off and then we are budgeting for

019a half-time lpn for next year and i've met with annette and she thinks that's enough time for an additional uh nurse additional nurse support and that's roughly 12 thousand dollars and you know if covet is has passed we can reevaluate that later on are there any specific items that in supplies that you you took out that were like bigger ticket items or anything um we adjusted the library schedule the library budget a little bit one of the one of the line items for the library in the past has been for alexandria which is the library management system used to check out books and the librarians met with angie and she's going to place that in the in her su budget because she feels like it's an equity issue all libraries should be able to have

020the same access to that system and that wasn't the case so that's going to move out of the library budget and that was a five thousand dollar item so it's pretty significant and other than that we've just kind of reduced each each um content area allotment and then reduced general supplies by a pretty decent amount i can't i can't tell you i can't tell you off the top of my head what it was but i'm not concerned about it i think we're gonna be fine um so that being said um i'll move on unless there are other questions okay i can't see you so just holler if you you have questions um so these are these are the major categories in the budget total wages are are up um you know a decent amount and

021that reflects a 2.5 wage increase in that additional half-time lpn so nothing nothing major there benefits are up 10 at this point that's the information that ed has to date and so he has calculated the increase in premium costs in the fy 22 budget contracted services so you'll see there's a pretty significant decrease in fy 22 and that is attributed to those professional development opportunities that we were planning to bring in big picture learning and leader in me it's also where the bi is located in the budget and there's a building operations reduction of sixteen thousand eight hundred dollars you might be wondering why in fy 20 it jumped so significantly in fy 21 and that that's the year we brought on the sro position so some of that increase is is the sro position

022which is included in the fy 22 budget so the building's operations reduction is the change in personnel or is that no it's and we didn't look this one up exactly it's contracted services so it could have been something that was brought in some contractor that was brought in to fix something that would be my guess and i don't know yeah it's not it's not personnel okay thanks yep um this is the maintenance and repair budget and it is also reduced and you know maintenance wages are listed under total total wages so you'll see that reflected from you know previous years um transportation is we've centralized it i think that's the right way to say it david correct me if i'm wrong so we've moved we've moved the local transportation into the um su budget so

023that we can uh negotiate a better contract and be able to share services if needed so in our local budget we have um local you know transportation costs which which are field trips i've spelled them out here athletics winter activities and homeless transportation which we we do sometimes have to reimburse families who are homeless for transporting their children to school if they um no longer are on the bus route due to being homeless questions on transportation christine yep so that's this is a good example um so the fy oh there it is okay so fy 22 budgeted heartland budget for transportation goes way down but it will show up in our yes yeah right yep you could back up one slide is this sure can we say the same about the maintenance and repair you

024can you can yeah it's helped to have some of that centralized yep is that that's a huge drop from 20 to 21 and even further to 22. i'm not sure could you explain that again i'm not i don't understand that quite quickly so some of the maintenance wages were centralized contracted through the seo and and that is the that is the shift that you're seeing from 20 to 21 and then continued um as in um forward into fy22 [Music] yeah yeah all right so we did um so communications insurance uh postage pretty much stayed the same we do have a new phone system and and larry's best estimate is that the cost will increase just a little bit in fy 22. um this is our high school tuition budget and you can see that we're

025sending 11 fewer kids to high school next year and you would think we would have a very large cost savings that was my hope but as you know from last year we had quite a few move-ins for high school um heartland's a high school choice town and that's pretty um enticing for families when their kids get to that age so in fy 20 our actual was significantly more than we had budgeted and so we are as of today ed has included high schoolers that have moved into heartland um this first this first trimester semester um he does have those numbers and um so the number reflects how many kids we have in high school questions on that okay i don't see i mean um ed and i were chatting and and it it it's hard

026to budget not knowing how many kids are going to move in but that seems to be the um the pattern as of late people with high school age kids are moving into harland thought somebody was going to say something well i'll just kind of flag that as a come back to the board members like do we do we want to think about adding two randomized students to account for some of it and we we gained like six this year though right or was it 10. we i think we get i think we gained nine in fy 20. um we gained i know a five this fall but we lost a couple so sometimes it it balances out and sometimes it doesn't but i will say the last two um conversations i've had were from families

027that were moving to heartland for high school choice buying houses in heartland for that reason and so they'll help high schoolers next year that we that we are not in this budget so it might not be a bad idea to yeah anticipate that it's a hard thing but and i think we used to do it and then we went back to straight budgeting and so you remember why you went back david scott it was before my time but i feel like it wasn't too far before my time we went back what what from my understanding is that we used to budget a little extra quite a bit why it was it was before david's time it's been a while and that's because budgets uh because the budgets were going up at such a rate they

028didn't have the luxury of adding that they had to find somewhere to cut so they took it out of there because otherwise when you had to make hit a number for a tax rate or those kind of things they were having to take it out of k through 8. okay i was kind of assuming it would be that sort of thing and it probably be in that place again where we want to back it back out again at some point it's just gonna i don't think there's anything wrong with patting in a little extra but it's probably something we'll take back out at some point when we're trying to make it look better well i need yeah go ahead nikki are we are we carrying a deficit into the 22 budget year ed we we

029are i believe and yeah yes you are 154 000 154 000 yeah yeah okay and like christine you also said i mean not to hop on this but you know this is the second big year for hartford i know hartford's always been a big draw for heartland i know that it you know historically if you go way way back um it was really hard you know it was hartford and windsor and almost a direct split but then it started to go hartford i mean i mean i mean what do you think is driving that christine do you think it's um just family tradition that there are so many people that have that truth i i know also the athletic program yeah yeah i think it's i think it's both those things i mean hartford's a

030a really good school and it's um you know there are staff there that the kids know that's probably part of it good athletics uh the tech program's there parents that have gone there so their kids are choosing to go there um yeah sometimes kids go where their friends go or want to go with their friends to go so maybe some of that i will say that we have done uh you know we had linda called around because we really wanted to try to get an accurate count homeschoolers that might be going to high school uh private school um the waldorf school just to try to get an accurate number and ed's been working with lori at the s at the su office on really um whoever whatever we have vouchers for that's what we're that's

031what we're budgeting for so we're trying to get an accurate account yeah that that makes sense but it is up one thing i have i i i was just speaking to somebody in the woodstock district and they are also struggling with this right now because they've had a lot of move-ins and a lot of high schoolers that they hadn't budgeted for and had to switch things around at the high school so it seems like a fairly you know we're not alone in struggling with this uncertainty during covet and all of the people moving to vermont yeah so you know i think there may be some legislative remedies too in terms of um you know in terms of the census and there i've heard some rumblings about maybe making some adjustments because a lot of people

032are struggling with just you know more students than they than they budgeted for yeah yeah that would make sense okay um so here here's that su assessment and it's up but as as we said before transportation is now included in that line um and ed and i were poor ad i call them way too much but i like to understand the numbers and what's going on so the assessment includes the transportation but we get a rebate from the state for transportation so when you when you break it down um the esu assessment is made up of early childhood which is which is up a little bit about 43 000 special ed which is up a little bit uh around 59 000 and then transportation minus the rebate from the state um is included in that

033so it's a nine percent increase uh which includes all of those things how'd i do ed i get that right yeah it sounds good to me yeah it really is the transportation that's driving that's driving it yeah okay yeah scott i'll go back yeah is that not the um transportation credit right i'm not sure what you just called it um is that in real time i didn't understand that is that something we anticipate it's something we anticipate um i believe but ed can correct me he he tries to do his best estimate so what that what that sounds like is the um sounds a lot like special education reimbursement and how it for some years there was some special education had been um was being provided through the su but the home district was getting

034the reimbursements and it was a convoluted um swapping of yeah we we the su will get the reimbursement okay that's what i'm asking thank you yeah so we clean there that way yes yes yeah okay um excess costs these are services related to um expenses for students with 504 and we do have some of those so it's down a little bit but we still need to budget for those costs um there's total supplies which we talked about a little bit earlier and it is if you look at fy 20 we did spend considerably less than what we budgeted but that was based on um some of that was because we were remote for part of the year and this is the total proposed um fy that should say 22. i'm sorry 22 budget um is

0358 million four hundred 844 sixty dollars which is an increase of two point three four percent a difference of two hundred and two thousand one hundred and fifty four dollars and um a good a good portion of that is high school tuition costs yeah high school salary and benefits yep questions thank you christine and ed that uh you guys are way ahead of the ball and i just appreciate that i guess not way ahead of the ball but on the ball for sure we're trying to be as prepared as we can be yeah that's just it's you guys have clearly done some hard work and that's a good place for us to start well it helped that katie got the um service plan done early and the su budget is set which is great yeah

036and katie again another huge appreciation for the uh the special ed budget not skyrocketing all right thank you it's very appreciated you're welcome is there anything else for christine and ed on the budget of course you know we we i know i don't have to remind the veteran but um but it seems like you know the the push really comes to shove when we start looking at cla and tax rate and all of that stuff but it's it's just good to know that this is th this is the budget and we'll just see what happens it sound you know you'd like to think that they're going to hold some things harmless just to get us through this crazy time but we'll just see those numbers shoes that come in around mid december ed mid to

037end of december they do david but i also want to make it clear that this is the preliminary budget i mean i i i anticipate there will be changes to this as we get better numbers for um all of the things that we're making estimates for so just i wouldn't say that this is done by any stretch of the imagination it will continue to get uh updates from the state on uh potential how they're gonna handle the whole fy 22 statewide ed fund and all of that but your budget we put this together with an eye towards adjusting it as time goes on a good example is if we get the announced tuition numbers for fy22 before uh say december 15th we will take out the two and a half uh percent increase that i

038have i've anticipated and and put in the actuals and that could go either way so please don't think that that this 202 is going to stay it could stay it could get less it could get more we just have to we just have to keep going with in updating it and and the salary increases are an estimate you know we haven't even negotiated this year's contract yet so i'm going off of what this current teacher's salaries are right and and with a with an eight with with a percent where they would go next year so i i will say that that that's a big thing that might change i don't know where the negotiations are why they haven't settled and went until they settle we won't really have a concrete number there thank you guys

039i still think it's a great start and i completely expect it to change good work god yeah thank you so one one thing that christine uh highlighted specifically was the phone system or some numbers regarding that and it's one what i see when i'm signing warrants is that we have um obligations to veto because we're in heartland but we also have the new the so-called new phone system i think david described that as a different first light fiber carrier yep yeah so but we still end up paying retail vitell quite a bit and i don't know if there's any way to yeah yeah we've got to address that we've had conversations with uh larry dower about that very thing and we are trying to uh what you're playing for is a lot of line charges

040and we're trying to get away from those line charges or stop those line charges but uh it's not as easy as it might sound where larry anticipates that we're going to get it to be a lot less and i think the numbers that christine showed you reflect that they do yeah it was i'm ed and i looked at it we actually had larry on the phone last week um because what we paid last year i think was upwards of 20 000 and larry did say he thought we were going to be able to cut some of those ties with vtel and reduce that i think he said by about 5000 right ed was that your recollection yeah that is my recollection so that's reflected we we cut that right out so hopefully he's right or

041close yeah i don't mean to imply that it's easy i just was trying to share yeah no you're you're absolutely right larry had the same point you know we're paying for this we're not really using the service so he's working on that thank you okay um if nobody else has anything um i'm gonna try and keep us moving because we have a lot of work tonight um so uh christine you'll send us the budget so we can look through it on our own um and we'll continue this discussion at the next meeting yeah um so ed thank you for coming and unless that's good david need you for something else you can hang out with us very much or take off thank you bye-bye thanks dad thanks ed um okay uh christine you're up again

042i'm up right let's see no let's see if i can present better this time the window i might have just done it wrong again can you see my uh presentation it's fighting you tonight and now you're frozen with your hand up in the air every time that's so weird is it is that am i still can you see my screen no uh i think i hit the wrong one again hold on oh you're on frozen now do you select your entire screen or a window what what is it window but i don't know that's what i've been doing but it doesn't seem to be working very well try again share there it is you get it there it is okay second try i did the same thing weird okay i did share this with you

043earlier um yeah and it's it's not too long but i wanted to update you on some of the you know normal fun things we've been trying to do at school we we did um decide to have the kids dress up if they wanted to and the staff sure took part as well and we had a ball it just felt really really normal which i think relieved some stress and anxiety among staff and students and it was a great day so some creative costumes too so we were impressed um we had a barbecue last week we've been watching the weather and craig really wanted to to do an outdoor barbecue the kitchen staff has missed seeing the kids so this was a way to you know touch base um say hi and and serve a really

044great meal outside again we followed protocols brittany and i were and craig and uh gosh mary i think we were all serving um kids so they didn't have to touch anything we were we were the we were the servers but it went well the rain held off and it was just a great great um fun fun thing to do with the kids um veterans day not the normal but we did we were able to have a bright uh bryce morency join us he's a remote student but he's been doing lessons with jamie bernstein and he wanted to play the star spangled banner so we all joined meet and we're treated to um the star-spangled banner which was which was pretty awesome he did warn us to turn our volume down before he started playing it

045sounded great it was it was pretty awesome um just a couple of other things that have been going on teachers just finished up conferences for the most part a couple teachers have a few left to go but we had really really good turnout roughly 90 of the families participated and you know again some more expected this week so those went really well i don't know if remote conferences are just more convenient easier for parents so isn't that really high i mean that's a big difference is that a big difference it's usually in the fall we have a relatively good turnout but not 90 i mean middle school is where we tend to drop off and most middle school families participated which is great so we're pretty happy the character trait for the months upcoming is

046begin with the end in mind and brittany did a recording and has been keeping up with all of the character trait things that we do with kids and the wild card drawings are happening they're just happening in classrooms so we're trying to again trying to create some as much normalcy as we can but i just thought you might want to know that's the we're working on begin with the end in mind which is a really important trait learning how to set goals and work towards them um and great news today um our new 7-8 math teacher mr michael butz started um and he is he comes to us from texas he was actually working in windsor as the permanent sub this you know beginning of the year and we um kind of snagged him so

047he's comes comes with experience he's been in the military he's taught middle school math today was his first day and it went really well um we're thrilled to have a math teacher with math um background so i'll keep you posted but i think we really lucked out yeah you're gonna love them yeah it's great that's really fantastic news and i think that i don't know how we left out at that level that's awesome yeah yeah so we did i will say the staff the the seven eight staff really worked hard um to create a plan that that worked for the interim um but i think they're all thrilled as well to have a math teacher so um so we've been working really hard and most of you i'm sure experienced the first kind of practice

048remote day although we've had two other ones those were a little different because we had professional development um during those days for the staff as well so they were we're not really full remote days friday was a kind of a test run teachers got guidance late in the game on what the days needed to include how much time you know each content area you know they need to instruct in um they did a really great job pulling together schedules and setting up meets and there's a lot of moving parts so it's it's complicated um but they will have the 23rd and 24th to really prepare for the next for the for the week after thanksgiving and and beyond if if that happens so but for the most part it went pretty well we heard some

049good things from from families and that's our goal to make it um pretty seamless easy on parents you know but with direct instruction going on from the teachers and then for our remote afternoons i think all of our schools we've been working diligently to really make sure our support staff are being used to support children that need that support and so we're close we've been working as a team katie brittany and myself the teachers and looking at data to help us make the decisions on which students really could benefit from more individual support from staff members so we're making progress but it's taken a while um i'll just give you some covet updates i included it here david might want to add some later on but just so you know as as i'm sure you

050all heard the governor on on friday with the update updated kind of regulations i'll call them so we had just surveyed the staff on their holiday plans uh at the end of last week just to kind of get a sense of what people were planning and what we needed to do in terms of quarantine or testing we had set we had actually set up testing at mount scotty for staff for the saturday um after like the saturday of the thanksgiving week i'm sorry the saturday following thanksgiving week so people could be with their families and then test and come back on monday nana scotty was really working working with us to set that up but we have since canceled that because of the governor's regulations for holiday get together so we're gonna survey the staff

051again because we just need to know um obviously we're encouraging them to follow the guidelines but if people have already made plans and have family coming in from different places we need to make sure the school is safe the kids and the rest of the staff are safe so we're putting that together now um the state has set up surveillance testing which we are taking part in on thursday i think david and angie are the deliverers of the covid tests and we had information on how to sign up um today and it'll be a self-test that's my understanding that staff will do and then and then it gets all labeled and sent in and the results are back within uh i think they said three to five days it's not it's not that quick of

052a turnaround but um it'll give the state some information on you know asymptomatic um people and it's just a wide um you know range all over the state so they're looking for that information and then i believe they're going to continue continue testing staff that that want to and this is voluntary every month i believe um but david can can chime in if i'm wrong on that um our maintenance staff members i just wanted to shout out because our uh many of our her um carports flipped over in the last windstorm they came right out of the ground and and john and the crew have really um spent time they got sandbags their backup and we know we know staff want to be outside with their kids so we want to support that as best

053we can so those are back up and just a big shout out to our families because they are just super flexible understanding their emailing with questions about the new guidelines they want to do the right thing so we really appreciate that and i think that is my last slide so i will stop sharing and if there are any questions thank you christine absolutely i like the happy pictures yeah me too normal pictures normal pictures it i will say it it does i mean we've done the whole su an incredible job i think of opening schools staying open following the guidelines it's almost thanksgiving we're still in school which is um a huge deal and we're we're so thankful and thrilled and we want to stay in school um but people are are seeing the numbers

054and there's some anxiety so um it is nice to to do normal as much as we can so you heard a rumor about um contact tracing the nurses would be they will not be no there was an addendum sent out today by dan french it's really the nurses will be asked to communicate like if a whole pod needs to close i think the vdh is busy contact racing there are a lot of cases so whatever we can do to take uh some of that off their plate so it's communicating back to them it's communicating yeah it's not doing the actual tracing great they take care of that yeah i was concerned about it i thought yeah so was i worried about yeah the implications of it yeah i was happy to see the guidance come

055out um later this this afternoon actually with the clarification on that great yeah yeah that sounds a little more i sent it to a net and immediately to afford it so it totally makes sense that they feel under you know they're gonna feel more stressed and i could see you know yeah i think the governor said friday they were staffed to handle about 90 cases a day and we're above that so they are they're busy so yeah so all right that's my report thanks chris thanks christine sure so uh david you're up yeah mine will be brief because christine covered a lot of it and um and i think probably one of the benchmarks that the state will use in terms of being able to keep institutions like ours open will be the ability of

056the vermont department of health and our hospitals to handle that capacity i mean it's not so much about transmission in schools but it's about tracing any transmission that occurs in school so i think that's a good point um you mentioned the surveillance testing angie's been uh you know heading that up uh i'm sort of trying to partner a little bit with her but she's taking on the bulk of it that'll be on thursday and christine you're right they are going to try to do a a modicum of this as we go forward they're thinking about maybe 25 of the schools every month so it won't be 100 but they'll they'll just sort of keep up with it and they might go back they might be more inclined to go back to those who have higher

057accounts in terms of asynchronous testing um david real quick i thought i read today the letter from angie that came from someone at the state that they were doing a quarter of the state a week so that they would get through everybody in a month oh that's nice yeah i didn't i didn't is that what you heard angie i can't remember that detail but if it's in the letter it's actually in french that's what i read that would make more sense 25 a week then they would get 100 of the schools a month so that it's a it's it's it's yeoman's work i'm still not convinced we're gonna be able to pull this off but angie's at the helm and i trust we're gonna we're gonna make this work um the uh we mentioned negotiations

058and that's been a draw on our budget but again scott as your representative and the negotiating team we have a mediation set up on december 9th to uh to try to settle this mediation is a little less expensive in the uh online world there are some advantages to um you know some of this we don't have to have the media to fly in from new york and stay in a hotel and have all the expenses and have meals and the whole nine yards so that'll save both the association and the districts uh some money and we're hoping we're down to just a few items that they're very tricky items i mean quite frankly uh a lot of the items are are related to heartland so we're gonna just have to see what what happens and

059we've talked about those items in the past and scott's been a great uh you know advocate for you know the board's opinion and uh we've got pietro will be with us uh you know he's our attorney so he'll be part of that mediation with us so i i'm i'm confident that will work out okay the su budget we had that budget committee colleen spence as a member of your board is she's part of that committee she showed up uh at that meeting and and uh and uh it was i was there nikki yes she was there she did it we like that and uh and much like the budget you saw locally tonight i mean it is what it is there's not a lot of wiggle room there i think as we said katie ahern

060did a good job holding sped cost uh two percent or just a bit just a tiny bit under the the largest increase will be that transportation and if you go to the miraculous the katie hearn piece yeah yeah the fact that she got that done and got it done in a timely fashion and also this is the first time too not to you know not to be critical of it it's a difficult job but this is the first time in a long time that the service plan which is acts absolutely all the services that will be offered next year matches the bottom line of what we budgeted so now all ed's waiting for is based on that service plan what are the estimated revenues because as we said before ed will take the expenses he'll

061subtract those revenues and that's essentially how he gets to your assessment um but i'm i'm anticipating that uh you know other than the transportation move you know we're essentially in that one to two percent range in all of the uh those categories at the su level and larry will be proud to tell everybody on the 23rd when we meet as an su some of you will remember that discussion about centralizing the equipment and larry promising that the equipment's expenses he thinks they would go down if we could bulk order things and sure enough you know they've gone down about 30 percent uh you know year over year so that's a pretty big savings when you get right down to it so larry was was um right uh uh about that uh i think you just

062stole his thunder though i might have yeah i stole this yeah so we'll all have to look surprised and pleased yeah he'll have his fancy powerpoint he'll he'll explain that uh to us and then the only other thing is we you know having to make a few calendar adjustments on the fly uh we had we had anticipated a week after thanksgiving which i think is going to work to our favor both in terms of practicing the remote instruction and also giving that extra window of time in case people for some emergency have to travel i have to go somewhere and you know so so we'll we'll we'll be ready for that the hospital is even though we're not going to formally encourage folks to travel and then be tested the hospital now every every saturday

063morning from 9 00 to 12 they are going to have an open drive through site so anybody can can call i don't know i imagine there's your pcp or your or an 800 number that you can call and register for that testing so if there are a few people who absolutely just absolutely have to travel then that's fine but we're saying no exceptions no excuses no entertaining and no traveling it's a bummer of a time uh to be doing that but that's that's the way it is we do and angie uh has worked hard on the uh on the uh next week um the 23rd and 24th on staff development days but i think christine alluded to that but that's really to get us ready for uh well to get us ready for future integrated

064work because that's you know that's been going pretty well and also to get us ready for that remote uh instruction and the other thing i think we have to keep in mind and this is the last thing i'll say is that angie is coordinating about a you know kids in the remote world and she has a staff of i don't know what is it eight people angie eight and nine well 128 128 students is the current count i have five classroom teachers and two special educators and a slew of um special education paraprofessionals supporting students with ieps yeah so i think that's just so it's that's something we ought we can forget and we need to note that and we are going to work on ways uh angie's working with the administrators to start including

065some of those remote kids in whether it's lunch bunches or just some social activities or because the word angie's getting back from those parents is those kids do miss their classmates and that that part of it is is difficult but uh we have to remember we're we're really running four districts this year including our room our remote district and angie's done a nice job with that but that's about it for me i had heard a rumor from some families that they were planning on coming back um in january what makes a word on that when we uh set it up we said that it would be on a semester basis that you could decide to come in and go out in january we've managed requests to up to this point based on the capacity in

066the buildings we've had requests for students to come out and to go in go to the remote only program and vice versa we've had to turn some kids down in some of our buildings because there's simply no space given the current distancing restrictions so where i have surveyed i started um with uh the remote only families surveying them i know right now we have five students from heartland that want to come back to in person and that's with only about 40 responses and i have 40 kids and that doesn't mean i mean that's not necessarily 40 kids 40 families so that might represent 50 kids um so that means that our principals are going to have to be looking at spacing and it definitely is going to impact that and then the next step would

067be to send out a survey to the in-person families to find out who would be interested in remote only okay it's going to be a huge it's going to be a huge undertaking so yeah especially if we have an influx coming back spacing will likely be an issue and so we'll have to figure that out but 80. and to chime in so is staffing we made a lot of staffing decisions for special education based on where our students were so and we're running into that now of students wanting to come back who needed support those people were reassigned in some cases like you know absolutely completely reassigned to to different buildings and so um it's going to take time it's not going to be uh it's not whereas we're finding out it's not even within

068those two weeks we originally thought would be a turnaround where we're looking at longer wait times too so so you're aware full disclosure yeah i i kind of expected that and i i'd heard from a couple families that were in remote that wanted to come back so i uh i thought that this might be coming and i appreciate the work that you guys are gonna have to do on it yeah so i have a quick question angie is it so if uh family you know families want to come back and i don't i don't have any idea if this is the case but if a classroom that they want to come back to is full capacity which again i don't know if that's the case in any of our situation but um what happens in

069in that case um right now if uh a student is uh wants to come back and the classroom is at capacity they have to remain in remote only uh we haven't and we haven't discussed i don't think we fully thought through the impact of it um for opening it up again in january um it'll be a problem to be solved but in january my my our thinking i speak collectively is that we will accommodate every student as best we can so um i think that you know i we are locked into that six foot distancing because of our risk management is that correct david yeah well you know we we've been locked into that not so much because of risk management but because we decided that we were going to err on the side of

070caution but right now in phase three that six feet at least k to five moves moves moves to moves to three feet but again i think that's that's going to be the nuances that we're going to have to look at you you've you have not formally uh reached out to those parents yet to get a an accurate sense of who might want to come back is that correct angie that's what i'm in the process i sent survey friday okay perfect i mean i think that's what we're gonna have to look at and it will take some work and brittany's question is a good question um we'll have to see how we can serve those students well you know uh we and again yeah i think you're right patty that would be a good topic for

071the reopening committee yeah um i mean the interesting thing about the remote kids is that they've been you know they've been sort of in these cohorts that are school-based but those teachers have been teaching across um you know across the su so yeah so i mean we may be able to factor some of that in too that if we have enough kids that want to come back then maybe one of one or two of those teachers can go back and then we find the space and figure out how to get them to where we got to get them it'll be good hang on tight yeah we'll figure it out it may mean some some changes in classrooms spacing but right right we can figure that out just implement if they haven't let you know for

072sure did you give them a deadline angie i did not give them a deadline um i am hoping to have uh more complete data i mean by december 1st and we're going to start planning based on the data that we have um up until september 10th we still had families coming in and out of remote so as much as we try to give a deadline we can get the bulk but families don't operate that way unfortunately yeah and you have to remember too our semester change is around the middle of january so it's not like we have to snap back to this the day we get back from christmas break so i mean we've got a couple of weeks on the other side to work on this as well so 22nd is the last day

073january 22nd is last day of semester one and we may have some some families but yeah sorry go ahead sarah i'm just gonna say i wonder if cases continue to rise as they seem to be if some of those families may rethink it um so i you know i would i would hate for you all to put a ton of time and planning into it and then have it all you know have it all switch around as cases continue to rise and families change their mind yet again um but i don't know how we how we plan for that well we may have we may have some in-person families that choose to go remote as well because of the numbers so it could be a wash we'll see so um just for uh official purposes

074i'm moving us to the covet update we're out of the superintendent's report now and along those lines uh we talked about um potentially extending the school day because are we still in discussions about that is the case rise causing us to not where are we yeah that's a good question and christine backed me up here and angie but uh the simple answer is yes to both of those things we're continuing those discussions and the rise has kind of slowed those discussions down a little bit um and again we have basically said to our staff that we would not do that either until uh probably when we make all of this semester change it won't be till january so we're giving ourselves some time to watch the case count and we're giving ourselves some time to

075do do the extra planning the good news is that the feedback from parents and teachers the union and association is that people think that because of the difficulty with that that afternoon wind time remotely and the inequity of the access to that time that most people would like to see an extension if if we could do it so it is clearly on the agenda did christine thank you got it you got it right david thank you yeah so we um i'm i don't know about the other board members but i'm getting a lot of questions about it um and some emails and stuff like that and i i my response has been that i know that you guys are planning it um we may want to give a bit more of an expectation as much

076of an expectation as that you can give because i think there are some families that are like why aren't we close to full time now like i want to be full-time now um and then there's a rising case count so and i heard today that there might i i i it's a group at rutgersfield a group of parents in weathersfield that might be stirring up for particular uh for extending so i think you're right i think people are talking about it and wondering why we don't do it but again it's very hard to explain and we're not going to get into it tonight but there are a lot of complicating factors and one of the complicating factors is that we want to safely keep these kids in pods and that means teachers have to be

077with the same pod or groups of teachers have to be with the same part all day which throws off completely your planning periods and your duty-free lunches and your intensive time so we've got to get this figured out my guess is to do it it's it's it's probably never going to be back to a full day 2 30 but i think we can add time to the day and that'll help instructionally and hopefully it'll help parents with some of the child care issues yeah that's what i've been that's what i've been telling all the parents that asked me is that contractually we probably can never go to a full day because of the pod structure and that's the expectation that they need to have but that we're working on it yeah and i think too

078i mean i've been getting more questions like a week ago but i'm not i haven't gotten much of anyone saying anything in the past week because of all the case rises so i think people are also a little understanding at this point around it and also i think everyone's just getting a little more nervous yeah so patty put in the chat box that she was on a statewide union president's meeting today and the physicians on the meeting are still recommending the pod structure so yes i think the construction is working and i think i think that the the cases that we've had in the supervisor reunion and um the contact racing the state's response to our case that shows that what we're doing is quite effective the other thing nikki i think we can be

079proud of is that we've right from the beginning we've been five days a week we we we don't do this your your child is getting on monday then they're out on tuesday everybody's out on wednesday then your child's back on thursday we just never bought that so i i've i have felt you know pretty confident that that we what we've got is every child that wants to be in school five days a week is there but yeah i agree i think i was i'm impressed that we pulled that off um and i also still want to give a shout out to everybody especially the nurses this this is still working even with the case rise and i'm knocking on every piece of wood in my office so did you see sarah's question in the chat

080box too before you move on i did not did you nikki uh oh are we adding um so sarah's question is are we adding a morning meeting question about multi-family gatherings or what i mean is to the to the questions you answer when you drop your kids off in the morning are we going to ask people have you gathered with another family i mean it's you know we've been talking about that sarah and i i don't know what to do because there are some families that transport other families children to school because that's the only way they have to get to school there are kids that travel home that way there are kids that have child care in multiple in somebody else's home so i'm yeah what do i do i mean that's essential they

081need child care and they are definitely mixing homes for child care some families because they have to sarah one of the things i did think of those i think after the thanksgiving break and after that remote week we are gonna have to at least on the first day or two we're gonna have to ask did you travel over the holiday and did you know did you know we're gonna have to figure that out because that was clearly part of the order um but i agree with christine i think on a daily basis it's tricky it's tricky it's tricky even asking i mean families are doing the best they can and you know now you're not even supposed to take your child with you to the grocery store that's not essential but what if you're a

082single mom and that's the only thing you can do so it's complicated but i i'm under the um thinking that we should survey our parents before the break and just you know if you're going to do it you do it no judgment no i mean it's we need to keep our kids safe when they come back and knowing ahead of time would be really important i think yeah yeah and i think along those same lines um knowing ahead of time and also helping those parents do the right thing yeah um so because i i didn't know about the manuscript need testing um and so asking parents to be honest and then giving them the tools to do it the right way even though they're doing something they're not supposed to be doing that right again

083if you've got a child flying in from out of state and you bought that ticket two months ago i mean it just gets it gets very tricky so yeah scott thanks yeah um i just i i'm questioning the um so maybe maybe david or christine can answer this i mean what's the deal with the one month of the one week that you're planning on staying remote after the holidays when we everywhere else we hear that two weeks is a good amount of um quarantining and so it doesn't sound like you're the plan really goes with this science that from health vermont no it it accommodates seven days with the test the negative test it doesn't accommodate the 14 days that's right the test is not test takes how many days to get an answer and

084it it it depends i mean it's taking a little bit longer now um but it depends where you go for tests i mean it is something that we we to be honest we were hoping the governor would make a a mandate for the whole state and that hasn't happened yet but would it be safer to just go two weeks remote after in my opinion it would be but that's just my opinion yeah i'm sorry the timing on the tests i had in my mind i'm thinking of the uh the rolling employee testing yeah yeah that surveillance testing yeah that's different but on the on the other hand scott it's like then kids that need to be in school aren't in school so it's really a hard i mean it's a tough decision what it will

085do scott is it will let's say somebody has to travel or that they bought the plane ticket the kids got to come home so they've traveled you know instead of you know 14 days of quarantine even with this with that remote week they'll only have to quarantine for another you know that next week essentially so it'll it'll be better and some some folks i heard that woodstock and she and that may have changed but i heard that woodstock and uh is just going to go back right after monday after thanksgiving and i have heard other people that have said they've taken the two weeks and then you've got two rivers down in the cavendish area that's that's saying they're not going to go back at all between thanksgiving christmas so people are all over the

086place and it's just trying to find the right compromise to uh keep the kids engaged they're learning and everybody's safe it's not it's not easy thank you that i think that i'm kind of glad that we're giving people a week to do the right thing um because i do think that there's going to be families that have to get together um but i don't i would disagree with the two week because for all the families that aren't going to get together um these kids aren't allowed to have play dates they're not allowed to um so our you know the kids my kids are gonna go two weeks without um any interaction so yeah it's it's gonna be a long haul and it's gonna be a long winter and i think school is gonna be the

087one thing that these kids really look forward to so and i heard today that they and this doesn't this makes sense right that then we can anticipate after that two weeks you know that we would have been out let's say that there's probably going to be another thanksgiving spike right because it takes two weeks for all that to incubate around those families that did get together and i think we're just gonna have to keep an eye on it that might be when the state says hey look this is always what's gonna happen but they really will be out for christmas so it's fine what's that beth it will be out for christmas yeah then we'll be home for christmas exactly yeah and then we'll be looking at that semester end date of january 22nd we'll

088be off like again yeah i mean i i think the kudos to the schools because not just ours but i mean we've done i mean the schools are you know they're masking and they're they're in pods and they're distancing and that's why the transmission is not happening in schools it's it's coming into the schools from these other kinds of social gatherings so i think the schools are a great example of if if the whole society lived like we were living when kids arrive at 8 30 we we'd probably have this thing licked by now but people are just stubborn and i i read a stat today that you know 35 if you know of the people still think that you know this is a conspiracy and that this mask thing is a joke and you

089know it's just it's so it's so crazy yep okay is there anything else on covet update i think we're good um okay so uh the anti-racism task force um i'll give a quick update on that and let christine and david chime in um so since i last gave an update um ariel and jameson from writing wrongs have come back from their exam period and reengaged and scheduled a meeting with the administrative team at the su level and that meeting happened last week um and that um just for some of you went through a meeting um it's just to kind of have an open dialogue about um where the schools stand on racism um and what's said in that meeting is kept in that meeting but it helps ariel and jameson kind of frame um the

090concerns of our community and um what where we really need to go um so the administrative team met last week um and now we have a pool of teachers um who also very much want to be engaged on the task force so the plan as far as i've seen in the emails is that ariel and jameson are going to do another meeting with the teachers and then my understanding is that as soon as that is done they're going to draft up a draft policy to bring to the anti-racism task force um and the anti-racism task force will take a look and decide how we expand our community engagement outside of that do you guys want to add anything that was perfect i think you did it no yeah okay awesome so i'm checking that off

091the um agenda uh portraiture for graduates on here um i kind of feel like our graduate is now the strategic plan and that we should just say exactly and not put it on the agenda again yeah the board was supposed to vet the strategic plan essentially i mean yeah just in the anticipation of the su trying to adopt that next time yeah and i and i've i i assume everybody's got it i could pull it up on the screen let me know if you want me to yeah so um so i emailed it out right before the meeting uh to the board members um so if you guys want to take a second and pull it up um or we can have david pull it up on the screen um and uh what so my

092thought here i want to pull it up on my screen hey nikki is is this diff okay that's exactly it that's so that's what laurie brown um shared i just wanted to wonder if that was the same as what you shared it was in your pack yeah i forwarded yeah oh right so it wasn't i also forwarded um some additional documents that angie pulled together yeah so the recommendation just so we know that uh this is the third this might be the third and last board to look at this is to really focus on the goals and then that's the most important part for the boards and then also the objectives are secondary i wouldn't get into all those draft strategies and notes and you know acronyms and that's the weeds i mean i think

093it's really do those goals reflect the direction that you know uh we think we want to be heading in so um so my plan right now is to go through the goals and the objectives um and make sure that we're hitting them and um we can ask questions of um angie who was on the writing team um but i was also going to propose a two-minute break for people to do jumping jacks get a glass of water or hit the restroom if you might need to and then we'll dive into this or start reading it if you haven't had a chance to read it i see angie clapping so we'll see you back for um well we'll go with we'll go with four minutes at 7 30. um we'll have everybody back on thank you

094guys stay tuned okay we're starting to come back slow but sure i uh i feel like breaks are important especially when you're about to dive into the weeds um that was a great idea yeah it's also important that i don't know you guys know me i need to move um knowing that we're about to dive into the weeds i needed to get some chocolate chips and move and uh i'm good now i love that chocolate chips is your go-to snack that's my little pile that's my jam nikki right there yeah the extra dark ones the 70 percent it also keeps me awake because i have not successfully time shifted yet and i don't know when i'm gonna successfully time shift because i would have thought i'd done it by now okay um are we all

095here um okay i think we should dive in i think all the board members are back right let's see colleen sarah buff scott good okay um so i guess i'm going to read the goal because i'm the board chair but um reading out loud is not my thing so we're going to see how this goes so goal number one is student success wsesu will improve students learning experiences because the personal educational vocational and civic successes of our students are incl increasingly challenged in our rapidly changing world so this goal does come directly out of the portrait work students need to not just know content because content changes so quickly and even the skill sets that students need are so wide and varied and those skill sets are even changing quickly so we need students to

096um be engaged in their own learning and be able to be flexible continuous learners by the time they graduate so any questions on the goal okay and i also i'm also going to take a step back um i'm channeling elizabeth burrows right now in that a ton of work went into um drafting this from a whole committee and so while as the board we're responsible for approving it and making sure that we agree with it um unless there's something that you really strongly disagree with we're not going to get into the wordsmithing um and we're gonna um hold faith that that team of people um did a good job and um and i know that they went back and forth and wordsmith a lot so um i just wanted to put that out there okay

097so to achieve student success draft uh the objective one is um wsesu will create a learning framework that guides the implementation of deeper learning which is the portrait um from pre-k through 12 as evidenced by the framework supported presented to the superintendent by 2021. um so that seems kind of obvious to me any questions angie go for it just a word about the time frame so uh mike asked us to have a time frame on there so it is a rough estimate and because it if it says june 2021 it doesn't mean the work starts in may of it means we have up through june 2021 to get the work started and completed so the time frames could could be adjustable depending on our priorities um as boards thank you angie uh sarah it i

098don't see any language in here about proficiency and i know there's been such a you know the last few years have been so much about proficiency is is there something that's sort of replacing that concept or i i'm just curious about the um it feel that feels like a shift it's um the learning framework is um what will be uh that proficiencies will be feeding into the learning framework okay but i guess when there's a lot of ways to look at proficiencies but from my standpoint i often think of proficiencies as related to how we test and how we do on um the s-pacs and those kind of proficiencies um and there is a shift away from that um through the portrait work um people really felt like that that teaching to the test was

099not beneficial um moving forward which i don't think that we specifically talked to the test ever but um that it was okay to move away from that and it was okay to see um different scores on the s backs as long as our students were meeting our expectations of um being more proficient at different skill sets that i don't know if i said that right but okay are there any other questions about objective one we have we have ten pages to get through so i am going to kind of fly okay um objective 2 is wsesu will create an assessment system supportive of the student's deeper learning by july 2022 as evidenced by the plan submitted to the superintendent i think that one's pretty self-explanatory okay um and i i do think that uh one

100of the keys in here um as far as the strategies go is develop reporting tools and processes that tell the story um because the assessment is not going to be um you know specifically can this kid do two plus two it's it's more of is this kid capable of um broader learning in math and so we're moving away from uh yes they can do this and towards a um this is the story of how they learn to do this so the kid can see how they moved through their own story teaching the kid how to learn okay objective three wsesu will create an inventory of extended learning opportunities for grades pre-k through 12 by july 2023 as evidenced by the inventory being shared with the superintendent um so this david you want to scroll down

101um that that goal is um that we don't just want students learning in school we want students to be learning all the time inside and outside school so we want to provide additional opportunities any comments feedbacks okay so goal two is culture um and i uh i will take another step back and say that um when uh patel for kids creates or helps um entities create a strategic plan um almost always the first one is student success because that's why we're here um all of us and that's why they're doing it and then the other one is culture because culture is critical um both to student success and um to moving a school system forward um and so those two don't necessarily come out of our portrait planning but they do match with what our

102portrait planning was um so go to gold2 is culture uh wsesu will strengthen abroad in the connections between and among staff and the core work of education in pursuit of greater staff engagement well-being innovation inclusion and resolve so the idea here is that teachers that feel supported are more willing to go out and risk to take more risks that might provide broader learning and they'd be supported in that environment um so wsesu will develop a portrait will develop a portrait of a wesu member and share that with the superintendent um so these are competencies of what we expect our staff to look like yeah i think the idea there would be if our portrait includes empathy then we want to we want to define what empathy looks like in a staff member so it's i

103think this is an important one i agree i think i'll help you all not but yeah no i think that this is a really important one so objective two is wsesu will design a plan to provide professional development about best practice collaboration as evidenced by the plan being shared with principals by july 22. um and i think this is bringing everybody up to speed on the way that we want our students to be educated and giving those teachers those best best practices yeah glad scott uh scott didn't i was just getting a little bit but um i also think that the pandemic and the way we're in these pods and the way people are collaborating and working together i mean i think it's you know it's not exactly the representation that we're looking for but

104i think it's forced us to really move into this java-like staff collaboration faster than we might have under other circumstances um objective three wsesu will design a plan for annual big ideas summit to explicitly build on the su's annual calendar of a recurring process of innovation um by july 2023 um i uh i'm super excited about this part because this is um a requirement that our staff teach each other the things that went really well and i think right now we don't have as much of that so this is really exciting i will say that one of the changes that sean whalen felt really strongly about was um the conduct a failure audit um it's not it's not really an audit um it's it's more to look at the look at where we've messed up

105so that we can improve um uh it's uh i forget i used to have another term for that but i lost it um but it's really diving deep for improvement um not necessarily saying you failed there and you failed there it's more holistic um yeah and i wonder too looking at this process is real really interesting it seems amazingly educational and how how could we incorporate student learning within this of like having students observe and be part of this because i think them seeing other adults around them risk succeed fail is huge and um that would be really intriguing i agree um i don't know how you do it i'm just saying yeah well there's you know in the notes there's the gift of failure um which is a book and just to be able

106to bring it to incorporate some of those practices with the students i think would be well and having it be a safe enough place too that teachers can share their struggles of what they're doing and succeeding and failing on and doesn't with students and to be able to share that process with their students um i think it could be really amazing i completely agree um okay so objective 4 under culture is wsesu will conduct a diversity audit again the word audit is not meant to be punitive to determine if gaps exist between s-u practices and policies um the portrait and a healthy culture um so again this is just to look at everything to make sure that everything um matches with how we actually want to be not with the way that we've always done

107things um and i i see this objective as um kind of a out with the old if it if it didn't work get rid of it um if it doesn't match what we're trying to do get rid of it um and i think that's really important because i think that our a lot of our staff is holding on to old ideas um and maybe just needs the freedom to push them away but again the word audit um i guess i would like to see changed i'll bring that up at the su meeting um okay any questions on culture um i know that a lot of you weren't part of the portrait um but you've heard some of what we've talked about happened during the portrait and the goals of the portrait is really to create

108a more freeing um school environment for everybody and so hopefully what you saw in those two goals aims of what you heard scotty of something or yeah i was just gonna say that some of those dates in in the objectives under culture particularly one and number two had a uh says july 22 it's just making me think because i'm thinking negotiations what has to be accomplished to um if this is really going to be changing expectations uh that the district the employer has of the employee maybe i may be wrong about that but what do you think david i think i think it does relate a little bit to our need to you know expand those professional development days to some degree i mean we've we've had that conversation in negotiations before about you know

109do we have enough time really to do that type of collaboration and planning around best practices so i i think it could have an impact scott it won't it won't come up this time but i think as we start into the next section it will right thank you wendy um to for getting rid of the audit ideas the continuous improvement review um when do you put that in the minutes and then we can bring that up i think that's a good review is a good word yeah yeah and she's got it there we go angie's got it okay we're good thanks okay uh goal number three is student wellness and engagement wsesu will further integrate the whole student into their education so that students increasingly see relevance purpose and connections between their learning experiences and

110their individual and collective lives um the idea here is that um battelle recognized that our students are struggling with that we have some mental health issues in our schools um and behavioral issues and that um some of our students are just really struggling with their lives um and so we want to find a way to make sure that our school educates the whole student so that we teach kids um how to find emotional health um so along those lines uh draft objective one is wsesu will create and fund a student mental health and social emotional leader positioned to guide the su actions for the su school and classroom support of mental health by june 22. um so the the leader is just going to coordinate at the su level i say just as john says

111just as a four-letter word um so so uh there this person will be a coordination person to make sure that all of the su schools um are really making emotional health a focus for all of our students which i think is important um i think we've done a good job of that in heartland um but i think that having that go as you why would be good yeah we have and nikki just so in these next few objectives you'll see in a k you know a position stated like this one and keep in mind that it doesn't necessarily mean a new full-time hire but it might be you know reassigning somebody's work or re-engaging them in a different kind of work it doesn't necessarily have to be a new hire and i hope it isn't

112okay yeah objective two would be student voice and choice uh will be operationalized at the su school and classroom levels as evidenced by a report to the issue board july or june 2023 [Music] so students are more engaged when they're when they can use their own voice so i think that that one's pretty clear um directive objective three um ws esu will engage will institute flexible pathways for middle school through graduation as evidenced by board action on the proposals of these pathways um so the portrait definitely said that uh kids should have flexible pathways which is also the way the state is going and so this is just kind of merging those two directions um and keeping that going and hopefully engaging our students more um and i don't see any comments so we'll keep

113going uh objective four is w-a-e wsasu will decide how to implement the concept of student advisory boards at the school the su level and sq level so that representation of respective student population can inform how their education looks and feels as evidenced by implementation report in june 2024 so again giving students more power will help them be more engaged and hopefully create a better education for themselves there are some good models for that out there too okay continuing to fly through this ten page document we are now on goal four information and communication wsesu will improve the quality and effectiveness of its two-way communication so that the stakeholder trust understanding and support will continue to advance the education of and opportunities for its students this objective came up because there was a recognized lack of

114communication between the school and the outward community um and then there was also some communication issues internally so uh draft objective number one is wsesu will identify an information and communications leader for the su to guide the work in this area so this is just to make sure that all communications that come out um reflect the values of the schools and the supervisory union um and i think the expectation will be that this person also teaches the teachers how to communicate more effectively so there's a lot of expectations there uh objective two wsesu will identify a data leader to guide and support the informational needs of the su um and so we still need to collect data so that we can continue to move forward um and i think that's pretty self-explanatory i think one

115of the challenges in trying to um up or students education drilling down at data feels to me like you could also um narrow it so i think that there's some challenges and i think this is a really important position but i also think that there's some challenges in not um putting too much weight on the data that's my personal opinion though and my family's home um okay uh objective uh where are we three um wsesu will develop a plan for informing and reporting the process of the strategic progress of the strategic plan as evidenced by a presentation to the board i think regular updates of the strategic plan are going to be critical okay so objective 4 wsesu will develop a systematic collection of student interests as part of its regular collection of student data

116to inform educational programming and personalization of the students learning experiences i think it would be awesome if we could teach what the students are engaged in any comments okay we're going to keep going last one uh objective five wsesu will conduct a review of all major sources and pieces of su and building level communication to validate that it conveys the priorities and tone of its values today um so for those of you who weren't part of the portrait um i just feel like this is really important to bring up um they reviewed the uh battelle for kids reviewed our student handbooks um and found that our student handbooks were incredibly incredibly negative um everything was written in a punitive language um and that it wasn't welcoming um and so that's kind of the idea i

117mean one example of where this objective is really important in that if we can we can make people feel welcome and excited to be part of the community and not feel like they're already being watched um that we might just have a more supportive community so um that would be the strategic plan in 25 minutes pretty good what was that there's a lot in there i love it the the language is so pretty um easy on my ears i mean i like it compared to strategic plan readings that i've been in on let's put it that way i really like the goal number four i seem to go hand in hand with the reason communication policy at the seo level so that just makes sense to me appreciate it thank you thank you yeah and

118i think the committee did an excellent job and angie's can take some credit but in that notes notes column not that you have to get into the words but there's a ton of resources in there and links that are going to help us guide this work we talked about um creating a simplified version of this for the for the general public because it is a very complex document and it really is meant for uh lots of educators speak in there and it really is meant to be an inter more of an internal document and that we can create one of our first things we might want to do is create the strategic plan at a glance type a document that is more user-friendly for our um for our communities i think this um this strategic

119planning process and outcomes highlights seems to be a start on that that second page it's a good outline of the goals and parts of it yeah i agree i think that that's a good start and i think that was put together by patel right angie consultation with angie you were part of that too weren't you when though yes uh i think mike did an overview of it yeah just a good outline we will work on this place to start with it's going to give us a good it'll give us a good framework for the next you know i'd say at least five years if not seven years of work that's why the dates are all need to be adjusted a little bit because some of them are pretty aggressive some of them not aggressive enough

120but and i think i think the thing to remember here and it's in the middle of this pandemic it's hard to remember this but this started with about 60 people sitting in a gymnasium and and that and i'd say we averaged between 45 and 60 community members that really did a lot of brainstorming and all those notes might get captured all those notes so not only did that go into the portrait piece but it also a lot of that was captured in this document piece because probably about 30 to 35 people stuck with us through that strategic piece so i mean it really is you know uh uh i i guess you'd say it's a collective document of of a variety of stakeholders and everybody won't agree with everything in there and you know teachers

121had representatives but they're gonna see a lot of teachers will see this for the first time when we roll it out but um i don't think they'll be surprised because and i know patty's on the line but a lot of the stuff in there is stuff we've been we've been talking about and doing anyways so i i don't think it's going to be a surprise yeah i don't i would guess there's not you know there's some stuff in here that's probably not new i just love that i love the body of work and having a plan not that we don't have a plan already but you know freshening it up maybe or revisiting right not to minimize it in any way it's really this huge body of work but um it it's exciting to me

122to feel like this collective representation of our community came together and agreed on some ways to go regardless of whether we meet deadlines or not we've i just think it's great to have something to work toward so while nikki is uh nikki's back okay we have a new participant okay so so what's going to happen uh next is that um this is going to go to the s.u board where it's going to have to be approved um it'll be discussed on the 23rd hopefully approved on the 30th if if we need to have two meetings yet yeah that's that's what it it was um and uh as many not all of you are on the su board um but as many as could attend um because this really isn't a plan for the su it's

123a plan for everybody um and so we really need to have everybody in on that meeting and part of the discussion and uh make it so that we truly own it um i personally um i know you guys were well i was dealing with other things um you guys were talking about your impressions but i it's time like we hired battelle to help us revolutionize how we're doing education and i think that this is an exciting document that really um turns it over to the administrative team to really revolutionize um what we're doing and i'm i'm really excited about it and i hope that um i don't know like in a few years maybe our kids will just be like this is amazing things have changed and so i'm i'm really excited and hopeful so

124okay uh this is uh geopatty um so we're gonna set the next agenda i think i'm just gonna review the agenda real quick to make sure i covered everything okay yeah um there's a special fu meeting tomorrow yeah yeah that's something urgent or like because i'm not on the su board but should i like it the agenda looks pretty light no it's light it's very light yeah yeah it's very quick i i would say if we're if we're there ten minutes but what that does mean is the ones who are on the su board which would be colleen scott and nikki if you could try to show up that that that would help us get that done yeah six o'clock you've all got the link yep and we're not going to any sports so that's

125not an issue let's set this next agenda i'm going to go with the same so we got the principles report um superintendent uh covid which just went seamless um budget budget we don't need to do the strategic plan anti-racism and that would do it can we compare thanksgiving menus yeah yeah sure want that as an agenda item i like that um okay is there anything else with anybody we're not we're not no one can eat together so we might as well at least discuss it after the fact um now are we going to meet on the what are we the third monday yeah so that would be the 21st does that work that would be december 21st not going anywhere i'm going anywhere still be here so it could be any day yeah yeah yeah

126i think that we're good with it that's fine i'm just gonna move that date right now so you'll get a new invite okay great when just when is the last day of school before christmas those are remote days in the calendar at this point 21st 22nd 23rd and then the break starts on the 24th okay great um oh and this was one of those years where you really could travel because you had two weeks almost or long oh wow a this is not forever we will get back to normal again yes vaccines are on the way i know that was good news today okay so we've got that um i'm looking through the radar list for those of you don't have it it's community engagement social emotional engagement preparation and variety special education [Music] physical

127plant security proficiency-based education and processed um i feel like considering covid we're doing a reasonable job but i do feel like it's important for us to keep those things in mind um okay so i would take a motion to move to executive session excuse me nikki yeah excuse me yeah so i just wanted to um not jump away from i think it's really important what beth brought up early in the meeting recognizing um our role in what white supremacy in this forum and um i don't know how to it seems like we need to continue to work on that i mean i'm obviously good are we really okay with our in our meeting night being the same night that the select board meets no i think that needs to change i don't mean to that's

128kind of a jump of thought process there he's on my mind but um it seems like something you know we keep we keep having it at the same time of our meeting at the same time of day the same day of the month it's not so much what what the current conflict is it's just that [Music] things like i don't know exactly what that might look like but i think i think we tried to um i think we tried to address that um by having our forums and stuff when we um when we could i think those listening forums were really um they were pretty well attended and um i think they were somewhat successful um now we can't do that i suppose we could do one remotely yeah that's a good reminder i appreciate

129that yeah yeah i guess i don't know why i brought that up but it's just something that uh a couple things on my mind i would encourage everyone to read the link that christine just sent that's um because it is it's really and it's the same i mean this is as a non-profit like this is how we function it's like a direct look in the mirror of you know what how we function and then how maybe it's not a welcoming environment for everybody and um i mean yeah i mean one of the things is you know worship of the written word we just spent 45 minutes minutes worshipping the word of this document you know and how is that you know how is that you know welcoming to other cultures and other like how does

130that work and so i think it's really i would just encourage folks to to read what christine just said and just think about it a little bit and and just give some thought into how how does our board function how can we keep each other in check around these different topics you know and um and how can we recruit more people to participate in in you know just coming to a board meeting but also um you know running for office um yeah like that that's just i think it'd be just something as a board we can try to commit to i agree and thank you for christine for sending that out um okay uh so should we have a motion to move to executive session because the move okay beth second second colleen okay um

131so all those in favor of moving to an executive session to um further discuss budgeting uh there was one other thing that i can't remember negotiations to some you know yeah negotiations um yeah so budgeting and negotiations um all those in favor please say aye aye yeah and wendy i'll let you know when when we come out and who moved to a turn you read my mind thank you very much buddy yeah thanks for coming wendy i did invite you to the next one you're becoming a regular fixture around here so oh i'll be sure to look for it in my mail david turn off the record recording well done thanks scott we've forgotten that before believe me