WS Board Meeting - November 10th, 2020

001thank you we'll call the meeting to order at 603 and we always begin with the pledge of allegiance ready i pledge allegiance indivisible with liberty and justice i uh i've notified the my fellow board members and members of the administration that i'm going to resign at the beginning of our meeting tonight and so that's what i'm going to do i i resign from the weathersfield school board effective immediately i think that is really effective immediately so what would happen now without a chair okay i guess i have to take over the meeting as well yeah you you would and uh you you could do one of two things you could just stay accept sean's um resume yeah there needs to be a motion to accept and then the other thing too is you can keep

002going as vice chair and then when you get a new member to replace sean you could then vote for a new chair or you could take that vote tonight if you wanted to but it's really up to you but the first thing should be to accept his resignation okay can i make a motion that we accept sean rayland's resignation with regret you have any seconds i'll second that okay that passed unanimously i didn't hear any nays um okay the next thing up on the agenda is the approval of the minutes from the previous meeting on october 13th 2020. can i get a motion to accept those minutes so moved this is robin robinson second markle second can we have an opportunity to make corrections yeah does anyone have any corrections i do okay go ahead

003first off the date is incorrect it says october 8th oops good catch it's october 13th okay second under uh financial updates one two three it's the third paragraph down in the middle it said that jean marie said we need a few more special ed teachers no we don't we just have our three but we did need more special education paraprofessionals okay do you want to change teachers to paraprofessionals yes special ed paraprofessionals um anne-marie i just noticed uh i don't think rebecca is here tonight is she oh no so that means that somebody's gonna have to scratch me yeah that would be me right kristen you don't mind doing it well i'm not going to get it you're going to do it anyway that's good so can you uh i can also send you the

004recording kristen if you want just okay yeah that'd be good are there any other changes or amendments so then do we just vote then david yeah then you just say all the favor of them doesn't look like anybody's opposed so we've done that okay um do we have any changes or additions to the agenda i think we'll have to i'm looking at the agenda now um i think wait a minute let me find it yeah there it is i think we're going to have to no i see it okay that's on there we're going to have to appoint the bac but we're also going to have to appoint somebody from this board to be on the negotiations committee because sean was on that committee and will also need to i think we need an executive

005session to yeah we can talk yeah we could talk about that in executive session sure so i'd like to add an executive session and at the end to talk about the board and what we're gonna do about sean's leaving and filling in his missing seats that he had yeah plus we can give an update on negotiations too while we're in uh executive sessions okay anything else okay hearing nothing we'll move on to public participation do we have anyone here that wants to speak yeah it doesn't look like there's anybody if you want to just give it a second but it looks like no okay um items for discussion the principal search committee update who is going to give that your mike's off david is meredith on the line i wanted one of the uh either

006or jessica i i i jessica there's jessica i'm on do you want to just give a quick update as to where we are yeah sure so we've been meeting uh we have our second meeting for with the whole committee uh thursday um we sort of we can't create our mission statement to have that reviewed in our meeting um list of questions and sort of have decided a game plan and timeline of going forward of candidate reveal uh reviewed uh questions and then sort of interview process yeah the the executive board uh is uh meredith and jessica is uh also on the executive board of nicole i don't see her tonight but so we've you know that committee's been very instrumental in moving the process forward we're going to start looking at resumes probably over the

007weekend we've got right now 22 applications they may not all make that first cut because i noticed a couple of them today were not licensable they have to be able to get a principal's license in vermont but we're still going to have i think you know between probably between 20 and 30 resumes so that that's a good that's good news i think that's it trying to mute myself sorry um okay the next item is the wscsu strategic plan discussion i guess that's angie or you're muted david yeah i can bring it up on the screen if you want andrew you can or we don't need to bring it up i mean it's really up to if you want to talk people through it that would be great yes can i have a second just to

008think so i guess also angela paris matt last what was it two weeks ago david with mike nicholson we talked about it and the whole idea of sharing the plan was with the rest of the board members was to give the board members an opportunity to um look at the plan uh to uh see if there were any questions that you had um and the board chair function was to was to share that out i don't know if it was i mean i know we've shared it in the past but um did you guys even have a chance to look at it so ann marie did robin did not mark did not and kristen did so um the idea is that this is a um document that we will live with for the next three

009five seven years depending on what you know what the time frame is and i think it's important that you are able to um be behind it and feel like it is um that you're familiar with it and that you can support it um [Music] and so we went through i mean we went through the process and so i guess i don't know i'm i'm sorry i'm just kind of stunned by sean's resignation so i'm just i'm just like oh and that was part of this process so um sorry i'm not being very articulate but um it's just what kind of discussion can we have dave i mean david if uh robin and mark haven't had an opportunity to look at it yet yeah it did go out it uh um am i okay i want

010to make sure my mic was on yeah it did go out with the packet i mean we've still got time to look at it in the end it's most important that those members of the supervisory union board look at it i would say if there's anything i mean this this represents about a year and a half's worth of work i mean we if you recall we had you know anywhere from you know 60 to you know it ranged from 40 to 60 community members from all four towns who participated in the early stages of this and then that got to phase two which was about probably dropped to about 30 30 participants uh and then the the the final group there was a writing team angie chaired the writing team with mike uh and uh

011and the the writing team is the team that put the final draft of the strategies together most of the strategies are initiatives that i think represent what that committee uh uh felt were priorities um and the goals are pretty simple right a matter of fact i would think all of the all of the notes and strategies i mean that's kind of getting into the weeds i i think for board members and s3 board members to look at those goals are critical and uh and to maybe look at those objectives would be good the goals come under headings of student success uh culture and i i kind of bridge culture and climate you're right and how people are feeling uh treated and sort of that a general sense of of of safety and health uh student

012wellness and engagement was goal three and you know that's been a big part of our our mission over the last several years and uh we've had that wellness team present to us several times and we want to keep that work going and then uh goal four was information and communication we think that a lot of times we're we're building a good protocols at the su level we're building good relationships at the board levels but sometimes that communication doesn't trickle out to our communities so there was a there was a real emphasis on getting better at communicating with our general community our parents and i know that that happens certainly at the building level but not always necessarily at the strategic systems uh level um and that's it uh so what i would suggest is anne

013marie's on the su board uh mark is on the su board um and uh we're gonna have to appoint another su board member later on because you need to have three members represent uh weathersfield i would say for those who haven't had a chance to read it to read it if there's any thoughts or comments or suggestions you should relay those to either mark or anne marie as su board members and then we're meeting on the 23rd and we're dedicating a a a good part of that meeting to this strategic plan and that doesn't mean that other board members can't attend kristin robin you know i i'll invite everybody to that board meeting since it is about this this plan and and i think it's important as angie said because this will guide our work

014uh for the next uh three to five years if not if not uh longer and so anyhow there aren't any questions i think that's probably the easiest way to deal with this certainly we'll take questions tonight if you want to i do i i just want to highlight a few things in the plan um because we uh we're at mountain county school district board meeting last night so i think that those questions might help um you guys as well um in uh goal two no three and four there are um sorry i'm trying to scroll i'm trying to scroll the screen and i don't own it i i'm it's not my screen um in goal three there is uh right here on under the objective number one is um to fill a leadership role for

015student wellness and engagement and then there are two more roles in goal four uh someone for to manage communications for the um across the supervisory union um between the schools and also with our community and um a data leader someone to help uh uh put pull together the data and use the data from a variety of sources so that we're making database decisions these are not necessarily new roles um when we were when the writing team was um creating them we were thinking about how um the re design of education would may open up space in roles that already exist to um to just uh what do you call it absorb the that those duties of those leaders so it might be just taking a an existing role and changing the job description to include

016parts of those roles um the other thing that i want to highlight and i can't remember what strategy it's under is that we do have a um strategy for a curriculum audit and one of the questions one of the board members was asking about well it seems like that would be something that our racial um anti-racism task force would be interested in doing and absolutely that's what we were thinking about we knew that we would be forming a task force uh we were writing this end of june into july and early august and we knew that a task force the board had already um stated that they wanted to put together an anti-racism task force and even last fall david is as part of his equity network work and um what we were talking about

017a curriculum audit anyway and doing that sort of thing so um those are the things that i just wanted to mention that came up in that board meeting oh the other thing that came up was how can we take this plan and kind of take it out of eduspeak and put it more in late late terms so that and it's a hefty document there's a lot of details and that's really um and if we want this to be a public facing document how can we um simplify it make it more straightforward and um if you want to get to the level of detail of course you can read the whole plan but um a simplified version of this may be helpful for our communities our teachers our staff also i think just to keep us

018remind us of what it what our strategic plan is yeah i think that simplification is going to be critical before we communicate it out to the public there was some talk too that we might want to do each district might want to do a a forum where we just sort of let both know without a lot of gobbly and acronyms you know what we're really trying to uh to accomplish i mean i think a lot of the plan too is very consistent with some of the work that the staff and they've been working really hard in these in these pods and getting you know getting kids into you know really good space uh place based education getting kids outside uh you know doing the integrated uh development work uh and it's been a work in

019progress but this plan is very consistent with uh with all of that so uh i would say on the 23rd if people want to be there and participate if not you want to get your questions to your su representatives that would be good um and again sometimes when a document is put together by that many people um you know it doesn't represent the need for a ton of change but certainly if there's something you think we're missing or something that's in there that shouldn't be uh you know you should let somebody know [Music] that and i think that's good uh ann unless you want to do something else nope that sounds good um so our next item is the fy 22 budget um i don't know who's going to be taking the lead on that

020who's presenting gene you're going to present yes i'm going to present and drop the entire budget to give you bottom line but all i do i'll uh do the educational piece and my kitty cats are giving me a hard time they're laying on my notebooks and so if i'm struggling a little here so bj bj i know you're there if you wouldn't mind pulling up the november second memorandum to the board thank you and if you can make that big enough so folks could see that's great i will tell you that i certainly can send a copy of this and plan b to anybody here tonight my faculty and staff have already seen it but if there's parents or interested community folks you shoot me an email and i'll make sure you get your own

021copy of this there isn't anything in this document that you shouldn't be able to see so i want to start by saying that it was very important to me and in particular because the superintendent asked all principals to be really careful in this budget year because we really don't know what's going to happen we don't know about the covid funds we don't know about the cla we don't know about so many the vermont education fund so when bj and i met with ed back on october 26th we actually prepared a budget now this would be our part of the budget the budget clearly is bigger than just our part but we made a point of coming in 47 700 a little bit more than that under what we did last year and we did that

022purposely because you're going to see when ed presents tonight the budget's up 7 so i think that will give you and ed's going to give you a real clear explanation of what that entails but the point i'm making is that the part that we control at the k8 level is minuscule compared to tuition for example teachers salary that's negotiated insurance those are things outside of our control but the little bit that bj and i could control we did do zero-based budgeting and so we really looked at the bare minimum of what we needed and that brought us in close to 48 000 under what we recommended last year so even though you're going to look at the budget and say that's not level funded from our perspective we were under i think it was like

023.78 so we really tried to do our best to be good soldiers in that regard now if you notice we have 237 students anticipated for next year we have a boom in that kindergarten class on the books we have 33 kids 33. now you know one year i had 17 on the books on the first day of school 28 kids showed up so i'm a little nervous what's going to happen because right now you've got 33 on the books so we'll see how many show up next fall we had to take into consideration all of the remote kids and the home study kids a lot of our kids that didn't come back this year is because of the pandemic many of them have indicated to angela and i that they will be returning in january

024so they have a property right to be educated and i can't predict if we'll be in a pandemic in the fall i can't predict if we'll be offering a remote choice so i had to include all kids so if you look at those numbers you'll see that we've got some pretty big class sizes i'm going to talk with you a minute in a minute about the local policy the ws esu policy on class size as well as school quality standards so with the exception of seventh and eighth grade we are absolutely in compliance even with these huge numbers and maybe all those kids won't return but it would be prudent of us to plan for that so bj if you want to scroll down just a little bit actually we can probably go right to

025the next page so one of the things you know when you look at a budget you should be looking at it from a a large perspective and i do have to say to you i am not familiar i'm more familiar with e-finance because it's the second year i've worked with it but i will tell you that when i built this budget with ed david and bj last october that was the fy 21 budget i was very confused by the way e-finance runs so i kept saying to bj i'll be glad to look at the year-end balance i'll be glad to be able to itemize what we spent actual expenditures well you and i both know we stopped in march so the budget that i had in fy 21 i couldn't roll it over into fy

02622 because it's not natural budget we don't really we know for example that we didn't we stopped the drama production we know for example that sports stopped so you know we there were so many variables so we had to really start from scratch to look at this budget line by line i wanted to mention to you that we did a cost comparison for folks that left and folks that we hired and that's important to note because i want you to know that there was a savings of 35 000 and we didn't use names but you can tell if you look in the left hand column what the position was what the salary was and then what we're paying this year and what the difference is now we did have an additional expense and that was

027the lna who is a godsend and my nurse begged me to put her in the budget for fy22 and believe me we've all worked so hard it's it's just incredible what we've been able to do to keep kids safe but that doesn't happen on a dime that's been really hard work long hours weekend work lots of committee work and our our nurse is exhausted she rushed this week to get all the hearing tests in because you know if you saw the governor today you know he declared our numbers are up and you know red is all around us and he closed the state today you he doesn't want anybody coming into vermonter or leaving to go out unless it's essential travel so there's a lot of things going on we don't know what's going to

028happen but the nurse wanted to get as much assessment as she could get in if she didn't have the lna she couldn't do those kinds of things so i want you to know we did build it in next year's budget and let's go to um bj down a little more yeah i'm really sad about this but this is a savings from last year um well actually it's going to be in this year's budget so we couldn't have four wins this year we signed a contract with them we paid three thousand dollars the service we get in return is immeasurable that is the best program i've ever seen but we can't have volunteers in the building uh we had stipends that we saved we can't do glb can't do national gob can't do the spelling test

029can't just or the spelling bees we have two can't do student council can't do drama so because of all that we saved eleven thousand one hundred and there we can't do field trips so we automatically saved five thousand and as you know we couldn't get a world language teacher this year we had one and i don't blame her she felt she has a little boy at home and she didn't feel safe so we actually saved that amount of money as well as 500 supplies and bjf you would move that down just a little more is so wonderful thank you so what you're looking at right now is whenever you look at numbers and class size you have to look at what your policies say so the su policy is the same as the ws policy

030and it talks about great clusters so let's look at grade two so grade two it the policy says that the minimum average can be 15. the optimum is 15 to 18. well if you look at and you go back to the first page i have 82 kids next year projected in k2 if you divide that by five teachers that's 16 students we're in compliance and that's important for you to know i'm not sharing budget c as you recall in the last meeting mark youngling asked if i would prepare the budget and then do a proposed b in other words cuts that wouldn't devastate us but then a c if the budget went down i'd like to think in positive terms i do not want to share plan c i actually can't support plan c at

031this juncture if the budget went down in march and i did go back and look at the numbers i don't have them actually i do have them in my budget book so i'm just i'm using the old memory and i'm going to guess last year i want to say we passed bj 17 votes the year before maybe 25 the year before that may be 30 really low numbers which scare me that really scares me because some of those years we brought the budget we were lower than level funding it was amazing that we barely passed so i think mark's advice was right on in terms that of look ahead i don't want to share i didn't share it with teachers i don't want people frightened if the budget goes down you will have a plan

032and we'll meet on it we'll talk about it i'm not going to share it tonight the board does have copies of that so if you look at this chart three and four is in compliance five and six is in compliance seven and eight says that um the optimum for seven and eight is 15 to 22 and we are anticipating 25. so we're only three above the optimum numbers and remember whenever you're looking at numbers for the next year there's a mathematical factor that we can use called uh it's using attrition and mortality so it's quite possible that we could have um an average of 17 kids because we don't know how many are going to return in 7th and 8th grade so if you'd scroll down bj the staff the cat and i are sharing

033sharing space here so you're looking at school quality standards it's section 21 21.2 and if you'll see bolded it says classes in k through 3 when taken together shall average less than 20 students per teacher in grades 4 through 12 when taken together shall average fewer than 25 per teacher so we'll scroll down and you'll see those averages based on the figures and it's right under findings so based on the fy 22 student teacher ratio we are in compliance with class size for k-8 based on school quality standards and if you look k3 i'm going to have 106 students projected you divide that by seven teachers and it's 15 kids for four through eight we don't go to 12th grade four through eight is 131 kids divided by seven teachers gives us nineteen the state

034says we can have twenty five so again this is an average so we did not add a teacher and i did that purposefully because i didn't add an assistant principal either and that's something we talked about last year 44 years in i i sleep drink education hopefully you're going to get a new principal that has a life outside of school my kids are grown i'm unmarried and my two cats don't care what time i come home so you've been you've had the benefit of a principal who really has been devoted to your school but that's not the norm you want to get a probably a younger maybe a family person who's going to have to have a balance in their life and i did say to you last year that i would add an assistant

035principal to this budget but i couldn't because of covet because of the uncertainty of our funding i know that there's concern about people not being able to pay their taxes all of this came into play i didn't build an assistant principal and we're still up seven percent people so as hard as we might try we've done the best that we can do and we've really made cuts not only have we made almost 48 000 in cuts at the local level bj and i if you'll go to part b bj plan b for costs i am recommending if the board and again there's a whole process that comes with budget you're going to have a bac committee i'll be meeting with them bj will ed will be meeting with them they'll ask their questions and it's

036quite possible that they won't want to make these cuts um but in following what the board asked me to do i wanted you to know that we thought very deeply both at the big picture level but also looking at it through a mic microscopic lens and we do have recommendations i'm not recommending them tonight i think tonight we need to listen to ed's presentation uh bj and i have looked that budget over very closely i think ed's done a remarkable job getting that uh ready for you tonight so i think we need to look at that and think about it but if the board were to come back or the bac were to come back and say look we can't afford seven percent and by the way we're we're shooting seven percent we don't know

037what it's going to be because there's so many pieces to this formula that come in in the third week in december that will really give us the bottom line but we're now basing this from the fy 21 what we anticipated spending and how we built our budget for fy22 and that is frankly up i think it's like 6.9 maybe so if you were to discuss cuts with us we are ready to propose that we could cut our field trip budget in half um we could cut the foreign language program i i have such trepidation saying that to you but we've done it this year without it and we're in a pandemic and you know i think all bets are off we have to really think about health and safety comes to my mind we've spent

038a lot of money on ppe this year best expenditures we've made sure we have top of the line air filters we've made sure we have green cleaning products jim taft and his crew have been remarkable and they deserve a round of applause they have done an incredible job making sure that our school is very safe and healthy and we've had to put money in that we've had to buy 14 radios so that we can communicate because our teachers are outside with kids if there was ever a child that got hurt we need to know it so we've had expenditures that were unexp we they were unexpected we don't know if they'll be covered covered or not frankly i don't care at this point keeping kids safe is number one if in fact we had to

039cut the foreign language teacher the savings would be close to 25 000. and if we you know you put 3 000 in for library books last year i think we wouldn't suffer everything is so uh on online now we could save about there i'm not recommending that we cut the we are hope program i think they've been remarkable in supporting kids they're life coaches for some kids who really rely on them but here's what i will say we've got an outstanding social emotional interventionist meg shambo she is she's just incredible with kids and she works with our bcba who is vanessa perry and our school nurse and melissa cole is our new guidance counselor and we are just so impressed with the quality of her work so you put those four people together and i'm

040seeing some amazing things supporting kids so when bj and i sat down to look at the big picture we said you know if we had to cut we are hope it's really a little more than this david pays about a third of it it's about nine thousand is what david pays i think through medicaid or epsdt i can't tell you the funding source and then we built the eighteen thousand in our budget so it's not a cheap program you know it costs quite a bit but what we get in return is worth it if we had to cut i've got a team that's working to support kids in a way i've never seen it before so i would tell you we could limp along so there are the 46 000 if you couple that with

041the 48 000 i think bj and i did a pretty great job and we did run this by faculty so they're very much aware of this and i'll tell you the faculty is highly sensitive to doing the right thing by this community and about families so i didn't get any opposition they're tight tightening their belts teachers are buying their own materials there's a lot of teaching that goes on at 12 30 in the afternoon after those buses leave and it's because teachers realize that we have to pull together and really go above and beyond the call of duty to do what's right for kids and i'm super proud of that and i also want to tell you that bj worked so hard over this summer working with mike gaudette to reduce our buses from four

042to three they're tight i'm not going to tell you they aren't tight bj had to change all the bus routes to make that happen but again there's another savings so i think we've really been prudent not only this year in our expenditures but in our preparation for fy22 and i'll field any questions and if there are none i get to give it to ed any questions i guess i have a comment and a question um i'm interested in what you said about an assistant principal it's something that i've been thinking about for a couple years um just seeing the time and effort that you put in and that bj puts in and seeing the need for that um and so i am disappointed that that you're not recommending that for the kind of plan a

043budget i'd be curious just to know kind of what sort of cost that would add and i'd also be curious to hear about just what what best practices are you know what kind of threshold in terms of a student body size is known to need that you know extra level of leadership so school quality standards don't address that in particular robin but they do say for example for every four 500 students you need a nurse for every uh 500 students you need a librarian so you know we're looking at about 236 students i will tell you that i don't think it's a secret that i have 44 years experience and i have three degrees and that's why i make this salary that i make believe me it's earned and you know that so i'm saying

044that my salaries in the budget the odds of you hiring someone with 44 years and three degrees is unlikely so i'm not going to say there isn't wiggle room there so if you were to go and when ed shows you that budget if you want to look at what that looks like that could either be a tremendous savings to you or you could use that money and again the this is just the initial presentation the board is in control the board in the bac might say g marie built that assistant principal in and then we would have to go in and look at my salary is is really too high for probably what you're going to hire and i'm guessing i'm not a member of the committee i don't know what your objectives are but

045let's say it's it's pretty substantial we could take a portion of that couple it with new money and you would in fact have an assistant principal so again you know that's it's doable yeah i would definitely like to explore that and i i hear what you're saying about looking at it as a savings but i think that's a dangerous temptation because i feel like it's the one year in which we could add an assistant principal once we then re-level set at a lower level because of hiring someone with less experience it's like we can never go back and so i feel like it's time to seize the moment and to get to to get that on the books and to be looking to hire an assistant principal as well okay well i'll look for guidance

046from both the school board and bac on that thank you other i love to talk about budget does anybody else have questions oh there's something in the chat let me just check the chat oh mark he was cut off is he with us mark yep okay yeah i didn't been back oh you got kicked off okay so if there's no other budget questions ed is ready to prepare ed is going to show you the big picture for example bj and i don't do the budget for maintenance we don't do the budget for transportation we don't do the budget for food service um so there's and we don't do the budget obviously for the uh wscsu assessment so that's why when you see ed's budget he does that so you're going to see the big picture

047uh so yesterday i sent the budget out to everybody had everyone got a chance to look at it yes so robin you didn't and christine you did uh mark did you okay so what i was going to suggest is rather than go this through this thing uh we go right to the summary and we ask if there are any questions i want i want to emphasize the fact that this is very preliminary um we're still working on the budgets that gene just outlined um it's still early we usually don't make a decision on the budget until almost january so uh we very much rushed this to get it out because gene said that the board wanted uh some numbers and here they are uh if you take a look at the summary the budget's up

048by 425 986 dollars i think the areas that you would probably focus on um at least preliminarily uh tuition's up 438 271 dollars and that's because it looks like you had a lot of people who didn't go to your school that moved in and at least what i see as the numbers that i got how i got my numbers was i went with uh lori brown's list of students that have uh filled out tuition vouchers and i got the eighth grade uh numbers from bj so that's up significantly gene mentioned transportation if you take a look at transportation in the summary it's down 239 000 that's because the su has now taken that on the uh at the behest of the state we now have uh transportation's done out of the su um so you

049don't have that in your local budget anymore uh assessments you also mentioned your assessments are up 187 thousand dollars but you saw savings of 239 000 because we took transportation out so your assessments are essentially flat and we had a meeting today and mark was there and we talked about some of the things at the su that we've done to try to uh at again at the behest of the state one of them was all the copier costs have moved to the su along with uh transportation so uh again that looks it's pretty flat and then um so the big gain in this one is uh tuition and i will continue to vet those numbers to make sure the numbers are accurate but at least in the initial glance that's where we are questions yeah

050and how many kids does that translate to the tuition increase just like a number of kids um give me one second and i can give you that number i have also increased the health insurance across the board 10 at our insurers uh that was their insurer's estimate we've made some uh assumptions about the wages but we still don't have an fy21 contract settled with the teachers so it's difficult to project what fy 22 is when you don't have fy21 so um made some assumptions there uh let's see i have in heart weathersfield i have 112 students oh i'm sorry um no i have 84 students this year or next year well that's what i'm projecting for next year and that's compared to what do we have as a typical kind of baseline i have a

051102 based on if you look at and maybe my numbers are wrong ed but um on because what we had to do is you don't have the vouchers anymore at your office i do okay so what are you thinking it's more than 102 uh yeah i just got i i have uh projecting for next year i have 84. 84. and it could be that that senior class was a is is um well that's what you do right you take the senior class out you bring the eighth grade up and then everybody yeah i've got right now i've got 22 in my i've got i've got 20 seniors again gene i i can't all i'm doing is i'm using the vouchers so when we get the bill if they don't have a voucher they don't get

052paid so if you've got other numbers we can go with your numbers it's simple as that but i'm telling you that with the vouchers we've got this is the count as far as robin's question is concerned i mean i can tell you what we have as vouchers right now yeah positions have to resort all this data yeah we we can you know we can certainly get that information too if we need to because i know you're you've always done a pretty good job bj has always worked with my administrative assistant and we get that we get that pretty tight uh um i have 101 right now this year yeah so there must be something wrong ed because if you've got 101 this year and you're projecting 80. when he graduated right right yeah 20 is

053graduating 22 are moving up maybe 23. we might be getting one 20 are graduating jane i i i will go with my numbers until i see your numbers so i don't know where you're getting your numbers and this is the conversation that we have every year about where these numbers come from so yeah she's talking about this was the budget was preliminary and i told you that we were going to work on the numbers but all i did was i went to i went to lori rory has the vouchers i asked vijay for the count bj gave me a count and then i used those numbers i think what gene was saying is she has 22 eighth graders i just took the numbers that that that i got from whatever the numbers were that bj

054gave me i used those numbers okay i guess what's confusing ed is that um you said there were going to be more students but actually you're saying like there are 20 less students so is it the cost like per student going up or what's causing the increase that what's causing the increase uh let's see i got 17 students going to windsor i've got well so part of the era that i have here is that i was counting rows and i put in every one of the students in groups so i put uh one student for springfield so in reality it's a lot more than that so let me recalculate okay yeah because it could help if you go to page two or three of my memo at the bottom bj actually did the projection now

055again i understand what you're saying we don't have vouchers but bj actually looked at where kids are currently and so if we get a minute we can pull that up and i am projecting 45 kids going to windsor um that's totally yeah so for my i've got 15 going to woodstock 45 to windsor 20 to springfield one to saint j one to northfield one to hhs two to hanno uh two to hartford sixth to hanover one degree mountain one to paul mountain six to compass and three to roberts stevens high school in claremont so i have a hundred too but like ed says sometimes that we have to kind of compare those but bj is as you know david is pretty cracker jack right so bj's bj's count for eighth graders was 21. okay she

056gave me one um springfield 17 windsor one woodstock one compass in one hand and then i simply graduated so that's that's 21 right yeah and then then we need the current freshman and then i have another 82 that are currently in school so that is 102. oh my it matches i'm glad it matches but it's still gonna make it over four hundred thousand dollars four hundred thousand more i i just backed that god in heaven the genes here and i don't know what we'll do next year without it i really don't good luck you're gonna miss oh i know i know so yeah yeah well you'll have bj that's for sure bj's raising your hand go ahead um so lori and i do work very closely on these high school tuitions they're constantly changing we

057just had a student move in this week this is like a moving target for us to keep on top of this you know we tried the best that we can with these numbers the day that i took eighth grade i know we had two students out and uh you know we every day i could give you a new number almost that and you know that you know we've worked so hard on this for the last few years i believe and have every confidence in lori brown that she's right on top of top of this this year so the numbers are really accurate we also have part-time students going to like the vo tech and those are kind of hard to count they're you know we did have a lot move in uh whether they be

058new students in ninth grade going to a high school or moving into the communities so this is really an ongoing number so there will be students in the list that i have lori brown that didn't graduate from weathersfield school that's correct and i suppose gene to give you the list and you could go through it because you've got that photographic memory but those are you can figure it out yeah cause you've got homeschoolers you've got yeah so it's that's that's going to be critical and by the way there is a differential in tuition right you send a kid to hanover it's 23 000 or 24 000 a year you send a kid to uh springfield and it's more like 17 or 18 000 a year there's a big difference so i'm projecting springfield's 19 168.

059that's a two and a half percent increase over their risk their tuition of 18 seven okay and windsor in hanover's case they don't have in hanover's case they have three students or let's see one two three four five six six students that are going to go to hanover and there's tuitions 21 410. so two thousand dollars more per kid that's for next year ed that's what i'm projecting that's right this year's this year's is twenty thousand eight eighty eight but they've only got like i said six students so the increase seems to be more so the actual costs that we're being charged by the outside schools than the actual number of students going up that's what i'm hearing well i don't think so because that the tuition would only be up maybe two to three

060percent generally how does one student add four hundred thousand dollars then yeah no i i think what we need to do to just be certain is to i mean ed's working off of his sheet now at home we we you know we we've got a long way to go with this i think you know lori bj and ed just need to match up those numbers you know we know how many we've got now i don't know if we gotten all the bills for first semester ed pretty much yeah yeah so we that's another way to do it is we we match it up with the bills but if we get a student if we get a bill say from springfield but that student has not submitted a tuition voucher we don't pay that bill because

061the tuition voucher guarantees the residency and we we have a pretty strict policy around residency and bj and laurie work hard on that but i think you know we've just thrown a lot of numbers around i think i think what we've really got to do and i understand bj it's a moving target but i think i think we've got to get clear on right now who's in our high school 9 through including the vote kids right and and and i think we've got a good preliminary on that but uh but we just need to verify it that's all and find out why that's up uh almost 400 000 because that would be almost that would be uh if you just should be david that what you're comparing it to an fy20 budget without actual so

062it could be that the fy 20 budget's up fy21 budget's up you mean the 29 i'm comfortable with these numbers unless something changes dramatically for laurie i don't know where else we would check them i guess we could give them back to westfield and have them check them again but without the tuition vouchers maybe they might not know some of these kids but i'd be willing to do that i mean sure like i said it's just the beginning and the 1571 dollars it's uh uh 51.571 million for this year may be underscored i mean it was bj that said to me that there are people moving in and out of weatherfield every day these days yeah i noticed the same thing happening in heartland we just got new neighbors i think they have a kid

063in every grade of high school and maybe even an eighth grader and that's so that's five right there so if i if i had to guess at that absolutely right that that one million five hundred and seventy one thousand eighty six is is wrong that it's not the actual it's what we budgeted and we got a bunch of kids that moved in so my guess is it's not a 400 000 increase you know actual to budget but but you know budget to budget it is and i'll tell you people are moving people are finding they want to come north you know for a lot of reasons uh coveted safety is not the least of which and they also like a you know they want to come to a choice district and and that you know

064and that that is a a cost we've talked about this before you can't control it is what it is so um i know go ahead i i was just gonna say that um what uh the question that i just heard was um what are we gonna do like how many students are there currently um and if i take these numbers and i take out so we just confirm there's 102 if i take a look at what we have right now it's 94. so there was an increase yeah so you mean we budgeted 94 no i'm saying that right now with rory's numbers there's 94. okay okay so if i were to take a look what i asked lori for was all the vouchers 9 through 12. she gave me the vouchers 9 through 12. i

065then took those names and addresses and i turned around and i said all right who's the 12th graders i took the 12th graders off that's right right then i took the counts that bj gave me for the 21 students in eighth grade right now and i added them to that list and that's how i came up with the numbers yep that's right that's right so ed i do want to stand corrected on my memory and some numbers you'll take great great joy in this i was really off but i think uh in deference to the comment about building an assistant principled i'm not opposed to it but i do want you to know that last year the budget passed and i'm looking at the numbers now by eight votes eight the year before it was

06616 votes the year before it was 23 votes in fy 18 it was 27 votes and in fy 7 17 it was 380 votes and i think you know that i've spent a great deal of care in preparing the budgets over the year and i've really tried to really level fund every year i've really worked hard in that you can see the ability i think for folks to pay has gone down from 380 votes that was the difference the budget passed by that many down to eight and last year that budget wasn't up much so i just want to caution you we should have the conversation about an assistant principal but i also am a real realist and we most certainly want this budget to pass so i think that needs to those figures are

067uh i say they're devastating and i think we need to be mindful of them as we move forward in preparing the fy 22 budget we always prepare a more detailed tuition list i mean that you know we we just don't have that tonight but i just did quick math if we've got 94 kids and i multiply that by an average tuition of you know 19 000 somewhere between 18 and 20 because that's kind of where we are you know it comes out one million eight hundred and eighty thousand or one million seven hundred and eighty thousand so that one million five seventy one is wrong we've we've had kids move in robin said she's got neighbors with four high school kids so uh you know so i i think that's what happens and you can't

068control it and once we once we affirm the residency you know they're entitled to tuition wherever they want to go and that's why we you know some schools build a cushion in but i you know i don't like that when you you know necessarily but you can always expect you're going to get a couple more kids it happens in heartland as well yeah i think it's always um it's always difficult when you're comparing budget to budget i mean um especially when it comes to tuition because this time last year there was no pandemic and this time last year there was uh most of the students that we were budgeting for and graduated from your high school from your eighth grade so i mean that that that whole dynamic has changed in the inter in the

069year so now in fy20 we've got a whole new group of people that have moved into town it'll be interesting to see how that plays out as the year progresses how men how much that 1.571 million is close to being budget yeah i had another uh question a sort of a comment i don't know if you'll be able to answer ed but um i know last year we ran up against that sort of multiplier effect that we had because of a property um assessments were lower than the actual property sales as far as what the state valued the property's at um so i'll ocla cla um now from what i'm hearing from people selling homes and realtors in the area is that the houses are going for crazy amounts of money it's impossible for people

070to find places to rent like they're just selling insanely so i'm just wondering if that's going to be even worse this year and if the state can do anything about it to help us with that uh the cla is based off an appraisal and generally an appraisal takes years i mean uh i don't know where you guys are in terms of your when your last appraisal was um but i don't think it would be impacting this year's uh unless there was an appraisal that they've just completed and it wouldn't take into account what you're seeing right now yeah they haven't haven't done an appraisal i think in four years i believe i'd have to look i have a email from one of the uh select board members but um i think it's four years yeah

071um i i don't see that that uh cla thing is is always a wild card as is the equalized pupil okay does anyone have any more questions for out of for jane marie i have another comment just something for us to think about in the future as town meeting draws closer i heard i think it was on vpr maybe this morning or yesterday that the state is considering doing universal mail-in ballots um for a town meeting and then i don't know who was saying this i don't know if it was the journalist commenting on it or if it was a state person commenting on it but what they said was they think that the reason school budgets in vermont have traditionally passed past in general is because turnout is low on town meeting votes so

072i wonder if the converse is true and if that's a further warning for us that if ballots being mailed makes things easier which makes turnout higher does that mean turning the budget down is going to be more likely i think that's i was we i was having that conversation with david today yeah right yeah so we i think we'll have to do a good job of marketing and discussing and educating which we've talked about in the past and and done in the past but i think we're going to have to do an even better job of it in order to overcome that possible dynamic yeah well if if we're required by law to mail a ballot i mean i know that you know this has been somewhat controversial in the given this last election but

073clearly voter participation increased with with that mail-in ballot and i think that the governor that caught the governor's attention and uh i think that's where that discussion started that maybe maybe we're on to something with getting more people involved by mailing them you know a ballot be it local or state ballot so and i i think you're right i think when uh i know remember in vermont uh most budgets and i'm talking about when i first came up here in in the early 80s most budgets were voted from the floor right and uh and you went to town meeting and you voted your budget um and and that was also criticized because there weren't enough people at those meetings so then they went with australian ballot i don't know when weathersfield moved to australian ballot

074but um that got trickier for budgets because more people went to the polls and i think if we do the mailing like robin said that'll be even more people and uh and we'd have to work hard i think to pass that budget so we'll see what happens that's a good point though robin yeah robin i don't know whether that would be an effect for this year good question that's the way i heard it i i'm i heard it in terms of the context of the pandemic that like we might as well plan ahead the pandemic could still be here in march people won't want to go stand in line and be cold and social distance and town meeting might not even be able to be held in the traditional way in person yeah so that's

075the way i interpreted it as for this coming year yeah so normally what we do is we this is november and i think gene and bj and ed everybody worked hard to get this out uh tonight it's in a very preliminary draft form i think we've had some good conversations and good ideas i think the next step would be you know to bring this back in december we still won't have all the tax information in december but it's a chance to really tighten it up you know for everybody to work on those numbers that uh are you know can be sometimes at this stage of the ball game a little squishy and then it would also be a chance to look at the budget with a assistant principle and then without any different principle i

076think robin you asked what the average cost would be i i mean i think with benefits you'd probably have to plan in the 70 to 80 000 range probably you know um i i think that's i just priced i just price went out uh or actually i had another business manager call me it was about a hundred and two thousand with benefits that was for an assistant principal a principal yes assistant the question came up in a vasma meeting in that yeah we were tasked with figuring that out that's for somebody with the experience that you'd need and plus i think the salary was like 83 with medical and all the other benefits it was about 102 000. yeah yeah so by the time you tweeted what are you making all right he was right

077though that i think that when we you know we've talked about this on the search committee that that uh you know she's got uh you know 40 plus years of experience i i think you know you know her salary is at the top of the of the game you know and that's not going to be the case with the new hire so i don't know how much we'll save but you know i think there will be some uh some savings there so uh we need to keep that in mind i i have a recommendation so i think the next time we will be a month from today and i think it would be great if we could devote the board meeting just to budget and this will give us time to you know look at

078that assistant principalship and do it maybe what it would look like but it wouldn't i don't know that ed will have a lot more information because typically what happens is we really start getting things like that second or third week in december then we get together around the first of january because we do have to go to print if i'm not mistaken bj help me i think it's january 16th or somewhere around there it's middle to the end yeah yeah middle to the end yeah and i think i think the other thing too is we've got to remember and i don't know whether or not we've got people interested in the bac does anybody know that did we get some bac members volunteering bj do you know he's holding up one finger so that's just

079one just one so what might what might i like gene's idea i think what might be good is to dedicate that december meeting just a budget we did this one year where we had a joint meeting of of those interested in the budget advisory committee and the board together sitting down and really looking at that and having conversations like you know do we want an assistant principal making sure that the numbers are accurate staffing patterns and um you know there's not much in in the in in the world of school budgeting unless you go to salaries that you save a lot of money we talk about that every year but i think it would be good not to have a whole lot of other things on the agenda but really work on trying to get

080right down to to the to the final so that we could we could finalize it if not in december in january sounds good um okay uh the next item we're done with the budget i think so yeah okay um the next item is to appoint the bac but um as everyone just heard we only have one person so far so i think we need to redouble our efforts to try to get some more members before we do that um i don't know do we do we want to appoint um a bac before our december meeting like should we kind of figure that we're gonna have to have like a little small meeting to appoint the bac before our next meeting or can we do that just at the beginning of the next meeting yeah we

081could do it you could do it at the beginning yeah or and i think i know bj just sent out a notice to the principal search committee you know that's you know that's 21 people probably 12 to 15 of those are community members and they're very going out david it's going out again in my uh thursday newsletters because we don't school friday and i've already written that so yeah we're going to get it out there again see if we can entice some people to play with numbers with us yeah but i'll tell you i think that in this in this covet environment you know people are being careful and i i you know and i don't think it's i don't think that's surprising and uh you know even though we could do you know it's

082virtual we'll be virtual we can update that whoever wants to be updated virtually but i i still think people are just they're immersed in sort of this whole environment and uh you know doing a budget on a cold december night isn't probably isn't exciting a whole lot of people but i i think you know i do know that there are some people in town that um you know because of the virtual meetings they don't have the um you know the computer access to techniques so it's hard for some people to volunteer to be on something that's going to have to be on line yep but again you know you've had good attendance at your board meetings i think if we dedicate that december meeting to broadcast and we take it's two bac members or three

083bac members we just we invite them to that meeting and we go at it okay um the next item on the agenda is um the committee representative appointments and i think we're going to do that in executive session because those are you're talking about sean's replacement yeah and and also we want to update negotiations and also when you're talking about personalities it's it's good to yeah it's good to do that in an executive session so um the next item up for discussion is a grant award um from melissa cole that wants to present that i'll be happy to present that so um melissa wanted to have more second step program materials she noticed when she inventoried the second step which is a fantastic uh it's really a k-5 program but it also is a resource

084for k-8 and in the past we've had the guidance counselor push in i know she's pushing in right now in some of the classrooms and for some reason the materials were missing so she wrote a grant it's a foundation that prefers that we not use their names publicly but they work for four thousand dollars she's very excited about ordering materials but as you know all grants have to be approved by the board before we can at least that's been the uh past practice before we can accept it so i'm here on melissa cole's behalf asking if the board would approve a four thousand dollar grant from an anonymous grant funding source jean-marie are there any stipulations with that grant a little bit we actually have many grants from this particular funding course and you approved

085some of them i think last month nothing that's insurmountable it's it's really easy-peasy okay can i make can we yeah does anyone want to make a motion to approve this also move okay mark moved robin seconded sounds unanimous yep unanimous okay so we'll move on um is i'm wondering does the board ever like thank these people or does melissa take care of thanking the people like is there anything we can do yeah sure we'll make sure that happens okay all right um the next item on the agenda is um winter sports update who's gonna do that yeah and i i can take this and then gene feel free to speak up and jessica i think i saw jessica's on the line as well yeah there she is right so first of all you know uh

086thanks to jessica for for a good fall sports season it's just a tough environment to to do all of this stuff and to try to make it work and uh you know basically i think the kids were very cooperative the parents were very cooperative uh and uh you know there were there were very few you know flukes but now it gets it gets more complicated because we're moving inside uh we have uh we the numbers in vermont and quite frankly in new england don't look good they're increasing you know x you know somewhat and again it's exponentially from vermont so when you double in vermont you go from 40 to 80 you know whereas this is not new york city but the bottom line is you're still doubling cases so uh we're trying to tread

087very carefully on winter sports and i know that the staff uh and there are several staff members including our nurse emily is on this at this meeting tonight uh we're trying to go cautiously uh the the agency of education in partnership with vermont principals association issued some guidance uh uh and uh quite frankly i don't even know if we've got the official official written guidance yet but i know that we've i don't think we do i think it's still and i think part of what's what's holding them up is the fact that they're watching these numbers increase in vermont and they're having second thoughts about some of the initial guidance but anyhow the the the the uh the guidance that we that we got by word of mouth was that at the high school level

088which is where you know most of those competitive sports really live uh not that we want to take away from our middle school kids or even our elementary kids but at the high school level you know because you've got you know especially in basketball in vermont i refereed varsity basketball for 18 years it's uh it's a big deal in vermont and and it it's what kind of keeps people busy in vermont in the winter time and and the initial uh the initial uh advice or or guidance was that there won't be any spectators even if we have a sports season so that's going to be a bummer for uh for people who used to use the basketball season as a way as a way to get out but there's not much get getting out of

089the house if you will and as far as the teams and coaches they said uh recommended the recommendation of the guideline was that on november 30th you could start some level of high school practices uh and uh and uh and and middle school too because vpa controls middle school but after talking to uh our uh reopening team and and meeting with our school nurses uh i i just still want to err on the side of caution we're going to be right in the middle of travel season with thanksgiving and christmas with where i i think people are trying to control their travel but you can't always do that and we're going to watch these numbers and what i've said to date is that we are not going to make a commitment to november 30th we're

090going to wait and see what happens and if they keep going in this direction my guess is we're probably not going to do anything until after after the holidays are over which would put us into uh january and that's at the high school level as well as the middle school level i know a lot of districts have already said we're not going to do any k-6 at all we're just not going to get those little kids in a gymnasium now i'm not saying that that's an official decision but i'm just talking to my my colleagues in the south of vermont and and that's what they're saying they are trying to be open to seven through twelve and uh and i think that we will in consultation with jessica and the school nurses and jean marie

091you know will make that decision uh as we as we move along and uh and i know this is disappointing for a lot of people but i think uh sports as as important as it is in vermont we have to keep in mind that uh we're also still in pod arrangements in school we're still masked and distanced at school we still can't have a theater program we can't have a music program we can't have a band program so i think it's unfair and equitable to just say because sports tends to rain and i like i said refereed 18 years of varsity basketball i played sports in high school i'm not anti sports i'm just pro safety and i think that's really the critical piece here is being safe so i i think that we'll we'll

092get the official guidance soon uh we'll sit with the uh we have a committee made up of the athletic directors uh and a couple of the principals uh and uh and uh and we'll consult the school nurses and we'll we'll make a decision but i think if you were thinking of what should you be planning for i think you should be planning for you know not much happening during the holiday season between thanksgiving and christmas and then we'll reassess in in january and i don't know jessica if you want to add to that you and i exchanged a couple of emails but uh but and you seemed pretty supportive of that right now yeah i'm i'm supportive hi everybody i'm supportive of holding off until january my only concern really is that for k through

093six area rec centers are opening sports springfield chester others so we have to release our kids to go play there if we are not going to host sports and i think that that's opening up a can of worms with we're trying to do as much as we can to control our pods and our kids and co-mingling and everything but we open it up to go play at springfield and they have 55 kids playing basketball then that's where my concern comes in is that the k-6 kids can go play at area rec centers and play with whoever they want to play with from area schools instead of keeping it in-house yeah and i think that that is okay i've already had multiple parents email me asking when are you going to release us we've heard we're

094not having sports so i'm waiting to see if if we go ahead and release those kids or if we say you know we're hopeful to have sports will you hold off we're asking you to hold off but i don't know what the proper protocol or what we should do on that and i don't to me that seems more dangerous than having it in house but um it all seems a little bit a little bit scary um for both sides yeah i think you're right jessica i think that's a that's a you know that's a a valid point and uh and and i think that it's going to be very difficult and you just said it you know to contain the kids who are really avid sports folks who want to go with we have kids

095right now even though we can't have music program in theater and dance we've got people trucking over to claremont for dance lessons and for instrumental lessons and you know uh i mean i get that i i and i i see it happening in all four of our three of our districts and four of our towns i mean kids will access what they need to access and it's tough to control um i think they're just gonna have to realize though that certainly certainly if they go out of state they're going to they're going to be into that quarantine mode if they stay in the state and go to either windsor or springfield or or some other place like that i guess that's okay i would i think i would ask them to hold off for a

096little while longer and let's get the guidance and but i think that there's a general sense and gene correct me if i'm wrong uh that all of the principals windsor heartland and uh and wethersfield all said that uh you know given the way the numbers are climbing they really don't want to open their gyms up for indoor recreation for at least k to six i think middle school and high school were still i think we're still debating but i think it's a good point jessica and it's going to be hard to control it and and it's going to be tough to bring them back but uh you know at some point but i i think that's kind of where where we are at this point i do want to mention too that it's multi-layered for

097example our gym right now is a classroom so if there are kids in there at night who's coming back in to clean and disinfect because let me tell you we've been religious and faithful about that the other thing is we've kept our seventh and eighth graders apart and suddenly they're going to be playing side by side with masks in a gym with no windows so i mean i and david you're absolutely right it was a great debate at the administrative team level and we were all very clear about how we felt we have worked so hard to keep our kids safe to keep our faculty and staff safe it's just not a risk right now they're you know the numbers covered numbers are blowing up and even last week when we had this conversation the

098numbers were on the rise it doesn't mean we won't be open to it i think that's what we agree david that we would all be open once the first of the year came but we are really clear what that looks like right now well we've already had two districts that i'm sure people are paying attention i knew this was going to happen but we've already had two districts one pretty close to us that has said they're going to shut down on the on the 23rd and they're not going to open up again until january 11th it's all going to be remote instruction and don't be surprised if we see more of that i think the reason why we're not talking about that right now is because we've been pretty darn safe and we've been keeping

099kids in pods and i tell you the kids are doing a great job and and so are the teachers and the administrators and we just don't want to mess that up but i will and i see robin's hand too and i don't know if you can see everybody or not but jessica will certainly when the guidelines come in you know uh we'll invite you to that you know to that meeting and we'll have that conversation uh i think we do have one principle on that team but i'll certainly let you know gene uh so you can be part of that christine is our rep okay christine goes to that and and uh we'll you know because we did a handbook for the fall we'll talk about the winter and see where we are uh and

100i feel terrible because uh it's just one of the hazards of of of where we are now now and i saw robin's hand up i'm hoping she's going to ask what i think she's going to ask but any you know any kind of activities that can be done safely outside uh that's my i'm so predictable this is coming from someone who i'm a huge fan of pods and keeping kids safe and separate and we've worked so hard on that and i at the same time hear what jessica is saying about like the pods are gonna self-destruct by people going somewhere else and that's exactly what we don't want and i'm not a basketball player i grew up playing hockey and yes hockey rinks are a little bit plush these days but when i was growing

101up in vermont we played a lot of hockey outside where it's really cold and we survived and my question is why don't you play basketball outside i mean i've also been on the situation where in april in vermont we were shoveling snow off the tennis courts so we could play tennis so why not get really warmed up by shoveling snow off the basketball court and playing basketball outside and you'd have different attire but you'd be with your pod and you'd be in fresh air yeah i love that idea robin i've actually thought of that and also other just brainstorming about how we can keep the kids active maybe not necessarily basketball but um outside an outdoor kickball in the snow i mean you can play kickball in the snow with snowshoes um things like that

102that's night you know later the after school things like that that they're still looking for and then that way it keeps them active keeps them moving and they're not going to area schools to play basketball yet the governor announced today that there will be no gatherings of more than 10. was that inside or outside gene do you know did he say no gatherings he said no gatherings more than 10. boy he's getting to be a curmudgeon after we elected him huh that's just that's just not right robin what about uh and jean have you talked all about the ski program for the winter is that off the table on the table what's more that wasn't part of the ads responsibility that was private and it was actually robin and her husband volunteered that so it

103didn't go through the a.d okay and so robin is there any thought about that this winter or uh or no yes yes definitely um so the uh the detail on that is that we've actually handed it off colin and i have handed it off to sean and ashley to take over at their property and they have a wonderful property and are connected to the vast trails so that should even add and enhance you know the capability of that program and so they are pumped and ready to to have it and they also have more flexibility than colin and i had in terms of having it in the middle of the day which is now the new end of the school day whereas colin and i didn't have the flexibility to start it until 3 p.m

104or later so yeah i would defer to sean and ashley to talk about that but we've had brief conversations about the fact that they that we anticipate more kids being interested just because people are looking for that extra care for their kids and because of less just sports availability i do still think that there's the die hard basketball people who you know and we've had some of them too that have they've been like oh yeah we'll ski two on your team and they don't because they're die hard basketball people um so i think that there's some that you're just not gonna entice away to other sports they're just they're gonna go to the places if they don't have a weather field and so i i'm still on the five on five that's ten people yeah

105get them out tonight yeah you know that might be one of the things you know that we talk about on in that committee right we we kind of get an idea of what you know what courts could we keep clean what you know what what would that look like i mean i'm certainly not opposed to it and i think getting kids outside is a is a great is a great idea and i also agree with what you said jessica that you know if we can keep them closer to home that's better i mean once they start to go out to these rec centers i mean you know the bottom line is a lot of them are young and it's hard to control them anyhow as i said that you know the dance lessons and gymnastics

106and you know i i think you know parents have kept their kids as active as they possibly can but you know maybe we can look at that robin i think that's not a terrible suggestion i think that uh you know um it just might be a question of uh you know where and and how but that might be a good conversation for the for for the committee and if the weather continues to cooperate and i don't want to jinx this in any shape or form but if the weather continues to cooperate like it has in november um you know then who knows you know i mean it's you know you can i agree you can get outside in 30 degree weather and play basketball it's not the end of the world yeah and i think

107gene you've still got and i see teachers on the line too but i think teachers are still taking kids out right especially on these beautiful days but the plan is to get kids out in the winter too and and uh and and that's good for them but uh you know i appreciate your uh your understanding jessica and we'll keep you in the loop and and then we'll keep reporting back to this board in terms of where where we are i'm just hoping we can stay in school and keep having school between thanksgiving and christmas uh the only other thing i don't think we have do we we don't have a covert update on this on this agenda right but but one of the things i will say is that we've got a wonderful partnership with

108moniscutane hospital and what we're gonna do for thanksgiving is uh this is for staff right because it's adult transmission we worry about the most not that we don't worry about kids but adults tend to transmit this faster than kids so with staff travel we know that there will be some people who will be entertaining and some people will be traveling we're getting a survey of those folks now and thanks to emily stevens and the nurses they've worked out an arrangement with mouniskutney where any staff that do travel to a ready yellow zone and quite frankly everything's becoming a red and yellow zone right now that uh mauna sutney said they'll do a drive-through clinic at the end of that remote week so that we'll test folks on i think it's either emily can correct me

109friday or saturday but we'll have those results back by sunday so people will know that they're okay to come back to school on on that following monday so again it's about safety it's been tricky but i'll tell you our community has been great and they've been understanding teachers kids and i think it's why you know we've only had we've only had really really two cases but i guess you could say three you know one was a presumptive positive but i think people have gone way out of their way to make this work and i think we just need to do everything we can in these winter months to be careful and and do as much as we can outside okay um is that everything for sports then i think so for now here all right

110um next up on the agenda is the principal report from the birthday girl the birthday girl does not have a report because she's on budget except to say you know we have six new staff and four of them will have completed their first evaluation um by next week so i have um one done and two scheduled for thursday one next week and then the two new special educators katie and i are working together so i'll be evaluating them working with students in december and then katie will come in and evaluate them running a meeting so we're right on target in terms of evaluating new staff um i'm really proud of our kids and our families you know our kids were without school for six months and like you know you get all we you know

111we have a variety of kids and a variety of energy levels and i'm just amazed at how few problems that i deal with in terms of discipline and behavior kids are glad to be back they're working hard my teachers are working very hard and making sure and i got to be frank with you i dreaded to track my progress scores i thought well you know as a nation we've all said hey don't expect much they weren't in school our track my progress scores were really good i was amazed and now we just heard they're giving the vermont science assessment and s back um and the window is march 16th until may 28th so we'll be scheduling those um i i'm just really pleased i'm not going to tell you i'm not tired you can hear

112it from my voice that's a dead giveaway for me we had a racial equity policy meeting that went pretty late last night so we're tired i think the administrative team probably david too is very tired and then tonight budget but even though we're tired it's a it's a good feeling our kids have been healthy and safe our teachers are taking kids outside minimally once a day minimally once a day i know a lot of teachers teach out there quite a bit of their day and so they they've been just really devoted to doing the right thing and it looks different you know i i i come from a big family 12 brothers and sisters and they often ask me so what does education look like this year i can't even describe it it's so different

113it's certainly nothing i trained for uh it every aspect of it looks different and you know bj and i are a pretty tight team and we've got quite a partner in carrie duo she is outstanding so the three of us look at each other some days and say we're just exhausted because it is different it's not the same and it takes a different level of commitment and energy and patience and i'm not complaining i'm really not but if we're feeling it what do you think the kids are feeling what do you think our faculty and staff are feeling and the other thing is i'm amazed that the parents who come every day i get positive emails more this year than i've ever gotten and you know i'm feeling like it's such a different world that

114we live in parents are always you know thanks for not just me everybody being outside thanks for bj directing traffic it's nice to see brian working outside i love the way they're coming in different doors my kids tell me they feel safe in school and families a lot of families i would say i think today i gave a number about 65 i think it's 65 kids are brought to and from school by their parents what an interruption to their day yet i don't hear complaints i hear really positive things so i just wanted to share that with you because that's that's just wonderful i think that that is great um yeah i actually heard from the well i didn't hear daxton heard um from the middle school teacher that the weathersfield kids are great so

115just for the weathersfield kids she said they're all awesome it's true that's on the remote if anybody doesn't know that's the remote um um and also i wanted to thank craig for the um for his delicious meals uh that he prepares and that are uh sent out to the remote kids as well um it's a weight off of my shoulders not to have to worry about what my kids are getting into and making their own lunches i know they're getting something good that craig has made so no it's very nice um i guess next up is the superintendent report yeah mine's going to be pretty quick because again we've been immersed in budget but um you know we do have parent conference week coming up and also on the 23rd and 24th that's going to

116be professional development time and we've been putting a lot of time into planning for that because that's going to give teachers some time to continue to work on some of this interdisciplinary work and also to get ready for that remote week so it's going to be a lot of building based teacher-based pod-based work and i think it'll be a good break for them entering into the thanksgiving uh thanksgiving recess and then um as i said we have that remote week afterwards followed by that testing site uh and uh again we're just gonna have to keep watching uh you know keep watching those numbers and uh and and hope that we can get them you know to flatline or stabilize uh a bit but uh i think that the the the work that's gone on as

117you wide with that strategic plan that we talked about tonight and and gene just mentioned we also are kicking off that anti-racism task force i think that that's very uh uh that that's very important uh for our communities all four of our communities uh and uh and i think that that's gonna be a good opportunity for us to stop and and and take a look at some of our culture and habits and climate around uh you know just in general how we how we we treat our minorities and and again it's going to be based on sort of that the emphasis around race but we also you know continue to to deal with other minority groups in in in our in our building we we know that we have you know even in our middle

118school uh you know our lbgtq community and kids that are really struggling with their identity you know i think schools have to make all kids feel safe that's the bottom line and that's going to be the emphasis of of this committee we already talked about the principal search committee but but that's going well and i really wanna hats off to bj for all the work she's putting into that from a clerical standpoint uh she keeps us organized and uh and uh and and moving uh forward um but i think everybody's done done a great job and uh and i i've been told from every single principal and assistant principal in our district that our uh office referrals and behavior uh reports are down anywhere from 70 to percent bullying and harassment complaints are almost non-existent

119i think part of that's the way we're set up and i think we got to learn some lessons from the way we're set up because i think the the fact that we're transitioning kids a lot less uh you know and and we're also in these pods where teachers are building you know great relate relationships with us smaller groups of kids and i know that the principals have talked about and the union and the teachers if there's some ways that we can preserve some of this because it does feel a lot safer when you walk in those buildings and the data shows it from the referrals so i think everybody can be proud of that work and once this pandemic is over if it's ever over we should think about how we organize our schools and

120our kids in our classes because we've had some great results from some of this including the the place based and outdoor education pieces i think that you know why would we stop that just because the pandemic is over so but that's it for me anne marie okay um that's great yeah i am i had heard that like the more energy you get out of the kids like by making them run around and stuff the less trouble they get into in school so i think that's definitely a benefit um next item on the agenda is items for action i don't think we have anything that we didn't do already except for what we're going to be working on in an executive session correct correct i think you took care of it all okay um setting the

121next agenda should we do that now or yeah that's a good idea and the date of the next meeting that was going to be a budget meeting correct i think we should do mostly budget on there you know we might have a couple of other things that uh that come up but uh i'm looking at this the second what have we been doing the second tuesday yeah would be uh december 8th and i think believe it or not i think the uh yeah that's it december 8th i think we'd want a sports check-in just because there might be more guidance then and yeah and like definitely like a covet update kind of yeah maybe yeah and maybe in a point appointment of a new board member might be something to just remind us to keep

122that on there i'll send that invitation out tonight just so we've got it and people have been going to the website we had 28 almost 29 i think 29 people at one point tonight and just a reminder that our meetings are at six o'clock now so when you post that it's a december eighth at six pm thank you is that everything or does anyone have anything else to add anne marie i just have a question okay this is b.j um if people are interested in serving on the board now how should they go about that now that there's a vacancy they should call you and then um you can collect the applications for us and i guess we'll have an interview process per usual but i guess it'll be a online event yeah i think

123we should put it out there uh you know gene you and i can talk about that we can get that out when we get out the bac notification and then uh yeah let us letters of interest can come back tonight so i'll put it right my newspaper because i'm getting that ready for tomorrow so what i'll write is that if you're interested to write a letter of interest to the board but send it to bj is that what you like yes and then if bj could forward those on to the board members that'd be awesome i'll do that tonight before i go to bed i did already post it on facebook when i was mentioning a anticipated board opening but i guess nobody called bj yet so um all right do we have any motions

124to enter into executive session uh i have a question you need well you need me the me will you need me there or is this something you can do without me no we're i think we're okay gene yeah you have night nights happy birthday [Music] have it all laid out like that very nice thank you thank you and bj and i were a team we worked together on that yeah and then oh ed worked with us too great okay um anybody else have anything else to say before we go into executive session did we have a motion i didn't see a motion but now we don't have a motion yet i'll move to go into executive session all in favor say aye hi hi any opposed okay i guess we're going to executive session um

125yeah so just the board members and you know okay we're called back into section at 8 20. um would anyone like to make a motion to um name a member to the su board i move to appoint kristen brusso to the su board anyone second marvel second yeah she's gonna vote no okay and then does anyone want to make a motion to nominate a new board chair i move to nominate anne marie redmond as board chair i will second okay all in favor say aye hi okay all right that passed as well that's great congratulations it really is good though in a sense because we are incredibly politically correct in this upper valley because now all of our board chairs are are women and uh you know elizabeth amy nikki buck and and anne marie

126and and i i think that's kind of a tribute if you look around the state and you go to the psba conferences a lot of the a lot of the chairs are are men so um so that's good i think that's great as a father of six daughters oh my gosh how are you still alive keep trying to get one of them to run for a school board or something because i want them to suffer along with me i think we're good then and mark you'll take on the negotiating committee i don't think that has to be an official appointment and uh and i think and i'll do the uh principal court search committee yeah and you're gonna do the principal search committee so i'll uh i'll reach out to bj and make sure she

127uh put you on that list and we'll bring you up to speed on that too because we have a meeting thursday night on that one so um dad is on that one too so i'm sure oh yeah oh god or not that's good there's a match made so moved second second all in favor aye aye all right okay everyone thank you