HES Board Meeting - October 19th, 2020

001seen them yet okay okay we are not recording we are going to call the meeting to order at um and the first order on the agenda is the approval of minutes from september 21st 2020 um my assumption is that most of you did not get that until just now so we're gonna let everybody pause for a second so the board members can review the minutes um and check in in three minutes i'm going to try to put them up on the screen oh perfect can everybody see that yes [Music] here that is nikki people are handing in their recommendations for membership on the anti-racism task force uh two is that a question or a statement that was a that was a question i just saw it in the minutes oh um i know you're not

002here to touch okay who took those minutes beth did she did an awesome job yeah they're good that's what i like again yeah short and sweet good and concise okay so scott's back i think i see we're still missing colleen but i see everybody else um does anybody know anything about colleen should i text her i don't probably worth probably to talk to her this morning or this afternoon at pickup and she was good to go she talked about coming to the meeting said she'd seen it so she should be on her way i would assume i'll just say checking just checking in yep okay um okay so do i have a motion to improve the minutes it's all moved okay that was scott move i'll say there a second sorry i did that by

003voice that was you right sarah [Music] yeah that'd be great david i'll do that awesome i think she's had this trouble thank you for seeing that okay um is there any discussion on the minutes looked good yeah those were awesome minutes they were like so concise and captured everything yeah thank you you're welcome okay so um no further discussion all those in favor of approving the september 21st 2020 please say aye aye the hand raised from beth okay all those opposed extensions okay so approved um i wanted to revisit um because the minutes are good at reminding us of things that were still on the table um one of the things that i do not have a further update on is the thetford academy tuition um ed has done a whole bunch of emailing um

004and has also not heard anything and so ed and i are both under the impression of no news is good news um nobody has come back and said that it's not appropriate um so we i guess still wait but i'm hearing nothing further in the discussion i think that's it's probably fine um so we'll we'll keep waiting um and if i hear anything i'll let you guys know but i don't know what's the question we're waiting for um so the state auditor um flagged so at the state level not the doe level um flagged the thetford tuition um as an issue paying the full tuition um saying that they were not um a public school and that we were not supposed to be paying the full tuition to them um but then d.o.e ed went

005to doe and said we've always been playing the full tuition and figure this out um so doe went back and forth with ed from my understanding and um they went back to the state and we haven't heard anything further my hope is that it's resolved katie i know i talked to them the other day because we still haven't received their contracts either for and that they told us they were still waiting to hear whatever they were waiting to hear about that they weren't sending out any contracts yet so that was bedford yeah so and i don't mean they didn't elaborate on it but we still haven't seen anything from them either from our end in special ed well that's insightful because i thought it was just us that got flagged for paying full tuition to

006them it sounds like maybe they got flagged by the state entirely i'm not sure um yeah no it sounds like we're in the dark yeah so um but we've been cricket sense because we were waiting for that too that's an outlier for us so yeah okay lots of crickets yeah okay thank you katie that was really helpful um there's something else i saw in the notes that i wanted to discuss that i can't hit by racism task force i mentioned yeah i think well that's not on our agenda okay something else that i saw there were two things and i can't find it now oh i just wanted to say um that's what it was um i went to alyssa joined us at our last meeting um to talk about uh what her virtual classroom

007looked like and to get approval for a black lives matter and lgbtq flag um and my daughter went to her um classroom today and it is beautifully done um and i was just so impressed and my daughter was so excited because it was so beautifully done she was excited to be in it and she was excited to show it me in it so um i just thought that any board members who hadn't had a chance to see that um should know that it was incredibly well done and it is a very welcoming classroom and it was kind of exciting to see so i'm glad that she came to us and i was also glad to see the results well all my kids were doing their after school work i'm listening to meditation music and watching

008bob ross videos from there [Laughter] yeah i i had to cut off the bob ross video so that we could focus on some other things but there's also a uh oh i forget what it's called um there's a coloring there are coloring books digital coloring books that you can do and i had to also say okay we're moving on from here too so it was uh there's lots of meditation oriented activities which is fantastic okay so um we have public participation is there anybody that wants to speak up at this point about any issue um i know that we've got cara on the line and some of her issues are going to come up during the coba covid update um is there any other public [Music] okay i'm not hearing anything um okay and then

009uh as far as the agenda goes we have the principles report superintendents report covet update um a budget update from ed portrait of a graduate and anti-racism task force um i think we should move should we move superintendent principles or should we keep those up top we can move we can move those down i think and uh and ed asked to go a little bit more toward the top of the agenda but you know we can we might want to because cara is on the line too i don't know how long she's got but if you want to do the cobra that's what i was thinking if we could move covet one and budget two yeah and then reassess okay all right so that what did i miss no comment you missed us approving the

010minutes that's okay and you're awesome yeah that's good you don't want me there for that so here's the conversation though should i text colleen we're good couldn't get in something my computer just i don't know they're not happy um i by the way i don't know if you guys can tell on the screen i got a new computer and i no longer have buzzing coming out of the speakers and it's a beautiful big screen so it's kind of fun bigger screen i should think okay so let's move on to the covet update um david you want to take it away yeah i'll i'll i'll start but then i'll let i'll let christine talk a little bit more locally and and angie uh can also add anything that i uh that i that i leave out

011i just want to remind everybody that essentially we we're keeping you know three three environments going are three schools going that are all very different you know one is the k-8 uh school which is basically um uh three of our four of our buildings actually all are involved in that and that's the uh that's the hybrid model where we're um we're we're uh in person in the morning and then in the afternoon uh the the students leave and it did take us several weeks to certainly to figure out the afternoons i'm still not so sure we've got it completely figured out because there were a bunch of moving pieces to all of that including and mostly around uh how to group kids uh how to provide support services uh how to do interventions uh um

012that that that was always a you know and i know katie hearn who's on the line too she could certainly add to this at some point but that's been there's a lot of moving pieces in that too in terms of uh how special educators are are uh are reaching out to kids how support staff and paraprofessionals are are reaching out to kids but i think the way that the morning is organized uh and i know there is some question i think that's part of what karen's going to talk about tonight about you know whether or not the day can be extended and we can talk about that you know in a little while but i think the way we did reopen uh as i walk around the buildings and go in and out of the

013classrooms i think that the k-8 model uh definitely the morning part of the k-8 model is still working well teachers have been incredibly cooperative parents have been incredibly cooperative the health checks are going incredibly well the pods the pod structure getting kids organized around a little bit more of an integrated curriculum getting kids outside uh and i think probably just in general the the peace and order of the environment because the kids are in pods and there's a lot less transitioning i mean i think i heard brittany say the other day that behavior reports and discipline referrals are down anywhere from seventy to eighty percent so it's just the new one to be exact seventy one percent to be wow exactly it's just a it's a it's an incredibly and i i've seen it it's

014an incredibly peaceful environment so that's one school we've got going the k-8 then the other piece is the high school you don't get too involved in that at heartland but i will tell you that that's that's going pretty well the kids come in and get three classes in the morning uh including a an integrated unit they all start together in the morning and and they are clustered in pods they work together and then they go to two other classes but those classes are within those pods so those kids are not moving around the building either and i know that the you know the two new administrators colleen and kate have been working very hard to make that work well i know angie's been a great resource of them as well so uh and that too

015not just the k-8 that but also the uh the high school piece that wins are very uh you know very peaceful very orderly kids have been outside a lot uh involved in the integrated work and and also they go they leave around they leave at 11 some kids go to the tech center most of the kids go home and then they engage in three additional blocks of instruction and then angie uh has been coordinating the third school basically and that's the totally 100 remote school and that's got uh several of our su teachers engaged with kids from across the su uh and and angie i don't know whether you want to speak to how that's going directly or not but i get the sense that there were glitches in the beginning but most of those

016have gotten worked out i've sat in on a few of those classes because i don't want to lose touch with those remote kids and uh i think amazing work is being done by the staff that angie's supervising would you want to talk about that at all angie yeah i will excuse me so um it is uh it was not without a very steep learning curve continues to be a steep learning curve for some of our families um we're just getting down to data regarding student progress and working on that in our staff meeting tomorrow um so that i can have some solid numbers um as expected um the families that um had some tech savvy um are able to make it work and those that have struggled with that struggled with their um with their

017internet connection um has and some of the students have really struggled so it is it's like a little tiny version of the school though there is uh you know a fair number that are being very successful and then a number that i'm concerned about and how we support those families is really on my mind right now how we support them and offer them the same kinds of supports that we offer our in-person students and part of that is access is just not the same so um we're working on that that's the biggest challenge i'd say with it yeah i i just took closing out i do want to give a shout out again to our school nurses i think they've done a phenomenal job trying to stay on top of this they are the ones

018that have to make decisions about who quarantines who doesn't quarantine when they can come back who has to test who doesn't have to test they've got the algorithm from the vdh they've been using it i think quite efficiently and effectively uh you know we've had a couple of situations where you know the parents didn't feel like the kids needed to stay home because it was just a runny nose or or or a temporary fever but um we're standing behind the fact that those nurses are the covert coordinators in our building and we're supporting them if they say they have to stay home they have to stay home if they say they have to get a covert test to return then they have to get a covert test to return i'm just not going to take

019that liability and responsibility for the health care for the health care uh you know industry so again a shout out to them and a shout out to the administrators who are trying to make this work i will say that we and this may be pertinent to uh and i don't know exactly the questions that cara have i i've certainly i've read her her written questions but um i know that there are questions about you know whether this model you know is is going to change or how long is it going to be in effect i will tell you that the administrative team is talking about that right now uh we're waiting for some further guidance from the agency of education uh we are we have been promised this week if not by the end of

020this week certainly early next week that we're going to get that guidance i think there is some concern at the at the level of the agency of education and quite frankly the vermont department of health about whether or not we have to make adjustments based on uh holiday travel and that period of time between thanksgiving and and and uh and the christmas season or the holiday season uh and they they have promised us guidance around that uh i i think that uh that whether or not it's it's whether or not there'll be any extended remote time we we've decided certainly as an administrative team and we would have involved the board if we thought differently that we're not going to recommend any additional remote time unless the state recommends additional remote time we would have

021had to go to the su board with that anyway uh so that's that's just the way you know it's it's going to unfold here we published our calendar we're going to stay with our with our calendar but there are rumors circulating at the aoe level that the governor's office and the aoe may be making some announcements about uh i don't know whether they're going to mandate additional time or whether they're going to encourage it or whether they're going to just ignore it like like like we have uh as well in terms of extending the day we're going to we're going to get the we had a reopening task force that worked diligently to come up with schedules and time frames uh there were certainly members of the union on that task force because you know

022many of these alternative schedules require compliance with our master agreement and with our contract because you know both support staff and teachers are are are tied to certain uh you know parts of that contract that require you know duty-free lunches for example certain dismissal times planning periods so we're going to reconvene that reopening task force depending on the information we get from the state and we're going to look at what we could do about extending uh the day any further i mean the general consensus is that the high school seems to be working because there are three um there are three in-person classes and three remote classes but the k-8 uh hybrid model it seems like we're we are struggling with getting access to certain kids who as angie said struggle with the technology struggle

023with the platform um so if there was a way to and by the way all of our kids don't go to good learning spaces when they leave our buildings some of them go to their child care centers some of them go to the rec centers some of them go to relatives or grandparents houses uh some have good wi-fi access some don't have good wi-fi access so so that's that's a problem so i think there is there is the thought afoot that if the state you know doesn't come out come out with some decree about uh uh needing to uh to extend remote or or be more remote that i think there's a there's a there's a feeling among the administrative team that we'd like to maybe start to extend uh that day but what we

024don't want to do is disrupt that pod structure and we don't want to disrupt um you know the restrictions that we've gotten placed around masking and distancing and hand washing and all the things that seem to be working and creating a peaceful climate for our kids and for and for our staff so we just have to be careful if and when we decide to extend that day as to how we do that and consider all of those factors uh you know that that branch out into support services unified arts teachers schedules uh the master agreement so it's it's not just it's not just like waving a wand and making it happen it's it's going to take some real uh planning and and that planning is is pro starting probably as early as this week we

025we've talked we're getting together with the union on on friday some of this will be an initial discussion and then we'll see where we go uh from there but um it's a difficult environment it's a hard environment uh it's a scary environment for some i think the thing we have to remember is that we do have adults in our community staff members in our community that still have anxiety about all of this they they live with immune compromised relatives or parents uh they have children that have compromised systems and and so it's always a delicate balance about how to move uh move forward so that's kind of where we are and christine i don't know if you wanted from a heartland perspective to talk about how it's going and then we can certainly open it

026to any questions yeah david i think you covered a lot of it but um the first um thing on my list was to really thank annette our school nurse she's doing an amazing job it's a hard job because people you know especially with the change in neighboring communities going to yellow travel restrictions it's very complicated for people and so she's doing a really great job letting people know the expectations and the rules and sometimes it's um it's it's hard to hear that information so she's doing a really great job so kudos to her um i think our our you know the system that we have in place is working really well the health checks are are going really well um you know with the temperatures cooling off the thermometers are still an issue at some

027point sometimes so we are now holding them under our armpits to keep them warm so they are more accurately reflecting kids temperatures but um i think we're still the afternoon schedule is um getting ironed out i think it's it's a it's a work in progress uh and and brittany and i have really been um that's one of the big items on our list making sure the kids that need support in the afternoon and are available for that support are getting it so working on that canvas seems to be coming along teachers are getting used to it and kids are kids are getting used to it as well i think i i will say in terms of extending the day i've mentioned it to a couple of teachers and they they are in favor of it

028so um i think you know we should we should definitely start talking about that um they are there are some staff that are you know the weather's getting cold and they're still going outside doors are still open the heat's on that's the best we can do i mean we need we need fresh air to be in the classrooms um but i will say and i'll share in my presentation later and the survey results we surveyed the teachers um i think last week last friday or two fridays ago and i think their biggest concern is travel over the holidays and coming back to school they are very concerned and recognize that people need to see their families they haven't seen them and it's stressful not seeing family so it's just a concern um so otherwise i

029think we're doing pretty well there's great teaming going on great collaboration people are stepping up when staff members are out other members are filling in and the kids are doing a phenomenal job i can't i can't say that enough they really are very impressed with with how they're doing so if you have specific questions just let me know awesome so i we do have a question um oh beth go ahead did you have it no i mean just uh what i've what i've seen and i guess the one concerning thing i've heard and seen is the lack of of intervention happening you know both my kids were receiving some sort of intervention um and that hasn't happened yet this year and so that's that's where i i'm a little concerned for my own kids but

030then i know that you know what i understand the teachers are supposed to be doing it after and then of course my kids are going to the wreck for most of the week and so it's it's really the reality of that is really high for our family and i know i've talked to other families that are really concerned around that as well and um yeah i don't know if you know the wi-fi at the wreck isn't great you know both my kids could potentially do it you know it's that whole thing of like how can we accommodate it a little better but it's it's um yeah and i know either my it's not just me i know there's other folks that have talked to me about that that situation as well wow yeah how is

031the wreck trying to handle it are they the wreck has been doing i mean they have 12 they have 20 kids as far as i can tell and they're outside like 99 points at a time and they they've they're running it basically like they ran their summer camps um so they do temperature checks when they get off the bus there and everything and they're just out and doing it um as much you know outside as possible my hope is that they maybe can i mean i don't know if you've talked to the wreck christine but be able to move over to the the gym for the winter you know like that would be so much more space than a tiny little wreck basement i was just wondering how they were trying to handle the online

032school after school if they were making an effort to get kids signed on and doing stuff it's it's what i've witnessed is it's kid it's more kid directed and so they've you know like like samara will do will ask to do her work and she can go upstairs there's that like workout room and so she can go they can go up there and do that or have a meeting um there they get some wi-fi outside um but it's mostly student directed it's not um i mean i think they might ask do you want to do your work but they're not like sitting down and corralling kids or anything like that that's correct yeah i don't they don't have someone doing that um yeah intervention intervention is one of our concerns as well um which is

033why brittany and i are looking carefully at schedules in the afternoon and seeing staff that are available um kids just to finish the tm well they're not quite done with tmp testing all of them but that's useful data that we need for um to plan for intervention but our interventionists you know they're classroom teachers this year so we don't have an available um specific intervention teachers so it's it has to be the classroom teachers so i think that's what's been motivating the conversation at the administrative team level around extending the day uh by master agreement you know we we need to provide teachers with a duty-free lunch and with a planning period which which results in about an hour and a half of time uh that because we've got them in pods and we and

034the teachers are not moving around and they're not getting a substantial break in the morning uh but there is some talk about whether or not we would extend the day uh to let's say 1 15 or 1 30 and then and then when we're done we're done and then they would get their duty free lunch and they would get their planning period at the end of the day but we would be able to do all of this instruction and all of this intervention and all of this resource work and uh and and uh the uh services for iep students we would be able to do all of that on site and and because it is hard when you got kids going to the rec center you got kids going to grandma's house sort of this

035to this child care so the idea is uh if we can get the staff in the union and i think i don't like christine said i'm optimistic because i think they recognize the problem and i think they'd like an extended day uh so i i i think we're going to get there it's just it's logistically going to take us a little time to get there and then you know we don't we you know we want to make sure too that we don't get you know kind of antithetical information with the aoe saying okay let's bottle up tighter now winter's coming the flu season's here you know let's you know i i don't i don't think we'll get that because vermont still appears pretty green on the map but i'm looking around this country as a

036whole and seeing how many cases per day and it's not very heading into holiday season it's not very optimistic if you know what i mean but but i don't know maybe we just ignore that and let the state worry about that and we just keep going with what what what we want to do i think that's but um i agree with you david that the national picture doesn't look optimistic and i think windsor county right now is orange um which is also not good um but uh i do i see value in trying to figure out how to extend the day even if it doesn't happen until march um i think that that planning takes time and it takes work and while i'd love to one of my kids was crying why can't we do

037it all in school um today so while i think it would be awesome to be able to accomplish it all in school i don't know if that's going to happen in the short term but i think it's worthwhile to have that planning because i i think that when it gets warm again and flu season is passed we're still going to be looking at this question so i think that that would be good and i think i think nikki to be honest i think if if everything goes well i think we could do it well before march but we'll keep everybody posted i did want to make one other statement and and then i i saw sarah your hand went up but um we you know we have had this year two active cases of of

038cover two folks who have tested positive one in the very beginning who really had very little interaction it was neither one of these are heartland staff members uh in a matter of fact just test it again and test it positive again this person has worked maybe one day or two days it's a brand new support staff member and and uh and and they and there's really struggling uh when when you get hit hard with this covet 19 it is not a pretty sight i just want to remind everybody on on on on this call that covet 19 is a dangerous it's a dangerous infection and it struck it hits people differently and i think unfortunately the message we're getting from from the you know from from the from the top you know national scene is

039is the messages are mixed but the people that i've known that have contracted this disease uh or this infection it's it's been brutal but i will say that what what we've decided to do and this came off of certainly sarah an email you sent to me i think we've been we've been and when we have a positive cove at 19 case we've been announcing it to the district that's involved but there was some thought that we should widen that and if we have a a positive covid 19 case whether it be a staff member or a student that we should probably announce it s u-wide so everybody knows and can follow kind of the not only the supervisory union but we're contributing to some degree to to that windsor county that that you know that's

040growing i know of at least two other people they don't work in our district but who right now have tested positive for covert 19. so it's in windsor county it's it's not you know i mean it's all glad you mentioned that david because it's that was something that i wanted to ask about i think it's really important for us to communicate out as much as we can any information anybody has helps other people right deal with it right yeah act on on what's happening um and i i think that the numbers are starting to go up and that we um we can't anticipate what's going to happen next but i'm hearing through grapevines in the medical field that we have more community spread than we did in the springtime which is you know different from

041people coming in from out of town and the you know buckle that buckle up yeah that's a good point it's all okay so i saw a lot of hands raised and i wanna i'm sorry i didn't mean to jump in no that's okay brittany you had something a while ago oh i was just gonna say i don't know how many kids we have at the windsor camp because i know it's opened up some of our camp kids but i know that they are providing um a certain time block per group it sounds like they're divided into groups so each group gets a time block for academic time so um it's it seemed promising i don't know if we have kids there but um that's all beth i saw you and sarah i think i was

042either beth or scott you guys were in the same i think beth went already sarah might have been next there um so i was going to ask a question but just before i say that david because you brought up the the notification policy um i think i think that's great and i i just really think it's important that we have a you know sort of a routine when we get a positive case that there's a press release that goes out there's a notification that goes out to every su family this is what every other school district in the area is doing um and that we just you know it's like a pr like clearly i've been getting the the hanover ones and you know even as a high school parent i get them when there's

043an elementary case i get them when there's a middle school case and it's really just a it's almost like a form letter that says you know we have been notified of a case it doesn't reveal any information about whether it's a student or a staff member um we are following you know just lists everything that's being done to contact trace and telling people what to expect and i just think it has to be that kind of a an automatic um release when we have a positive case within our su so that people trust that they're hearing about it you know i think i just think that's really important so i'm glad to hear that and i think i mean we i don't know if we need to talk about an official policy or um you

044know um and then my other question that i wanted to ask about the half days was i know part of the rationale for for doing the afternoons of distance learning was to sort of give everyone a chance to practice so that we'll be ready in case we have to go 100 remote and so i just wanted to ask sort of how that part of it is going um you know i have a i have a little bit of a sense from my own house that it you know there was definitely kind of a learning curve but it does feel like the kids have kind of settled into okay we get home we sit down this is what we do this is where i go from your perspective um how is that working do you feel

045like it's preparing us for that eventuality do you want me to go david yeah christine i think it'd be good for you yeah i think you know i think it is um i think the staff and the students are figuring it out it's different by pod i will say we were meeting with k1 today um brittany and i to kind of flush out afternoon schedules and what that looks like and the supports that are there and which kids need that and you know they're they're getting there it's not you know they're waiting for parent-teacher conferences to to really connect with parents to share um what the needs are and the availability of kids and parents because at that level you really need a parent with you um to do the work so um you know

046two three four is more settled actually fourth grade started early and and piloted some stuff and i think they they've they're in in sync and and doing pretty well um a five six i mean fifth seems to be on track sixth grade is um it's it's when canvas comes into play and the curriculum is is it's pretty uh what's the what's the word i wanna say it's a lot of reading text and responding it's not that exciting it's um i don't think it's all that we hoped it would be so we're trying to figure that out um angie can concur or not i think she'd concur and then 7 8 they've really set up a nice system of kids they're really using it as wind time what i need time it was fit time last

047year focused instruction time and they're allowing the kids to sign up on monday for what they think they need help in for that week and then they're going to the um the meetings that they need to go to and the teachers are doing more double dosing of instruction or helping kids individually so it's a work in progress i think will it mirror what what it looks like when we go remote completely i mean i believe that's on our admin agenda for wednesday making sure we have all our ducks in a row and that staff knows the expectations and families know the expectations and what's what that's going to look like but um i don't know david angie that that's how yeah that's helpful that is that helpful okay it sounds like cara might want to

048ask um an additional question that it's that she felt like it sounds like that we that we haven't uh responded to yet did you care did you want to unmute karen why don't you go ahead and ask your question i think i've asked a lot of questions that i haven't heard answers to um yeah so um some of the questions questions are appropriate for public meeting and other questions are less appropriate for public meeting um and so i was going to ask uh the questions out of your email um to the group um so one of the one of kara's questions was transparency as far as the supervisory union teacher expectations um what school employees are supposed to be doing um during those uh in-person hours so between the 12 30 dismissal and three o'clock

049i don't know if christine or david wants that picture yeah so we're talking about the in-person block or the no the the when the kids are remote what are the um okay yeah staff supposed to be doing yeah so so that's uh that's exactly what i said they are entitled to a a half an hour duty-free lunch and a 45-minute planning period so for an hour and a half they had to do nothing basically except plan sorry dr baker could you just could you explain what time um the teacher contract starts in the morning because i know now that kids are not starting school until 8 30 i know that teachers are no longer showing up as early as they used to so that kind of affects the work day schedule and additionally is there

050anything in the contract about um being allowed to provide child care to their own children during the paid work day um i i can answer the contract time the contract hours are 7 45 they start at 7 staff are expected to be at work at 7 45 health checks start at eight so kids are going into the classrooms at eight o'clock in the morning and supervised by teachers during the eight to eight twenty time kids are able to eat breakfast teachers are checking in with them then they typically start around 8 30 is the official time once everybody's in and settled they have morning meeting time but they are on site at 7 45 and and kids are arriving at 8. yeah and that's always that's always been the case that's been the arrival time

051at heartland 7 45 so nothing's changed there i'll answer the second part there is nothing in the contract that allows for for for for us to uh to to enable them to do child care uh from a management perspective we've just decided in the afternoon that if they can uh work remotely from home and they do have child care issues then we've allowed them to do that i mean that's just it's just consistent with kind of our philosophy to support families where we can support families so that's that's it's that's not obligated in the contract it's just the way we've been treating our staff and i i totally respect that um my only question is is that like publicly you know there are a lot a lot of working parents in the school district and

052i know the board is made up of a lot of people who have some flexibility in their working hours and they have the ability to support their kids and provide the direct instruction and i just i i just wonder if um if these decisions you know is the board are the people on this team really in touch with the reality of of working parents who don't enjoy such flexibility in their lives and don't enjoy that socio-economic um status and i get it i mean i think that's i think that's great that teachers in your district are supported that way but it really worries me that decisions are being made and the tone of decisions being made seem to really disregard the reality that the rest of us are experiencing you know i appreciate that carrots

053one of the reasons that we're considering extending the day right there was always a time when students had to leave usually it was around 2 30 a lot of people worked till 5 5 30 so there always had to be some plans made in the afternoon it's just how long can we keep the kids you know and that was that was our original concern was just how long can kids stay masked and stay distanced and stay in pods and so that's why we started off the way we started off but i think just because of what just what you said is why we're considering extent well that's not the only reason but that's one of the reasons we're thinking about extending the day because we know the pressure that it puts on on on working

054parents but you know it's it's it's a difficulty without a doubt i mean schools have provided historically a child care function right and in addition to that when when you are providing your staff with the opportunity to not have to spend money on child care and you're telling the community that they are responsible for supporting the education of their child and paying for child care wow your employees are enjoying enjoying the opportunity to uh suffer neither of those consequences i it really makes me wonder as a taxpayer you know it makes me feel like jeez i i feel like next time it's time to vote for a school budget in this town i would really like to see a cut in the school budget and an increase in a program like the rec department that

055can actually support the needs of kids in this community and perhaps support financially all the families who are paying out a great deal of money in child care right now that your teachers do not and your staff do not have to experience like the optics of that like that that makes me a little squeezy in the stomach thinking about that and and what are other school districts doing i can tell you that they're not doing that so what what entitles one school district to experience those luxuries and and employees in another district not to yeah well i know kerry your district is not is not supporting that i will tell you there are other districts that are supporting families and and child care and i can't explain why yours doesn't do that i mean i

056get it i mean that that's a decision i'm not i'm talking as a taxpayer in this district right i i don't want to talk about anything about anything personal that doesn't have to do with me being a resident of this town no what i'm saying and i would love to hear from you dr baker some specific examples because all the surrounding communities are not doing this and and the surrounding communities are making choices that are best for children and they're learning and in trying to get kids in school as much as possible and it feels like some of these decisions are about what's best for yeah that that's incorrect that's just incorrect but that's yeah okay would i would also agree in that i think that what we are doing is better than all the

057surrounding schools and that we have our kids in school five days a week and the surrounding schools are going two days a week and that makes it more challenging for teachers and that teachers are out of their houses for more of the time but our kids are in the building five days a week and that's three less days a week that people have to find care and i i feel like as a taxpayer and as a board member i am fully in support of that decision and think that we're in talking to other parents who are also working parents all around they are jealous of what we have in our su and so that's where i stand on that sarah lebanon's going back to five days a week okay cara we have to let the

058board members talk um i was just gonna i was just gonna say that you know as far i haven't heard any um any issues with staff members ha you know having kids while they're uh in in the afternoon if there is an issue like that i think that you know there are appropriate places to address that um but i haven't i haven't seen any negative effects from this and i you know i i i would also just support the idea that um you know i think there are employers all over the upper valley right now who are trying to make things a little easier on working families during this time and i'm i'm proud to work for or to represent a district that um is trying to make things a little bit easier but certainly

059if there's a specific instance where a teacher is distracted or isn't you know then that that can be addressed through our through the policies that we have in place and i would absolutely support doing that um i also think that sorry not all teachers are taking advantage of being allowed to have their kids there are a lot of teachers whose kids are at home alone just like a lot of other parents because those families have decided that the adult could focus better at work so so maybe i'm totally off base maybe i shouldn't have brought it up you know i i love teachers i i want i'm just my only point is like the optics of it when when we're getting emails from dr baker talking about all the expectations for parents and you're gonna

060you know crack down this year about expectations and hearing those things and then seeing that the folks working in the district aren't feeling those same things that you know i like i i feel like this is going the wrong way covet is serious i hope it is a big deal like i like this isn't a political thing this is just like this this feels yucky being told over and over about our accountability as parents when the folks who are telling us that aren't feeling the same effects and and that's that's my only point and and i don't mean to that's that's my only point so i i guess i'm done with that and and that's it i i think i'm the only member of the public who showed up tonight i'm probably the only member

061of the public who wrote a letter to you um i i'm sure it will be quick and easy to dismiss my concerns but but my guess is i'm probably not the only one i'm just only one stupid enough to bring it up publicly harry you're not the only one that wrote us a letter although most of the letters um or phone calls had more to do with trying to extend the day and trying to understand why the day was structured the way it was um we this is the only concern that we've had as far as teachers um sarah go ahead oh i was just gonna say that i i i'm glad cara brought it to our attention and i think it's a really good conversation to have and um it sounds like the administrative

062team is is going in the direction that um that i think carrie you you would like to see us go in and i think a lot of a lot of parents would as well and there's there's some trickiness here and it may take more time to get it right and to figure out how to do it especially if as seems to be the case cases are rising over the next couple of weeks um but i you're i don't think you're alone at all and i think everyone is and i'll just say from the board's perspective you know some of us may absolutely enjoy some privileges um around timing and flexibility some of us i know don't um i'm one of the ones who has a fairly flexible schedule but i know many of the other

063people up here do not have flexible schedules and i would just say that every single conversation we've had has been around thinking about how tough this is for working families and we have agonized over it we really have everybody has and you know when we were presented with a schedule we said how are people going to do this and we many times during this discussion we just keep coming up to this is the worst possible solution to this problem except for every other solution and we really are just all kind of trying to do the best we can here but we believe me we know how hard this is for for all families for working families and and um you know we're we're doing what we can i guess is what is what i would

064say and i totally appreciate you oh sorry there are a lot of the concerns that you raise are national concerns i mean these are the same things that we're facing as a nation in that our the way our country is structured is that school is where we send our kids um when parents go off to work and the it's a national problem this isn't something that this board has spent a lot of time talking about it and a lot of time trying to figure it out and it's going to take a much broader solution than what we can come up with in heartland and we've tried and we just can't do it alone i i totally appreciate that i guess one thing i i wrote um in in my comments here is that rather than

065receiving emails saying how parents are going to be held accountable for achieving learning standards i'd really like this board to support providing parents with a list of learning standards that need to be met during the year and that when we receive assignments that are of low quality that we don't feel are worthwhile to invest our very valuable time at home that we have the freedom to choose to meet those learning standards in a different way on our own um and not feel like you know that that's going to be a problem i i i you know when when these expectations are suddenly thrust on us at home and what we receive is not of high quality i i as a human being with brain in my head i'm going to choose to opt out and

066and choose to educate my children um as i see fit and and i would like to know that this school district and the school board is going to support me in that and and not attempt to hold me accountable for checking boxes for them i can just share my my kara this is beth um i can just hear my own experience regarding that last last spring um you know i had a similar experience where i wasn't thrilled always with what was coming through the door um i and i had a conversation with the teacher of you know these are the other things i'd like to do is that is that appropriate and the answer was yes you know like there was it was just good conversations with the teachers that i was able to feel

067like i got what i needed to move forward and and feel like i was able to get you know the the quality that i was looking for um with with you know some good conversations with that with the teachers to move things ahead and i and i i hear i'm i'm we are a working family and we do not have a lot of extra time nor cash to be throwing at child care um and this i look at all our options and what we're doing and it is all horrible and there's nothing here that's on my side and i don't you know that and that's kind of how it's felt since this whole whole time so i i very much hear what you're saying and um it's it's it's difficult but i do have to

068say i don't think my family could handle um like doing a b scheduling or anything like that um the consistency of the five days even if it's shorter um at least i can figure out child care because that's you know it's been i can't i can't fathom trying to do on and off days and actually keep a job um so i'm i'm grateful for that i don't know if david or christine if you guys have a response um like beth though i've also found that i have tweaked assignments plenty both in the spring and this fall i just had a email with the teacher of what i was proposing and um in most cases had very positive response so i don't know if christine or david want to follow me yeah i'm just thinking about

069what you said cara and the the piece about parents being held accountable and um i'm not exactly um sure what that what that means i mean in my mind parents are our partners right now and we're working with them hand in hand um in the afternoons especially and appreciate all that they're doing so i i hope that you don't think it's in a punitive way that that's that's kind of what i'm taking away from what you're saying because we're certainly willing to work with parents and tweak assignments and you know if it's not working for your child that's what we're here for so i don't know if that helps or or doesn't help but um that's just what i was thinking about i don't know if david has anything to ask about i mean we're

070struggling with accountability and and it's not that the pa we're hoping that parents can work with us but we recognize that parents are working and we're doing the best that we can and and parents are doing the best that we can and sometimes it's case by case and this parent can't do it and that's okay so we're happy to work with any family around this issue britney's got her hand up too yeah i was just gonna say i also think that um because each family is kind of getting used to this new normal at a different rate school certainly started off differently um so during the school day it was a lot of relationship building and getting kids back into school after being off for six months and you know same thing kind of goes

071for the afternoon let's figure out what each family needs what what can we provide that's reasonable let's get some assessment data let's figure out where kids are at so that when we do kind of really do a remote push in the afternoon we're doing it well and i think that's kind of this little bubble that we've been in this last month of trying to kind of get the hang of all that and get schedules set um which which may feel not fantastic because obviously it's not a full day of school like like everybody's typically used to but you know we certainly want to be sure we get it right when we when we you know put it all out there for everybody so um so i'm just going through more questions so that um second

072question was a what's considered a remote learning day and i think that the state the state had standards for what was considered a remote learning day we've had one practice remote day um and i guess i'm just looking for what they will look like in the future because we've got a lot more coming up well well i think our our thinking was that our in-person days would mirror our remote days and so um you know that is that is still the hope that we're going to be able to translate what we're doing in school to doing at home as best that we can and balance um parents uh requests for not as much screen time and so we're trying to figure out how to do that best um but david feel free to share your

073thinking on that well that was it i mean the state the state has published guidelines and and they are by by you know grade level the expectations k4 5 9 and then high school of 5 8 and then high school and they run basically in the average of three four or five hours essentially looking at those three great spans but they also talk a lot about both that that whole notion of synchronous and asynchronous work right so they're not saying for example a middle school student has to be glued to to the screen on a remote day for four to five hours so it's it's really just setting those expectations and we you know we you know we we are going to be get because we have these remote days coming up we're going to

074be getting a little clearer and probably it will be important to get that word out to parents too about what the expectation should be around screen time you know and and non-screen time because that's that that's part of the problem we've really you we always wrestle with how much how much screen time is good for for a student on any particular day so we you know but but there are some guidelines but they're vague in the sense that they don't tell you how much should be synchronous and how much should be asynchronous but we're looking at that three to five hour and as christine said we're looking to have it mirror the the the actual school day that we have right now i think um i think that question cara asked that question um and

075i think um some other parents also asked it and i think it may be because um the first remote day was also a teacher in service day which i think made it a little bit more challenging so it was it ended up looking for us i think it was mostly a fix and finish day with very little actual work um and i guess maybe some reassurance that um not all remote days are going to look like that may be also part of what we need that that's accurate nikki the staff had two collaborative problem solving sessions to finish up and they were in professional development and that is partly why um and our plan is not to have that happen for for remote days yeah okay that's what i thought i just um i wanted

076to make sure that that was clear um so uh and then uh cara's last question was related to um potentially our guidelines being more strict than state guidelines but i think david cleared that up in a series of additional emails um does anybody have any further thoughts on that i feel like this is particularly challenging with um windsor county having a higher caseload than grafton county but grafton county being considered orange so that makes it a little odd um okay um so let's see i just want to make sure uh does anything is there anything else that somebody asked that that's ed on the phone just see ed khan is he you know in terms of the financial report that that's who's on the phone okay maybe the only public i just just checking in

077um just for the agenda's sake where are we because i i don't know we are we're on covent which was our first thing and we haven't gotten any further okay so um i'm good so and i uh for clarity i did um have a couple of conversations with people and i think some other board members did as well um and a lot of the conversations were about um how can we extend this day it's very challenging for working parents um and doing the after school part is very challenging for working parents and i think that i think our administration knows that as well um and i think it was a good way to start and now we're seeing some growing pains um and i think that that was kind of the gist of the conversation

078that i have with most of the public um okay so if we've got our covet update um let's move on to ed ed you waited patiently how's it going uh good good um i sent out a i sent out a financial report earlier uh this weekend and with it i sent out some questions that i had been asked by sean weyland in weathersfield and i uh sent them out to give us a basis to have a discussion tonight about the budget as it stands in fy21 and what what fy 22 looks like and i hope did everyone get a chance to look at that so as you can see from the financial report itself i'm projecting at this point a 253 000 surplus and it is pretty far out we're doing a better job of

079uh projecting because we're doing a purchase order system which is still a work in progress but we're getting better at it um so right now we're looking at about a little less than three percent uh surplus for the year still early there's still a lot going on but um one of the things that's become more obvious to me and i had this discussion with uh christine as well is that yes we do have increases in the uh cost due to the pandemic but we also realize some savings because things aren't um things that we normally would spend money on we're not spending money on so i i did have a conversation with uh christine on on friday and we talked about things like uh extracurricular transportation uh some of the contracted services what were the

080other ones christine i don't really remember travel yeah because people aren't going to workshops they're taking virtual workshops we saw some savings um in supplies because i really told the staff this is not the year to buy anything extra just the necessities so we saved a decent amount of money there um you know transportation basically for we're not transporting um the kids to windsor for algebra we're not transporting kids to field trips so there is a cost savings there as well and then um the other ones add i think you've covered them pretty much i mean just yeah i do think that there's an inordinate amount of conversation around the uh additional expenditures due to the pandemic and what's what's really happened is you've reassigned a lot of people you've had people that you you

081have teachers and support staff that you've been able to move around from what i can see we haven't incurred a lot of costs along those lines we've just reallocated people's time and the resources that you had budgeted for in a different way so uh there are is are there is there federal money to cover the anticipated expenses yeah there is it's it's a muddle though i mean there's not a lot of uh we've been going back and forth and i think i told you the last time we talked it's there's a lot of um i don't know how to put this but there's just a lot of uh back and forth on how these monies are gonna get distributed and what's eligible and what's not eligible and what's the best way to get the money

082do we want to put it into a surplus for fy22 do we want to cover the expenses some of the school districts have between the the uh repurposed money and the and the actual cost of things they've they've claimed as much as eight million dollars you know so there's a lot of uh controversy around that but as you can see from what i've talked to you i went in and i used actuals in my mind and i came up with about 116 000 worth of refundable expenditures and one of them one of those the principals and the executive staff in heartland's time for the summer and things like that and so we put together i put together the grant and then i so that and they're telling us they being the aoe are telling us

083to be kind of in a background kind of you know be liberal you know don't don't be afraid to repurpose things because the more we spend because they're afraid they're not going to be able to spend all the money by the end of the school by the end of december and they have to spend it in this year so then we get an email from the the part of the aoe that does the oversight and they give us a 32-page document of what we're going to have to work required to have to support the expenditures so on the one hand they're saying yeah that could be repurposed and that can be repurposed and on the other hand we're getting misguidance from their their uh monitoring group that says uh yeah but you can't do that

084and yes you can do this so i'm being pretty conservative and as i said before i some of what i've claimed i'm not sure i i mean some of the executive time meaning the superintendent's time one of the things that i've run into is if excuse me not the superintendent of the principal is when i said that our principals spent the whole summer and the assistant principal spent the whole summer doing planning for the pandemic i mean i think that's accurate i think it's really accurate but i can consider a question their question to me was what did they normally do so what weren't they doing when they were doing the covet planning we didn't take any vacation time at all so there you go right so that's that's one of the questions that i

085have to that they're going to be asking me and that's one of the ones i stumbled on because i i don't know what a full-time principal does during the summer at the schools so that's one of the ones i've been going back and forth with david on and trying to get some some so that's where we are on the federal money there's money that we're calling crs that's what i just got through talking to there's another group of money called esser it's esther money they've told us to try to spend in the spring rather than during the school year because they want to maximize the amount of expenditures they can put into the crf grant so i i think that safe to say you're going to get some of the money back none of what

086i've sent in has been approved there's been a lot of questions but nobody said yes you're going to get the money yet um so the fourth question he asks is looking ahead to the budget process for fy22 what conditions can be predicted that might affect heartland's budget in the local tax rate well i sent along another sheet that had so that outlined what makes up the ed fund what are they what are the sources of the ed fund and as you can see a large portion of that of the uh hedge fund is our property taxes and then the other revenue sources that they talk about are loans and meals tax and and these are all taxes that are have been projected to have increasingly large shortfalls so the short answer to that question is

087well if those other revenue sources are short then they're going to have to make that up some way now part of that way is to set aside some of the crf money and the other way would be to potentially go back and raise property taxes so there is that potential but i can't give you a definitive answer on how that's going to look i mean i don't think there's anybody in the state that knows that quite yet but i think common sense would dictate that this would be the year to be very very conservative in your budgeting and i've had that conversation with christine as well you know we you know one of the things that i've run into this as i go through the budget process is the way that we're structured they want

088some of the principals want to know how do we budget do we budget for a normal school year or the only budget for a covid year and i don't know how to put how to answer that question so what we're trying to budget for now is september of 2021. um i wouldn't i would say that you would budget well i'm going to be optimistic here i i would say you budget as if it were a normal school year with the same staff that you would need to teach your kids as normal all being there all day every day there are people there are some principles that are saying that you could potentially realize some savings if you didn't budget that way but i don't know if that's a safe thing to do at this point

089and finally i think i i think that's the only other question he had in there yeah so having said all that is are there any questions uh do you remember where uh maybe somebody on this call remembers where heartland ended up last year uh for fy20 um yeah yeah i think it was about i i'll double check here but i think it was a hundred and fifty thousand in the red yeah yeah that was right yeah and i know that that was due to well partly due to unbudgeted tuition expenses right we had like eight or nine kids yep that we hadn't anticipated yeah and that was one of my questions is looking at tuition um it looks like we budgeted correctly for tuition this year no actually i haven't gotten all the bills in

090yet but what i did was i i uh encumbered to budget what we have to do what we normally do is we wait for that first semester bill and then we use that to create a purchase order for the whole year and we don't have so who are we i don't have all of them in yet they usually come in in october so maybe by next month yeah we definitely added some high school students that we did not anticipate this year we also lost a few so it may wash it probably not wash but it might help itself so we to answer your question the deficit from the one you're bringing forward into the fy 22 budget year is uh 151 000 601 negative okay well i think that was better than the we brought

091into this year um he has to not have a deficit if we could figure out how many kids we have um okay any other board members have questions hey ed could you add anything to the um set for tuition question i just i think it's a it's a miscommunication at the state level i think there's one arm in the state that's saying you know their blood they're doing an audit on the tuition because somebody up there said that we pay too much tuition and then there's they're saying that thetfords was never accepted as one of those tuitions that was grandfathered in and we've been always led to believe by the aoe that that for saint johnsbury those schools all of them we paid we paid the full amount of their tuition because they were grandfathered

092in so so schools like uh waldorf and sharon academy get the state average and there's therein lies the dispute and what i did was i connected the the auditing agency with the aoe and they've been going back and forth ever since i mean i don't know where that stands but my experience i don't ask them that question until they ask me a question because i don't think we've done anything wrong i mean we've been doing this since i started and before i started i i was doing it almost 25 30 years ago so that's that's been the case for a long long time um but it's good to let the state auditors you know have it out with the aoe because then they don't bother us we'll let them figure it out i don't think

093there's really anything to figure out no i think it well they've got to find the document that says i think that's what they're trying to do like where did that happen you know but i don't know we'll see well man i think that i think nicole pointed it out the language was really ambiguous yeah what they were looking for was a motion from the school board no that's not that's not going to happen well no but i mean it's not something that the school board was ever had to make a motion for it was known through statute that we were supposed to pay and they're going back to the and the aoe is kind of caught in the middle of this saying wait a minute our advice has always been to pay the tuition so

094i i think this thing will take care of itself i hope so i don't know what the resolution would be well the good news is that food would would owe us a boatload of money yeah and they'd go out of business okay um so i think going forward with budgeting i kind of and i would like some board input on this is that i kind of concur with ed and that for next september we should pretend that maybe this is behind us and we can have a normal school year but i do i do wonder um with the pod structure that we have if if we can learn some lessons from how this is impacting us behaviorally and maybe not have as many people um if we could do this yeah brittany go ahead so

095i want him put yeah no i i recently um and i haven't compiled all of the information but i'm happy to share with the board when i do but i sent out a survey last week to teachers just saying what you know what things are going really well in your classroom behaviorally that's resulting in this 71 decrease um i'm still collecting more and more information every day but um but there was a lot of really good feedback that we're gonna kind of compile and say okay let's look at this and see what we can keep in place if we if we had a typical school year um so hopefully that will be really helpful moving forward when you say um less people nikki what do you mean by that because i think part of what's

096working is we we're using all our people just in a different way and i guess i just i wonder um [Music] by less people i don't mean a lot less people um but you know we've got we've got one-on-ones and we've got bis and we've got you know extra paras and um i just wonder if some of those kids are doing a lot better because the way that we've restructured school that maybe some kids and i don't we don't have a lot of one-on-ones i think we have two um if i'm remembering right or do we have more than that um so i don't know like i guess i'm just throwing it out there i um and and part of this if i was going to send you guys an email part of this is

097coming from our family's experience in that um your transitions is fantastic it's and that's really cut down on behaviors but the other thing that um has and i i don't know i mean maybe this is only my child but um they've developed trust right they're seeing a teacher so like there have been teachers in the school that have been there for two years that my child has never trusted because they see them once a week for a half hour or 40 minutes and that's not enough to establish trust and after one week of having them in the classroom yeah all of a sudden everything's changed and yeah having the related arts teachers um and it's not perfect yet but but doing some co-teaching being in the classroom with the teacher leading some of the um

098learning you know with the teacher as the support you know the classroom teacher as the support is really a model i'd love to replicate going forward i mean i think it's working not every kid gets every special every week but that's okay i mean what they're gaining you know offsets that i i believe um i think not eating in the cafeteria i mean many of our behavior issues were during the lunch time um i don't know if teachers love having kids eating in the classroom but it sure is it's almost like a family dinner right you're eating with your with your pod or your your classroom so there's there's lots i'd like to carry forward um with what we're doing you know some of it you know raises the issue well if teachers are with

099the kids all day what time does school end or how do we use our staff in a different way to you know make the day longer but still keep this structure in place so yeah lots to think about and i think you know in terms of budgeting for next year i mean i think the safe thing is to budget like school is going to be back to normal but i feel like this is the new normal kind of i'd like to keep it this way but the the questions for me are you know we we're we're we've got um an additional lna do i carry that forward will we need that next year i don't know we'll kove would be gone you know we've hired up today we hired a permanent sub well we need

100that next year um because that's a you know that's a person that is guaranteed to work every day and it's kind of funny because i don't think we ever had a day with where we didn't need subs last year the year before but you know there might be some days where you don't so it's it's just trying to make the best decisions with what we know um but basically it's um i've already sent out a memo to the staff in terms of supplies it's still not the time to buy extra we're going to just keep it bare minimum for next year um not that that's a bit not not that's big ticket items because it's really not in a big budget but it's one thing we have control over and then staffing so that's where

101we're at and ed's been it's been wonderful he's been really a good teacher in this new e-finance system he hasn't given me all the keys yet i believe but some of them he's giving me more access as i request it so hey christine is the um is a permanent sub um licensed uh they do not have to be licensed no but if they're if they're a permanent sub are they are they credentialed in some way no they're doing by permanent it means they work only for heartland but they're doing they they're doing it they might do a day here two days there two days in this classroom so they're not they're not like a long-term subject which is what i think you're referring to scott okay okay yeah it's really to keep just one person

102one additional person in our building we don't want to bring in any the fewer people in the building the better so this is one consistent person that can sub anywhere in the building if that makes sense um and we're lucky with with the one that we're hiring now um he was licensed uh in 2017 i think he let his license lapse for elementary ed but he was licensed um yeah which is great so he does have quite a bit of experience sounds good yeah sounds exciting um brittany do you have something else uh i think i was just going to talk about one other thing that you know of course is coming back from the survey is just the smaller class sizes and the impact of that but to get smaller class sizes there are

103other costs like you know you get smaller class sizes because you're using all of the staff you possibly have which doesn't leave intervention but at the same time if you have smaller class sizes you might not need as much intervention because you have more staff and a smaller class size so it's it's like this you know kind of balancing act that we're trying to work through so but there would be a lot more data as the year goes on about all of that information so the information that i gathered is really just very preliminary like hey what are we seeing right now and then we'll we'll do follow-up throughout the year um as well sarah did you have something you're on mute sorry um i was just thinking about as we sort of re jiggered

104everybody this year how are there any holes that we then are going to have to fill like i was thinking the library position right that one that that's going to be a totally new hire the library stem right because we've used our librarian stem teacher as a classroom teacher or yes but she'll go back to she'll go tina will go back to being the library stem teacher and the way we did that we had some combined grade levels right okay so we wanted to make that up well if we want to keep small classes and not then then we then we will somehow okay so that's maybe one so that's one sort of new hire to to kind of fill in i'm just thinking about how we sort of hold different places and where do

105we have to fill in um yeah there's also two interventionists that are classroom teachers right now right so if we want interventionists back you pull them out of the mix and you combine some classes which makes larger groups and we didn't and we did not ever um replace uh our part-time interventionists teresa so that's part of the cost savings i'm sure that ed is is showing yeah and we also have 50 more kids in theory in september right back in school yeah hopefully yeah yeah there are a lot to think about you know one thing i do have to say that i think is is going pretty well is um you know using our lodge staff in the in the classroom as like hands-on first-hand intervention before things kind of go south versus being more

106reactionary which is what they've been in the past and i i do think that that that seems to be going really well and we are moving them around um minimally but a little bit based on the data that we're seeing uh the behavior data that we're seeing coming in so we'll keep collecting that on that too and see how we can best utilize them if we're um throwing out ideas about you know how to go forward as we begin budgeting i guess i would share that it would i'm not comfortable acting as if the next school year will be a quote normal school year okay i i i feel like [Music] more of the same is more likely at least to start with um i don't know that i don't have a crystal ball but

107i just i think it would be easier to let down our guard if we if we were really able to rather than trying to uh start up again you know i mean it would be easier to keep this this boat sailing um i think one thing that comes to my mind folks is that when ed was speaking about the um cares funds i think that's what it was i don't know is ed still on the phone yeah um and that i understand there's a time limit i think of the end of the year that is that is really a juxtaposition of as a community representative so i i guess it's really a whole other animal but i just wanted to say out loud like nothing makes like the blood come to my face then being

108like the spring of the school year and overhearing at a school board meeting that there's a basket full of money that was in the budget and we need to spend that because as a community member i don't i don't want to hear that i want to hear like correct spending and spending that needs to be done i'm not not spending the budget any time just because it was put in the budget nine months ago so i just think that's that's worth like saying out loud um like i said it's a whole other basket of money but it's still the same people that are uh in charge of that financial management i don't scott i don't that's not what i hear her hearing say at all you know and what i heard is that he's being

109really careful and really you know and and not feeling like he's charging karex stuff that doesn't that's why the whole idea of like what are how can we charge the principal's time in the summer you know because that was a significant change from past years and what does that look like so that's not what i heard ed saying was that we were going beyond the budget or changing that it's more it's what i heard is that ed was really looking at it really really closely to make sure we could be reimbursed to the fullest but not over the line in any way i mean that's i didn't hear that i agree i agree with you beth i it's i was more or less just um bringing up like historically that's yeah and i don't think

110our community should have the um should trust that um that we're because the budget is always an estimate i i i'm totally on the side of that the budget is an estimate and and it really when you think about the timing associated with the school district operations it you really can't have any other outlook i don't believe that the budget is an estimate and so we all understand that life goes on and that we come springtime that it just may not be a need for what we budgeted for yeah i i think the scots it's a scott's point i i don't think he was necessarily talking about the cares money but i know for example we do have a district that will remain unnamed uh ed certainly can attest to this though but sometimes in

111the spring they find out that they've got a fairly substantial surplus right now that's just an estimate but let's say you get your second quarter reporter you get your third quarter report and and and i've seen this board not the heartland board say well we've got this money let's let's buy this so let's buy that or you know i i think it's okay to land at the end of the year with a surplus if you have to land with a surplus and i think this board has always pretty much understood that and i think that's the way we'll operate um you know and you can't you can't predict i mean i i i think the i had a superintendent one time tell me that you know if you can land within one to three percent

112on either side of your budget surplus or deficit you're probably doing pretty well because it's also especially in this time in you know day and age it's it's all an estimate as as scott said so i think we'll see what happens my guess is that that that's that number is going to change as we go on but i think we have saved some money in some areas and that's a good thing one more thing i'm sorry um when i i heard loud and clear that it was getting cold and the doors were still open christine yeah is there any um that's really like a i know it feels wrong but you're breaking scott's household rules no no that's just like that's interesting it's very interesting and i understand we're trying to i mean there are

113a lot of goals to me here basically that's what and so i wonder if they must be helping um district leaders like understand like the size of the room or something and how often the door would need to be open or or if it should ever be shut or they're they're the guidance is that the doors should be open and windows so uh you know i've told staff you don't have to have them 100 like wide open you can you know maybe put something in the door to let fresh air in but um to be honest scott some staff need the door open to feel safe yeah they just do and um and um it does i mean the heat before the heat was on and the doors were open i was freezing literally and

114i'm typically cold but it was cold um now that the heat's on it feels reasonable um but it is it feels like you're you're just wasting energy right because the door's open so um i i don't know the answer to that except we're supposed to keep them open same with bus windows following the guidance is the way to go that's exactly i'm with you yeah do you do you foresee it changing for winter i mean it's cold possibly now like what's it gonna be like if it's 10 degrees outside yeah i i don't know colleen um but it is all about uh you know it's it's they call it what do they call it the swiss cheese approach it's like the masking the distance the ventilation airflow all over just wondering if it's gonna be

115doable if there's snow coming in the door that might not be right no i don't know as it gets colder i'm guessing they're gonna start to just be cracked open instead of wide open but um you know staff are still planning something outside they'll continue to go outside and when they're outside the doors are closed obviously but um it is great to see them outside i have to tell you it's pretty it's pretty awesome are the eighth graders going outside as much i hear a little bit of whining in my house they they're not as much um no i mean it's more it starts uh the most i would say the younger kids go out the most as you get older it's harder to what they're teaching is harder to teach outside um because they

116rely on their promethean boards and other things that they don't have outside so it does get more challenging um but we'll we'll remind you know it is good to be outside when you can be it also took quite a long time to get some of the um middle school supplies in because i mean we were just short supplied and the orders everybody was ordering everything all at the same time so it took a long time to get those in and the more they got in they got out a little bit more but that did take quite a while so okay yeah how how's the gear situation like or do we still need gear for kids like as we move forward because i mean 8th graders you know love to wear their shorts also all winter

117yeah they'll stop if they get cold yes ed yeah i just wanted to say i for some reason i couldn't get myself unmuted but two things one is that um you're going to have to as a board and the schools all of them are going to have to anticipate increase in energy it's only because as as you've outlined the the way they've dictated you you've got to exchange the air in the in your rooms every 20 minutes and to that end that means you're bringing in cold hair to and blowing out warm air so you're going to have to it's going to be chilly there's no way around that um the second part is there's different cr crf monies that are available and one of them was from efficiency vermont and heartland got a significant

118amount of money from efficiency vermont in the in the 125 dollar range and it still hasn't been finalized like all the crf money but that money was put towards um getting your air handlers and your air circulation and hvac system up to up to par now there's money i i put in another 33 000 into the crf grant that is the one i had talked about earlier and it's not clear to me whether they're going to allow that expense but if they don't allow that expense then i'm asking the board tonight if they would be okay with taking that money out of your capital reserve fund because if we we have to we being heartland has to be willing to complete the project and if you're going to get 125 000 in money from efficiency

119vermont and the crf then i would i think that it's a good idea to commit 33 000 out of your capital reserve in order to commit from our capital reserve that requires a vote at town meeting correct yep yeah okay so you're giving us that long of a time frame to think this yeah okay um yeah and the um improvement to the air handling system is something that will improve the air handling system beyond this year and maybe next correct yes yeah absolutely i mean it will make it so that the system can be uh it can be handled from a remote basis automated you could you can do it from your phone and i think jim showed you didn't he christine what the assistant's capable of yeah and the system in heartland is unfortunately

120unfortunately this the pandemic has has um brought to light a lot of shortcomings and a lot of other opportunities and this is an opportunity to get that system up and operational yeah yeah they're straight they're still working on it um the guys there uh from control technologies i believe and he works after the kids leave every day so in practice and the other thing i was going to say is i think that the conversation that you had earlier that was triggered by um uh asked about what were the lessons in brittany's response about what were the lessons i think that's an invaluable conversation and i commend you for having it because it's gonna make it's gonna be difficult there are i've already said to christine that if it comes down to it and as you

121all well know is anytime you're going to make any significant changes in your budget that i mean supplies will get you a couple of thousand here and there but you really have to look at staffing and that's a conversation that needs to emanate from the board and you really to have it in an open forum like this is a that's a good start thanks for your vote of confidence i don't know that we got anywhere in that conversation but um no i'm certainly not i don't hear it a lot i don't hear that kind of conversation a lot and it's you're talking about education and things like that and not talking about money which is important i think those are the things like every crisis has opportunity and brittany just outlined one and christine talking

122about people not whether or not they go to the cafeteria i never would have known that i used to love the cafeteria oh yeah kids love it it's it's a nightmare right now and i get to deliver lunches which we love we do and i i will say since it is a public forum um when i brought that up i wasn't intending to cut any staff i was specifically looking at not hiring new people all that information for you guys once i get more of it we just started that collection and so i'm i actually have can come in and see it all up on my wall it's all taped to the wall right now that i'm trying to compare what's working and maybe what we can improve on so um i do think that

123will be very informative moving forward yeah that's just a preliminary thought it just seems like you know out of crisis comes opportunity and and i think the fact that christine has looked at that pod structure and i mean we just see so many advantages to that and if one of them is to look at staffing patterns then we can do that but i i think yeah that that's a good idea we need to do that as a whole we do we do thanks for any yeah thank you ed does anybody have any other questions for that or we let good to let ed continue on with his evening okay thank you very thank you very much thank you for hanging out with us for an hour and 50 minutes we appreciate it thanks thank you

124have a good night okay um so i'm going to go back up to the top of the uh agenda with the principles report christine sent out earlier do you want to share your screen or do we all have her second i'll be sure it's it's it's not a long report it's short i assumed we'd be talking about other things so i didn't include them but um let me present here okay all right so um we are in the middle i think i mentioned this earlier in the middle of tmp testing actually we're at the end we're just doing makeups this week for kids that that weren't able to um complete complete um tmp testing and um as as dr baker predicted yeah we we didn't um we're doing okay on our tmp scores uh the

125mtss academic leadership team meets tomorrow we're gonna we're gonna dive in and look more specifically but in general we want to be in the blue or the green and these are class averages scaled scores so um each grade level and remote students are also participating in tmp so in math you know as as grade level cohorts everybody's in the blue and green there are definitely kids when i dive down into the grade levels where there are kids in the yellow and red that need additional support so that's really important information for us so that's math and that is better blue or green green is better okay so we're doing okay the blue is yeah blue is in the um range of proficient awesome okay yeah yeah overall um you know we were we were concerned

126we didn't know where kids would be and you know this is one measure teachers are doing other measures right now um f and p tests um running records and and things like that but this is good initial data um that's coming in again it's not quite we're not quite done yet but we will be this week um we are continuing our work although we're not going to be um contracting with leader and me this year some of our cost savings came from that money that we put aside but we are trying to continue um using the traits um you know the seven habits of healthy kids brittany's working hard at making sure the teachers have resources to teach the the habits and um going in and reading books recording videos and we're doing what we

127can to keep it moving forward uh having nominations are in process right now for student of the month which the first habit was um being proactive so those those kids will be honored um at the beginning beginning of november um one comment on that that just popped into my head um since since your parents are your assistants this year it might be nice to send them a note and maybe you did and some of us don't read our notes but um yeah yeah yep yeah this is our habit and this is how it's expressed in a kid i i don't know like just a short two or three bullets on the habit and why it's good or how you think it would be valuable for me because there are a lot of parent resources online

128um for teaching these in fact a lot of the book that that's on the slide actually is designed for parents and it has activities in the back or whatever um would it be i don't want to overwhelm parents is is kind of what i was thinking so i didn't know if it would be valuable to in the monday memo to put a here's the activity of the week or of the month for for this character trait um we could also work on um i mean the teachers are teaching the the traits in school but maybe a focus in the afternoon brittany some teachers um giving parents access to that access to him that way as well but yeah we can work on that let's think about it yeah and honestly like so um like many

129other parents i'm completely overwhelmed all the time um if you just gave me three or four bullets like if i knew that that like i can think of things knowing now that the character trade of the month was be proactive there are just ways that i would have put that in even with my child's behavior today um and so just to be able to carry that through even if it's during dinner time and other times of the day just to say oh you're being proactive that's awesome yeah is the monday memo a good way to get that out to people well that's for the staff you mean the wildcat week i'm sorry the wildcat yeah yeah i think that would be great just just like three or four bullets in the wildcat weekly and more

130information is great but just um somewhere really short yeah um for those of us that don't always follow through as well as we'd like a lot of resources that are just that are very short like here are three things that you could do this week to promote to promote be proactive so yeah we can definitely do that that's a great idea yeah awesome okay thanks okay i don't know if we're as like people that are watching over children and their afternoon work if there's other ways for them to like give um caught you cards or things like that um just if they're seeing you know because i'm just saying that's really proactive if kids are actually doing their work on their own so i'm sharing that and stuff like that yeah last year we tried

131a google form that parents could fill out and submit um and then we would we would represent that we didn't get to too much turnout for that i think it might have been the design wasn't maybe fantastic for parents to be able to easily access it so uh but we can we can certainly think about how to how to do that i think other schools have done it before so i'll do some research on that i would even say just maybe telling parents they can email their teacher if their kid does something great at home yeah finding a form for me would be the thing that stopped me would it be now that the kids are back and forth nikki if we sent home just um blank wild cards for parents to fill out to

132send back in would that be an easy way or not i think um i'm speaking for my family i think my kids would find it really cheesy to get one from me i think it would lose this it would lose its value coming from me um but if i were like so this information if i were to email the teacher and be like hey i was really proud because so-and-so did this and then the teacher said hey your mom said she was really proud then the kid would feel got it i don't know that's the psychology of our house no that makes sense totally okay we'll work on that i wrote it on my list um i don't i know i put this on the my presentation last month but i don't think i got

133to this last slide um we are using heartland connects i don't know if if any of you have seen it um tina ski hin was the um kind of lead on this she put it together and and we really wanted parents to have one one place to go for all of the remote things that need to happen and um and staff are using it they're putting their newsletters they've got schedules links to where people the kids need to go so it's it's it's working pretty well i love feedback from parents if any of you have used it or not and find it useful that would be good information at some point maybe we'll have have you it sounds like nikki you want to say something i can't see you but i'll say that it's really

134helpful to to be able to go to one place that's not that's not controlled by my kids so i don't have to open up one chromebook and try and figure out what's going on over here and then go to the other chromebook and figure out what's going on just to be able to because what i'm doing is on mondays before i pick the kids up from school i'm going to heartland next and and trying to figure out what their week looks like so that i can you could plan it okay yeah right i find it very helpful um okay i'm also gonna say scott you can connect too there's no login you can just google heartland connects and check it out if you want to i was just trying to find it right now yeah

135it's totally open yeah it's on the dashboard scott um if you go to you know if well you could go access it through the dashboard or you can access it through our home page i think it's under parent if i remember correctly yeah so you can go to parent and then it says heartland connects on there so you can you can check it out either way thank you yeah it's really great too because teachers get to see what other teachers are doing um are like i shared earlier fourth grade teachers piloted remote afternoons first and created some great links uh and plans on on heartland connects and shared it out with the rest of the staff so it's it's a good tool for for helping um each other as well so we'll keep that i'm

136finding great just especially with the younger kids because then i'm not relying on a second grader to have their appropriate bookmarks marked good which doesn't the whole thing is happening so yeah that's hugely helpful well that's good to hear that was that was a hope so yeah well no and it seems so much more transparent because i always felt like i was logging into like their seesaw what are your assignments what is this i mean i still have to do a little bit of that but it's more like i can get a cursory overview of what the expectations are for the afternoon pretty easily that's great i will share that information with the staff they'll appreciate it quick update on acceptance and understanding they continue to provide professional development at staff meetings so we are

137at um we are at uh finalizing definitions of some of some key words which which was interesting the other night at um nikki and i were at the anti-racism task force preliminary committee i'm not sure what we're called nikki but um talking about what is the definition of of um discrimination and racism and so this our staff is wrestling with that as well so it'll be nice to have some common definitions of what those words mean so that's what we worked on last month getting feedback to some preliminary ideas and and they're going to revisit that at the next staff meeting but moving forward with that work and then the the other thing that we're um spending time learning about at staff meetings is um trauma and how to become a trauma uh informed school

138and this is a big initiative in our whole su and we have a very active champions group within our building and they um they're doing some educating at staff meetings as well i think i met with him last week and i think we're going to take a pause and just do a check-in at the next staff meeting it feels like staff need to need to do that and that's really important um the man that is um our lead in trauma work is dave melnick and he is a firm believer in just stopping and uh doing some reflective practice as a staff to build um trust and um cohesion and he does it with the administrative team regularly we usually all end up in tears so i'm hoping which is good for us sometimes so that

139group is leading that work and then um we put out a survey i say angie did most of the work week five was a similar survey to week one it was a staff survey and it had some of the same questions in hindsight i probably should have done a comparison of week one and week five but overall people you know more than 50 percent of the people feel very safe some are still not sure um very few feel you know unsafe which is which is good um transitions how are transitions in in the in and out of the building going pretty well i will say in in heartland we do have one-way hallways right now and i think as the weather starts to get really cold we may consider uh just dividing the hallway into

140a two-lane hallway and to be clear that basically they're not really transitioning it's just for bathroom usage and things like that not classes or right and then i think um this is about building cleanliness and i think we've really flushed out and worked out the disinfecting schedule and everybody feels like um you know the maintenance staff has been working incredibly um hard for the past you know eight months however long we've been at this but they um i think the staff is is feeling that the building is being taken care of and this is s-u-s-u-wide results not just heartland and that is the end of my report so let me stop sharing and take any questions or thank you christine that was really awesome yeah i'm trying not to make it too too long because

141i know we talk about other things throughout the meeting but just give you a sense of where we're at and what we're doing did i stop presenting [Laughter] okay any other questions for christine no so david you're up superintendent's report yeah so i i really you know again it's always good to follow christine because she covers a lot of the things that we're working on and um the only two things i would add is just in light of ed's report you know we do have to keep our mindset now geared toward budgeting i think we're gonna our goal is to have a draft su budget ready for the next su meeting so because that always drives the assessment piece for all of the individual districts and it gives us a baseline to start putting the

142rest of the budget together so again it there there's not going to be much like most of the local districts we're not going to have any huge initiatives anything added um you know we uh we'll look at some of the you know katie to her credit she's on with us tonight but she got the special ed service plan which is probably 80 of the su budget is special education but she got that done early this year so ed's had those numbers to to uh to play with and to katie's credit she's kept it in the in the i think i don't know the increase was what katie two percent three percent i don't even know what the it there wasn't an increase we kept it all right but it was level i think i i

143think it's 20 over if it is anything but it which in an eight million dollar budget i think that's yeah but i don't think there was an increase i will triple check i've been doing it piecemeal the past couple of days so um to fill it in so sorry to interrupt no no no that's right yeah i knew it was just while we were on that katie i just want to give you a huge shout out shout out that that is just awesome because in previous years we've waited forever for that information and weren't sure where it was coming from and it was always an enormous increase and and i just like thank you i know it's hard to pull together and i'm just really happy to hear that update at this point in here

144i just want to add um part of the reason that things are are working as well as they they have been is the um the connection between regular ed and special ed staff i mean they're working together we're not there's not a a line drawn in the sand we're all on the same team and we're working together and that feels really good and i think kids feel that as well so and that's that's across this good news so it's very good news yeah very good news and then the only other thing other than the stuff we've already reported out and uh and i know nikki we'll talk a little bit about the anti-racism task force so i'm not going to go there but it's negotiations and we can talk more specifically i think we do

145need a very brief executive session tonight we can talk away but i can say publicly that we we did hit you know impasse we you know we we both can't you know any further alone so that's going to mean uh you start using with mediation we'll we'll bring in a mutually agreed to mediator uh we'll put our proposals that are still left on the table on the table and they'll put theirs and the mediator will run back and forth between the two rooms it'll be virtual so the mediator is not going to cost as much as it has in the past because usually you have to pay travel and lodging and a full day's worth of mediation time so and we split that cost with the association so it's too bad i i don't think

146we're that far apart um but we we can give you a little more detail in executive session but but that's that that's and we have a couple of other things to share in executive session too that are personnel related but we'll wait until we go there that's it for me thank you david um okay so moving right along that uh brings us to the portrait of our graduate update which i think is angie or is that me i know angie can give that because she's been working hard with mike nicholson on that piece i can get that and what it is is the strategic plan is going to the board chairs on wednesday evening and mike is joining us and he's going to walk us through the process that the strategic plan was created through

147and then um answer any questions anticipate any questions that may come out when we share it with the whole um board next week is it next week yeah um looking forward to that and uh that's really where we're at where we are at yeah but angie's done a nice job really working with mike and and we're and i think when you see the strategic plan when it comes to the whole and i'll send it to all board members if you haven't already i don't think we sent it out no because we're waiting for this vetting process with the board chairs but that writing team really worked hard on that this summer and we've got based on that portrait we've now got a strategic plan that's several pages long and it's got i think there are

148five goals in there with very specific action plans and uh i i think it could guide us for the next at least three to five years but it could easily be a ten year map if we do it if we do it right um and i think it's got a lot of exciting things in this so angie thanks for doing that stay tuned it'll be published soon because the first step is to get the su board to support it and then to you know then to start to uh get to get that plan out to the community staff and some of them have seen it some of them worked on it don't forget we had that 60 member design team that met all those crazy nights way back when that developed a lot of these

149ideas and thoughts so so that was good work thank you angie and david um i will say that i i've said this before i'm super excited to where we've gotten with that document um i feel better having read it one time and now we'll go over it again on wednesday but i feel better about that document than i ever have about any of our strategic plans because i couldn't read the other ones they didn't make any sense to me that goals were all over the place and weren't in clean english and this feels very good so i'm i'm excited to read it again and um to improve on it if we can and move it forward and actually work from it um so then that anybody else have any questions on portrait no okay moving

150forward to the anti-racism task force we've met um last week um and uh i am now the chair of the anti-racism task force um colleen's laughing how did that happen congratulations nick i just i just found that out today yeah so um it turns out that when there's radio silence i can't keep my mouth shut um so but i'm actually i'm it's such an important thing i um didn't feel like radio silence was appropriate so i don't know um and so um we didn't it was really an organizational meeting we took an hour to decide who was chair um and uh we also kind of talked through um there were some questions um as to whether or not a policy was the right way to start um and there was a lot of debate on

151that that was probably 40 minutes of our discussion um and then there was also a question of whether or not we wanted to continue to call it anti-racism task force um if we wanted to pick a softer name that might ring better with the community um i don't feel like there was finalization on that but i it's still called the anti-racism task force um and i think my personal opinion is that it should remain that um and i think that's true of most of the group yeah yeah um and um so the next steps is i emailed um writing wrongs ariel and jameson um and i'd like them to um do so the first step of the anti-racism task force was that um we did a question and listening session um where uh jameson asked

152us some pretty tough questions actually very tough questions um and we responded um and so the next step is that we are going to direct uh jamison to ask those tough questions of our administration and some staff members um because there were they're much more in touch with what's happening in the school um the board members kind of know what's happening in the broader community but we're not drilled down um and thankfully um brittany and christine don't share every little detail of everything that happens in the school with us so we're gonna let them um hopefully jamison and ariel will be willing to meet with them um and do that question a nicer session with them then the next step will be to probably bring it back to the board member task force to review

153a draft of a policy that's just a very preliminary draft based on those two question and answer sessions and from there we'll have to figure out where to go next um i will say that um ariel and jameson asked for a pause um because they are uh graduate students and have exams that they need to take so um they i emailed them today and said that um if we get slowed down a little bit i'm okay with that um because i think that it's important to do this slowly and right um and so that is where we are with the entire racism task force go ahead beth yeah i mean i would also urge you guys to you know zoom zoom out a little bit and look at board culture because you know there's a

154lot of white supremacy culture just based in our board system and how these things work so um yeah i mean i think it's worth looking at that and how to make our boards as inclusive as possible because it's if we're making policy it starts with us and if we're not an inclusive system then it's not going to trickle down anywhere and nikki the only question i had too was i did get uh i i don't know whether it was requested or not but i did get that list of people in windsor who were interested on being on this task force did you ask all principals to submit a list of people who would be interested no what i asked um so so there's a lot there's a lot to unpack here um there's so ariel

155and jameson's for the questioning session 15 to 20 people is kind of the best um and so we need to keep it small for that i think for the initial policy discussion we also need to keep it um for the initial just the board members after that initial then i think we can open it up um and so what i asked is for each community representative um on the task force to pick three to four people to find a way to pick three to four people from their community um to join us for the next round of opening up um and i guess the way that i kind of envision it is that we'll have those 16 people um review the policy and then allow the task force to listen in to those 16 people

156um so that the task force can absorb how those 16 people react and what the conversation is so that we can build on that that's kind of the vision of what i have i haven't run that through ariel and jameson um and then i think from there we still need to open it up broader because we can't just show up with this policy that hasn't been embedded well so um that's kind of what i see happening right now but that's my brainstorm and i'd like to talk to them to figure out um what they think of that brainstorm and how they would manage it yeah because they've done this yeah that's right and the other thing i was thinking about um i just want to make sure we're communicating to the to the broader communities

157both our parent communities and our staff community because i think they all think that there's something starting like in the next couple of days where you know or next week or so where we're going to have a task force i just want to be able to communicate that to them but if those were the names that came based on that request and i think there were only four or five of them and that then then that's uh that's great the other thing i think we have to do and maybe this is a conversation you could have with jameson and ariel would be as we as we embark on this work because it's going to be very delicate work and it's not by the way it's not going to be very easy easy work i think

158in especially when we get to the wider community and and and that may be even some of that early debate about what we call the task force buried in that conversation or that question or that debate is a lot of underlying you know sort of baggage that could go along with the word racism or what what is racism but that's that that's that that's not what the point i want to make though what i do think at the onset both in developing the policy and then coming up with a plan to implement that policy i mean i do think it would be good to talk about at some point with the either with that smaller group in terms of what are we you know kind of like what are we trying to accomplish if in

159fact our policy were effective and we were going to create safer spaces for minority communities be they black brown or lgbtq or whatever what would that look like what would need to what what what would be different you know and kind of get some indicators there because what i'm worried about is that some place down the line we've got to figure out a way to measure our progress right and and again i don't think we have to decide this tonight but i know i've been thinking a lot about this especially through that equity fellowship that i'm in and i just happen to be in the middle of it this this week and some some of it is figuring out ways to measure you know what what what you are trying to accomplish and some of

160it is pretty it's pretty qualitative and it's not very quantitative but i think if you can get the characteristics down or the attributes of an organization or a community that is welcoming and and it is a safe space uh for our minority communities then i think then we can you know there might be a way to measure that christine yeah david did you get four um community members or was it a mix of staff and community members on that list uh i think it was i think it was it looked to me like it was all staffed do you have do you have it no i just think there's a little bit of confusion on the convenience store because i think it was my understanding that jameson and ariel were going to do the listening

161interviews with the administrative team next is that accurate nikki i mean and then i have staff and then it's the larger community is it is it yeah okay so so um what so the listening tour i think they are only going to do with the task force which has already been done yeah and then the administration team and the teachers that come like that group um schools so are the so you so the teachers are are doing that with the administrators um and i'm only because i i don't want there to be anything that gets in the way of honest answers and i don't know if having administrators with the teachers if that would happen or not i mean i'd like to think it wouldn't but yeah it could right i i definitely see where

162you're coming from there um well so i think um the way that we i think the way that you communicate going forward is just like let's let's just be honest and say that we're on pause for a second that's good is that great everybody needs to know that yeah yeah let's just let people know that we're working with graduate students who are very bright and are doing the community of service that we're excited about but they are graduate students and we need to let them do their job their other job um and so that would be the first thing i communicate um just so pause and stay tuned we'll let you know you're not excluded and we'll let you know and christine i think you bring up a really valid point there um that i

163haven't figured out yeah yeah i don't know what to do that's a good point and and you know who knows maybe colleen colleen deschamps emailed me that list today and i wasn't sure why why why she was and maybe she was just randomly letting me know who's interested in the building in this topic it might not have been any particular request i can check in with her you know later on but i think that's a i think that's a good idea that we just let people know because i think even right up last summer you know there was this you know push not push but can you know a lot of interest in starting a task force like this and then it just sort of you know it just leveled then we then we were

164blessed to secure ariel and and jameson to do this work by the way at an incredibly reasonable cost for two bright minds and two people of color to walk us through this but then you know we we we still are on pause so i think we just need to let people know that we're on pause because i know christine you have people in your building that are incredibly passionate about this and i wouldn't want them to think that we just hey whatever happened to that anti-racism task force are they just kind of you know i think that would not be a good message to send to our folks so maybe angie and katie and christine we can think about a way to get something out to the whole staff that just indicates we're unpaused it's

165still a major priority of our school boards and and and and stay tuned i think that's all we need to say i think the pause they i think they said it was a couple weeks i don't think it's a long pause it's just a short pause so they've got to get through exams yeah it's a short pause um i will admit that i've heard that they picked up more schools um and so um yeah and so i i think that the service that they're providing is so needed and um by everybody that i think everybody's realizing it now um and so i just i guess my personal opinion is that i think i i very much feel like i need help i as a person of white privilege i am not the one to be

166writing an anti-racism policy and so i it is my outlook that i will continue to be in touch with them but i'm also not gonna pressure them to produce something and i if they finish some other schools first i'm totally okay with that as long as um you know we could try to get the attention that i feel like we need um so that's kind of the tact that i want to take because i feel like it's so important i don't want to brush it um so i will keep in touch i um emailed this morning i haven't heard anything yet and you know we'll get something out to the staff just so they know yep it's a working yeah and i feel like using them is so critical um they really like they they

167could run away right now and do this for the next year and um i feel like we're lucky to have found them i also feel like that their demand is going to be so high i don't know how to manage that and i don't know that they know how to manage that so i'm trying to be sensitive to that yeah so we'll see hopefully that's scott yeah thanks i think you you hit on a bunch of things that um were were questions in my mind since the last supervisory union meeting but first of all that was talking about um our board evidence of not our board i'm sorry but just evidence of white supremacy on in public public boards let's say um and i wouldn't uh deny that and i just thought that it's it

168was encouraging to me even though none of us would have wished to be in uh in the midst of a coronavirus pandemic but this this format that we're using now is we've had more folks at school board meetings in the past few months than i can remember ever i've been doing this with you guys eight and a half years and it's been a lot of quiet nights and so that that is good i mean it's it's a form of equity i don't know how it addresses the white supremacy part but i was curious about the um writing wrongs am i correct that it was um nikki writing wrong's llc yes i think it is right correct do they have a web presence that that anybody can check out or you know they have a national

169they have a national they have a national web presence national yeah so i think if you if you were to google them you'd see something about their you'll see you'd see something about them at the national level oh jameson and ariel are part of a much larger organization correct okay i did not understand that um so and then that brings us to brings me to the part about um i was curious whether they were the breadth of the work and whether you know they were both at um law school in south royalton like what part of the state would they do this work in just on a practical matter um so i don't know how it's blossoming i hope i wish them all the luck um um so most of the policies that we that

170we have approved easily have been looked at by the vsba's team their internal legal uh eyes and then they have external or contract legal help too so is that something that we should be um kind of wonders like as soon as it starts to get get pretty big um our friends work um are they working with the school boards association or the superintendent's association or is everybody aware of what's what's going on i think those are really valid questions and those are thoughts that flew through um my head as well um i i think part of the work is that the policy um i mean yes we're a small state and and we could probably draft a policy for the state but it really the work needs to happen in the communities i think um

171and so while and this is just where i came to in my own head being part of this process is that um yes i do think that the state could approach this um i do think that the vsba could provide guidance on this but i think that from a community level will get something of more value um by doing it at the community level um and i think that that's where jameson and ariel are um just so uniquely positioned as two outspoken students of color who are capable of speaking um to their experience and help those of us who haven't experienced that um guide us through developing an anti-racism packet but then also the fact that they can develop a policy because they've got legal background as well um and i think that's just an

172amazing combination um i think i worry that they're over tasked and that maybe they need to be at a state level um but that's i think more their decision than ours and i'm just gonna keep trying to hope that we can keep going on our process yeah and it is difficult i i just try googling them again it's not there's a trick to how to do this elizabeth showed me before to get to the but but i think those are good questions scott i did writing wrongs anti-racism and i got it okay i think seek truth report writing wrongs programs um yeah i know they're all over the place they're not just here but scott to your point i think i know the southeast superintendents and that would be everybody south of basically hartford you

173know they're working together you know those superintendents to make sure that regionally we have a presence this way too and i i've certainly mentioned that resource to them whether they'll use them or not they're all in different places but but it's but it's a it is a good point thank you thanks for taking it on nikki yeah i think it's important um and like i told the task force i'm i'm gonna delegate so i'm gonna organize these meetings but i'm not doing all the work i uh as you guys know i'm a little overwhelmed um okay so that brings us um unless anybody has any new business that brings us to uh setting the agenda and then we will do a short um executive session but that is not on this agenda of david yeah

174so you could you could still move to go in even though it's not on the agenda scott what did you say new business yes it's totally off the subject that we're on it's totally up from every other subject that we've been on that's we're a new business subject so um i think this is pointed right at the superintendent and larry's not here i wish he was here doing a report but it kind of ruffles my feathers that you get on the website and then it lists schools of wscs and we're this we're the heartland school district board and i can recall you know getting letters letters arriving at the board desk during a meeting that were addressed to the hes board you know its is similar you know where there are for one thing there

175are students who aren't in the district every day but we're definitely not just a school of wscsu you know our governance is is is complete right here and so it's um i just wish i guess i'm being a stinker but getting some of the basic stuff the communication and the upkeep of the website you know having somebody having that be a priority over not over but as well as coronavirus pandemic response [Music] please yeah i know we you know we have a and larry would be probably the better person to address this and we we do have a webmaster it happens to be larry's brother ryan um and and and the way that website gets updated is with the information that's sent to ryan now the apps the actual organization of the website i think

176that would be a bigger conversation that we'd have with larry whether or not it should be schools or school districts you know i mean i'm not saying that's what you're proposing but i mean i think that would be a a bigger question but i think it's a valid question and we could i know larry's going to be giving a report at the november meeting to the entire estuary board first of all about his budget but just like you know how he does that little annual update so that might be a time too i'm not trying to slough it off tonight but to bring that up again scott and we can you know we can talk more more specifically about what that looks like i mean just to be clear we're not we're not a unified

177district as much as i've spoken about that and how in some ways the governance structure of a unified district would be different is different and would have a lot of pluses in my mind but we're just not there so it makes it look like that and part of that quite frankly is a little bit intentional but but i know what you mean i i get it i guess i have a little thing on that too the lunch menus are not updated very quickly um what are they do they come up with a month yeah they come out by the month but i remember like i don't know it was like the 7th or 8th and i went to the website and it was still september so that's an easy one to fix well yeah it's

178an easy one to fix but but just an oversight i mean like i don't know what the structure of the website if it has to be updated in four different locations no no no and i'm not really complaining about it but while we're on the subject oh that's no that's right and there's an example where that would be you know that's not a a ryan dower problem that that's probably a craig lecarno problem he's got to get that to ryan in a timely fashion so that it can get posted to the website so but that i'll i'll certainly i mean i can i can that one might be easy to fix we had a problem two weeks ago where we weren't getting the board minutes and the board agendas you know because as soon as

179it goes out to all of you and it sounds like it might not have even gone out to all of us this time i don't know i mean laurie's really it's a work in progress she's getting there i think and she's incredibly efficient uh lori brown she'll get this down pat um but uh she admittedly she said i made a mistake i didn't this was on a weathersfield meeting it sat you know that was probably the worst board to you know to make that mistake but we didn't get it to the website in time but laurie apologized you know she apologized and she said i'll make sure that happens and i went to the website tonight and all of our stuff you know the minutes were there the agenda was there i mean i don't

180know how many people go to the website but i know laurie is trying to keep that up up to date but the website's always an ongoing kind of issue but it's you know and we yeah but point well taken we'll stay on it did where did you go nikki did you go to the wses you or the heartland um for the lunch menu yeah i think it's there this week because i did print it i think i bet it's there now but but it should be by the first of the month it should be yeah yeah i'll fall it was late um food service is that's what it's under yeah yeah okay yeah it's there now it should be yeah yeah no but i'm not like i don't want to be whiny or anything no

181yeah i mainly think because there have been parents that um well people check it yeah people check it and especially in food allergies and that's the one that i'm worried about most is that some parents would choose to pack lunch based on what's inside okay so um any other new business are we doing okay okay um so for setting the next agenda um i think we'll stick i think that this agenda is pretty spot on is there anything that people want to add to this agenda that i would keep everything and i do principles reports superintendents report covet but budget okay maybe you can hear me now that i turn my video off now we can okay um so i would stick with the exact same um items for discussion the exact same agenda um

182is there anything did i miss anything that people feel like we need to discuss those are our priorities i think okay um david these are minor things but um i did want to keep the radar list on the agendas it got dropped again no fault i just we went through all the work to get it put together i want to keep it on there because i it actually is something that i review before every meeting and i did um today and then we should also keep the tentative uh executive session on there i think that also dropped off but the good news is that we got the principal's report and the superintendent's report back i'm happy um okay i think we need a short executive session um i'm gonna give some hugs um to my

183family this will be quick one to two minute break or are we ready to dive through and power through i think what'd you say christine i i didn't say anything okay sorry i don't i don't think just give me a thumbs up if you want to power through or a thumbs down if you need a break i think we can power through and be done in 10 minutes okay let's power through okay i'm going to give a quick hug though okay i think we can stop oh no we need a uh i need a motion to move into executive session a motion to go in executive session beth roy yep second second column okay okay it's 8 43. angie was in favor of moving to executive session say aye aye all those posed okay so

184we can stop recording yeah and i think we i mean angie and katie you don't need to