MASD Board Meeting - October 14th, 2020

001um i'm going to call this meeting to order at 6 30 p.m um as i mentioned before chris garneaus is um going to be late so uh i have a couple of changes to our agenda for this evening i know some people are not going to like it but for to them i apologize uh we will be taking a break for an executive session at 6 45 this evening and we will um that's pertaining to a legal matter and then we will return uh from executive session at approximately 7 30. um so that's the first change to the agenda the second change is uh that we need to add another item to the agenda under voting in the new treasurer and that is payments for summer work so um those are the additions and corrections

002to the agenda uh public participation for items not related to this agenda does anybody have something they'd like to have addressed at this time okay seeing none uh the next item on the agenda is uh announcements and celebratory comments from board members uh well i think the announcement is that um oh hold on hold on we'll see if we can get somebody in here um the announcement is that we have a new board member to add today um and that's oddly enough also our first action item is to uh uh i'll take a a to introduce rebecca roisman who the board members have already met um i will take a motion to appoint rebecca royceman well first first i'd like to ask rebecca if she has something that she'd like to say she did not

003prepare a speech i bet [Laughter] okay i'll take a moment to appoint rebecca royceman to the natas county school district board i'm sorry who amy head amy and nancy ii okay [Laughter] okay hold on there's somebody waiting to get in um all those in favor of appointing or adding uh rebecca roisman to the mount of scrutiny school district's board please indicate by saying i i i and all those opposed the eyes have it um and welcome to our board rebecca we're so glad to have you with us um i think you're gonna make a nice a nice addition to our dynamic um so elizabeth do you want to uh just explain that i i don't i don't think eliza uh that rebecca's been sworn in yet right so she'll be participating but not voting correct

004that's right you still rebecca you still have to be sworn in by amy who can't do it tonight because she has to do it in person um but to do that you go down to the uh go down to the town hall and she'll swear you in and then after that you'll be able to vote right now you're a member but a non-voting member okay and i sent out an email earlier advising everyone of your new email address um and and that did i forget anything david no i think i think that's it rebecca is a long time resident of windsor and she's been in you know social work in counseling and school work mostly across the river in new hampshire but she's got a great background and we all welcome her to uh to

005this board um okay so we'll try to the next item on our agenda is that sherry greeley had to resign as treasurer for our board and we need to appoint a new treasurer as soon as possible does anybody wish to be appointed treasurer for our board now as that said it doesn't have to be a board obviously since sherry wasn't on the board it doesn't have to be a a board member who does that right david that's that's correct that's correct um uh it does have to be a windsor resident that's correct right amy or a winslow has to be a resident of the mountainous gutney school district right either one yeah what does it entail i think it's mostly uh just looking over the warrants one more time signing checks uh it's um that

006that's about it because most of the financial action and approvals happen at this board level but it's just you know one more set of eyes to look over the invoices warrants and and sign and sign the checks and a matter of fact i think the check signing is now done electronically so i think the i think there's a way to do it without even having to come to the office but i i can't promise you that but i think that's possible nancy do you want to do it oh i wasn't thinking i have done the warrant work um the signing if it's if it's not that is it like once a month you go in and check everything yeah pretty much that's yeah i think i like i think they paid twice a month but

007it's probably every two weeks like the su treasure yeah they go in and sign checks and such i'd i'd be happy to do that yeah and you've got good contact with gail in the office and and tina and ed so yeah they'll let you know when to come in fine not that yeah i did that uh for um abs so that's fine so you want to do it nancy surely i'll do that great i'll take a motion to uh appoint nancy pedrick as treasurer for our district so moved i'll second all those in favor of appointing nancy as our district's district's treasurer please indicate by saying i i i okay who said i everybody so that's four to four to nothing i think since we don't have chris and since rebecca can't vote uh that's

008what i was wondering um okay uh all right for those of you who are reporters waiting for some sort of announcement please be advised that there will be no announcement that i think you're looking for this evening so if you'd like to continue with our our uh meeting this evening you're more than welcome to we we welcome everybody being here um but if you're waiting for some sort of announcement you're gonna it's not happening tonight um could i ask uh when this announcement most will most likely be made no no okay sorry he can ask it can you answer it i cannot answer i'm sorry okay wait i so i'm sorry i'll keep you posted though now we'll keep you posted if if uh if that should change or when that should change okay okay

009thank you yeah um okay the next item on our agenda is let's see student representation on the board let's go ahead and just have an update on that if we can except the pr the principles aren't on here are they uh no why don't we hold that till they get on at 7 30. yeah okay uh let's see what's the next thing uh budget process well yeah okay talk about the budget process um i just that is simply that i wanted to have a brief discussion and i think we can do it under four minutes just uh stating clearly that um i think that the budget should be tied to the strategic plan and portrait of a graduate that we've worked so very hard to um complete uh and so i don't know how the

010rest of you feel but i just wanted to state that for the record that i i hope that the budget process and the budget as it's presented to us and as we discuss it uh uh includes the strategic plan elizabeth i am all in favor of that to have more meaning and understanding of our goals and values with our budget and showing that we do support our strategic plan that there's a tie-in it makes complete sense i think it also will be much easier to explain the budget to people who are paying for the budget that um if we make investments that the investments are actually tied to a you know long short medium and long term goals so uh as you all know i've been waiting for this moment so um i'm glad that

011you you feel that way as well yeah and just for the public that are here um just to bring everybody up to date we finished the actual portrait of a graduate uh almost a year ago but then this last spring and through the summer we worked on the strategic plan that will be tied to that portrait in those five competencies that we want every single graduate of our high school to have when they leave and we are just beginning to vet that that design now or that that strategic plan now i don't suspect it's going to change much because uh an awful lot of input went into it it was written by a pretty uh significant team of people uh who provide leadership in our supervisor reunion including two or three of the board chairs

012so it and in that strategic plan our five goals we won't go over it tonight but i think that would be a good idea to keep those goals uh in mind as we go about the budget process i know that we could next month uh i'm hoping by next month well let's back up while we're talking about the budget process i'm hoping by the end of this month that we'll have a draft of the supervisory union budget uh ed's trying hard to pull that off by the end of october we have a supervisor reunion meeting the end of october you know that's a big part of our budget because that is that that that affects our assessment obviously all three districts pay an assessment to the supervisory union i will say that katie hearn did

013finish the service plan which is the special education plan for next year that's a huge task and it's also a big part of our budget so we hope to do that in october so i think by november and i know colleen and kate are not on here but uh there is a meeting coming up soon jet and with jennifer colleen and kate uh to start to draft out uh a budget that we could bring to this board by the first meeting in november and then i think we could begin to match that against uh the uh the strategic plan i think that was the plan of the principles anyhow and then this board could uh decide what else you wanted to do from that point on to solidify that budget as ed pointed out to

014the weathersfield school board last night a lot of times the best laid plans of mice and men are also in a way at the beck and call of the tax rate and this year in particular uh it's there are going to be some areas that will will put perhaps be at the the hands of the legislators uh because as you know we our tax rate is based on a lot of things that we don't we don't decide including the common level of appraisal the uh per pupil block count the the the yield and it would be my guess that the legislature this year given the covert requirements and some of the monies that have been you know promised that they're going to be trying to do says harm almost as they can pieces uh includingly

015they already took on the uh on the adm of the average daily membership and held that constant so i won't i won't go on any longer than that other than to say i think that's a great plan it's it's it's a long and tedious process for those who haven't taken part in the budget process but i think we've got a great board and a great community and i think we're ready we'll be ready to go here pretty soon well i i i guess the thing that i really wanted to say was that i hope the budget process this year doesn't look like years past in which each cell on the spreadsheet is increased incrementally i that's all and so now i'll take a motion to just as a reminder we are going to enter executive

016session now and we will exit executive session at approximately 7 30. so i'll take a motion to enter executive session so moved second that's nancy and bill seconded in favor of entering executive session please indicate by saying i i i i so elizabeth am i correct i mean certainly wendy we don't need minutes taken during this part of the meeting i would assume everyone will leave the meeting and they should be back about what time elizabeth if they want 7 30 okay so people will sign back on at 7 30 and then we'll continue the public portion of the meeting at that time um so where we left off was uh student representation on the board yeah we waited until you were all on to talk about that uh wait hold on a second david

017um somebody trying to get in no is wendy on back on yet wendy is back on okay there she is i see her wendy is back on and okay wendy just so you know chris garners moved to take out of executive session and nancy seconded that and they voted unanimously to come out of executive session so now we start the public meeting again and in that case the unanimous is a five-and-oh now that was actually at six and all because well that's right no that's correct um so we where we were was talking about uh student representation on the board um have either of you or any of the three of you been able to follow up with uh seeking interest or student representation on the board colleen invited us on tonight but it got

018a little wonky because of the change of the time so colleen do you know where we're at i did not get an email back from our um advisors but our student council advisors thought that we were going to have representation but i didn't get a name yet so i would we'll definitely follow up with you elizabeth as soon as i get the names okay thank you and my understanding in talking to kate and colleen was that they felt you know the best way to do this at least initially was to go through the student leadership that's already existing and then have them decide who who might at least initially represent the students so that's why we did it that way stay tuned okay uh the next item wedged in there is uh payments for summer

019work right because we added that uh we added that to um to the agenda hold on a second yeah so i sent the board just before the meeting an email that indicated i've met with all three administrators who worked this summer uh starting pretty much right as soon as school got out you know june 8th 9th 10th whatev whatever that was when when whenever we were done with school and uh one of the people involved uh jennifer was um contracted as a year-round employee until i won so i've talked with jennifer and with uh and uh and and gotten a a readout or a spreadsheet of the days she worked i did the same thing with colleen and kate and uh i do have the amounts of money that i feel per diem were owed

020because all of them starting july 1 were 210 day employees so they were not year-round employees and they did not take a vacation they worked every single day of the summer reporting out for jen uh 20 days because we didn't count the june days with her and then 25 days for kate and colleen so uh the amounts for the record uh wendy you can put these amounts in the minutes uh jennifer uh would um would get additional pay of eight thousand three hundred and forty five dollars uh kate would get additional pay of 8928 uh and colleen would get uh uh a pay of 9 625 and and and uh a part of it is because the difference in the podium rate and also adding the extra five days for june to kate and uh

021and colleen and that also allows them to put some of their 210 days into this year because they will be working through february vacation april vacation thanksgiving vacation you know and they'll they'll account i think in jennifer's case there are about an additional 13 days that she can allocate to the rest of this year on top of her contracted time and i think it was uh same amount for colleen and and kate so i think what we would need from the board is just a motion to authorize those payments to the three administrators and i would completely support that there was not a lot of time off this summer and and again they you know they were not contracted for all those days i also just i think i put in my email and i've

022told ed that i think we could easily consider these payments as part of our covert or cares act money because really what we did is we purpose we repurposed these folks we could probably almost justify that for every principal in the district because what they would normally do in the summer is take a couple of weeks three weeks vacation we'd probably have a retreat none of that happened it was daily work from eight o'clock in the morning till six o'clock at night some days so i think it's a i think it's a fair way to treat the three administrators in the monastery school district so moved i think we need to actually have the the motion given by sorry i'll take a motion to authorize payment for uh summer work for each of the three

023building leaders so and wendy has those amounts that can be reflected in the minutes i'll second um before we vote i'd it was my understanding that these three worked every day this summer i'm not really sure how uh 20 days winds up being the amount that they worked well i can certainly send you the spreadsheets elizabeth but essentially what you have to look at i mean there were about anywhere from 33 to 35 days but you got to remember that they they they got paid more than 184 contracted days for you know teachers and students they have 210 days right which is so in other words there are already more days allocated to work you know and some of those you know could be included in that some work some of those can be included

024in extending you know in in in into the year i mean i think what's important and uh i think the the the three administrators would would say this that they all felt that given their contracts and given the number of days that they are contracted to work this this seemed fair okay uh all those in favor of um authorizing the expenditure of the uh money for the the uh extra day's work this summer for the three um building leaders is indicated by saying ani i i uh ultimately i no uh all those opposed anyone okay sorry five to zero okay um the next item on the agenda [Music] is sorry bear with me oh the next item on the agenda is the um transportation follow-up yeah so i um that's on you david yeah right

025we we have we have since had another meeting with the student transportation of vermont uh because we have to certainly uh continue to you know rearrange routes to accommodate i think finally after this last meeting i i i'm sorry bill go ahead yeah can we mute some mics i got some feedback yeah so i think there was an understanding after that last meeting that they have to really treat us as a single district and they have to be able to work out for us transportation to and from you know each of the buildings especially for those students who are who are graduating from the sixth grade and then now no longer by choice but by uh merger agreement attending uh the windsor uh high school and i think you know ed was at that meeting

026i think they completely understood that they've made some additional adjustments i haven't in the last few weeks heard of any major complaints [Music] i do know that the other issue here is that uh and this isn't this was part of our conversation but not necessarily what i was tasked with but my understanding is because of the remote days that we're going to be having here soon uh and we've already had one last friday what's considered a remote day and we've got some spread out over the course of the year they agreed first of all we're going to be doing some food delivery on those days but secondly they are going to adjust the invoices are going to reflect when they don't transport so they're going to give us credit back for days and runs that

027aren't actually uh taken so um i think that's going to help us out in the end too i think we're going to end up saving a little bit money but um you know we've been happy with the drivers they were short of driver that driver is now back uh but you know and we're happy with the company they seem to serve us well um don't i don't know if there are any other specific questions or uh concerns i i i know that jennifer and colleen and kate uh and wendy actually because wendy serves as among other things in the district she's the transportation coordinator for the monastery school district and i think she has a good relationship with mike the the the um the director of transportation at student transportation of vermont uh and i

028i i think we've got a i think we've got a good system set up right now i you know i don't know it's going to change again if we start to extend the day it's going to change again if we uh you know if we ever get back to full time but i think we can make this work thank you i appreciate your update um the next the next uh item on our agenda is the uh student resource officer memorandum of agreement um i'm gonna i'm gonna pull that up elizabeth okay uh well don't but i don't as no because uh there's a there are a few problems with it that will preclude us from really being able to discuss it this evening okay that's fine it does not include even mention of west windsor

029which is the whole purpose of creating a new contract so that's problem number one problem number two is that we have previously gotten our uh any any uh police services uh west windsor has gotten through our contract between west windsor and the windsor police department so that has to be worked out as well so i my suggestion was going to be that uh we invite whoever was planning to sign this contract to attend our next meeting so we can talk through some of these details and not just be uh okay yeah and and uh because those those contracts need to be coordinated uh i'm planning to attend the next west windsor select board meeting so that i can talk with them about changing the west windsor contract with their police they're they're in or west

030windsor is in year one of a two-year contract currently and so we would have to come up with some sort of rider for the second year of the west windsor contract so that was that um yeah and was there a place in here where you thought something should be mentioned about west windsor i mean basically the header is the town of windsor and the mount scotty school district agree to the implementation of school-related police services so wouldn't that the monastery school school district is westwind it is albert bridge and windsor i i i'm j i was a little confused when you said that but well i guess i'm i am therefore a little confused because uh uh do we i can't really understand from this contract whether it means that there's going to be police

031inside the building each and every day and if that's the case then how is that going to happen with two buildings number one and number two is that really necessary number three it doesn't define police weaponry and whether it's necessary to bring police weaponry into a school um it's it's all in there elizabeth if you look at it carefully i mean i did i did look at it carefully it said that it would be less didn't define what the weapons were well it says the s uniform of the day right yep which will include uh but shall include a department badge firearms and less lethal weapons i mean it says it right in there now if you disagree with that then we can have that conversation but it clearly states i do disagree with that

032i don't think that we need to have firearms inside a school um but i'm not the only member of this board that's right after we'll have to talk about that because i know we had this very healthy conversation in heartland when they a matter of fact this contract is modeled after the heartland contract and windsor at least this was now a while ago they won't do it if they're if their officer can't be armed so that that would be a different kind of conversation but i think it's pretty clearly spelled out in here it's just that we may need to have a meeting or invite them to the board meeting for other reasons then i mean if we want to change this we can change it but i just want to be careful that i

033think both school both schools are covered it talks about being in the schools during the hours of 7 45 to 2 45 monday through friday and you know you can go right on down but i do think if we have concerns about you know weaponry then that's a that's a whole different topic i i think it should specify that it you know if there's going to be a police officer in the school that that it should be both schools because i think that albert bridge gets left out a lot of of this type of service if this is what we want um and so uh i guess that is really the the other thing any of the other board members have any any thing that they'd like to say about it i i would i

034i really i can't imagine a police officer in albert bridge every single day and i wonder and has that happened in the high school is that how it it's working now yeah for the for the last couple years um i can't remember how long officer favero's been with us but my and we've had an office in our building for him and standing is that he goes to all four schools as needed and tries to check in i don't know how often he's at the other schools but i know he's not at our school full time but i would say two to three times a week he's in the school and at the beginning of this school year we asked him to support us with the morning check-ins and the traffic and our back parking lots

035and those kind of areas that can jam up and helping our student drivers coming in and out that's what we talked about this year so far but he's always been um kind of an on call person if we needed him and support in any way so he's not with us every day but he is a presence that i think we are we try to make a positive relationship with our students and officer favoro and that that seems to work well for us how about janet west windsor does he make appearances there jen uh so far this year we've called him in once and he stopped in once okay then i know he he stopped in one time of his own volition or he stopped in that time that you called him um two two times

036he's been there one that he stopped and on his own and one that um we called him in and the time he stopped and on his own he was told he couldn't come in because he's right at the start the nurse said he can't come in yeah but at the beginning of the year yeah yeah yeah so i i think my point elizabeth is this this is really more of a different discussion i think it's and it does it does impact the contract don't get me wrong i i agree with this but it's it's it's really what type of presence do we want to have in each of those buildings remember it's a it's a shared service i imagine his total salary is about ninety thousand dollars of which we're paying about forty six thousand

037heartland pays another i think thirty four or thirty five thousand uh and then because of size and then windsor also maintains a share of of his time because he does also provide police services uh for you know for the for the town of windsor as needed but i do think it's i mean i agree completely that it's been the expectation around his duties in the buildings you know uh when he should be in the buildings how often he should be in the buildings what he should be doing while he's in the buildings i mean i agree that that has not always been that clear and maybe that's part of what we need to get clear and i don't know if we i don't i don't know if we need to do that at the board

038level but i think it would be good maybe for uh kate and colleen and jennifer and i to start that conversation with both office of favoro and tom marsh the town manager and just see um you know what what what other needs what would what would we like to see because as jennifer said he's been in the building only once on his own volition at the beginning of the year the question is does the district you know want him there for any regular period of time uh you know as you know i guess it's a question of use and i don't think i think we can have that conversation with them i'd like to hear from the board though what would you like to see into i i heard elizabeth say what she'd what she

039would not like to see when he is in the buildings but i don't i don't know what the board would like to see in terms of you know he's he's a a a very kid-friendly uh uh person and and he's built good relationship with many of our students in heartland uh and and windsor and i know jennifer has used in west winning but what would we like to see from them nancy i i don't know well first of all what i'm gathering is that uh between um or among all the districts we're paying his whole salary and i just don't know if we need a presence like that and windsor's right 15 minutes away um and is closer to the high school the police station i do we need another do we need this expenditure

040i just don't know i kind of think i would prefer not to and and just call him as needed um i so we as a school district are not paying his whole salary we're only paying a portion of it heartland is paying some and then the town of windsor is because he is a windsor police officer so if if we're paying 46 and heartland's paying 30 something that's almost his entire salary isn't it or is this whole salary 90 000 i think it's somewhere between 90 and 100 000 with benefits because remember it's salary and benefits but because the the the town invoices us and i think as i recall uh the breakout is um uh i think it was 50 or slightly under that maybe 45 for from honest gutney and then uh i

041think it was about 30 and 30 for the town in heartland now that's a good question i mean are we you know you know do we need him that much time do we do we want him available that much time uh to me it doesn't seem if the high school sees him two or three days and if jennifer hardly ever sees him i don't know it just it seems like we're paying for more than we're getting and i don't know if we need it so those are both my questions i think those are great questions i i think it would be helpful to maybe have our school resource officer maybe come to a meeting or maybe chief sampson or something to explain what their role is and what what he does when he is in

042the schools and maybe our administrators should also talk with him about spending time in all of the buildings because i'm not sure like elizabeth was saying that that might not have been completely explained and it could be that when he was turned away when he first came on his own that he said well okay and decided to only go there when asked and everyone has to know what the expectations are before anyone can be responsible to meet them yeah this this position has really it's really more i think it is time for this conversation remember we we really discovered last year that we hadn't really updated this contract or had this conversation uh since uh since uh uh we had contracted under the original agreement about four years ago so i think this is a

043timely it's a timely discussion uh and the role of the resource officer has changed dramatically when we first engaged with a resource officer you know we had uh we had a very different personality who was in the buildings constantly and uh and uh you know and and and and that really worked that person then took another job in uh in norwich as a chief of the norwich police and and then we we we hired paul but i think we may be it may be time for a meeting with chief sampson but but i think be i what i want to make sure of though and we don't i we don't have to spend an hour tonight doing this but i think we have to be clear about what we want do we want a regular

044presence in the building and how much time would we like per week of the officer in the building and then we can decide too the administrators can decide what's the best use of his time when he is in that when he is in that because if we if we don't need the servants you know then maybe we don't need service i mean we do have an on-call police department you know windsor and west windsor both use the winslow police department but i think that's the discussion we we've got to have in the board so that we're not just sort of thinking it out in in front of chief sampson i mean what do we want an officer in our buildings on a regular basis i think that's a really good question i think we need

045to i i think it's a discussion for the board but it's also a discussion for the administration before that it it the the sro over the years and it goes back before uh the last four years it goes back a lot further than that and we've had some very good sros we've had some okay our sros and i think certainly the climate has changed a little bit in our school but i think there's still value the question is what the function is if it's if it's a if it's less time in the building does that serve the function that we wanted to that we wanted to accomplish i think there's value in having in creating a relationship with the law enforcement in our town rather than just having it show up when when we've got

046a crisis um it it establishes it it creates a different it creates a different atmosphere i i there's no question about that that and in the past it's been a positive it's been a positive value in in our school uh but i think everybody on the the the administration side needs to first get clear that that's what they think is a is a is a valuable thing and i want to know what they think at this point um and i don't know i don't want to know now just just because we can go on and on on this but i would say if we are going to continue this what are we going to continue this for because just having him show up in the building every once in a while and walk around is

047not the function of an sro we can get that to happen by just having the the you know the the current cop on the uh the policeman on the on patrol walk through the building every once in a while that that would not necessarily require uh a contract with a for an sro and an sro gets special training for this process there are other things that they're supposed to be doing so i would say that that we need to look at that first yeah that's correct does anybody else weigh in i i'd just like to add that um officer favro also supports um the truancy protocols and home visits and um setting up coordinated service plan meetings when there's a truancy issue and he files the reports with the state's attorney i appreciate when he

048is needed when there are i would say like student drivers is a good example of places where we have young people um doing more mature things as they become drivers and need reminders on campus and it's it's a more teachable moment rather than more of a police officer in town finding that student doing something that might not be appropriate so those teachable moments are very important as his role as the sro and in a lot of support in the truancy protocols so i just wanted to add those too yeah i can also add um just in the past i mean we just started this year and we did kick him out so in all fairness um but you know when we've had school resource officers who come to our school on a regular basis to

049touch base with kids talk about you know sort of integrating our goals for kindness you know caring responsibility those kinds of things um i will tell you one story of a kid who thought his parents were um gone when he woke up in the morning and freaked out called 9-1-1 saw the resource officer jumped in her arms you know and that's that's that's a good example for an elementary perspective of the power of having somebody you know show up in the uniform that that's familiar to you and so i think there's some value in that kate and this has been true the whole time we've had an sro is that they're never used in discipline issues at all like as colleen said like they act on teachable moments but we don't access them if we

050have a discipline issue they're never used as a threat or a force they're strictly what chris has said which has been invaluable in windsor as we've had it through the years to promote the relationships between officers and the community i would say i've seen it over the years that it's working that you know kids identify a police officer or someone who's who's there to help and i've seen him this year have difficult conversations with some of our high school students who've had a lot to say about police brutality you know and he's talked to them about his career and the type of police officer he is and how things work out so i think that chris your idea of what what the intention is is pretty dead-on aiming and i think it's important for our

051kids to have a relationship with police officers other than being arrested you know to and also for police officers to understand kids you know to to build that relationship yeah yeah thanks um i'm really that's the kind of thing i really needed to hear i didn't know what he did and but i also really feel if if we if we're all paying him that um the conversation has to be made is where you're going to be and how how many hours is he actually there because i we need to i i don't like just paying a person and not having them i don't know where he is or or what he's doing and that's what that's my only thing is that it has to be really clear that if he's we're paying for him for

052a full five days a week he should be visible five days a week someplace and i i feel that uh uh and this isn't part of the contract but i think parents should be able to opt out of um at least be given the the choice of opting out of uh uh having kind of um not interaction but uh uh i can't i can't find the right word i'm sorry um uh well that's okay i think parents should be given the option of opting out i don't think that all parents agree with it being healthy for their children to have a friendly relationship with police officers um and they if they feel that way they should know that today officer friendly is coming to the school and is going to fingerprint all of the kids

053today so that the kids think that having their fingerprints done is a fun thing not all parents think that's and they should be given a choice that's all i'm saying but that's not part of the police contract no but i mean you i mean i think it's a good example because it could be that you know there might be a a lesson in civics on on fingerprinting or the nature of arrest and the law and and oftentimes he might be wrapped into that lesson and and who knows maybe he might demonstrate how to fingerprint or not uh you know so it's that's not a crazy example is but that's a i i don't know that that's ever happened but i i see it as a possible example we have had some families in the past

054who have uh when we've offered uh to have him speak with the family and or the child have asked not to have that happen we always at least my understanding is we've always given parents that choice to opt out and and some of them i don't think we have i think we have uh when parents have requested to know when that's gonna happen they've requested to be able to opt out but they haven't always automatically been informed that that's taking place uh without seeking out the information so anyway let's move on um well wendy has a question i just yeah sorry yes wendy i just wanted to say as a parent i have three kids in the school so um i can tell you that the sro has been used in education and of health

055classes about the the influence the effect of alcohol on the body and there have been some curriculum to that and i as a parent have been asked every single time if i would like my child to be included in that curriculum or not so i have been given that option to opt out um as a general point my son is a cadet so sro is certainly something i'm passionate about so i i think it's incredibly important that there should be some structure and clarity about what the expectations are as far as their presence or or not you know from a scheduling standpoint paul is a wonderful manning brings so many good things to the table but i think at the same time if we're paying a very large portion of his salary then we should

056be getting something in return and not that we're not but i think it would be better for him better for the school and now the way around that everyone is clear about what they're getting but i definitely think there's a great role for an sro in our school building i think it's a valuable asset that shouldn't maintain so two so just two things to if we're going to come to a close here i want to go back to what chris said i i think chris is absolutely right that probably those discussions should happen first at the administrative level around what's working now what's not working you know what what we want to do you know moving forward and what kinds of recommendations do we want to bring uh to to the board this is by

057the way the right time to be talking about this because we're entering into budget season and if we end up feeling that uh you know that the the what we're paying is is not worth what we're getting then this would be the time to make those adjustments so it certainly is it's timely and then the other thing i wanted to say is as we move forward i just want to get clear that um once we have that conversation you know what would be the next step do you want us we you know we don't have a signed contract right now so quite frankly you know we we you know we we would we could make all any kind of changes we want to make but do you want us to bring back recommendations for a

058time structure and what the day might look like and some of the duties he might perform is that what you want uh yes and also uh i'd i would like him to come for your uh well the chief too yeah um just to work out some of the the contractual um details i'd like for them to come yeah we can we can easily do that and by the way that's exactly not to compare but that's exactly what happened in heartland chief sampson came out met with the board talked about you know uh talked about you know possible duties and responsibilities that's when the issue of carrying a weapon came up and chief sampson was very clear about the parameters by which windsor police department would partake in this service but i think we can have

059those same conversations uh with chief sampson and with officer favreau and i think tom marsh came too just because you know they all answer to uh to each other and the only last thing i'll say and then i'll shut up but um this is my ninth year we've got to understand we've got to put this in the context of the history the first three years that i was here we did not have an sro at all uh and in fact what happened we weren't merged at that time what happened was just what was explained sometimes an officer would stop by and say hi to the principal and blah blah blah and it worked it worked very informally and then at the end of my third year going into my fourth year uh there were these

060they re they reinvented these cops grants you know that where you could get money to in fact help support an sro in the building and what what happened is year one you got ninety percent of reimbursement through this grant year two you got like fifty percent year three twenty five percent and year four uh you were done you had to either support the sro on your own or or the sro had to go away so we're in year six now of of that of that progression uh and so for two years we've been paying you know uh our our line share according to windsor of of his time but that's negotiable and and we can talk about that once we decide what we want him to do um i i feel we should move on

061uh uh the next item on our agenda is uh black lives matter and other symbols used to create a safe space and i've invited chris long to be here um he has something that he'd like to read chris lord actually i'm sorry i apologize chris lord that's all right because your your email signature is chris l so i i apologize and everyone can everyone hear me yeah you're you're on chris okay um i get super nervous talking to people so if i can write something out i'm always better off so i i wrote something hopefully i feel like it says everything i wanted to say and i guess we'll go with that i wish this wasn't something that required any explanation or a need to defend but that i'm here it all speaks clearly as

062to why these messages are vital and i thank you for allowing me to speak to you tonight i'm not here to discuss or debate the black lives matter movement or the lgbt rights movement i'm not here to debate the meaning of either flag and larger context of our country i'm here to explain why i have them in my classroom and why i've had similar messages messages on my classroom walls since i started teaching 25 years ago i work to be a voice for all of our students but these flags speak to where i see the greatest and most immediate need for our advocacy they are not about exclusion but about putting the focus where there is a necessity they are not statements about white or straight people and they are not accusatory or meant to

063lay blame both flags are meant to amplify a message of civil rights and social justice and the voices that are frequently unheard ignored silenced or ridiculed even here in our school they are meant to ask how we can do better what do we have in place as a school district to support our students and families of color how do we provide support for our lgbtq students and in what ways do we seek out those crucial voices my intent is to send the clear and based on the deliberate size of the flags loud message that my classroom is a safe space for lgbtq students and students of color why i hear racist and homophobic slurs as well as the mocking of different ethnic and cultural groups on a regular basis in a class last year a

064few students made the statement that the civil war in slavery had ended 200 years ago and that black people should stop complaining and get over it and when we and when discussing a gay character in a novel it isn't uncommon to hear that's gross these comments very clearly send the message that the lives of our lgbtq students and staff and students of color don't matter both flags say that they do they are meant to spark discussion and to help provide our students with a greater understanding of history and current socialist issues they are also part of supporting the more inclusive diverse and anti-racism anti-racist curriculum so why black lives matter and lgbtq pride flags they're about building awareness of the immediacy in not only our country and state but also in our school district while

065they're only while there will always be exceptions white and heterosexual students and staff aren't discriminated against isolated harassed ridiculed bullied or marginalized because of their race or sexual or gender identity white and heterosexual students will be presented with a curriculum that will teach them about their history we'll include characters and novels that they can identify with and they will see themselves represented fully and respectfully in discussions of current events when studying history literature or current events subjects that often address issues of race white students will be surrounded almost entirely by other white students and will never be asked to speak for their race during discussions white and heterosexual teachers and students will never have their thoughts or behavior viewed to the lens of their race sexual or gender identity white and heterosexual students are guaranteed

066that there will be teachers administrators support staff coaches and guidance counselors that they can identify with based on race or their sexual or gender identity heterosexual students will never hear that they are gross wrong not normal or told that they are dressed wrong heterosexual students will always have their correct pronoun used and will never have a teacher or classmate forget or refuse to use it white student athletes don't have to fear that they will face racist taunts or insults by opposing players and fans during games black students have to see political slogans worn by their classmates that represent politicians who have devalued their race on a national national stage black students have to see the confederate flag a symbol of hatred and white supremacy worn the clothing of classmates on the bumper stickers of cars

067and flying above houses in their town but black live matters black lives matter flags are labeled controversial and debated publicly black students that start driver's ed and begin driving in vermont will be two to three times more likely to be stopped by police than their white classmates lgbtq teens are more than three times likely to attempt suicides than their heterosexual classmates often stemming from harassment bullying a sense and a sense of isolation so this is why i hang the flag to say that in my classroom and then at windsor you do matter that is not my place to be the voice but to help create a safe space and a platform to hear from those that are going unheard and to help bring attention to a true need within our schools thank you for letting

068me speak today and for sports supporting our students i also want to thank my principals kate and colleen and for dr baker for their leadership as we move forward and that's it well done chris thank you chris you're welcome um that was for can you please uh would you mind emailing that to me and also well i'll so i can get it into the record i'll send it to you okay thank you very much um so the rest of the board is aware of uh what prompted um chris being invited to uh to um but kate or colleen would you mind um describing the the situation where david um and where we stand right now yeah colleen or kate do you do you want to say something or i mean i don't i mean the

069situation elizabeth that led chris to be invited here yeah right um so it came to when we because it's coveted sometimes we just go to the doorway chris's flag is hanging so you would have to go all the way in his room and walk back out so we were made aware of it um by a parent that it was hanging in his classroom then because we felt and we've learned a lot that that was a board decision and we called christine bourne and talked to her about how they had handled the heartland we immediately reached out to elizabeth and asked her if we could get this on the agenda and what if she wanted to do in the meantime um she had told us that she thought we were going to have to ask him

070to take it down at that point we told her that the safe space stickers had been in our building and all over our building probably for 10 years um and she sent us an email right before we were about to meet with chris and talk to him about it um that said it's okay you can let it stay until the board meeting i've talked to the other board members and then we told chris and invited him to come speak here okay uh and so board members um and thank you kate uh because rebecca is new and she hadn't she hadn't been uh informed of all this so uh rebecca we we um i asked the board members to quickly get back to me as quickly as they could separately um just giving approval to allow

071the the um symbols the flags to um remain in the classroom until this meeting until we could talk about it chris and bill i believe both had some strong feelings about it um about that event so would you each mind um talking about it in in the meeting context well yeah no no problem uh my strong feelings wasn't so much about the flag and allowing it but um making sure that the the the process was followed that uh you know chris went to the principles the principles went to the administ to to david and then david would bring it to the board um i just wanted to make sure that the proper protocol was followed i i really don't see it as um a board decision but if it makes people more comfortable i'd be

072more than happy to you know vote for my approval for these safe places to be in the building i i feel it so that was my strong feeling not uh chris did you have something that you wanted to add to the discussion sure well i would i would also i would also say that it wasn't my intention to say that i was uh against a black lives matter flag and i'm not um but i asked the question as to whether or not we had policies about any sort of displays of things that have that potential to be questioned as to whether or not they are a uh a political statement or a i'm not sure what the uh a social statement and i was only encouraging us to use the opportunity to take a look

073at what do we have in place and do we need to have anything else in place to support these sorts of situations i'd rather be clear so that so that the so that the administration doesn't have to come to the board every time something like this comes along and i think there's it's a it's a challenging balancing act and i don't i i it it goes beyond the lines of things like the the question it it does come up to the question of what's when does something become go from being a social statement to a political statement and when does something come go from being a social statement to potentially a religious statement or something like that uh you know chris had some really good powerful things to say about the situation of being a

074a minority person in a in a very white school situation and i can certainly i can't personally speak to that from the standpoint of my own experience but i can speak to that from my from my children's experience and my children are white but my children are jewish and they experience things in school and in other search wage situations and i'm not about to suggest that that windsor has any more problems than anywhere else but the challenge of figuring out how to make those safe spaces without or not without but how you draw those lines is a very big difficult question and i'm not sure um i just want to keep looking at whether or not there's something else that we need to have in place in order to support this stuff because i'm for

075this kind of thing but i also don't want it to be uh well they have this then why can't we have this and where those are where are those law and lines drawn and i don't have a problem with the board establishing that this is what we believe in and this is what we support and then then it's up to the people who don't who disagree with the board to say okay we don't want you on our board anymore that's that's a that's part of the that's part of the the way our system is is constructed but i just wanted to look at the it it goes beyond just saying well do we look at okay we got a black lives matter flag yes or no and then we've got a uh uh a uh

076a rainbow flag yes or no uh i think there ought to be i don't know in some places some people some places people everyone has said uh the the schools have decided that it's safer to not let anything in and it comes up in that same way that the question of christmas and hanukkah and kwanzaa and all of those things come up uh my child my child uh children grew up being the the two jewish kids in the in the elementary school and having the teacher you know in a in a positive way and certainly trying to do the right thing but putting them on the spot to explain what the heck kwanzaa what the heck uh hanukkah was and how it worked and they weren't necessarily real comfortable with that but you know it

077so i i can understand how the situation what the situations are but i'm i'm just i'm at this point i'm still trying to look at what it what's the best thing for to support everybody and to support the the people the the students in our school so i'm i think i think that's well said chris and i think that um i think that's exactly why it's at this level because what has been historical proclamations or safe space symbols or social statements have gotten very politicized over the last sadly over the more more so over the last several years but they've they've become you know sort of targets or symbols of something other than what they actually stand for but that's why we brought it to this level because i do think that you know those

078symbols have it has to be decided you know by the body that represents the town does this reflect does what what chris just said reflect you know the values of this of this community and whether it's a school board discussing whether a mascot needs to go or stay because you're going to hear a lot of conversations in the next several months about mascots in vermont those the the the the surfacing now again in a strong strong way uh and any time of a a school has decided to fly a black lives matter flag in front of their school alongside the american flag that's been a bored decision so um and gotten into some really good community discussion and board discussion so that's why we decided to bring it up to this level i also agree

079that i think we don't have policy on this we're short on policy which is another reason why we're here i don't know whether or not something like this could be included in you know our anti-racism task force at the supervisory level supervisory union level because that's where our policy is developed now at the supervisory union level but i think in the meantime and by the way you're not the only district in rsu that's faced this as elizabeth said heartland had a situation like this just about a month ago where a couple of teachers uh wanted uh to have both the rainbow lvgtq symbol and the black lives matter symbol on this was virtual because when you sign on to a to to a google hangout or there's ways you can put little symbols in the

080corner and they want to use those symbols uh some in the classroom but also some virtually on their home screens so heartland debated this uh for a little while less than about three or four weeks ago and uh and then they did they took a vote to to to allow at least specifically those symbols but i do agree with chris that that raised the issue about you know what do we do with the next symbol or the next religious symbol or the next you know i think that's where you you know policy would help um but i think in the meantime you know it would be good for this board to address you know chris's question specifically but i also know there are other um teachers in that building who do uh um uh post

081rainbow lbgtq safe space flags and or the safe space symbols uh the blm symbol or flag i don't think chris is the only one so i think it would be good for this board to yeah i think david part of the reason that uh that uh boards at least in vermont i don't i'm only familiar with vermont boards um but part of the reason i think that they uh that they um are the ones who make the decisions about whether to fly the the black lives matter flag is so that they can take the heat from the community and uh and support the the um teachers and students and administrators who are courageous enough to to uh put those symbols up and so uh i appreciate you seeking board input um i think that's important

082because you know we we could to chris's point we could next week uh have a student who requests that a blue lives matter flag be put up in the classroom to symbolize support for the police uh i've seen the thin blue line i've seen the blue lives matter the blm uh symbols uh and i can tell you and i don't know how the board feels but from somebody who has an african-american son-in-law and two black grandchildren uh those signs and symbols can sometimes be an affront or offensive to people of color so you just got i think we just have to have these conversations and make sure that we understand our value systems and how we create safe spaces and uh and and and uh the logic that that that chris used was was was

083strong around uh you know uh you know a heterogeneous white male or female uh somebody who is clear on their gender in their in their place in society but i think the board we need the weight of the board behind these decisions because uh you you represent our community uh just to clarify david there's a difference between um i mean there there is a difference between uh being a police officer and being of a different race um so one is like it's part of an identity but it is a choice and the other one is part of an identity which isn't a choice so uh i think there's a you know i don't i don't think david was implying that i wasn't i wasn't applying i'm sorry if i if i oh no i know

084no no i know exactly that if somebody asked to have a thin blue line symbol it would be different from having a symbol which represented you know they're different things right so sorry yes bill so i i don't mind exploring policy um and i think there's a couple different situations here that that come into play i think what chris has done is he has posted something within his classroom that that is far different than not fargo but that's different than say uh having a group of students outside the building posting flags now within a classroom um i'm kind of putting my administrator hat on because i've had you know i'm a certified principal and i've had that training it's really important for us to understand that an educator within their classroom has made those choices

085based upon their education environment that they're creating and chris has a particular a message and environment that he wanted to create within an educational intent now if there's a problem with it then it's up to the administrators who are trained in educational law to then look at the situation and make their decision if someone has a problem with their decision then it goes to the superintendent and then his training of course or her training comes into play based upon their i mean their decision is based upon their training i i i hesitate to um give the any sort of power to a policy um or to a school board to make those choices without a lot of thought involved because really there are school law is rarely understood by the general public um i mean

086there's there's yeah so i'll i'll leave it at that so i guess the question really is do we really need to take any action here other than to say uh i mean well i i guess my question would be has that chris has taken it to his administrators and have they made it a decision and that that's an actual question for the administrators so did chris have you taken this to the administrators administrators well we know that chris took it to or that that the administrators addressed it and we know that they took it up with david baker okay and and what would david and david what was your decision upon this yeah and and again it came it came to me via as kate said by a parent and it would be um you

087know my decision to support those kinds of safe spaces for uh you know the lpgtq community and and uh black and brown brothers and sisters so that would be my decision uh and i just wanted to make sure that that wasn't uh you know that that would also have have board level support given the tenor of how some of this stuff gets politicized [Music] and uh i i and i think i've gotten a sense tonight from the conversation where i think the board stands i mean if you don't want to take a formal vote i mean that's that's fine my feeling is no decision could be a decision you know that that you're right oh so i i think that should stand and if any of the community has a problem with david's position they're

088welcome to bring it into a school board session and then we could state our support for david's david's decision otherwise we're talking policy which really should be brought up to the supervised reunion and not to us we don't actually really have any policy that we can take at this time i mean you could you could easily state to the supervisory union board probably with heartland support because they've dealt with this too you know that maybe we need a policy like this or this should be part of our uh task force on anti-racism you know that you know i think you have the right to do that and then we can you know we can have that discussion at the supervisory union level i think anything other than that then we're going to assume that kate

089colleen and my decision stands and and chris can feel safe doing what he's been doing and uh and and we're okay moving forward and and i'd like to interject really quickly that i i thank chris for coming to the school board meeting and and uh reading your statement and and sharing that with us i i appreciate that um and i support what you're doing wholeheartedly i i'm i'm comfortable with with what we've well we've established at this point uh i i certainly support what chris is doing as well and i think that that part of it in in this case is that it is in a classroom as bill said rather than this is different than students standing outside or or a flag on the flagpole which establishes that this is the school ward the

090schools administration's uh position as well we can support people being having their own their own opinions and their and we can support uh our teachers in in going about their educational uh efforts uh without micromanaging their their educational efforts as well so i'm i'm i'm very comfortable with where we are at this point on this thank you chris um chris the lord for what you did i agree with you amy yeah um thank you chris ward for your statement because it also helps educate the the greater community who might be watching this meeting later or who might be sitting in on that meeting now and as far as i i think it's important for teachers to feel comfortable having a black lives matter flag or a rainbow flag and i personally have thought in the

091last year or two i i've thought to myself we should have a black lives matter and a rainbow flag out in front of the school that's just been my feelings yes or i have not brought it up at a school board meeting however that has often been on my mind i think it's it's something that we should consider discussing at another uh another time but for now for this meeting um chris lord do you feel satisfied with uh with this discussion oh yeah i just i just wanted to have a chance to say my piece and just just share my thoughts i mean i'm i'm this is my fifth right this year at windsor and i'm i've been proud to be a windsor teacher from you know i was really lucky to have been hired

092for five years ago and i still feel lucky and i think there's work to do but you've seen head's not i've worked at some of them you know i've worked at a incredibly progressive school in maryland i've worked at more conservative institutions and the challenges that we're facing in windsor are no different than the challenges faced at other schools and you know these are not chris yep sorry i i'm sorry there's a there seems to be a lag and i i apologize i didn't mean to interrupt you oh no i was just saying i mean i think the challenges that we're facing as a school are the challenges that a lot of schools are facing my daughters at sharon academy right now and she's on her school's anti-racism task force and they're having the same

093discussions about a black lives matter flag hanging at the school and how the school sort of approaches things so i think this is something that a lot of schools are tackling and it's not easy and it's difficult to do in your community of predominantly white folks i think we tend to tiptoe through the discussion a little bit because i think we're nervous to have the discussion but it's one of those things that you know it's just crucial that those discussions happen and you know i'm i'm in a classroom today you know i'm teaching students of color and i am teaching students who you know a girl today who get a little short writing and her piece was about you know discussing her sexual you know her her gender identity and so it's it's out there

094with our seventh and eighth graders i know it's out there in the high school and you know it's just and speaking know everyone's name but you know chris was talking about his children and his son you know last year i had to deal with some anti-semitic comments in class so you know there's there's things as a school that we're grappling with um and so yeah so i'm satisfied i just i just want to be part of the work and part of the discussion and i just felt like hearing a teacher's perspective um behind why the flags are up thank you ever ever so much for for being with us do you mind if i ask you what do you teach oh i'm the seventh and eighth grade english teacher at windsor okay well thank you

095thank you um [Music] i'm starving i haven't eaten all day and i'm i'm starting to get faint and drift towards the left so i'm gonna step out if that's okay if you have another question oh thank you for your participation that's it thank you very much i'm proud i'm proud of my granddaughters in your class yeah great oh yeah hopefully she made the bus today because she didn't want to leave so that was have a good night thank you thank you bye uh okay the next the next item on our agenda i promise we'll go we we won't go too much longer um is the covet update um [Music] and so um are you sent out an email a nice email to the supervisory union today about the um positive diagnosis that was received on

096saturday right um what is the protocol for family members who test positive yeah so that's the uh well first of all you know if the family member is also associated with the school community then certainly we have the right to ask the family member to uh to be tested before they return or to certainly quarantine for the full amount of time before they return um so if if the family member like if a staff member has a family member that that doesn't work for the school then i don't think we'd have much to be able to say about that that would clearly be between the vermont department of health and that family i think the issue that was addressed over the weekend and i think we learned a lot from this um was what sort

097of transparency do we need when we have a positive cova test and that's what my my communication today was intended to do that uh with the weight of the administrative team behind me i think we decided to and to make sure that the entire supervisory union knows uh if we have a staff member who tests positive for covert even if that staff member has no connection to either of the other districts so that's why that letter went out uh today but um so that's what we'll do from now on hopefully we won't have any more but i'll be surprised if we don't i think as we move inside as we get into the flu season uh i think you know we could we could get more positive tests i think the state right now is

098really wrestling with whether or not you know we're at a point where we need to be a little more careful but you know we'll get our direction from the state and from the vermont department of health they've been great with us the contact racing team at the vermont department of health is absolutely incredible i was on the phone with them all weekend they were calling different members of of this um staff members household and also colleagues that this person worked with in our district to determine what type of contact they had with this person and uh and then they made decisions on quarantining and testing uh uh you know based on the information they got so again we should be proud luckily vermont's a small state and they they've they've tasked a lot of people

099with this contact tracing the question is you know if we have more and more positive tests as we've seen in the last week or so throughout the state can they can they keep up and right now they seem to be able to keep up right i mean that's that's the key and uh and so just to be clear this this person is asymptomatic is that right uh well that's a very good question um [Music] we determined uh before the test that that um both because of exposure that they may they may have been exposed to somebody who had uh tested positive for covert 19 but also because they were starting to feel fatigued you know so actually we started the quarantining before this person was tested which really helped out quite a bit um so

100so there were very mild symptoms but not nothing you know nothing not nothing very pronounced certainly nothing that would require any level of hospitalization um so so that's great uh and you know you know to the good news because of a household situation this person had come in contact with a couple of students that are in the monastery school district too both those students have tested negative so that's good news and uh and so we uh you know we feel that uh there was due diligence that was done i think kate and colleen responded quickly elizabeth martins our school nurse is doing a great job and by the way it's not an easy job because oftentimes when you're told that your child has to stay home because they have a runny nose or they're feeling

101a headachy or they have a slight temperature you know we in in the past we haven't done that to parents and sometimes we tell them they've got to stay home for a while sometimes three days without a symptom sometimes 24 hours without a symptom sometimes 7 or 14 days based on the level of of symptom and parents have been very cooperative but it's not it's not easy uh weapons field school today uh i only know this because we were just talking that jean marie had had 22 students out because they were they were experiencing some symptoms that could be covered you know covert associated chances are that all 22 it's got nothing to do with covid but our nurses are using algorithm and they quarantine those kids so that's uh that that's a credit to

102our nurses they've done a great job um i my next question although i can't find where it was on the my next question is uh for the building leaders um how's the outdoor program going and how much is it being used um i would say thanks to the great weather we've been having our outdoor program is going great uh hats off to our custodial staff who got us tents where we do our temperature checks on the rainy days um i would say we haven't had any complaints about the heat or bug or everything everyone's coming back happy they're utilizing what we have in our town particularly paradise park i mean i'm thrilled that that has worked out for us uh we've opened up our playground structure which has been um really great news for our

103younger kids and our cleaning crew is going out and sanitizing that five times a day um i haven't heard anything negative about the outdoor programming at all our teachers go outside regularly they're not outside the full day but almost every pod is out regularly yes um we're mostly outside we start the day inside with a full school morning meeting and breakfast and then um pretty quickly everybody goes outside for most of the time for us it's it's in pretty good shape we've got a couple of concerns considering um particularly hunting season and the fact that we're out and about in our in our neighborhoods so we're working on finding solutions to make sure people um are aware that we're out and about um but overall i think it's a real nice opportunity for us to

104[Music] take advantage of a beautiful fall particularly and we've got plans to move forward with colder weather you do have points that's what's going to be my next question well yeah i think i think teachers that i've spoken to and certainly the administrators you know we live in vermont and we don't want the cold weather to completely obstruct our abilities to get outside i i think we'll be able to still get outside and jen to your point about hunting season this may be a total rumor but my wife told me today that the state had declared that there would be no hunting season this year has anybody heard anything about that [Laughter] no one david my my husband was hunting this evening just saying yeah right now we don't have to prove if that happens

105daddy morrison left the gate david i was going to say when she told me that i said i would not want to be the person who made that decision in vermont because those people have they'll get shot we have lots of fun and i would not want to be making that but she was she was emphatic about it and i i'm gonna i'm gonna do some research on this but i can't imagine that that's the case i still bring licenses so i know that hunting seizing is happening okay that's good bob my neighbor got a deer that's good well maybe my wife is drinking during the day i'll have to i'll i'm gonna i'm gonna check on that because she's hearing some strange things from people but that's good to know i'll tell her that

106that's a vicious rumor not true uh the the next question was about um not really related sort of related about after school programs um and i know that there was a a uh concern among albert bridge parents that the windsor wreck program was not adhering to any sort of masking protocol and i wondered whether what the outcome of the um whether there's been the same sort of feeling in windsor whether that um jennifer whether the uh survey that was sent out um hadn't led to any conclusions and what's going on with that okay so i can speak for albert bridge um we we don't have any control over the rec center nor do we have control over what parents do after school right um but we did try and pull together a parent's group to

107gather some data and i have parent in the school who's taking lead on trying to organize possible after-school school gatherings where the grouping is less intermingled with other cohorts in other schools but that's still in process okay and i think to that point elizabeth jennifer is absolutely right that we don't have control over after-school programs they are accessed by parents by choice uh i've certainly had conversations with the recreation director james i mean he's certainly trying to adhere to his guidelines he has different guidelines in after school program that than we have in public schooling uh and we've had those conversations um and we've had some similar complaints from windsor parents as well but we tend to we tend to send them to james because he he runs that program i and i certainly don't

108have any i think it's great that james is running the program and i'm i'm i'm positive that i speak for a huge swath of the community in expressing gratitude yeah that program exists um uh and so i apologize if it if i warded that in such a way that made it sound as if i was uh not grateful for the program i really was talking about parent the parent concerns about the masking um uh kate and colleen or jennifer do you know do we still have a fair number of kids i think at one point we were in the 4 40 40 range 45 range yeah i think it's 42 there's a wait list of five kids right now not everyone not all 42 on that list though access it every day some do every

109other one do two days a week some do three days a week so i'm not sure there's 42 kids there at once but like you said that's james's yeah no it was very nice of him to do that and it's helped a lot of kids who might not have a you know a place to go it's not very proximate to some of our other schools but and he can only handle so many but he did a great job opening it up yeah that was very that was that was very good of him um okay uh there's just a couple of little a couple of little things left i swear um i just wanted to check in with vtlc and distance learning and what what is going on with distance learning and whether whether we're having

110this is whether we're now five weeks into the school year are we going to have distance learning in the afternoons or and and are all high school students fully engaged in their uh their distance learning and and uh so yeah and i'm gonna let angie take take this one but i want to just separate out that there really are three right now three different venues for distance distance learning right one are those students who are 100 remote and and those kids don't ever come to in-person instruction and angie is supervising those teachers and that program and i think she'll tell you you know that's a little bit of a challenge but it's happening the second is what elizabeth mentioned and that is the afternoon for the in-person students and for the first two or three

111weeks we did not have any interaction or distance learning happening in the afternoons we are now at least within the last couple of weeks we're start to answer your question elizabeth we're cranking that up but i'll let angie maybe speak or the administrators speak more specifically what what i will tell you is from a logistical standpoint and a contractual standpoint once the students leave our building our teachers are still contractually entitled to a duty-free lunch because they're with those kids every second of every day and and and they're also uh entitled to a a planning period so so there's a period of time after the kids leave that because the teachers haven't gotten those things during the day that that has to happen but that still leaves about an hour in the afternoon for checking

112with kids and tutorial and intervention and some lesson planning but but and and that should have started so the the third venue is what you mentioned also elizabeth that's the high school uh students who have historically had some level of distance learning already we had several of our students who were partaking in virtual high school classes and dual enrollment classes online and and uh offline uh and in person so so we've had those flexible pathways at the high school level for for a while so again angie you know or colleena k can speak to this but i would say that of all three of those venues the ones who are the most engaged are the high school students because they actually have classes real live online classes in the afternoon either through virtual high school

113or through our own teachers who are teaching those online classes and they are scheduled in they've got three blocks in the morning and most of them have three blocks in the afternoon so that that that's i just want to make sure we understood this a whole lot of different kinds of distant learning but angie do you want to talk a little bit about how you think vtdlc is going and and and what are the challenges and successes um so we are actually at week five and a half um so this is our sixth week sixth week and last week so i'm speaking for remote only i'll let colleen and kate talk about how the afternoon remote learning is going in their buildings uh in their build ding and um so last week i had five

114families request to return to in person um and there is a process that we have to follow and that's not always doable because the we're practicing the distancing in the classrooms and many of our classrooms are maxed and we can't take more children in there so that's been a challenge usually it's let's talk with the teacher let's find out how we can support those students to be successful in remote only learning um probably no surprise to you this week based on the information that was happening over the weekend we had some in-person um families request to be remote only again that it's i explain it to families that it's like transferring your child from weathersfield to heartland or maybe from weathersfield to springfield because remote only is its own school because our teachers are they're

115not the teachers that are in the buildings there are they are su teachers um but i i just want to make sure that that's clear anybody that's listening to this that this is something that they're thinking about if they're remote only or they're in person um even though we are using the vtdlc curriculum um the scope and sequence what is happening in the buildings is is um different than what is happening in remote only and remote only our teachers have many students and they are following the vtvlc curriculum um with more fidelity than what's happening in the building because in the building we are emphasizing what's happening in person learning we're not we're we want our kids to know how to use the vtvlc in the in the event that we might have to go

116remote with those students but we're really emphasizing um in-person instruction and activities and things like that for students to build their understanding that way and the interdisciplinary units are also um happening in person that is not happening in the remote only option so um it we did ask families to make a semester long commitment we will revisit the remote only in december to see what's happening um the semester ends mid-january so um by uh by definitely by christmas break we ought to know um if uh what's happening with remote and there will be an option whether or not we can accommodate an option to return to in person so that's all um the same i have any questions about remote only okay and colleen and kate i'll let you talk about data and actually yeah

117the three of you could bring in person yeah to say that the our vt vlc classes are all up and running it's just that what is um grade level appropriate and what especially with some of our younger students what the vtvlc expectations are um as angie said we're working on a lot of in-person activities and hands-on and not trying to use a lot of screen time just allowing them to understand how to use vtvlc if we were to go totally remote but the learning curve of catching students up who never used vtvlc in a scope and sequence before and may not be at exactly the same space so for our younger students um we're we're doing traditional hands-on learning and what our teachers do best with um an understanding for our students and families how

118the vt dlc works so that we could um fall back on that and and understand how to use that and be in the sequence as best we can that's that's great appropriate our teachers are now beginning to add hours in the afternoon for student enrichment um struggling students office hours different ways to access our our students in the afternoon that is between the t the teacher teams and the families and how they're reaching out to those students for some online afternoon learning after the 12 30 dismissal kate do you want to talk about the high school um so the high school remote is kind of its own separate thing so we have the k12 in person then angie's doing the k8 remote thing colleen and i are doing the uh 912 remote so traditionally at

119windsor you could access remote classes i think current currently we have about 47 kids who are doing the all remote of those kids the majority of them come from the ninth grade of the ninth graders that come the majority of those are students who've actually never set foot in windsor school because they're tuition students so i wanted to give a kudos to greg and his comrade jessica who noticed that those kids did have the need for the idl and they have created a virtual idl to welcome those students and to connect them to their classmates um we do it this has been a struggle for some of our kids and some of our families so we've been working closely with kim gogan and bridget ferial so they've kind of speared up spearheaded all the kids

120that are doing ed options classes who don't have a connection with a windsor teacher because they're fully remote and we have a meeting every week and they report back to us on what they've done for to reach out to these kids to reach out to their families to connect to at options and the rate they give the people that should be on our radar to us what colleen was really smart enough to think of was that our truancy policy was set on 30 missed class periods so that would trigger that that was five full days but if she switched that to 15 periods that was showing us all the kids who were just blowing off their remote classes so we've been um sending the letters home and talking to the to the families now if

121they've missed 15 remote classes as opposed to 30 full classes because if you're missing only a remote now you're going to be in trouble quickly with those classes so those are a couple kinks that we've worked out along the way um it hasn't been seamless but everyone is working really hard and coming up with these ideas like greg and jessica and colleen as we go and with the vhs and the ed options that our high school students have always had access to with a different online teacher as kate said our flexible pathways coordinator and and our mtss coordinator bridget ferial and kim gogan have really taken on a huge role in being that liaison between the online classes and our teachers here and our counselors have done everything they could to connect high school students

122with our own teachers first if if at all possible so the relationships are we're still working on them remotely um it is it is difficult um and as kate said we are trying to pinpoint when the remote classes specifically are being missed versus the in person and trying to make time in our school day for the students who are half and half in that hybrid to get some of that support that they might need from the afternoon teachers when they don't get to see them we also have brought in a couple of full remote students for just for a day to kind of get them situated in person with this is what your classes look like this is how you access bt vlc because they never had that luxury so if that's been a problem

123we've had them come in for a one-on-one session again with greg and jessica as uh angie pointed out it is not that easy to transfer someone from remote to in person but it's also just as difficult to have someone go from remote to online only there's about a two week lag period to get them set up into vt vlc and we tell parents that right from the start when they make that request that we need two weeks to make that happen um i see a note in the chat window that uh from catherine allen do you either one of you know catherine you know i i think i i think that the question is a good question uh i mean we have not met at length with katherine but i know that uh her question

124is how does she get her oldest child who is on an iep to get enrolled in other classes other than art now that we're in week five and a half uh school despite my emails to staff so i think we're and i think i might have had a conversation with catherine i've had a couple of conversations over the last couple of weeks and part of it is is make it is is making that contact now that we are in week five and and figuring that out so certainly what i would say to catherine is be persistent you know continue to to continue to reach out to if you're students on an iep katie hearn's on on the on the call tonight that's been a challenge getting those kids scheduled in the afternoons and getting their

125support scheduled in the afternoons but i would say you as a parent have the right to call an iep meeting anytime you want to call one so and kate katherine and um katie i don't know whether you want to add to that i guess my my um question would be it's about high school getting enrolled in the high school classes and and um so cat may we should give a call tomorrow and we could see how to track this down um would be would be um because it that's a that's a enrollment issue of getting into classes so um and i think greg's kind of nodding his head too so um let's see what we can how we can figure out where the hiccup is yeah yeah we're going to assume it's a high school

126student i mean obviously we wouldn't talk in a lot of detail at a public meeting about a particular student but we can assume it's a high school student and i know in the afternoons uh that there's a lot more being offered than art so there's no reason we shouldn't be able to work something like that out but uh you know you can reach out to me catherine you can reach out to katie uh hearn uh and and we can take a look at that now that we're in i would tell you the first three weeks it was a little bit confusing but now that we're in week five i think we should be able to work something like that out jennifer so for us particularly in regards to remote learning um we have about 20

127of our kids who are not able to access any type of remote learning in the afternoon so our teachers are hesitant to start anything new using vtvlc because during the day they're doing the interdisciplinary units for roughly 70 minutes of the morning with math and ela is the expectation for 40 minutes of the other two slots um so vtblc while we're moving ahead we're looking at the scope and sequence but for the first six weeks of school our staff had already planned back in june to do an interdisciplinary unit based on responsive classrooms first six weeks of school so we didn't have any of the btblc at all identified then and so instead of asking them to throw all that work out and try and do something right there in the moment when we're starting

128up school we decided to stick with the plan that we had made so we're moving into looking at the scope and sequence as we move to our next rotation for our specials which is starting next week and as far as our interdisciplinary work our specialists when i met with them are really excited about being embedded in the classroom and the ability to watch other teachers teach so it's it's in a way this is a win-win for them because we know one of the best ways to learn to become better teachers is to do that and so they're excited about that process however we're still feeling a lot like it's more um integrated instead of interdisciplinary so instead of the two being kind of partners in developing based on the standards it's more like the teachers

129got the idea and then the specialist comes in and sees how they can support um but they're still very happy doing that um so in the afternoon we have and as far as our academic interventionist i believe that is 100 scheduled with students our special education crew looks like it's about 85 percent fully scheduled um in terms of getting everybody in the needs met that can access the needs our counseling is i think gosh i want to say this morning he said it's about 30 to 40 percent fully scheduled our sel um crew the rest of them are pretty close to fully scheduled at this point um we still have some outside people who aren't in our building or outside of our organizations that we're still trying to work with like we are hope are

130mentoring and those kinds of things for afternoon what i need time um that might be so we're also starting enrichment so instead of band we're doing lessons um i think that's it for data for now jennifer are they starting something remote next week are you saying so some of them have already started it depends on what the teacher has scheduled for the individual student so if it's a student who can access then they are setting up specific times to meet with students or small groups based on what their needs are um there is no new learning that is happening in the afternoon because we would be missing about 20 to 25 percent of our kids and that doesn't feel okay for us so we're really focusing on it being our what i need time so

131we've got interventions for those who need extra supports and enrichment for those who are ready to move forward and do extra things um that's where we're going but the idea is each teacher is either connecting with parents for the little younger kids um to have conversations about what the kids working on and to help them set up sort of afternoon activities that are meaningful and then the older kids there's some independent work as i understand being sent home depending on the teacher there is um teachers are setting up specific times to meet with students during the week and that is not fully washed out and i don't even have good data on how many have finished that based on my my spreadsheet doesn't have good information on that um but hopefully they've already started to

132an extent yeah and one of the challenges one of the challenges nancy uh and that's why i think this is a great question and why it has to be so individual in terms of how you get that access in the afternoon for example you know not all of our kids at 12 31 o'clock are going home some of them are going to child cares some of them are going to the rec center some of them are going to a grandparent's house uh and with no access to internet so you almost really do have to individualize this this support and and it either has to be you know a choice board whether with a student's investing in something that's enriched enriching or it has to be some level of of intervention because a student is really

133struggling and i'll tell you it had that that part has not been easy to schedule thank you very much for that oh sorry i have a q is there any what are we waiting for to go full day you know that that's a great question nancy um first of all we are waiting for for this for the state to put out some new guidelines about what this phase three really means uh we're also waiting for some of the restrictions to be loosened because one of the reasons we're going partial day is because the students and staff quite frankly get very fatigued when they have to wear masks all day or or have to you know be be in these pods all day so that that's part of it but the administrative team just today started

134to talk about reconvening that reopening task force once those guidelines are are back out and and having that conversation about i don't know about full day but certainly extending the day because remember we also we have these kids in pods we have them building relationships with adults those are great relationships and one of the things we don't want to do is upset that apple cart so and and at the same time if they're going to be in these pods we have to make sure that the contractual obligations are met for duty-free lunch and planning periods for teachers so uh so i i think it's going to be that reopening task force getting back together again once the guidelines are posted and talking about it you know the administrative team just had that conversation uh this

135morning and whether that would be incremental you know whether we'd extend a half an hour or 45 minutes to start and see how that goes uh understanding that we still have to make sure that the professional teachers and the paris get the breaks that they are that they deserve and that they are contractually obligated to so it's it's not a simple question but it's a good question nancy uh thank you for the updates um we have one more agenda item which is trauma transform champions update but i'm going to bump that to our next meeting because it's awfully late and i don't think i i'm not sure that my brain could hold any information that's trying to be dropped to it at the moment so yeah but before before we bump that though i do

136with with respect to that issue i want to shout out to the champions and and jennifer aldridge who has kept those champions alive and well with dave melnick she's done an enormous amount of work so i'd like to really highlight that on our next agenda so she could give you that update i don't want to i don't want to rush through it i agree i'm jennifer waiting until the next happy to do it i'm sorry no problem it's past my bedtime it's it's it's quite past your bedtime um all right i will take a motion to approve all of the minutes that have been sent to us so moved second seconds all those in favor of approving all of the minutes which have been sent to us please indicate by saying aye hi hi why

137uh are there any nays or any abstentions okay uh the five minutes have been passed and let's see we've got future agenda items uh which will include the trauma trauma champions i think the budget has to be on there budget will be on there the uh the sro with the police officer yeah the budget and the plan together uh and covet updates hopefully that'll be that'll be a healthy agenda no pun intended all right um i'll take a motion to end this behemoth of hey you did a great job for all those likes bill could you say it doesn't normally it doesn't normally run this long i swear that they do want to be part of this but they're concerned about the life of the meeting it doesn't normally go it i swear it doesn't

138normally go this long so they would like to just go proportions i thought it was funny because i was thinking right on kids right on this thing that's good um and elizabeth remember the recording is going to come to you that that's editable and uploadable so um you know kind of what you're doing there and then bill yates is he with us or did he leave i think he already left he left i was going to ask him to stay on for a minute but so much for that i'll touch base with him tomorrow okay did we vote on ending the meeting yes i thought he did yeah all right bye everybody see you thanks everybody bye-bye