001okay we are now recording and i'll open the meeting it's a special meeting because it's not our regularly scheduled meeting of the windsor southeast supervisory union board first off um we're going to have the school opening update however we have a guest who is here to speak on assisting us with implementing approving etc the anti-racism policy so if if it is okay with everyone if we were to jump to that policy so he doesn't have to sit and wade through everything else with us that good sounds like a good plan okay so elizabeth you were going to introduce so i i was going to introduce him because i am the person who invited him this is jameson davis and uh he is a law student at uvm sorry from law school um and he is
002uh one of the authors of the hartford um policy so i sent him the questions that i had about the policy at our last meeting and i just sent him the policy that we that we are looking at as we are looking at it today so that he would have it um i apologize for not sending it to you further in advance of the meeting but that is about yourself yeah um first and foremost thank you for inviting me uh to the meeting um you didn't have to move it up for me as a former select board member i'm used to sitting in very long meetings um so yes i'm a former secretary member for the town of hartford um 3l from vermont law school i am currently doing an internship with the department of
003justice in washington dc although i am in quiche right now um working remotely and so uh yes a peer in mind ariel king founded uh writing wrong llc which is pretty much what the platform we've been using um to really help visit schools organizations um municipalities anybody who's willing and ready to develop an anti-racism policy um we've been working with quite a few schools and districts about vermont in new hampshire new orleans new york city having conversations kind of all over the regional area um so you know we're definitely excited to assist you guys ariel couldn't be here today she's doing a presentation on embedded racism uh which is a reoccurring um kind of conference last webinar that vermont law school was doing so today she was the guest speaker up there um so she
004sends her regards not being here today so i will uh represent the both of us and and uh hopefully help help you guys you know answer any questions you may have and have some a good conversation and just figure out what's best for you and the winter southeast okay elizabeth you said that you sent him questions do you have those james then yeah so i have two questions um and we can start with those uh absolutely so let me just pull them up really quick the first question that i received from mitch barros okay but the first question had to do with uh providing a definition of racism and anti-racism for the purpose of the policy correct so i mean with that again the the policies that we create are specifically designed for each individual
005entity that we're working with so we're not going to have the same policy throughout so if the town of or winter southeast feels and decides as if though racism needs to be defined within their policy that's absolutely okay um we can help assist there um one thing that i do i want to say and point out about about the racism uh definition is it's important that it's a correct definition it's important that it's a definition that has certain touch points with built within it right and so what i mean by that is if you're going to define racism you need to be specific about what racism is so you need to articulate that and it needs to be somewhere in a definition that mentions um bypoc individuals being targeted specifically um you know because the
006conversation around reverse racism that i've been hearing sometimes uh and throughout my my tenure in uh as a psych board member is not a concept that i would consider to be added into a definition of racism racism is something that was created um specifically it's hard targeting people of color uh black people and um other uh individuals who fall within a bipod community um and so if we're gonna define racism it's important that we define it correctly and we are um honest with what it is that that racism is and what we are seeing here specifically in the state of vermont so to answer your question absolutely we can we can put that in there we can help you draft it it's just important that when you put it in there we end up with
007a definition that is correct overall but i i had written a whole paragraph about the question and then i decided to just give you the question but i i was thinking that in in in coming to a definition of racism and anti-racism we are educating ourselves in the community um in the process so that was yeah again the the the policy is getting specific to your community and your culture so if you feel you know your community culture better than i ever could right because you've been there if there's a town of hartford and they are going to differ but it's not so you know whether or not that that word needs to be defined and so if you feel like you need that extra layer that extra step then 100 absolutely let's take that
008because the one thing we don't want to do is if we don't want to create a policy that's not going to do any any good in the sense of educating as you say or one um being able to hold individuals accountable when it needs to be used right because that's the other piece of the policy and the in the kind of indirect piece of the policy as well is the conversation that it sparks within the community right just having the policy and just manifest not even having a policy just having this conversation right now it's a catalyst to a conversation that may or may not be happening in the community right you people are interested in what you're doing as a board that's why you record these because somebody's going to go back and watch
009them and they're going to you know write things down they're going to take notes they're going to call you and send you emails and ask the questions that they have based on things that were said today that is a conversation that needs to happen throughout the community regardless if there's an antivirus policy or not and so there's many things that the policy does it's not just a policy for um you know putting on the shelf and taking off the shelf when it's needed to for discipline it's not a policy just to hold people accountable it's not a policy just to kind of you know have it on your books to say you have it on your books you need all those things to work uh collectively for it to be a policy that's actually gonna
010um do the things that we hope it does and and that your you know your town i would say hope it does in the sense of um again having that conversation and just it being there when it's needed to be used so if you again if it's just not racism if there's other definitions out there that you feel like need to be laid out then we need to lay them out because again the education spectrum on racism is all across the board you know and we don't want to assume that people know things when they don't know things and we also don't want to put people in a position where they are afraid to ask questions or speak up due to the fact of what somebody's response is going to be we start all about
011meetings letting everybody know that any conversation we have individuals it's a cone of silence that we have and it's a cone of confidence where you can ask any and every question um we won't be offended being people of color because again we are here in this space to educate and to help in ways that we can and so there is no question um that is not a good question if it's a question that you have sincerely uh and i believe the second part the second question you sent me i'm not i was trying to find that one is should it include should it include means by which to measure the progress so yes we tried to when we developed and again this is going to be different for for every entity that we work with
012because everybody's policy and procedures are different right so in the heart for policy i'm sure you saw and there's a policy section and there's a procedure section the policy section is more so having the conversation in terms of this document is here to do this get rid of freedom by uh putting up the sign on all of the schools buildings whether that be the schools athletic building the shed building where equipment is wherever it may be in a hot traffic area and there's other things that that fall in line of that then you have the procedure document which is a separate document outside the policy document the procedure document is where you're going to see the most change but most of the time because that's going to be dependent on uh the processing procedures within
013that district town organization municipality etc so there may be things that we need to add into yours process and procedure-wise that we might not have to add into the town of hartford or the town of sharon or any other of the other towns and so um you know we can have that conversation in terms of what needs to be added or taken out um so that's where we're really lean on you guys to really let us know if you know there needs to be more things in which you want to make sure progress is done what we try to do and with the town of harford is that speaking with the superintendent um mr divalsi town of balsi he was right in the room when we developed ours when we made the final changes um
014i should say because we developed before we got there it went to a reading then we went through another uh edit and went to a second reading and you know we looked right at him directly and asked someone uh certain things are you capable of doing this something you can do and one of them was the reports that there's a biannual report what i mean by any i mean every other year and one thing that we didn't realize ourselves that he helped us develop was in some of these school districts the the demographics when it comes to people of color are so low that even when you try to disguise some of the material and some of the information that you're receiving it still points out the people within within that that demographic right because
015the demographics was so big and so therefore um bless you miss katie we try to um you know work with the superintendent and work with the school board to figure out how can we still have that information put out there for not only the school but for teachers and for students and for parents to gain access to it without without anybody feeling vulnerable because they may or may not be within that document and so if there's other ways in which you know you think it's best for your uh district then we would gladly you know hash that out and figure out what what is best uh but again it's not going to be the same for everybody so things that you see in the hartford version may or may not make sense for or wins
016or um so if you have any suggestions among you know what it is that you want to see the measure then yeah we can definitely most most definitely incorporate that on the at the baseline level we try to just do a biannual report that has certain information in terms of you know incidents how the incident was handled how the disciplinary was handled you know uh whether restorative justice was used as a discipline you know things of that nature well then andy that was only two questions that i had so if there's any other questions out there please feel free to ask me and throw them out um i have a question it's amy so we are in the beginning stages of reading through the policy and adapting it to our supervisory union which consists of
017three separate districts okay yep um all of our policies are at the supervisory union right now and then the boards the individual boards also adopt them okay but what i'm wondering in the as you were describing the process of making this policy ours you know to our community would it make sense to you to have a couple of community members perhaps and one person from each of the towns that are represented by the school district to get together and kind of work through adapting this policy and working with administration to develop procedures so yeah i'm always about diversity of minds right especially in a situation with you guys where you have so many communities coming together as one and where you know even in the town of hartford you know the five villages that make
018apart for each town kind of have it has its own identity right right like oh each deal just to say has his own identity and i can only imagine what it's like um and you're in your situation where you have you know more than five villages being represented um so yes and no the yes meaning um you definitely i definitely want to have individuals community members uh if there's anybody within your your towns or your villages that have been doing this work previously we want them we need them in the conversation okay because one thing we don't do is that we're not trying to step on anybody's child who's been doing this work prior to us um there are some communities that we've been in where people have already been doing great work but just
019needed our assistance or wanted our assistants in some way and so we made sure they incorporate them in the entire process uh so they can they can you know take what they've learned and help us and we can take what we know and help help each other pretty much um on the no side the only thing that we will be concerned with is i would not want a complete different document for each individual you know and so we want to keep it as close-knit as possible especially because you are all coming together as one winsor southeast district exactly and it would be okay yeah yeah it would be it wouldn't be three separate documents for each it would be district i should say okay it would make sense to have a representative um be involved
020in each conversation though just so we can make sure that whoever wants to be appointed whoever wants to appoint somebody we definitely want to make sure that each district is represented so when we do kind of roll it out finally that everybody felt that they have the input um and then we can kind of build from there to make sure that we cover our bases because there there very well may be some instances in one and one district that may not be as prevalent in another you know um there there may there may may not be they it may just come across well you know they're very similar but we want to make sure that's the case before we just assume yep wow very cool thank you worse of course keep keep them coming i'm
021here for you no do other people have questions i do nancy i wondered if the principals should be involved because they would be the ones who would know about the incidents in their schools again it wouldn't hurt it wouldn't hurt to have the principles involved um you know we've worked with with principals uh before i mean we're working with principals now so there's there's no harm in getting the principles involved in some instances it does help because you know they could let us know for instance as we said about the the um um the document that we required to have you know but we didn't catch on ourselves that the demographics are so low that it could possibly point some people out the superintendent was the one that pointed out that to us so the
022principal superintendent if they want to be involved then you know there's there's no harm in that um but you know you just want to make sure that we're all working towards a document that can be completed in a document that could be put out there for everybody to have a say on um and then when we come back to the drawing board after we have that chance then we can make whatever adjustments are needed between the first read and the second read or whatever the process is specific to winter southeast other quest points john just shared that the anti-defamation defamation league has a definition of racism has her hand up amy yeah oh okay you were in the corner i didn't see you sorry that's okay um i just want to thank jamison for coming
023because the first time that we when we read this policy last time we didn't really understand where it came from um and so having you come and tell us where it came from is really fantastic and i also just really appreciate what you said about involving the people in the schools that have been working on this already because i honestly look at this and i'm like well yeah i could write something but you know i could approve this but i really don't feel like i have the grasp and the handle and i would really appreciate the background of everybody else and so i guess amy i'm proposing that we do try to form some kind of committee um and figure out how to make it go farther yeah just so i mean um i didn't
024really get much background on how we got here but just to give a little bit so those who may or may not know if they're comfortable um so ariel and i uh applied to be part of this fellowship program i'm not sure if you guys are familiar with that but the schweitzer fellowship program is a program that takes graduate students engineers uh lawyers as well as those in medical field and they provide a way in which they could insert themselves into the communities and really work on um you know advocating and creating programs to help with really the health of that of that community and the health of you know whatever their project is so what arielle and i decided uh is that we always wanted to try to find a way to well let
025me back up the state of vermont enacted h3 act one right which is the ethnic studies bill and so now is law in vermont that you have to teach a certain amount of ethnic studies within schools and so what we thought we would do is create a teacher's guide to assist teachers with having that conversation right because me as i grew up in connecticut i went to all white elementary school up until middle school um so i know what it's like to sit in the all-white classroom during black history month and my teacher looked at me and asked me to teach the class about kwanzaa when i have no idea what quanza is myself right or if you know a teacher um you know shows the same kind of video that we showed every year
026which is like the hosing and the dolls stick down black people and the beating and the lights get cut on and everybody's staring at you right so these are instances that happen very frequently you know there's a lot of burdens that are placed on on children of color when it comes to them being the only ones in the classroom and so my mom was a teacher she's been a teacher i was also was a in the individual that would go to the grocery store my mom and she would have two or three carts that i helped push and then we get to check out lane and i realized none of it was for me it was all for the students and so you know um it education has been near and dear to to my
027heart and areas as well so we wanted to make sure that with the ethnic studies bill we tried to find a way to assist teachers who are really really adamant about having this important conversations without them necessary having it because we know how much work you're doing especially now with cova and especially now with some of the stuff being on on zoom and on the video um we wanted to we wanted to create something that you can just kind of pull from the shelf and whether you're teaching science english history whatever you're teaching you can go to that page and you can teach about somebody of color who who was prominent in that field right because we all know what what i call the classic five right martin luther king george washington carver malcolm x
028harriet tubman you know like those are the those are classic five or six that we all know like the back of our hand but there's thousands out there literal thousands out there and so we want to do with this guide is that we wanted to be able to to uh enlighten and and expose the others who had just as much prominence in their respective fields but it would whether it's science whether it was english whether it was art whatever the case may be and we want to make it easier for teachers to do that um rather than you know making it harder in the sense of having to do ed research and education on your own and trying to do all these things with a little bit of time that you have outside of creating
029your own um uh work plans and things of that nature so while we were doing that we got we're doing that with the town of hartford they signed on to be our our home base school um and so while we were doing that the social uprising happened and so we were further we were further ahead in our development on that program that we felt comfortable putting out that on pause just for a month or two and the true story is i just i couldn't sleep one night and i it was so much was happening in the world i just couldn't rest my eyes i couldn't rest my body and i was thinking about the kids in the schools who were probably having the same instance the difference is that i'm 33 33 years old and
030they're between the ages of you know 14 to 18 right and so what would that be like going back to school and in in the months of everything that's happening and so we we felt like the one thing we could do is we can create a policy that when regardless of who you are a little bit when you go back to school you feel a little bit safer knowing that there's something there that you can lean on us or your school has something in place if an incident were to happen right because there's too many instances that there's too many times where we find ourselves being reactive and not proactive you know and so we wait for incident to happen we wait for a mom to pull her kid out of school we wait for
031you know i again in my all-white school i would they try to put me on rhythm and when i didn't need it i got sent home with it with this teacher one time and my mom never cusses this the first time i heard a cuss what is this jameson and i said ma i don't know what i didn't tell her was that that week it was black history month i know what happens every year black history month and so i i didn't want to involve myself with white people to be honest and so i sat underneath my table my desk i did all my work handed it all in my grades were perfect as if they were any other the week of the day or any other week in a month the difference is i
032just knew what was coming up i knew when we got time to do what we call current history or current events when we did current events i knew it was going to happen we were all going to gather in the in in our common area they're going to roll the video out i'm old so they were rolling the videos out they're going to roll the tv out they're going to put the dvd on everybody's going to watch it and cut the lights on they're going to look at me and then somebody's going to ask me a question and i was going to have to be put in the spot to answer questions i didn't know the answer to and so you know that miscommunication that misunderstanding is is something that we wanted to we want
033to write uh uh not only a guide but a policy that just assisted people you know we're not teachers we're not we're not trying to tell anybody to do the job or into that nature we just want to assist because we experienced it i personally experienced it i personally know what it feels like to be that kid in class when that happens i personally know what it feels like to be a called a in kindergarten i personally know what it feels like to have the talk that my dad have to give me which is if somebody does call you inward then you need to you know keep your composure but also at the same time don't let them you know talk to you in that way that's a fine line you know how do you
034do that what do you mean by that you know i'm a kindergartner i didn't think i would have to get that talk but not only did i think i would have to get that talk i didn't think i'd actually be called that and i only took the first three days of school for it to happen you know and so having that experience i feel like i'm a very privileged adult now as a black male being able to be in law school being able to live in vermont being able to expose myself to so many things that my own family my own cousins that i see and know every day and talk to every day would never have a chance of doing and so therefore you know it would be a waste of of the things
035that i went through not to apply that in a setting where you know it could help other students and kids and teachers and individuals so that's kind of how we got to this point um and how we are where we are and why we will continue to do this work until it's not needed anymore so any other questions i would love to answer them all right well um sorry okay ann i guess um just one thing is uh as far as like dealing with racial issues it's difficult here in vermont because there are so few people of color around that um it almost feels like you have to single them out and you know beg them to help out with policies like this um i just don't know like how you feel about you know
036having a bunch of you know like white people like us making this policy well you know that that was a appreciate it's concerning point blank period it's concerning which is why we've tried to infiltrate ourselves to help assist you in any way possible because there are certain things that you might miss that you might not think about solely because you never had to think about it before a day in your life you know some of you may have mistakenly have said have done things similar to asking a person of color to educate us like like my teacher to kwanzaa she didn't mean anything harmed by it she didn't mean anything you know bad about it but that doesn't doesn't mean it's not a microaggression you know that doesn't mean that you know that it didn't
037have effect on me and and things of that nature um we applaud the fact that you're having this conversation and we applaud the fact that you're doing this work that hands down cannot not be said enough uh but when you're doing this when you're doing specific work especially around racism and anti-racism you definitely need to to to have diversity within that conversation because there are no doubt going to be instances that you're just not going to think about you're just not even going to know that you should have thought about that because again none of you have ever been the only black kid in the class you know um and and just being the only black kid in class doesn't qualify me to be sitting in community even having this conversation you know there's so
038many so much more that goes behind it um in terms of educating myself in terms of helping educate others you know i've represented a town of 10 000 people that has a demographic of around 94 um caucasian you know i've gotten emails let we go back to africa as as their select board member things of that nature so you know it's it's just if you want a policy that is going to do the things that you want it to do you need to be able to have the conversations that you may not want to have now so that way when you finish the policy you feel more comfortable having that conversation with somebody else who may not who may be uncomfortable having that conversation because the reality is that when this policy gets done it's
039going to be up to the individuals on this call and those that you work with to keep that policy at the forefront of everybody's mind this isn't a policy that we're creating just to put on a shelf and then let it collect dust right this is something that you're going to have to work towards every day literally from this day forward anti-racism is not a one training thing it's not a one one zoom coffin you know it's it's a it's a mental it's a lifestyle change just like you would do anything else you know it's not that everybody is is racist or anything of that nature but you have to continue to teach yourself to be anti-racist you know you have to be comfortable having conversation with friends who may make jokes that you're that
040that are uncomfortable family members that that may say things uncomfortable you know you have to be able to to be comfortable enough in yourself to have that conversation in a uh a way that could reach them um better than you know anybody else could because then they know you personally right and so that's what it boils down to is just the fact of if you want the policy to be what the policy could be and to help help the policy change certain cultures then you're gonna have to cover as much ground and much basis as you can and you're absolutely right about signaling out the individuals within your community which is why i mean ariel here you know because it it very well may be uncomfortable it's the first for the one or two or
041the few black people within your community to all of a sudden get a call from somebody they never spoke to before say hey we're creating anti-racist policy you're black or your person of color do you want to help us write it you know that's a microaggression that's that's what it is and so yes we are offering ourselves to to be that for you angie you had a question hi hi jamison and i'm angie ledoux i'm the director of curriculum so i'm thinking about beyond the policy and how we um you know the you were talking about the microaggression by asking you know the few person of color you know to be on the committee how do we encourage our children um to of color to be part of this conversation and our those families i
042mean isn't that i'm thinking that's very important i'm also thinking that how do we do that in a way that isn't seen as a microaggression or experienced in a way that oh i'm i'm singled out because you know it's about creating safe spaces it's about them deciding they want to be a part of it right and they will only decide they want to be a part of it if they feel like they are safe in that space so you know you go into them and ask them hey do you want to be a part of this policy writing or be a part of this club or be a part of this whatever it may be and then they get there and they realize that that space isn't ready for their presence right and so that's
043what you have to really kind of take into everything that that we do on the anti-racism side especially when you're when you're asking because right now here's what's happening right and this is happening all across the world i have never personally been asked to be on more board of director positions in my life than in the last three or four months and i couldn't have paid anybody to let me be because you know you get what i'm saying now so it's like oh you know so now you know but at that point as well what you don't want to do is that you don't want that person to feel as if the only thing they bring to the table is their blackness or is their their probably identified okay because that's also another thing you
044you want to watch out for is that hey we're we're we're not inviting you just because you're the only black person in school you're the only black person that i know we're inviting you because you have knowledge that can help us get to where we want our culture and our community to get to and so in order to get to that point for me it's just about creating that safe space first right i was on a call with somebody i was doing a talk with the autobahn society and somebody asked a question similar to yours and the they asked you know as a they were running a program for for youth in like the nature and they wanted more people of color to be in the program rightfully so and my my she asked me
045a question i asked a question right back i said is your program ready for that person of color and that's what you have to ask yourself is that is our program is our curriculum is our you know whatever it is that we're creating ready for the person of color that we wanted to enter and you will only know that answer when people of color start inserting themselves right because when they start when we start asserting ourselves we only insert ourselves in places where we feel comfortable when we feel safe and so that's kind of really you know what the mindset should be around developing these things is is if we get a person of color today will they go home coming back want to come back because even in vermont as a whole right the
046thing about vermont as a whole is we get people to come here it's how do we get them to stay here right i can get a teacher to teach for a year but how do i get them teach for five i get to teach pretend you know and so that's that that's that's it that's that's the question you have to ask yourself when you're doing this type of work is you know what do we do to keep people what do we do to keep them enter uh to keep them feeling like this is their community and we don't we don't want them involved just because of their their blackness or because of their personal color but because of what they bring to the table as everything oh and and i do have to say i
047should probably do the disclaimer but i'm like a little bit on the blunt side of things so my this is like right in your face um but um you know we can have off-camera conversation immediately okay are there any other questions or comments so i just this is dave baker the superintendent i just didn't know what um we're gonna talk about next steps before jameson leaves and we have that draft policy but it's really just kind of what what's next right what i was hoping that we've been moving along but ever ever ever so slowly um anne-marie brought to everyone's attention in the chat that we had been talking about having a committee subcommittee form um a racial task force but i don't think any action had really been done with that and what i
048am wondering is if we could have some volunteers people who have the time and energy to be part of that preferably someone from each of our communities so that everyone is represented and then we can once the the board group gets together then we can reach out to the community to see if others in the community keep it relatively small with and then report back after a couple of meetings yeah i mean when it comes to things on our side you know whenever you guys are have that committee together and you decide that you know you for sure want us to to continue to work with you um then you know we'll be ready to go and we'll be we'll have everything on our end we have you know already uh procedures that we've that
049we do are that we do and have done um so we'll just continue to use those yeah um jameson i had a question um it sounds like if we uh if we get a few board volunteers and i know there are a couple of administrators if not more than that that would love to be a part of this i mean and then we start to promote this in the community i mean do you have a suggestion i mean uh in terms of how you would name the task force that so that it would feel safe and that it wouldn't feel like you're trying to do something you know uh like if you call it a race racism task force or an anti-racism that i i mean i don't know what would be uh what would
050be a good name to make it feel safe to people of color in in our community as well so i mean me personally i like anti-racism and the only reason why that is is because it's letting people know what it is work about it you know we can't you can't sugarcoat things when it comes to the terminology we're going to be using right so a quick preview one of the questions that we asked when we get to that point is how comfortable are you in your community using the terms white supremacy white superiority institutionalized racism systemic racism you know we ask those questions about how comfortable you are because of the fact that those are the things that we're going to be combating with their policy you know but they also as i know again
051from my experience it's a cringe kind of worthy instance sometimes when you fear it because when you hear it because just by having the word white in front of those things it it personalizes it for a lot of people even though it may or may not necessarily should right it's because you it personalizes sometimes the the the cringeworthy the response is people are feeling attacked when reality is that's not at all what we're doing we're just addressing what it is that um we are seeing right and so for me anti-racism works on both because it lets the people of color know that this is where the community is going and so if they want to be a part of it they're more than welcome to be a part of it they're not required to but
052the door is open for them 100 and that goes with anybody else who also wants to be a part of the conversation yeah no that that's helpful jameson um so i and i i think anti-racism task force is is not a i think that you know you you say you say what it is and i think the other piece of this and i say this to the board members is i think that that task force needs a charge right they need to know what what what what they are supposed to be doing you know it sounds like one of the charges will be to put together a comprehensive policy that will represent you know uh you know uh the the all the communities essentially so that would be one charge the second charge might be
053to i mean i don't know i mean i think you have to discuss this but the second charge might also be to come up with a strategy to implement that policy right so that it doesn't just sit on the shelf like jameson said i mean i think if we had those two charges to begin i think that would be great and i am glad to hear jameson you're willing through through uh you know personal experience and also just through your the organizations you've worked with to help us with this because uh i think i i i do i think we we we need that perspective at the table and and i'm just glad you're open to that um so so i don't know how the board feels but i i we've never had an official
054motion to establish you know an anti-racism task force um that would be charged with the you know the two things that i just said you could word them any way you wanted to word them i i think that would be a good first step and then we could i would assume elizabeth scott jameson's you know contact information we could reach out to the community and say we're looking for members i know the community is waiting for this because i've gotten emails saying you know i thought you were going to start an anti-racism task force i haven't heard anything lately and again we got buried in covet and all that other stuff but i don't think this is going to be a surprise to our communities i i think they're and i think you're going to
055get some good i think you're going to get some good membership um on on that on that team i've already got a couple of names i don't have them with me tonight but of people who have stepped stepped forward who want to do that so okay it's really up to the board um there are two people named colleen who have questions um are you up um colleen spence and i know the champ is that okay um i guess i'll tag on to um your thank you for coming jameis and this is i'm really excited about getting started with this um the my question was kind of do you recommend um drawing out us we were talking about the strategy for implementing this policy drawing out specifics in the policy to that we plan to implement
056i mean i guess that's kind of where my head was going was what next steps were and then david kind of covered it but that's what i was wondering yeah again if if if you're not someone who's going to be on the committee um but you there are things that you know you think for sure need to be addressed then i would just say have that list and give it to the person who's been representing your district um in the committee that's again if you're not on the committee itself um but yes i mean you're more than welcome to obviously go through the policy uh critique that cross things out you don't like circle things you do like add essence whatever you want to do um but if again if you're on the committee you
057just bring that you bring that to the committee when we meet with you if not then you just hand that over to somebody who could uh kind of be your mouthpiece for that for that part of the development and then again when we get to the first draft again that's the first draft right and so you guys will look it over you'll you know give suggestions you might put on it whatever the case may be and if there's a need for a second draft um then we'll make the necessary changes there as well that answer your question kind of i guess i what i'm picturing now is you know kind of embracing the your um comments about this being an ongoing everyday thing that we're working on um i'm leaping forward to what are these
058everyday things that we're oh i'm going to be asking our teachers and our administration to do and would we be drawing that kind of stuff out in a policy or just arming them with the materials that they need to do these things that are maybe a little more generalized in our policy exactly yeah so the idea that you know we would not just grow information out to teachers and expect them to do it on their own the idea we would create things within the procedure document that would um kind of identify and outline the specific things okay for example a procedure document to go along with our policy okay yeah policy document and then there's a procedure document because the policy document is kind of the overview this is the anti-racism policy this is designed
059to combat racism and it goes into different parts the procedure policy really goes into specifics of how that's done great right and so that talks about um we require certain monies to be set aside for the school to use specifically for training um you know we require um not only the staff to be trained on anti-racist policy but administrators as well um you know there's a part in there where the district shall form a committee of high school students to promote equity and diversity uh to serve as leaders and spokesperson within the school and district because again we need buy-in from everybody involved right and that just doesn't mean that's from the bottom up all the way from the students to the teachers to the administrators to the superintendent so yes we will have specifics
060um built within that's helpful yeah thank you that that's what i was wondering and in this colleen second calling another calling so glad you're here i i'm just thinking about what i heard amy say about maybe starting small and what dr baker said about like the right name for the task force and that makes me think um about what you said jamison about being safe and are we ready for this as the person who joins this task force ready and feeling safe are we ready for everyone to be there and anybody can be feel and safe any person so i i don't feel i'm just wondering if the name is that important and if it would feel safer if we did more of a description of what we were trying to do the task force
061that's trying to do this and then when the task force feels comfortable then they name it as a task force who feels comfortable with what the right name for it is um and the idea of starting small i just would hate to turn people like limit that if we had a lot of people who wanted to be there because i'm sure there's a lot we've got a lot of work to do and it's an everyday piece and it's a lifestyle change there's there's lots for lots of people to do i could imagine breaking us into smaller committees but i would i would hate to limit by i'm not sure what you meant amy by starting small but i wouldn't want to turn anyone away if they were feeling safe to start right off the bat
062just yes thanks uh the first thing is it's just you're absolutely right when it comes to feeling safe right again that's where i where i spoke of in terms of you know your your community better you know where you are in terms of if we say racism will that spark an uprise if we say you know x y and z will that have a negative impact but you also have to ask yourself is that okay is it okay to kind of spark a little bit out raising a little bit of impact for this conversation right because what you can't do and what i would discourage you to do is try to get everybody on board right just because that may or may not happen but at the same time you do want to make sure
063that you're not alerting anybody who wants to be on a board but may not feel safe on the board or who wants to be in a board but doesn't want to actually speak their mind when they get on the board right because that's another thing that we don't you know we also welcome different uh uh viewpoints right and so if we need to have a conversation with different viewpoints then if that's what your community is made up of then that's what the community is made up of and we need to we need to have you know as many voices as possible um but what i would say in terms of the kind of the smart starting small and and not starting a small part is that there are certain points within the development where it
064makes more sense to have more people involved right so from the very beginning for to develop the policy it may not make sense to have 40 people on a zoom call you know it may make sense to have 40 people on the zoom call when the policy is written and it's actually on paper and this is what we're going to vote on but before you vote on it let's you know run by it with as many people as possible so if there's any tweaks that need to happen that can be done before the vote if there's conversation that need to be happened because you're representing your community you can have those conversations with people individually you know and if me and ariel need to help out in any way within that then obviously we'll be
065there as well but you know it just from my experience again um you know on a document as important as this as a document that uh you know touches a lot of baseline level you know you want to try to get as much done um up front in in a tight knit group but then open it up when it's time to open it up you know this isn't something we're going to sneak under the rug to anybody this isn't something we're going to hide and all of a sudden it's voting day this is not the ballot type thing you know this is this is something that people need to know is coming um and then that you know we need to be able to have those conversations john i moved with our supervisory union establish
066an anti-racism task force oh second is there further discussion hearing none um i will okay um all those in favor of our supervisory union forming and anti-racism task force say i worship i excellent um next up just to to keep to to start small so that we're not all um i can't think anyway um to have at least one person from each of our towns i will take um volunteers for that elizabeth you're volunteering i will volunteer for that from weathersfield elizabeth colleen spence from heartland sean from weathersfield and do we have someone specifically from windsor it it's okay to have more than one from a place i know i see mr cole has her hands up mr brook i would be a second from heartland okay i was pointing at you nicole that i'd
067beat you but i'm glad you're coming i will i'll volunteer for windsor close tonight and i saw mark mark medicine i would like to be involved with this as well uh it sounds fascinating to me and it's something i'm quite passionate about so if there's room for another one i'd like to be a part thank you sure if there's not any other question for me believe it or not i do have class at 8pm don't ask me why but i do thank you again if you don't have one we're gonna head on get ready for that thank you thank you and thank you so much we'll be in touch please do okay thank you thank you thank you bye-bye so the other the other question amy is um i mean i'm i'm certainly glad to
068take the lead it's it's it's right up it's right right something i definitely have a passion for but i don't want to use serp i mean if there's somebody else of the people who just volunteered that want to take the lead and uh you know i certainly we can be the conduit and get words out to the communities and get requests for membership out to communities and all that stuff but uh i'd be i'd be i would not be hurt if somebody else wanted to take that on yeah what i am thinking is um for the first meeting is our favorite kind of doodle poll and to have it happen fast like in the next week and a half or so um i know we're all at least a few of us are kind of
069up to our little eyeballs in kind of crazy meetings but um if that could happen sooner until the group meets and decides about dates to involve the the public you know to have a community forum on who wants to be involved and kind of what we're doing to have have a discussion to let the public know and then all of our meetings would be they would be public meetings so anyone from the public could attend our virtual meeting so do we want to solicit public interest first and and generate that list of people from our communities that are interested is it is that how we want to start no i think to um publish that we're establishing an anti-racism or that the board has established a board anti-racism task force and we're welcoming community members
070and our first meeting is on this date at this time so invite anybody who wants to be a part of it right and then because not everyone who wants to be i mean we we all want to be but it's levels of ability to be committed and to be able to go to meetings so what i see is all of the meetings will be public sessions but not everyone attending is going to be a member of the task force i got you so that people feel that they can attend the meetings but not have to commit to every single meeting you know that will just be the task force and mark you had a question uh yeah more of a suggestion i i think that if there's any way that we can have the subcommittee
071meet first to establish an agenda a general uh through line of what it is we're gonna do before we involve uh public input um that'd be good just so we get our feet underneath us um and it's not just one big zoom call because if we end up with 75 people interested and we don't have any structure at all to this subcommittee i just i don't think we're going to get anywhere so if we we just start small give ourselves a few parameters at least lay the ground rules for the first open session of people that might be showing up and or perhaps a point person um who can accommodate uh the technology um i just feel like that would be a better start to it instead of just a free-for-all from anybody who wants
072to pop in from the public exactly that's that's very very good thank you mark for bringing all of that up you want to put your mic down bill right here you and your mic down here roger well i was eating so i just didn't want to get any mic um the uh i i want to echo what mark said i i think it's really important to have sort of the steps you're going to go through an agenda first um i really like what was talked about you know going through the steps of defining what racism is or however what what sort of steps that the committee wants that would create structure so you move forward exactly it it has to be that i think the task force the board task force needs to meet first
073and determine who kind of the the leader of that who's going to be taking charge of the meetings and making sure that we're following the open meeting law all of that kind of thing and there absolutely has to be structure otherwise it turns into just more um tension unhappiness people feeling that they haven't been heard um and that it's just another oh well they're doing this that nothing's going to be done um i think we all want this to be an act it to be action steps as opposed to what jameson was saying a policy that just goes into a book and we never look at it again so um i think the the first step if people are willing to do it is that we set up a meeting of just our group and
074it can be again a public meeting but we're not asking for a public input at this point we just want to get kind of set the parameters of what our task force will be doing and then we can open it up for people who from our communities who want to be more involved in the task force are you are you amy are you thinking or is the group thinking maybe you should have jameson involved in that first structural meeting yeah okay absolutely yeah i think you should so that might be the first thing is to get the dates he's available is that what you were going to say elizabeth yeah i was going to say that maybe we should start with finding out when he i think he and arielle are had planned to do
075a kind of tag team so that we have twice as many dates yeah as we think we do um so they're kind of they're somewhat interchangeable um they work as a team but we can find out when they're available and then doodle pull those dates yeah you can let me know and i can do the doodle poll i don't doing the dutiful it's it's actually not that big of a deal to set up okay yeah okay so that sounds good elizabeth and then uh this may be a stupid question because we're halfway if not three quarters of the way through our meeting but is anybody taking minutes tonight i mean we i know we're recording it which is good is anybody scratching down notes because i'm not i i see i saw some people writing
076like you see elizabeth writing i am writing down but i i wasn't i was just taking notes i wasn't necessarily doing minutes we don't theoretically have a minute taken at our meeting sorry i'm taking notes as far as the the motion yeah okay we can all put our heads together i mean i think that's the other thing too we've probably got to reach out to uh do an internal posting for somebody who might be willing to take our minutes i mean we haven't we haven't talked about that but we probably should right but we have the recording so we can probably get minutes from the recording yeah yeah and i i will do that okay i'll start from here oh good colleen's taking notes not nikki okay yeah and by the way lori i think
077laurie my new administrative assistant you know i don't think she'd mind either amy you know just let me know she wouldn't mind recorded from the recording she might scratch some minutes out of the recording i just think we've got to get our our note takers we need we need one for heartland we need one for uh uh for uh mounis gutney and we need one for the su so and i don't mind putting a little posting out to the internally to the staff to maybe somebody out here who loves that kind of work okay yeah thank you i'll do that okay um so we were we jumped to the anti-racism policy and we are taking some really good first steps so how about we go back to the top of our agenda if people would
078like and talk about um how school opening went yeah we certainly have a lot of administrators on this call which is great i love the fact that our principals are attending our su meetings uh and and that's great uh and i certainly i think they would all be one voice saying that it went better than we had expected or worried about all summer we put a lot of time into planning but i i think that the you know the best laid plans of mice and men work this time and i think that we uh you know it's just so heartwarming to see the kids so cooperative but not not that we haven't had a few bumps here and there and a few glitches but in general uh you know for both the in-person uh kids
079uh the remote kids and and then as sean reminded us last time we have this other group of kids that are working with the aoe developing their own curriculum but um but i think so far so good we did do a little dipstick uh survey of the staff last last week we took that friday and did some debriefing and uh we did get some data back from uh from the staff i don't know do you want to put that up angie it's only a couple of slides that we could look at if people want to take a minute and look at how the staff felt in general just a second i'm trying to make my mouse work and also if christine or colleen or kate or i don't i don't know if jane marie is
080on the line i don't see jesus meetings oh yeah she had an iep meeting yeah anybody wanted to add anything feel free it should only take me a few minutes to go through the just an overview of the data so we on friday last week which so that was day four for um for in-person instruction um and our students were remote that day um uh we asked them a few questions we asked them to organize themselves into teams and into their the teams they usually work with and we asked them some questions about the interdisciplinary units about um unified arts integration uh their how they were feeling about the safety protocols about um about the building cleanliness and then to share with us anything else that's on your mind um so first of all we
081got 29 responses that's 29 teams i'd say probably a handful of those were individuals so um that represented over a hundred and i mean 179 staff um uh from all uh areas um of instructional staff um we did not have uh the custodial staff and bus drivers and lunch staff did not respond to the survey um so about the interdisciplinary units we asked them if they had started to work on their interdisciplinary unit and um not surprising uh there was a lot of others and um some said yes and some said no and the primary reason we then we asked them okay so tell us about that answer and and as to be expected they're establishing routines getting to know the kids um they're building their community they're working on um introducing canvas and vtdlc
082in the event that we should happen to go um remote um and and there were a lot of comments about how we're just taking this step by step and we will be doing more each week as we move forward the second uh set of questions we asked was how um the unified art schedule is working and so there were a lot of different answers to this one but i had given them three general categories um very well um and uh okay after some tweaking we should be getting this better uh not great and then unsure it hasn't uh there hasn't been enough time so that was some of the answers that we got so then i took that data and i put them in the categories so we could see that you know primarily they
083feel like it's going okay that we have some tweaks to make but they feel like um they're going to be able to move forward with it we've kind of uh slowed the progress of our interdisciplinary units in terms of moving forward in order to allow teams uh teachers to uh work with students on getting to know the canvas um and vt vlc curriculum so generally uh the comments were that you know things are going well and the unified arts teachers miss having their own classroom and miss having their you know being able to work with students on their content that's to be expected um there was a lot of positivity about being able to have art every day or pe or whatever the specialist that work was working with the team um and uh they
084you know really appreciate the work that our unit i mean the teams seem to appreciate what our unified arts teachers bring to the children's experience and bring to their teams um the second uh the next set of questions were about safety um we really wanted to see if our staff were feeling safe because as you know the hours and hours of planning um was about making sure that we are creating a safe environment so that our students feel safe that our families feel reassured and that our staff feels safe so um in their teams we ask them to look you know to answer this from a team base because with 179 staff to try to go through that data in a short period of time is very challenging so the reason behind having the groups
085uh the teams answer the question was so that we could get we wouldn't have to spend as much time just trying to figure out what the data was that we were asking so uh the blue areas yes most of them feel very safe with the precautions um the red areas at least two-thirds of us feel safe but some of us are still not sure um and then the um orange area is less than half of us feel truly safe with the precautions um there were no no's um so i would say we're doing a decent job of helping people um feel safe uh some of the comments were like you know to get kids to wear their masks and to walk and to maintain their distancing was like herding cats and i can imagine that
086when for all grade levels not just our littlest kids but even our bigger kids um uh masking and social distancing seems to be understood on the broad range um you know there is some trepidation about you know will people continue to stay diligent and um there are several comments about feeling like it went a lot better than they expected it to uh and they want to know more about that evening fogger apparently there is uh an evening a fogger um uh set off at the end of the day that helps disinfect the buildings and i don't know david if you wanted to talk a little bit more about that i don't know anything about it so um uh do you yeah i mean i don't know more other than i don't i don't think it's
087like all of a sudden the bomb hits the school and it gets fogged all at once i mean i think what they're talking about is uh they they have this equipment that they can go around each classroom and spray this disinfectant uh in the classrooms and and and so i think that's really what it is these canisters are you know and so each building i don't think it's i don't think it's every night but i think it's like pretty frequently that that they do that and uh and they're also blowing in four hours of that clean air every night and they're blowing out two hours uh uh in the in the in the morning before the kid or the other way around i think they blow it in in the in the afternoon uh or
088in the morning and then and the afternoon they blow out for a couple of hours so yeah so they're keeping that h8 hvac system going pretty well too but um the buildings have looked nice and seemed to really smell nice but i don't know that might be because we're not getting as much foot traffic in the corridors and you know so it's it's it they the buildings seem in good shape still great uh the next section's on building cleanliness so um there were some suggestions for improving safety um uh tents or something outside um that could provide shading would help make outside learning a lot more comfortable um and though we haven't had any rain i imagine that you know a place that they could get under with groups of kids if it was lightly
089raining might be helpful signage and line marking for movement of traffic were some ideas staggering the release time for the 9th through 12th graders um having better several comments on having better access to the disinfectant wipes towels paper towels etc and um then i think the um teachers and staff that work with younger students were are concerned about uh the younger students being able to read their facial expressions if they have a mask on and so what the there were some questions about you know how could we explore options um that would that could work and i mean we know we have plastic the face shields um but you still have to wear a mask with the face shield you can take the face mask down momentarily but um i think they were thinking about
090are there other solutions for that so building cleanliness um what's your team's experience of your building's cleanliness so um blue is it exceeds all um expectations and uh 55 said it meets their expectations 35 does not meet and um there was a a small percentage that the building was below their expectations so some of the comments on that were that there seems to be i think this goes with trust um the staff are not seeing that the daily cleanings are necessarily being done so we've told staff that the the there are three times a day that daily cleanings like of restrooms and common areas are being wiped down and they don't know if that's happening and it's probably because it's happening when they are doing other things and um i know that earlier this week
091we had one of our principals address this with um her staff and it's that very thing it's happening when they're outside or um at the end of the day when they're getting the kids out to the buses and they're preparing to go home and so they're not seeing it be being done doesn't necessarily mean it's not being done um there were some questions about can we teach kids to to um clean their own desks in their own areas um there were some concerns about making sure the trash and recycling and compost buckets were emptied on a daily basis i think part of this too is just getting into the routine so um this we should make sure that um jim gets the feedback so that he can share this with the staff and then in
092overall there was a general sentiment the staff are doing a great job keeping the building clean so then we asked what what else is on your mind um and you know there was an overwhelming uh sense of we are so happy to be back here with our co-workers with our students um just so happy to be together again um not gonna sugarcoat it candace and vtvlc have been very stressful um there's been uh a lot of i say a lot but there's been negative feedback from peop from our our families and our students who are who are who are frustrated and i think that we just need to give ourselves time to get used to that get everybody logged in vtvlc themselves are i mean the the organization has been um you know as responsive
093as they can possibly be they're trying to set up what we heard was at the time that we were sending our information to vtdlc we were one of two school systems that actually had all our stuff to them at that time and this was the week before started so um they in these last few weeks they've been setting up a lot of other schools and i don't know how many schools in the state of vermont are using either vt vlc to go or using their um program um the the option we talked about with the um with the where they we loan them teachers so anyways there's a lot of setup going on and i'm hoping that we get all those key kinks worked out and it does seem i'm working with a remote only
094team and it seems like every day is slightly better um we still don't have everybody a hundred percent connected and up and running i mean and part of the nature of school of coming back to school is that we do have some students that register late um and that might be made worse this year because of the length of time it's been since kids were um in the buildings but um we still have kids that are registering and then we have to make sure that they have their chromebooks and then get them into the system so we just are asking for a lot of patience and understanding um and uh i think there's a lot of appreciation and gratitude for the work that's been done which feels really good and i know that um as
095an administrator i really applaud the efforts of our staff um as they have come back here to make to make lemonade out of lemons because it's not been easy and working together is our best form of defense are there any questions i had a comment um for the uh i guess the lack of trust with the custodians actually doing the cleanings um where i work we have a sheet up on at our in our um cafeteria and um whenever someone cleans it they put initials you know cleaned at this time you know certain days and times so maybe just a sheet like that outside the bathrooms or something might make people feel like better yeah it's a suggestion yeah that could work in the bathrooms i bet yeah good suggestion i think angie's right i
096think it's at the time when they're doing it i mean i've been in every building and i i see the custodians they've always got a bottle and a rag in their hands and they're wiping everything all the time so i just think sometimes when you're in in your classroom you don't see it but i think that was the initial data i think though with the vtvlc the stress of that one of the things that we talked about as administrative team today is we may i think we may need one more week next week i'm gonna let i'm gonna get the word out to parents where you know the afternoons are around preparation planning getting ready for you know just continuing to get you know good good facility of that vtvlc and canvas platform um we
097don't want to we don't want to push and press as much i did see the teachers though as i walked around they are teaching the kids how to use it because that's going to be the platform if we go completely remote and you know so far so good but you you never know as flu season hits and winter hits what'll happen but i think it's a good platform and and bill kind of jokingly today bill yates said that uh hartford picked another another platform and and they're really struggling with that as well right bill i forget what what you said but you said that they they're having a tough time with that new platform as well with their remote kits yeah david let's not get into that no we won't we won't i think it's
098all new for everybody and we're just it is it is it's a struggle trying to get things going was that nikki i don't know if anybody listened to his press conference um earlier this week but canvas and bt blc came up in the governor's press conference um just the the insanity of how many new students they've had to enroll into the system and the governor admitted that they were struggling but they would be very hard to come through so i guess it just what you're feeling is real and it's statewide and i think i think it's coming along but it's definitely noticed at the high levels someone said he also said that we're going to stay in phase 2 at least until october i mean i so i think that that's not not surprising because
099remember only the governor by executive order can move us from one phase to another phase so i think the plan we've got is working i wouldn't move away from it too quickly i think we've just got to get settled and build those patterns and staff staff have been great in terms of their cooperation and their investment uh and so of the families and the kids uh when you when you see uh i've seen a couple of drop-offs in the morning windsor and and wethersfield it's just amazing all those parents are synchronized they get their kids there between 8 and 8 30. um it's that takes a lot of community support and cooperation and those the parents have been great i i have a question for bus sing because one of the concerns was how kids
100were going to be screened before they got on buses and just wondering how that has worked if there have been many family kid bus driver complaints one of the principals want to speak to that or i haven't heard any complaints does it seem like everybody's working okay on those buses in terms of the health checks yeah our our uh what we learned this week is not to leave the thermometers on the buses because the cold weather kills the batteries so um place the batteries in our thermometers already and we are struggling a bit i did talk to jim that um some of the thermometers seem to be um not reading yeah they're reading low yeah if it's the weather or the thermometer itself so he's gonna he's on it so but really no complaints everybody's
101been really really helpful we didn't go with the cheap cheap thermometers but we didn't go with the more expensive thermometers we got something kind of and they're not they're yeah they're not they're not hospital grade or you know so we you know jim's working on that because i think it is an issue when your forehead or wrist gets cold it comes back cold you know you we've had a lot of low-grade fevers as kids come in the building you know so we're we're working on that i've competed with our bus screeners every morning and each day it gets better and they're knowing the kids and the families and they're they're seeming to do really well i think at the very beginning it might have been a couple minutes of the timing of the bus and
102the bus stops that we were looking at but the screening i think is going better each day and relationships are being built and people are familiar with the person's taking the temperatures yeah it's good to build those relationships with those kids too right what better way to get to know a kid than take his temperature or her temperature right that's a good deal i've heard many many staff members say how much they enjoy the health checks actually because they get to check in with the parents say hello quickly and you know smile at the kids so that's a that's a positive coming out of the situation yeah and uh to colleen and kate's credit again not to embarrass them but i was at windsor the other morning and all the seniors are doing their capstone
103that's the first period of the day is capstone and they were in that auditorium they were all physically distanced the auditorium they were probably i don't know what would you say colleen 40 kids in there maybe 35 40 kids physically distance they all had their masks on uh just you know these kids are 17 and 18 years old and just so cooperative and and so uh respectful of each other um it was it was again very heartwarming to see that i told that story of all summer waking up in the middle of the night tackling that junior or senior who wouldn't put their mask on but it just it just hasn't happened so hats off and masks on to the to all the kids they've done a great job great thank you for the update
104does anyone else have any questions or comments concerns hearing none seeing none i think i see everyone um i will move on um so we will go to our first policy that social media and from what i could tell looking at what we have here is a combination of what we had from withersfield as well as the the policy from the sba is that correct um yeah no not really but um no i just um let me look at my email here larry had emailed me and said i'm resharing it and she didn't reshare the most recent copy of the the su52 social media so i just included the link um in the uh special board meeting uh email um so that you could take a look at it basically what we've done so far
105is um look at take the wettest field and uh address some of the concern i'm sorry could could everyone hear me now we got you okay uh take um the the wettest field uh policy and shape it uh to take care of many of the concerns that were voiced in in the last meeting um putting in a stipulator that allows family members taking out the age limit and just putting in students who are enrolled but there is one section and highlighted in yellow personal social media e uh part two c um which is not required because that's covered in the required visbit policy and i have a little more work that i want to do with my cohorts on at the very bottom of this document you'll see notes and i would like to replace
106that paragraph in yellow with a section that really talks about windsor southeast supervisory union reunion employees district not just district employees but all employees what their responsibility is on on the private um you know a code of conduct possibly for for private um social media accounts um so that's really the last part i i'd like to to work on under notes and what i did is i just copied some different pieces i found online and pasted them in there and and i'd like to to shape that into something a little more to fit our district i think it's important that that the policy included at least something about expectations of of what it means to be a school employees and and and and how that applies to how you present yourself in public um so
107it's not so much a a meshing as much as i think the visbit policy is good to go i that really focuses on uh communication between staff and students and the appropriateness of it and the social media policy focuses more on the difference between public school based social media accounts and how how that procedure is for for teachers that have them um and guidelines with social media between students and staff and the le and it just touches very lightly about expectations of uh um school employees social media and that's what i want to finish so bill you've integrated that visbot policy into this one but not no no yeah they're they're separate policies and i i with more time i i might be able to do that but really there there there's there i think
108it would be hard to do just because the visment policy really is about communication online communication between staff and students and that's quite a wide area you know because it comes down to email it comes down to social media it comes down to all those things um very legal expectation and i don't think that i feel comfortable combining the two and getting everything if if this board would like me to do it i i would need more time than i've had in my life in the past couple weeks right right yeah um so amy here i i think you're right bill that it would be better to have them two separate policies um to have the the visbit with the legal requirements all of that covered um sad for want of a better term um
109that policy i am i'm looking for it here with our meeting and it was not included well that's what i was going to say i think the at the at the last meeting and i don't know because we we didn't have you know all the detailed notes but i i thought there was some thought that we might be incorporating that visbot policy into the in in into the social media policy and if we're not going to do that then i think we have to re-share that visbit policy and get that into our format i don't think we ever did that did we um it was started yeah it was started um so i think what i thought happened at the our last meeting was um wasn't someone supposed to take the the visbo policy and
110compare it to the weathersfield one and sort of like take out anything in the weathersfield one that was already covered and we were gonna buy the visa because we were gonna like approve that one and then have the weather feel things sort of be like you know whatever extra we wanted to say yes and that's what i've done well that's what we've done um and so that i i plan on taking out the highlighted yellow part because that is the real redundant part and there was a couple things i changed and we we cleaned up based upon concerns about family members and social media and things like that so we've we fixed that um but i the last part that about there's a portion i would like to add to it yeah before we approve
111it but um i i i didn't have time to go over the visment one and make sure it was all clean um i just read through it to to make sure what was in it and um there was nothing in the visment one that i felt we should take out but there was something in the weathersville one that was redundant that i i will take out i remember the way anne marie redman remembered it we were looking to um come up with language that that honored both of those documents um with they accept that we had to remember and [Music] i'm not an expert on this but people at esba said that we're not allowed to toy with uh electronic policy electronic communications policy at all so or we would at least have to submit
112any changes to them to see if it would right yeah scott and that's why i didn't i didn't make make any changes to it um i mean i would feel more comfortable reading through it again to make sure all the windsor southeast supervisory unions and all the nouns and pronouns were correct other than that i would just leave it as is the only changes that i've made and plan to make are in the um that weathers field policy about social media because they are two separate policies but you're absolutely right i i am not planning and i don't think we should make any major changes or any changes to the visibility policy it's a decent very short to the point policy um when i talk about cleaning up i'm just making sure that it is
113in the language of windsor southeast supervisory union yeah so i think i think what's important amy now and bill is that because remember jennifer tessier and diane tessier were the keepers of the policy at least internally they had the word documents that that were associated with those now that's going to be laurie right so so we need to we need to just make sure i mean she's got the three we're looking at right now the the social media the uh the modes of instruction for covet 19 and and the anti-racism that was sent out but i don't i don't know that she has that has had access to that via it's a vsba policy right on electronic communication correct so if we could just send that to her again or bill once you clean it
114up if you could get that to her again if you said there's a little bit you wanted to do it but it doesn't need much right right i i want to do another read-through just to make sure it's it's it's matching yeah i just want to reinforce that i don't understand the cleaning up part what i mean by cleaning up is that um where it says windsor south this policy of windsor south a supervisory union that where we input our name where it identifies this policy as a winter southeast supervisory policy all that is appropriate that's all yeah because scott the model policy on the vsba website it just says the blank will have this and so what bill is doing is making sure that windsor southeast supervised reunion is put in there instead of
115blank yeah i understand i think we have a lots of um uh examples of that in our um policy book already it doesn't sound like it um no we can make that happen easily argue about we're just um we have all here so he just wants to make sure that windsor southeast supervisory union is there instead of blanks yeah that's not easy and laurie can do that too quite frankly i mean we just we just need to either get her to that vsba website or send her that that that version the word version of that she she can do that and then i i don't see i'm i if that's all we're changing and we've agreed that we can't change anything else then i don't see any reason why you can't adopt that policy tonight
116to be honest do people feel comfortable with that it it didn't come through tonight but we have all seen it and we know as scott said what we can change is adding our supervisory union name to it well it's unfortunate that it wasn't in the packet but we did talk about it two weeks ago but yeah i think that was just you know not to you know i think that was the jennifer tessier diane tessier to laurie it didn't you know that didn't happen so so we are having our regular meeting in two weeks so we could wait or if people are feeling comfortable i could take a motion to approve that yeah i i see no reason why we can't wait two weeks and and share it out and give people a chance to
117read through it and then pass it in two weeks okay that's fine yeah and and you know hopefully maybe i'll forward uh my other policy to elizabeth and she can help me pound out that last paragraph along with everyone else has been helping me so that that's ready to pass as well in two weeks yeah that would be great yeah so we will have electronic media is that what it's called yeah electronic media electronic communication and then social media we'll have two of those two policies so so just remember any policy now that we want to go out with the board packet it's lori brown that's gonna you know so we just need to make sure she's emailed and and uh and and then we can make sure it gets out to the board okay
118scott yeah thank you so i'm not sure if we're going to have a chance so tell me to stop in a second but there's some comments i wanted to make about um policies in general i mean so if you want to go on just tell me what to do well the only one left is the was the modes of instruction the covet 19 plan and with that one uh i don't know if it went out in the copy that went to everybody but we made the changes there that needed to get made we took the hartford was still in there no that was the anti-racism sorry but this was the one that we had to put um uh change the dates on it and then [Music] yeah i think i think that was about it
119i mean it was all that one was pretty because remember that one came directly from yeah so there's only one part that needs to be determined on that and that is on page two responsibilities of the superintendent correct they'll provide a monthly or quarterly status report to the board um at our last meeting i remember that we were hoping to have a monthly report yeah it might not have gone into the copy you all got but that's what we've got in there now the superintendent shall provide a monthly status report to the board okay on sort of the covet conditions so so maybe the best way for um me to express what i'm trying to say is for us to look ahead to the next regular meeting that would be the fairest way to do
120it so all i wanted to say was that in looking at the vsba's list of their model policy manual there actually are a whole bunch of i'll to the far left if you're there on that site under the required heading a whole bunch of new dates in late 19 and early 2020 and and summer 2020 policy language i'm not sure if it's um just language changes or holy new policies and they're under the school boards association required heading and so it's been you know just about a year or more since we adopted kind of the whole book right nikki um the whole book i think it was last summer yeah so that was kind of the last big look at it and there it looks like perhaps there's a number of additional policies that are
121required and perhaps uh not too hard to adopt because they're again like the electronic communications one they're kind of they are what they are so i i that's something too i think lori could do i think diane helped with that the last time she can cross check she can crosswalk what we now have out of the required column and if there's anything we don't have we we can get that updated and get that to the board thank you yeah thank you scott so in terms of the mode of instruction during cobain i think that would make me a change i'm sorry david what i think that was the only change that okay was monthly um i would take a motion to approve that policy i'll make that motion nikki okay oh a second okay i
122will um it's been moved and seconded any further discussion on mode of instruction i thought we voted on this before well we wanted to make that one change to monthly the change has been made so all those in favor of approving modes of instruction say aye aye all right hi opposed hey um one may um it has been approved so that's good to go thank you so those are the three policies um then we have executive session i will take a motion to go into executive session oh nicole um david uh the i went to the policies section of the heartland website and it is not it's the old web it's the old policies okay so and i suspect that's the case and i don't i didn't mention it the last month because i knew
123that larry was flat out and i imagine larry is still flat out so um i'm not asking for urgency but we should get it right yeah just to be clear what should be happening is the when you go to the policy of the heartland school board it should point you back to the su policies correct well that would be that'd be great i don't care how they get there but well they can copy those same policies yeah we're all using the same policies right yeah so i think elizabeth brought that to my attention a month ago or something and elizabeth didn't you contact weren't you in contact with larry or something about that or ryan uh i i was but um i as nikki said they were pretty swamped at the time so oh telephone
124um i so i i can resubmit a request i'll take care i i've got it i'm doing it right now okay thank you david thank you yeah because at one point they were all it was all the new ones and then something happened at the request and and uh i think larry said that it was a temporary glitch and then it wound up not being a temporary glitch that's what it was yeah slightly more permanent or longer lasting temporary glitch okay thank you david um so before we go into executive session it just occurred to me we need to discuss our next agenda and that meeting is the fourth oh god calendar upside down so that will be on the 28th and having an update from the anti-discrimination task force would be good anti-racism excuse
125me if something was wrong there um are there and then the two policies the electronic communication and social media correct and and update on the the other policies that just to see what it is that we might be missing yeah we'll try to get that crosswalk done so yeah we'll get those those policies on okay was there other you see something in chat let me take a look yeah i think that was chris that's yom kippur that oh yeah don't have a meeting then yeah we probably shouldn't is there another date that would work better how about chris any other day that we any other night that week or what what i think i think the rest of the rest of the week would be fine yeah for me it would definitely that would be
126fine do you want to do that everybody i'd be late but it's okay what day either tuesday or wednesday which one's better between the 9th or the 30th 30th financially it's the 30th anybody can't make the 30th that's wednesday yeah actually the 30th would work for me the 29th one i have a presentation to make sounds like we're on the 30th then i'll make that change and it's going to come out to you right now so you'll all see it okay great thank you and there will probably be other things that come up between yeah it's two weeks um so with that i will take a motion to go into executive session it's 8 30. so moved second okay and it is it is for the purpose of personnel personnel and litigation um all those
127in favor say hi abstentions okay thank you i am going to stop the recording sounds good if i can figure out how to do this okay hold on i think i can do it too amy