SU Board Meeting - July 27th, 2020

001okay we are recording um welcome everyone um i will call the meeting to order at 6 34 and let me look at my other screen for the agenda [Music] let's see changes additions to the agenda i recommend that because of the amount of time that it's going to take to discuss that we move the school reopening to the top of our agenda i think that's a good idea if there's no no objection sounds good to me no okay you scott okay and let's see were there any other changes nope okay so public comments on items not related to the agenda hearing and seeing none um i will take a motion to approve the minutes from may 26th and june 22nd colleen moves is there a second it's got seconds were there any corrections changes um

002[Music] do any of the minutes does anyone wish to elaborate or look good to me all those in favor of approving the minutes from may 26th and june 22nd say i i i i opposed they have been approved thank you diane um so let us go into the conversation of school reopening at our last meeting there had been considerable conversation um the state issued some information and we had a task force working on a plan and the climate has changed just a little bit and i will let david elaborate yeah so so uh first of all i'm glad so many people are on the call i know that you know a lot of folks have been working hard on this reopening plan and uh and quite frankly i think it's a good reopening plan i

003think what sort of uh caught everyone's attention this weekend was um was the email uh or excuse me the letter uh from bridget niece to her community in waterbury uh duxbury uh harwood union um and i sent that to everybody i just wanted to let folks know that i think this is the sentiment of a lot of superintendents around the state that while we have a plan while the plan is is is i think a good plan i think it's consistent with uh the the state's directive to do something that has a a hybrid an in-person and as well as a hybrid ring to it that that uh that uh it's it's it it's there but i i just wanted to make sure that this board uh understood that the administrative team will do their

004best to implement that plan um but you know in terms of the unpredictables there's just no guarantee we have collected some data through a survey which just we started you know the deadline for that survey was was 12 noon today angie can share some of what she's gotten back on the survey we've done a preliminary a very very preliminary analysis of that survey and it talked about um it talked about whether parents felt comfortable given the given the plan that was presented of sending their students back and also it had some transportation questions on them many of you have been our parents of students in our school so you may or may not have taken that survey uh i thought the response was good we're going to reach out to those parents who did not

005respond because we'd like we'd like almost 100 response if we could so we may start making some calls this week to get even more information but not surprisingly on that survey and i looked at some of the responses today not surprisingly there are still a fair number of people who are undecided that really have not made a decision and i think that was part of what um superintendent niece was saying that there's so much that continues to be unpredictable about this in terms of the way the community feels the way the parents feel the way the students will react the way the staff feels because as i've said to you right from the very beginning there's the science to the virus and then there is also the emotional uh implications of of the virus and

006everybody as they look at their family and they look at their circumstances will will make their own decision so that being said i thought we should have a discussion tonight also and i think this is important not unlike what's been happening at the agency of education and through the governor's office you know there were a couple of pronouncements last week that sort of shook the apple cart a little bit and basically what happened was the uh you know the governor and the secretary of education delegated the responsibility to the local communities and the local boards to determine how much if any in-person instruction would occur that essentially they authorize the boards to make a final decision right up until the day school opens as to whether or not uh they feel they have the capacity

007staff wise number of students resources uh sanitization custodial staff to really open those doors safely and i felt that you know in some ways nice that you've got that authority but also it's another way to kick the can down to the local districts to say you make the final decision we're not going to make the final decision and i think that was disappointing to a lot of superintendents and a superintendent niece and she references that in the letter that she sent to her duxbury and waterbury community so i want to make sure as we start this discussion tonight that nobody on this call or at this meeting feels that i don't you know that i don't think we've got a good plan i think we've got a good plan are there details that need to

008be worked out yes are the principals working hard at getting those details worked out the answer is yes do they and can they predict how the community will react in the seventh the last hour as we get ready to enter can they predict what will happen when those staff members show up at the front door and maybe have one final panic attack and won't walk in do we know how many ultimately ada accommodation requests we'll get do we know how many students will actually show up we don't know any of that and we can't predict any of that but i still think it's a good plan and i think it's a doable plan providing all the other pieces fall into place i think what i'm looking for tonight after a healthy discussion is i don't

009think um you know we we should you know uh at the seventh hour or the 11th hour you know try to have four board meetings or three board meetings or supervise reunion boarding and make a last-minute decision i would like to have you know the decision i i'd like the board to authorize either the executive committee which is made up of the board chairs or the executive committee in consultation with the superintendent or vice versa the superintendent in consultation with the executive committee to make that final decision as we get closer to school opening and who knows maybe the state when the state looks at all of these hybrid plans and different plans and realizes that some kids are going to be in school one day and some kids are going to be in school

010five days and some kids may be in school no days maybe they'll say no moss no moss we we can't start like this and maybe they'll back up a little bit but so far they haven't really done that so after we discuss this i really would like some sort of authority uh you know given to um to the executive committee or to me to sort of make that call in the moment when we get to september 7th september 4th august 29th and we realize that we've got a lot of kids who aren't coming and a lot of staff who say they just can't make that happen um so that that's it from me and uh and amy can you see everybody on the screen um i can see most um yeah sorry sorry can you

011somebody needs to let the public in there's people trying to get in i think and it is a public meeting correct right there's there's something great um funky about the link on the agenda i got on through the calendar yeah i know when i when i uh when when somebody from the public wants to sign on and we've had a couple already tonight uh i usually get a message since i set up the link to admit them and i have not had that request from anybody except uh we do have a there were a couple of people who asked to be admitted but i don't see anybody else asking to be admitted there are a couple okay they sent emails yeah that they're waiting to get on they're waiting they're not getting the right they

012normally get the little let them in but they're not getting it right now um that's interesting who are they sending the emails to to me um let me take a look the link on the agenda is not working sorry to interrupt i just want to click on it and it says no one's there so i think the only link that's working is on the calendar okay so let me try to i've got a couple of emails here let me respond to those folks if it sends you into your own little own little world [Music] okay so do you think the only way to do it is to send the actual calendar invite i will do it that that would work okay i will do it yeah and i think so the other question and i

013know elizabeth you asked right so kind of then going to the right the data so it would be helpful right to see the data results because while right there's an n of whatever considering i don't know it was sent out last tuesday in the middle of summer i don't know how much data you got back uh within right five days six days and you did we get a lot of data back like how many surveys total we got about 500 plus surveys back there with some duplication of surveys something weird happened people were able to submit another response so i'd get like a response at six o'clock in the evening and then another one at 10 and it was the exact same response so anyway um have a slideshow prepared and um i the comments

014are really great um and i'm trying to make pdfs of those comments but i have to take out all identifiable information and that's taking me a little bit longer because i'm being like fine tooth comb so if you're ready i will start presenting that and yeah and do you have it broken down by um school district by any chance those 500 um yes okay good thank you um okay just a second can i possess a quiz a quick question first uh while you do that david uh have you have you been in contact with our surrounding supervisory unions and districts and i have heard i think it was mentioned on the vermont edition program today which if none of you realize vpr is doing a um series on this this week they had the first

015installation today but they've been talking about having regional agreements on whether to open or not and i wondered whether you've explored that or or not they yeah the question was has the have the regional superintendents explored a regional calendar is that was that the question i'm sorry elizabeth well have you been in contact with our with the uh with the supervisory unions that touch ours yes and have you have you had any kind of discussion about whether you're going to coordinate whether to keep open or close and also you know this is really pertinent to heartland and weathersfield who have uh high school students that are going all over the place so um we i you know it's something to really be conscientious about yes yeah just to add to that david right the other

016part is you're right heartland and weather's hit field right are sending kids right every which direction and i also understand right even though we are right whatever the recommendation is for the high school students hartford is still open in the afternoon so those students will be going off to the hartford program after they leave so some students will end their day at 11 30 in the high school and others will continue on their merry day at hartford so it just seems a little bit inconsistent but yeah well with respect to that um no high school student ends their day at 11 30. they all have remote classes in the afternoon and i think what you mean is all but the tech center students will end their in-person day right yeah right that that i i

017get so they'll they'll all be going to school they're just they're just not going to school in the same way you're right to answer elizabeth's question yes the regional superintendents said the southeast regional superintendents uh which all of our border districts are part of woodstock hartford springfield um we meet every thursday for an hour to an hour and a half and and and yes we have we we we have made tentative pledge that if if we'll either all decide we're all gonna go completely remote or or we'll go uh we'll all go with our various plans the plans don't all line up completely some of them aren't even at a stage where they've announced their plans yet i think woodstock has i think uh i think springfield is very close but i don't think they

018have yet um but but but we are in constant communication uh with them about that about that need to try to do something together at one point we thought we might try to pull off a regional plan but again we have eight different collective bargaining uh agreements and a whole different approaches to it not all school boards you know are you know are are aligned so it looked like that was going to be too hard to do but but we will certainly keep in touch with each other yeah when we go through the data i guess this is my point at least again i know i've said it before here a through eight can look very different than the high school but even the high school right you're right you're gonna have some kids that

019go in for two hours three hours then go home and do the rest of their day you're gonna have some that go in for two or three hours go to hartford come back the next day go into this it just it feels like rhyming raising there's just a something's not quite gelling for me there's no it's just feeling very inconsistent of we are saying they have to do this they have to be in these pods they have to be in the building they have to do this but yet then right half of them go off i don't know what the percentage is now oh and by the way right the other half go off and they're going to do anything anyway so that's the piece that i struggle with at the high school level so

020think of it as the personalized learning kind of oh no no no yeah i'm not doing that so those the kids who are going to hartford they would be going to hartford anyway whether the other kids are doing their online yep and there has to be some degree of personal responsibility that all of the students have to take on and yeah it might be a burden for some i'm not concerned about that i'm concerned about we're trying to say this is safe we're trying to say right we're doing this and pause and this and the other thing but then yet we're sending which i agree we should be sending them off if that's what they want to do but you can't say it's both we're solving those things because we're not and that's my right

021that's why i'm like i understand i get it i get it and i think this is part because of this allowed inconsistency you know that i think that you know it's been every district for themselves and and the hartford tech center is part of the hartford school district and they're going to make their own decisions think about this for a minute beth the opposite could occur if our seniors go to hartford in the morning so let's say there's a coveted case at hartford tech center and those seniors can't go to hartford for five days 14 days the rest of the seniors will be in school while those seniors who go to hartford will be remote because hartford's closed down so much so much of this is local that it just makes your head hurt you

022know what i mean it's real and we're being asked to make decisions and i think this was bridget point we're being asked to make decisions that are all about immunology and all about viral spread and all about disease and i didn't take any of those courses in superintendent 101 right it did not happen which is why just put them all in a room together because you know what they're all together right now as i sit here tonight yeah they're probably right they're outside the house are they in your basement that's that's just not not all of them no but i bet some of them are yeah i get it uh i see beth roy's hand up yeah i think uh similar to what carter was saying is that you know what are we what's happening

023with all the after school programming and the wrecks you know are those are they even opening and what does that look like because if all the after school programs are opening and all the kids from every pod go to the wreck then yeah what's that all about so so yeah so i saw how can we potentially i know we can't control cross fu but perhaps we can look a little closer um you know just within our su and what we can control yeah and and i know that we have had conversations with the rec departments i know christine who i see online at heartland has had conversations with the rec departments and and uh christine do you want to speak to that not that yeah we're asking specifically but go ahead right so in my

024preliminary conversations with uh john at the wreck i mean they're they're this is not for sure but they're they're talking of opening with a limited amount of students and and keeping them outside and shortening their day at the wreck as well so limited number outside until at least winter that could look interesting on december 24th but yeah or february 5th but but yeah i i i think it's great and and i've been in touch with tom marsh at windsor here's the problem you know weathersfield doesn't have a wreck so weathersfield really is struggling with what what's going to happen at 12 30 uh with their kids but that's that battle between schooling and child care right i mean i think that that this is uh you know you you i saw a meme the other

025day that you can have remote instruction and uh and employment simultaneously but but it's it's gonna have to be with a lot of cooperation from from businesses and employers and child cares and the state and and i i just don't think we're prepared for for that now the other part beth about the cross-contamination kids go to the wreck they start mixing up with other kids they come back to us the next day it's exactly why we do it's just what beth's talking about there are high school kids right now i'm sure all playing basketball uh at that you know and and there's probably 10 of them 15 of them 20 of them you know but we're going to do that health check every day we're going to ask those questions we're going to take their

026temperature and that's the best that we can do and here's the thing while they're all playing basketball we we're not insuring them our insurance company really doesn't care our insurance company only cares when they cross over that threshold and they're in our building that's when our insurance company says hang on tight because our insurance company visbit is expecting that should there be a case it'll be a lawsuit that's the bottom line because somebody won't have had the mask on or somebody won't have been distanced or somebody didn't accurately report their temperature and so visbet is going crazy trying to keep track of all of this because they insure us and they've got deep pockets but not that deep and and they're nervous too as we go forward um amy and then i don't know did

027you want to do angie with me um colleen yeah angie just a sec colleen had a question on what are the benefits of closing at 12 30. yeah so that that was a long discussion and and colleen uh i take it that's from colleen spence right yeah yeah yes yes good colleen great question because that's of the 20 emails and i did not get and bridget's got more kids in our district i did not get 100 emails i got about 20 emails but i also saw the comments on the survey there were a lot of comments about that you know that that that that early release i mean i think that that's i've gotten a lot of feedback from parents as well david yeah and and the thought yeah the thought on the shortened day

028and remember it's only a reopening plan right it is not a year-long plan it was how do we gradually go into this and get a sense of how kids respond it was not necessarily a medical decision although less time in contact is less possibilities of of transmission i guess but it was much more about the social and emotional safety of both the staff and the students because we haven't yet taken a group of seven-year-olds put them six feet apart told them to face front put a mask on them and say to them look we're in this room all day or we're going to go outside for a few minutes we don't know how they're going to react to that and so we didn't want to do that for seven and a half hours we wanted

029to do that for four and a half it'll probably be by the time we get them there and it's probably about five hours so it's i i've gotten a couple of emails with what's two hours good well it's not two hours they get there between eight and eight thirty they leave between 12 30 and once so there's and there's going to be some staggered dismissals and some staggered arrivals but i'll tell you it was not a decision based on immunology as much as it was on psychology that we only think they can take so much of that initially once we get good at it well once we move to a step three when we can loosen up the mask and and get rid of some of the social distancing i think we can start to

030go back to normal but it could go the other way i think that i think that makes sense it might be a good thing to communicate to parents i have one other thing that i wanted to ask about that kind of veers off of this topic [Music] you were talking before about how the responsibility has fallen over to the boards to make the decision go no go decision i think what you were saying was makes sense we probably should approve a smaller group to make the decision i don't know who or what but it did come up in conversation with one of with a couple of people for me i would like an opportunity to approve our plan as a board um even if we don't have the authority to disapprove a plan just to

031be a part of being a you know being in this with you um and i hope that that's something that we can take up as individual boards or even as an su if we feel comfortable doing that and if we don't then i hope we can talk about it and talk through some things i think that's a great idea colleen and whether we do it at this board level or do it in our individual boards uh you know it's just that it's it's complicated and the actual statute up until the governor made that announcement you know that authority rested you know i think the authority really has been pushed down and down and down and it really is sitting now with the parents to some degree um but and you know i i have feelings

032about that we all have feelings about that but what it is what it is um but i think i think as as a group of superintendents and principals and plan makers and boards maybe we could go in as a united front yeah i i don't think i'd feel comfortable telling a parent that i didn't have anything to do with the plan i don't know what to tell you like i want to be able to tell them that you know i participated i let you know that a 12 30 end date is really bothering some is really going to be difficult for parents and i you know so that's my two cents i i think i think that's fine i i mean i i i like that idea um i i i certainly i i i

033shudder at the reality that if the board like you said if the board decided they didn't support the plan okay good luck i don't know what happens then but i mean i don't want to set us up for failure in any way i just think that you need our backing we need your backing really is how i feel it and i want to feel good about as good as i can about the plan we're not going to get this right we're not going to get it all right we're going to get as much of it right as we can get yeah no no i agree with that and the and the administration and the task force because there are people outside the administration on that task force um have have felt the backing you know

034we felt the support of the boards right from the time i first met with the board chairs a month that was a tough meeting but you know i have felt that level of support but i think a formal vote would be that would be great if we could pull that off and we should talk about that okay can we hear from angie now on the the data that she has are you going to share your screen angie yes she is and she's going to try i will if i unmute myself sometimes you walk through the concern list yet i might end up just reading out a few of those yeah we did this you know yeah um i don't wanna i would rather err on the side of caution than post something that was to

035have a kid's name in there not or family identify identifiable so here's uh the survey so the survey cloud has not i have not turned off the survey and uh since five o'clock three people were on so there's three more surveys in there so that's good um uh so that's the responses are still coming in so this gives you just just uh shout out if you want me to stop or if i'm going too fast so um like i said before this number up here the 558 responses really more like 500-ish i don't know what was happening with those duplicate responses but and that's the number of parents who responded i did not have time to check the data for duplicates of um you know both if both parents responded um i didn't add to

036the survey that it was one per family um so both parents could have weighed in um so when i um when i collated the data there are some places later i i had gone through and deleted what were duplicate responses and they were duplicate like exactly the same all the way across so um are there any questions on this screen you can see um and that's like albert bridge that's 35 responses not necessarily for 35 students it could have been first 50 students or you know depending on the size of their family so the section on families returning to school started with um just this question agreed disagree or not sure yes no undecided i plan to send my children to in-person schools almost 63 said yes um so this shows you a better picture

037of the response's bias broken down by school the yes nose and undecideds um i'm going to give you a moment just to kind of digest that it's a lot of numbers you can hone in on the school that you're interested in or you can look at the su total on the right side and angie did you have this broken down in windsor white abs by high school versus k through eight out of curiosity uh i no because the way that no i did not i i just went with windsor at this point can we look at that by where is that possible um the problem is is that the data has identifiable information in it so i have to clean it up before i can share that out so to go to the spreadsheet where

038the data is and break it out by school i i can get that to you i just i i don't want to go into the data with my screen here now you know that yeah that i completely understand that but it's just again like i've said from probably day one a high school population is in my mind a different discussion than i came through so maybe before the end of tonight's meeting i'll be able to share that okay any other questions so then we asked the transportation this is this is of the people who said yes they would um transport their kids so there's two of these slides it's a little confusing um so 74 said they would transport the kids 26 percent said no and then we asked the question later on for the

039folks that said they were undecided and this is the responses of the undecided people so we still have you know 20 of this group and then 20 of the previous group i'm sorry that's confusing but it gives you an idea about a fourth of our families are saying they would not provide transportation and then there was some feedback that we should have asked a question about people children who walked to school and um that was a good that was good feedback we should have asked a question about children who walk to school okay um angie yeah i had a question from a previous slide that beth roy yep yeah so i just said like the whole are you ready to bring your kids back to school kind of thing are you willing to that was

040a really hard question to answer in the sense of right now in my mind it was i'm sending my kids to public school or i'm applying to start doing homeschooling through the state like there was nothing that was undecided yeah so it was very like but that wasn't like because i'm not yeah like it just wasn't given that option because like in my mind of like oh is is online learning an option if i just keep my kids home and i don't have to apply through the state then maybe i wouldn't somebody so there just was it was a little unclear so i i just had a hard time not even saying undecided because that was like undecided to be undecided [Laughter] i think why you're demonstrating beth uncertain this is for many people how

041undecided but it's a good point bet and we'll talk uh once we're done going through the data we'll talk a little bit about we've got more information about remote possibilities and what we can offer i mean i think there's a commitment on the part of the boards uh that i've heard that we you know we want we want to be able to provide something you know without having a parent have to buy to the aoe so so and we that's why we'll probably have to do this survey at least one more time if not two more times because we've got to get that plan out to folks so they can see what it is how they access it you know who's going to teach it uh you know so we'll you know we'll we'll we'll

042work on that because i think we need that remote option in this next if this is if this is if this is a statistically represented if this is enough responses so um say this is maybe this represents about a third of our students um and so if we can think that 25 really need to know more before they can make a decision then that's that i think we can use that number that's and that's helpful to know that um so the transportation question again i mean i think we asked if they were willing to transport children that live near them and there is a lot of fear but we did have about 25 again that said yes they would they would and many people in their concern said i can't transport my kids i gotta

043be to work at x time and i i'm there all day so i'm gonna have to rely on families and and friends and neighbors so i think there's a real need for this and how we can how we can help facilitate that i think will be important so these out of the uh this section i'm sorry before i go forward does anybody have any questions about the transportation questions there was more detail in that but i didn't it was more or less the logistical detail for um for the schools to know uh the homeschool option this these next couple slides are are from the folks that are said yes to the um or no they would not be sending their kids back and these are the top five reasons that they were choosing homeschool my

044physical health my child's emotional health my child's learning style our family situation such as having a family member with a high risk and my anxiety about the school's ability to keep my child safe so this is the percentages i thought i had the slight the percents on there so this this is about this line right here is 60 so most of these are between 40 and 60 of the respondents um chose these they could choose more than one too so angie when they when they said when they talked about a homeschooling option they weren't talking about the aoe home school not yet right they were just talking about this question that comes up right okay this was for the people that said they would not send their kids back it's not for the undecided so

045then the next question okay well what is your plan okay and this is helpful because this says about 25 have filed a home study plan with the vermont agency of education and over 60 percent want to have support from their local school such as remote learning options so that's helpful not supplied that's helpful then any questions on that one yeah these are the people that seem certainly more s more certain about that they would not send their i don't think there's any circumstances circumstances under which they would send their kids kids back unless there was a vaccine and coveted had been eliminated so the um 140 folks said that they would be on they are undecided so about 25 percent and there they were the question was what are your top three concerns so i

046tried to um collate these basically they they they came in about three categories health risks for the child and or family members the um fear of the child coming back to the home on being asymptomatic and exposing uh high-risk family members um the logistics the hours of the day um there were several comments about you know this doesn't work for the working family i can't see how i can do this um transportation is going to be an issue child care is going to be an issue so that's what i call the logistics and then the safety my child will not wear a mask my child is um very social and will have will struggle with the distancing and and then they're just worried about the ability um to enforce the rules to keep the children

047from interacting in a way that is unsafe um in particular to the social distancing um and i pdf with you once i have once i'm certain the data is is good it's clean any questions okay i think that's it yeah i mean i guess right what would be helpful and you're going to slice it out by the high school versus k300 like if i don't want to i don't want to create a lot of work for you but i think no i don't think it's that hard because i think we're important because i would think right on that last one right well child care shouldn't be an issue of right nine through 12. um the health was probably would be the only reason that they don't want to send anybody back and then right august

048first right it's required that we all wear masks um when looking at social distance in the state of vermont so i just think here you know what the breakout is by the high school on that one as well because i still write my right from at least the vote or the discussions i would i would prefer we put the high school in longer than the two hours or whatever it is david because it's just right they're just a different group of kids and they're out there being social and social distancing and wearing masks and can wear masks and have more control than probably some little ones for sure do we want to talk jean marie asked about the data jean marie um the spreadsheets will be shared with each principal they're sorted out by school

049yeah i have a question and i was going to say the the and scott sure that i see i see him but the other thing about separating out with the only thing that's going to take just a little bit of work is we have to go in by name almost and and grade level because that's how parents reported the data so i think i think we can do um and before and i also want to make sure that we talk a little bit about the remote options because as you can see 20 percent have already more than 20 have already applied to the aoe for homeschooling but they they don't know what our plan is maybe they'll continue to do that right that's and uh and we'll also talk about a plan to increase the

050number of respondents but uh but scott did you have a question yes angie thank you dude did we get sense of how many didn't respond no angie is there any um way in the survey data to figure out um uh the free and reduced lunch numbers and how they correspond with okay nothing nothing like that no no i did not collect that information and it would you know those lists that information is so guarded only a few people in each building if if more than one person knows it it's um highly confidential so we could have there's no way yeah okay we could have asked him to self-report they could have self-reported but but we didn't do that um you know perhaps the specifics are confidential but i think it's um understood in the su

051among board members and perhaps among every i'll admit everyone that i think heartland is at the top we're near the top of numbers for free and reduced students in the supervisory union per at a district level i mean a per distance that per district please correct me if i'm wrong christine but i i think that's um and i think that one of the first slides showed um that heartland was near the top for families that were planning to go back to school can we see that again yes so of the 128 heartland responses 76 said yes so more than half yeah we know this will be important in days to come yeah so so angie do we know uh how many how many have not responded how many did not respond because i know we're

052going to make an effort to contact parents who did not respond do do we have any idea i think you said a third of the children responding i i i mean we can figure that out but it just it takes it's going to take time to figure that out our principals and their administrative assistants need to go through the data and say this family this family this family and and i got responses from you know at least one response was i'm no longer i no longer have a child at your school please take me off my your email list so um you know once we have gotten the data from all of the families we'll have a better sense of that um i imagine that uh principals their administrative assistants who know their frl accounts

053could look at the numbers and tell them what percentage said what yeah they'll know that it's helpful to know so that and just so everybody just everybody knows that that is the plan the plan is to go to our administrative assistants cross-check these names see who did not respond and we're going to start making phone calls so we'll we want you know we want to get up to an at least an 80 90 response rate if we can it's going to be a lot of work but i think the principals are committed also we need to know who's on the buses who's not on the buses that's that's critical information sorry scott i didn't mean to interrupt you yeah no problem dave thank you i'm not criticizing angie thank you very much that heartland has

054a high number of free and reduced qualifying students and families and and what looks like a pro a desire to go back to school there might be a correlation there so i think it's it's it's interesting to look at how we support it helps us to know how to support our families for sure i talked with hr today this is another when i sent out my email to the staff describing the plan we asked for anybody who may be contemplating an ada accommodation and they and they'd really prefer not to come back and we have a protocol for that and we asked them to notify hr i checked in with hr today right now we have four four staff members one paraprofessional and three teachers who have at least instigated that process now as we

055get closer or as people get more nervous or you know i don't know what'll happen whether that'll increase but but right now we we have one paraprofessional and three teachers who have requested some sort of an ada exemption so they would not have to come in that doesn't mean the exemption will be approved right there's there's a lot of there's a lot of um protocol involved in approving that type of of an exemption so you know we may have three we may have none so that's kind of where we are so part of the problem with offering remote was the idea of you know whether or not we would just you know live you know stream the classrooms with a chromebook it didn't seem very user-friendly uh or if we'd have this cadre of teachers

056that um you know wanted to be remote by ada accommodation maybe that would be enough to cover those remote students but i don't know i'm not convinced that's good that's going to happen but we have just recently run across uh a plan that vtvlc is putting together around a statewide remote plan and the person who probably has heard the most about this is christine bourne i know christine i keep putting you on the spot but do you want do you want to describe uh this plant yeah i can and i think angie did a webinar today so she can chime in um i heard about the plan well we got a survey actually from vtvlc a couple weeks back and then i asked about it at a prince state principal meeting a week ago and

057the way that it was described to me is it's an option for for teachers that are um have accommodations to work remotely and they are partnered with students that can't come to school for whatever reason for health reasons or because of their comfort level and there needs to be a process to determine that um and vtvlc will will try their their hardest their best to match the students in your district with teachers in your district or your su and if that doesn't um match up then they will match students to a statewide teacher in vermont um with with the correct certification it is free um to all districts for the entire year next year the cost is um the cost of enrolling in their program to become a certified remote you know online teacher which

058is i think thirty six hundred dollars per teacher um yeah when i asked um at the meeting i was at the vermont principal uh association director said that at this point it would be allowed under ada accommodations to require those teachers that can't come back or for medical reasons to take that course um because that was one of my questions can we can we make them do that and it's a quick it's a quick course they would finish it over the course of the year they would have their certification um and and be teaching you know in tandem at the same time that curriculum they they have a they have a six through twelve online curriculum already completed it's through um uh it begins with c angie help me uh but it's it's basically all

059the course is all the coursework is there yeah work is developed and teachers do have have the ability to adjust that to what you know to reflect the values of their particular school or system and they have recently partnered um and so there is now access to a k5 curriculum as well online curriculum that is already created and out there so um our team meets our admin team meets with jeff from vtvlc tomorrow morning at nine o'clock to you know gather more information and uh get our questions answered i think it's dependent on districts or s u's within the state i mean they need a they need a pool of teachers to be able to do this so it will depend on their survey results but angie if you have more information yeah ironically enough

060they have more than enough math teachers christine interesting you know they do need health and pe teachers that's where the real shortages and then ela science and social studies in that order um there are some interesting things about it that you know at first i was like oh this could be a great solution and it can be a great solution for many you have to be willing to get the online teaching certification and it's a one-year commitment so that yeah and not everybody who um who might um want to teach from home or be um qualified to teach from home would be a good online teacher so we have to be thinking about that too about if it's the best fit um for folks and it might not be so um it's uh an interesting

061uh model because uh vermont learn virtual learning cooperative has always offered um some learning support to high school students in the high schools in vermont they offered that last um spring when we went to um went to remote and i don't know if very many i don't know of any classroom teachers who took advantage of that um i did not facilitate that for anybody that's what i know so um and i don't know if any of our students have ever taken a vermont virtual learning cooperative course so um now that they have the k5 curriculum it does make them far more flexible um and able to meet um you know meet the demands but christine's right that it does depend on the number of teachers um one full-time online teacher is the equivalent if i

062have this right equivalent of five classroom teachers so i think they need far fewer teachers to accomplish the same thing that you would for in person i think is what he was saying so we did did we have um i think 10 teachers during our remote time um access of vtlc vtvlc coursework we um there were about eight or nine of us maybe ten of us that took the online teaching best practices um workshop uh which was a three-week course that was facilitated and um so we had a number of staff that were interested in improving their online teaching practices the course the nine credit course is a graduate credit graduate level course and at the end of that they it can lead teachers to uh transcript transcript review for their uh license because that

063is an endorsed endorsement area online teaching thank you ann she has things at the high school that um her son took a course in geometry through vermont virtual learning cooperative and um it was successful scott you had a question yeah thanks amy i i get um i think that the um the virtual learning cooperative is an example of offerings perhaps of curriculum that it i just want to say that i'm concerned that we have a curriculum director we have a direction the sdu board has a direction on curriculum for years and just it concerns me that in an effort to solve a problem this year this summer that we um fall prey to some entrepreneurial efforts around vermont and i in the nation i i would want to say just um put it out there

064that i hope that that these whatever uh uh distance learning options perhaps that uh a new new options that we're willing to look at um that they that they that they are in line with rsu's curriculum direction now yeah that i think that's a good point scott i mean i think some of this you know some of this is around capacity and i and we're just holding this and that's why we're meeting with jeff in the morning we're just holding this as as an option you know and uh and we'll have to you know we'll have to vet that vet that curriculum one thing i heard the boards say clearly the week that we had the montescotnie board then the weathersfield board than the heartland board the thing i heard distinctly from all three boards

065uh is that we want to be able to provide something for those parents who want to stay remote because we don't want to lose them to aoe land or we don't want them to not be part of our school community i think we should still be checking in with them you know just because they're part of this vtv lc it doesn't mean that we won't be checking in with them on a regular basis maybe helping them or assisting them we're going to have some support staff and paraprofessionals and you know teachers administrators we we don't want to lose touch with this community of kids who may choose to stay remote and and i and i know the principles are committed to that it's just we've got to be able to have the capacity to provide

066the curriculum and the instruction okay david i wanted to talk a little bit david wait a minute btvlc was tweeting in the last year that they wanted um sending school districts like weathersfield and heartland to understand that they had a height and online high school program available and i i don't think that's cool i don't think that going to high school online is you know if unless they're right unless you have to unless you have to right right so like high school choice i don't feel good about that like the school board so i yeah i just i'm earning lots of content thank you no that's good and and you know i think that uh i wanted to speak a little bit to the high school program and i i see that uh our two

067high school guidance council is joining us today because they're very interested in in in the plan and in sustaining the plan because they've been working really hard to put new students schedules together you know we've we had to change some things that's the bottom line because what's going to happen at windsor high school and and this is different than um champlain valley union it's different than burlington high school it's different than woodstock you know the everybody's having to create their own plan which is the insanity of this but what we're doing at windsor is we wanted to make sure we embedded we embedded the integrated you know project-based interdisciplinary piece so a part of the morning will be the high school in teams with cadres with kids or pods as we call them doing that

068kind of work but then there will also be a couple of in-person classes uh you know biology chemistry algebra that we'll offer to students in the morning as well in person and then when students leave at 11 and get home we'll start another online session of classes starting around one o'clock that'll be totally online and what we're hoping to do and i think the school counselors are hoping to do is to disaggregate the kids so that we can kind of we we know the kids that really fell through the cracks last year with remote learning and so we're going to try to get as many of those courses scheduled into in-person learning as we can knowing that they'll have to be some uh they'll have to be from online learning and this speaks a little

069bit to what beth is saying you know high school is different than middle school is different than elementary school but each of the plans has to match the developmental age and it also has to match you know all those health and safety requirements so i i just want to give both jessica and uh counterpart greg tonight a lot of a lot of credit because they've worked a lot of a lot of hours outside of their contract to put to put to help put this high school piece together and it's very complicated it's not done colleen and craig have been very instrumental in helping with that um but that's that's a whole other uh piece of organization that has to happen um and my understanding is i don't think hanover has released their plan yet i

070don't think hartford has released their plan yet i think they're in i think they're in dialogue but i mean what i'm most proud of is that there were lots of voices at that table um maybe not all the voices that showed him at the table but there were lots there and i and again i think there's generally a fair amount of support for the plan angie did you want to say something i saw you leaning forward i was um just trying to let amy know that nicki has had her hand up for quite some time and i know with this well she might not even be seeing her yeah i wasn't seeing her so nicole go for it um so so this is one of my wild um somewhat hair brain ideas um although i

071don't think it's very hair brained um so one of the concerns that i've heard from a lot of the parents is that um shaping this picture here is that um the remote learning last year was a bit of a train wreck um and my personal opinion is that i would be absolutely blown away and i'll go on record at this if we make it to october in school i will be absolutely shocked and so i feel like we're gonna have a situation where the entire supervisor reunion is back to remote learning by october and i i love the plan that we have and my kids are gonna go but i i would one hate to see we lose 25 percent of our kids to um yeah yeah i would hate to lose those kids for

072four weeks and then go to remote learning as a school or an su and have lost those kids because they're stuck in that program now for the duration so that's one of my concerns and then another one of my concerns is that our teachers aren't trained for virtual learning and that showed through loud and clear some teachers nailed it and some teachers absolutely bombed it and it was a train wreck and i don't want personally i'm not gonna let my nine-year-old sit in front of a computer for four hours a day again and so i think that we need to have a curriculum that we can immediately push out to our parents and say this is what you do your kid doesn't have to spend five days with the computer in front of them you

073know maybe they have a class meeting once a day we already have this curriculum we're ready to go and just go with it and to find a curriculum that meets like angie at the end of the heartland meeting angie had talked about some curriculums that were project-based that kind of met the goals of the supervisor reunion um and i think that this is harebrained in that our teachers i know our teachers have great hearts and they want to teach things that they have always taught and they have a plan for what they want to do but i just kind of wonder if this is the year that we just say we're buying a curriculum you use it and off we go so there's my idea yeah and i think there's i think there's still plenty

074of time well let me back up not plenty of time but i think there's still time you know as we investigate these options to maybe make those decisions the problem and angie maybe you can speak to this and this did come up the heartland meeting is that um the one or two that we found that were project based consistent with our philosophy moving us forward were incredibly expensive and they were anywhere from 800 to a thousand dollars you know per student uh maybe there's something cheaper than that maybe i i also remember at one point i think nikki you said that you know but i think this is going to be very discriminate against who the parent is but can you just send the five reading standards and the five science standards and the five

075math standards and and then let the let the uh let the parents sort of create it i i think some parents could do that i think other parents could not so i i think this decision has to be carefully thought about uh and and and there are also financial implications of of going ahead and buying a curriculum i'm not opposed to it i just think the board there's another example has to have our back on that one yeah so to counter some of those i did run some of the numbers um and i think that we said that within the supervisor reunion were short something like 15 peras and i ran the numbers and that comes pretty close to being able to buy a curriculum um to use it and so so it does feel

076like there's an offset there um and i i worry about just sending the teachers the standards and saying run with it but if we have a curriculum that's already been um vetted for homeschooling where the parent just gets their instruction manual on monday and and i don't expect that all parents are going to do that i expect that teachers you know if there's reading to be done for fourth graders i expect that teachers are going to log in and read for an hour to the kids assuming that maybe the parents aren't like there's going to be some interaction there's going to have to be some flexibility but i really we are going to lose so many families so quickly if we go to the remote program that we have in the spring because there are

077so many families that are anti-screen time um and that remote program was 100 screen time with no movement and no there's no options any other thoughts on that just i mean i think i think anybody else want to wait on that colleen i had to find my mute button is the vermont um curriculum not as good is that what we're saying the what the online curriculum that they offer i don't know i don't know i have not looked at it and then if we did do this would we try to stay with the teachers try to stay in sync with that online programming in school so that if kids are back and forth you just kind of stay no so the way that it works colleen is that parents have to commit to a semester

078for their kids because that's a reasonable stopping time so whether we're in or remote they have to commit to a semester commitment a semester-long um course that means they have to take um you know they have to they have to take those courses there is some choice in their courses for the middle and high school but i think the um coursework for the k5 is pretty prescriptive based on an elementary program with core courses math english language arts science social studies health um and the teachers have to have a year-long commitment to it so if they're teaching remote if they're teaching for vermont for learning cooperative they're not coming back to teach for us they're teaching for vermont virtual learning cooperative we're paying salary and we get the benefit of having so many students the

079program available for so many students okay and and i think some of that would speak to what nikki's saying i mean because what i'm hearing nikki say regardless of who did a great job last spring or who didn't i mean that came on us within 24 hours i mean i i i i understand what nikki's saying so i'm not hitting it out of the park some you know bunted whatever but but the bottom line is i think what nikki's talking about is a curriculum that doesn't include four to five hours of screen time per day because a lot of the parents i think by the end of the spring with sick and tired of the screen time uh and and i think that's what we've been trying to figure out is how can we do

080this with more integrity and less screen time as as we move forward i did see kate katie hearn's hand go up and and i and i it was probably i'm gonna let katie speak for herself but the idea of how many paris need to be hired and could that be an offset i think we think we have to be cur clubs we have very few regular ed paraprofessionals most of them are specifically special education related and just because you've got an online program those services don't go i'm not saying we couldn't do that offset we might be able to do some of that offset but i think we'd have to really do a do a thorough a real thorough look at that katie i don't know amy if you can see everybody but katie had

081her hand up katie hearn um no i can't see everyone so go ahead katie thank you amy um so yeah part of it was about the paradise we actually don't have 15 openings anymore because i've spent the past 10 days interviewing people like you can't believe which is a plus we we i can say that we um many of the hcrs staff that we had are being replaced by um individual people internal hires and we are we have some absolutely fantastic hires so we're going to see a cost savings there and as well as every principal sitting here and anybody i can't see everybody either so i think everyone's here on them work on consolidating the adults and figuring out some really creative ways um to meet students needs so i'm not sure about the

082cost to upset that but i can say nikki i wanted to speak a little bit to the curriculum i know from families that i've heard from if they're just if they're thinking about staying home for their own for reasons not because they you know for health things that angie had brought up they are asking though what is the district going to do for curriculum for our children especially our children in special education and that gets messy because if they're homeschooled it's not technically special ed's responsibility there's a whole difference if you're on an iep um and but if we're providing curriculum then we also can provide the supports of the instructor it would be virtual um i will put that plug out there but um trying to find the balance of what we can offer

083and whether it's with the vermont learning whether it's someone else um i think it's important that we and i've done a whole change of this since the very beginning it's taken a while of just listening to people and trying to figure out the balance um that we how we can do it so we don't lose students we don't disenfranchise parents and we also don't have kids in front of a screen especially the younger ones all day i agree with you on that i mean that's it did not work for everyone it worked for some more than others but um i i hear the hear it a lot of it so i'll be quiet at this point i don't know there were several hands up so i don't know i was thinking amy also maybe if

084people don't think they're being seen because there's i think there's over 30 maybe they put their name in the chat of my hands up um you can do it on was it the google meets one or not google meets the um the microsoft one or whatever you can raise a virtual hand um i don't know if that might yeah not on this one they would have to put their chat saying can i ask a question yep again i i really want to thank all the folks who who have been working so hard on this it's a work in progress but you can see why bridget neeson wrote that letter to her community you know over the weekend i mean it's just too it's so complex and you know you don't want to leave anybody behind

085but in the meantime you've only got so much capacity and knowledge around what you know what what to do next i think if if anything can come out of this as colleen or somebody indicated i mean one of the things i would love to have come out of this is that you know in accordance with some sort of emotion that in accordance with the governor's order you know the you know the executive committee in consultation with the superintendent you know is authorized to make you know you know final decisions about uh the opening or closing of school sort of pulling that plug i think the other piece around the integrity of the opening i think there's still room for discussion there we're going to meet with the vtvlc person tomorrow morning we're going to see

086what that offering looks like we have not looked at the k5 curriculum i've seen some of the high school curriculum um but i think we need to take a look at that maybe bring that bring that option back to a small subgroup of this group just to see i know nikki this has been a passion for you maybe we can take a peek at that um i think we can also then look at cost offsets for buying there are some great project-based curriculums out there that we could provide to families um but again it will be an expense and we need to look at those offsets i see angie has her hand up is it okay i do want to say vermont um virtual learning cooperative has their own timeline and they'd like us to

087have names to them by friday as in july 31st or next week at the latest wednesday they're doing their planning so yeah we have some work to do so i'm saying that it was good intentions to ask people but we just simply might not have the time to get people together for that right so we may have to make some decisions and of course it's always by choice we can't force a kid i don't think we can force a kid into vtvlc right i mean i think it has to be a parent choice but we can offer it offer versus serve as they say in the business and and and that could be one of our offerings then we could maybe have another possibility around what nikki's talking about if we can find a way

088to support that okay i have two questions from the chat um first one is from elizabeth is there a plan to have online parent forums about this um about the about the the homeschooling aspect of it elizabeth well the whole plan i i what i meant was not uh not seeking input per se actually just uh having a walk-through with parents of what the plan is and and uh you know it for each district as well and or the supervisory union just wondering yeah well i know that the principles have done an incredible job of putting together christine put the template together and the other principals have used that template for a powerpoint as they sort of walk their staff through the plan i mean maybe that we can talk about that at our administrative

089team meeting and i think there might be a way i think those would be best done by building because there are so many individual decisions around you know pick up and drop off and health checks and stations and isolation room and you know that i think that might be best done by building and i think you know i don't want to put principles on the spot but i think we could certainly do do at least a forum per district if not a couple of those we can talk about that in the morning i think it's a great idea elizabeth okay the other question is from colleen spence has the reopening committee taken a stab at metrics they might use for deciding whether to reopen or not or has the state given guidelines no i think

090colleen that's an excellent question and i think that was the vet that was the essence of bridget niece's letter to her parents right that no the state has not given us metrics and they have not given us guidance is it one case two cases no cases 50 percent of your kids want to go but 50 don't 20 those metrics aren't there and that's what's making this so complicated is that you have to sort of make up your own metrics and and have your own design which is why i'd like a small subgroup the executive committee or whatever to to to help me through that decision making as we go through the next month because we're not going to meet as an su until probably you know three or four days before school begins so i

091think that the board chairs could really serve as a as a as as enough an authority authority body if if if this board you know so stipulates an emotion okay uh beth carter did you have your hand raised uh you know amy i was just typing it into the chat box but it kind of goes back to i think what maybe katie said or somebody asked about parent or elizabeth actually asked a question about the parent forms and then it goes back to what jen meager asked i don't know if she's still on at the beginning at the beginning of the call because she got in latest right at some point right quite frankly those forms should be in person as should these because we're bringing the kids back to school we all need to

092be back in person so i guess right there's an inconsistency in our approach here and we need to be a little bit more um consistent in that if right that's our plan perfect point perfect point right i'm telling you that's exactly the point beth that we're going to be gathering somewhere between 750 and 850 human beings back into the windsor building but you know we're all still meeting remotely i mean i i don't this is the part that keeps me up at night and it keeps brigitte nice up at night and and uh zach mclaughlin down in springfield and you know it's like we're we're all talking about it as if it's surreal or it's something that's gonna just happen in the future but um i don't know i don't know how comfortable people would

093feel about in-person forums i'd feel a little nervous about gathering adults you know without health checks at the door we you know we're gonna have those when we go back to school do we have those before we have a forum i don't know david right right i i disagree i respectfully disagree we all go to the grocery store now is what i guess or we all go somewhere to get something we all wear our masks we all socially distance do i think you should have one big forum no but i think there should be options i mean we are all doing it now right with our masks on my is my assumption so to think again that goes back to my discussion earlier about the high school students to think that this isn't all happening

094now as we speak and sit here right we're foolish to think right that people are not gathering in right pods of 10 20. there's only one little caveat to your to your logic bath and that is that when i go in the grocery store i'm considered a transient transmitter i'm in and i'm out i'm not in a room you know and there's something you can do you can do it outside or in a large auditorium or something like that and so it's just something to consider no i get it there's just science around exposure and and and that's that's critical and that's part of what has us nervous about opening buildings too but i hear you robin has a question yes hi everybody um i'm here at the weathersfield school um with sean we each

095had our separate technological difficulties um and both arrived here um we arrived late we came in on the very last slide from the survey so i might be asking a question that's already been covered but i didn't hear a lot about the you know a couple hours a day five days a week doesn't work for a lot of working families etc my question is mainly around the science behind this decision i've heard a lot of science around things like a week on a week off because it gives you nine days for symptoms to show up with your cohort and alternating um those cohorts my daughter's class again would be 27 people so i'm not understanding the definition of a small pod or cohort and the science behind that and so i'd just like some more

096clarification on i think what i heard which is that a lot of people feel like it doesn't work that's part a and part b is what is the science behind why it was created in the first place yeah robin we did address that a little bit earlier and and uh but but i'm certainly willing to address it again because it has been the number one well number one or two comment that's that that has uh come up and uh and i want to make sure i understand both i understand this let me do the second part first what's the science right behind a shortened day right i think that was your your question and and what and how i answered that before is the science was not science around immunology or transmission it was science

097around the psychological ability of the adults and the students to endure uh a a a length of time where they had to be socially or physically distanced socially isolated in a pod masked and and and that was the issue that that as we as we thought through that we didn't know whether or not we thought this was the way to start whether or not we can increase that day as we go along that's fine but it's just a matter of not being able to move them around the building not being able to have them you know interact you know with anything other than the small part the science behind the small pod does have more to do with transmission and it has more to do with contact tracing right it's in the guidelines the pods

098should be kept small they should be it they should be in proximity to the same adults every single day they can't move around the building they have to have a designated bathroom a designated outdoor space a designated indoor space and so that's all part of transmission to a certain degree but it's a lot more about contact tracing and whether you would have to shut down a small pod versus an entire building if you weren't in pods so that that that was the logic behind that no not a guy has a question scott has a question go for it okay thank you amy thank you david this this is for you david um and miss may or i hope this is the right time i think this is what we're getting at after this discussion as

099the discussion moves on could you explain to us um what you need from the board and what kind of authority you have now say for instance to cancel school for a week because of a natural disaster or something like that and so explain to us what else you need from us or what will you believe is the way to do our community i i i i have the authority on any given day whether it's a snow day or or a an electrical emergency or quite frankly a covet emergency gets to be october 3rd and i think i have to close this pod down or i have to close this school down i have that authority what i what i don't have is the authority right now without the board giving that authority to me or

100some subgroup of this group to not open at all on september 8th right so i need some authority around the decision to open on schedule you know from this board because that was the governor's pronouncement last week that the board has the authority to decide whether they will open remotely or in a hybrid or in person and and and i don't have that authority without this board voting for that so i would need a motion to authorize the superintendent consultation with the executive committee to decide right up until the opening of september 8th to to to to not go back in person basically right now the executive order says without that we have to go back in person okay yeah sorry and can we make sure right and i know whatever that date is david

101again let's say probably the tenth time can we make sure that decision is one right if you right if we need to do a k through eight or school or whatever i firmly believe the high school situation is different so that should be a different discussion different decision um and that's i mean i know nobody else here seems to right have as strong with feeling as i do on that um but it's a different it's a different group of kids all together different level right abilities capabilities willingness desires um so no i i think i think i think with that authority beth would come the authority to make a decision is that k-8 is that k-6 is that k-12 but right now when you look at the executive order it says that all children in

102grades k through 12 will have some form of in-person instruction for the 2020-21 school year and now they backed up on that a little bit last week and said that the board or the board can authorize the superintendent has the authority to change that decision you have the authority to say we are not going back in person k to eight we are not going back in person nine through 12. you have that authority but you have to vote that authority right you know or or vote some semblance of that authority so we don't have to whip this whole group back together again or maybe just the board chairs yeah and that's fine david but then i want to understand because there is a mount scotty school dress district that has a high school and the

103rest do not i don't want right all of these people voting on what we are doing in mountainous scotland because there is a high school yeah no i i understand right i mean everybody should vote on that but i have an issue with that right i mean it's one thing if you know 80 of your kids go here i hear ya i get it yes you should have a vote but if it's a really low percent i'm not quite sure i really want your vote on whether the high school should open or not so the motion could be right to authorize the superintendent in consultation with the executive committee to make a decision on the opening in person of the k-8 instruction and then it would be the montescutne board that would make the decision

104right i mean i think you could do it either way i mean your board chair will be there you know i would hope elizabeth will be part of that decision she knows you have a high school so i think that we could make i completely agree with you beth you could decide not to open for 912 but to open 4k eight i think that might not be a very good political decision it's okay and safe for you know because this remember this decision will be based on staffing capacity health capacity immunology the current state of of of the of the covet virus in the windsor uh you know uh county i mean there's going to be a lot of decisions that that this committee will have to make and this isn't about whether or not

105we can provide you know child care that's a whole separate issue really this is about the authority to make a last-minute decision based on look we don't have the capacity we can't we don't have the buses to run right now quite frankly mike who is our bus coordinator told me that he's got three drivers who are contemplating retirement he may not have bus drivers and they're contemplating retirement because they have uh compromised immune systems if we don't have buses to run this thing we gotta we've got to shut it down you know that that's my point and we're gonna have to do that you know with a with a pretty quick decision and i'd like to have the authority vested in the executive committee of this board which are all four board chairs and uh

106and quite frankly because of that elizabeth represents montescotni amy represents uh the supervisory union and i know this is not what you're talking about beth but but moniscutney will be represented well on that executive committee can i ask a question it's angie um so david i wonder if you might be able to speak to um the collective bargaining agreement and uh the if you can to the extent that you can share um the overall feeling of teachers on having one team of teachers be remote and other team of teachers be in person yeah i think that's been a concern yeah i think i think the union agreement is a big it certainly has been a big part of this and luckily we've had our union presidents from all three associations at the table so it's

107it's made it a little bit uh a little bit easier but but angie is right right now they understand the ada accommodation for a teacher to stay home if in fact they pass sort of the ada test what they would not understand i think and they probably would not support and again i know this isn't what you were saying beth they wouldn't support a group of high school teachers teaching remotely while k.a was was was in school and they've they've expressed that very clearly uh to us that he either either we all go in or we all stay out and that's that's that's that's a pretty tricky tricky situation quite frankly yeah to be clear right my recommendation is the high school is the one that goes back right because those are the ones that

108can control themselves probably a little bit more and maintain social distance right they might be able to wear their mask but they're doing it already right although every time i wake up in the middle of the night it's a high school kid i'm wrestling with in the library trying to get him to trying to get him to put his mask on and it's a big kid i don't know who he is but he's big i'm gonna ask colleen someday i'm gonna describe him and maybe colleen can tell me who he is but i actually am bear wrestling with that kid christine i see your hand up yeah i'm just thinking about what beth is saying and remembering because it wasn't that long ago the challenges of having the younger kids home i mean it it

109was in some ways easier the older kids could manage themselves and and there is science around transmission of kids and under being less you know it's just there's so many so many moving targets yeah yeah it is yeah and christine part of it is just right yeah agreed it's a moving target but quite frankly the high school kids are already out there doing whatever they do putting them in a school or not in a school it doesn't matter because they're all important doing whatever they do i agree we have the recording too so i don't know if diane's still on but but again uh the motion i'd like you to contemplate is to authorize the superintendent in consultation with the executive board to make a decision anytime from this point up until september 8th to

110open uh to open school in person or to remain remote and that doesn't mean we don't have a lot of work to do on what remote would look like given given nikki's caveat earlier but that's the motion we're looking for is someone willing to make that motion this is nikki i'll make that motion is there a second yeah i'll second chris seconded so um i'm sorry what's the motion so the motion colleen is to authorize the superintendent in consultation with the uh executive board uh to uh determine b uh between now you can put the date in there if you want and september 8th as to whether or not we will open in person at any particular grade level at all okay i have a question yes um is this definitely an su level decision

111or because it just says school boards on the vermont uh aoe thing it doesn't say supervisor union school board so would this be a weathersfield uh decision school board decision or definitely an su school board decision well and the the only i thought about that and quite frankly you probably you know could argue it either way the only reason why i think this board is best to make the decision is because we have a a unified collective bargaining agreement and a unified calendar the calendar goes supervisor reunion wide so you can't we couldn't one one district could not veer off and say we're going to open the other districts say we're not going to open i mean it would just create an absolute union fiasco scott you have a question yes thank you amy so

112i wanted to second that motion because i i i'm keen to talk about like the process and i'm not a fan of executive board and superintendent teaming up to make these kind of decisions i don't think that this context that we're describing is one that needs uh the the the that kind of that that doesn't need to be a necessity here uh for reasons of for instance speed like an overnight division or something like that um i think we have we can put some more thought into that and i would prefer the superintendent to look to a broader decision-making body like this whole su board that would be my desire and why did you second so we could discuss it we can't david had in his uh david had it written and we needed to

113talk about it yeah you need discussion you have to have the motion to get it on the table that's for sure fair enough i'm just my only fear scott with that and so far we've done well this environment and this virtual environment gets pretty good attendance but you know god forbid if i have to make that decision and i can't get a quorum of of this full su board or any particular individual board you know maybe that would never happen maybe it would happen you know i i i'm sure we would make that effort but if we couldn't we'd at least have this motion in place to expedite if we absolutely had to well i just looked over the policies i couldn't find anything in the policies that allowed for an executive session executive board

114any board decision like that um we had discussed this a lot at this seo board you know in the last five years yeah well because we because we took that authority away that's why you have to have this motion tonight because without that the only the only authority i would have would be to get a quorum of this board together right we used to have a policy that gave a lot of authority to the executive board if you couldn't get a quorum together but we took that policy out last summer and you're right scott we had a lot of conversation which is why we have to have this vote tonight if we're going to at least have the authority to do that doesn't mean that we will do that we'll we can still make every

115effort to get this board together but that's really meaningful david i mean we this su board got rid of that policy not on the books and that's really meaningful to me so i don't want to go backwards tonight i get it are there any other call colleen spence hi um i would feel more comfortable voting on this after i heard what the process was going to be for making the decision like if we don't have we're not getting any guidelines from the state i know we're getting some but um i want to know what the decision-making process is first is it possible that we could vote on this at the end of august once we know you know more about how you're going to approach making the decision yeah we could let me go and

116see when the next uh supervisory uh the next supervisory room is august 24th and the way our calendar sets up now we don't really start school until the 27th i think that's the new teacher so yeah we would we could we could postpone that what i'm afraid of colleen is that we may not we i mean we may have some better metrics but we may not have metrics because the kind of decision i'm talking about is a decision that we we we don't have enough bus drivers on august mike's still looking on august 29th we don't have enough bus drivers or we have more teachers who as they get to that door well right if there's staffing issues you're not you're the home you're you're going to know more than we do about right whether

117you can right but if there's immunology questions do we do you have do you have that piece in place like i i trust your your judgment on staffing and the principles yeah yeah but that's what i'm talking about but the questions about you know what's going on in the community in terms of the virus is the part i'm interested in knowing more about how you'll think about it yeah that's a that's a good question and believe me we we would not make those decisions around immunology that would be you know that would be uh i would assume that would be a county-wide decision or or or a regional decision based on cases but the only authority i was asking for tonight with the executive board was more around you know was more around staffing concerns

118uh numbers of students who agree to come in you know i mean what happens if only 20 percent of your students want in-person education and you've got your whole staff in the building that gets a little complicated but but as i look at the calendar now we could we we could table this until the 24th i mean it makes me a little nervous but we'll have we'll we may have more information you know we may not remember the state laid this on us just last week i mean right you know we don't even know the full connotation of it in i'm hesitant to hand over my opinion and i you you know i trust you i yeah that's i understand i'm also feel responsible so i would feel better about doing it in august um

119so nicole has a question but just a sec i want to read a comment that jean marie just put up on the chat and then you're exactly next nicole jean maria can families wait to hear as late as august 24th and you're up nicole um so the way i read the motion and david can read it back to us is that we're giving the superintendent the authority to make the decision in consultation with the executive board not that the executive board is going to vote it's just that he's going to call the executive board and say yo can't do this um here's the problem right that that's what it would be yeah and so we're giving by making this motion we're giving you the authority and then we're calling together a quick committee for you

120to say i can't do this this is why and then we report back to our boards david just called and said he can't do this and this is what he explained and that's how i read the motion and so i guess to me it's not even a vote of this board it's just a whether or not david brings it to this board i mean i still think in the end because of that governor's order last week that the decisions to open in person or not rests now with the with the boards as a and marie said it's even confusing what they mean by the boards right it was a nice it was a nice sound bite and it was a nice sort of stance and i still think it was partially to kick the can

121to locals to make that decision but but i i nikki is exactly right that's how we would do it i would say look we we're missing three bus drivers we we're just not going to be able to go on september 8th we we've got we we've got you know another 20 applications for ada accommodations where people want to stay home and i just got those yesterday when we can't make those decisions we can't go that's what i'm talking about and you know at that point we could decide to call an emergency meeting of this group but if this group we can't get a quorum of this group i'm i'm sort of dead in the water but you know i don't i don't know i mean the whole thing is is is sort of you know

122surreal anyhow so maybe we just let that happen so i just just an observation since march i think all of us are really hyper sensitive to everything that we're hearing from everyone and i think your ability to get a quorum at the last minute is pretty good at this point i even though we're we're probably all about fried we could probably meet very quickly and anne-marie says i'm confused i think what the order says is that boards need to vote on which reopening model we're following and like jean marie asks parents need that vote to be made sooner than later that's exactly right but my understanding of that of of that order is that we're voting on which model we are going to use you know to reopen right i mean that that's the key

123not which model we're going to use once we are open or which model we're going to use when we open but really it's it's it's it to me it's really an open it's an opening order it's it's you know and right now we know that we're using a form of a hybrid model right but we know that we're going to do some in-person instruction but if the board wanted to decide that we weren't going to do any in-person instruction we have to have the authority of the board to do that i know it's complicated but yeah and i i think in a situation like that that we would all make ourselves available and and i think as we move closer into august we're we're all going to be on pins and needles here you know

124looking at um governor uh press conferences i mean we're gonna be listening to as we all are anyway where we're reading vermont digger to get the latest if we weren't able to listen to it there's a vermont nea forum tomorrow for teachers and well for the entire public on kind of how the union is coming at this um we're we're all really aware and i i really think david that if you needed all of us that we would be there at least within a couple of hours or you know as quickly as it would need to be warned yeah chris jean marie has a question i think i don't know yeah let's uh my question is chris had one my question was what do we need to table this till the next meeting which is

125already going to be before david's going to be faced with this this decision so we'll know a lot more in a month as to where things look like they're headed yeah i appreciate that that the uh parents want to know what's going to be happening and i would say the if we're all generally in agreement that the that the um that the plan that's been created is based on where things are now health-wise and in in hopes that they might get a little better we can only plan so far as to health situations if they get worse there's only so much we can do with that so we can offer parents a plan based on what we see now and that's what we're doing and continue to survey them and get a feel for where

126they stand and then and then we're going to have to act again in some way probably uh at the end of august unless we all want to right now declare that we're going to be all uh remote and then then that's a different plan and that's a different you know then everybody has to deal with it and we go through all of that but hey that's pretty crazy jean marie hi thank you i just wanted to mention how proud i am of the wscsu task force as well as the administrative team and david's leadership and and i'm going to point it directly at something so we've been reading as much literature and research there is a weekend that hasn't gone by that we haven't connected in some way ask questions of each other send each

127other articles to read and today our school board i think it was robin tindall sent a 62 page report that came out of harvard mpr is talking about this article this week and it's called schools for health risk reduction strategies for reopening schools so i immediately downloaded the document and i read it to cover and what i would like to share with this board when i was done reading it i was astounded that there was not one thing in here that the administrative team or the wscs task force had not debated in a really genuine way using research using the information out there so as much as and i'm as tortured as the rest of you about whether or not we should open in person i i struggle with that daily but what i will

128say to you based on this report all of the strategies that are coming out of and i think harvard is is this study group it's pretty impressive and there wasn't one thing in here that we have not talked about in depth so if we do go in person all of those thousands of hours that we have spent as a team working together really thinking about kids and safety by god we've done a good job and i don't think there's a stone unturned now that doesn't mean something catastrophic couldn't happen something unexpected that maybe harvard hasn't thought about or we haven't thought about but when i was done reading this i wrote david right away and said we are on the right track thank you jean marie that is that's heartening very good to hear yeah

129the school the school nurses also got that harvard study and and uh i've heard back from a couple of them saying that you know it is a useful resource but they felt we were really in compliance with a lot of the recommendations it's just a question of whether or not emotionally and socially the kids can step up to the plate you know maybe they can maybe they can't we're we're going to find out but we've got to have enough adults we've got to have transportation we've got to have the right hvac systems the isolation rooms have to be in place you know so there's a lot of things that have to happen and we may need to make some decisions that last week but i think this time if you want to table this the

13024th we could make another decision i'm just going to hold everybody to the fact that if we need a quorum we we're going to need to get a quorum because we don't have that other executive uh executive board policy like that scott talked about so it has to be a quorum of this board all right the people who made the motion and seconded are you willing to withdraw your motion for tabling yeah you could do it that way somebody could make a motion i'm willing to wear the draw yeah i'm not sure who which one of us uh seconded but i'm willing to withdraw it too sir the two seconds withdraw withdrew and nikki would have to i was drew you just didn't hear me nikki with proof motion was struggling great thank you and

131anne-marie asked if we need to vote on the hybrid now i don't know that that that i i don't think so although colleen did state that that would be good to uh you know to you know to you know to certainly have a a a motion to support the hybrid plan that we've that we've put in place i mean that would that would strengthen it some i mean quite frankly the original uh yeah i mean it's really up to this board i think that even if we don't have all the specifics about a hybrid plan that parents need to know that we're either going to have one or not have one or we're considering it or something i don't think that we can come out of this meeting with no information so robin you're talking

132about by a hybrid plan you mean that some students will be allowed to learn completely remote and other students will follow the in-person plan is that what you mean right i'm assuming that's what anne marie meant okay yeah that makes sense and i don't know that we need i don't know about the level of detail obviously more detail is better but i don't know that any decision has been made on whether it's the um vt vlc or whether there's going to be a project-based curriculum or whether there's going to be conference phones and videos streaming live from the classroom we do not have a plan but at least parents knowing especially since there's such a large percentage of them knowing that something will be offered is going to at least help them know that they

133don't have to file for um home study with the state i mean i think that's a big decision right now that parents are facing um you know there is on paper the august first deadline for filing although i believe that that's not strict but a lot of people right now are trying to at least do that first fork in the road there's going to be a lot of forks in the road after that but they need to at least know that that first fork in the road is there i i i think i have a list of obviously my my last email to the community was the big reveal right so that happened and then i have a series of topics for either follow-up emails or follow-up um videos that that i'm gonna do and

134that that that was number one on number two robin that's gonna i'd say by the end of the week we can get something out that indicates that our plan because i've heard the board say all three boards that that's a priority that there will be a remote plan um you know i certainly said that to anybody who asked me in a private email but i i'm gonna send out a general email blast saying that it's gonna take a little while to put it together but there will be a plan okay thank you so where are we besides 8 30 and yeah i mean it's getting late i don't know what i don't have the agenda somehow i deleted the again yeah i i figured this meeting might even go until midnight so yeah which is

135where i i am where i am right now but um do you need us to vote on something or we're tabling the authority part and you have kind of a groundwork with the task force of coming up with the plan yeah i think it's really up to this board if the board wants to vote as robin stated to that that the this board is going to make every effort to provide a hybrid plan where some students have the choice to learn remotely i mean you could make that motion it gives it a little more authority and that'll help me when i put out my email you know it's you just got to remember that we're going to have to you know we're going to have to really work diligently on what that plan will look

136like the administrative team is working on that that's why we're meeting with jeff in the morning that's why was you know we've got some staff members who you know who have we think are going to be compromised enough to stay home but i don't know whether you want to take you know go on the record there or without knowing the complete capacity issue but i mean i i think you could say the it is the intent of the windsor southeast supervisor reunion board to offer a hybrid model that provides for some uh for some students to uh be educated at home i think that's that's an okay motion david david would that be did that be until phase three yeah unless yes while we're in phase two exactly well it could transition us right to

137phase three too david i was probably thinking the same as larry i mean we need a plan b for when we go if if and when we go full remote yeah um that's actually phase one phase one i'm sorry i meant phase one um that's but yeah if we go phase one we're all remote and we're going to need a better plan right as we talked about and we've talked you know we've talked about that but if we go to phase three supposedly it's all in person no students are exempted everybody comes back to school so that's that's really the complication there that's as clear as mud right but but i think in a phase two opening this board could support a hybrid model is somebody willing to make that motion this is nikki i'll

138make that motion this is chris i'll second way to go nikki yeah so so the motion the motion just so it's clear to diane who will be writing it down is uh the motion reads it is the intent of the windsor southeast supervisory union school board to offer a hybrid model of instruction which includes both in-person and remote options for parents during phase two okay so that's been moved and seconded any further discussion yeah sean whalen here yeah what is the i i i kind of i think it goes back to what nikki was suggesting is that we don't know what online instruction that we're going to offer is and so we'd be we would be voting to adopt something that didn't work well for a lot of people in the spring and i think

139what nikki was offering was the question of are we going to choose a curriculum that we're going to offer as that online component that's not something we're inventing in our su but something that's proven as an online option i it could be wrong and i'm just jumping to conclusions but what we're doing with this motion and voting is to because we haven't got the full plan of what the online is going to look like we are authorizing our administrative team and task force to put together that hybrid plan and to let parents know that there will be a hybrid plan and we can do that right now or it can be another thing that's tabled a ev everything it just feels it's so up in the air and could change two weeks from now but

140we have to go with the information that we have now and hope for the best and then cross that horrible bridge when we come to it if we have to make tremendous changes chris um i think we i think we either have to do i don't think we can table this till the end of august i think if we were gonna if we're gonna table this we would have to have another meeting in two weeks yeah to to see what what the administrative board has come up with and things like that otherwise i think we can just uh my my feeling is that this was a this was a statement that would be giving our support to the concept and let the i i think we i think we you know the spring is a

141is is was a learning experience there's no question about it and i don't expect to to assume that whatever occurred in the spring would be repeated is probably god i would hope that wouldn't be going to be happening no matter what since we know more and we have more training we've already we already have more training and more knowledge of what works rather than trying to throw it together in a uh in what a week or something like that like the last time so i would uh i that that's just my opinion we either have to do it in two weeks or do it or or vote for supporting it now thank you so um just comments from chat um colleen spence has a question um i think the question is what makes phase one

142phase two and phase three designations that's the level of um covet infection and community spread and then the government the government makes that decision right and that's the governor's decision yeah um katia hearn has a comment um my comments a little bit about the preciseness of language when we're talking and larry mentioned it in the chat that we already have a hybrid program are we is this more about offering a distance option for families and we should use that language that we're the because as i understand it we already we we have a hybrid in terms of there will be an online learning component and an in-school component and families are choosing that but the the question seems to be that what are we offering for a distance learning option for students who will not

143be in physically in the building am i and so maybe we need to go back and change the language from hybrid to distance learning um i'm just we've been talking about a lot so um that was my two cents on the precisest of language on on the motion if that's helpful right and beth roy brings up a very good point as well um don't forget that a hybrid or distance plan also means a hybrid or a distance school meal plan and can we handle that and there there are so many moving parts to all of this and um repercussions to any decision that we make one way or the other and having all of those parts moving in the same direction is um just a phenomenal task so um does someone want to change that

144motion to say distance learning and that we will have more information on that in two weeks from our administrative and administrative team and task force i'm willing to add the distance learning to it take away the hybrid and add distance learning i have a question about that though if we say just distance does that sound like we're not doing in person i thought the meaning of the word hybrid is that we're doing both distance and in person um our plan is already hybrid well we have a hybrid plan right where there's some in person and some but but what i'm what i'm assuming this board is talking about is that there will be a remote and a 100 you know hybrid option you know or in-person option and that's that's what i thought we were

145talking about and i do think there's a lot i think it would be wise to maybe give this a couple of weeks because this this has a lot of tentacles to it and uh i did see beth roy was the one who typed in um remember a a remote a 100 remote requires 100 percent plan for how you're going to deliver food do we have the capacity to do that i don't know does it mean that i don't know i mean i think i think there's a lot of work that needs to be done on this it's not yeah it's not as simple as putting and we could do this and we've talked david and i have talked about it uh you could put like a separate chromebook available you know so the teacher can

146teach you know from walk one kids at at home learning uh and then there's kids in the front of that person in the classroom um but it's not a panacea like uh a lot is gonna be left out a lot of the interaction other kids are going to be talking at the same time as kids tend to do uh it's not going to be like it was where everybody was muted right like we're all muted now one person's talking at a time it'll be like a live classroom and that person has to hear the teacher uh that's one issue also there's other privacy issues where there could be depending on how the camera's situated even though it is a school environment um it's so it's not like it's not as if you could just set

147up a chromebook for four straight hours and watch a lecture so just a heads up on that i know i've heard that a lot and uh i think there is a possibility to do that well for certain instances throughout a school day but you wouldn't want your student who is home experiencing 100 remote learning uh just to have a chromebook screen camera pointing at their teacher while they teach it's it's not good for that kid it's the same you're still staring at a screen at that point i think the the point of a hype of a remote learning is that it wouldn't be a screen that the teachers would actually have to provide a plan for the students to be able to implement at home um without having to watch a screen for four hours

148it's a big lift while while they're teaching an actual class of k in person kids yeah see that's the issue so i think that's what david was alluding to earlier when he was talking about the agreement the master agreement which i won't get into so um it feels like we're right back to square one of so many moving parts that this whole group of people cannot make an educated decision on what we should do and that we need more information although i don't know that more information is necessarily going to help us having a plan based on the information that we have now that there will be students for part of a day in class and then for the rest of the day they will have assignments to complete at home that won't necessarily have

149anything to do with screens i think would be a marvelous plan and i haven't seen any lesson plans that anyone has put together but it's my understanding that that is what the hybrid plan is that kids will be in school with a teacher having some interaction socially distance wearing masks and then they will go home and they will do the assignments that have been given and that that that wouldn't have anything to do with screens yeah am i am i jumping to conclusions there david no no that that's that's the plan but what the administrative team heard from our boards all three of the boards is that in addition to that they would like to be able to accommodate those parents who don't want to send their kids back at all right do i do

150i have a plan for that no do i think we have the capacity for that i'm not sure you know so but we we want to honor this segment of our population because we don't want to lose them so we're going to try to do something and i think we'll have a plan in the next week or so but we don't have one tonight because we've been working on the the in-person hybrid plan and and and we you know we have a meeting tomorrow morning with that jeff from vtvlc we are we are exploring other options we're looking at other curriculums we're seeing what staff might be available if any maybe none um so we we do not have a plan to honor that board request but you could i think you could you could

151have a statement that you know intent is there we know you probably don't need a vote we already know the intent is there you've made that clear to us and uh we're we're we're actively pursuing options and we we you know we don't want to let the board down we may have to come back to you in the end and say we we can't we can't do we can't make this work but we'll we'll let we'll let you know right now i think we've got some options and we could we could we could schedule an su meeting a couple of weeks from now and and make a final decision with more of a plan and i know it's it's a lot to ask of our admin team and also our task force but looking at

152ways to [Music] have the the different learning units and the different classes that it doesn't necessarily an assignment doesn't have to be online um that's correct that's not an online option it doesn't have to include screen time right now a remote option or a distance option does not have to include screen time right and just having just completed an online master's course yes all of my courses were online but i wasn't online the whole time i spent a lot of time reading and talking to people and so it's more than just sitting at a screen and i think our administrators and all of our teaching teaching staff is more than capable of kind of working together and not necessarily reinventing things because a lot of them are already out there but i think hearing more

153in a couple of weeks is probably good not to put christine and marie and everyone else on alert but yeah i have another comment this is robin um again i came in at the tail end of the survey results but i think i saw the last slide saying something like 20 of respondents wanted to sign up for homeschooling and 60 wanted to stay at home larry's shaking his head can someone tell me what those percentages were just roughly and quickly and angie's got angie's character i think it was 20 of those who said no so it's not 20 of the total no 21. go ahead angie's going to turn her mic on and tell you it right all right i need to put my mic on i will send this to to the board and

154i've added high school numbers um so overall 63 said yes they will send their children to in person 12 said no but some of those responses were also but if the school has a remote option i would be interested and 25 are undecided does that make sense rob i guess i could summarize that by saying 40 is the total space of which might be people who don't want to send their kids to school right 37 okay 30 47 30 or 70 who who i think right now right are you either undefined right or don't want to get the crux of my question which is that it's sounding to me like we're saying we're sticking with five days a week 8 30 to 12 30 even though 37 percent of our people are potentially saying that

155won't work for us well that's not we asked him why and that was only one of the reasons that was i forget what percentage of that percentage said it was because of the schedule others said it was for health reasons or they had a compromised adult in the home or they had you know other other issues it wasn't just because they didn't like our schedule okay so my question is are we re-examining that because of they're missing out on 37 or are we saying we're sticking with that it's 8 30 to 12 30 that's the in-person model case closed but then on top of that we're examining distance correct the latter the ladder was sticking with the 8 30 to 12 30 and we're and we're examining a distance a distance learning option i mean

156there would be staff revolt and union grievances and we don't have staff members willing to spend a whole day in that building we don't have kids we think that can spend a whole day in the building i i've not yeah i mean i think that's the simple answer that but we do need a distance option and we're gonna and we're gonna work on that uh david shawn here that uh that sound it's just sounds like that's a very consequential decision for our families that's being driven by the teachers union and it's the question of who works for who because it's what we're hearing is that for the it's for the families that this 8 30 to 12 30 thing this just doesn't doesn't work um but if it works i don't know if it works

157for the teachers union that's one thing but it it's we work for the families that's who i work for it's not just the teachers sean it's not just the teachers unions right i mean it's it's it's the administrative team who you employ that are just you know it's me i i'm trying to picture a seven-year-old masked and distanced and isolated for seven hours i don't feel comfortable with it i just don't i don't think it's going to be a good option you know and and and we've got consensus on that task force and i i just don't know i think the people who have to implement this have to be comfortable with it you can't have revolt with those who are going to implement and i think the issues around parent and child care are

158separate issues we can address them we can help parents but i i'm just not feeling a way that we can step back and do anything anything that's going to include more time into that day you you you you jump to yeah i mean i i don't i don't i don't perceive it at this late hour i really don't we have administrators on the phone on the call now i mean i've been at every single one of those meetings those task force meetings i don't want to make this a union issue yes it could become a union issue but it's not the union it's our administrators who are entrusted to take care of our kids who are anywhere from the ages of three in preschool to 18 in high school and we've looked at the developmental

159research we've we've looked at the uncertainty about taking united states american students not we're not talking about south korea or china where they mask up every year anyway this is the united states here where where we're going to have to get seven-year-olds to wear a mask for a long period of time socially distanced and isolated from their other peers in the building we just haven't seen a full day as a good way to start a month from now maybe we could start extending the time there's openness to have that happen but i don't i don't and and if any administrators want to chime in but that's been the feeling of the of the task force at this point so robin asked the question if the task force compared five day four hour day to one

160week on and one week off and other models of in-person attendance yeah and says yes robin we want to offer consistency one week on one week off was not user friendly for families and their planning yeah we and we also felt that it was very inconsistent with with uh with the ability to lay out a curriculum and to and and to follow a curriculum it just didn't it didn't seem from an educational standpoint to be very we looked at those we looked at a b days we looked at three two days we looked at we looked at one week in one week off we we looked at all of those and then we weighed the cost benefits with respect to the educational consistency and continuity of a curriculum it it just didn't and i and

161i guess we'll see how because some districts are going to try to do that we'll see how it goes our staff and teachers and administrators didn't feel comfortable comfortable with that but yeah and and i can see where the monday wednesday friday or tuesday thursday for high school might work because they are preparing for college where they're going to have that but for an elementary school child it's for a parent to say okay you got to get up today no you don't got to get up tomorrow you know that kind of thing could get really at least in my household with my kids that would have been crazy i just have a quick comment this is beth roy um i think you know with all of these options it's just totally overwhelming and i think

162i have really high hopes that we will be able to extend our day to 12 30. the idea of an 8 30 to 12 30 day is i don't know if both my husband and i will be able to keep our jobs like i but you know i'm willing to give it a shot you know like we just need it's going to be miserable no matter what we do but i have really high hopes that we will be able to extend our day things are going to get better it's just we need to offer offer up you know thanks and grace to be able to move this forward and that's really where it comes and it's really hard i mean and i think i mean i've been watching my two kids attend camp every day

163from nine to four thirty fully masked and they don't care they wear a mask all day through the sprinkler like it doesn't they are fine so i think i think we it's it's it's harder for adults i think than kids and they will learn and we'll figure it out so i have a lot of hope i think we just need to figure out because we will be on this call till midnight or beyond yeah more we just need to figure out this next small step and have faith and give each other that grace to move this forward yeah and i think beth that's a very good point and we've looked at we've looked at those camps and we've looked at the child cares because they've all experimented to a certain degree right i mean but

164but again they're experimenting with very small numbers i know the windsor wreck program has 65 i don't know how many kids at the camp where you are but but but it's it's you know it's really looking at all of those things and seeing maybe after the first couple of weeks the staff will relax everything will be fine the environment looks better and we extend it an hour and then maybe we extend it right to the end of the day maybe it'll work i i i don't i don't know i can't predict it you know it and i think this was just a way to start slowly and open slowly and and make sure that everything is is copacetic okay i i think it is time to move on we will have a meeting in two

165weeks where we will the only item on the agenda is going to be the opening plan and there will be a plan that we can all look at if not too much to ask david and admin team no and two weeks from the table [Music] did you say there was a motion on the table yeah yeah there's my motion that we would have uh i forget how it's worded but that we would have a distance option for families and i can i can remove that as long as peop everybody feels comfortable that we can all say that we will provide a distance option i just uh the amount of funding that we will lose even if we lose 10 kids to homeschooling is more than we can afford to lose okay so are you willing

166or do we want to vote that there will be i have a question learning um yeah colleen so you were about to restate it so it may have like jumped in on you but in two weeks we're going to hear about distance learning options what what what our planners think is possible and then in four weeks we're gonna decide about we're gonna vote about who gets to call the shots well whether we open or not if that hasn't already been decided for us by yeah right the other the other thing we could do because i know this group likes to get together um actually two weeks from tonight two weeks from tonight is august 10th and there's a mount of scrutiny board meeting the next night of weathersfield board me i mean there's nothing next

167month there's nothing there's nothing next monday on the third so we could get together again a week from now and by then we will have met with jeff from vtvlc we will have we will have explored some options the administrative team is meeting twice a week the task force is meeting at least once a week we could have some more information on the distance piece as long as reopening is the only thing on the agenda by the third maybe but i think we could david i think it's christine i think that makes actually more sense with the vtvlc timeline yeah they need to know like asap right so uh if no one's opposed to that we could we we could have that happen we'll make that happen can i have a quick quick question kind

168of what nikki uh said do you consider the vtvlc that would be a remote option that the board could get behind even though it may not be a wins or southeast advisory union teacher and it may not be a project-based curriculum that we have endorsed is that is that what you're saying um i personally that's my least favorite option but it is something that i could get behind if that's the only option we have um the concern with that is that if we like i was googling forecasts for covid for this winter and fall and it does not look good so i really don't like my vision is that we're all gonna be remote in october and then we've got all these kids that are off taking classes somewhere else away from the rest of

169the class if i have to want to clarify yeah yeah that the vermont virtual learning cooperative just to repeat this the commitment is that students will be in program for a semester and they can't go in and come out go in and come out that's not going to work for them and the same with our teachers so we just have to be thinking about that that's why i think it's a huge downfall of that program are the students full time with that or are they just taking one class or two classes that can be determined so we're not we've had that option at the high school anyway to take classes right so they wouldn't be completely leaving us we're not they're still part of our membership we keep the adm that's the agreement with vermont

170virtual learning property which makes it what what makes it appealing um but they would not be our students in in the in the fact that our teachers wouldn't necessarily be interacting with them if they're really taking a course like say for example they wanted to get an advanced course that we didn't offer or it wasn't working for their schedule they can they can do that and they've all they've had that option anyway for the high school so uh the elementary curriculum is an elementary curriculum they the kids would do i don't i'm not sure you can pick and choose on the elementary side okay have that same flexibility with it yeah so on the third we would have more information yeah yeah yeah yeah we we will and we may have some other options or

171we can discuss some other options i know i keep listening to nikki's plan and i i i think i know what she's talking about but i i can't quite get my head around it but we could spend some time on the third talking about that and then the administrative team could see if that's a possibility i know christine i think christine and nicky have talked so we could talk more you know more vigorously about something like that um we you know yeah so i think we could how do people feel about the third there are no board meetings on that night the people feel okay changing that to the third anybody opposed anybody opposed to that all right i'm fine with the third all right i'm gonna send out it'll cancel the 27th we can

172put that one back in later so you're gonna get a new invite to the third okay great we have to move on to our next topic of fun discussion and that jessica the people who are on just for the reopening discussion i mean don't feel you have to stay on administrators it's up to you but thanks a lot for your patience tonight i know you've put a lot of time into this too yeah thank you because we have an early morning as administrators tomorrow morning okay so we skipped over did we have anything financials david uh ed told me that um and that might be maybe even in the third he needed another week to put the su financials together so but maybe we don't want to crowd the third with that but he could

173probably but he'll be ready in august with financials for the actual yeah and also for the individual boards he plans to come and give you your financials for the closeout okay that will be good so next we have portrait of a graduate right and you can speak to that because the writing team has been working uh on on the strategic plan and we could probably give you the two minute overview angie's trying to find her volume button my mouse you got it you got it it is it's not the most cooperative and then i try to go really slow and i've adjusted the settings on it anyway it's not very precise um so yes we are on the third round of uh vetting it's it's really more vetting than writing um the the first round

174was looking at the goals um and those were based on our portrait of a graduate and goals um that came out of the work that we did at the end of that last meeting with the team identifying those areas um the after the goals we're looking at objectives the language i'm just trying objectives are more specific like um we will design a learning framework and then the strategies are around the different things that we will put in place to do that and so we are starting to work on uh developing the strategies and we have about 15 strategies um i feel like i'm saying this wrong i need to look at one of mike's um uh one of the documents hang on a second i will get that um anyway but i i'm not sure

175i'm gonna be able to pull it up quickly um the the um work is continuing we're noticing that we need to i'm going to be reaching out to a few more teachers to make sure um because the it's coming down to about you know as as expected when you're doing work in the summer about seven or eight people that are showing up regularly and um that's a mix of we have a few parents um and teachers and some administrators on the team so i'm working to make sure that we have representative representation across the supervisory union for that across grade levels so i don't know if there's anything more that work is going to be ready to present to the strategic planning team on august 12th so we have two more meetings to flesh that

176out hey great thank you so the next fraud um portrait of a graduate meeting for the the larger task force is the 12th yep okay wonderful thank you [Music] and sean is commenting that we've asked community members to help with portrait of a graduate but not reopening right it's all yeah who knows thank you sean um next up we have our social media policy which got sent out to i everyone i think bill made some adjustments to that right or not big ones but just right it was shared with everyone okay so let me click can i summarize where it's at sure basically so i went through and just made a couple of mostly just technical adjustments to make it a um su one mark had gone in and made some pretty good uh comments

177um and i don't know i didn't feel comfortable um just kind of going ahead and making those changes but i wanted to i thought it'd be better if if other people read some of mark's ideas and came to consensus on on whether they should be input or not um and that's kind of where we're at it marks up um i had a couple comments just a couple questions and mark had several things he commented on so that's that's right um anne-marie if you were to go to the the agenda all of the materials that were sent out by diane it's on there anne marie's trying to get plugged in here i actually just just received right before this meeting like actually actually was after the meeting had started my acceptance to that email i would

178have said i had clicked on it and it said you need to get permission and i just got permission like right before this meeting started so i haven't had time to really review that email other than to click on the link to try to get up into this meeting is i didn't have permission to view the documents attached until just about whenever this meeting started um but uh i'll look at it now i guess if i can find it well it's the first reading yeah you you can do up to three readings and there are comments that mark made that are along the side and is in the second when we when we meet next we can comment on those and then put our social media policy together [Music] i have one concern um in

179looking over this document some more um i came to the realization that it almost requires a secondary document not as far as we're concerned uh but in terms of practice as far as parents go because when this document was crafted the whole idea of online learning pandemic wasn't out there and i almost feel like if we have parents of students that are working on social media as well that we almost need some kind of commitment from them as parents that they will address concerns that they have with education system uh assignments in in a non-personal way towards a staff member i almost feel like what we really need as well as an agreement when you have parents signing up for distance learning that they will communicate their concerns to the educator through a channel that

180can be documented by administration it's just it's a concern i have as far as you know obviously you don't want to limit people's freedoms and you're you're not interested in controlling it what it is that they say or how they say it but i i think it's important that we look for a commitment to follow proper channels for a parent through the educators that they're expecting to educate their children um could be considered a procedure and if we were to adopt this policy we can ask our administrative staff aka david um because david needs something else to do the procedures for that and we already have procedures of how parents are to bring something forward that they start at the lowest level with the teacher and then it goes to the principal and then the

181superintendent and then to the board so that's already in place if that's what you're yeah i mean that that is across the board for any anything with with the school any any class any um policy is that it's brought at the lowest level that um that it can be solved okay if it's not solved at that level then it moves up i just i i know in terms of um this current situation we find ourselves in that most of us kind of ignore that sort of thing until all of a sudden we've got something we have to do and then i i don't want to see staff members being attacked online forums without going through the proper channels but it sounds like this pathway has already been laid out thank you right and what we

182have also found i mean since facebook was invented that there are going to be people in our communities that go directly to facebook and it goes direct it it explodes and then we have something that we have to deal with so it doesn't matter what we had in policy that sort of thing is going to happen unfortunately right i just i think it's reasonable for educators and administrators to expect a a commitment as we have to change everything as far as the education of the of the kids thank you mark did anyone else have any comments from what you read i guess in the next month if you can look over mark's comments make some of your own also i don't know if we want to have maybe one person from each district look at

183this and be kind of a subcommittee in instead of all of us trying to put this into a semblance of a policy well i've gone through it fairly recently and so i'd be willing to continue with the representative the uh the escondi board um okay mark i'm still in bill's been nice to me i'll stick around i'll email up the heartland board and figure out who wants to join them okay that'd be great and then that person could get in touch with mark and bill and they can have a that they could maybe even meet in a field and do social distancing and and have a paper copy not even looking at screens wi-fi when you have that you know excuse me amy yes scott yes thank you thank you amy so this uh you

184jogged my memory about something so i went back and looked at it again and i and so we're trying to work on this so um something to think about why is there a specific why is page seven specifically use the word procedure and why is there a procedure inside of a policy well that seems odd to me and i think that's what we were i'm just talking about some yeah so that's on page seven right oh procedures for social media so that could be something that this subcommittee looks at is to pull that out and to see if that needs to be not labeled as procedure or something pulled out and given to our admin team to create an actual procedure with that thank you scott okay thank you yeah that that wouldn't go in

185the policy um jennifer meeker wished to ask a question and jennifer yes sorry my mic kept disappearing um i just had a question you i think amy you said that the policy that was sent out to the board members i assume had some comments are those comments that you're willing to share with the public at this time or are those only going to be addressed in the next meeting um the pop i think you know last meeting i had asked if i could have a copy of the policy and you had indicated that a copy would be attached to the the meeting agenda and then it wasn't so you kindly emailed it to me yesterday but the copy that i received yesterday doesn't have any of the comments that you're suggesting are there um you

186know it's it's interesting because the agenda that i'm looking at and the policy the copy of the policy i'm looking at i got off the agenda so i don't know the agenda that's online yeah yes is actually the one that had the wrong call-in number for tonight's meeting too so maybe that's part of the problem that it's not the wrong that it's the wrong agenda um well i got the wrong link for the meeting because the pin number the call-in pin number doesn't work and the link wasn't working to get into the meeting as either so i'm wondering if maybe the one that's on the website is different than what you folks are looking at yeah it could be um i've yeah so i guess basically the question is am i entitled to get a

187copy of that before the next meeting before you're going to discuss it um i wouldn't see why not yeah but i you know i'll leave it to you chair amy yeah so i think i would have to ask larry how to do that because they're they're comments made by i i'm not sure how to send comments along with okay because i sent you what i have that has those comments on it and if you didn't get those comments i don't know how to send them so i would have to ask yeah my guess is i probably don't have permission to view the document as you're viewing it would be my assumption but yeah i have no idea because i sent you exactly what i have so if larry could take a look okay okay thank

188you i don't know if larry is still on i don't think he's still on but yeah i think he left so david if you could ask him to do that and at our next meeting it will be oh when where is that so this was the first reading so there will be a second reading at our next meeting and that will be the later august meeting we also were going to talk about the hartford anti-racism policy and i don't know if that was successfully shared with everyone i know i tried to do that but if no one got my sharing yeah yeah this is beth i didn't see it come through in the agenda or the attachments okay because it's number five on the agenda but um i i tried to share that with everyone

189so i guess we will have to table that as well um however well i will send it i'll send the link to everyone it's it's interesting it started out i think through the town of hartford but is now a school district policy and it's something that we could talk about as an su policy and we could also invite the a couple of the policy task task force members from hartford who worked they were part of a um racial equity committee in the town as well as the school and we could have them come talk with us and kind of discuss what their um what their process was in engaging their town um certainly given the current environment and events not only locally but nationally and around the world so that will be something we can

190put on our next agenda but i will send a link to that policy bill yeah i just wrote amy i just sent you a download of the policy in microsoft and it has the comments attached you mean the social media social media yes okay and so if anyone has questions and they want to read the comments that mark made and the policy then you can just send it to them okay i will do that and jennifer i will send that to you in fact i will send it to all of the board members plus jennifer and i will also send out the link to the hartford um yeah and that has not been adopted yet right amy um the hartford policy yeah that was my understanding somebody said it was i thought it was okay

191i heard it was still in like second or third reading but we we can verify that okay yeah amy it actually it was it was passed a couple of weeks ago it was like the day before our last month that made district meeting yeah i knew it was in progress they put out a press release about it good yeah thank you elizabeth so let me see that was all on our discussion on possible action items so around the su i think we've been around the su all night long yeah would everyone agree and it's really dark outside and i have to leave this building it might be scary um so let me see um setting the agenda for the next meeting will have financials and we will have the social media policy and we will

192have the hartford anti-racism policy and possibly someone coming to talk with us and also more on reopening and where we are and that'll be the regular meeting not this yeah exactly let's go our next meeting is only on the hybrid slash distance yeah or reopen yeah for diane's purposes we're going to call that a special meeting on the third so that'll be a special meeting only agenda item will be reopening amy yes chris um just the that i i think the um the hartford policy deserves a a real good uh view and discussion and i'm afraid if we have somebody come and talk about it as well we're gonna have so much else in the meeting especially since it's gonna be there yeah so we won't i think maybe but i'm going yeah push that

193to the next one yeah so i'm going to send out the link so all of you can be looking at it between now and then write down your questions not necessarily on the document because possibly not everyone will be able to see them but write them down to yourself and then we can talk about that at our next meeting thanks amy oh you're welcome that was a very good what you brought up because our next meeting is probably going to be as long as this one given the reopening and who knows what's happening um so david do we need executive session uh we do not we do not thank goodness no after adjournment though i'd like maybe for you and elizabeth to stick around for a minute i just have one quick question okay we

194can do that so i will take a motion so moved oh i was definitely second yeah she got it second and she did okay so i think we're all in favor yay bye bye good work tonight good work hard work but good work see ya bye thanks everyone thank you bye scott bye katie bye mark everybody's trying to talk to don't forget to stop the recording david ah good point thank you that's good good uh i don't know thank you