001[Music] okay good evening everyone I want to welcome you to our June 24th hu USD board meeting my name is Kaitlyn Hollister and I'm the chair of the heartwood Unified board please note that tonight's meeting will be available on Mad River TV as well as on our website tonight's board packet is online at hu USD org slash board if you look to the right and scroll down to see the 2019 2020 packets tonight's is the first link when we meet in person we typically use a speaker list and call on folks in the order they sign up in our online meetings I will ask interested speakers to click on the raise hand button or star nine on your phone and I will repeat your name to indicate that I've recorded it I will then choose
002names out of a hat if necessary offering each speaker up to three minutes to address the board I hope you will consider making your remarks concise in order to allow us to hear as many voices as possible if you have more to share with us that does not fit within this time frame we invite you to email the board with your thoughts or to speak at public comment during a future board meeting that way you can be sure all of your ideas have been heard by the board even if there was not time to through them all during this public comment period please know that we will not respond to public comments but we will be listening carefully if I indicate your time is up please and your remarks as we will be moving on
003to the remaining business of the meeting at the end of the public comment section I will offer any fine remarks if I can quickly address any of the topics raised thank you for taking the time to join us this evening at this time please click on the raise hand button if you would like to make a comment if you are calling by phone press star and I so I have Brian and I have Maureen Brian why don't you make sure I'm enabling you to speak and okay you should go ahead all right I'm setting my timer go ahead Brian it's very hard to hear you I'm speaking to the nine people is that better that's much better thank you go ahead thank you to them nine people who voted to retain Bridget you've rehired an
004employee who has lied about significant safety issues and has an outstanding credible accusations of racial insensitivity she has shown major insensitivity and other actions so it's not unreasonable to believe this is true she has a reputation for retaliating against employees who challenged her and has a vote of no-confidence from three of the six towns in the district she tried to shut down Mecca when I was getting started she even lied about me in an email one town is considering withdrawing from the district is this the best you can do to hire someone as superintendent actually it may be considering how you have damaged the district so badly that nobody of quality is willing to work here it's a pretty low bar you receive letters from 187 people asking you not to rehire her and 12
005asking you to keep her that's 15 to 1 asking you not to extend her contract once again you've spit in the face of the community there will be no chance of unity in this district until Bridget is gone Kaitlyn you were foolish and insulting to talk about unity the words you wrote in the valley reporter are completely contradicted by your actions this board continues into venting the pre-k through 12 plan which the district voted down in the first budget disco ball is like Trump in the Republicans who blocked change is desired by the maturity of the country you were like Trump forcing his rally on Tulsa despite being asked not to and risking harm to many people just to satisfy your ego what happened to honest representation you were not serving the people you're elected
006to represent this is why I called you corrupt politicians Rosemarie Christine and Jeremy you constantly betray the people you were supposed to represent in addition three members had a clear appearance of conflict of interest and refused to recuse themselves 187 to twelve and you ignored that you're pre-k through 12 plan is still pursuing the illegal closing of the middle school truncating the fifth and sixth grade at Moore town and closing faced in elementary all of which were soundly rejected in the first budget fatal Kaitlyn and Tory are you still confused about why it failed because nobody else is you have created quote anxiety fears and tears end quote in the students in this district why can't you just back off and let us get through this pandemic without creating more chaos anxiety and pain this
007cabal is trying to implement a fear-based austere and contractive restructuring is that how you want to teach our students to live I and many others prefer to creative life affirming an expansive approach how about stopping your bullying and giving that a chance Maurine go ahead oh I'm gonna need to get you home first here we go and go ahead if you can engineer me yes thank you Maureen go ahead okay great thanks I'm just making a comment about the racism issues in May of 2019 I was on the school board when we were contacted by a parent who was frustrated that our school Climate Survey was racially insensitive some of us sent responses that all of us missed or maybe chose not to see something bigger we missed the clear undertones of a struggle that
008this mother was having that day every day with her child of color in our schools my complicity and letting it slide a year ago has been weighing heavily on me for the last two weeks I'm thankful to that mother for being willing to hear from me for accepting my apology and for content connecting with me again this connection and a few others have turned into an odyssey of sorts that I now find myself on it's been an emotional journey and I want to give you a brief overview of the stories I have heard but first I want to be clear that I'll be telling you about six situations all six occurred in the past five years they occurred in three different schools in our district and all of them were known by people in positions
009of power building principals the superintendent and even in one case a school board chair they show a pattern of awareness and also in action over years I would like to share a quote from one of the parents I spoke with she said now all of a sudden the schools are responding and it doesn't feel authentic to underscore her point she told me that her for what her friend said to her her friend said I hate to say nothing ever changes but nothing will change and this is what I think we need to understand as we embark on trying to solve this big issue in our community we need to understand that many impacted families have already felt shut down multiple times by our system they already feel unheard and unseen they are already exhausted and
010some have already left our schools some are downright angry about what feels like a PR move on the part of the school system that shut them down before and the fact that some of the very people who were involved in their frustrating interactions in the past are the ones leading the charge now what we do as a district right now at this very moment is critical we need to build better environments for people of color in our schools and community but we also need to help the people who have felt wronged already in the past we need to help them heal and let that healing take whatever form is needed for each family at the very least we can start by recognizing by seeing the hurt we've already caused now I'm going to recount the
011six experiences very quickly I'm aware this list may be taking me a bit over three minutes but I respectfully asked you to let me finish the list out of respect for these families or you only have 15 seconds and I would welcome any family to speak with us or contact us really Maureen and you've been in this role I don't enjoy doing it I have to respect it for everyone and there are so many stories on many topics I will give you the rest of your time please go ahead okay I will not go into some of the ones that are more public I'll talk about the friend who told me about a child directed a racial slur toward her black child administrators knew didn't do anything tell you about the parent who had a
012protracted and racially charged bullying issue involving her son in one of our middle schools in 2015 she sent a letter two copies with copies to the principal Superintendent of Schools water barrier Duxbury chair at the time and the Vermont Board of Education I'll tell you about the mother of the family of color who told me that in 2017 she absent that is time I think that what you're sharing tonight shows the importance of the work that is on our agenda this evening as well and I don't think any of us doubt that there is much more to share there are more stories to tell and there is much much work ahead so thank you for sharing your thoughts and I'm going to go ahead to life and like once I've clicked you're gonna need to
013unmute okay thanks and make sure to speak in your a little bit face alright my name is Life League eros I live in Duxbury I sent a letter into today I hope folks have a chance to review it I have been studying this for some time I have a doctorate I'm an educator I wrote the blog post that the superintendent forwarded to you on behalf of the Horwood that said it was the best resource they've seen out there and I'll tell you what I mess up all the time I do racist stuff and have racist ideas because I'm a white man and that's my limitation and I do harm and I seek to repair it and this is what I'm coming to you tonight to just say please approach this issue in a different way
014because if you approach it the same way we're gonna be back in the same place you need to bring humility and you need to focus on learning and that learning is a different kind of learning that you've done ever before it's an internal learning it's a journey and in my letter you'll see that I cite the harm that our community has caused and that all of us are complicit including me I worked across a Brooke wasn't partnership on through my job at UVM and I've heard from what marine was just saying and from others there is a deep problem in our community like systemic racism interpersonal racism this is all over our country but who it's bad here we have to face this there is farm that has been done and that we are all
015part of humility and learning approaching it humbly by saying we need to have a healing process as a community we need to figure out what's going on and we're not gonna be able to do it the white people on this board and not gonna be able to do it we need to figure out a way to regain trust of the community members of color and students and I'll tell you right now this superintendent is not gonna help us do it and certainly the symbolic act of renewing months before you need it too was a mistake and I urge you to go back on that tonight and say we're not going to renew the contract yet take the renew off the table and revisit it in August you don't even have to do it till September
016because that's offensive to people in this community who have been harmed and people who have expertise and equity and anti racism the learning part as I tale my letter this needs to happen for all of us and you could start this and lead this you can invest and have a organization of color come in this summer and work with you deep work internal work understanding racism understanding white dominant culture it's complex stuff and I'm like I said I mess up all the time and I'm on the journey right now I've been on it for over a decade yeah and I just want to say that you could have admin as mandated for this training and all of you could join voluntarily and you could invite select boards as well because we have a problem in
017our community and needs to start with leadership doing and learning and then you could go to the teachers we could have some community conversations etc so I'll just say that I have heard from educators all over Vermont right now in this moment are saying is something gonna change can we really do this together like what can I do can I do this are we gonna do it together and I just say that you folks are no position of power and privilege and you have that choice right now in this pivotal moment to be anti-racist and to lead us all future I really think I've talked to you katelyn talk to me for an hour and a half the other night all of you you can do this we're behind you you just have to humility
018and learning and make a change and thank you I really quick guys thank you thank you um Kim will you go ahead please sure yeah thanks for thanks for hearing me um I just wanted to point out that as a parent of three kids in the district I am really really concerned that almost 1/4 of our kids feel actively unsafe at heartwood middle in high school and 30% apparently feel unsafe at Warren and only 12% can say they actually feel safe emotionally at her would the best anybody else gets to is neutral and that is incredibly troubling to me incredibly troubling and I hope the board will look at that because two of my kids have left different schools because they were treated perfectly and it was incredibly painful and I'm not the only one
019so please look at that closely Thanks thank you can I also just want to make sure that I have everyone's name for the record why inflation Waitsfield Maureen McCracken water very likely arrows of Duxbury and Kindle a law-based end so please indicate if I didn't have that correct I think that concludes our public comment so I want to thank you all and again I know how far the time unit is and how many conversations we do still need to have I'm gonna move on to what we have this evening and much of what's been raised this evening is relevant to tonight's agenda I'm first going to be looking to approve tonight's agenda from the board so are there any changes tonight's agenda otherwise I would ask for us let's see I have to go back
020to my panelists um Christine go ahead yes I was just gonna make a motion to approve the agenda I just see Kelly as well as there's something that you want No uh yeah I was wondering Caitlin if you could just I had a clarifying question around because I know that Katrina had asked for maca to be on the agenda could you just share your personal email with with the rest of the board so they're abreast on that situation please very very good yeah so we had did have an inquiry about some admin items related thank you thanks for the reminder we'll make sure everyone's up-to-date and everything is in shock Thanks um but I I don't think I necessarily need a motion Christine what I would say is if there are no objections we can
021approve tonight's agenda so I would ask now if there are any objections that I see a hand okay so seeing no objections we will move on with tonight's agenda that brings us to tonight's consent agenda Christine as your hands still up hands up okay thank you do I have any objections to tonight's consent agenda okay I speak Kelly and then I see Teresa go ahead Kelly I was just gonna ask if we can table the contract are you asking over both contracts to Biren to be removed from the consent agenda yes both the support staff and the superintendent particularly the superintendent okay so we if I want to make it clear so we will go through a motion then to approve the consent agenda after removing the superintendent's contract which we would take up at
022the next order of business don't we need motion don't we have to vote on the motion to remove it from the consent agenda no we have been allowing that to go with with one request Teresa did you have another item no I'm okay do I have a second I'll second that thank you is there anyone opposed to approving tonight's consent agenda after removing the superintendent's contract Cherise are you opposed I'm sorry I trying to get my screen down though yeah okay so then I'm gonna have Tori mark everyone as approving consent agenda after removing the contract the superintendent's contract okay hearing no other changes that will pass what I am gonna do then is I'm going to ask us to move that contract into the next order of business and that will bring us to
023an executive session and so I would ask us to enter into executive session for the purpose of discussing an employee's contract because doing so in public session we clearly place that employee at a substantial disadvantage I see Christine are you making that motion yes second second so what I want to indicate members of the public is we will as board members be leaving this meeting the meeting will still sit they active and we will return and resume this meeting after on this executive session is complete oh we oh I'm sorry do you need to the vote Thank You Teresa go ahead of them yeah can I make a request to table this to later in the meeting so that we can have back-to-back executive sessions and hopefully have more people you know the public can
024we move forward with the rest of our agenda I move this towards the end of the meeting so that more public can be part of it so they don't have to wait for us to have that other discussion I don't expect this to be a long one so I am gonna ask us to take care of it now so that we can come right back and and update them because I think this is also something that a lot of people have attended the meeting to hear about so I wouldn't want them to have to stay on it this is the topic that they're most interested in they thought would be taking care of at the outset Oh No so is there anyone opposed to entering executive session okay hearing no opposition I am gonna ask
025board members to move off of this call and you will be needing to check your email for an invite from sorry and she will start that as a separate zoom off thank you I [Music] need to see right yeah and the cool thing we've learned over the last couple months I think not only are we reliant on you [Music] you