10-25-2021 School Board Meeting

001and then we can get started um so we have community comments as we always do to start the meeting um then we have a presentation from jen cote the underhill central school principal we will after that have our district budget priorities for the 223 school year we have a few moments after that to talk about the vermont school board association resolutions that have been proposed and will be voted on early next month then we can approve our minutes and have committee reports and then talk about any other business or future agenda items does anybody have anything to change ad take away from the agenda all right looks like everybody is comfortable with this agenda so the first thing we have is our community comments um for community comments it's an opportunity for anyone in the

002community to present whatever they would like to do for the board if it's not on the agenda it won't be discussed in this meeting but it could be put on a future agenda item so is there anybody from the community that has anything they'd like to share with the board or are there any board members or other people present who would like to represent community comments i'm not seeing any so wave at me if you want to get my attention okay um yes eve diggs if you could tell us um what town you're from um you are you have the floor and you'll just have to on me there you go yeah so can you hear me yes okay so i'm from the town of bolton my name is actually steve diglio d-i-g-l-i-o i have

003a couple questions um going through the agenda tonight it looks like there's a whole bunch of policies that are going to be discussed are those in order of relevancy like um uh the 2020 to 2023 district instruction policies seems like there's a whole bunch of them being discussed it starts with kind of purpose pursue efforts to close opportunity gap advancement to racism and equality initiatives yeah so that agenda item is a presentation so i was i'll talk about it a little bit more when we get there but it's a presentation to the board about some of the broad strokes of topics that are in the budget for the upcoming school year so it's not policies okay so because i do have some concerns over some of the things being added into the curriculum under some

004of these um initiatives so now you would have an opportunity to share with us any concerns you might have again we probably won't be talking about them but the other thing if it's a curriculum issue it you know address it to the board and you could also address it to the curriculum director to andrew jones at central office so what we're happy to listen to now well i mean in particular when it comes to like the anti-racism type stuff you know it's kind of based off of an ideology that i'm kind of concerned is not helpful to the end goal and i know this school board has sort of moved forward with it and you know as i'm getting into the epistemology behind it it kind of seems like it's it's almost like toxic in

005nature where you know no matter what what the situation is racism is perceived it's just a matter of how it played out and it kind of has a dynamic of oppressor versus oppressed which which typically doesn't end well um and i'm just kind of curious how that became such a big focus i understand we have a non-uh discrimination policy that seems to be pretty robust and now we're adding this in and i know we're all against racism but but this is pretty ideological and political and i'm just not sure why we're now hyper focused on it um i i i i have a lot of critiques in epistemology and and and one of them like you know uh if you look at the book how to be an anti-racist ibrahim x candy or um he

006basically says the the cure for past occurs discrimination is future discrimination so i mean are we teaching discrimination as part of this because according to you know the books that's kind of how it goes which seems to go against our discrimination policy as a school which are non-discrimination policies of school which seems to make sense um yeah the other thing i've kind of brought up which which is kind of related kind of not i wrote a letter to you about a year ago um this about the black lives matter flag that's that's standing up there and it has nothing to do with the phrase black lives matter it has to do that with that it's a political symbol um in a publicly funded school and um i was informed that you know it was not

007about the group uh that's political it was about the phrase um but my kid was shown a video of the founders of the national political group black lives matter so the school itself is is conflating the groups and the phrase and considering how partisan and political that group is it does seem like a conflict of interest when it comes to being nonpartisan well thank you for your comments as i said before this isn't um we don't do it back and forth here and this is you know i'm happy to talk about this further i'm happy to shoot you an email um okay i just i it is kind of interesting like um you know i'm involved in a lot of public meetings and it seems like we have to preempt discussions on this particular format

008and instead of having you know the public have maybe a five minute only period anytime you know after the boards had their discussion um this way it is now as the board has their discussions we listened to and then we had to wait two weeks to kind of you know discuss what happened you know in the prior meeting anyway it just seems like a tough way to incorporate you know public input um efficiently into a discussion that has i mean a lot of these things on the agenda never even talked about yet and we kind of have to preempt the discussion and questions about them um and it's kind of a difficult format like all the meetings i have we normally have a you know public comment after all the board members have asked their

009questions and clarifications then we asked the public for their comment on what's being discussed at the time but it just seems like a tough way to get that and anyway just just a critique i know it's been like this for a while and i'm new here but it's you know it's a con seems like a difficult way but i do appreciate your time thank you any other public comments or anybody representing public comment okay um so jen thought i saw you did i see you no um jan i'm going to be representing densely smith can you hear me i can hear you great jon so again we're dealing with some coveted cases um out in underhill center and so she's not going to be able to um to make it tonight um so i told

010her that i would uh talk a little bit about what's in the principal's report and i would also support um with the priorities that she was going to touch on tonight with the board um everybody uh get a chance to to take a look at the report so we added um jen talks about um the parent group and the involvement it's been strong i know one of the things she touched on is that it'll be good for the school to get back to a place where we can have more interaction and more engagement with families and other folks in the community once we've reached the other side of this pandemic but parents have been supporting in a lot of different ways and meeting with jen and talking about what some of the hopes and dreams

011are for the school as well as supporting some of the work in the outdoor classrooms one of the things that uh that she shared that i thought was interesting was um that something they started at ucs was sending some something positive home to students and families about things that have happened celebrating successes at the school in small and in some big ways and she said that the families and parents have have shared with her and other folks in the school what a great new piece of celebrating students and the good things that are going on at underhill center she talks a little bit about student voice and they have been they took a look at what their mission statement for the school and they were able to engage with students and sharing with some of

012their thoughts and and what they think is great and important about school and what they wanted incorporated into the mission statement and the school was able to do that she goes on to talk about literacy which is a theme across the the school district uh they've set a pretty lofty goal of um 85 of the students reading on grade level by the end of this school year and they've done a lot of work to try to make sure that students are reading at grade level and she talks about some of the work that they're doing around with their multi-age classrooms because they have different grade levels and different age students in each class and how they're working to implement the word study program successfully she goes on to talk about the outdoor spaces um that

013have really grown and i would say blossomed i've had the good fortune to go out and take a look at them um and they're used often uh and consistently um and the students and teachers you know are getting a lot out of that um talks about some artwork that's uh that came from a grant from a a ucs uh alum um and mary lacy um you know with some feedback from folks has is um is uh going to be uh doing some murals across the school with a a theme that came from the school community as well as some of the students one of the pieces of that eating i talked about we've added obviously a couple of things in this one is aspirations and some opportunities and uh that this is of our way

014of talking about some of the challenges and we're looking at them as some opportunities as well but you know we're in the middle of a pandemic i think that that's going to be a theme you're going to hear about this evening at least for me and we've had to adjust some of our expectations and really focus on um having students understand and learn how to be in school um uh in a on a consistent way if you think about last year the educational programming was disjointed um and and very very different than it is this year having full in person and so there are some schools some teachers that uh and some students that are that are adjusting um this year and particularly students learning about you know how to be in school and some

015of the processes and some of the structures and some students are are are getting used to that but having some challenges as well so really focusing on social emotional learning and being patient and trying to bring some joy and jen talks about some love and into education um and that's been a um an opportunity you know and a challenge as well um underhill center is one of our schools that recently has had a you know a number of cases what happens is teachers need to you know pivot from in-person learning to some level of synchronous and asynchronous education that's not only you know hard on on teachers but also really hard on students so we've had to do a lot of adjusting on a lot of additional planning and that is that i would say

016is really worn down um some of our teachers um and some of our students as well um you know we're only in october and i'm hearing really from a lot of our buildings that teachers are tired um and they're feeling a level of anxiety and stress you know as we've tried our best to transition into full in person learning as you know we're dealing with one two three cases really on a daily basis you know over the weekend i think we had five and so that requires a lot of communication and a lot of adjustment from our teachers they've done a great job and i know when i talked to jen today um she really stressed that we need to be patient some of the things that i have shared with the board recently patient

017we need to dial back some of our expectations for students and for our schools at least in the near term until we can get to the other side of this pandemic and she talks about some ways that she's trying to make uh teachers who are you know the great and staff members um uh less stressed giving them some opportunities to really plan and think more in their classrooms and just giving them less initiatives and less requirements you know we're we're working hard to do that across the board but certainly word we understand because we're living it as well our principles and myself you know some of the anxiety that's really associated with this unrelenting pandemic jen goes on to talk about also the outdoor learning which we're going to get to a little bit later

018in the meeting but it's really it's expanded greatly across the school district uh really every school and we're we're seeing we're reaping the benefits um as far as engagement health and students really getting an appreciation for how beautiful and wonderful vermont is while learning to to read and write and be scientists and artists and mathematicians and musicians so even in the middle of pandemic i'd say there's some really amazing things going on at underhill center with a fantastic fantastic group of teachers um and personnel and families and students so certainly some challenges but a lot of good going on as well so jan uh wanted to apologize that she could not be here but this is sort of the reality i had a hard time um you know getting here and and probably will have

019a hard time being completely focused for the whole evening just because of the fact that we are we are trying to support families and students and staff as we're dealing with um covet cases and we one of the things we do know is that we are seeing increased cases and that's you know that's part of the reality when you open schools and there is community spread but the contact chasing is working um and you know i met with the health department today and jen was there and essentially they said underhill center is doing everything right um that we're picking up the positive cases we're having people quarantine and um and that's going to hopefully reduce the spread of covert 19. in the near term you know we're hopeful that we're going to get a the

020bat be able to vaccinate students 5 to 11 and that'll be a big deal and implement test to stay um but jen really wanted me to emphasize the fact that you know we're going to be talking about priorities tonight but really we need to get through this pandemic before we can really start pushing any any big initiatives or any new initiatives or even some of the initiatives that we have thanks john appreciate it and we absolutely understand that um jen can't be here we appreciate that you're here we appreciate that there are so many principals and assistant principals here um it's you know it's you have all heard me say this at least once but this is the meeting that is my favorite and when it was just for the finance committee i would always

021make the meeting i called in from numerous locations before we did all this virtual thing because um it is the meeting i think that gives us the best overview of what's really happening in our school district so um thank you all for being here we really appreciate it we know last year and this year have been tremendously difficult complicated always changing um and that yeah this year especially without the leadership from the um from the government from montpelier it's been even more challenging so we really appreciate that we appreciate everybody's dedication to our students um and to our community um i was not going to have questions for jen if she's not here if the board kind of gives me a thumbs up that that's okay to move on we will do that a couple

022of thumbs excellent thank you okay so thank you thank you moving to um the discussion of the district and budget priorities with the principals um there are a few folks who have never been to a board meeting to present before um so gretchen mueller who is the principal at campbell's hump derek williams who's the principal at jericho elementary welcome to both of you um rebecca i think marsh you've been to a board meeting before yes yep so welcome christina you've presented at a board meeting fernandez yes i lost you yep okay great did i miss anybody everybody else has been here okay so i'm going to turn it over john i don't know if you have any um lead in that you'd like to do i'm going to turn it over and then at the

023end of each section um board member and student reps if you have questions just pop your hand up and we can follow up on those questions the only intro i would have is to really thank the principals um assistant principals for being here tonight you know they have been as you said a 100 dedicated um and done a lot of the heavy lifting that often goes you know unsung and unseen but we're a close-knit group that is really always trying to pull on the same rope with the number one priority being student success and we know if we're going to be able to do that you know we've got to meet them where they are we've got to have diverse educational opportunities and we've got to focus on not just their academic needs but some

024of their social and emotional needs as well the only other thing i would add and i said in the beginning these are multi-year priorities and you know we're we're always striving to do better and work on a lot of different initiatives but we've really had to dial this back a bit and hit the pause button on some of our our plans and some of our initiatives until we can get out of crisis mode and that is all all i have thank you good evening everybody uh kevin hamilton browns river middle school principal um it's good to see you it's hard to believe i'm the older one on the staff now in terms of the administrators here so uh my question might have me beat by a little bit i guess uh but it is good

025to see everybody um jeremy and i are gonna do the uh jeremy rector from res is gonna be doing uh we're gonna be talking about the uh the street strategic priority around pursuing efforts to close the opportunity gap you know we talked i talked to jeremy a little bit uh texting actually this evening about what we're really talking about is access for our kids um is um giving them access um you know i think in terms of putting the pause button this is one of those ones we probably are not putting a pause button on and the pandemic is these students um are the ones who are struggling quite a bit and we want to be able to support them and as a district we continue to address the needs of the economically disadvantaged students

026through a variety of means to ensure that they graduate effective and engaged citizens we continue to address the needs by helping students gain access to our curriculum through a variety of means to help them achieve a success through graduation from our schools we want our students to be well taken care of when they come into the schools today um you know it's it's great that we're able to feed all of our students uh free food free lunches um and three breakfasts and hopefully that will continue for our students um that's been a big help for our students i think um coming in ready to learn um ready to to be a part of our community our as you can see there's a list on the right of the the many different opportunities that we have

027for our students that we continue to will continue to move forward with as a community as a school anywhere from you know the many investments around summer programming our social work positions uh social emotional learning and different training for equity and trauma-based training for our student our staff as well it's going to go a long way for helping our students to to gain access to our to our curriculum and to our educational opportunities it's really important to us again this is one of those ones that we can't hit the pause button on we gotta really move forward with this um and and help our students access all the things that we have including co-curricular activities um multi-tiered level supports um so those are things that we're going to continue to pursue and look for other

028opportunities to help our students access the curriculum as we move forward as a leadership team here i talked to mike weston a little bit about the opportunities for graduation the high school provides a variety of pathways towards graduation around you know the traditional pathway to graduation through the tech centers through early college admission a lot of vermont colleges students participate with that with vermont colleges i believe clarkson is another opportunities for kids to get early admission to college so there's been kids that have taken advantage of that the vast tech program uh the vermont uh tech center and randolph there's other access to those opportunities for our students as well um there's an adult vermont adult diploma independent work study so we really want to give kids opportunity our students opportunity and access and we

029are looking for those ways and continuing moving forward with some of the the work that we've done and other opportunities i talked a little bit about the high school i'm going to turn it over to jeremy to talk a little bit about things going on at the elementary school great thanks kevin and again um yeah access is is key and essential and i think if you look at the or when you look at the other priorities and when the rest of the principals and assistant principals present you'll really see that um each of the priorities is kind of represented within this um you can almost see this as an overarching or key priority in terms of like everything we're doing to to work to close that opportunity gap um when looking at the list on

030the right um really i i think um while some of the things have had the pause button or the the re-envision button kind of pressed i think the mtss button if you you know one of the the tabs closer to the bottom that's something that i really see us as a you focusing on as a priority and adding some additional resources too and really what that's doing is just helping us to ensure access for folks within our buildings aligning our est systems elementary principles went to a gm dmg presentation district management group around scheduling and effects of scheduling and how we can impact student outcome and achievement with scheduling in a positive way aligning our systems of support and just being as as aligned as possible so really i i truly believe this this this

031priority is overarching and you'll see it represented in each of the ones below um you know and i think to what john had said earlier the um it it's important to recognize and and yeah this is apparent for everyone here you know that this is all happening within uh a pandemic and so um access to folks you know jen cote is not here right now because there's a number of of pods that i'm sure have gone down families have gotten letters just ensuring access through devices through high quality teaching all of our systems have been redesigned so that we can deploy materials and resources in a day and that's pretty amazing so that is how we are working to ensure that we can close the opportunity gap so board members student reps any questions comments

032ethan hi sorry just one clarification just because you dipped into my my world a little bit kevin but there is really no longer an adult diploma program it's the high school completion program which is a you know flexible pathways for anybody 16 or older sort of absorbed the what was the adult diploma program from from way back when thank you okay i think christina and i are next excuse me my name is rebecca marsh i am the the new second year assistant principal of browns river middle school and we are going to talk about the priority of advancing anti-racism and equity initiatives so the district goal is that we better understand implicit bias systemic racism the effects of discrimination and methods to create inclusive and and an anti-racist school environment this has an influence on

033the budget and that funds are needed to coordinate elevate and continue this work this includes funding time and support needed for professional learning consultation from outside experts and facilitators such as dr lavelle brown who is doing a lot of this work with us this year and we're happy to have him on board christina fernandez assistant principal from mansfield union high school this priority is important to all students learning well-being and overall success advancing anti-racism and equity initiatives help our students learn how to become more inclusive understanding and appreciative of differing perspectives and backgrounds additionally this work better equips our teachers and staff to engage students in thoughtful conversations in classrooms and with each other this priority aligns with our global ends in several ways the mmusd a bar so our anti-bias anti-racism group the goal

034statement states our specific focus on anti-racism in mmusd is intentional as we aim to empower our students with the critical thinking skills and equity literacy needed to be anti-biased and anti-racist global citizens this aligns with global ends 1.1 knowledge and skills as it pertains to critical thinking it also aligns with global ends 1.2 citizenry and community in our ability to graduate effective engaged citizens our district work related to advancing anti-racism and equity initiatives include last year even given the pandemic we were able to audit our school environments both common spaces and classrooms our focus was on creating spaces that welcome and celebrate all students we are conducting curriculum audits to self-assess our current practices through an equity lens the school board administrative team district a bar council and individual schools are working with dr louvall

035brown this year who is an equity specialist we're also building our internal capacity to facilitate and sustain anti-racism work for example over the past two years two-thirds of mmu professional staff have taken the graduate level course courageous conversations about race our district is supporting several teams to attend the 2021 roland conference this year that has a focus on racial equity restorative practice and school redesign lastly our district is also in the process of developing a multi-year equity action plan thank you thanks um board members questions comments yes tara thank you is this where we would also consider hiring a director of de ni should i mean would that go in this priorities list hiring somebody to be the director of yeah yeah this would be the area where that would be in the budget okay

036thank you or or our position like that yep so we invested some money last year that we had put in the budget along with some grant funds to be able to fund somebody to help us with a curriculum development and really do some on-site coaching with with staff kennedy and then chuck yeah thank you excuse me um it's not really a comment it's kind of a comment not really a concern but i wanted to put in a plug the mmu alum program that maybe you guys have heard about we're doing a community course and a student course we're having a um it's not really a meeting it's more like a seminar um where we're having students and community members come talk uh i think it's it's a weekend mid-november i'm pretty sure it's 15th and

03714th and 15th um we're gonna have like an open meeting where we have like scenarios where people can come in and kind of like practice having some conversations about race so we're gonna have posters up and we'll post on front porch car and stuff like that but i wanted to like let everyone know and say like hey that's happening if anyone's interested um thank you kennedy i'm currently taking one of the classes one of the eight week classes i'll just put a note out there to community members if you can get in if it works with your schedule it's really worth your time for community members for staff students have a different we're not in with the students so um chuck you have question comment i'm interested in um knowing more about what what the

038level of student interest is kind of coming into this work i mean is this something that there's kind of a pre-existing appetite for or is this yeah i guess that's my question there absolutely is at the high school level uh we have a student group there's a color that's focused on um actually i think they changed their name this year sorry mike what is their new focus well there still is the cougars of color which are the students at mmu of color and it's a support group and it's a group that also helps us see some things we're doing well maybe some things we we improve we have a student equity group to answer your question chuck um students do students want to try to do what's right um and uh just today you know

039i heard a student talking about their 11th grade um you know book that they were reading and how was the fifth time they've read it and they were just so excited to to be able to talk about it in class and um yeah i this isn't something we're forcing and just to add to that really quick as a student like the fact that when we're taking the alums are teaching a course outside where we're asking students to add to their workload and like to focus on learning more outside of class and that they're still doing it even like juniors and seniors who are stressed out of their minds with junior year in the workload there that they're still taking the time to come in once a week and like have those conversations just speak to

040like how important it is and it's not just they want to learn about it in class it's they want to learn about it for life and i think that that's something that's important to stress i'm trying not to say anything as little as i can but i know that my conversations with middle level folks as well that they're really engaged in wanting to learn and um and understand and be inclusive and see what's going on in the world around them and that really you know penetrates into the elementary school as well but there's i would say there's a real appetite big one to engage students another way for us to to do that the other piece i'd say and i don't want to talk too much is that people are really interested in this you

041know the vast majority of our our personnel and staff members are think this is really really important work and want to do it and want to do it well and understand that there are different perspectives we need to listen to those you know we need to affirm those and always try to do what's right thank you any other questions or comments okay let's move on to the next topic all right good evening everybody this is derek williams principal uh proud principal of jericho elementary um i'm going to speak to uh for a bit about the third priority uh and it's centered on providing safe and healthy learning environments in coba 19 pandemic situations like we're in right now so um ironically jen cote was supposed to present with me tonight but she is not able

042to be here because she's actualizing this very priority as we speak so um but i'm happy to to speak on both of our behalf and to share some of our thinking around this very important and very timely priority that we're kind of living and breathing through as as we speak um kind of going to frame it around three question words why what and how and so for the beginning we'll start with the why why is this important and how does it impact student learning some of this may seem obvious but i think it is really important to talk about because uh of the work the the diligence the work the vigilance that the district is putting in um day in and day and day out to um to frame you know the work that we're

043doing to keep kids safe and on staff and families so mitigation factors are critical to keeping uh students and staff in person for student learning as it has always been the health and safety of our community is a school is the school district's number one priority and so when we're thinking about that the discussion that we'll have the kind of the pieces that we've highlighted for you tonight really are about that that preeminence of the idea of maintaining health and safety for the entire greater community and we are celebrating the fact that our students can be here or in person learning for the end hopefully the entirety of the school year they started with day day one in person um so that was a different narrative than last year last school year and certainly different

044than the ending of the previous year year before that so that was the why the wad is what does this look like and sound like in school so i'm just going to share with you some of the things um that we have been doing or are doing to maintain the safety and well-being of students and staff we continue to purchase and use a variety of ppe materials to mitigate the spread of coven for example masks for students in any given day students come and they might have lost or forgotten or can't find their masks we provide those we have shields available we have gloves available and a variety of cleansers that are made available at a moment's notice throughout all of our schools in the near future we will be implementing you may have seen

045recently john sent out the uh test to stay uh strategy that will be beginning in the near future students will be who are determined to be close contacts of a positive cova case will be tested by school personnel right now that could look at as a combination of things in our schools it might be existing staff members that have volunteered who want to be a part of that initiative or effort or the district is currently has posted for individuals from the greater community who might want a a job to come in and help with that testing that will happen the test to stay strategy they would work solely for that purpose of helping implement the test to stay for students that were deemed close contacts who had parents who had signed off on giving permission

046for the children to be tested and that testing happens every day of the quarantine period and so as you can see it's a lot of moving parts to ensure that that strategy is up and running and efficacious for our students the district just recently approved a resolution just important to note requiring all mmusd employees to either be fully vaccinated against coven 19 or if unvaccinated they will be required to perform a weekly pcr test supplied by the school and so that is getting ready to begin the the staff had until last friday to let us know their status we're still cleaning that up and then that process will be beginning momentarily um we're also continuing in all of our buildings to monitor ventilation systems to ensure we have adequate airflow uh throughout our buildings uh

047some of which are quite old and so making sure that we are able to maintain those and we we did a lot of that work uh in the school year before last and we're continuing it's an ongoing effort of testing and ensuring that ventilation is um is not just adequate but is is uh meets the the high needs and expectations that we set for our students and in our buildings uh we've also had mmusd sponsor a variety of vaccination clinics at mmush or mmu for short to eligible vermonters and just as a side thought we're excited about the prospect of getting our youngest students at the elementary level vaccinated that is still evolving as we speak but it looks um like it might be a possibility and a go for our five to 11 year

048olds who are not able to be vaccinated just yet and then lastly i want to talk and i talked about the why i mentioned a little bit of the what the moving parts pieces and then of the how how does this impact student learning well i think it goes without saying if students aren't able to be at school and present and healthy that none of the other priorities are really able to happen but schools are continuing in the moving parts of living in a coven 19 pandemic that is still present and in our community they're looking at how we can limit those interactions of students so when we do have to do contact tracing um it limits the pool of students that are um potentially having to quarantine so that's happening throughout our schools our

049conscientious and strategic thoughts about how we group students different homerooms and different different configurations throughout the school day to prevent or at least mitigate possible spread how does it impact student learning as well as many schools have also created different configurations for recess especially at the the elementary level um recess and then also at the middle school levels and lunch times at the elementary middle and high school levels what do that what does that look like and sound like so trying to think strategically uh always again with the health and safety of our students at the forefront of our minds contact tracing is occurring as it is at this very moment it sounds like uh in all of our state common spaces in our buildings we have in many of the buildings uh record sheeting

050sheets or some sort of record keeping that's happening so if a person goes in that classroom and stays for 15 minutes or more we record those in public spaces throughout the many of the schools in our district and then you might have recognized or received the district alert system has been activated to communicate with families if their child has been deemed to close contact and that system has thus far proven to be both effective and efficient and then i'll just say lastly and john can add anything that he might feel germane to this but the esser funds or the elementary and secondary schools emergency relief funds have been used uh they were granted to us through the federal government um been those have been made available uh to support instruction to impact student learning whether

051that be through purchasing a material resources or staffing we've been able to do some of that and that's in a staged process sr1 sr2 some of those funds have already been spent and some will be spent are being encumbered as we speak lastly i just want to kind of summarize the what the how and the why in that schools have put a variety of structures and measures in place to support remote learning when needed to do so and however because of the ongoing vigilance and mitigating spread and our entire community is working collaboratively to maintain to the extent possible the ideal instructional setting of again in person learning so i'm proud of the work i know firsthand that my teachers have done in those instances where we've had to go remote but i'm also really

052proud of our families who've stepped up and and know what they need to do to help keep themselves their their children and the greater communities safe so i think that this goal this priority right now supports all of the global lens in our district around knowledge and skills community being lifelong learners right now we're living through this pandemic and so i think it has that underpinning unfortunately that impacts everything else a ripple effect um for what we do but we have learned and learned from and reflected on what we've done and improved practices over the last two years of living through this and i'm proud of of what the district is doing to keep all of us safe so that's it from me on that but i'd love to entertain any questions people from the

053community might have great thank you questions comments i'm sure it's disheartening for everybody to think about the fact that we have to keep covered front and center even looking at next school budget but it is part of where we are right now and what's happening right now so thank you thank you next priority okay so i have the next one along with sally hayes um and we're going to be talking about our continued support of literacy and mathematics proficiency through continued professional development and resources robust literacy and mathematics programming and instruction as we all know are the foundation of our education system additionally educator preparedness and quality are significant factors in student success and acquisition of key proficiencies this priorities influence on the budget entails a continuation of investments in embedded professional development and coaching

054and literacy math and other curriculum resources programs and interventions it also impacts our continued work on our mtss our multi-tiered systems of support this ensures that we continue to ensure our high quality first instruction with qualified teachers and and as well as working on systems that help us to meet the needs of all of our learners sally's going to go into some details so when we look at the acquisition of key proficiencies for students and overall student success we really have to focus on um educator educator preparedness and quality it's critical that our teachers stay current in instructional best practices in literacy and math while some of the content may stay the same and constant over time some content changes and at the same time we're continually learning more about how to refine our skills

055and update strategies based on current research in teaching and learning and our professional learning and implementation help us meet this end if we're looking at our our priorities the global ends 1.1 knowledge and skills mathematics and literacy obviously is synonymous with this and if we're looking at how to engage effective citizens and graduates of mmusd we want to be focusing on literacy and math because these are lifelong skills and the ability to communicate and problem solve is really critical for our graduates so really in summary if we're looking at the budget and this priority we want to continue supporting instruction with a common curriculum in literacy and math provide ongoing professional development to keep practices and instructional strategies current we want to continue coaching to provide and refine high quality tier one instruction and of

056course updating and supplementing resources such as books and materials thank you any questions comments [Music] okay next priority evening everybody it's mike weston uh william p card was unable to make it tonight so you're stuck with just me from my son's bedroom which is much dirtier than it should have been i thought he cleaned it before he left for college um my priority is to ensure the facility systems are efficient well maintained and provide safe and healthy education environments and phil graf did a great job on this a couple weeks ago derek hit on a lot of the the things we've changed in our buildings because of kovid in a little bit later tonight you're going to be hearing uh from gretchen about outdoor ed because when we talk about facilities we're not just talking

057about in our building we're talking about all our spaces um you know the the goal here is that we want to make sure we have a quality learning and instruction environment we want to have positive culture and student engagement and our building plays a big part of that over the past 19 months and that's how long we've been dealing with this since you know march of wow 2020 uh 2019 2020 um we've had to use our buildings as we've never used them before i have buildings that we have buildings in high school that before this were closets that we're now using in important ways we have um a cafeteria that last year served as a study hall um so we've had to change in the fact we were able to because of our our maintenance

058staff because of our custodial staff they were able to to make it work um is is quite incredible um we continue to look to find ways to make our buildings meet the needs of our students and to provide the education that they they need as well as to create a place that they're comfortable um being comfortable um having a place that you're pride you have pride in in knowing that uh knowing that the place you're at values you can be seen by looking around and that's something that um that we do um and it's something the board has always supported in the past so i you know i kind of want to thank you for everything you've done the past and i doubt there's any questions but i'm more than happy to answer something on

059the facilities questions comments i have a comment i just want to say her oh chuck you chuck i'll let chuckle because i bet he's going to say what i was going to say our buildings look so good you know i mean i go into mmu more than others um but it's true of all the buildings but i'll tell you when a kid goes to mmu and goes through that front door the first thing they should they can tell is that someone cares about them you know that that building is is uh it just shows well um and you know i mean it's true throughout the district and and it's different in our district i'm telling you i mean going to basketball games and you know i mean i'm a little bit out ten years out

060of date i guess i'm going around prowling around all the various little elementary schools for basketball games but um we've got some our buildings are well cared for yeah it's one of the downsides of the pandemic not the most important one but one of the downsides is that board members haven't had the option ability to tour we used to tour uh three to five five schools a year some a lot of schools a year and we're looking forward to getting back to that um soon um andrew pond and i recently had the opportunity to get into a lot of the different schools in our district and you know it's just like chuck said everything looks great people know that they're cared for um students know that they're cared for intrinsically by walking into a building

061that is cared for so we all appreciate that that what i wanted to say before is that one of the benefits of our merger before we had um mmu yeah not in your head mike um mmu camel's hump and browns river were all part of the same district and i think those facilities were cared for together um you know as a bigger entity and now that we're a fully emerged district with all of our schools i feel like all of the schools have improved significantly um and yeah i'm seeing some heads nodding from administrators so i think that we all have benefited from that and i don't want to let this opportunity pass without thanking the community for allowing us to merge and allowing us to have a lot better schools um minimally the facilities

062um because of it yes ethan yeah we just you know add to echo that that the coordination of you know being able to leverage all of our systems when it comes to facilities is just a huge benefit and the expertise that you can now share i think you know john you do a great job of of managing all these different pieces but you know certainly as someone um in huntington just uh knowing that sally and her team have the opportunity to leverage a larger community is so great so thanks for mentioning that edie and chuck yeah i i want to thank you as well um our buildings have never been in better shape they really haven't and that's uh i uh this is the longest serving administrator currently um on our team they've never looked

063better and i think a lot of it has to do with that coordination and the commitment and the fact that we've been able to carve out around 400 grand that we didn't have before to prioritize important projects and that's made a big difference a huge difference not just on the the facade or the physical of the aesthetics but the safety you know that it really has made a huge huge difference so um want to thank all the principals for understanding that the physical environment is one of the critical parts to a really really good school and a really really good strong school system i don't know if everybody saw that kevin was just showing off their new uh uh gym bleachers i know we have new bleachers both at camel's hump and at browns river

064so yeah we got 50 years out of those bleachers 50 that's remarkable 50 years yeah that's that is amazing but when you go you look at those bleachers i mean it's like a brand new place it really is quite impressive i i was blown away john we're getting more than 50 years because we made benches out of the bleachers too sitting outside so folks we utilize everything we don't waste anything that was almost really bad timing because i almost just that my cells are all over the screen so thank you john i appreciate that all right next priority so good evening everybody that's a great segue into priority six mike and i will be presenting um the priority state we are going to provide programming that supports and and initiates initiatives that promote social and

065emotional learning strong mental health and wellness provide programming and this is important because students from poverty and trauma-filled backgrounds those with learning difficulties those with mental health issues and students who have struggled in the pandemic they all have to be served and supported and why is this an important one students need to feel safe and emotionally regulated in order to learn and gain knowledge and skills which is one of our ends once the students have are able to access their knowledge and skills they need to feel safe welcome and be emotionally open to the new experiences which then would allow citizenry and community skills to develop and to help them learn turn into lifelong learners at our elementary schools we have a lot of programming and i appreciate john and jen saying in the beginning

066that it's important to slow down i think we've all felt the need for that this year to slow down and to just be there with with the students and to listen most of our elementary schools follow the second step social and emotional curriculum and that curriculum has activities around bullying prevention personal safety procedures problem solving it teaches children how to make friends how to do conflict resolution and how to be a good friend we also have mindfulness activities in our classrooms we use restorative practices and circles with our children we have social cognition programs such as the zones of regulation where students learn where are they on this emotional ladder and and how they can can bring themselves back back down if they're too high we have howard mental health clinicians and we have we

067offer quiet and active outdoor experiences with all of our classrooms we also use responsive classroom conscious discipline and pbis which are school-wide practices to help students at the middle schools they have advisory groups where they do a lot of teaming and social interactions they have project evolve which is an alternative program for students in grades five through eight and at the elementary school we also have an alternative program jeremy what's it called now it's the multi-age program re mac re mac the the multi-age program for children in grades k-4 and most of the middle school social and emotional skills are taught in the health and guidance curriculums how it affects the budget we're hoping to use esser funds for a social emotional screening tool and to provide a district-wide social and emotional curriculum and mike

068is going to tell you about the high school hi everyone you sort of stuck with me for the this priority the next one as well um you know social emotional learning um and student support has kind of been a top of the the list for a while uh in particular mmu you know we're in our 17th year of having an advisory program which i call the the glue that holds us together um but over the past uh five to six years we've even had a shift to to that um and certainly more through covid but before covid we were starting to look at having what we call kitchen table discussions we had one this year to talk about community we've added this year to make sure that students all students could access clubs uh we

069added club time into the day we are putting together some screening a screening tool to use for anxiety and i i need to uh give a shout out to the students uh three years ago a student group got together um to help us come up with strategies for mental health um and they've been uh it's it's the mental health club and they've been meeting with uh their their advisors are a couple of our school counselors and they meet um every couple of weeks um that started before covid they met all the way through the covid year virtually and they continue to meet now and they're putting forth different ideas and different um things for us to do from putting signs up around the building um on how to access help to asking questions to uh

070to help us understand what we need to clarify better um some other things that have changed significantly this year that i think really tie into social emotional learning is last year was very different students were only in the building at mmu every other day um we were in a different schedule students were taking two to three maybe at most four classes um per semester coming back is a big thing our freshman and sophomores have never been in the building when it's an ab day schedule with six classes um we are asking teachers to have more frequent check-ins on uh the emotional well-being of their students you know they can do that as they're walking the the classroom in the beginning checking homework how are they doing you could put a question on a homework or

071quiz asking students how they're doing or you can use google forms one of the big things is then to react to that data we are trying to help our students by helping our teachers you know john started off reminding us that this has been a different year and that students are feeling stressed and teachers are feeling stressed and sometimes we have to slow down we have to do a little bit less and we're far from perfect on it but i i do know that the the that we're all trying and it's it's something every time the curriculum groups get together it's how better to support students keep them engaged and keep them moving forward so social emotional learning is is something that certainly when i was in school we didn't talk about but we know

072how important it is for students um to feel loved and for students to feel valued and that's one of the things that uh i'm hoping we can hold on to these the this check-in on how students are doing from from coven so questions [Music] questions comments yes chuck so i i ran into a teacher a week ago from mmu who said he thought that the the uh the maturity level of the students was a couple years behind or that's what he felt that's what it felt like to him that um just that they were anxious you know just behaviorally just really hard to just a lot more work than usual is that kind of a general feeling that you have or was that i i just want to take uh take issue with the word

073maturity the students are the the right maturity level but they haven't had the experiences you know they didn't get the eighth grade experience if you look at our ninth grade year you know kennedy and serena had experience of it through co-op we really spent a lot of time in ninth grade helping students become high school students we break it down our sophomore class didn't get that opportunity so as they come into their 10th grade this year they're we did we we dropped the ball a little bit we had to build some stuff back into 10th grade to help them learn how to be an independent learner because that's 10th grade is much more independent than ninth grade is so um it has we have dealt with more stuff sure but i i don't think it's

074maturity level i i think it's it's where we are i see kennedy has her hand up there yeah i was speaking of my advisor actually two days ago or three days ago now and i guess it was monday so it must have been a couple of days ago and um we were talking about how with sophomore classes like when you had the freshman online learning and you're taking online tests it's hard to learn how to study for a test that you're going to have in person when you're taking when you're doing everything in class and you don't have like big projects like it's hard to learn how to dissect questions and figure out how you're going to attack different especially group work so like we were talking a lot about sophomores it's not necessarily that

075they're not mature that they don't have like the uh dedication to putting in the work it's they get like they genuinely didn't know how to like do so to the expectations that sophomore year has i just thought that was an interesting point that he made so i mean i'm very interested in hearing what dan has to say i'm i mean is there like like how long is the tail on this thing i mean i'm gonna say something and john can jump in even though i don't see him right now maybe something happened um i think the tale is gonna be as long as it lasts you know right now we're at 19 months i think this is a 19-month tail yeah how long it lasts yeah yeah yeah i mean like you know one of

076the um this is such an important topic right now and and and this is a topic and a priority that our whole school community has really coalesced around you know the surveys we've done we've done on the recent one and the one we did in the spring and most of the feedback that we've gotten has been around trying to support kids you know social emotional physical and you know mental um wellness and i think it's that that to me is encouraging but it's going to be a it's going to be a road and we're very i was talking to rebecca marsh a couple of days ago and you know we were talking about the fact that mount mansfield is a high achieving school district the academics you know in general it is comparatively it is

077academics are really important to people they have been there's very high expectations for our school district and you know we may we we're going to need to adjust a bit um to make sure that we're taking care of students that they feel supported that they feel joy when they're coming to school and when they're learning and what the prospects are for their life so i agree with mike i mean this is an over year over-year sort of journey that we're on and we we're going to need to really try to be very very understanding and i i say the word thoughtful because i think that's going to be important when we're thinking about the individual needs and where kids are you've got to dial things back that doesn't mean that the essential proficiencies that we

078want kids to know and be able to do go away but we we're going to have to really figure out and i think this is going to be good um and jen talked about it in her principal report that a little bit of narrowing of what the expectations are in the car and what's in the curriculum could be positive is there a way to make this kind of i mean it sounds like an exhausting challenge is it possible to turn it into an invigorating challenge well i mean i you know it is i certainly right now it feels exhausting but we're going to get to the other side of this pandemic that i know and then you know what we want kids students to do students uh kids because we have you know they're not

079uh uh we want them to you know again feel like that people care about them that there's joy not just in learning but in their life that they're loved um and you know now we're talking about that and i think in the end that's going to be good um in the long run this is going to be very very positive we're looking at really getting a k to a unified social emotional curriculum supporting it with professional development and i think that is going to be a really big positive step for us but it's going to take time and i keep going to this because it's going to take patience too and understanding because that's where we're at right now so aspects or scores probably going to suffer probably some ap results are probably our sat

080meeting probably the act mean is going to is going to be hurting or at least go down a little bit but i don't think that should be our priority right now i really really don't continued progress should be the priority people feeling good about themselves and the people around them that's the priority feeling safe cared for great thank you um diane has her hand up and then serena i was just going to say um that the situation that john and everyone has have been talking about is not unique to mmu it's being felt throughout other school districts and john's probably already heard that in superintendence meetings but i think that our board should know that it's not unique to mmu in terms of the stress and in terms of the wise words about being kind

081and giving kids an opportunity to have some good stuff happen this year regardless of academic achievement but really focusing on whatever kind of good things can happen with connections with relationships with achievements in even small ways and then you have to do that with parents too parents are suffering and they need to feel good about some of their decisions that they're making that are stressed so it's not unique that's all i wanted to say thanks thank you diane um that's really really important in my opinion because i'm i hear the same that there is this these are the issues everybody is facing [Music] um i'm going to add i'm going to just take a prerogative here not unique to the high school either we're seeing it district-wide all grade levels so i you know i'm

082watching a lot of the elementary principles nodding along and you know we know that it's happening everywhere um serena and then gail yeah um hi everyone i just want to apologize for not having my camera on my wi-fi is very slow and this tends to help but um i just wanted to say thank you john i hearing that come from the superintendent and the administration is so important because a key to what we've experienced in the past two years is the fact that everyone but particularly young people who are in such a rapid state of growth um have been forced to grow up far more quickly than they ever anticipated and that anyone helping them ever anticipated them having to um and i think when we talk about behavioral issues if you want to call

083them that or i've heard the phrase maturity issues or whatever else we want to use to sort of categorize or label these students i think we have to acknowledge the fact that even though from maybe the perspective of a teacher these kids are behaving in a way that is younger than they may expect or more juvenile than they may expect you have to remember that these kids have also been forced to act as adults and to deal with these huge issues that even adults themselves struggle to deal with um and i think when you look at the whole picture it really balances out in terms of their behavior in the classroom and i also just want to say that i really i really appreciate your words john in terms of you know allowing leeway for

084students academics because if the administration and if the schools and the teachers are not giving any forgiveness to students for whatever stresses or trauma or anything that they're dealing with this year those students are not going to be able to forgive themselves for it and i that is a huge part of dealing with mental health and mental illness is feeling that you are unable to forgive yourself for what you're dealing with and i think um i think the administration acknowledging that so openly and so clearly is is really critical for that forgiveness to take place so um yeah thank you thanks serena that was really important for all of us to hear so thank you for sharing that um gail although i agree uh with diana that that a lot of schools maybe all the

085schools are needing the same kind of pressures the same kind of disruption that we have been dealing with but i think you can look at us particularly john and the administrative staff and our full teaching staff of responding in a positive adult manner i mean you don't have to go outside the county even to find the schools that where the students are fighting are arguing where parents are are seriously out of line as an adult and so there are the level of crisis is just unbelievable but the reality is john and his leadership with the administrators and with the teachers we are we are responding to that in a very positive positive way and we're lucky that we are where we are compare in comparison with almost anyone that you can find because there is

086enormous amount of anger enormous amount of i don't know what you call it complete disrespect for each other i guess is the one way of describing it and as far as i'm concerned from from not only from our board level but from throughout our our adult staff that we're dealing with it in a very positive proactive way and i think we we are we can send out in an unusual way with almost everyone that you can look at thank you very much john and the full team thank you gail we are truly lucky our community has been incredibly supportive of all of the measures that we've had to take um and you're absolutely right we are very lucky to be led the way we are and in a community that we're in thank you all

087um i am not seeing any other hand so i think we're ready to move on to the next priority you just haven't gotten rid of me yet uh this priority is to promote and establish regional and cross district relationships and this is really important um especially when you're thinking budget uh if we can't uh take advantage of our proximity to area schools and area institutions and provide more opportunities for our students we're being foolish and and it's something that we are actively searching for um all the time we're the rural school when you think about chittenden county us milton are are kind of the rural schools um and being the rural school there's some things we don't we don't have as much access to um so we need to create partnerships um and this is

088something that uh you know the the christina and i are actively doing when we when we speak with area schools i know john's doing it with superintendents um we have three relationships i want to highlight with you and there's a couple more in the back burner that we don't have enough ingredients in to bring out but it is something we're looking at christina i'm going to turn over to you to talk about one of our partnerships we have thanks mike so one of the partnerships that we have is with the south burlington school district and the program is called the big picture program and we are able to offer our students access to this program which is pretty unique it's part of a network of over 200 schools worldwide and allows students to build a

089flexible schedule that fits their interests and goals the work in big picture south burlington is hands-on it's through student-driven projects community-based internships service learning and travel it's an admission-based program that really allows students to self-drive where they want to be and all of the students that i've spoken to that are part of that program just really enjoy the the opportunity to be flexible in their pathway to graduation the other the other two partnerships i want to talk about and i don't want to forget this once to me it's a partnership and that is our relationship with center technology essex in burlington tech center we have around 90 students who attend those two institutions um and they are doing everything from learning how to drive heavy machinery to health informatics systems to computer programming uh to

090enter uh to electronic and recording arts there are many things they're doing in the relationship we have with them is uh is great uh our our center technology essex students start their day with us every day in a class we call um the our tech seminar they go through some pbgr's that we haven't been able to get into the uh the program at cte then they got they go over to cte for a full day um we have done the curriculum walks with cte and uh their teachers and administrators have been great with us btc is a little bit different a little bit further away it's a half day program students either go down for half the the morning and come back for the afternoon or vice versa um once again they they hit all

091their pbgr's um and it just provides an engaging education for students for many students it's the first time they'll tell me they like school they kept coming before they were going so i think they kind of liked it but they do speak to that um and then an exciting uh partnership we're just one year into is we're starting a satellite program between cte and us there was a large grant that cte applied for and it's going to be an advanced manufacturing and what we're doing starting with this freshman class is we're go we're going to be exposing all of them to some of the steps that go into advanced manufacturing at the end of freshman year we're actually in january february we're talking scheduling um we're going to ask who might be interested in taking

092um a full class a 90-minute class would be taught at mmu by mmu teachers in preparation for them to move into some it's going to be a program that's half at essex tech half at mmu so the students will stay mmu students as they all do all these students graduate from mmu on the big picture students do um and these students do um so it's it's exciting it it allows us to provide opportunities for students that the price tag would just be staggering if we had to do it ourselves um so you know i know john and i keep keep trying to to get other arrangements and i think we will eventually um but it's it's really exciting stuff it really is and i really appreciate christina and mike and the folks at mmu for

093their commitment to wanting to do this because it if you don't have that kind of leadership it doesn't happen and um you know we're not talking a lot about the elementary in the middle and you know what quite frankly there's hardly any cross-district partnerships at those levels so we've got to do a better job of that i think the one area that we and mike and i have talked about this for five years but i just can't get any traction but maybe now is the time is we're spending a lot of money on alternative programming where if we could really do that collectively as a county and we could get it done it would be more cost effective it would benefit more students and you know and i think you'd be it would be much

094more sustainable one of the issues we're having right now is there are no you know really no how to district alternative placements for students that really need them right now and those students are still in our schools so we've got to do something better collectively if we're going to meet this need and if we're really serious we can't do it alone so you know mike and myself and our you know some of our other admin administrators um including mary londine and andrew and some of our principals you know we're we're trying to get that i think the interest is there but the bandwidth isn't and we should get what was the gentleman we talked to today he should be coming to talk to these kids what was his name kyle uh clark bart well he

095was good do you know him mike i too he's a hockey player so he's going to be pretty good um yeah and uh and he was pretty impressive but that was that's what the whole thing was at the whole meeting in the wrap and i'm probably like getting ahead of myself but it was all about advanced manufacturing and the jobs and some of the innovation going on right down the road from here chuck did you have something you wanted to add no i but i think that i think all of these things working with other schools really increases our potential to offer more things to more students i mean if we're going to offer chinese to our students we're going to do it with other schools um and and i think i think we just

096need to just develop momentum like any one of these i think will lead to more opportunities ethan and then tom thank you for this i think i think most of you know this is all stuff that i love to hear and see um don't forget the adult dead system mike when you're talking about it high school completion program that's my little plug um i'm i'm just kind of curious as to what kind of budget implications like specifically these these projects you know might need i i'm assuming big picture kind of way i understand it's sort of like we're we're paying for students to be there as tuition um it sounds like you know there's maybe some infrastructure costs if we were to build out a big manufacturing program but like as a board like what

097what should we be out there selling to the community and and you know i know that um there's always implications for for budgets and passing budgets and and all that but it does seem like this is a a priority that you know when we think about trying to build engagement with the community to sell this as a as an opportunity so that when when it comes down the line in the budget it can be something that the community gets and is quickly are quick to embrace yeah so these are that that's a really good question ethan thank you you know this we um you know i don't know exactly who is but we pay for one of the teachers a big picture and that allows us to send you know really we can send almost

098you know as many students as we want it's been you know again kudos to mike and christina for forging the relationship that's what that's how it happened um and it's made you know it's made a really big difference for a number of students so that's in the budget um and some of those that all those out of district placements are already you know it's already in there you know we're either paying through it through the regular budget or special education and we're just we're not um we're not optimizing the resources that we have and everybody's trying to do their own thing and then um you know the teachers that are going to be helping us with the advanced manufacturing we pay for those too and i'm sure there'll be some other costs associated with that

099but um so these are things that are in the budget they're going to be in the budget they have been in the budget um and we gotta you know this is this one right here is now more important than ever really it really really is because every school district right now as diane was talking about has these students that are really really struggling you know you've read it in the paper we're not immune to this and they need really some specialized instruction and care and right now everybody's doing their own thing and and what happens is there isn't enough resource for everybody out there real quick just to talk about the advanced manufacturing um you know we're looking at just a 20 teacher so one one one one fifth of a teacher's day will be

100teaching this class and i have a uh a classroom in the art wing um that used to be the drafting room that's going to work great the equipment's being purchased through the grant by center technology ethics it's around 150 000 worth of equipment so they're getting this equipment we'll put it there and then we have a teacher who will um be teaching year two year one will continue to be this exposure type program which we've built in to our science curriculum um so it's uh we're getting it at a pretty good price too all the more reason to promote that right is an opportunity right it's a it's an investment in the future that is is not coming out of our dollars yeah tom i don't have anything more to add around these great partnerships

101uh at the high school level um tremendous great work keep at it for sure so great to hear all of it a question though and john you may have touched on it briefly um but i'm not certain um these are all high school focused partnerships can you talk a little bit more maybe a building principal could talk specifically about some partnerships at the elementary or middle school level there's plenty of opportunities there too i'm sure slightly different types but would be interested to hear how we're thinking about it at those levels you're we're you're talking about cross district yeah did i say crosstalk is something different but yeah i look for the cross district partnerships um there aren't many let me now be totally honest with you um yeah we really the bridging program is

102also at the high school which is another partnership um so there aren't many of them you know one of the the garvin school i guess you know it's kind of is a is kind of a um a co-op model um where we're all investing in it but there are very very few right now i think i agree with you there's opportunities but um but we haven't tapped into those and um much at all but you know i think about it john and i appreciate that it's different types of learning and learners right and so there you can do the types of things that mike's able to do with his kids because they're older right um and and have a little more autonomy but i'm thinking even beyond just the children and maybe it's just a

103different interpretation of this principle um but you know promoting and establishing really regional and cross-district partnerships doesn't mean uh you know shared programming across districts it might be uh curricular co-curriculum development or you know uh professional development or you know i'm not i'm not sure exactly what it is but i i got to think we must be doing some of that and if we aren't i'm curious whether there are opportunities well we do we are part of uh we're part of a cooperative around the professional um learning part so all we do all invest in um and it's a regional thing where we invest in an organization that helps us coordinate curriculum so there is there is i'd say on the curriculum side i was really more around the programming piece um but i'd say

104there is more a lot more cooperation around trying to leverage all our dollars for professional development um and um but that that's really kind of where it ends um just to add one of the things we've talked about that i don't know that we've quite implemented yet is looking at hiring a more diverse workforce would be something that would be more dis more than district-wide would be community-wide or county-wide or something like that where we could partner with other schools to do the recruiting um that we need i'd say there was a lot more momentum pre-covered and people kind of hunker down in um they're just trying to honestly sometimes just get through the day all right i think we have a couple more priorities to do so let's get to the next one hi

105everyone i'm gretchen muller the principal at camel's hump middle school i apologize if my eyes are looking funny they are dilated right now so i'm going to do my best to look at my notes and explain the next priority which is providing and increasing outdoor learning opportunities that align with some different proficiencies that are really important to us and certainly we know that you know mike mentioned facilities facilities have played a big part in making sure we have more outdoor learning opportunities on all the different school campuses and i will say you know when we talk about covid it's been it's been really challenging um and i think there's also some positives or silver linings to covet and it's really um pushed all schools to think differently and think outside of the box and and

106that aligns with the increased opportunities with outdoor learning for our students so when we look at outdoor learning we're thinking about increased student engagement and providing different instructional options for students and so really this priority um does a lot for our students benefits our students so by providing outdoor learning opportunities we're really able to help students build their confidence be independent learners but also be creative it certainly allows students to use and refine their decision making skills as well as problem solving skills we know the the research that um supports um students with hands-on and inquiry-based instructional program um really benefits them with decision-making and problem-solving um being outside really helps students decrease stress helps them be outside of the four walls or maybe three walls of a classroom depending on what school you're in

107helps them increase their attention we also know that just being outside gives students an appreciation for the world around them outdoor learning helps our students awareness of the outdoors and helps them and provides opportunities for them to contribute to their community and also we're seeing when you have outdoor learning opportunities we're seeing community service built into that and and the start of reciprocal relationships that can be built um between the students and the community and certainly outdoor learning um not only provides students opportunities to learn about the greater world but it also helps them build community and increase connections between their peers with their teachers as well as the larger community around them so students are able to collaborate develop leadership skills and develop those positive associations with with being outdoor outdoors and learning and

108there's certainly outdoor learning programs as we continue to embed them at the different schools really aligns with the ends goals of of having our students become lifelong learners and really having appreciation for the diverse world around them and having those different experiences and it also aligns with citizenship and community and by having opportunities to to learn and work in the community helps them become effective engaged citizens that are more informed as they go out into the world our schools have done a lot with outdoor learning opportunities and being able to connect with local professionals as well as organizations i know a lot of the elementary schools have school gardens classes are using those spaces to to grow items practice science and math skills outside um i know jes and res i think ucs as well

109all have built outdoor learning structures and spaces and those spaces continue to um expand and allow students and teachers to be outside more and doing different learning opportunities there we have um also different programs that students are engaged in to be outside so there's woodsy wednesdays and trail tuesdays at the different elementary schools we're certainly seeing a lot of work with our district science coach to support outdoor education programming and learning for our students um middle schools we're seeing a lot of field studies for science classes so students are going out into the greater community they're working with um you know biologists ecologists ornithologists and really applying um those science skills and um as well as collaborative um skills and and leadership so we're seeing a lot of benefits of outdoor learning and we want

110to keep that keep that going questions comments i was lucky to attend a field study last week in the rain and while the rain part wasn't so nice the rest of it was really amazing to see what the middle school students are doing so um yeah anyway thank you for supporting that trip i know we had we had an adult need and it was great to have you there and working with students and and seeing what they were doing it was fantastic um i'm happy to climb up a mountain anytime anyway uh last priority great thank you edie um our last priority um is continuing to offer and expand bilingual education and world languages so i'll speak to a little bit of what the elementary program is doing and really the focus of this will

111be around the spanish immersion program offering students throughout the district uh on the bolt on both the north end and the south end access to a fully immersive program whose mission statement is around recognizing language immersion education as a pathway for our students to become bilingual and bi-literate achieve academic access and act as culturally competent citizens of the world um really the um focal points around this are including diverse innovative multicultural and contemporary educational programming in schools connected to graduating effective and engaged citizens with this priority you'll see again congruencies with many of the other priorities in terms of of high quality educational access anti-racist anti-bias just equity exposure and and it's just been a beautiful program to be a part of uh at res this is our second year and i think um as

112a district this has really been a seven year journey um so what's possibly longer and what what i appreciate is we now have i believe it's two students from smiley and one student from bolton um and we have we've had students from ucs and students from jes who are really seeing broad scope um full immersion um access and that is a beautiful thing uh connected to some of the other priorities we've expanded um uh resources supporting these kiddos in this program uh in terms of hiring an interventionist that's split between jes and res um and it's just again yeah so this is uh kiddos at jes are in their fourth grade year you know um and so they're looking onward and looking over to the middle school uh to see what's next so i'll pass

113it off to kevin great i'm going to use john's word opportunity that it's a great opportunity for our kids uh to to be coming to um to browns river middle school um it'll be it's the first group uh that started with the spanish immersion program um and they're gonna be here next year um and we're really excited about those opportunities that it's gonna present us as a community as a school so budget implications means we are going to have to hire a spanish speaking math science teacher and that's what they're going to be receiving instruction in in spanish when they come to brownsville middle school they'll be going into a traditional ela and social studies class the way the program is going to be working in their fifth grade year then sixth seventh and eighth

114grade we're looking at other opportunities for our kids would they continue with spanish they're going to kind of have a choice is what we're kind of looking at will they take a third language and incorporate french into that so there's a lot of opportunities that we're looking forward to as they come to the middle school um in the year 2022 so it is a little bit smaller class coming in this year i think but then the classes get a little bit bigger as they go along so we're going to be looking expanding that program um over the next couple years um and you know as john says there'll probably be some bumps but without the bumps you know we don't get anything done um so um you know they're that we're going to work through

115those bumps and we will figure things out but there's a great opportunity here and we're really excited about it um you know that not just bilingual they could have three languages by the time they're done um with browns river middle school and it's a pretty exciting opportunity for our students and i think just expanding that will be the the goal uh is how do we get more kids involved in it so um again excited for the opportunity we've been doing planning with the teachers at the elementary school uh for the past year uh year and a half starting with ben white and then andrew jones has picked it up this year uh working with the teachers there and coming up with some ideas of how we're going to move forward so again very excited and

116it's a great opportunity questions thanks questions comments ethan and then chip uh just quickly and just so i understand this trajectory so the group of students that started at jes and spanish immersion are getting ready to go to browns river next year and so we're continuing that process of a spanish immersion experience in middle school so my question i guess then is thinking down the line again budgetary-wise will there be an opportunity for those students at richmond now who will be going to campbell's hump or will they have to go to browns river for the middle school spanish immersion experience you know we'll do it'll be the same trajectory so they'll go to camel's hump and uh and they will have the way it works um is that there's a as you matriculate to the

117grades you get a little bit less a little bit less proportion of whatever the language is um and it and then it you know really does end in fifth grade and that was pretty consistent with all the school districts that you know the many that we talked to that are that have implemented the program so that's where kevin you're saying that they could choose another language they might take french what's the third language that you maybe you're in uh english spanish french i thought you were going to make now i think there was some talk about some opportunities on vtvlc too i think mandarin was a possibility as well um so i think there's some other opportunities that that kids could access as well as they go through through the years here so i think

118vtl via i forgot to mention that that could be an opportunity as well okay thank you and and some cross connection with the high school we've talked about that um so you know at some point being able to potentially matriculate into a high school level course too so we think that that's that'll be something that we're going to strive for if people want it you know there's that's a nice part is there's some choice here most what what the school districts that we talked to almost universally said is that they really encourage these kids to take another language because they're they're really what they found is that they were really able to access french um or other language particularly romance languages you know pretty easily great thanks chip well it's really exciting to hear about

119uh the goings-on i think it's uh it's wonderful that uh already we're already looking at kids transitioning to middle school in this program i guess first question would be um how are we measuring um the success of the program uh you know what what measurements are we using to determine that um that uh we're getting the results and the kids are benefiting in the way that we expected uh you know it's it's great to have uh expectations but it's also great to be able to measure those expectations so that would be the first question the second question is where do we see this going uh and how will this affect the teaching of languages through high school because you've got now a cohort of kids that are coming through with a very different level of

120comprehension and facility with a language that typically doesn't exist in in in a traditional uh foreign language uh instruction scenario so just kind of looking down the road a little bit so these kids are taking all the you know taking the assessments all the other kids do except they're doing it in spanish so they're taking our local assessments um in spanish so we're able to you know they get a report card um and you know they're also able to the teachers are to to really gauge you know how well are they speaking and how fluent are they so you know it's through formative and some summative assessments that we're measuring it um the other part is um is is a great question and you know this gives kids at least i can see them the

121opportunity to maybe even take ap spanish as a freshman so you know that's a big deal i think that's pretty neat okay um and i think that we're gonna we're gonna see that some kids are gonna be able to do that post that though um chip it's going to be do you want to take another language you know do you want to study abroad you know do um you know i think it's just going to open up a bunch of opportunities for folks this is a pr this is a really unique program i'm not saying it's perfect okay i'm not saying it's the end-all be-all because i don't want to oversell anything because then you know people don't think you're being honest um but you know there's a lot of interest i can tell you

122i've gotten emails from people from south america that are moving to america and are you know and moving to vermont and they are moving to our district because of the program andrew jones got i think two or three um emails recently from people that are either out of state or are looking to move in vermont that are that really want to get into the program so it's it's it's really it's been it's very popular and um you know i give a lot of the credit again to the administration you know jeremy and vicky and derek and the teachers who have they've made it work they've done the hard work the research to to allow the program to grow and it has head bumps and it hasn't been perfect but we've learned and we've tried to

123adjust that's great and uh i'm all for the continued efforts and uh look to support those in any way i can thank you very much thank you [Music] any other questions or comments from the board so that was a lot we threw a lot of that yeah let's let's let's let the principles and the assistant principles go oh yes of course um i just want to say two things one of them is that um priorities you know i i i'm sad that um rebecca um stepped off but i'm sure she had lots going on um two of the things that we didn't talk about are um related to staffing and retention and all of that and we are in a better position than a lot of districts with our staff but we still have openings

124and so that is something that will impact in the budget and we do have a contract with our support staff but we don't yet have a contract with our teachers so there are a couple more things that are going to impact our budget that i would be remiss to not mention as we're talking about our priorities for next school year so i just wanted to put that out there as a um an important factor to consider as well um thank you to everybody who presented tonight we really appreciate the diligence the time the you know just the care that you've all shown in your both your presentations but in what you're doing with students we really appreciate that we're lucky to have you all in our district so thank you very much um you are

125welcome to stay we will think that you are doing exactly the right thing when you leave right now and just say i've had enough and i'd like to have an evening you know an hour or something um so thank you all you're you know appreciate it um foreign board members do we want to take two to five minutes right now just to take a quick break we've had a long we have the um the resolutions will be a little bit of a discussion they will take a little bit of time so do we want to do it two to five minutes and come back at 8 30 exactly just turn your camera off as i i saw in head now do i see thumbs for that you guys want or you guys want to keep

126going i'm seeing a couple of froms yes [Music] can i just get an approximate time for this meeting i'm in a hotel room with my kiddo and he is tired so i do want to hear about the resolutions but um i might duck out when that is done and skip the community engagement report because there's not much totally all good and i'm really glad you were able to join us i know you've had a rough week oh it's just starting i know you're going to hell around monday um so did i see that people do want to take a minute or so or are we good um you're good what's for john all right let's forge on then okay i'm sorry i'm yeah that's all good whatever works all right then i am going to

127turn the meeting over to tom to talk about the resolutions for the um upcoming bsda annual meeting sure hi everybody and john i love the enthusiasm i'm in any time with more of that during this presentation um i actually you know think that these resolutions are pretty straightforward i hope everyone had the opportunity to take okay i think we've come to a decision on a couple of them that may not be quite as straightforward um but generally speaking you're just a quick overview for those who are new vermont school awards association has annual meeting and they vote on resolutions and these resolutions can they really dictate uh the direction that the school board association will take uh over the coming year uh in a lot of cases it's directing the school boards association staff and

128board to focus and hone in on uh policy related items with the legislature sometimes it's just um broader statements um position statements for the organization to help guide this decision making internally um so in this case i think we have a little bit of both um with the six resolutions that are up for uh discussion this uh actually next thursday the fourth of november basically what happens is is those yeah yeah i'm going to ask would you mind turning your camera off work we're catching you and then you disappear and then we're catching your words and then you disappear and try talking that way maybe it'll be better how's that maybe i needed a five minute break to go somewhere near wi-fi um so just give me a holler again and uh i can move

129but uh bottom line uh is you know there's a process for getting these resolutions in motion and what we're looking at today are the motions that will be considered or the resolutions that will be considered um on the floor so there are six of them uh i'm going to skip one and three for now because i think that they require a little more conversation but two resolutions two and five really are focused around um equity uh and the first the first one actually um really it's too together um this is really around uh making sure that independent schools are uh really have the same standards um that that public schools have so any independent school that is receiving public dollars um there's a basically these two resolutions are encouraging uh the legislature to ensure that

130those independent schools receiving public dollars really have to meet the same level of standards in their admissions their programs and their practices to ensure equal and equitable access to opportunities for those students in the independent school you know so and it requires independent schools to assure operational and financial and educational accountability and excellence so really making sure that we're holding independent schools receiving public funds to a similar standard as our public schools are held through and so that really is played out in both two which is really focused around advocacy four uh which is around um basically an existing resolution that adds pre-k and after school uh into the mix um as well so private private lean private programs that are publicly funded that are pre-k and after school funding um we think these are

131pretty uh straightforward um no no major issues makes sense for all schools i think in the state to be on an equal playing field if they are receiving public dollars um the the fifth one really is around equity and anti-racism and it's strengthening an existing uh internal uh vsba policy i think the language is strong and welcomed um and then the final uh resolution is uh resolution six is around appointments to unified boards i think i don't know that this came up in uh maybe it was a subcommittee meeting ad hoc meeting that i was in recently of the board but uh basically uh there were some law changes um around how the school board and really what this is doing is just updating this resolution will update the internal vsba policy to conform with

132the state law which changes the rules of the road in terms of who actually appoints a vacancy to a unified school board is it the select board or is it the school board itself i think is the fundamental change if i if i write it right since those i think were kind of the easier ones i breeze through them hoping people have read them um but i'm happy to take any questions i think generally speaking this these are the resolutions we could support okay um chime in if there's any questions on those i'll ask edie and john and others to weigh in as needed on number one and number three which uh the first one number one is shared school district financial software system as you may recall the district has uh with great effort

133i think over the last number of months uh merged or kind of brought us over transitioned i guess is maybe the word us on to a new uh financial accounting software system this system i think is part of a statewide move that was really led by the aoe and all districts i believe are expected to move on to the system we have made that implementation already and basically what this resolution is asking is uh for the vsba to advocate for the state to abandon literally the word abandon the single statewide accounting software system uh for us this gets tricky because we're already there we would like to continue to have support from the state uh to continue this system and uh it would be tricky if all of a sudden that those efforts were abandoned

134we understand that there may be some districts that would like to have a choice of accounting software systems were they all ready we just assumed stay here it would be a huge burden to go to transition uh to another platform so this is a trickier one for us uh and you know kind of leans towards i think possibly oppose this or at least abstain from from this voting yes on this resolution john and edie or kevin or anyone else have anything else to add on this one yeah i'll just oh i'll let kevin dad go ahead kevin yeah i don't i don't know if we have anything in this fight i i would say maybe we just um you know don't take a position on this one we've already implemented it we've proven that we

135can implement systems um i i don't think uh we're the ones pushing back i think from an overall state perspective it makes sense to have a unified charter account either take no position or i would also support uh do not pass well it would be a real drag if we were then required to uh do reports in a form that wasn't aligned with this accounting system i mean the point was to be that all the different districts would be able to easily assemble uniform reporting uh if that goal is abandoned after we do the work that would just be a drag i i think we do have a dog and we have the the fight we have a dog in or i guess we don't want to talk about dog fighting the uh the the

136issue for us is that uh we don't want to have to redo a chart of accounts for any future reporting did i say that right yeah so i think i think i'm going to try to say it in a different way but i think what you're saying is is important which is we switched to the program that the state asked for the program does not work well for anybody anybody who has implemented it it is not working well for them the state picked it though and the state is required had required us to do it so do we support the fact that we don't want to have other schools go through what we went through and to have a program that doesn't work as well as what they might have now right of course of

137course we don't want that to happen however if the state picks a different system and chooses that we would have to switch again perhaps it'll be a better system perhaps it'll be the same we don't know we would need extra support in the fact that we've already switched we've already jumped through the hoops that they asked us to jump through we're already doing a working with a program that does not meet the needs of our district it's the nicest easiest thing that i can say about that program um so how do we support making sure that other schools don't have to go through the garbage that we have gone through with this system and also make sure that we are supported if there is some new system that is chosen so that the state can

138get the reporting that it needs down the road is that is that fair john i guess i didn't know yeah that's well um okay i didn't know we were still unhappy with it oh my gosh well yeah we don't we're having a little sound issue here but yeah nobody likes it that i've talked to having said that we've implemented it so we we had another system we changed from that system one that we liked to this new system it took us a long time the thought of switching back to another one and then pulling the funding and not supporting the program with the actual vendor is scary all right kevin go ahead thanks yeah i um i think for me it's the the idea of a unified chart of accounts is is more important than

139you know a single accounting system but abandoning i think the only way to get to the unified chart of accounts is to have a a single accounting system and there's other there's you know there's a lot of good reasons to go through the pain of reporting our financials the same from one district to another it really helps with equity and i i feel like if we support this it it means you know we wanna we want to report our finances our own way and that goes in the wrong direction from my perspective so i feel like i'm coming late to the party on this one but if many districts are unhappy with the product how did this is opening pandora's box how did we get here um why are we uh why was the decision

140to go with a uh less than optimal product uh usually i was gonna say a short answer because i know we're really pushing up on time the short answer is that people who don't use the program picked it because they thought it would give the reports that they needed but what's happening in the world and you know in the wild is that the districts that are using the program are having significant trouble making it work the way that they were promised that it would work so again i'll say re supporting this resolution means that we are helping other districts to not have to go through the horror that we have been through and at the same time possibly puts us in a position where we will not be supported with this program so i think

141that this is a really really difficult situation that we're in and it's one of those complicated resolutions i don't think we've been in a position with the resolution with the vsva like this before you know edie when i think about this and what i've been hearing and i think kevin put it really well but you know is that there's probably some analogy or metaphor here but i this this is kind of like take i'll just go for it it's like taking a sledgehammer um and we're not we're looking for more of the scalpel approach here um so you know i think that it probably makes sense for us to um you know certainly not vote for it and i i don't think that there's a reason for us to i think it'd be reasonable for

142us to oppose and we can you know if there are questions about it uh you know i think explain our nuanced approach to this um and the resolution is not new and i think that's a disservice um because these kind of issues are complicated um and not not like abandoned is pretty strong so i think saying i would might recommend that we oppose um and allow the representative should there be conversations about it to take a more nuanced approach i'm seeing thumbs up tom i think that is a a good way to go about it let's go with the last resolution i feel like i'm on a game show um so the the last one is around pupil waiting this is some heavy stuff here um you've asked me to do tonight eddie by eating

143but um bottom line is we'll all recall that there's a few uh there was a pupil waiting factors report um that i believe was released in say 2018 so it's the invisible conversation in the legislature uh and now there is a task force i think looking to really do the work to prep for this legislative session when and so we know that we support as a district uh equitable funding i think it's core to our work equity is core to our work as we've heard so much this evening but we also know that any changes to funding formulas will have impacts on districts not just ours every single district across the state and what isn't clear is just what kind of impact the changes to the waiting system will have on a district by district

144level um and that's in part because what we're working off of and what this resolution works off of is basically uh recommending that the the resolution recommends that the vsba advocate for the implementation of the recommendation in that initial pupil waiting factors report that i think was spearheaded by the university of vermont um again not so nuanced it's it's we support the findings uh fully of that report um and i think what is clear after talking with john and others on the board is that uh it isn't entirely clear as i noted how it will impact our district and so taking a position on that report from essentially a consultant is premature and because this task force made up of legislators is actually making some recommendations um to the legislature later this fall and that

145you know we should wait and see how that plays out so i think that where we were coming to uh in talking about this ahead of the this meeting is you know possibly an abstain or an oppose on this one as well again um really from a nuanced perspective we don't quite know uh where this issue is going to go and um and so it would be kind of premature to put all of our eggs kevin go ahead i don't know who else did um yeah you're still breaking up tom just so you know um but i think we got the gist of it i i think on this one i get confused when i see um um you know the expeditiously i i feel like you know what are we missing when we do

146it expeditiously and i know we have some pretty significant concerns with what was in the report some questions about the the data in the report um you know so i see thoughtfully uh implemented okay i'm okay with that but thoughtfully and expeditiously i'm not sure which one would win so i i think as a district we're concerned that we may we may not benefit as much or any other districts would i think they'll be winners and losers whenever you redo the how pupils are factored and so i think we we should not support this and make sure that the the intent is is met and that our our district is better i guess represented in the data that's included in the report so i i also don't think that we should support this but i

147have a little bit of a different reason for it um when we're looking at how to support students um pulling money from some students to support others is generally not the way that we want to do it right like we're always looking you know title ix ads money other pieces add money and what the program the way it's set up to change the waiting is it pulls money from some districts and adds money to others and there isn't a district that's swimming in money that has money to give away so i would say that a different kind thoughtful some other kind of implementation is really important i would also say we vote no on this one um anybody want to argue the other side is there something that we're missing ethan not necessarily that i

148want to argue the other side i think um i think there's a part right there's a fundamental philosophical issue here right i think edie you just crystallized it for me and i think it's that idea of it's not increasing the pool of money right because this idea as you said kevin right you're pulling money from one support another i just think that it's it's more now about how do we how do we leverage infusion into the education system uh how do we bring cash and and resources into our system that can support everybody at the level that they deserve so i i was kind of going back and forth about where i stood on this and i think if there was a way that we could message what you just said edie then i think

149it would be a really excellent counter while still supporting the philosophical underpinnings of what this resolution is trying to accomplish all right well there's a waiting study um public comment on the 29th so i'll put my name in for that and see if i get a spot and see if i can directly message the legislature on that um do we all agree we're going to support the four that tom recommended i'm going to get the numbers wrong but tom you want to say which ones we're going to support and which ones we're going to oppose yeah let me pull that up so we will support two four five and six and we will oppose one and three and this is this is not a binding vote so this is just thumbs this is a because

150what happens is we send somebody to vote and they vote however they choose based on the information that they may glean from the meeting that may have something that we didn't quite get but this is a recommendation to the our voter on how they should vote so can i just get thumbs to say that you agree with what tom just said excellent thank you okay the next thing we need is somebody to go and vote i will be traveling and probably in a vehicle at the time of the vote so is there anybody what time do you think uh seven o'clock-ish on november 4th right time yeah 6 30 is the business meeting and it looks like the resolution voting is later in the evening but unclear exactly when tom are you interested oh i'm

151not jumping up and down to do it but i i could i could make it work if um unless there's other folks interested in attending the meeting kevin is jumping up and down i just wanted to see what that would look like um sorry i'll nominate tom since he's not running away i'll second that oh i'm just gonna second too all right all right and and kevin will you be the backup in case tom can't make it or do we need to find somebody else to do that yeah i can back him up i think i can be there on the on the fourth i didn't check my calendar but are we good with that this is uh yes chuck i i i don't know enough about the waiting study to have a real strong

152opinion but uh you know certainly in jericho we have zoning designed to prevent middle and lower income people from living here we have desi we have zoning designed to keep uh single parents out of jericho uh you know we're a wealthy community and we think it has to do with the water it's not it's because that's how we designed our community uh in 86 of jericho it's illegal to build a triplex i mean we are who we are because we have kept uh we've kept a lot of people out and if it's the case that uh the uh that that that's that the the waiting is wrong and that there are communities that have a much higher acuity um than we do then you know i think we need to respect that and i think

153the idea that oh we're we and i'm not saying anybody said this but someone might say oh we it's not fair to you know we have to uh you know we have to bring them up and keep us the same you know i think the way to do it would be make it level and then raise everybody as opposed to saying um because we're just simply not going to fight that hard if we get to keep ours and and and you know another community needs to wait to to be able to to get the same kind of treatment that you know that we get and i don't know i don't really understand the resolution i don't but basically that's the concept and um i simply don't think we're going to fight hard enough we have

154not fought to date for the communities that have a much higher acuity because we have zoned out much of that acuity um you know in our own districts and we need to face up to who we are as towns and why we are the way they are we sort of go through life thinking that you know the housing problem is someone else's problem to solve as opposed to appreciating the fact that people are driving from eden to work in south burlington because we've made sure that they can't buy a house in jericho and i think we need to look at this waiting study and other i mean somebody we need to really look at it i think through that um through that lens and if we take a hit it's painful we work along with

155everybody else to rise the to to uh whatever it is sea level yeah i mean i you know i hear what you're saying chuck and if it were we stay the same and other people get more money because they need it i would have no concern issue with this we could lose 30 of our state dollars if the funding goes through the way it is 30 is more than taking a hit 30 is decimating our district and so that's my concern and that's why i feel like we really need to take a look at this so i i i'm terrified of what this could do and if it is done quickly and not thoughtfully then i think we could have big issues and the unintended consequences of it would be um yeah i i don't

156want to speak i don't want to say more but anyway you probably know more about it than i do but uh the i i don't think our view should be we're going to stay comfortable and will lend a hand you know to raising additional funds to these other you know if if it's true if the whole waiting study is true and that we have been we have been receiving favorable treatment um you know and if it's true that these other communities are are are feeling like we would feel if we lost 30 percent i don't think we can take a passive point of view and the fact that we're really kind of the first time with this resolution is kind of an indication that we're taking a passive point of view well no because we've

157talked about this before and john has been mentioning that this is a concern of his right it's a concern for us for our district that's right we are looking at it from our own point of view and i think that we should have a broader point of view and i don't know what that is but ethan and then chip i certainly uh hear what you're saying too chuck i i i guess for me it's it's you know part of it maybe it feels a little bit like it's become another thing that the school is responsible for right so mmu and other towns that you know may have benefited greatly from a funding formula um that it's the school district that that has to then meet that need as opposed to the community you talk about

158jericho essentially zoning out multi-family units well that's not a school board issue and i think again this is this comes down to me is that there's there's just not enough money in the education system and i think as a as a community this idea that we'd be taking a passive approach actually i'm a little offended by it because i feel like this is an opportunity to have a conversation how do we then leverage our collective power to support these other districts not in a way to carve out a little more money here a little it's just fundamentally flawed as you're saying from a policy standpoint but but the school our responsibility right here and right now is talking about resolutions that could potentially affect the school district so if you want to expand the conversation

159and say how do we as the mmu school board go out and affect change and not take a passive approach then i'm all in but i don't think that this is i said i'm not expressing an opinion on this resolution i said i don't know enough to have an opinion on this revolution resolution i'm more speaking kind of generally and almost all of what i have heard in our board about this issue is how it's going to affect us and i haven't heard much talk about the situation that schools that have a much higher acuity have but that's but that's our that's our role right now in in this conversation right you didn't hear me jumping up and saying hey uh when you're talking about priority support adult ed which primarily supports communities in in

160this need right most of the students that come into my system are burlington winooski students you don't think that the funding needs to follow those students we're not that's not what we're here for and so if you if you're feeling like this you don't have enough information on this resolution then we need more information and i think as a community we need to talk about opportunities to have this discussion so that it's a meaningful opportunity for us to enact the change i think you're hoping for chip i think what chuck's leading towards is as a more global you know a more uh comprehensive approach to education in the state um my concern on this one is uh we have to get the whatever budget we end up with through our district and if there's a

161thirty percent cut for example if there's a cut in state funding that means taxes will go up and you know it it can we get that through so it's a practical thing i think to try to to try to implement change through a waiting resolution is is it's kind of little a little backwards and i would like to know more about it as well but it seems from a practical sense that we have to take this from a we have to take this to a different level we have to go to the legislature um you know at with as many allies as we can to say what exactly are our goals on this because if it's just um you know balancing you know a scale um there's always going to be like i said winners

162and lewis losers um you know it can't be a zero-sum game uh we have to find a different way to solve the problem you know they've been adjusting the the uh the the formula for 40 years you know morse giuliani all those you know i mean you name it it's uh and then they go for five years and then they change it again uh that's not a that's not a solution that's a merry-go-round um so i i would i would like us to we all sound like stowe before act 60 right now well no but the issue is we've been through that we had you know stoke going over gold town we're just going to self-fund and you know we'll avoid it that that wasn't the solution either so we know that that's a potential

163problem how do we even avoid that going into this you know it's it it's it we're it's we're pitting one town one district against another that's not going to work either kevin and then tom or kevin you put your hand down oh yeah but you know just real quick i think the rate of change i'm concerned with um i didn't i didn't get from the report or the resolution that there's there's any sensitivity to how significant the change would be over a short period of time that's what really hurts us that's why we merged the rate of change killed us from one year to the next and we really need to you know if if the equity study does actually show the reality and some need to come up some need to come down we

164we do need to be sensitive about how many years it's going to take to get that change in place without causing a significant short-term impact and i also just find it ironic right that on one of these resolutions is is shooting down a common reporting structure which would give us a lot better data from one district to another to be able to do a better comparison and another resolution is trying to push quickly with with this study that's why i think that the two kind of go together um but uh yeah i still think we should we should vote not in favor of expeditiously implementing the report tom yeah i was uh kevin thanks for helping sum this up um i was gonna go there too and say you know i think what i'm hearing

165is we probably are still in the same position we were in the beginning here to oppose it we oppose this current resolution but acknowledging that we support the equity in our funding system but what i would just recommend because i think we do want to have a conversation as a board here i i do fundamentally agree with a lot of what was said around you know we should be advocating for the best interests of our students and communities that we represent and those who are underserved and so i do take that as a challenge for us as a board to be thinking outside of our boundaries to do that i think we need to be really up to speed on what's going on and we won't know what's happening until we get that task force

166um recommendation you know and a month or or two time um not forgetting their exact timeline i would recommend edie that we we come back to this i i think we will anyway um but i would just say let's make sure we put this on our radar so that we come back to it maybe bring an expert in maybe somewhere from the vsba or the vsa or something like that to let us know really what's happening and what the outlook looks like this legislative session because i do think that we will want to weigh in on this and let's not just think about it myopically but we do obviously need to be thinking about it through the lens of the people we're representing as well excellent i think we are ready to move on can

167i get a motion to approve the minutes from the previous meeting so move thank you andrew ethan are you seconding ethan is seconding thank you um any anyone opposed to approving the minutes from the meeting of october 11th any abstentions all right the minutes are approved unanimously thank you all um committee reports katie i know you're ready to go um bye have a good night i hope you guys get enough sleep um yes kevin you're muted sorry clicky clicky further just want to make sure for the purposes of the minutes um that we we did get on the record that tom would be the a point a point d that would be the backup for the resolutions i feel like we were making that decision and then we got sidetracked a little bit yes thank

168you thank you thanks thank you uh finance committee kevin while you have your mic on thanks we we have not met since our last uh board meeting but our next meeting is november 11th so i can attend the fourth meeting great um negotiations uh we have nothing new to report policy governance nothing new tara do we have something new we met on october 14th which i guess right was three days after we had met as the larger board so in that meeting we did review um the fours of polar policy governance we took them from eight separate policies down to four condense them made them a bit more reasonable there are links to those policies in the policy governance notes there's a few more adjustments i need to make to the force based on the

169comments i received and the feedback i received from the policy governance group we're meeting again this thursday where we're going to go over the threes uh ethan i i'm not sure if i'm in the right account but i doesn't look like i have access yeah you probably wouldn't because i only shared them within the group and then i looked at the notes that andrew took and realized he linked my google docs to everybody else so i'll fix that thanks rab chuck uh well we had our we had a meeting uh tonight with uh i think we had either the chair or the vice chair from every district in chittenden county um [Music] and uh bellows uh fairfax uh bellows academy which is all of the school districts in our tech center service area and um

170you know i think about well it was a good orientation for many of the board chairs who didn't have familiarity with tech uh kyle clark the ceo of uh beta technology spoke um which was good and um then we you know then we answered questions so i think i think we've made we're off to a good start getting um i mean as you know and john knows uh we go to these rap meetings and and i was elected chairman with i think three votes so uh three nothing i mean it's just uh not what we need and by statute we're supposed to have a board member and the superintendent from every district so i think we've laid the ground for uh you know uh you know a a governance system for the tech centers um

171and kind of put out there the need for us to be involved in um visioning and designing the new burlington tech center and then advocating for its construction so i think that's the news great thank you um tom there's probably nothing else yes ba legislative um i will add the one thing that everybody should be aware of um the statewide bargaining between the teachers um the teachers union and the representatives from the vsva has gone to um uh what's the word i'm looking for fact finding i think so same as last time where they did not agree the two groups did not agree and now we are waiting to hear what the recommendation is from mediation there was a email from the vsda on the 22nd you should all have it if you don't let

172me know and i'll send you mine that out lays out what happened and what the two last best offers are from either side um did i miss anything committee reports other business future agenda items yes chuck i mean i i don't know if this was said at the beginning of the meeting but uh i was so impressed with the uh the group of people who presented at the last meeting um you know that's the kind of what i call sort of the vice president level that's john's you know half of john's team and uh you know i thought they were great they were composed they were relaxed they were comfortable they were very comfortable expressing their own you know their own views um and i think uh you know that's kind of how we evaluate

173a superintendent i think is you know how his or her team is coming along and they you know a lot of them were new they've been in their jobs for a couple years but they just seemed great same thing again tonight you know i thought it was great that uh you had principals from different schools working together presenting together um and i think the whole uh you know the whole notion of having sort of an mmu way and kind of human you know unified priorities i think it's sort of playing out in front of us so that was uh that was really great ethan uh i would totally agree with that uh photos are interesting too a little bit uh obviously less questions for the principals and i'm not sure if we were more aware

174of time or trying to pack it all in but it did seem like there was a difference there and i'm be curious to unpack that at some point um two thoughts for just other business i think one is just following up on the conversation we're just having about the waiting study and maybe having some time to to dive into potential implications and perspectives so that we um have a and have some time to really um kind of dig deep the other parts wanted to mention i don't know if folks have noticed this the reapportionment committee has made a recommendation um it's an it's an initial recommendation for the house uh it does change the dynamic a little bit um it's a one person district um the senate seat is or the senate seats have not

175been published yet but i wonder if there's a time and a place to to just discuss what those implications are if any and if there's anything else that we feel like we want to do to support that effort yeah so just to add to that on the december 13th meeting we are planning to invite all of the current senators and representatives from our school district to a board meeting so we can talk to them directly on that and as ethan said it would be good to have a general understanding of what we want to advocate for before that so um shoot me an email we can talk about it at our next board meeting um we have we have one board meeting between now and then and if necessary i have one more uh yes

176tom i just want to say you know we're praising um the administration uh rightfully so for the presentations over the last two weeks i know they're not here now but um we're saying it again but i also wanted to just praise pat pat's got to follow us with everything we said this is a long meeting so thanks for sticking with us pat we really appreciate you wish we could see you in person to say our thanks you would have just caught me doing the biggest yawn ever you're not the only one pat sorry guys you are very welcome you're so welcome thank you pat and thank you for mentioning that tom and thank you to all of the administrators for the last two weeks who have been presenting to us it's really helpful for us

177to do the work at the board level to hear from everybody directly so thank you all um the very last thing i want to mention as other business is the um oh i'm going to forget which church but the church in jericho that does the racism in america um series chuck what racism in america yeah so they're all on the mmc tv channel on thursday i believe on the 27th they are doing a series on voting history the most recent one that they did before that was on critical race theory that you can find and watch the recording so the one on voting history has a uvm professor that's presenting this week um and that's the good shepherd church thank you serena the good shepherd church um so if you want to find the information

178on that you can look at the mmc tv or the good shepherd church or you can email me and i'll send you the email then you can get on their email list our next meeting is november 8th 6 30 we will hear from the jericho elementary school principal we will also hear from mary lundin about special education um i don't believe we're going to have a student representative report i think we're going to push that to another meeting is that right serena yes we'll be pushing that to the following meeting okay so we'll push that to a different meeting um thank you all very much i appreciate everybody sticking with two long meetings in a row have a great night can i get a motion to adjourn please tom's moving chip is seconding we are

179we have thirds and fourths you may vote by uh turning your camera off and having an excellent evening thank you all very much thanks john