001SBSD Owl Camera: Okay. SBSD Owl Camera: I'd like to call to order. SBSD Owl Camera: the regular meeting of the South Burlington School Board on December 17th, 2025. SBSD Owl Camera: The first item on the agenda is a projected executive session. SBSD Owl Camera: I would entertain a motion to find that premature disclosure of the stuff we're going to talk about regarding labor negotiations would put the district at a significant disadvantage. SBSD Owl Camera: I'll make that look super. SBSD Owl Camera: Second. Second. Dan, motions… Michelle, seconds. Any discussion? SBSD Owl Camera: All those in favor? Aye. The motion passes. I would entertain a motion. SBSD Owl Camera: To enter into executive session to talk about employment of a public officer, namely a superintendent, to receive SBSD Owl Camera: Confidential attorney-client communication for the purpose
002of providing legal services to the board, and labor negotiations. SBSD Owl Camera: One more to motion. Dan motions. SBSD Owl Camera: Second. Austin seconds. Any discussion? SBSD Owl Camera: All those in favor? Aye. Motion passes. So we're now going to go into executive session, and we should return about 6 p.m. SBSD Owl Camera: Certainly, good. SBSD Owl Camera: I'd like to call back to order the regular meeting of the South Burlington School Board on December 17, 2025. SBSD Owl Camera: We just got out of executive session. SBSD Owl Camera: It was only the board in the corrective session. SBSD Owl Camera: The next item on the agenda is Pledge of Allegiance. SBSD Owl Camera: to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God,
003indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. SBSD Owl Camera: The next item on the agenda is announcements. Do we have any announcements? SBSD Owl Camera: Would now be a good time to say momentarily was extended 10 minutes tonight for student… focus on student learning, just so that we can have a student from the high school come up and talk a little on it. SBSD Owl Camera: Yes. Do we have? Do we have to approve and accept? Well, I think we'll do that in the review and accept agenda, we'll do it there. SBSD Owl Camera: Any other announcements? SBSD Owl Camera: So I wanted to bring up again something I mentioned in our last meeting. SBSD Owl Camera: Which is that we have enrollment projections, and if any member of the public wants to see them,
004they should ask for them. SBSD Owl Camera: And also, we are going to be looking… SBSD Owl Camera: changing the policy around video surveillance in schools. So if you are interested, in… SBSD Owl Camera: how video surveillance works in schools. You should pay attention to upcoming school board meetings, because it will be discussed, and that's at the request of the superintendent. SBSD Owl Camera: Any other announcements? SBSD Owl Camera: No, okay. The next item is to review and accept the agenda. SBSD Owl Camera: So, the rest of the agenda is comments from the public. SBSD Owl Camera: focus on the student representative report, which I think we'll probably be happy to add 10 minutes to. SBSD Owl Camera: And then we actually have 4 action items tonight. SBSD Owl Camera: Appointment of permanent superintendent. SBSD
005Owl Camera: Monitoring Report Calendar. SBSD Owl Camera: Board monitoring rubric. SBSD Owl Camera: And, whether we want to approve the… SBSD Owl Camera: best use study proposal, from NASDAQ. SBSD Owl Camera: And then we have two discussion items. One of them is reviewing Policy G8, Selection of Library Materials. That's going to be at first reading. SBSD Owl Camera: And also, if there's any discussion of the budget. SBSD Owl Camera: And then… SBSD Owl Camera: The final item on the agenda is… oh, no, sorry, it's not the final item. The next item on the agenda is the superintendent's report, update on 3Q meetings, and also, use and prevalence of equitable grading policies. SBSD Owl Camera: The next item is the consent agenda, and that's it. Any comments about the agenda? SBSD Owl Camera: Alright. SBSD Owl
006Camera: Hearing none, we'll move on. The next section is comments from the public. SBSD Owl Camera: And so, generally speaking, there are 3 opportunities for the public to comment. SBSD Owl Camera: This only lists two, because today is not a community forum, but normally. SBSD Owl Camera: The opportunities are, right now, about any topic. SBSD Owl Camera: before the board takes action on an action item, but only on the topic of being action, and if this were a community forum during a community forum agenda item. The board will not respond to public comments unless this is a specially designated community forum and the comment is on a topic or not on the agenda. This is not a community forum. SBSD Owl Camera: You'll be given up to 3 minutes. Please do not violate anybody's privacy,
007and official complaints or grievances cannot be filed during public comment. So, do we have any public comment? SBSD Owl Camera: public comment, but I have a question about it. Could you please come up… point of what I need to come up and… Sure. It's about the budget, so would you rather me… SBSD Owl Camera: Comment now, or wait until that agenda item? SBSD Owl Camera: Well, I'll just… so you won't be able to comment on it during the discussion item, because it's only a discussion item. So, if you want to comment about the budget, you should do it. SBSD Owl Camera: Hi! SBSD Owl Camera: I'm just gonna read this, but I'm Sarah Pineda, I'm the district nurse Leader for our school district. SBSD Owl Camera: I want to begin by acknowledging Superintendent Clark and
008the administrative team. I appreciate the care and difficulty of the budget work underway, and I'm grateful for the opportunity to share a nursing perspective this evening. SBSD Owl Camera: I want to offer some context about school nursing, not to challenge the intent behind the proposed reductions, but to explain how the nursing model functions and why staffing capacity matters. SBSD Owl Camera: School nurses are essential infrastructure in our schools. They support student safety, respond to emergencies, and manage chronic and complex health needs, so students can remain in school and access learning. SBSD Owl Camera: Our nursing model is intentionally built with some float capacity, which allows us to maintain coverage across buildings when nurses are absent, responding to higher acuity situations, or supporting students with ongoing medical needs. SBSD Owl Camera: That flexibility is what keeps
009schools functioning safely day to day. SBSD Owl Camera: A reduction of approximately 25% of our nursing staff would significantly reduce that float capacity. When that happens, the system becomes much more reactive and less stable, even when everyone is working hard to make it function. SBSD Owl Camera: Sis… SBSD Owl Camera: I'm sorry, stability has been a stated priority in the budget process. From a nursing perspective, stability means having a staffing model that can absorb absences, respond to urgent situations, and maintain consistent coverage without disruption. SBSD Owl Camera: The float capacity built into our nursing model is what provides that stability. SBSD Owl Camera: I want to briefly touch on Medicaid, because this is an important moment for school health services in Vermont. The state is in the process of rolling out a modernized Medicaid school-based
010services program that will expand reimbursement for school-based care, including services provided by nurses. SBSD Owl Camera: Well, the ability to bill for nursing services is not fully operational yet. Districts are being asked to prepare now. SBSD Owl Camera: There is real potential for this funding to help offset the cost of school health services, possibly including a portion of a nursing position. However, that funding depends on having licensed nurses in place to deliver services, document care, and participate in required, processes. SBSD Owl Camera: In short, we need nurses to access the funding intended to support nursing, and ultimately to support our students. SBSD Owl Camera: I understand the complexity of the decisions before you, and I deeply respect the leadership involved in making them. My hope is simply to highlight that maintaining adequate nursing capacity supports
011student safety today and positions the district for stability and sustainability moving forward. SBSD Owl Camera: I would be happy to provide additional information or data or to continue these conversations as the district learns more about what Medicaid reimbursement will look like in practice and in dollars. SBSD Owl Camera: Thank you for your time and your continued commitment to our students and our schools. I really appreciate y'all. SBSD Owl Camera: Thank you. SBSD Owl Camera: Do we have other public comment? SBSD Owl Camera: Potentially going on with you. SBSD Owl Camera: All right, we'll move to the next section, which is focused on student learning, student representative reports, so… SBSD Owl Camera: She was… SBSD Owl Camera: Before we pass it on to Issa, I would like to give a quick update on the partnership we
012are building with the Student Council. SBSD Owl Camera: On November 17th, Allie and I attended a student council meeting with three goals in mind. First of all, we wanted, the student council members to understand our role on the board and what we do every day, and then we also presented a systemized discussion format for high school advisories. SBSD Owl Camera: Which would be an opportunity for students to understand the panorama data, and kind of how we use it, and how we can use it at the school level. SBSD Owl Camera: And then we also wanted to receive some feedback on ways we can improve our communication and create a lasting relationship with student council. Meeting went really well, and we're working on this discussion format, as we have been for the past few weeks. SBSD
013Owl Camera: And we will, working on a bunch of things right now, so we'll share some more at the January 7th meeting. Yeah, and now, we would like to invite Issa Harrington. SBSD Owl Camera: Up to the microphone, Isa is a SV High School junior, and has been working hard, along with some others, to advocate for student representative voting rights on Vermont school boards. SBSD Owl Camera: Yeah, thank you so much, Allie. So, I'm just going to talk a little bit about what I've been doing, and so I've been working on a project with a bunch of students around Vermont, starting over the summer, to give students on school boards the right to vote on the school boards and have a binding vote, keeping in mind that I only knew about the students… our student
014representatives as early as last year, so it's not a well-known position, and I don't think there's a precedent for this around Vermont. So that's all… it's very new, and I'm SBSD Owl Camera: Keeping that in mind as I'm going through this process. SBSD Owl Camera: But, the way that this started was I was fortunate enough to be able to attend the Governor's Institute for Global Issues of Youth Action over the summer, and I had the opportunity while I was there to speak to representatives at the State House specifically about education policy, which is something that I'm very interested in. SBSD Owl Camera: And, I was given the opportunity to speak with this representative about, things that I thought could be improved in school environments, and one of the things that I brought up, along with
015several of my peers who were present at this meeting, was that we don't think students are given enough voice, when it comes to their day-to-day learning or education policy in general. SBSD Owl Camera: And so our goal with the bill that we're writing is to give students opportunities to take a bigger hand in their education, and… because we are, like, what we are hoping will happen is that students who are able to engage with their education will get more out of it. SBSD Owl Camera: Sorry, I'm going a little bit off my script, but SBSD Owl Camera: we… we believe that these students are the ones who are, like, experiencing… interrupt you for just a second? We should go a little more slowly. Yeah, sorry, no, that's okay. SBSD Owl Camera: So we are seeing
016that students are the ones who are experiencing the consequences of, education policy decisions every day, and they're the ones who are most aware of what the student body needs, and what are issues that students are experiencing. SBSD Owl Camera: And so we're writing the bill with this in mind. And it's a very slow process, it's going through a lot of stages right now. Currently, it's being drafted by alleged counsel at the State House, which is something that we're very excited about happening, and we're in constant, communication with our representative who is sponsoring our bill. But an outline of our bill would cover the following. SBSD Owl Camera: So, all high school students in a district, and we're keeping in mind that redistricting is kind of in the process right now, we know that that's something
017that's been passed, and we're keeping that in mind. Currently, nothing we can put in our bill is going to be affecting that, and there are going to be changes that are coming in. We are still waiting to hear from Ledge Council about their thoughts on the situation. SBSD Owl Camera: But currently, what our bill is looking like is, student representatives would be elected, so applications would go through the school board, and then students would democratically elect, a representative, and it would be a continuous model like what we have now, so there would be a senior representative and a junior representative. And our hope for this is that students would be able to engage more with their student representative, because as a high school student, I was not aware that we had student representatives until SBSD
018Owl Camera: late last year, and I think that that's a resource that many students don't know is available to them, in terms of getting their voice out there. So I think giving students the option to have a say in who is representing them is an important step to take in making sure that they are comfortable, having their voices out there. SBSD Owl Camera: And so all applications would be reviewed by the school board, which I know is the process now, and then would go… finalists would go to students for voting. And that's something that's hard to enforce across the state. We're aware that student, election policies for things like student council differ by school. This is not something that could be strictly enforced. These are kind of guidelines we're providing along with our bill. SBSD
019Owl Camera: To give this, idea the best chance of working for all schools across the state. SBSD Owl Camera: So, students with the voting rights would have the same, rights to vote and rights to speak as any other member on the board. They would operate as a full board member. And the hope with this is just that this would give students a real, tangible way to create change in their community. SBSD Owl Camera: Because what I'm looking at right now is models where students are able to SBSD Owl Camera: say what they're thinking, but don't necessarily have any way to enact that into real action. And I think this is a huge issue when it comes to student needs, because while their voices are being heard, if action is not being taken on behalf of
020their voices, there's not no real change being that's benefiting these students. SBSD Owl Camera: And so we would have continuity, the junior position would be re-elected as the new year comes. And another thing we were… we are advocating for on this bill is giving middle schoolers, having one or two middle school students. SBSD Owl Camera: come and take a similar position to what Allie and Moment have now, where they are able to be in contact with board members, they are coming to meetings, they are representing voices of people at their schools, and we are prepping them for a leadership position, so they are ready when they come to high school to be comfortable in sharing their voices with adults. SBSD Owl Camera: So, when there is that kind of gap between, there's that gap in
021trust, and there's also just that gap in age that's really intimidating to a lot of students, which is why there's not a lot of, there's not a lot of dialogue between adults on the school board and students in the high school and in the middle school. SBSD Owl Camera: So yeah, this is… again, there's no precedent for this, both in this state and nationwide. There's very little information on school boards, period, available to the public. With the research that I've done, I found that there's only one state in the country who allows students to vote on school boards in all counties, and that's Maryland. SBSD Owl Camera: there are other states where students have the option to have a vote, like a non-binding vote, which is what Alliano would have. They're able to voice their
022opinions, they're able to speak to the school board, but their vote has no real consequence. SBSD Owl Camera: And there is a movement around the country to give teenagers and people in high school the right to vote in local elections, period. And this is seen in states such as California, Maryland, New Jersey. There's so many movements regarding giving students more opportunity to say SBSD Owl Camera: The needs of that particular population. SBSD Owl Camera: And we know that these are the people who are coming into the world, they're going to be stepping up and taking over a lot of these roles. They're going to start voting as they come out of high school. And I think it's really important to be having them for these opportunities that they're going to be handed, and show them
023that their voice really matters and they are capable of enacting change. And that is what we hope to do with this bill. So again, it's a very slow process. It is in the hands of Ledge Council currently. SBSD Owl Camera: We're, waiting feedback constantly. We know this is, like, a very delicate subject to a lot of people, but I have, SBSD Owl Camera: I have people who worked on this with me who are advocating across the state to their school boards and their administrations about why they think student voice is so important when it comes to education policy decisions, and we are getting a lot of positive feedback from communities around the state regarding this. And we're super excited to see so many members of staff and so many students in support of this, because
024that is ultimately what we're looking for, is we're looking for students who are saying, yes, I want to use my voice, I don't have a platform to do it. SBSD Owl Camera: it yet? SBSD Owl Camera: But I want the opportunity to share what my student body needs. And I think that's such an important opportunity to be giving young people now the ability to stand up and say, this is wrong, because what we're looking at is younger generations giving the opportunity, are standing up and saying something they think is wrong. SBSD Owl Camera: And we want to give all students this opportunity. We want them to be… have their student representatives be accessible. We want them to trust them. We want this trust between the adults and the students. And this is a way of
025fostering that trust, by giving students a platform where adults are saying, we trust you with this responsibility, and we want you to succeed. So we're giving you a platform to speak on behalf of your class. SBSD Owl Camera: So I want to open it up to questions or comments you may have for me, concerns, but I'm very excited to be able to share this with you today. SBSD Owl Camera: That's great. So, so I think what you're saying is that SBSD Owl Camera: there would have to be a state law in order to allow the votes of the student representatives to carry weight, is that right? Not necessarily. There's no law saying currently they can't. What we're looking at is a law that's saying that it's required that all school boards have student representatives who
026are allowed to vote on behalf of the student bond. SBSD Owl Camera: Because currently, there's no law in place saying that that's not allowed, meaning that if there is a school board in Vermont who is allowing their students to vote and have binding votes, it's not against any law we have currently, but it's not mandated. So, many school boards do not have students on at all, or do not have students who have the right to vote on a school board. SBSD Owl Camera: As far as we're aware, there's no school boards in Vermont where students have a binding vote. SBSD Owl Camera: Explain that. SBSD Owl Camera: In what you've looked at… so, there's no law, but are there other laws that… SBSD Owl Camera: would make it problematic. For example, if we were just
027having a conversation the other night, students under 18 can't sign contracts, so to the extent that we sign SBSD Owl Camera: Agreements to, do certain things and take owes. SBSD Owl Camera: does that in any way… is this something that has come up in your conversations and that needs to be addressed? So that's nothing that… we have not been made aware of any law that would, in any way prohibit students from taking action like that on a school board. And again, like, there's very little data that we have access to that is around students on school boards in general, or school boards around the state. SBSD Owl Camera: We've not been made aware of any legislation by our representative contact or by alleged council that there's anything that would prevent students from doing this at
028this time. SBSD Owl Camera: And in Maryland, are they binding votes? Yes. SBSD Owl Camera: And so, what it is in Maryland, and again, this is… there's very little data, but what… from what I've seen, school boards have the option to give students binding vote, meaning that it's not required, but it's the only state where it is allowed to the extent that, like, if a school board chooses to have students on the school board, they have the opportunity to have a binding vote. And I think what is required SBSD Owl Camera: Is that students have a non-binding vote. SBSD Owl Camera: And again, there's, not a lot of… I've read several articles, there's nothing that goes into specific detail about if there's any specific issues these students are voting on, but that, from what I
029have read, it is that they have a binding vote in at least SBSD Owl Camera: one county, Maryland, there is one county where students have a binding vote and have had a binding vote for several years at this point, and many other counties around the state where students are given a non-binding vote, or are given a binding vote on certain initiatives. SBSD Owl Camera: Any other questions from the Board of Superintendent? SBSD Owl Camera: Well said, well spoken, and good luck on your quest. Thank you. SBSD Owl Camera: I was just curious about how you mentioned that this kind of came about at this summer, and you were at… Yes. And so, was that, what was the name of it again? It was the Governor's Institute for Global Issues and Youth Action. And so, did
030you kind of come up with your own ideas about what you wanted to SBSD Owl Camera: get behind, and… That's a really good question. So, we were given the opportunity to kind of choose a class, which would be, like, our focus, and so I was in an education policy class, that was kind of the class that I selected to focus on. As a student, education policy is really important to me, because I want to be sure that my voice is being heard by those in power, so the students are getting the support they need. SBSD Owl Camera: And so when we were given the opportunity to go to the State House, I was in the Education Committee room, and we were… me and several of my peers were in this room with our representative, and
031we were given the opportunity to kind of talk about what are issues we're seeing in school districts, what are concerns we have, what are things we think could be improved. And something that kept coming up again and again across issues was that student voices aren't necessarily being listened to across issues. SBSD Owl Camera: or if they are being heard, there… no action is being taken on behalf of these issues. And this is just, like, as students, something that we… SBSD Owl Camera: concerning, and so we were really excited when our representative, who was in the room with us, said that she would be interested in sponsoring a bill regarding what we talked about, and so… SBSD Owl Camera: In class when we went back to the Institute, our teacher and one of our peer leaders,
032who is the head of a non-profit here in Vermont, and her whole, the goal of her nonprofit is to get students in the room where these decisions are being made around education policy, so she was a huge asset to us. I spoke at an event she held in September regarding education policy, and so I led a panel… I spoke about this, and then I led a panel there. SBSD Owl Camera: So, like, her goal is just to get students in the room where these conversations are being had, and giving them a voice, and giving them an audience that's willing to listen, and is willing to take action to create the change that students are looking for if students aren't given the ability to create that change for themselves, and so her long-term goal is exactly
033what I'm doing is to give students the right to create that change on their own. SBSD Owl Camera: Thank you very much for your comment. Back to you. Thank you. Yes, Melissa, you said something that's super important to us, as well as a lot of students in the state. So, if you can keep in mind while they keep talking about it at the legislative… SBSD Owl Camera: Thank you. SBSD Owl Camera: The next item on the agenda is an action item, appointment of permanent superintendent, and so I have a few words to say about that. SBSD Owl Camera: So, we just finished a highly competitive national superintendent search. SBSD Owl Camera: The competition was fierce. SBSD Owl Camera: We had 3 out-of-state candidates, and our current interim superintendent, Joe Clark, Each of the applicants who
034we interviewed. SBSD Owl Camera: Had years of experience as a superintendent, and a principal, and a classroom teacher. SBSD Owl Camera: So, you know, there were also people that we didn't interview, but the people that we did interview had all of those experiences. They came from out of state with excellent recommendations. SBSD Owl Camera: And… in the opinion of the hiring committee, and also, of this board in executive session, SBSD Owl Camera: Our current superintendent, Dr. Joe Clark, came out on top. SBSD Owl Camera: I want to say just two things about him from my personal, perspective. SBSD Owl Camera: I think that Dr. Joe is humble. SBSD Owl Camera: And I think he's action-oriented, and I think that those two things don't… SBSD Owl Camera: come in the same package very often, and so
035I think, that's… that's a very special combination. SBSD Owl Camera: And I also want to say, just from my perspective, and from what I've heard. SBSD Owl Camera: He has earned the respect of children. SBSD Owl Camera: And that is, I think a very important sign. SBSD Owl Camera: Do any other board members have comments? SBSD Owl Camera: Wonderful, Joe. Is Jen on? Just… She's gone. SBSD Owl Camera: I think… She'll be back. SBSD Owl Camera: Yeah, absolutely. Yes, absolutely, please do. SBSD Owl Camera: One of the things we saw in the community survey for the permanent superintendent was that the community really valued someone who is student-centered. Kind of echoing what Seamus just said, the student body does really respect you, Dr. Clark, and you have reached out to me a moment multiple times
036since you had the interim position, wanting to get students involved in committees. SBSD Owl Camera: Coming and talking to students, so I really appreciated that about you, and I'm excited for you to be here. SBSD Owl Camera: just to piggyback off of that, I have had different friends tell me that they've… their child has received a letter in the mail from Dr. Clark, about SBSD Owl Camera: winning a soccer tournament, or being in the play, or just the student focus, I think, really hits home with a lot of people in this community, and I think Dr. Jones got that dialed in. I also just feel like SBSD Owl Camera: have a lot of trust in Dr. Joe already in the short time that we've worked together, because, SBSD Owl Camera: He puts integrity into his
037work, and he cares a lot about this district, which is… SBSD Owl Camera: easy to see for anybody who's been working with you, so I really couldn't be happier to have you sing on with us. SBSD Owl Camera: Look forward to the future. And I do hope that you continue your excellent efforts on, SBSD Owl Camera: meeting the community, I think in the first 3 months you've been here, you have met with over 30 different groups, groups that have told you that they had never SBSD Owl Camera: received a superintendent before. They had never gotten attention from a superintendent before, so I… I really hope that you expand your, you know, your efforts on that. SBSD Owl Camera: Any other comments from the board? I wish Jen was here. I know that Jen also had
038some specific comments. I told her to let me know when she gets back, so… I agree with all the comments made, and I do want to emphasize also that level of trust. SBSD Owl Camera: You know, to have somebody in this very important role. SBSD Owl Camera: demonstrates that… that level of trust through just straight up, you know what I'm telling you, it might not be the greatest, but… SBSD Owl Camera: this is where we're at, and I am committed to the actions to improve, so I just… I really appreciate that in particular. Thanks. SBSD Owl Camera: All right, well, I would entertain a motion to appoint Dr. Joe Clark as the superintendent of the South Burlington School District, and authorize the board chair to sign an agreement to that effect. I move to appoint
039Dr. Joe, and to authorize you to sign with me. SBSD Owl Camera: the LoRa moves, Michelle, seconds? SBSD Owl Camera: Any discussion? This is now a time where the community is allowed to offer public comment. SBSD Owl Camera: All right, oh, Jim Ray, yes, of course. SBSD Owl Camera: Great. SBSD Owl Camera: Hi, I'm Jean Marie Clark, Senior Director of Finance and Operations for the School District. I just wanted to say two things. I think that one of the things that Joe's done really well has been an excellent communicator within the district and outside of the district. I think that that's really been needed. I've seen a lot of bridges, SBSD Owl Camera: the beginnings of bridges being built, and I really appreciate that as an employee, and I think that I've seen that appreciation
040in the district and with parents and families, so thank you for that. I also just want to thank the board for taking the time to go through this search. SBSD Owl Camera: Because I know it takes a lot of time and effort, and I feel bad for anybody that was up against Joe, because it's hard to beat the intern guy that we've already got to know. But we did appreciate getting to meet, those candidates. And I… SBSD Owl Camera: did want to say that I, as a person who's worked in an organization where the leader has changed over a dozen times, it's really, really tough as an employee in that organization to deal with the change of leadership over and over again. So, I valued my time working with Joe and the work that he's
041done, so I thank you for helping that continued leadership and not forcing another change on the employee community here. SBSD Owl Camera: Thanks. Congratulations, Joe. SBSD Owl Camera: And would you recognize Month. SBSD Owl Camera: Elizabeth. Elizabeth: Hi, thank you, Seamus. I just wanted to echo G. Marie's comments that, Dr. Clark has been very proactive in working with, the City Manager, Jesse Baker, and communicating, proactively with City Council as well. Elizabeth: So I feel great about the decision that the board's made, and I welcome Dr. Clark to the community, and look forward to working with him in a council capacity. Elizabeth: Welcome, Joe. SBSD Owl Camera: I'd just like to say that the relationship with City Council has really paid off already. Today, I was asked to be the celebrity guest with their vaping content,
042so I got to try some of this fabulous baked goods. I brought them right here. SBSD Owl Camera: Well, I'm serious about that, but also serious that I'm really grateful to this board for putting your trust in me. I do feel like it's been a really good fit. I feel like the district's needs, they fit my strengths, and, SBSD Owl Camera: I am committed to serving this place for a long time, and I just am so grateful for the team I work with, and the… I love the people I work with, and I love the kids that we serve, so thank you for giving me that opportunity. SBSD Owl Camera: Thank you. SBSD Owl Camera: And before we take, SBSD Owl Camera: a vote after comments. I just… did you say in the motion and
043authorized? Yes, you did? Okay. SBSD Owl Camera: I just didn't. Sorry, I just wanted to make sure. SBSD Owl Camera: Great, then we… Allie and Molman, do you have any other comments on them? SBSD Owl Camera: Okay, sure, great. I was just really surprised at how many people knew you in school, when you were walking around. SBSD Owl Camera: Yeah, right? I mean, I think you said… people said hi to Joe in the year. SBSD Owl Camera: I've been carrying snow days. SBSD Owl Camera: I was surprised I didn't get a single question, because I've been hearing them back and forth, like, can you tell Dr. Doe to give us a snow day already? I want to. SBSD Owl Camera: Alright, well, all those in favor? SBSD Owl Camera: Say aye. Aye. SBSD Owl Camera:
044Believes all of this. SBSD Owl Camera: unanimous. Great. So, congratulations. Thank you, thank you. SBSD Owl Camera: The next action item is monitoring a report calendar. SBSD Owl Camera: That's something we've never ate. It is… it is… do you want to share, or do you want… I can pull it up and share it? If you can pull it up, that'd be great, because I'm not sure. Somehow I'm not able to connect tonight, but… SBSD Owl Camera: And I… I'm not sure why it's not in the pivot, so I apologize for that. We will get that out. But the calendar is set up, well, I guess there are two parts to it. One part is to get us through SBSD Owl Camera: 2526 for the policies that we have not yet brought to the board. Oh,
045okay, hold up, sorry to interrupt you. Oh, yeah, I'm sorry. So, so the purpose… so… SBSD Owl Camera: The South Burlington School Board is a policy governance school board, which means that SBSD Owl Camera: we have agreed to a set of rules about how we monitor superintendents' performance and how we monitor the school district's performance. And so, in policy governance, there are these things called monitoring reports, and monitoring reports are SBSD Owl Camera: The superintendent, Telling us what he or she thinks SBSD Owl Camera: We expect of them, and defining what success looks like, and then reporting out whether they were successful on everything from financial auditing to SBSD Owl Camera: treatment of staff, treatment of students, treatment of community. So what we're talking about now is, when should each of those monitoring reports SBSD
046Owl Camera: be presented to the board, and obviously we have to spread those out over the year. We couldn't review them all in one meeting, and also, you know, the superintendent couldn't be prepared at every meeting to do all of them. So the question is, when do we monitor what? SBSD Owl Camera: Sorry, sorry to interrupt. Oh, no, no problem, thank you. And so, there are really two parts to what you're approving. The first is actually the bottom of what Michelle split up, which is, the… the short term. These are the… these are the policies that we have not yet, SBSD Owl Camera: Done throughout the 25-26 school year, and we may have skipped them, so that is the… SBSD Owl Camera: schedule for, policies coming forward, and the first one's January 7th. I'll be
047presenting, the monitoring report for Policy 1.2 Academic Proficiency. And so you can see we'll have a few of those between now and May. SBSD Owl Camera: And then the top is what will be, expected moving forward. So starting… really, it'll be, like, a June 30th. SBSD Owl Camera: A date where this will take effect, where we will start, SBSD Owl Camera: might even be May, that we will start doing these for the coming year. So you can see that they are spread out. The calendar is really made with feedback from the central office leadership team, because these policies are really… the majority of the work in gathering data and putting reports together is done by the central office leadership team. SBSD Owl Camera: And so, we tried to put a calendar together that made the
048most sense for when would this report be most timely, most accurate, and fit within each employee's schedule. So, that's what you see there, and SBSD Owl Camera: If you approve it, well, I'm gonna… I'm giving a report on January 7th anyway, but I hope… I hope you report, or you agree to the monitoring report calendar. SBSD Owl Camera: So, one thing on here… oh, actually, you know, do you want… do you want to speak to it at all? Just a couple of comments. I… I… just about… specifically about the ENDS. One, from what I can tell, we have not monitored. We… or LE District has not monitored the ENDS policy since 2021. SBSD Owl Camera: And it is a big chunk, it's like the… SBSD Owl Camera: most important, probably, set of monitoring reports, because
049this tells us, how we're doing on our goals as a district. For anyone maybe familiar with Portrait of a Graduate, or… SBSD Owl Camera: Just generally the aspirations that we have for our kids in their educational experience, they're embodied in those… those goals. SBSD Owl Camera: or those policies, and then they're distilled into, you know, what are the goals of those policies through definitions and monitoring. In any case, the academic proficiency was selected specifically to kind of SBSD Owl Camera: bump that one up. Well, first of all, it's in November, because that's when the data come out from the state for summative assessments, prior to that, so they're available to do monitoring in November. Because we missed that. SBSD Owl Camera: And because we are voting on a budget in the middle of January, so
050the meeting after that, we wanted to make sure that SBSD Owl Camera: This report was kind of front and center. SBSD Owl Camera: In anticipation of it potentially helping guide SBSD Owl Camera: Any kind of guidance or priority setting, nuts. SBSD Owl Camera: particularly for the board, but for the staff, and then to the extent that we need to weigh in on any of those specific things at the invitation of the superintendent, we'll have a little bit more information at our fingertips and fresh at that point. SBSD Owl Camera: And the rest, as Joe mentioned, is really about getting us back on track, because we've missed a bunch, so those are the ones tagged down in the bottom, and then kind of setting the expectation for moving forward when we would expect to see these
051reports. You reminded me of one more thing, Michelle, is that it used to be that the ends policy, 1.0, was done all as one policy, and we did divide it into the four specific ends. SBSD Owl Camera: Because they're pretty… I don't know, pretty big and meaty, so we spread them out a little bit. SBSD Owl Camera: And I know that there is… SBSD Owl Camera: There has been incidental discussion in different board meetings about the potential need to SBSD Owl Camera: update our ends. Personally, I will say, for example, that I think that the ENDS does not talk enough about trades and careers. It puts too much focus on college. SBSD Owl Camera: That's just me personally. And then the other thing I'll say about this that I like is academic proficiency is coming
052up. We're doing that first. SBSD Owl Camera: And I know that that's a big community concern, because for a community that has put as much money into schools as SBSD Owl Camera: the South Burlington community has, we, as a community, want SBSD Owl Camera: results, and we want to focus on, proficiency, at least that's what I've been hearing from my constituents. SBSD Owl Camera: Well, I really appreciate that. SBSD Owl Camera: And if the board does change ends, then we'll change the calendar accordingly. SBSD Owl Camera: I had another question about this. One of the… Questions that we got. SBSD Owl Camera: in November, in November, when we had our community forum about the budget, was SBSD Owl Camera: Do you get a report every quarter? SBSD Owl Camera: Talking about spend against budget. SBSD
053Owl Camera: And so I see that you have, a quarterly financial… Yeah. And that… and that's not new to this calendar. It had always been that. I haven't been here long enough to tell you if they've been done or not, but they… they will be. So Jean Marie's up next with, I think a February, report. SBSD Owl Camera: And I did hear the comment about spend against budget and, you know, year-to-date expenditures and things, and I think… I mean, we'll… we're… as we go through these, the first time, I'm sitting with each, COLT member to go through the report and what we need to, SBSD Owl Camera: Put in there, and so it'll be… it'll be really a year of learning for all of us, and SBSD Owl Camera: So, she's next on my list
054to have on her. Sit down with Joe. And do you anticipate putting the spend against budget? SBSD Owl Camera: I think it's a good thing to have, but, I mean, we're just talking out of school right now. SBSD Owl Camera: Yeah, I mean, it's… I can tell you that in my experience… in my experience and my other place in Ohio. SBSD Owl Camera: There was an… I mean, monthly, the treasure… there was a treasurer in Ohio, not here, but a treasurer would give an annual, monthly, report, and it would always include, year-to-date and monthly-to-date. So you could see, where we are with budgeting and, SBSD Owl Camera: You know, what we were expecting we'd spend, and… and that, so… SBSD Owl Camera: I think the software probably allows for that report to be run pretty
055simply. SBSD Owl Camera: Is there any other board comment on this schedule? SBSD Owl Camera: Do we feel it's appropriate to approve a schedule the first time we're seeing it? SBSD Owl Camera: I guess my main thinking is I really appreciate hearing you say that, you know, the central office had, input into when is the most appropriate time for them to tell us these things in terms of getting the information that they need. SBSD Owl Camera: I wouldn't pretend to have any clue what a good time to monitor these different reports would be. So, I guess I don't have much of an objection to approving it. SBSD Owl Camera: Because I believe that the people who needed to put their input into it have. And also that, you know. SBSD Owl Camera: If something changes,
056if somehow the information doesn't become available at the right time, that we're not holding people to SBSD Owl Camera: monitor for us if they don't have all the information, because that… it is not the point of what we're trying to do, so… SBSD Owl Camera: Right, with the flexibility. Yeah, I think that's a good plan. Like, there's… This is… SBSD Owl Camera: you know, hopefully a guide that's functional, but if it's not, for any particular reason, we can reschedule. Right. SBSD Owl Camera: Yeah, I just don't want to come to another point where we're having someone come here and try to give us information they don't have yet, and they defeat the whole purpose of what we're doing, so… Right, right. Then it's just mechanics without substance. Right. Well, I would entertain a motion to
057approve SBSD Owl Camera: The monitoring report calendar as presented here. SBSD Owl Camera: Well, I move to approve the moments you move forward. Laura moves. SBSD Owl Camera: I second. Emily, seconds. Any discussion? And this is an action item, so the community is welcome to comment on the monitored report calendar. SBSD Owl Camera: No one. SBSD Owl Camera: Alright, all those in favor? SBSD Owl Camera: Aye. The motion passes. SBSD Owl Camera: The next item on the agenda is Board Monitoring Rubric. SBSD Owl Camera: Okay. Would you like to introduce that, Michelle? Sure. I'll try to… Please remember that not everybody knows that we're a… all the things. SBSD Owl Camera: That were the… all the things. Am I… do I have to watch my own? No, no, no. SBSD Owl Camera: Sorry, I wasn't
058aware. I mean, remember that not everybody knows how our board works, so it'd be good to explain… Oh, to give a little background, yeah, no, that's a great, great point. Let me share my screen, and I've also… I've shared a hard copy with everybody at the table. SBSD Owl Camera: So what this is, SBSD Owl Camera: You know, recall when we did equity monitoring, we had a kind of beta draft of this, and it was longer. SBSD Owl Camera: But what is it? Yeah. Yeah, I'm gonna get to that. So… SBSD Owl Camera: Typically, when monitoring has been done, the board has been presented with a piece of paper that says. SBSD Owl Camera: Something like, is… is the interpretation reasonable? Yes, no. Is there sufficient evidence? Yes, no. Is the superintendent in compliance? SBSD
059Owl Camera: And, yes, no. Without a lot of, SBSD Owl Camera: coherence around what exactly that means, right? Part of that meaning, the core of that meaning that guides our decision, comes from the superintendent's interpretation, but also from the information that is provided through monitoring that answers the question. SBSD Owl Camera: how will we know when we are in compliance, right? And that suggests measures and criteria on those measures for, you know, the kind of progress that is reasonable and positive, right? So a lot of what we've seen in the past is SBSD Owl Camera: A long list of all of the things that we're doing that are, you know, great for our kids and whatever, but we haven't really had much of an opportunity as a board and as a community to see what
060that looks like. SBSD Owl Camera: as a whole, and as a… as a status, so to speak, right? And as a trend. SBSD Owl Camera: So, it's connected to the actual monitoring report in the sense that this is a tool that we call a rubric that allows us to break it down in a little more detail and understand exactly what it is we mean when we're saying in compliance, not in compliance. SBSD Owl Camera: And in this case, what we're presenting, which is… it's not a completely novel idea, but it is definitely novel for South Burlington, which is to have categories of compliance. And what this does is it takes the focus off SBSD Owl Camera: and the stress off of the yes-no decision, right? So if you think, well, I don't, you know, some
061of that doesn't sound right to me, like, I wish we were doing better, what can we do to do better? SBSD Owl Camera: we're not stuck in the position of saying yes or no, right? We're overcompensating or under-compensating, or under-identifying and over-identifying. SBSD Owl Camera: It also sends the message that we know that almost nothing is perfect, right? Or nothing is perfect, and that progress can always be made. SBSD Owl Camera: And this gives the structure for defining how we're going to do that, and then this part of it is the board's SBSD Owl Camera: review of what the superintendent reports. And so, specifically, what we're looking at are five levels of compliance. The last time we brought this to you, it had four. Dr. Clark brought up the very good point that we do
062need SBSD Owl Camera: A clearly not compliant, which is something like the monitor report isn't there, it's absent in interpretation, it's… SBSD Owl Camera: it's the condition that we hope we never have to use, basically, where the superintendent is kind of intentionally not monitoring, right? Because if we don't monitor, what's the point, right? If we don't have substance in the monitoring, there's not much point in doing it. SBSD Owl Camera: But then the rest just lays it out in kind of a graduated step process. It allows us to say, you know, some of the elements are there. We're meeting some of these goals, but not all of these goals. And so, just looking at the first one, the monitoring report is present, but interpretation is incomplete and or lacks a clear rationale, connecting measures and
063compliance to SBSD Owl Camera: policy goals. Then the next one, partially complete. Then the next one is reasonably well aligned with policy goals, and SBSD Owl Camera: has, a sufficient number, right? So then the bottom part of this, the key part of the bottom, the second paragraph, so to speak, in these rubrics, really is, does the board, in this report. SBSD Owl Camera: Is the board receiving enough information to understand SBSD Owl Camera: the level of adherence to policy, right? The level of compliance. So it's kind of a two-part thing that you consider in terms of what you check, and then the bottom, the board member rating, is just simply… I gave you the piece of paper, so what you can actually do in terms of SBSD Owl Camera: operationalizing this, right, in our work
064here, is the chair can walk through and say, okay, on the monitoring report. SBSD Owl Camera: Emily. SBSD Owl Camera: you know, what should you… right. Emily will have made her judgment during the report, and any discussion that follows, and then report that in to the chair. Just, I mean, that's the normal process, that's how it's done, it's just that it was a yes-no, now you'll be saying, beginning compliance, proficient compliance, so on and so forth. SBSD Owl Camera: There were 4 or 5 of these in the first pass. There are now 2. SBSD Owl Camera: And it addresses the question that we got stuck on the last time, which is, what SBSD Owl Camera: Are… are we monitoring the… or are we making a judgment in this evaluation about the report, or about the
065outcomes? SBSD Owl Camera: And where we landed is we really should be doing both. That is consistent with policy governance, but especially the outcomes, right? That's the whole point, is we're making sure that we're getting the value that our SBSD Owl Camera: Outcomes. So… You mean ends? Like, is ends and outcomes the same? Outcomes of the policy. SBSD Owl Camera: Yes, and are we meeting the goals of the policy? SBSD Owl Camera: So, district outcomes. SBSD Owl Camera: is the second, and this is really overall compliance with policy goals, and these are more simple. SBSD Owl Camera: The policy goals are neither referenced nor addressed. SBSD Owl Camera: There is an indication of attention to policy goals, however, there is not yet clear progress in achieving them. SBSD Owl Camera: The policy goals have been
066partially met, and some improvements over the last reporting interval are noted. Nearly all policy goals have been consistently met, and then the advanced exceptional category, all policy goals, have been consistently met and exceeded in some or all cases, right? This gives us SBSD Owl Camera: the… The definitions… SBSD Owl Camera: Of… not the definite, the definitions are in the monitoring board of what it means to be compliant. SBSD Owl Camera: Joe or his designated team member give the report, and we say. SBSD Owl Camera: basically, we're still saying yes or no, but we're saying it in more shades of gray, right? SBSD Owl Camera: And the, I lost my… my thought on… SBSD Owl Camera: No rush. Let me leave… let me leave it at that as a way of introducing this, and then just
067add that, SBSD Owl Camera: In the cases where a… compliance plan is included. So, in Joe's evaluation of district performance, says, Okay, we… SBSD Owl Camera: we are not meeting expectations right here, right? Like, we're not… we're not achieving compliance consistent with the criteria… the interpretation and the criteria for success that we've established. SBSD Owl Camera: And therefore includes the compliance plan, which is the, how are we going to get there? SBSD Owl Camera: the last one that is to our thinking, but would love to hear from you, is more of a yes-no question. Like, that one is… SBSD Owl Camera: Comfortably for me, a yes-no question. SBSD Owl Camera: So I think what you're saying is… SBSD Owl Camera: the problem with what we had before was that it was kind of pass-fail, and
068so it didn't get a lot of information, and so, like. SBSD Owl Camera: if you wanted to recognize the effort, because you thought it was mostly good, but there's some big problems, you might pass it, and then it's passed, and you just move on. But here, it's a A, B, C, D, E, you know, 1.2.3, so, like, the superintendent actually knows that SBSD Owl Camera: how the board feels where the board fails, particularly that's… Right, and it stresses the non… like, this isn't supposed to be punitive, right? It's supposed to… SBSD Owl Camera: be the board's due diligence in making sure that our policies that we set are being implemented, and our goals are being met. That's the whole goal. SBSD Owl Camera: Sorry, yeah. The other thing I think you're saying with the problem
069with the old one was that it… SBSD Owl Camera: It, wasn't clear that… SBSD Owl Camera: The board should also check whether this… this monitoring report even talks about the ends. It's kind of like, you know, we will… because, you know, we obviously want to monitor, you know, say. SBSD Owl Camera: You know, treatment of community, and how well that works, but then we also want to say, like. SBSD Owl Camera: is what is being monitored? Like, did you actually successfully tie that back to the goal… to the ends that we set for you? And I think you're saying that that was not adequately covered in the past version of the rubric? It's, SBSD Owl Camera: ENDs are separate, right? They're separate policies. So I'm not sure that every single executive limitation report needs to
070tie back to the ends, because those will have separate SBSD Owl Camera: Definitions of what it means to be compliant. So every single policy SBSD Owl Camera: there's gonna be… actually, Dr. Clark was extremely impressive. I was… I thought I was being diligent in putting together, like, a nice template for after we… we did our equity monitoring, and he informed me that he had already used the template that we created. I just polished it up, I didn't change the substance, to create templates for all of the other monitoring parts. But the point being. SBSD Owl Camera: The monitoring report is specific to the policy, and the outcomes that are defined are specific to the SBSD Owl Camera: the policy, and some of them are very simple. Like, we started with one of the hardest ones
071to do, because it had all of that student information and school information. Okay. Many, many indicators, but, like, a succession monitoring report is going to be, like, a no-brainer, right? And so that's why you're not SBSD Owl Camera: you're not saying… at first I saw this, I was like, wait a minute, out comes goals? Like, I thought policy governance, you weren't supposed to have goals, were you supposed to have ends. You're saying that no. SBSD Owl Camera: ends, like we had up here, ends are being… SBSD Owl Camera: monitored in the first part of the year, and then those are the 1.0 things, and then later, there's going to be the 2.0 things, which are executive limitations, and so it's like, it sounds like what you're saying is that an executive limitation can have an
072out… or a goal behind it. Yeah, it's the superintendent's goal, so it's the staff. SBSD Owl Camera: Yeah, if I could use Monica's report as an example, the one that she gave, and this is where we had the discussion, she talked about all those 2.1… 2.11. 2.11, right. That's an executive limitation. It's not then. Right, and she was talking about, SBSD Owl Camera: Thank you. SBSD Owl Camera: she was, she gave a great report, but when we came to our discussion about, is the board going to accept this monitoring report, it was about, well, are you approving that I gave you a good report, or that we're making progress in the equity realm? And so, what we've done here with this is we've incorporated both. SBSD Owl Camera: Now you can say, hey, you did
073a… you did a really great job, or a really horrible job. SBSD Owl Camera: giving us a report about how you're doing, and by the way, we're also looking at whether you're making a difference. It's not enough to do the work if SBSD Owl Camera: if nothing changes, if we don't get better. So that allows you to look at both of those things. SBSD Owl Camera: And another point of the articulating it in really specific terms like this, which, again, we're completely open at this, is that the language needs more adjustment, would love to hear it. But the… SBSD Owl Camera: A benefit of this, and a point of this, is that it… it… Gives us a common… definition. SBSD Owl Camera: which will allow more consistent and useful rating. You know, to the earlier
074point, I know Laura's been doing these for years now, when you sit down and you're asked yes, no, and there's an expectation that you say yes, because no one's bad. SBSD Owl Camera: And you don't really even know, now I'm speaking for myself, because I did have an experience like this. SBSD Owl Camera: what you're supposed… what does compliance mean? Like, it's not defined for you anywhere, it's just a word on a piece of paper. Of course, we like our superintendent, you know, they must be compliant. This gives better definition, I think. SBSD Owl Camera: Yeah, I was gonna say, thank you. This is… this is really great, because I have done some of those reports. SBSD Owl Camera: This is just a question. I think this is really good. I write a lot of
075rubrics, and generally, it goes advanced, it goes the other way. So you go 4, 3, 2, 1, 0. So the first thing you're looking at is where you're striving for the excellence. SBSD Owl Camera: So, most rubrics that we do in school, they start with advanced, and they go down. SBSD Owl Camera: Because the idea is that you… because we're reading, left to right, so you want to see… strive for that. I mean, because I'm assuming when you're… SBSD Owl Camera: Because you and Michelle, when you're looking at those, you're… you're striving for that. SBSD Owl Camera: then you gotta read through all of that. That's just… I don't know if that makes any difference, just how… SBSD Owl Camera: I think what makes sense for the group. I don't have any preference on order.
076Generally, that's how we do all of our… I mean, it would be easy enough to flip them around. I don't… SBSD Owl Camera: Right, so you bring up another point that, we haven't mentioned, which is, generally speaking, the idea would be to at least achieve proficiency, right? That's what we're talking about, the reasonable, you know, things are… the report SBSD Owl Camera: provides enough information to make a confident decision about how we're doing on our goals. SBSD Owl Camera: it's, you know, reasonably well aligned to policy. It mostly covers, right, like, those kinds of things, and it reserves that kind of exceptional category. I'm sure our students could tell us, right, about that. And I'm just wondering if, like, even, like, highlighting, like, shading in gray… SBSD Owl Camera: teacher… Oh, yeah, yeah. Proficiency, right?
077That's what you're… Yeah, that's our, that's our bar. So you shade it in, so we're, like, as a board member, we don't really… so, okay, we're really shooting for that. That's excellent over here. That's a good visual. Yeah, it's a visual. So almost like that's the one you're going to compare it to first. Does this sound like… SBSD Owl Camera: I love that it's been broken out, like, you just can't do it. I definitely felt very, like. SBSD Owl Camera: confused about monitoring alerts, and the way we used to do it, and because there would be so much work put into it, but I couldn't tell what the outcome was, and I didn't like not being able to acknowledge the work and SBSD Owl Camera: And then also say, how are we going to make
078it better? Because that's the whole point. So if you just acknowledge the work, then maybe you don't figure out how to make it even better, but if you don't… it just was way too black and white, and I think this is… would be really helpful. I think… so I think what we'd like to do is SBSD Owl Camera: I'll give the 1.2 monitor report January 7th and use this, and then see if it works. And then if it doesn't, we'll make adjustments, and if it does. SBSD Owl Camera: then we kind of adopt that as what we use going forward. Will we fill these out, like, before we come to the meeting, right? Is that the idea? No, I think you'll fill them out after a report's been given. Yeah, I mean, the reports will
079be made available, like, a week before, at least, right? SBSD Owl Camera: Well, in this case, it might be… Maybe not. I mean, you should fill it out after the superintendent has SBSD Owl Camera: presented it, and been given an opportunity to defend it, according to whatever comments are made, so it's definitely something… But you could have, yeah, you could have something in mind, and review it, and get your questions ready, and those kinds of things. Great, okay. SBSD Owl Camera: So then at the end, we… is it sort of the board member decides if it's a path, if it's a yes or no? SBSD Owl Camera: based on the rubric and how it shakes out for them? No. So, no. Okay, thank you. No. So that is… so this walks a line between complexity
080and simplicity, I hope. SBSD Owl Camera: Because some complexity had to be introduced, right, in order to give it this level of detail, but the last round was admittedly too complex, I think. SBSD Owl Camera: What this allows us to do is to sit down with our piece of paper, like a physical piece of paper, and make notes and check the box, right? In the end. SBSD Owl Camera: I assume the chair, but somebody on the board will have to take that role and indicate each person's, and I did do a spreadsheet just so that we can get that turned into an overall board rating for the record. SBSD Owl Camera: In a way that I think is reasonable, that I can explain, or if you're ready to just be done, I won't. So, at
081the end of the policy monitoring. SBSD Owl Camera: You will check… two boxes. SBSD Owl Camera: where you're rating from 0 to 4, and you'll check one box where you're deciding yes or no. So you'll check a total of 3 boxes. SBSD Owl Camera: And then, what do we do with it after we have all made our decision? We haven't… that's procedure. We haven't figured out what… how exactly it'll be collected, but it'll be collected, and… and then… SBSD Owl Camera: you know, there'll be an average, I assume, you know, it's like the average SBSD Owl Camera: So, I'm going to propose that we use a median. The reason that is, is because this SBSD Owl Camera: with these multiple categories, it's not a straight-up majority vote, right? We could be spread all over the
082place, and then there was, you know, then you wouldn't be able to tell. If you take the average, what happens is if you get SBSD Owl Camera: you know, some activism, some extreme ratings. The average will… SBSD Owl Camera: give that more weight in your final decision, which tends to, in this kind of process, lead to some unfairness, right? It gives the person with the extreme perspective SBSD Owl Camera: more influence over the final result, so using the median accommodates that. SBSD Owl Camera: It's how we… it's how we set cut scores on tests that determine these things, right? You use a median. I would entertain a motion to… One question. Can you remind me what that is? SBSD Owl Camera: It's the middle score, right? So, if you take an average and one person
083says zero, that's going to bring your average way down. The rest of your people could have said 4, but that one person was zero. SBSD Owl Camera: would pull… like, it almost… it's almost like it breaks the whole idea of a majority vote, to… to decent average. The median, we'll put it right in the middle, and… SBSD Owl Camera: It is literally the middle number of all of the numbers entered. SBSD Owl Camera: This might very well be something for us to figure out later, how I want to extend this longer than we have to, but couldn't the inverse also be said? That if we adopt their median, we are basically… we are going to be… SBSD Owl Camera: De facto accepting a rating system that will put the score in the middle. SBSD Owl
084Camera: Well, the thing is… the thing is that, like, you'd have to have 5 people vote extremely high or low to… for the median to not end up SBSD Owl Camera: somewhere in the middle, and that the superintendent is compliant. And I think as a board, if we want… I mean, look, we could try it both ways, but I just want to express, I think if we accept the median, we're doing the inverse, which is we are more or less guaranteeing that we're going to have a score in the middle every time. SBSD Owl Camera: So I think that's a valid thing that, you know, I think that maybe Michelle, the superintendent, and you want to have a conversation about that. The thing is, though, that the boards, SBSD Owl Camera: In a policy governance
085board, in my limited understanding of that, you know. SBSD Owl Camera: policy governance is something we elected into, right? And so, to a sum ext, we control how it's interpreted, and so, like. SBSD Owl Camera: Part of the purpose of monitoring reports is to provide the evaluation of the superintendent SBSD Owl Camera: Because in our policy government, the governance, it says, we will hold the superintendent's performance to be equivalent to the operational performance of the district, as shown by the monitoring reports. And so, like, what I like about this is that, you know, it gives us a number instead of a pass-fail. SBSD Owl Camera: And that number, you know, we have to interpret it over time. And I think that, like, in many cases, when there are numbers involved, you have both the average
086and immediate. You can keep both, like, you don't lose any information. And then we have to interpret that as to whether we think that that is sufficient performance. Fair point, and certainly something we can… SBSD Owl Camera: develop with and experiment both ways. I just wanted to express that. And it looks great. That might be one risk. Everything else about the same level, that might be one outcome risk we have to pay attention to. If we are consistently falling down on the exact same median. SBSD Owl Camera: when we're getting votes, you know, that might suggest something… an exceptional job was done, or a very poor job was done. We might always end up with the same middle number, and that doesn't really demonstrate that range. But we could… we don't need to extend this
087longer, I'll just voice that one thing for us to maybe observe as we go through and do a couple of things. And I think if Jen was here. SBSD Owl Camera: I don't want to speak for Jen. I don't know if Jen has rejoined us. SBSD Owl Camera: I'm gonna call for the orders of the day. We're actually behind time now. So I think if Jen was there, she would say, this should go on our website, on our scorecard, you know, and it should show, just like we asked the superintendent to show SBSD Owl Camera: the change in equity over time, we should show our own monitor and report scores, you know, over time. And then I think some of the concerns about the actual number will be lessened, because what you're looking for is,
088are we getting better, or are we getting worse? I completely agree with the point, though, and I will make one more point. So imagine you're scoring an essay. SBSD Owl Camera: on a 5-point rubric or a 6-point rubric. And… SBSD Owl Camera: as a person scoring that essay, there are, like, 5 people scoring that essay, and you're all trained, really, to… to rate consistently with the rubric and the rules around that. Well, the monitoring report and the language in the rubric are those rules, so to the extent that this is intentionally focused on the SBSD Owl Camera: Building a common understanding, it feels more likely that that common understanding will lead us to very consistent voting, right? SBSD Owl Camera: So if it's very clear that things are out of compliance. SBSD Owl Camera: that
089will be apparent now in the actual monitoring report and the presentation. But I think it is a really good point that we have to… we have to keep an eye on it, right? If we're always just… if we're… if we're a really split board and we're always coming in in the middle, maybe there… we'll have to talk about a better way to resolve that. SBSD Owl Camera: So I would entertain a motion to, adopt this policy monitoring rubric as presented, and ask the superintendent to, produce SBSD Owl Camera: these rubrics for each of the monitoring reports and provide them to us for, for our… for us filling them out. SBSD Owl Camera: Laura Mills. SBSD Owl Camera: Sorry. SBSD Owl Camera: Austin seconds. Any discussion? And this is an action item, so the community is
090welcome to comment on this action before we take it. SBSD Owl Camera: I would just say with the understanding that we're trying it out, and that it's a really good document that we are all wanting to amend. SBSD Owl Camera: Best practices, if necessary, yeah. SBSD Owl Camera: All those in favor? Aye. The motion passes. SBSD Owl Camera: The next item in the agenda is… SBSD Owl Camera: the best use study proposal from NESDAQ, and I would ask if the superintendent would just give another explanation of what this is, what it's for, what it's not. Yeah, it's a reminder that this would be, SBSD Owl Camera: NESDAQ, the New England School Development Council, would come in. They're an independent, group we are members of, which gives us a discount on the service. They would, SBSD
091Owl Camera: do a study of our facilities to determine if there's a better way for us to use those facilities. This is not meant to be any part of a new construction plan or any of those kinds of things. It's… SBSD Owl Camera: With the spaces that we currently have, are we utilizing the best we can, or is there a better way for us to SBSD Owl Camera: assign students, or assign different employees, or whatever it might be. So they would come in, they would look at enrollment projections, they would look at our facilities, they would look at space, square footage, all those kinds of things. SBSD Owl Camera: and give us recommendations. They're not binding recommendations, they'd be recommendations for the board to consider, moving forward. If this were done, it would take… SBSD
092Owl Camera: I think 3 or 4… they talked about it in the proposal, I think it's a several-month process, so none of the recommendations would… my expectation is none of the recommendations would be something that we could get in place in time for the 26-27 school year, but I think we could for the following year, if the board wanted to accept whatever recommendations as that came up. SBSD Owl Camera: And just the cost, it's like $16,000, which is a 20% or 25% discount over the regular cost, because we're… And this is something that we've discussed, we discussed this at the community forum. SBSD Owl Camera: in November at Orchard, so, is there any board comment on this? SBSD Owl Camera: Great. Well, I would entertain a motion to, SBSD Owl Camera: Ask the superintendent to
093carry out the… to authorize the superintendent to… SBSD Owl Camera: go forward with the best use study proposal for NESDAQ. SBSD Owl Camera: Laura moves. Dan seconds. And so now, any discussion? And this is an action item, so the community can comment on the… SBSD Owl Camera: On the best use study proposal that we are authorizing the superintendent to conduct. Is there any… Nothing online. Nothing online. Any comments in the room? SBSD Owl Camera: Totally not. SBSD Owl Camera: Trying not to, but I'm just… it's just… Can I ask a question? Sure. Sarah Pineda, can I ask a question, or at least have faith on that? So, since this is a community… not a community forum, we don't… SBSD Owl Camera: discuss. We'll… we won't respond to you. Okay. But we might take your comment.
094I mean, if we're gonna discuss $16,000, if they could, like. SBSD Owl Camera: I don't know. SBSD Owl Camera: give… Any type of input before we make… invest money making changes to… The use of our space. SBSD Owl Camera: I guess. SBSD Owl Camera: So… Like, I guess, I'm thinking, I'm like… I would suggest, like, sending a question like that to the board to answer. Thanks. Yeah, I'm just envisioning, like, oh, well, we do all this, it costs money, and then they came and come and say, well, that wasn't a good idea, or whatever. I don't know. SBSD Owl Camera: Yeah, I'll tell you what it is. Thanks. SBSD Owl Camera: Does that give rise to any other thoughts from the board members? SBSD Owl Camera: Okay. All those in favor? SBSD Owl Camera: Aye.
095Aye. SBSD Owl Camera: The motion passes. The next item on the agenda, we've now moved from action items to discussion items, and the first discussion item is to review Policy G8, Selection of Library Materials. This is the first reading. My understanding is that this is a… now a state-mandated SBSD Owl Camera: Policy, is that right? Yes, so we're required to have that. So I will… SBSD Owl Camera: Michelle, I think you're still sharing your screen. Oh, sorry. No, no, I just didn't… I just wanted to know. Would you actually, while you still have it up, would you pull up… would you go to the school board website, and go to the agenda, and open up the document, and then I'm going to read the document. SBSD Owl Camera: Or actually, do you mind reading it?
096I'll read it, sure. I'm sure you're talking about. I've got it, I've got it here. SBSD Owl Camera: Timber and ready? SBSD Owl Camera: I'm bringing up the agenda, or one of the… So, go to, selection of library materials. In the, in the December 17th folder. SBSD Owl Camera: there's a PDF called Policy G8. SBSD Owl Camera: And we'll wait to start reading it until you have that on screen. SBSD Owl Camera: Oh, I'm not… just stop and then share. It's like, we're not seeing what you're doing on the computer, it doesn't seem like you're really sharing it. There we go. SBSD Owl Camera: Yeah, okay, great. SBSD Owl Camera: Alright, we've got 8 o'clock. SBSD Owl Camera: Okay, so selection of library materials. Policy. The freedom to read is essential to our democracy. SBSD
097Owl Camera: The school library plays an important role in helping students to inquire, to study, and evaluate information, and to gain new understandings and knowledge. This policy exists to ensure compliance with 16 BSA 1624, SBSD Owl Camera: Inquiring that the South Burlington School District affirm the importance of intellectual freedom, guided by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the Civil Rights Act of 1964. SBSD Owl Camera: Vermont laws prohibiting discrimination in places of public accommodation. The American Library Association's Freedom to Read statement, June 2004. SBSD Owl Camera: Vermont's Freedom to Read statement, January 2024, and reflect Vermont's diverse people and history, including diversity of race, ethnicity, sex, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability status, religion, and political beliefs. SBSD Owl Camera: School librarians shall be responsible for curating and developing collections that provide students with
098access to a wide array of materials that are relevant to students' research. SBSD Owl Camera: Independent reading interests and educational needs. SBSD Owl Camera: As well as ensuring that such materials are tailored to the cognitive and emotional levels of the children served by their schools. SBSD Owl Camera: So, definitions. For the purpose of this policy. SBSD Owl Camera: 1. Library materials include all materials considered part of the library collection, including but not limited to print, digital, and media production sources. Library materials may be found in both physical and virtual library spaces. SBSD Owl Camera: Technology integration refers to the infusion of technology into the curriculum as a tool to enhance learning in a content area for a multidisciplinary setting, enabling students to select technology tools to help them obtain information SBSD Owl Camera: In a
099timely manner, analyze and synthesize the information, and present it in culturally, linguistically, and age-appropriate ways. SBSD Owl Camera: Administrative responsibilities. The superintendent or designee will, one, develop and implement procedures that address the selection of library materials and the provision of access to those materials. The superintendent or designee will develop procedures to address a selection of materials. SBSD Owl Camera: The deselection of materials prohibiting the renewal of school library materials for the following reasons. SBSD Owl Camera: One partisan approval or disapproval. SBSD Owl Camera: Two, the author's race, national… no, nationality, gender identity, sexual orientation, political views, or religious views. SBSD Owl Camera: Three, school board members or members of the federal discomfort, personal morality, political views, or religious views. SBSD Owl Camera: Or the author's point of view concerning the problems and issues of our
100time, whether international, national, or local. SBSD Owl Camera: And by race, nationality, gender identity, sexual orientation, political views, or religious views of the protagonist of the characters. SBSD Owl Camera: Or 6, content related to sexual health that addresses physical, mental, emotional, or social dimensions of human sexuality, including puberty, sex, and relationships. SBSD Owl Camera: We see donations of materials and reconsideration of materials. The superintendent or designee will ensure that the district provides services of a certified school librarian as required in state standards. SBSD Owl Camera: Is that it? That's it. SBSD Owl Camera: Is there any comment from the board? SBSD Owl Camera: Is there any comments from the superintendent? SBSD Owl Camera: No, our library committee worked hard on this. I'm proud of the work they did. SBSD Owl Camera: Great. All right, well,
101this was just a first reading, so we can move on to the next topic if nobody has any other comments. SBSD Owl Camera: So the next item in the agenda is the 2027 budget. SBSD Owl Camera: My first question about the 2027 budget is whether we can see it on Jan 7th, if we can see a early version of it on January 7th. SBSD Owl Camera: It's a bigger meal. Yeah. SBSD Owl Camera: Let me just give you where we're at in the process, maybe that'll help you. We have… we are a little bit behind, as you know. We are… we were a little bit behind in this process because we're all new to it, but one of the things… one of the parts of the process was, giving funding to each building principal for
102them to allocate what they want to do with that funding. SBSD Owl Camera: Those, budget proposals from the principals were due back today, so they've just come back today. SBSD Owl Camera: Joe and I and my friends in the business office will be meeting on Friday to review them. We're meeting with the building principals tomorrow, for a regular scheduled meeting, and I am certain that there will be questions and discussion during that meeting about SBSD Owl Camera: well, I did this, and what do you think, and can we change? And, so that'll happen tomorrow. We have another meeting on Friday. SBSD Owl Camera: And then we have a meeting with our central office leadership team for them to also review those budgets on Monday. SBSD Owl Camera: The budgets have gone out to the department
103managers, so that's, like, the transportation manager, and the IT, manager, or the IT department, and the facilities manager, all those folks have got their budgets. SBSD Owl Camera: They've been asked to submit them back to us with any changes before close of business on December 23rd. SBSD Owl Camera: The ladies in the business office are gonna work like dogs after Christmas and over New Year's to pull all of that stuff together for us. We are aiming for the 7th. I don't want to… I like to, you know. SBSD Owl Camera: I forget, like, Promise, slow, deliver, or be end. Thank you. SBSD Owl Camera: So we talked about this a little bit. Yeah, it's not our lack of transparency. I want the folks to be, clear about that. We… we simply are behind, and we're
104new to this, and I promise you next year will be much better and much more in time. I think that we have to have it out by the night, because if we're going to warn the meeting, it needs to be part of that. So, we are shooting for the 7th. Yeah. SBSD Owl Camera: But I would be lying if I said I can promise you the 7. I can't, but I can't promise tonight. Yeah, and next year… I mean, we keep talking about next year, it's gonna be… everything will be earlier, and it'll be cleaner. Like, the trouble with running into it being as late as it is, is now we're running into the holidays, we're running into end-of-year things that have to happen, like W-2s that have to be printed, and the contract just
105back from the unions. SBSD Owl Camera: like they're still trying to figure out how to organize the new pay structure, and do retro pay to employees, and how that affects the budget, so… SBSD Owl Camera: There's a lot going on this time of year in the business office, and we've thrown the budget work in there, too. So, I'm hoping that next year will be, like, a month or early. I don't see why it wouldn't be a lot earlier than we are now, so… SBSD Owl Camera: So that's not a strategy. We will be earlier next year. We are going to try to have it by the 7th, and if we fail at that, please, our intention is not to, be, SBSD Owl Camera: anything but transparent. It's just we would… we want to be accurate
106instead of quick. Yeah. SBSD Owl Camera: Is any… is there any other board comment on budget process, or where we're at? SBSD Owl Camera: I… I do think my understanding of the… SBSD Owl Camera: constituent comment on that was that even if it was a rough draft and was so marked, was so watermarked, you know, in red, rough draft, rough draft, rough draft, having an opportunity to see it at the Janet 7 meeting would be meaningful, and provide SBSD Owl Camera: You know, just more opportunity for the… SBSD Owl Camera: for the public to be able to provide it. But to you guys, you know, oh my god, you know, for example, the gentleman who provided a lot of excellent commentary on the budget in November. SBSD Owl Camera: You know, if he had an
107early copy of it, then maybe he'd have an extra week to send in a comment to you guys. I wouldn't want to be late on the one. SBSD Owl Camera: Because we're producing a rough draft all of a sudden. SBSD Owl Camera: Well, and rough draft is… SBSD Owl Camera: I mean, I get the sentiment, and I think there are places where that's appropriate. SBSD Owl Camera: In this case, I… I would worry. Well, you know, that draft said. Because if we're having a discussion on the 7, SBSD Owl Camera: about the… well, I guess it would be the opportunity for public comment. Is that what we're trying to address? SBSD Owl Camera: By posting the… the… Marked up, not complete draft. SBSD Owl Camera: So my understanding is that on January 14th. SBSD Owl
108Camera: we're voting to approve. Right. Board approval budget January 14th. I'd love to address that. I did take the liberty to change some language on our website that shows the 14th as being a day that the board SBSD Owl Camera: For this very reason, what we don't want to do is wait until the very last minute, bring the budget to the board, and have you vote on it that day. So the… I changed the announcement… I didn't change anything with board agendas or whatnot, but let me find the budget. It'll tell you exactly what the language is, so I put on there. SBSD Owl Camera: January 14th board meeting to consider the proposed budget at 6 p.m, so I was hoping that that would give SBSD Owl Camera: Flexibility that if the board's ready to
109adopt it. SBSD Owl Camera: the 14th, they would, but if they wanted to… if they needed more discussion or, or got feedback that caused us to need to make some changes, that would still give us a week before the 21st to adopt it. So, just a language change I made on… on the website. SBSD Owl Camera: To allow for us to get meetings for feedback, and not to hold back giving this out and then asking the board to vote on it. I think… I think you need to have SBSD Owl Camera: time for questions, and… and for comments, and so… We have a meeting on the 20th, please? We have a meeting on the 10 of ours. Yeah, 7. SBSD Owl Camera: So I think the… legal requirement SBSD Owl Camera: Is that we have
110to… we have to warn SBSD Owl Camera: The approved budget at least 10 days, or at least 30 days before. SBSD Owl Camera: It looks like it's 10 days. The board votes, or the town votes? Before the town votes. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, before town meetings. Even on the 21st, we're… yeah, we're good. Yes, because we'll work with the city to submit our information with their information for the budget book. SBSD Owl Camera: So we… right, so if… so by… when you're saying that you've moved back the board… you're suggesting that the board move back its approval vote, we'll still be fine in terms of… Yes, yes, and I'm not… I'm not suggesting the board do that, I've just given the board flexibility, because we know that… I heard the community that we want to
111have some lead time before the meeting where we can discuss it, and we, because we're behind. SBSD Owl Camera: through our own fault, are not able to get it out until the 9th, and so therefore the board is not comfortable making a decision on the 14th. SBSD Owl Camera: We have some room to push it for another week. I think that's only fair. Yeah, I think… I don't think… I would agree. Even if we were ready on the 14th, I don't think it would be fair to the community to vote on the 14th. So is the board amenable to… SBSD Owl Camera: Except, basically, accepting the superintendent's recommendation about when SBSD Owl Camera: we vote on the budget, if not on the 14th, but later. Discuss it on the 14th, vote on the 21st. Is
112that what you recommend? I'm… I'm recommending that if you feel ready and the community's ready on the 14th, go ahead, but if not, the 21st would be it, but great. SBSD Owl Camera: Well, I think we can just decide that now. We should vote on it on the 21st. SBSD Owl Camera: Yes. That gives us a time. We should talk about it on the 14th, definitely. And if it's available on the 7th, that's great. Because that's when we're going to see the first, right? Yeah, and I just… So, I would feel much more comfortable waiting a week. Well, and I can… I can add that date to the website also, saying on the 21st is when the vote will be communicated. And we should also update all the… SBSD Owl Camera: Everything is printed. Yeah,
113yeah. I also… I don't see our meetings listed. SBSD Owl Camera: For the new year on the website, which… They're there, they're just in a different spot. Oh, okay. So I was like, wait, Laura knows we have 3 meetings in January. I don't know, I don't know if that calendar. Oh, oh, oh, oh, that's how you go. I can show you. Yeah, thank you. SBSD Owl Camera: I just want to say that my friends in the business office are, unlike me, they do not operate well in round numbers, or rough drafts, or, like. SBSD Owl Camera: half-heartedness, so you're not going to see a, like, marked up. Maybe it'll be, like, well, they would never produce something like that. They would rather die than do that. So, SBSD Owl Camera: And to your point about,
114like, we don't want an incorrect coffee, misleading, so they will work hard to get that to us as quickly as they can in as exact fashion as they are used to, so… SBSD Owl Camera: Yeah. SBSD Owl Camera: And, frankly, we're grateful for it. We'll do whatever the board asks. We're grateful for the exception. Yeah. SBSD Owl Camera: Great. Any other from talk, anything else to talk about with the budget? SBSD Owl Camera: Thanks, Kimberg. SBSD Owl Camera: The next item on the agenda is the superintendent's report. SBSD Owl Camera: Okay, so, and maybe before you go into the use and prevalence, if I could say a word, spell why I asked. Sure, absolutely. Well, let me start with the update on 3Q meetings, and we've talked about this often, and not much has changed
115since the last time. SBSD Owl Camera: It is over 30, or more than 30 groups that I've met with at this point, I think nearly 300 people. I have 3 remaining 3Q meetings to hold, and those are all scheduled for after January. Also, or in January. Also in January, I will be sending out SBSD Owl Camera: a, a blanket, 3Q survey for anybody who was not able to attend any of those meetings, or wasn't invited because they weren't in those groups, or whatever. So that will be out, so the community, the staff, SBSD Owl Camera: students, everybody will be able to give feedback into the 3Q, and SBSD Owl Camera: We'll gather that up, all of the feedback, that'll all be public, that'll be published and all that, and we hope to SBSD Owl Camera:
116Use this part as at least a huge qualitative part of our strategic planning, which we hope to do SBSD Owl Camera: starting soon after the board, if the board's going to adopt new ends. They adopt the new ends, we start strategic planning, because to me, the plan is the means to the end, and SBSD Owl Camera: And that's where we are. SBSD Owl Camera: And on the meetings, SBSD Owl Camera: To what extent were you able to reach non-school community, and do you view that there are opportunities to reach even more non-school community members? SBSD Owl Camera: I believe that… I think we did a good job, reaching non-school community members. I've met with the SB3… SBSD Owl Camera: South Pacifica. SBSD Owl Camera: the South Burlington Business. SBSD Owl Camera: I can't remember the
117accent. South Burlington Business Association? Yes, the SBV, the SBBA, I met with the South… SBC3, the South Burlington City Center Collaborative, I met with the Scouts, SBSD Owl Camera: I met with the, the minister, group, the faith-based leaders group. I still have a meeting with the, Rotary in January. And again, and the survey that I send will also go to… it's… it's… SBSD Owl Camera: It'll be sent to everybody that we have in our, SBSD Owl Camera: parent broadcast group, but also on our website. It'll be out there, so people can, SBSD Owl Camera: can respond to it. And just out of, did you happen to have a chance to go to the Senior Center? SBSD Owl Camera: I did not have an opportunity to go to the seniors. We went back and forth with
118them, and they weren't able… never able to schedule anything. That would still be an interest to me. SBSD Owl Camera: I'll try to get that. Any other questions on the 3Q? SBSD Owl Camera: Luke. SBSD Owl Camera: All town. Along the range. SBSD Owl Camera: So the next item on the agenda in the superintendent report, I just wanted to give a little bit of background. It's kind of a mysterious title, Use and Prevalence of Equitable Grading Policies. SBSD Owl Camera: There is a community perception that… SBSD Owl Camera: Our schools are struggling, that we're not as good as we used to be. SBSD Owl Camera: And the board needs more information about that. You know, I think that's part of our job. SBSD Owl Camera: As a board to make sure that… that, we're giving
119the best education we can. And so… SBSD Owl Camera: One topic of many possible topics around SBSD Owl Camera: making, schools more rigorous and focusing more on academic proficiency is a concept called equitable grading, which is a relatively recent term, and I don't… I'm not an expert. SBSD Owl Camera: But I know that it is a topic of concern. There's, you know, national surveys about it that say one thing or the other, and I'll let the superintendent talk about that. But I brought this up as part of concern around… just to kick off the discussion of academic proficiency. SBSD Owl Camera: In Southern. SBSD Owl Camera: Okay, and I'm going to introduce Nicole Carter and Monica DeRochers to SBSD Owl Camera: present on equitable grading, and their presentation is going to talk about… you sent
120an article, Seamus, that talked about several different components of equitable grading, and they're going to talk about what they are, and what, that looks like in practice here in South Burlington. SBSD Owl Camera: Thanks. SBSD Owl Camera: What? Hello, everybody! SBSD Owl Camera: Nice of you, I'm here. SBSD Owl Camera: So we made a slideshow. We love the visual. I love a visual. SBSD Owl Camera: So, sure, I'm Nicole Carter. I'm the Director of Curriculum, Executive Director of Curriculum and SBSD Owl Camera: And supporting special education. SBSD Owl Camera: I'm Monica, I'm not an actor at DBI and Tourism National Latin. SBSD Owl Camera: So Monica and I, who didn't meet until this year, at the beginning of the year, decided to join forces and create a learning and equity team, because there's so much
121overlap in our work. SBSD Owl Camera: And that's relevant to this because when Joe brought this to us, we met as a team and talked about it. We feel confident this is going to probably raise more questions SBSD Owl Camera: than answers. SBSD Owl Camera: So we're gonna do our best to let you, to give you insight. SBSD Owl Camera: So, that's… Click in without pointing anywhere, Nick. SBSD Owl Camera: Oh, there we go. Okay. So, we… I thought we would start, and Monica agreed, with, what we do, because we… there's no, practice, policy, or program called equitable Grading Practices. SBSD Owl Camera: In the state of Vermont. Instead, in the state of Vermont, it's called the Vermont Framework for Proficiency, Proficiency-Based Learning, and this started in 2013. SBSD Owl Camera: So the state of
122Vermont has been working on this for 15 years. SBSD Owl Camera: And so what I put in this slide, and SBSD Owl Camera: we need to make sure you have access to the slides, I'm just realizing, is, just to… they have our… they have this roadmap right here of the components to proficiency, and the one we're talking about in this presentation is the green one that's the second from the right, which is rating and reporting. SBSD Owl Camera: There are links below this, because this is just one slide. This is like the tip of an iceberg. SBSD Owl Camera: That's probably the size of a continent. And so those links… SBSD Owl Camera: For those of you who want to geek out, the first one takes you into the state of Vermont's, multi-layered explanation of
123proficiency-based learning. SBSD Owl Camera: The second one is a YouTube video, which tries to explain it, in video. And the third one is, states across the country that use competency-based learning, which is the synonym for competency-based learning. SBSD Owl Camera: Somewhere in the… SBSD Owl Camera: So we wanted to give you some resources, because we're confident this is going to bring up lots of questions. SBSD Owl Camera: Keep going. SBSD Owl Camera: So… SBSD Owl Camera: All right, so, like Nicole said, we're really focusing on proficiency-based reporting right now, which is just, like, a singular component of proficiency-based learning. But it's essentially honoring that each topic has several skills, and it's reporting out progress on each of the skills. So rather than saying a student SBSD Owl Camera: is exceptional in mathematics. It's saying the
124student is exceptional in these particular SBSD Owl Camera: standards in mathematics and is struggling in these particular standards in mathematics, so it's a little bit more detailed explanation. In terms of assessments, we have two types. SBSD Owl Camera: So we have formative assessments, these are ongoing, these are really, like, check-ins, right? Exit tickets, entrance tickets, homework, group work, right? Informal. SBSD Owl Camera: Assessments that make up no more than 20% of the grade, and is really meant for teachers to adjust instruction in the moment. SBSD Owl Camera: And then we have summative assessments. So these are kind of the more traditional, right, end of unit, summative exams, final papers, final presentations, and those are just the final evaluation of what a student knows. SBSD Owl Camera: For those of you, and I don't think there
125are many of you who are as old as I am, there was only somebody, right? So if you… up until 2010, and 3 years alone. SBSD Owl Camera: Before that, there was only somebody. It was like, you took a class, and then you took a big test. SBSD Owl Camera: And so… and the issue is that during the unit, the teacher really doesn't have a check or, like, a dipstick of how students are doing in the moment, and so they can't really steer, unless they have that. So that's why we introduced formative assessments that are around 20% summative, or around 80% fit into that. SBSD Owl Camera: Any questions? SBSD Owl Camera: Okay. SBSD Owl Camera: Actually, yes, I do have a question. Is there… was there some event that happened in the last 10
126years that led to this being adopted more SBSD Owl Camera: you know. SBSD Owl Camera: So I had a feeling somebody was going to ask this, so I took a deep dive today on the history of proficiency-based learning. And, SBSD Owl Camera: It really… it goes so far back and could be traced back through, what's termed progressive education, right? Which is the idea that we're trying to bring students to the center of the learning and focus on what they actually learn versus sorting them based on their performance. SBSD Owl Camera: That's the long, hard story of it. SBSD Owl Camera: And then in Vermont, the reason Vermont adopted it is because in 2013… 2013 is when they adopted the education quality standards. SBSD Owl Camera: And that's when they put it into their volume standards.
127So it has been gaining steam since, I believe I read today, the early 1950s, and it's just been growing and growing, and really took off in the 70s. Not surprisingly, sort of. SBSD Owl Camera: That's when you just started really saying, this is what we should be doing. SBSD Owl Camera: Did you… oh, you said 2013, but it was just a… yeah, 2013 is when Lermont said support. It wasn't, and this is where, again, I… I represent the uninformed public, so… SBSD Owl Camera: Wasn't there something in 20… in the Obama administration in 2015 that returned a lot of control to the states? SBSD Owl Camera: To set their own proficiency standards. SBSD Owl Camera: Like, ESA? Yeah. I don't know, but you tell me. Yeah, SF. So, yeah, Every Student Succeeds Act, which was,
128like, our reformation of, No Child Left Behind, but… SBSD Owl Camera: Sorry, what was the question? Yeah, Arnie Duncan. Yes, what did it do? What did it do, and how… and is that… is… is the fact that we took action around the middle of the last decade related to that, or how does that affect those federal changes? I would… I would have to repeat up on that. SBSD Owl Camera: Yeah, I would… SBSD Owl Camera: I would need to think about it more time. Welcome to the AOE. Is this all on the AOE's website? Thousands of pages. It's thousands of pages. I thought about giving you a presentation on efficiency-based learning, and then I was like, there'd be, like, a week-long course. It would… it is… it is… there's so much information on AOE. SBSD
129Owl Camera: And as a teacher, I can tell you, like, you know, I think a lot of it was focused on brain research, though, too, right? And the whole, idea of fixed mindset versus broke mindset, and I think all of that… SBSD Owl Camera: research into how to… how do kids learn and, caused a lot of this. SBSD Owl Camera: Yeah. Yeah, there was also… Yeah, and in particular, in terms of reporting, there was a lot of… SBSD Owl Camera: opinion around what goes into reporting traditionally, and that wasn't always just a student's ability to demonstrate their knowledge. A lot of times, compliance went in, effort went in, right? So, attendance went in, so grades became this muddied-down version of… and it was harder to… to really SBSD Owl Camera: accurately understand what a student
130asked. Which was then part of the whole desire, in many communities to figure out, why kids weren't ready for college, and how were they going to learn the skills, and so if we get it down to just teaching them the skills and grading them on the skills, then we'll know if they have the skills. SBSD Owl Camera: I'm glad you said that also, because there is, I think, case law that also impacted this. Back probably when we both started, when I was a teacher, students could, fail, SBSD Owl Camera: a year, based on their attendance only, and there were lawsuits that came out of that, because students might not come to class for 40 days, and they might take a test and pass it, but they'd still fail, of course. So a lot of, and
131state courts, mainly, would SBSD Owl Camera: file suit claiming, what's the purpose of the grade? It's to show learning, not to show attendance, and I think that caused some of the shift also. SBSD Owl Camera: Lots of streams into a big river. SBSD Owl Camera: You're gone? SBSD Owl Camera: Yep. Okay. So, SBSD Owl Camera: We found a list of, components of what's called equitable grading practice, and we decided to try and stick with reporting on that, because that was the request, by comparing what we do with those particular components. I really appreciate that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This… one of them might have actually been Monica's idea. SBSD Owl Camera: One of them was grading with zeros. And so, can you give a… pull it back a little bit and say, like, what is… SBSD
132Owl Camera: like, what were those things, and where did they come from? Grading with… they came from an EdGeek article about equitable grading practices, grading with zeros, late work, assessment retakes, credit for homework. SBSD Owl Camera: And credit for class participation. SBSD Owl Camera: And those were… those are considered by this article to be the, like, main components of equitable grading practices. SBSD Owl Camera: Okay. SBSD Owl Camera: Grading with zeros, you want to keep that? SBSD Owl Camera: I can go. So… SBSD Owl Camera: you can kind of read it right to left, right? Elementary is on the right, and then, Tuttle is on the right, and then we move to the left, which is SVHS, the more detailed. SBSD Owl Camera: So, in terms of elementary, we use formative and summative assessments. SBSD
133Owl Camera: It's very rare that a student in the elementary levels gets a zero on a grade, mostly because they're doing that work in class, guided with a teacher. There's a lot of encouragement, there's a lot of multiple trials, right? If a student's not ready for learning, we try again, then they are. So it would be rare to put a zero in the SBSD Owl Camera: a grade for an elementary student. That's not to say that it never happens. SBSD Owl Camera: And then moving to the left, SVHS uses a 50% floor for summative assessments. SBSD Owl Camera: And any missing summative assessments are recorded as 50% until they are completed. Student works with the teacher to complete them. SBSD Owl Camera: And then, in terms of formative assessment, students can receive a zero until
134that work is completed. SBSD Owl Camera: And so on this one, this was, I think, the one… so basically the reason that I brought this up was because there was a, there was a national study from the Thomas Fordham Institute that asked teachers to rank various quote-unquote equitable grading practices SBSD Owl Camera: And they were… so the ones that I think you've mentioned, no zeros, no participation, no late penalties, no homework, and unlimited retakes. And so the no zeros policy SBSD Owl Camera: According to this. SBSD Owl Camera: which I don't know whether I should trust it or not, that's the one that was the least popular among teachers. It was the one where, as I understood it, it's basically saying, teachers believe that if you don't turn in a homework, you should get a
1350, not a 50. SBSD Owl Camera: Well, now, at the end of the quarter, though, don't put in the zero if it's never done. SBSD Owl Camera: Sounds like only for a formative now. No, well, I can tell you, at Essex, right, so if it's the end of the quarter, this child's just simply not going to do it, the 50% becomes a zero. SBSD Owl Camera: They haven't done it. No, I believe here it stays 50%. It stays at 50%. It definitely does. Yeah, it definitely stays at 50%. Yeah, that's the floor. SBSD Owl Camera: Oh, that's before, like, even at the end of the semester or quarter. Okay. Yeah. SBSD Owl Camera: Is there a… Sorry, please. Is there a minimum score on a formid for completions? Like. SBSD Owl Camera: No, so, like,
136even if you do it, it's still being zero. That's my understanding. So, are you using the hybrid in the high school? Are you using Carneg units, or are you using 4321, or what are you… or ABCD? What do you… what are we… what are we doing in the policy model? SBSD Owl Camera: You wanna… What are you doing, Ellen? Well, it's… it really depends. Like, I can't give you a straight answer. Some of my classes. SBSD Owl Camera: the teacher will put that, like, proficient developer into… SBSD Owl Camera: their Schoology, so you can see, like, an 100, as you did in follow-up through on this, but some teachers, it's straight out. SBSD Owl Camera: just current unit percentage, yeah. So, there's really not a consistency on it. I tend to use all of them,
137because I kind of don't know. One of them gives you 5%. Yeah, it's confusing. SBSD Owl Camera: We didn't say, which we meant because we talked about saying this, is that, when we came together as the learning and equity team to discuss this, and we were going through everything we knew, we actually realized, like, there's what we all think is happening, but let's actually make the chart with the questions and send it to the principals. SBSD Owl Camera: who are, like, doing the work with staff to build it, and put their information in. So… SBSD Owl Camera: The information that's in here is coming directly from the school principals, because we felt like they could best report what they're actually doing. Again, I really appreciate that, thank you very much. I could spend hours on
138this, I promise I won't, so we can get out of here as fast as possible. I do this all day off. I'm just curious for a quick explanation of the logic of using a 50% floor for summatives. SBSD Owl Camera: I just… I don't understand the case for that, and I'd love to… I can tell you the logic of that. Sure. I'm not going to say whether I agree or not, but I'll tell you what the logic is, and it deals with kind of what Michelle said about when you do the rating here, right? If a student, were to get a zero early on. SBSD Owl Camera: The thought is that, that could, in fact, cause them to fail the course. SBSD Owl Camera: in September or October, and then there's no motivation for them
139to do anything else if they know that they've already failed. So the… I mean… SBSD Owl Camera: So the thought was, if they get a 50, at least there's hope. SBSD Owl Camera: But then at the end of the year, it doesn't reset to zero, which is the strange thing. Right, that's… that's my question, like, could do we… if it holds at a 50 for that hope, and then we have the opportunity to retake, which is… SBSD Owl Camera: one of the other items I think that's coming up wouldn't… Well, the other thing is, Austin, since it's at 80%, like, a 50 is really gonna bring your grade. It's still gonna… it's gonna bring your grade to barely passing. SBSD Owl Camera: So, if you're really… if you're motivated and really wanted to do better,
140like, you… you're still… you're still alive. Right, a zero with an A for that. A zero, there's no coming back. But a 50, you have a funny chance. And as Laura's showing, and Allie and Roman, I really appreciate it, is, SBSD Owl Camera: So Vermont loves local control, as you all know. SBSD Owl Camera: So there's this proficiency grade learning, requirement. SBSD Owl Camera: But every school district sort of does it differently. So I just want to name that, like, some school districts do an extinguishing zero, where, like, the zero feeds over time. SBSD Owl Camera: Some people don't ever put a zero. I mean, like, there's, like, all these different ways it's done. SBSD Owl Camera: neither of us were here, I don't know if you were, I don't think we were, when this
141particular… I can't speak to how they got to 50%. What I can speak to is that it wasn't a decision made by one person, it would have been a collective decision made at the high school about what made the most sense after doing a deep dive into the research, and what are all the options. SBSD Owl Camera: Yeah. SBSD Owl Camera: We don't have that. SBSD Owl Camera: Yeah, I put in 50%, but no, we can't put in this email. Yeah. This was my first time doing it. There's also a hyperlink, that I can't press on from here, but when you get the slides, that actually shows you the grading reportings for the high school, which might be helpful. SBSD Owl Camera: Okay, late work. SBSD Owl Camera: So, you'll notice on the right, the
142middle school and the elementary schools is teacher-dependent. SBSD Owl Camera: Right? So, some teachers accept late work, some don't. SBSD Owl Camera: On the left, you'll see the high school has articulated, that students must complete their reassessments and late summative work within 2 weeks. SBSD Owl Camera: Or within a timeline specified by the teacher. So it's either 2 weeks or what your teacher says it's going to be. SBSD Owl Camera: There's also that addition that you have to show formative work before you take the summative, right? So you have to, like, do the work before you show what you know. And that they have taken, this is what Monica was talking about, behavioral penalties out. SBSD Owl Camera: Right? The grade reflects performance relative to learning, what's actually been taught versus, like, how you… SBSD
143Owl Camera: responded or reacted, which again, for those of you who are old like me, that wasn't the case, right? If you didn't participate, that could… that could impact your rate, even if you understood the quadratic equation. SBSD Owl Camera: And that's why, in blue, I highlighted the high schools saying this practice better aligns with demonstrated learning, right? It keeps the focus on what have you learned or not learned versus how you behave in a classroom. SBSD Owl Camera: So, this was… So the nose… the… SBSD Owl Camera: The thing we just looked at, that was the one that was the least popular among teachers, had a net 70… negative 73 rating. SBSD Owl Camera: The rating for zeros? SBSD Owl Camera: grading with zeros, the… Or the absence of zeros. The absence of zeros
144in this survey of 1,000 teachers nationwide, that had a negative 73 net rating. SBSD Owl Camera: And this one, no late penal… which I am reading, no late penalties. You're not allowed to give late penalties. That was a negative 33. Teacher… net-net of these thousand teachers, and who knows, maybe they picked SBSD Owl Camera: special teachers that were very conservative, or something like that. They… this was the third lead, or this was the one that they were… SBSD Owl Camera: 30th net… oh my god, I think the third. The most supportive of it is, of the policies, is the one they lead with the most? The third least supportive. The third least supported, yeah. SBSD Owl Camera: So this… but to be clear, this means there is no penalty for turning work in late. Correct.
145And so… That's a… that's shocking. Well, I would like to know, I don't know if you've asked your teachers, I will speak as a teacher myself, that it is… SBSD Owl Camera: So overwhelming to get all of this work SBSD Owl Camera: all about coming in on one day before grades or two. It is… it's… SBSD Owl Camera: it's really an unreasonable ask to ask us to go through all of that work. So stuff… so let's just say, you know, the quarter started October 1st, and it's going to end in January. Your kids are now handing me stuff in from October and November. Like, that… that… that's where it gets really overwhelming. SBSD Owl Camera: Like, just like you can. And some school districts have collect… have corrected for that, yeah. But they're complicated formulas
146for how they correct for it. So, yes. And I would just say, again, the overwhelm… SBSD Owl Camera: is not arguing for or against it. The overwhelming philosophy to keep in mind with proficiency-based grading is the question, what does a grade represent? If a grade represents learning. SBSD Owl Camera: Instead of time, you know, SBSD Owl Camera: then it makes sense not to give penalties for late work, because late doesn't tell me whether or not you know the content. It tells me whether you SBSD Owl Camera: Right. But in terms of being prepared for life, like, in my company. SBSD Owl Camera: if you don't turn in something on time, you didn't turn it in. That's the question, is timeliness or adhering to a schedule a proficiency that the school is measuring? It's like, does
147this align with our IS policy? SBSD Owl Camera: Right. Like, ideally, you have a culture in which the expectation is that it would make the time for the learning to happen there. The allowance is for when that can happen, but eventually you run out of time. SBSD Owl Camera: I will say one thing, and this is, you know, like, my… showing my own bias. One of the very brilliant gentlemen that I work with, and we would get research SBSD Owl Camera: It was sponsored research programs, and we had deadlines, we had contracts, and SBSD Owl Camera: those papers were coming in, you know, most of them came in on time, on schedule, on contract, but there were always the… like, I need a little extra time, I need a little extra, need a little… and
148he said, they're never better for the extra time, right? Like, they… those are the least SBSD Owl Camera: quality reports that come in. And these are adults, right, that… SBSD Owl Camera: You would have expected that, you know, they have these contractual obligations, and there's money tied to it, and all this, so… SBSD Owl Camera: I do wonder… the time runs out. I had a child with extra time. Eventually, time runs out. So it's interesting that you say that, and this is just one of those, like, happened at the same time. I was reading The Atlantic, two nights ago, and they have a whole article about, accommodations in college. SBSD Owl Camera: And I was… and it's a fascinating article. 38% of all undergraduate students at Stanford University have accommodations, most of which are… Extra
149time. Extra time. 90% at Harvard, those that percent at Brown, so it's, it's, SBSD Owl Camera: it's all out there swirling, like, right? The colleges are trying to deal with it, we're trying to deal with it, so it's… it's interesting. Yeah, on a supplement, that's a different story. I agree with what you guys have said completely. I think there does need to be a standard for SBSD Owl Camera: You can't just keep putting it off. I'll say I don't feel like this is exploited by high schoolers overall. SBSD Owl Camera: Obviously, I think me and Melvin represent a specific type of student within the high school, but from what I've seen, there's minimal students who are like, I'm just gonna keep putting it off because I know I can. Mostly, it's, I'm sick for 2
150weeks. SBSD Owl Camera: and I can't get it done, can you please give me a little bit of help with it? Or I have something going on at home with my family, give me a little more time. So, if I'm… it sounds like what you were saying, like, not… at least as far as you guys are saying. SBSD Owl Camera: not a lot of abuse of these, maybe a genuine usage of them as needed, based on your experience, and no, is… is there any resentment in the student body, or like, SBSD Owl Camera: Like, opinions about these as being… SBSD Owl Camera: if the goal here is equitable grading, I'm wondering, is there a section that it's the other way? Like, oh boy, like, these students get more than… SBSD Owl Camera: other students for
151maybe a very good schedule. No resentment. Also, like, I don't know how strictly some of these are, like, held… like, how strictly they're held across the school, just because, like. SBSD Owl Camera: I know. SBSD Owl Camera: I feel like I've had experiences with teachers that's been, like. SBSD Owl Camera: oh, I found my bag, like, 3 weeks ago, I forgot to turn it in. Can you take it? I'm like, like, we're kind of past that by now. And that window, that window's closed. Or, like… SBSD Owl Camera: you know, like, and it makes sense to the student, you could be like, okay, yeah, you know, I kind of wasn't expecting to get a turn in anyways, it was… just to see. SBSD Owl Camera: So… SBSD Owl Camera: I feel like it's kind of
152like, even when I, like, find something that I forgot to turn in, I'm… my first thought is, okay, yeah, probably not, if it's super late. SBSD Owl Camera: So, yeah. Well, I think we should keep moving to the next one. I just wanted to do register, you know, I think SBSD Owl Camera: the South Burlington School District Global Ends. SBSD Owl Camera: Students successfully complete their education from South Burlington School District, ready for the next step, which could be college, which could be career, which is life. And, like, having no penalty for lateness is not life. SBSD Owl Camera: But anyway, it's some life, right? I mean, it depends. SBSD Owl Camera: It depends on your profession, it depends on how, the people you work with. I agree, there are absolutely some businesses you cannot
153ever be, late. Flights are late all the time, and SBSD Owl Camera: It just happens, you know? I would like to hear from teachers. I can tell you from my teacher perspective, yes, it is like that, Jeff. SBSD Owl Camera: I mean, you probably don't see it, and I don't… I agree, I don't think there's resentment among students, but I can tell you, in my profession, yes, it is… it is overused by students. And that's what the research showed. And that's just my… my experience. I would love to hear what it's like here. I mean, I don't have the answer, but it is… SBSD Owl Camera: I've been doing this for 30 years. SBSD Owl Camera: And with this, you do… and I'm not talking about the kids who are sick and things like that.
154Kids who get sick, they're really good about letting me know, and that… that's never… I mean, we… Right, and so I hear what you're saying, that this isn't addressing… it's addressing something, but it's not addressing the… SBSD Owl Camera: Preparing for the future in terms of SBSD Owl Camera: I think it's a good skill to learn how to manage your time, and so… Exactly. I would want to know if a kid's not able to hand things in regularly all the time. My son, when my son was in middle school, I bought a book called That Crumpled Up Piece of Paper Was Due 3 Weeks Ago, because I dealt with those executive functioning issues. So, I'm just saying, I see where this is a different topic, I think. I mean, there would be those that argue,
155yeah, we absolutely SBSD Owl Camera: absolutely should be teaching responsibility and timeliness and all that. We just shouldn't be grading. If the grade is to show SBSD Owl Camera: academic performance. SBSD Owl Camera: Why not a second grade that shows? SBSD Owl Camera: responsibility time of it. Which is what I'm saying. Not arguing either way, I'm just throwing up. Yeah, habits of work. At least trying to… And we have habits of work, yeah, so they are not included in the… SBSD Owl Camera: There you go. SBSD Owl Camera: For me, the curious question is, if this is what we're doing, how are we strengthening executive functioning skills? SBSD Owl Camera: Not to, like, discredit being ready for a job, but instead, regardless of who you are and where you're going in life, having a strong
156set of executive functioning skills is really… SBSD Owl Camera: important. So I think that's a good question, good, serious question. SBSD Owl Camera: How do we strengthen executive functioning skills in South Burlington School District? SBSD Owl Camera: Assessment retakes. SBSD Owl Camera: Did I do this one? Yeah, great. So we do not offer… SBSD Owl Camera: unlimited retakes, but students work with faculty and are given multiple opportunities to demonstrate learning when it's appropriate. And that's kind of on faculty determination. At the high school? At the high school, sorry, yep, at elementary and Tuttle, or teacher dependent, yeah. SBSD Owl Camera: And so… SBSD Owl Camera: Retakes must be completed within 2 weeks, unless there's another timeline worked out, and it follows teacher… specific teacher feedback that's based on growth. SBSD Owl Camera: Those were kind
157of the highlights of this. SBSD Owl Camera: And so, it's this idea that you don't just get one shot, right? You get multiple shots, as long as you show that you're making progress and you're making kind of meaningful effort. SBSD Owl Camera: Credit for homework. SBSD Owl Camera: This always feels like a hot-button issue. This is, like, everybody's got, right, 10 people, 10 opinions about homework. SBSD Owl Camera: So there's limited homework at the elementary schools, if at all, and they're not required to turn it back in, so I believe this year, teachers were given the option from our ELA curriculum, CKLA, to send homework home, but not to actively, require it to be turned in. SBSD Owl Camera: At the middle school, assignments are counted. SBSD Owl Camera: So things change from elementary to
158middle school, and then you get to the high school, and formative assessments, including homework, right? So homework is in that category of a formative assessment, counts for up to 20% of your quarter grade. SBSD Owl Camera: So, out-of-class work, which is a different way of saying homework, is considered to be formative. SBSD Owl Camera: And the idea is limiting the impact of formative work as an element of proficiency-based, right? So the idea of formative work is it's not about demonstrating what you know as summative, it's about showing how you're grappling with the learning so the teacher can then either adjust their instruction or make sure you're getting the resources you need. SBSD Owl Camera: Questions about credit for homework? SBSD Owl Camera: So… is there a district position on… SBSD Owl Camera: I think, like,
159the way that I would… SBSD Owl Camera: have asked this one, is like, do you require teachers in the high school to give homework? SBSD Owl Camera: Oh, it's not a requirement to give, so it's faculty-dependent, and usually, SBSD Owl Camera: Teams of faculty make those decisions together as departments. SBSD Owl Camera: Likewise for middle school. SBSD Owl Camera: And I don't see the… so the… 80% SBSD Owl Camera: Summative assessments count for at least 80%, but can homework SBSD Owl Camera: But homework is not considered something? No, it's part of the formative, it's part of that 20, there's that. SBSD Owl Camera: So, essentially, Homework is given, homework is graded, homework counts up to 20% of a grade. SBSD Owl Camera: Homework's not always great. Yeah. Homework is given as a practice. It might
160be gone over in class, so students can check their own work to see where they're missing, but credit might be given for having completed the homework. SBSD Owl Camera: It does seem to me like there's, again, that difference between you know… SBSD Owl Camera: Real life, executive function, exec… you know… Can you actually… SBSD Owl Camera: Accomplish the work that's given to you in the time that's given to you. SBSD Owl Camera: And then there's this more pristine, pure goal of, like, well, is this person learning it? And they seem to be… SBSD Owl Camera: I do see a disconnect again with reality here, but that I'm just… just in my own… SBSD Owl Camera: Well, I heard you asking the question of, and I did… we did not look at… I mean, I don't…
161I'm gonna speak for you. We did not look into this. SBSD Owl Camera: what's the imp… this has been going on since, like, 2010. Are there any studies showing what the impact is on students who leave school? And, like, do we know, right? Is there… are there any efficacy studies that students have experienced? It's been about a decade, right? Yeah. It's been about a decade. SBSD Owl Camera: you know, we do talk a lot about… I try to talk to kids about natural consequences. If you don't do the… I mean, I don't give a lot of homework, because I don't… within the day of AI, I don't know who's doing this one. So, but, you know, but it's practice, right? And so. SBSD Owl Camera: If you don't do it, you're not going to do
162well on some of it, and it takes a lot of explaining about why that is so. I mean, if you're giving stuff that's meaningful, but it is… SBSD Owl Camera: Yeah, and it's very frustrating when someone doesn't do well on some of it. We didn't do the steps leading up to this, and that's the part where I don't know if we've SBSD Owl Camera: we fail. Like, I need you to do this, I need you to do this thing, but they don't take the test, and then they can't do it. And to Seamus' point, there probably… maybe there aren't studies, but there's a lot of SBSD Owl Camera: Anecdotal, qualitative feedback from my questions from… that was one of the most common things that came up with parents, was. SBSD Owl Camera: We don't get
163homework, they don't… it doesn't matter if they do it or not. We can… and again, this is perception that they speak. They can retake stuff as many times as they want. SBSD Owl Camera: Lack of rigor, my kids weren't prepared when they went off to college, those kinds of things came up time and time again among the parents that I've met. SBSD Owl Camera: I can SBSD Owl Camera: Kind of on the other side of that, students who come back, our alumni, generally report that they do feel really prepared for whatever their next adventure was. We don't have formal survey… it would be interesting to send out, like, an alumni survey. SBSD Owl Camera: But anecdotally, the feedback that I hear from our high school counseling team is that I felt so prepared for it.
164SBSD Owl Camera: Although you have to watch for, what is that, survivor bias or something? Yeah, and who's reporting, definitely. Yeah, yeah, no. I'm gonna add to that, just slightly my opinion, just laying out loud, I think when you give students homework and you say it needs to be correct. SBSD Owl Camera: that kind of adds to the want to access other resources to make sure it's correct, versus when you're grading it on completion, it's… you don't have that added pressure, let's just try and put that effort into trying to learn, and then if you don't do great at it. SBSD Owl Camera: at least the teacher can reflect on that, versus the student being like, I don't know it at all, I'm not gonna try, I'm gonna either access an outside resource or not
165do it. Is access an outside resource? SBSD Owl Camera: Yeah, so I know, like, my math teacher, for example, he will go around, when he's grading for completion on the homeworks, he'll look at all the homeworks, and he'll go. SBSD Owl Camera: this homework, like, I'll see… he'll see what each student didn't do great, and then he'll go over the homework on screen and say, these were the common mistakes I saw, and this is how we can work through, like, what's the disconnect, versus being like, you got this wrong, points off on your homework. SBSD Owl Camera: And so, I think something Laura said is that, is 80% passing, or something, or… SBSD Owl Camera: It's for 80% of your grade for some of the tests. Oh, sorry, I thought… So you don't… it's a
16659%. Yeah. So if you didn't do any of the homework on that math class. SBSD Owl Camera: that could potentially bring you down to as low as an 80. If you aced all your summitives. Right, you aced well on your summitives. You did perfectly. I couldn't even get an 8 out of 10. Yes. I'm good with 10. SBSD Owl Camera: just… and this is another… this is another topic for another day, but you bring up a great point about how the… how AI and technology has just changed SBSD Owl Camera: the nature of work that students do, because we're not designing work that can't be… that's not AI-pooped, or it's not using AI meaningfully, then it is… like, Alex says, I mean, I can find answers to a lot of stuff really quickly and not
167learn by myself. SBSD Owl Camera: Fascinating. Okay, credit for class participation. SBSD Owl Camera: No? Oh, okay. So… SBSD Owl Camera: So in our elementary schools, we have characteristics of a learner, so this has a little bit more to do with executive functioning, work completion, peer interactions, behavior in the classroom. SBSD Owl Camera: And then in middle school, we call those habits of work. Again, they are recorded. And then in high school, also called habits of work. SBSD Owl Camera: But is not listed as a standalone graded category, so it's not included in the grades. So grades are really tied to just academic evidence. SBSD Owl Camera: Participation obviously influences learning, but is not assigned a point value. And this is in line with proficiency-based grading of, I could not raise my hand to the
168entire class, and I could know everything I need to know and be able to demonstrate that. SBSD Owl Camera: Options on this one? SBSD Owl Camera: This was the one that teachers were second most skeptical of. It had a net 40… SBSD Owl Camera: a net negative 46 rating out of 100, out of 1,000 teachers surveyed, this was the second… the one that they were second most comfortable of. So, the concept of not requiring participation. How do you feel about that, Laura? Laura? SBSD Owl Camera: Well, same with Spanish, too. Yeah, it's really frustrating. It is. It's very frustrating. SBSD Owl Camera: to have 25 people just stare at me, and I can't… there's nothing I can do. It just… it doesn't seem like these brainstem… But I can't usually require them to speak. Were
169these… SBSD Owl Camera: guidelines, you know, the proficiency-based stuff, was this developed with teachers? Did teachers do this, or was this, like. SBSD Owl Camera: theoreticians and… A lot of this was developed with the AOE in conjunction with teachers and administrators about a decade ago. There was a long-standing partnership with an organization. SBSD Owl Camera: That did this work in Maine. Great. Yeah, and now does this work here. So it was definitely done… I wasn't here, but I can… SBSD Owl Camera: Probably confidently say that it was done in collaboration. SBSD Owl Camera: This is a hard one. I know. This is a… this is a tough one. But I think it also speaks to what we're trying to do, which is… SBSD Owl Camera: Have grades that help kids SBSD Owl Camera: get the
170grade that they deserve based on what they shine at, you know? Like. SBSD Owl Camera: as a child, I was not good at taking tests, so I knew I'm gonna… every… homework is gonna be in on time, I'm gonna hate this, I'm gonna be raising my hand all the time. So that way, when the tests come around. SBSD Owl Camera: I have some wiggle room, whereas I think these kinds of ways of grading kids help… I don't know, it just allows them to lean into what they're feeling strong in, and then being able to make up for some of the stuff they're not so good at. So if someone's painfully shy, and they can't possibly participate. SBSD Owl Camera: but they ace everything? That would not happen. I mean… Right, and that's the intention, is
171to not penalize… SBSD Owl Camera: any type of compliance, and really to keep the focus on what am I grading? I'm grading content. SBSD Owl Camera: I'm not great in character. SBSD Owl Camera: And again, I… I wouldn't say… I wouldn't ref… I… SBSD Owl Camera: I think character is really important, and that's kind of a separate conversation of invention. SBSD Owl Camera: I feel like, although this is not, like, a specific grade, it is kind of built into our everyday. Like, if you… if you do Poetry Out Loud unit, like, you're not going to get a good grade on Poetry Out Loud if you don't participate by standing up in front of the class and doing it, or in a presentation. SBSD Owl Camera: if you're not talking with your group, you know what
172I mean? So I think it's not graded, but also it can kind of appear in your grades in other places. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. Well, and for language, I can't imagine how you couldn't speak and then actually ace it, because… You would be shocked at how many kids have plans that say, so-and-so does not have to speak in class. SBSD Owl Camera: And it's really interesting to me, because… SBSD Owl Camera: Yeah, I didn't, because I don't… didn't really know why. For language, though, you do… SBSD Owl Camera: speaking is a… is a grade, too. Like, writing… All the students get up and walk around and speak. It's… usually I make… I make them all formative, and if you… as long as you try. SBSD Owl Camera: You know, because it's like,
173we don't… you know, people come… acquire language at different places, like, we don't grade our two-year-olds if they can't speak. I mean, so it really is about, like, you just really have to be… like, in my discipline, it has to be about the program meetings. SBSD Owl Camera: You know, there's no… something like math works or right or wrong. SBSD Owl Camera: But if you get up and speak fluid bags of Spanish and you're new to it, that's awesome. SBSD Owl Camera: We also have done a lot of work around, what participation actually means, and, the definition of participation, and broadening our definition of participation, and honoring different ways of learning and showing learning, so that has to do with this tenet as well. SBSD Owl Camera: That's the last slot. SBSD Owl Camera: Great.
174Lots of questions that got brought up, huh? Well, I really… I think it bodes well for the district, the way you guys approach this. I really appreciate it. And I also… your input, student representatives was very helpful, so thank you for… SBSD Owl Camera: Thank you for this. Wonderful. SBSD Owl Camera: Thank you. SBSD Owl Camera: So the next item on the agenda is the consent agenda. SBSD Owl Camera: And so… First, the minutes for the November 19th and the September 3rd. SBSD Owl Camera: Meetings? SBSD Owl Camera: Is there any… SBSD Owl Camera: I always forget how to do the consent agenda once. We basically… Get approved, right, is there anything over the thousand? SBSD Owl Camera: There wasn't something for a million. SBSD Owl Camera: the movements. SBSD Owl Camera: So we were
175going through that earlier, it shows one single line, and at the end of the PDF, it gives a line-by-line breakdown, and it looks like it's very heavy, like, tuition payments, SBSD Owl Camera: And I don't know what sort of specifics you want to, but I was looking at that earlier as well, because I wanted details on what that was. It's a large assemblage of individual things, largely, from what I can tell, like, tuition and Operation Random. SBSD Owl Camera: So, since I don't remember, and we don't have a lawyer here, and maybe, maybe Joe can advise me, but I think I'll just run this as 3… SBSD Owl Camera: Oh, no, okay, because one is marked for action, so definitely the one, the approved AP voucher checks to Howard Center and ProCare Therapy, that one
176we will take full action on. SBSD Owl Camera: And then the others, I think it's just, like, if I don't hear objections, then it's passed by default, is that right? SBSD Owl Camera: Excellent. SBSD Owl Camera: But yeah, I can… SBSD Owl Camera: I think that's what… Yeah, I think that's what it is, yeah. So, are there any objections to the… SBSD Owl Camera: minutes for November 19th and December 3rd. They looked very complete detailed for all of your reporters, so… SBSD Owl Camera: And any objections to the accounts payables? SBSD Owl Camera: value… The ones that are listed here, 1251 through 1285. SBSD Owl Camera: Any objections to those? SBSD Owl Camera: Okay, and then, I would entertain a motion to approve the AP voucher checks to the Howard Center in the amount of
177$110, $189. SBSD Owl Camera: 74, ProCare Therapy in the amount of $63.988. SBSD Owl Camera: 64, and Singer MALC in the amount of $116.975.17. SBSD Owl Camera: Moving for motion? Yeah. Yeah, yes, I move to, approve, please. SBSD Owl Camera: chance. Laura moves. SBSD Owl Camera: I second. SBSD Owl Camera: Emily Seconds? SBSD Owl Camera: Any discussion? SBSD Owl Camera: All in favor? SBSD Owl Camera: Aye. Aye. The motion carries. SBSD Owl Camera: And then these two hires… Objections there? SBSD Owl Camera: Okay, so I think it's approved by consent. I will check with SBSD Owl Camera: I'm pretty sure that we don't have to take individual actions on each of those, but I will check with them. You don't on the hires? Yeah, okay. All right, well then the next, SBSD Owl Camera: item
178on the agenda is talking about the agenda for the January 7th meeting. SBSD Owl Camera: Is there any specific requests? SBSD Owl Camera: for the January 7th meeting. SBSD Owl Camera: That we haven't already discussed for January, so… SBSD Owl Camera: It says the draft… yeah, that's in addition to the draft. SBSD Owl Camera: I would say, just in general, is there anything that you guys want to talk about January 7th? So, for the record, I do just, I mean, maybe just say, SBSD Owl Camera: ends monitoring 1.2. Yeah. SBSD Owl Camera: Right, what we have right now… SBSD Owl Camera: is second reading… oh, go ahead. Yeah, that is the meeting. Remember, the folks from the early retirement. SBSD Owl Camera: plan are going to be here to present to the board. Oh, great.
179Right. SBSD Owl Camera: So, right, what we've got on January 7th right now are no action items, And we've got… SBSD Owl Camera: Second reading of selection of library materials. SBSD Owl Camera: We have a placeholder for discussing the 2027 budget, although there's not any specific content yet, but just to make sure we can talk about it if something does come up. There's the Early Retirement Program presentation. SBSD Owl Camera: and Monitor and Report 1.2 Academic Proficiency. Shouldn't that one be an action item? Yeah, that should be an action item. SBSD Owl Camera: Okay? SBSD Owl Camera: And then in the interim superintendent report, Website interim there. SBSD Owl Camera: there's… there is, update on 3Q meetings, I have a feeling that that's, there will not be anything new since then, because, yeah, I won't
180have any more different from them. SBSD Owl Camera: Good catch. Any topics that anybody would like the superintendent to tell us about? SBSD Owl Camera: Particular? Anything you'd like to talk about? I would just… I think that the EPC retirement presentation is probably going to be 30, 45 minutes, so that'll be long, and I think that the monitoring report will be relatively long. So, just want to give you a heads up on one. SBSD Owl Camera: Alright, so we won't add anything else, for now, but please let me know. And since it's scheduling, you can email the whole board and say, hey, what do you guys think about doing this thing on the 7th? SBSD Owl Camera: Alright. SBSD Owl Camera: That's the end of our… SBSD Owl Camera: more on topics, so I would
181entertain a motion to adjourn meetings. Any move to adjourn meetings? Laura moves. Second. SBSD Owl Camera: Michelle, seconds, any discussion? SBSD Owl Camera: All those in favor? SBSD Owl Camera: I'm tired. SBSD Owl Camera: Are you coming over?