October 30, 2024 School Board Meeting

001All right. Upon the regular meeting of the South Burlington School Board to order on Wednesday, October 30th, 2024 at 6.04 p.m. Agenda item two, announcements and amendments to the agenda. Do we have any announcements? All right. I would like to propose some amendments. I'd like to change item seven from school board candidate interviews to discussion regarding board vacancy. And strike item B from executive session, discussion of school board applicants You don't need to do that. And strike item 11, appointed me to the board member Because we wanted to do that for you. I just want to add, we just need to consider the timing of the community feedback session. election and just never thought of that sure do want to add that in like to look on your committee that would be fine sure Anything

002else? Agenda item three, comments from the public. This is the community's opportunity to share feedback and concerns with the board. We ask that you keep your comments concise, two to three minutes and that you refrain from using any information that would identify a specific person. Please raise your hand in the room or use the Zoom raised hand feature. We will only use the online chat to manage any tech issues. We are not able to take action on any issues brought to us during public comment. However, any board member may suggest tonight that the issue or question be added to a future agenda for discussion. We may also delegate addressing issues to our superintendent, Violet Nichols. And it's always helpful if you can email us a copy of your comments for follow-up. Do we have any

003public comment in the room? If you would please come up with which or both Together and state your names for the record I'm Kate Nostle. I'm Rebecca Meyer. So we are here regarding the resumption of charging for classroom spaces It affects a group that we work with students in the school who go to an after school program I think for me, it feels like it's going to become inequitable. So students who can afford to pay for space are going to be able to use space. And students who can't are not going to have those opportunities. And I think if there is a need to resume these, if there could be a transition period or a runway so that it's not immediately starting to pay the full fee and or looking more closely at a more

004of a differential for charitable and nonprofit organizations. from what the profitable organizations say. Yeah, so a little backstory. Last year, my daughter, who's in fifth grade at Orchard wanted something to do after school. There's not a lot of clubs at Orchard School. Actually, I don't think there were any at the time. So Rebecca and I decided to to start a Girl Scout troop. And we reached out to Schools Out. We asked if there was any space that wasn't used. So they set the art room, never used the art room, great. So we're using space that's not ever used, number one. And… So we also wanted to make sure it was right after school. It's just orchard kids. It's just a group of six girls And so we've been, we started that last year They worked

005really, really hard selling Girl Scout cookies so they can plan fun activities And now we have to tell them that if we want to stay at the school. we'd have to charge them $45 of their hardworking money. It just doesn't feel right to say there's no clubs for you and we can't rent space from the school unless you guys want to So, you know, 45 boxes of Girl Scout cookies. For one meeting. So it's just so it was a little frustrating for us to hear that. Also parents of other entities, Minnie Metro and the RAC departments that that are going to be charged more as well. yeah so and additionally, I have a son who is playing mini metro and they're really trying hard not to increase their fees But they're going to have to

006pass those down to the kids. And so ultimately we're going to be paying more for my son to play basketball. And there's no there's no sixth grade basketball team. seventh grade, you have to try out. My son didn't make it last year. The only way he could play basketball was when he metro. And we did have to pay for it, but now it's going to be astronomical and just doesn't feel right that This is our community space, our schools, and it's affecting our children. And I don't think the $45 fee you're going to collect from our kids is going to solve the budget issues. Which is kind of what they told us when we inquired onto the the charge so Thanks. Thank you. Do you have any other public comment in the room? All right,

007let me move on to agenda item four, focus on student learning. And first up, we have student spotlight All right, so my very favorite part of all board meetings is when we get to showcase our absolutely exceptional students and So to do that, I'm going to welcome middle school principal Suzanne Grundling and our student council members. If you'd like to be miked, you'll talk into those two microphones here. But this evening, we're going to be hearing about the social contract at FHT, and I'm going to welcome Principal Grundling to get us kicked off. Thank you for being here. Thank you for inviting us. I will be brief, so I'll talk from here. We are excited to have you understand how we develop our social contract at Petal Middle School. It is day 45 of school

008and the events work that our students have put into deciding together what they will socially be responsible for our student council members, Honda Mir, Eliza. Morgan and Spencer have put together a fantastic presentation for you. Hold on. So this is our social contract rollout 2024 to 2025 by your student council. So our social contract Students from each team and grade gathered to devise a social contract that everyone in our school community must abide by. Our social contract is people's moral obligations that are turned into a contract. That contract forms the community. This is what we commit to in order to be responsible, inclusive, safe, and engaged. And you'll see that come up or those words come up later in the slides too. So you'll see up there, these are some pictures of These are some

009pictures that might have taken some of our school counselors took the live action of students coming together to form the different rules that we create into an acronym. the rise. So you'll see that the other slides by Wednesday. All right. So this is the social contract details For social contract, we created the acronym RISE. It means being respectful, inclusive, safe, and engaged these must be followed in respect to all times. So yeah. For the pictures before, kids gather at all tables like clutting off. he tells Anna. Thanks. Great rise. This is our social contract. This is the finished product of our social contract. This poster is planted all over the school. In the next slide, you will see the way we displayed it. to the school. We showed it through the slides and teacher advisory

010and let the students talk about it and what it means to them. So on the board, we have our teacher advisory slides, which we have every morning. These ones usually teams do them separately. So I know that like, why not endorse a house will never have the same slides unless it's for something like this where it's a whole school activity. So on this, we had the daily news, which starts kind of like that's what you read when you come in. It kind of gets you like ready for what you're going to like just talk about in TA. And then you have a greeting, which we do every day. It changes most of the time. And that's just something so that you can say hi to all your peers. Then you have a share. So for

011this day we had was one thing that you can do to be responsible of the school so every day that change for these slides it went, what can you do to be responsible, inclusive safe and engaged. And so that change And then the activity Oh. Oh, yeah. The human are bodies on the floor. Yep. So that would change every day the other three days. And then you would have reflections. I don't know if I feel like at least our day, we kind of just did that on our own. We feel like we really talked about it. But that's something that's up there all the time. So you're kind of thinking about it. Then you had the daily announcements, which is just something that you read every day as a TA that tells you everything you

012need to know. And then we have Ms. Meisensahl here, who's our student council advisor. And we have Ms. The guys who is the health teacher and she helped work on all of this. Okay, thank you. There we are. Yeah. Any questions or comments? Yeah, it's very impressive. No. Yes. So does the contract change every year or is it put in place that'll be used It changes every year. So I know last year we had something different um So each year… Each year, we have a fresh group of students that come in So we think it's very important to implement their ideas and their views of what our community and school should, you know. have to follow and so every year because of the new six figures coming in, we choose to refresh it so that

013we can have new ideas and new people that are included. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you. All of the educational leaders in the room are taking notes from you all in your process, you know, the inclusiveness of your process, the voice, how you had it hands-on and the pieces that you allowed for individualism and the pieces that you brought together. I also have to say, I think your acronym is just extremely catchy and we can have maybe future marketers in the room. I don't know. I thought this was great. I'm filled with pride. And as we think about democracy and process. and elections, given the proximity to the next election, you know, I'm filled with hope knowing that you all are our next generation. And thank you so much to all of the staff. Yes,

014Louise, you're getting the fingers, Louise, to guys. Thank you for all of your work. I know you don't like to be thanked publicly. Suzanne and all the staff who helped out with this. So you all rock. highlight of my board meeting for sure. I already know I can say that with a high degree of confidence. Thank you so much for being here. Please feel free to stay for the rest of the meeting or head out. If you're heading out, make sure you have an grown up with you who's approved to So we really, yes. Thank you so much. Thank you for coming. That's really awesome. It's very inspiring. Thank you, Mrs. G. All right. Up next is our student representative. Thank you. SBHS's green team posted a hike after not final state park today. It

015was great to see students get outside as the weather started to cool down. And if you're a high school student and listening in and is interested in joining the green team, we meet on Fridays from 730 to 815 and we hope to see you there. The Key Club at the high school is organizing a winter clothing drive from November 11th through the 22nd in the high school lobby. Items such as gently used winter hats, boots, gloves, snow pants, and other winter clothing items are welcome and students can bring them in and drop them in their grade designated bin. And then the grade with the most items donated is going to have advisory parties. Good question on age ranges. Is this for high school students specifically? Yeah, so I'm in Cape Club and we were thinking

016of just doing it in the high school, but we also totally reach out to elementary schools or the middle school. So if we're bringing in like boots thinking the size of any size. Okay, great. November 27th, is that what you said? November 22nd. Yeah, okay. Is it one day drive? It's over those two weeks, the 11th. We'd also like to remind all families that there's no school on election day. Next Tuesday, the 5th of November for all students. 18 year old students go out and vote if you can. The end of the first academic quarter is tomorrow at the high school. So this means that all students who are taking a PE class for a different quarter long class should look out for a schedule change. And then also all their students should just check

017in, make sure their grades are looking good because they're finalized tomorrow. And this week, Britt Marcotte Central School had a celebration for the unveiling of their new street of Detilio Drive. If you tuned in a couple months ago, those students presented their process of deciding the street name to the school board, and we're so proud of their accomplishment. It was awesome. Yeah. We'll have to look at the news too, because Sue DiTilio did a very rare interview with NBC. I held her hand. She is not someone who enjoys the spotlight, being the humble person she is. And she was great. So if anyone has seen that, share it my way because I haven't seen it yet, but it was really awesome. That's all we have to do. Thank you. Okay. Up next is our agenda

018items. First, we have mental health of our youth with Mr. Patrick Boudinque. At this time, I would like to invite Mr. Ledig to present to the board on the findings of a recent inquiry his organization conducted about the mental health of our youth in our community. Mr. Rodu, welcome. Thank you for having me. I appreciate it. leave a lot of time to hear directly from you. And then at the end, we have some time for board members to ask questions and some discussion with you about your presentation. Sounds great. Thank you. And kudos to the youth that just presented to you that did an amazing job. on a future role model there, if not role models already So I am going to set myself up so I can share my screen. Is that correct? I

019think we've got your slides too if you run into technical challenges, we're happy to assist. I appreciate that. Let me see if we can get this rolling. Beautiful. So again, thank you for having me. I really appreciate it on behalf of the other members of the Faith Influence Leaders organization. We really appreciate the opportunity to talk with all of you. We recently met with the city council And we've had a couple of meetings which we'll talk about today. I want to start with just explain who we are, just so you know who is presenting to you. Then we'll go through a couple of the indicators that we think are really important indicators about what's going on with our young people. I welcome any input from our young people as we go through this process. Your

020voice is more important than anybody else's in this conversation. And then a few key findings that we found when we started meeting with experts and stakeholders of the community. And then some conclusions and next steps that we think are important for our community. There's no specific ask of the school board at this time, just like the city council we met with them, there was no specific ask. We're really trying to just socialize this conversation and talk about what could be next. So who is the faith influence leader? So the faith influence leaders is a small nonprofit that was created in about 2019. And we've got some of the members in this slide deck. I'll try to keep my paper and my electronics on the same page here. We started really just as a couple of

021people that were trying to support each other. You'll notice that David Young, former superintendent, is one of our members, a very active one. Largely, if you think about what we do at all over here, where what we do at all, we are the kind of founding group and the governance over the South Roman food shelf. And that really just came out of an acknowledgement that there was a food insecurity problem in Salton. And for whatever reason, privilege or whatever you'd like to define it as, a lot of us were unaware of that. And so what we decided that if we are going to call ourselves faith inclusive leaders, which are really people that have a faith, we don't really designate which faith and we don't try to evangelize our faith, we just try to live

022our faith the way we are. And consider ourselves leaders in some ways when you find out there is a problem, the only option is to take action of some kind. So we decided to take action and we spent a lot of time getting smart about what was happening with food insecurity and food scarcity. in South Burleton, we talked to a lot of people to understand that. And then we really invited the community to join us in helping to solve that problem, not systemically, because we still have people that are hungry, and that's not ideal. But at least getting food on the table so that they can nourish themselves and nourish their families. And we had a great outpouring of community members We still have a tremendous number of community members that volunteer every single week

023at our food shop, and we have a great number of people that we provide support financially, a great number of people that supply food to our food shelf every single week. It's just been a beautiful outpouring of neighbor help in neighborhoods. So what's happened really in a lot of ways is that work has been so kind of adopted by the community that as our nonprofit board continues to expand, we see ourselves in a governance role, which is a great place to be to help make sure the wheels on the car don't fall off. but also is a lighter lift than actually running the day to day. So we said, well, if we're going to net, so the question is, what's next? And as we talked about that amongst each other, we said our youth are

024struggling with mental health in many cases. I want to be really clear, our youth are resilient. They're amazing when push comes to shove, but that does not mean they don't have challenges that they have to confront. So we said, let's get smart about that. So we spent some time talking to a number of groups. We started with a group that we called experts leading through people that you'll see on the screen now that are representative of those groups, really people that are dealing with mental health crisis on a regular basis. So everybody from the police department, the Howard Center. and other school resource officers, everybody that's kind of like confronting it on a regular basis and trying to make a dent in that. And we've got a lot of information from that group. Then we

025met with what we were calling stakeholders. So these are people that maybe their definition of their work is not directly to support youth if they run into mental health crises or challenges, but they're deeply involved with our youth in various ways. And so their stakeholders in understanding how these systems work and what could be improved And what we have not really had a chance to do yet is really talk to you, which is vitally important because we think there's some action to take. we must talk to our youth directly about what that is. So they can design the supports that they need as a group. And so we haven't had a chance to do that yet, but that's clearly going to be on our list. So that's kind of the backstory. So we learned a

026lot around how to bring the community together, how to bring very stakeholders together to solve that food shelf problem. And we're trying to use that same model of getting smarter, getting our information really straight, and then start socializing this challenge with an eventual call to action. really to the community as a whole. And we'll talk about that as we get toward the end. So I want to cover a couple of data points, which are a little challenging. So if people need a space for a second, we can pause But this is really from the Youth Risk Behavior Survey. And I know that the the board has had a chance to see this data, added a couple of data points just for locality here. So poor mental health during the past 30 days, a third of

027students reported their mental health was not good or at least most of the time. And so that's a statewide data from 2021 and of course we were coming out of the pandemic But South River, the school district number is 34%. So right around that same one third, right? Not a material difference there. feeling sad or hopeless Three intent students felt sad or hopeless almost every day for at least two weeks during the past 12 months. another very sobering stat that school district was around 25% in that same stat. I'm going to just jump through a couple of these. I'm going to skip this one just in the order of time. self-harm. We know how devastating self-harm can be. One in five students reported hurting themselves without wanting to die, such as cutting or burning. And

028that's 20% statewide, and that's really the same number in South Brooklyn School District, right? So there's self-reported numbers. Again, these are challenging times for many of our young people. And we're headed into another challenging time coming up. And you'll also notice on the circle there, we put in the numbers in 2009, 2017, and 2019. So this problem is not going away right on its own. So we need to think about what we can do to support our young people. made a suicide plan. So this one always gets me a little bit, so we'll pause for a second. Let's let this sit in. 14%. of our students that's one in seven made a plan. So from the sutures, that number is 11%. And that number again continues to rise from 9, 11, and 13. was really

029hard to digest that because we look at these as percentages in the data point, but these are people Which is real challenging stuff. And then, unfortunately, 7% statewide and 5% in South Carolina School District reported that they actually attempted suicide. So these are some of the data points that we know statewide that are going on that students have self-reported some of these challenges. So following our discussions with experts and stakeholders we had some great conversations, really interactive conversations, and we have some findings that we wanted to share with all of you. So let me just You jump ahead of my paper here. Again, I'm going to cherry pick a few of these just out of the spirit of time and leaving some time for questions. So following our discussions with experts and stakeholders. We have

030these findings. And again, we don't represent, I'm going to slide one back here on the screen. We don't represent ourselves as really experts in any way, and it is We've talked to experts and we're trying to relate that back to everybody in our own words, but we are not the experts in this field and we don't want to pretend to be. So most of, but not all of the existing financial resources that we see brought to the system are involved in treatment for mental health illness. So what you'll see is a theme through some of these is there's a real deficiency in any preventative care. I was at a session this morning when the speakers spoke about mental fitness as opposed to mental health. Just like physical fitness, we need mental fitness. And that's not

031true for just for our youth. That's for our entire society. I thought that was a great way of framing how we need to take care of ourselves. And then as much as we are funding a lot of reaction and crisis management, those organizations are still underfunded. And we have Howard Center serves about 19,000 individuals per year. Centerpoint School, as we all know here, had to close last year or two years ago for budgetary reasons. And there's about 80 families in the fall of 2022 that were on a waiting list at Howard to get services. So even though we have lots of organizations statewide providing the supports, there's more demand than they can serve. Salton Fire Department reported to us this is one of the most rapidly growing problems that they see in their calls. That's

032quite a crisis in their mind. And they also acknowledge that they don't get training on this. This is not really their job by definition, right? They're EMTs and firefighters rather putting out fires and hopefully not helping too many people that have broken bones, but this is not necessarily in their wheelhouse. So that's a challenge for them to respond to those crises. And then we've talked a lot about children's access to technology. This is a topic, obviously, that's going across our country, many school districts in Vermont are talking about this. I had a small role in helping Beth O'Brien put together a Listen Up Vermont, which is the musical that was written by youth for youth. And they talk a lot about the technology and the phones and how that's both a blessing and a curse

033in their lives in many different ways. touch on this one so the neglect and use in the house The thing we keep hearing is that youth who are struggling, right? You may see them in the school district. We may see them in other places, but they're usually coming, not university, but they're usually coming from households that are struggling. That's something we keep hearing from experts. And then we talked to some people at the emergency room that were serving students in crisis or young people in crisis, some of them as young as seven and eight year olds coming in in crisis. And it's just hard to understand how we can kind of as a society get to the point where that's what's happening with our young people. And again, UVM MC provides no preventative services. It's

034just reacting to what's being presented to them in the moment. servers that are getting calls from families who are getting younger and younger children they report We heard consistently the school systems are doing as good a support as they can for this, but there's a feeling of overwhelmedness in that case sometimes as well. You all know more than that than I do about that. And then the services need to extend beyond nine to five. A lot of these services are only available during certain times, especially, as you can imagine, within the school system, which makes perfect sense. less in the specific mental health crisis, but more in the kind of general society. We heard it from multiple people that there seems to be an increase in the haves and the have-nots, which is troubling. But

035what's more troubling, people kind of spent some time chewing on this is that there seems to be this kind of apathy that it is getting wider, that the halves are in theory not caring as much as they used to that there are other people that are in crisis. And again, I don't want to judge anybody, but that's just some of the dialogue that we heard through these conversations with experts and stakeholders and others. And there's an affordability crisis, which I'm sure all of you are aware of. And we've heard a little bit about things like this in some of the reporting out, but little things like getting into sports really early. If there's a cost reason why you can't. really hard to get into soccer later if you didn't start really early, right? So then

036you become isolated a little bit and alone. And so those create other dynamics which spur some other crisis moments that may come up so And then we had a conversation with the community. We invited the community as a whole to join us and we were going to share what we learned. And we took some more learnings out of that community conversation. One thing we heard in that conversation was that for black and brown young people, talking about mental health is taboo. They may need examples of people that look like them that they can relate to that model that behavior so that they can feel comfortable being a little bit vulnerable saying. I don't feel good today. I want to talk to somebody. lack of places to go came up in that community conversation for a

037lot of students if they are not involved in one of the extracurricular activities the school comes to offer and maybe they're in a house that has two parents that are trying to work double job happens my phone is talking to me. where do they go? And is that a good place? Is it a safe place? Are there other people there that shouldn't be interacting with them? All kinds of things. And then I think the SBE mentoring program is closed. And so that's another set of caring adults that are just not available to our So those are our findings. I'm just checking my time. So the conclusions that we came up with. And so, again, you probably saw this coming. So the current demand for services goes well beyond our existing resources. So the conclusion that

038we came to as our group and some of these community conversations is that we have to look at the opportunity to advocate for more funding for these, and that could be local, that could be at the state level, that could be at the national level. how do we bring resources to bear to advocate for increased funding? That said, there's almost all the existing services are focused on treatment as opposed to preventative care. So we need to find ways to increase funding for or start funding for preventative services. That's one that we think is really important. And one of the things that we internally kind of think about as it relates to what's preventative is creating spaces and people that are a safe place and a productive place for young people to be at. So there

039are models in other places on drug addiction where there's people have quality places to go to and spend time outside of school And an action that we are spending a lot of time really thinking about and really socializing is a community driven youth drop-in center. And you can call it whatever you want drop-in center, a youth space. We envision it as a place that is kind of co-designed by our youth. So that they feel like it's their space, they own it, they kind of run run with it and design it the way they'd like it to have it with the supports they think they want. We're not envisioning a place where it's for the kids that are having challenges. It's just for our youth, when it's outside of school, on the weekends in the summer.

040it's their space. They take care of each other to some degree and we have some caring adults there, but they're also providing supports and making it a safe place. That's something that we think is really viable for us as a community. And that's the thing that we are probably thinking that we want to have the call to action for our community to come together for. And as part of that mentoring, having a caring adult in your life, even if you have great parents and a great household, having one more caring adult And research shows has powerful impact for our young people. And sometimes that caring adult isn't of the student, right? That may be just a little bit older. A near peer modeling is really important. And as part of that, as we all know,

041transportation is a huge challenge in our state. Sydney County doesn't have quite the same challenge as some of the other communities, but we have our challenges. And if we are going to create a space where we would encourage young people to come to Those, again, going back to some of the conversations that you were asked about early on in the public comment section, if they don't have the financial resources to get transportation there back, they can't participate in that. They will be either isolated away from that or just not able to take advantage of that. So whatever mechanism we find to create a drop-in center or a youth center or just the South Brompton Wolves den place that we're going to build. It has to have transportation tied to it so that students can get

042there and they can most importantly get home when it's time to go home at the end of the evening or on the weekends or whatever that is. So that's all we want to do. But our qualifying slide at the end here is that there's no resources really brought to bear in helping people to avoid mental health challenges, especially in our youth. And so our vision is to figure out how we can come together as a larger community, most likely some kind of a public-private partnership. We have some great organizations in South Burleton that are doing well business-wise. We have some people that have philanthropic thoughts about how they can help the community. We've got the infrastructure where city council and our school. We've got organizations like ours that want to see this happen. We can

043see how we can come together within a partnership with our youth. and design a place that they feel ownership for and that there's a safe place for everybody to be in our community. So that's what I want to share with you all tonight. Any questions for me? Thank you so much. You're welcome. This time we have some time to ask questions and have some discussion. I'd like to start with you. It's a lot to chew on. It was a very good presentation and i Personally, I really appreciate that. There were some very sobering numbers and facts in there. I'm curious if we have more recent data that was a 2021 survey i think pulled a lot of that from so I'm curious to see if numbers have changed at all in the last several years.

044I don't believe the state has yet published the next youth wider survey. And we'll be interested to see how it's changed as we've emerged from the COVID pandemic. it's lagging or getting better or better Even worse. I agree. It'll be a great day to have it. I will. remind you all that you just saw that the numbers were going up before that. So it's hard to imagine they're going to go down much. Thank you for the presentation. So I also teach in public school and what you're describing sounds to me like a vibrant school setting So I encourage everybody to vote for their school budget because yes, having a caring adult, that's the goal of school that one adult in that building knows you well And it's getting harder and harder to do that in

045our schools. So that is, I kind of like Because I think I like how you said that there's a place for kids to go that they can own, not school. And as we just saw that presentation, the inclusion, the rise everything else for that inclusion like everybody needs to be so yeah We can beef up our schools get our transportation up and running because that is one thing also like clubs are huge, right? We have to tell a child the other day, I'm sorry you can't participate in the inclusion program because we can't get you home yeah And this is a child who uses a new American who wants to participate. And it was really hard to tell him. And we're not allowed to try it. so that's Yeah. So like a drop-in center, gosh,

046I would love that to be school because I think there are a lot of, there's a lot of teachers who are offering their time and their expertise to kids, but getting them home safely is a huge barrier. Yeah, I think we've envisioned that if we could make something like this a reality, we would want it as close to the middle schools and high schools as possible. We've also talked about something close to the elementary school, as we know that there's a little more dispersed But we think the priority would probably be creating something that was really accessible, close to the middle school, high school first, and then learning from that experience. The school is that is a great place, but the school isn't open 24 7 weekends in summer. So that's one of the other

047things we're trying to like resolve. I would love if either of you have any thoughts, I'd love to hear your thoughts on it. Yeah, first off, thank you so much for doing this. Yeah, it's very shocking and i don't Just to look at the data and Yeah, and I think for sure need to act on this as a community The first point that I thought I could add on to was that at South Burlington, there is a program starting this year called the Student Ambassador program and so that is more student to student mentoring, but it's basically any transfer student who comes to the high school will have the opportunity to pair with a student who has been trained and is a student ambassador and those students will pair up for the first week of

048the transfer student is here. Yeah, they'll be taken to their classes. They'll eat lunch together. So I think that's a really great step, student to student wise. And if we could implement something like that at every school, I think that would be awesome. And then I think I spoke with you maybe last year at a meeting with Monica. Yes, you did. And so when we were kind of brainstorming this outside meeting space for youth. I think my kind of my kind of Turian would be in some sort of some sort of like coffee shop right next to it. That's what we talked about. Middle school and it would be awesome if the youth could have the option to work there and be paid. And I think having a bus stop right by there will be

049Perfect. Can I add to what you were just saying so as racy is saying, we chatted a little bit, it was last year, right? Yeah. And one of the ideas that we had when we were talking about the coffee shop idea that she was just sharing is that you could create this space where students have a space to go and then there maybe there's a little retail spot in the front. that the students both can work at but can also really run I mean, this is an opportunity to learn like real life. How do you order product? How do you hire employees? What are all the things? And so it's a real educational opportunity baked into creating a space that is theirs. Yes, sir. Yeah, those are all my thoughts right off the bat. I

050just wanted to thank you for coming. I really appreciate hearing the idea about opening the community space, because I feel like that would just really be a good opportunity for students to connect with each other outside of school. I like the idea of the coffee shop too. I think it would be great for students to have the opportunity to make their own money as well while also being able to like see their careers on a daily basis. So I just really appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you so, so much. i i was i was really impacted by your presentation as well. you have my full support and any way I can help, I'd be happy to. You know, when you were talking about preventive mental health supports. being really something that don't exist. I think

051that's something that is incredibly needed and um you know we go to the dentist for cleanings, right? We give universal instruction to students and yet that we have nothing in our systems that provide any sort of mental supports. I mean, from a school level, I think, you know, we're really trying with guidance classes or the development of our social emotional learning curriculum, right? But as you mentioned, you know, the firefighters are grappling with supporting mental health crises. So are we as school employees, right? And I think with many mental health supports evaporating or just statewide not being funded, schools don't have the choice to say, no, we won't support this. We are here to support all of our kids and the whole child. And so we as educators are oftentimes triaging situations that we are

052supporting without any sort of formal medical training, but it's just love, right? And I see a great need for mental health supports in our schools. We've started budget conversations and the conversations we've had with all of our principals are around choosing between mental health supports and academic supports And as an educational institution, one of the biggest in the state, we're picking mental health supports, social emotional learning supports over academic supports. Because if our students are not able to be in our schools first, right? Like that's the first step. So we're um I have a lot of concern about how to move forward with funding Youth Center. I think it's a great idea. We just don't have the funding and I don't know where it's going to come from, but that your group is trying to

053engage in partnerships and fundraising, I think is really wonderful. I'm happy to help in any way I can. We have a significant body of data that is current. And I think that funding is the greatest challenge here. And I also see you know, not just our youth, but I see our adults and our staff more impacted now right like we're looking at budget expenses as we craft our fiscal year 26 budget and our disability for staff, our FMLAs, our staff supports. And those that are directly connected to mental health are dramatically rising costs the last few years. So appreciate your time on this and happy to consult support anything I can. Appreciate it. And let me just say, I acknowledge the challenges, not just how growth the school has, but every school in our state's

054having budget-wise, right? And so I don't think our vision is that we would be looking for funding from the school district to help run this. I think we'd be looking for like that partnership in talking to people, having data and socializing this so that we can move this forward is really ask that we would probably be having the school district. I think just to be clear, our goal is, again, we're not going to become mental health experts. That's not who we are. how do we create spaces so that those numbers that we saw in those early slides are dramatically smaller, right? That's all we want to do. How do we create a space so that we have not 5% of kids maybe can you know try to commit suicide but zero How do we get

055that 11% of kids that are thinking about it to two? How do we create and that creates tremendous value for our kids and it also takes some pressure off the systems that are trying to respond to these crises, right? So our goal is to get upstream to reduce the number of our young people that are going into crisis in the first place. I didn't tell you Gracie's coffee shop idea is a goldmine because the number of teachers, I mean, I would go there every day. You put a coffee shop between the high school and middle school, it would be well supported. And we could direct some of that funding, maybe some of these preventive. In the high school, I saw that in Philadelphia. That's what they did. Yeah, we heard this was over 15 years

056ago. So this has been done and it is quite effective. Yeah, it's a great idea. Did the city bite at all at this concept by Epic? I recall having this discussion with folks both in rotary and at a city level. There was an interest because infinite is, you know, there's a need for something larger yeah what was the feedback? We'll maybe reverse our so travia and I stay in constant communication, regardless of what happens there. And she's doing some good work and I consider her a friend. If we were able to find something, we would pull her in as well, right? She's got some knowledge in the space. She's got some resources. And I think if we need something that's a little bit more, it's a little larger, maybe a different model a little bit.

057The city, I would say I think they were pretty impacted by the data. I think some of the numbers and some of the findings, I think it hit them a little bit hard. And I won't speak for what that means for action from them, but it was a pretty meaningful conversation, I would say. I took that away. I think our next steps are really kind of like kind of reading these rooms, right? Like, so what did I take away from the city council? What am I taking away from here? I'm going to try to be meeting with a couple of other groups that are on that kind of private side now and see how many people counting how many heads are nodding right okay and then if we say, okay, we've got enough people that

058are nodding up and down. Let's get some movers and shakers in a room and say, we've probably got you know enough of the community saying we should do something So let's start something. Let's get it rolling because we had a similar dynamic and this is much more complicated than opening a food shelf, right? I mean, I should mention the rotary. The rotary has been very engaged with us in this conversation as well. You know, they were tremendous supports for the food shop. They just donated that brand new electric van, which is amazing. And in this conversation, we'll be told that this is our next action they were like You keep us in the loop. We want to be involved with this. This is important. So I think we're starting to slowly just get more and

059more kind of movers and shakers going, this is something. Let's figure out how to do this. And then we'll have that in that large call to the community. And this one will no doubt be a capital campaign of some kind. We've talked to a couple of organizations that already exists that kind of oversee these types of operations already that have said, if you can make it get all that stuff out of the way, we'd be happy to come in and help guide the operation of it because we know how to do that. So I think we're starting to get things lined up. We had enough people nodding up and down. We'll see what this takes. Chris, the city council has appropriated funds to infant center too some some really significant funds. So I think, you

060know, the appetite has been there. I don't know if they're continuing to do that annually. Not anymore. Yeah, that's exactly. So it's just when you see the number, when you see the numbers Isn't it always almost underreported? Like whatever that number is, it's probably a little bigger because folks are Yeah, I mean, I wouldn't, again, because I'm not a research, but these are self-reported numbers. So I think, you know, you have to kind of say, okay, they're hopefully being honest. But yeah, I mean, am I going to fill out like there's a bunch of other questions, right? And he's like, are you taking drugs? How many kids there are that are saying no. But they ask, are you eating, you know. Healthy. Nine to 11 veggies a day. How many people check yesterday? Yeah, yeah.

061But this has been a reliable set of data points so I've got my new mental health matters. I was really looking forward to this conversation. So thank you. Thank you, Chris. I've spent a lot of time thinking about programs like this, and I have some like experience with programs that are designed to take students that are statistically more at risk for not just mental health struggles, but just like falling through the cracks and not being given the same opportunities as other students. And I think that this coffee shop idea, for example, is a good way of destigmatizing preventative care. Like, I think sometimes when you create something that's meant to be preventative. students don't want to participate or people don't want to participate because they don't want to flag themselves as Being someone who needs

062help. I just, I would love to be involved in this project. And I've actually lobbied nationally, like with with um US senators and such for programs that I think really do make a difference. And I feel like I still have their ear and I could reach out to them if national is something you're thinking, but I feel like we have to start locally too like And I think I've seen a lot of really good preventative programs that are designed to help reduce these numbers. And what happens is you don't get engagement because nobody wants to label themselves. And then any sort of advocacy or visibility that you've done to try to get the community to appreciate how important a program like this is, they just watch it not be successful and then everyone kind of

063just is like, well. didn't work. So I'm really excited about your approach and What a great idea and engaging maybe someone like to tell us how could we build a program that would work is i think the only way forward. So thank you very much. We do have a couple people online. It looks like they might like to ask a question or comment. Are you comfortable with that? Of course. Okay. Could we unmute Kate Jarvis, please? Whoops. Hi there. Thank you so much for um taking my question or it's actually more of a comment And that is that there is something that currently exists in Wilton, Connecticut Which, um. would or could or could or could or could kind of address some of the aspects of this center that that we might like to create.

064It's called trackside Keene centre. So it's focused on teens in the high school and in the community And it's run by a friend of mine In conjunction with some other parents, there's a board that exists as well. And it's focused a lot on social activities And because it's not held at the schools, they actually have a standalone building in the town. You know, they have events at weekends and during the summer holidays They take kids on camps and excursions. They have really terrific facility, which has been built up over the years which has Sort of like the coffee shop idea. So there's food and there's that sort of thing. And there's various kinds of recreation available there there's There's technology stuff, you know, there's a pool table, there's um you know they have friday night

065gatherings for teens And I think the idea was just generally to give teens a place to go But it's become more than just a place to go on a Friday night or whatever. They've really developed a community there. So I know this is a little bit Aside from the mental health thing, but I think a way into getting kids interested in something like this is in part um you know, presenting it as an opportunity to socialize Rather than, as Chelsea says, you know, something where they would be flagged as needing help. So those are just my thoughts and I'd be very happy to connect you to Lori Fields, who helps run it if that was something that you'd be interested in. Thanks very much. Yes, I'd be happy to be connected to that person. And

066I think this is very aligned with what we're thinking, right? We're not thinking about, oh, you have a mental crisis, you should go to this place. This is for all students hopefully to prevent those mental health crises, put them in an environment where we mitigate that a little bit. Patrick, I can connect you and Kate via email. Does that work, Kate? It's gone. Yes, yes, absolutely. That'd be great. Thank you, Kate. Thank you. Thanks so much. Can we unmute Diane, please? You guys made a mistake. Sorry, I had to unmute. Hi, Patrick, Diane. Hi, Anne. And thank you school board for inviting Patrick in for this conversation. I think it's so important and It's encouraging and hopeful that our community wants to dialogue about this. And I really just wanted to share that I heard

067in a meeting today that the 2023 youth risk behavior survey data will be coming out soon. I didn't hear a specific date, but it will be released soon. So, you know, we can all have a chance to take a look at that data. So thank you. Thank you, Diane. Diane is also a former school board member for those that don't know that name. right here it's all broken. Martin, do you want to come up so we can share it here online? Mark Gable, community member and aaron whichever one of the issues. And so you said and along the preventative side, what I wanted to mention was that there's several things that used to happen at high school pre-covid that don't happen any longer. One of them that i keep How many mom was supplying Ryan

068program, which is a great preventative measure and i've been told by john painter that that was going to be reintroduced this year, but I haven't really came about it. And then the other one is the UBM ropes course. I was talking to John Abbott. He used to run that program for UDL. Yeah, I used to work over here myself I believe it was freshman students Mr. Bird could tell you because I was on the ropes course with him when this was going on, went there as a team building. And it's a great group element. And what a great opportunity for prevention yeah And that has fallen through the cracks. Snowfold of South Burlington During the conversation I was having with John today, which is about him becoming a bus driver We veered off and said

069there's got to be a place up and running again because if there was ever a place is ever a time in our history that there was a need for that, it's now. you know the impact that you can have on young lives and afternoon reports is incredible So those would be the two seats that I would appreciate. And I'd also like to talk to you. Great. Thank you. Thank you. Well, I'll just add, because it feels like we're winding down just you know i In my day job, I do a lot of work kind of indirectly with youth across the state of vermont. And I want to just recap that our you know our youth are amazingly resilient And we're also, there's like the dynamic with our youth of today that are different than other

070generations. I mean, we see this as it relates to their career searches. Our young people care much more about mission. They care about respect. They care about the organization they work with cares for them. And so that, you know, those types of attributes for our youth The only difference is they exist in their day-to-day lives. And so that's why I'm so insistent that if we can get some legs on this and we have youth involved They care so deeply about each other you know there's competitions and there's clicks and all that but in their core, they care deeply about each other. So having them involved in this is going to just make it wildly successful, I think. I'll leave that as my parting statement. Thank you very much for your time. Thank you. But in

071the meant this little And then just a minute breath. Well, the next, Nick, would you be able to pull the power print down. Do you mind telling the… Power all the way down. All right, so up next, we have a finance committee update. And not to forget that as a part of this update, we need to discuss the community listening session for November 5th. Tim, I hope we can do this as an error. That's right. So kickoff meeting was a success, well attended by both community members and students. Engaging conversation of kind of what some short-term goals look like, a desire really to get good information into the community. We quickly realize that our budget form was on election night. So that was a good call out there. But we have a cadence of bi-weekly

072on a go-forward basis. We are I think we encourage existing folks who joined that they could bring a friend, bring a finance buddy, and expand that group because that really just getting good information out so that folks can make informed decisions. We emphasize that, you know, we've we are advocating for the mission of the school, but we don't have a predetermined outcome. We are sharing information so that folks can make informed decisions. engaging group. Sam, help me out here. No, I have to reiterate what you said. I thought it was a really good first meeting. Definitely there is a lot of a lot of interest and a lot of desire to understand how things work and how we can best spread, you know. positive message. So it was very encouraging. We did have four students

073attend, so I was very excited about that. They all seemed very engaged. So I welcome them. Yeah, it was just a really, really good initial meeting. It's about an hour long. And we did hold it on Zoom, a little Zoom problem at the first start, but just Chris stepped in and saved us. And so we are good. We got lucky. So just looking for maybe some feedback from the any values or topics that you want to ensure happen or violate We're looking for some direction or keep what you're going. Yeah, thank you so much for bringing the committee together. I'm really excited to have student participation and the bring a friend approach is so smart. I love that. I think, you know, my vision for this is really having this be a grassroots community organization

074where, you know, the financials that we've put into that shared resource folder are really explained in detail to those on the committee so that they can understand what we're going through and what some of the facts are. I was looking at tax rates online. The state of vermont has tax rate and per pupil spending online buried in their school snapshot. And, you know, ours is some of the lowest in the state, even with our two fiscal years of surpluses applied. And we've just been able to like rub pennies together to provide really programming, but the budget conversations we're having are really hard. I mean, we're looking at cutting such a massive amount of staffing and programming and it's not going to support the mental health of students. And Norame, a really excellent point about connections

075of co-curricular and athletic participation. I mean, that's a $1.3 million budget in total. And if we were to make to that. I mean, we have students who come to school specifically to participate in co-curriculars and athletics, right? So it's all a bunch of difficult choices. But I'm really hopeful that this committee can use factual information And that you all can explain and share kind of what we're looking at and what this information means. you know i'm happy to share any information you know in addition to anything you need from the resource folder, that's an open book and we want people to have access to information. We want this to be transparent and we want to have people on that committee feel armed to share it with their friends, families, community organizations so if there's any

076way that we can support like that understanding and education and then advocacy, reach out. Julia is happy to create materials. You've got our financials um you know we'll field any questions from the committee, really wanting this to be a group of people who can be a grassroots organization early and often. You know, we can't endure three budget pharaohs year in and year out. And I think that um that community push that we got for Vote 3 was the reason why our budget passed. And to have that community engagement before the first vote is so essential. So yeah, I think it's the education pieces and the advocacy pieces are my hopes. And I think the biweekly schedule is awesome. I really appreciate it. you know all of the work from folks at this table to leave

077that um Call me anytime. I'm happy to provide resources. Can I just ask what your initial thoughts are for your community listening session on Tuesday? Are you thinking about canceling it or are you thinking about adding a second one? It's a Tuesday, right? I don't think we can, I think we would need to cancel it that evening. I think there's just a lot going on and I think people are going to be pretty distracted. So I think we would get minimal, if any, participation. Highs will be elsewhere. Highs will be elsewhere. So perhaps we push it out to the following week. If that's appropriate, and that gives us time to get the message out and uh Yeah, so you're thinking the 12th. The 12th, if there's no conflict Because I can make a template from,

078do you want a calendar post or a calendar and post, keeping in mind that we only have two, three posts per month but if it's important. Just I think a calendar would be fine and then we can communicate to the committee and then we can broadcast that via the committee as well. Another thing, if you all want to shoot me a blurb and I can say, hey, you know, here's something from our you know, finance committee, I'm happy to put that in my newsletter too. The viewership on that is about 6,500. What's your newsletter? So biweekly, so not tomorrow, but Thursday after that. So November 7th. Okay, great. Do you want this called a community budget forum? Community Budget Listening Session? What did we have at the title? I'm also curious if you need to

079put anything out. to state that it's been canceled. I don't remember what we did to let the community know about it other than discuss it in another session. I have it on the, sorry, I'm going to interrupt you. I was pulling up our timeline for budget preparation that we have on our website. I'm going to update this. We have it on there. Should I put it, should I just change it to the 12th on this? Yes. And what is it specifically called? So we called it community budget forum here and we had it six to seven 30 hosted by the finance committee in person at 577 Dorset We also had it offered as virtual. We do need to just check to make sure that we're able staffing wise to offer that virtually. So we'll follow

080up with you on that one. Why don't you email me? Just to confirm the place, the time, and whether or not you have a virtual option, because those are all things that I would put into the calendar posting. It would be my intention to post this about a week before so that people see it, unless you want it sooner than that. No, that's fine. So we're planning on holding it here, right? Is that where you want it to be? I think it would make sense. I think people are used to coming here. I just need to see if I can… staff this So I will follow up with you on that. Can you just keep helping me on that stuff then so that I know whether or not you have a virtual component? Would you

081still host it even if you don't have a virtual component? do we need a staff person? Like, can I just… remove wicked. We can probably do it. The library Yeah, the only issue there is we have to be out by quarter to seven So always happy to host here. However, like we have to pay folks to be here, right? So if you were to utilize a library, it would be you know savings for the districts Okay, let me touch base with you tomorrow and we can get right out here. So you want to just let me know where you land on that for location? All right. So I will… I'm just going to put time and location TBD. newsletter came up as a discussion point of how engagement with voters of how to reach folks

082that normally aren't focused on this early on in it was just a really informed discussion about there's only so much that Front Porch Forum does. There's only so much that Only 6,500 out of it. How do we get to the other active voters so that they're informed It's a current problem, right? Like it's just But I would love, so to me, part of that, trying to answer that is this committee right and their community connections and their friends and family and I'm really hopeful that this committee can help spread the word about vaccine information with a broader variety of our constituents, our community members. Yes. All right, and that brings us to listening sessions. Yeah. So listening sessions have been very quiet there at the library. So yeah, so I got a lot of work

083done. A lot of things corrected so uh I am there and I'll be there again on November 13th. on December 11th. And at that point, we can make some sort of determination if this Because, you know, I'm there from 545 to 645. I think we said six to seven Because they do ask you to start wrapping it up around 645 so it I mean, obviously if someone's there, I'm not going to say, well, time's up. No, I mean, but still they do start asking to So I'll be there in the I don't know if it's going to be in the study room or the choir. And I'll plan to make a post for that as well. That would be great. And then Violet's newsletter goes out November 7th. Is it November 13th. Yep, November 7th.

084So anything you want included Okay. Shoot it over to me. Do you want me to just, I can just write it down now. So it's November 13th library yeah 545, 645. 545. How about in the quiet, let's just say the quiet reading room quiet radio. Great. Yeah. And then… Okay. And can I just say that folks could reach out to you? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And this goes for staff as well. Yeah, awesome. I'm not going to make myself Okay, great. Yep, thank you. Next up, we have the first reading of revision of the firearms policy. Would you like me to read this out? Sure, yeah. Do you want me to provide kind of just rationale of why we're discussing this? So, you know, as we've been going through policies and updating policies, this is something

085that This was an outdated policy and we have had the firearms policy, but realizing you know in our research that a lot of districts have either what they call firearms and weapons policy or just a weapons policy. So we made some modifications to update this. You're still going to see the legal references. A lot of these statutes refer to firearms, not those pieces. And you still have the connections to our other policies. So without, we won't need to modify another policy to make this immediately applicable, right? But wanting to broaden the definition of firearms really specifically state weapons for clarity's sake. And… We see what else can I say here? I don't think I have anything else that I wanted to mention right now. A lot of the language here is like we're clearing up,

086we're providing greater detail for definitions And what we're talking about, expulsion is what I wanted to discuss. We want to make sure that we're not just supporting or maintaining a school to prison pipeline. So this is we see that echoed in this is we want to, rather than bringing any weapons violation, the word must that I must bring this to a board member, we want this to be May. We also want to account for situations such as say we have, this is a complete hypothetical. This is not an actual situation. Say we have an elementary student who accidentally brings a pocket over to school, right? I don't want to have to come to the board and say, hey, we need an immediate weapons hearing, right? So we're wanting to empower our principals and our staffs

087to support students We're still going to be following a lot. We have very strict practices around how to deal with weapons threats. So this isn't softening any preventive measures or any of the procedures if a weapon is found. But what it does do is say that it provides reasonable interpretation so that I don't have to bring something you as board members don't have to have weapons hearings when they're not necessary. Again, we still work closely with law enforcement and families and students following practices that are required by law. Many of those outlined in Act 29, for instance, but very clearly in our legal references, the statutes you see here as well. So with that. I was going to say, we have story time with Tim as I call it. Yeah. And just for clarification, we'll

088read it this one time when we review it next time we don't need to read. That's correct. All right, South Burlington school district policy f8 firearms and weapons policy is the policy of the South Burlington School District that weapons of any type are prohibited from all South Burlington school district schools properties activities or events The use or possession of weapons of any type will not be tolerated by South Burlington School District schools. It is the policy of South Burlington School District to comply with all federal and state laws concerning the prohibition of weapons and firearms on school property. including the federal gun-Free School Act of 1994, and the equivalent Vermont Statute 16 VSA Section 1166, requiring school districts to provide for the possible expulsion of students Ubering a firearm to school. It is also the

089intent of the board to comply with Vermont Statute 13BSA Section 4004 prohibiting the possession of all dangerous or deadly weapons, replicas, or facsimiles of any dangerous or deadly weapon at school or on school grounds. For purposes of this policy, the terms firearm and to school shall have the same meaning as found in 18 USC Section 921. Additionally, the term weapon shall include the definition provided in 13 BSA Section 4016, as further defined by the board. It is further the intent of the board to maintain a student discipline system consistent with the requirements of the federal individuals with disabilities education act section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act and the Vermont State Board of Education rules. definitions. For the purposes of this policy, the terms weapon, firearm, school, and expel shall have the following meanings. weapon has

090defined in 13 vsa section 4016 means any firearm, knife, fighting instrument, or other weapon-like device, instrument material or substance whether animate or inanimate, which in the manner it is used or is intended to be used is known to be capable of producing deaf or serious bodily injury. Examples of such weapons include knives, clubs, brass knuckles, or nunchucks. weapon also includes any reasonable facsimile, reproduction, or replica of the above. firearm and destructive devices as defined in Section 921 of Title 18 of the United States Code. and 13 VSA, Section 4016 means Any weapon, whether loaded or unloaded, which will or is designed to or may readily be converted to its fellow projectile by the action of an explosive. the frame or receiver of any weapon described above. Any firearm, muffler, or firearm silencer. any explosive incendiary

091or poison gas. Bob, Renee, Rocket having a propellant charge of more than four ounces missile having an explosive or incendiary charge of more than one quarter rounds. Mine or a similar device Any weapon which will or which may be readily converted to expel a projectile by the action of an explosive or other propellant and which has any barrel with a bore of more than one half inch in diameter. A weapon shall also include any combination of parts, either designed or intended for use in converting any device into any destructive device, bomb, or firearm. Any reasonable facsimile or pre-production of a firearm. School means any setting that is under the control and supervision of the school district. It includes school grounds, facilities, and school sponsored events, whether held on or off of school grounds and vehicles

092used to transport students to and from schools or school activities. expelled or long-term suspended shall mean the termination of educational services to a student for greater than a 10-day period. at the discretion of the board, an expelled student may be afforded limited educational services at a site other than the school during the period of expulsion under this policy. sanctions. Any student who brings a firearm or weapon to school or who possesses a firearm or weapon at school may be brought by the superintendent to the school board for an expulsion hearing. A student found by the school board after a hearing to have brought a firearm or weapon to school shall be expelled for at least one calendar year. However, the school board may modify the expulsion on a case-by-case basis when it finds circumstances such

093as but not limited to. The student was unaware that they had brought a firearm or weapon to school. The student did not intend to use the firearm or weapon to threaten or endanger others. the student is disabled and the misconduct is related to the disability The student does not present an ongoing threat to others and a lengthy expulsion would not serve the best interests of the pupil. At the discretion of the school board and administration, an expelled student may be afforded limited educational services at a site other than the school during the period of expulsion under this policy. Policy implementation. an expulsion hearing conducted under this policy shall afford due process as required by law. and as developed by the superintendent or his or her designee. The superintendent shall refer to appropriate law enforcement agency

094Any student who brings a firearm or weapon to a school as defined above. In addition, any student who brings a firearm to school, the superintendent shall refer to a law enforcement agency and a report may be made to the Vermont Department of Children and Families as necessary. The superintendent shall annually provide the Secretary of Education with descriptions of the circumstances surrounding expulsions imposed under this policy. The number of students expelled and the type of firearms or weapons involved. I won't read through the legal references. Any questions, comments? changes from your word. The only, as I read through this, it was very clear Under sanctions. we have Any student who brings a firearm or weapon to school or who possesses a firearm or weapon at school may be brought by the superintendent to the school board

095So I'm just wondering So is it the sole prerogative of the board to expel? And if it is, then I wonder if we just want to include some sort of precursor statement that says something to the effect that it is the purview of the superintendent or designee to determine sanctions up to but excluding expulsion. So we read a number of these that have been updated recently. So as in another way of saying prepared by the same lawyer and fact check, that language isn't in any of these. So I would advise against adding additional color there or language when not needed. We know about We know that in policies and contractual language, the absence of language is often provides more latitude. I can tell you that I did change the word in this section, the word

096shall to me. That was the intentional revision that we made there. And that was the verbiage that we saw in Essex Westbrose, for instance, right? Which was just updated by legal. So I know that that is, it's been vetted. A lot of this is has been vetted by legal. I'm happy to discuss that. I mean, it only came to mind. I just was curious if um so if it is the sole purview of the board to to expel. Is that something you can decide to do or is that? I can. I would bring it to you the um i have to report weapons violations to the agency of education and sometimes they can be contested. So a hearing might be because a parent is, say, challenging decision I've made, right? Or that, you know, so

097it could be a variety of situations. I will add that I have a modification for next time. The cross references were inadvertently left off when we reformatted this below the legal references should read cross references search and seizure and student conduct in discipline. Those were the policies that I was referencing. I said that this updated version still jives with those policies and would require updates to those. So we'll add that back on. Those were in our they're in our current firearms policy, so sorry these were left off. So the only other comment I had or really question is clarification. In several instances, there's reference to an expelled student may be afforded limited educational services at a site other than the school. The site, we interpret that as home So if there's remote education offered, the

098home is considered an alternate site. There could be homeschooling opportunities which are regulated by that agency of education i read site and I immediately think, okay, another educational institution. It could be. Which would be fine. I just want to make sure that if the decision is, hey. They're going to do remote learning from home. That's considered a site under this policy. Palms are considered a… Okay, great. That was all I heard. Good questions. Thanks, Emily. Any other questions or comments? Reasonable changes. I was just thinking like. Was weapons less restrictive than cell phones now So no cell phone policy has been good because the currency report. Yeah, the the um you know this was brought to our, we have folks who lead this And you said, weapons aren't mentioned. It's only firearms. And I just

099think, you know, as we So I think being specific in language is something that we know as educators we need to do, but also updating was really important. And at the top of that when I started the equity pieces here of how are we supporting our students? How are we, of course, attending to the law and taking any kind of weapons violation very seriously that won't change. And how can we treat this in a way that isn't Just. developing that school to prison pipeline. So that equity pieces are way heavy in the proposed modifications. All right, so I'm going to add the cross references for that second meeting. I pulled up the draft and put those on So without Delina, you're going to see more of me doing these things on the documents right away.

100I assume if we have simple copy edits, I can send those to you. Just email me this. I don't want to waste any time. Yep, just email them to me directly. Thank you. Great. That concludes our discussion items. We have a brief recess one, but we don't have a lot left for our open session. Would you like to take it with us or would you like to take a quick one. All right, so we're going to take a brief process and we will resume at 7.36. So next, we're going to discuss agenda item seven, school board discussion regarding school board vacancy. So we were going to be conducting interviews tonight, but as you probably noticed, you were not forwarded any applications to review. We had zero applicants for the school board seat. I checked in

101with our legal attorney about what we are legally obligated to do, and we've already done our due diligence by the charter. We had to notify the community of the opening provide a reasonable amount of time. It'd be 30 days. for people to apply and then we would have had to decide if we wanted to fill the seat. So now at this time, our options are we could repeat the process we already did. We could appoint someone or we could just leave the seat vacant. And you don't necessarily have to make a decision about what we want to do tonight. But now it's like the time to discuss. bring it to you all to help me decide, help us decide what we should do. I do understand. I think it's probably a very challenging time for

102anyone in the community to step up to join the board with the budget season that we're about to face but No, thank you. What's our quorum? How does this impact our quorum? Yeah, so our quorum is still three. And let me explain. So even if there's two of us of a four-person board, that's not enough to win a vote, essentially. That would be a It's not a majority is 51%, and that would be 50%. So in terms of the finance committee, like you and Tim are still perfectly fine to we need um We do have two big negotiations. that we're opening. We have a big budget season ahead of us. So, you know, I'm really in favor of adding someone to the team, but obviously we can't just make somebody join the school board so

103You missed it. I mean… I don't know anybody who I mean, is there somebody that wants to to appoint somebody would have to want to do it. I don't personally know anyone who wants to do it, but… No, but I didn't do any outreach either. I did a little bit. I approached one person and they said they didn't want to do it, but if we didn't have anyone, they would do it, but they did not want to do negotiations. Okay. So. What do you think, Tim? I would like to see the seat filled like five is always better than four, right? Especially coming into the season. Again, I haven't put out any feelers, but I anticipated at least a few applicants coming in. I'm kind of surprised there weren't any Well, we'll leave it open,

104right? Can we just leave it open? I would say just leave it open. Because yes, I would agree. So why don't you set a new application deadline Because I don't want any issues with like one person applies and we end it there and Yeah, let's reset the application deadline um um just thinking about timeline. So I think I absolutely agree. I think filling the spot is really important. Obviously, it's not appropriate for me to put fillers out um I would offer that we look at the November 20th board meetings or possible interviews um you know leaves us about 20 days. we would need to So if we were shooting for that and you all can decide whatever date, the 6th is one week from today, right? So that's our next board meeting. And then it

105would be two weeks to the 20th. 20th, so three weeks from today exactly And that would put us at if the applications closed on say Friday at noon we could send them all to you all to review with the board packet so that you all could have the Well, that's actually not enough time maybe to let we'd have to let folks know. So do we have to do another full 30 days? We've already done that by the charter. Do we have to Because here's what I'm thinking. Maybe there were a pool of people who thought I might do it, but I'll let someone else go. And if the community hears nobody applied, then perhaps more people will say, okay, I'm going to go ahead and do it. So I'm just saying like we have opportunities

106to kind of advertise. And if we had the application deadline be the 15th. I do feel like that's enough time. to support agree? I was thinking earlier, we can't put it on for November 6th and just carry it to agenda. I don't want to carry it for each agenda because I don't want any sort of perception that we stop looking for a candidate when we find the one that we want. Does that make sense? So like. I want it to be fair in the sense that everyone has a new deadline. Everyone has the opportunity to apply. In previous board vacancies, we've had to discuss like how many people would we like to interview? I don't think we need to talk about that. We'll interview all of them if they would like to be interviewed and

107be appointed to the board. I just, I don't love the idea of like every week saying like join the board and then we get one person it just doesn't feel fair That makes sense. I agree. trust the recommendation. I think that makes sense I was like, we could receive applicants until the 15th. And if we get any, then we interview on the 20th. And then make a decision. If we don't get any applicants by the 15th, then we potentially still have the ability to appoint somebody if somebody comes forward at that point, right? I think that's absolutely a defined approach, I guess. There's quite a bit of lead time. If we don't get any interest, it concerns me in a way because you know we have two more seats that we're going to try to

108fill come March. So this is something that perhaps maybe the next OP article could be about and we start drumming up some you know some some interest in it i mean it is the community right there's a lot of in you know and What better time to get people interested in those school board and budget season so certain business that we would not be able to do if we were unable to fill it. It seems like we It can all be done technically. Yeah. And I also, my understanding is that the majority is if it's a split vote two to two, then it goes with the eyes, not the ye is not the nays. But I believe. Okay, so at our 1120 meeting, the whole board candidate interviews. You'll have an executive session where we

109discuss the inter applicants hopefully appoint a new board member on the 20th. will put out information so that people know the vacancy is still thing and apps close Friday 1115, November 15th at Did we do 12 p.m. last time or should we keep it consistent? I thought it was four or five. We did four, but if we're sending you the board packet, it makes sense for us to just send it all together. So we'll do 12 p.m. We'll use the same rubric that we already compiled and interview questions. So not a whole lot of new work to do, just new days to post Thank you. Anything else about this? for new ones. Okay. All right. So that brings us to agenda planning, set the agenda for the November 6th meeting draft agenda. Do we want

110board vacancy on as a discussion item just as another way to highlight. Dr. Word. your discussion items. Should we revise second reading to something else if we're not actually going to read? I think it's official yeah My only other and put on this is I think per the budget timeline slide that I saw Violet that you published There was a reference to reviewing policy 2.5 financial planning. Yes. We're going to put that on for it's November 20th. Oh, so it's going to go on the 20th. Okay, because it was under the 6th, I think, in your timeline. We, um. are in the Is this what you mean by the timeline? No, in your slide, I think unless I was one slide with the uh The budget timeline, I think under this, I may be wrong,

111I think under the 6th, I saw a reference to Policy 2.5 Financial. You did. We are going to modify that. Sorry about that. We're going to change that. I'll update it right now to the 20th and I will change that right now. Thank you for bringing that to my attention. We should also strive welcome news for board member. Hopefully they'll do that on the 20th. Okay, without the line, I'm trying to move to the time. I'm taking notes, though. Yeah, I've got access to that. All right, so I modified the timeline to add review 2.5. Month of funds. One week. anything like there's a problem we have. Just the usual. Sure. it will get curriculum review documents. next week yeah visit them on Friday. Anything else for November 6th? Next, we have future agenda items,

112parking lot. I did just want to say I missed the October submission deadline for the opioid at home. The one that I wrote will appear in November. And do we want to decide on a December topic? I mean, or fourth member or maybe an article about what does it mean to be a board member? What do you do yeah i think that'd be great. I think we need to get that out there considering At that point in time, people can pick up you know bids for being born. I would be happy to co-oper this. I'm happy to give it a shot and watch more, Chris, you want to. go back to that drop the ball on the last one was supposed to write. But I'd be happy to I've had a positive experience since I

113was 12. Come on. just the perception that it's this big heavy on burden that, you know, it's not it's It's rewarding. We're a fun group, too. I mean, I think that's what we need to convey. I'm happy to draft an initial round and then send it to folks to appropriate. I'm actually just wondering, is there any way that we could just all write an article about this together? Yeah. I think we need to be careful. We can't have like an editable doc because that's an open meeting law violation but maybe what we could do is you could all write the workout is supposed to be 800. So each of you could write 200 words and then send them to me and I can try to find a way to add my own 200 words and

114edit it and then edit it like try to encompass what everyone says maybe we have it in the style that it's like commentary on what it means to be a board member from each current board member and that reduces my need to edit it. I'll just like go together. When you want this So this will be for December. So we have quite a bit of time. I will follow up via email about when the deadline will be for this. But maybe it could also be a little bit about like what you get out of being a board member. When I was petitioning for my, when I was going around doing my petition. Several people ask me, why would you want to do this? And it was a really good question. And so maybe um I

115think there's a lot of creative opportunity here. Maybe it's each of us takes a different question and tries to answer it. Maybe we all answer the same question, but I like the idea of this. So why don't we revisit this either next week or on the 20th, just to confirm the direction we're going with it. And we'll have all the editing writing be done through me so we don't have any open violations. Yep. Great. I'm really excited about that. What a great idea. Okay. All right, so up next, agenda item nine. Is it okay if we could just recap these? All right. So to the November 20th draft agenda, I had a section for the board interviews at the executive session, and then at the end of the meeting, the appointment of that. I'm adding,

116I've added 2.5 financial planning and budgeting. Were those the only… items proposed for the 20th. Could you also, if you're already in the editable in the Oh, it already has RPR. Is that the 6th, the 20th? This is the 20th. Okay. And I also put it in for the 6th. I have OP articles. I have… removed welcoming the new school board member. And we've got, those were the only modifications. Is that right We've been utilizing our two posts on porch Forum where I've been posting updates trying to tell the community a week in advance we're having a meeting. These are topics that I think would be very interesting to the community. That way they have a chance to consider coming and sharing your thoughts and knowing the board When we want to change the format

117so that perhaps one of the two postings is an update about the work we're going to be doing for the month? And the other one could be whatever we're planning to post in the OP, like another way to boost whatever writing we've done share with the community as like a discussion things like that as well. I haven't really gotten a lot of feedback about the updates I've been providing. And I try to put some like welcoming language at the end that's often like if you have questions, email us or If you have thoughts or comments, email us. I haven't really gotten any emails from them, so I'm not sure if people are reading them or just scrolling by them. Sometimes that's okay right like This is good news, but it's also good news Rem's just

118a type of subject. Maybe it's just that cycle forever. Just an idea that OP is just one place to share, but we put a lot of work into these articles. So maybe having another forum to boost the work will be good. something to consider maybe something we could look at for a format for December. Okay, I'm just going to make a quick note of that before we move on to our next agenda item. Well, we're using that time correctly. I'm just hearing the um feedback that we've been getting from public comment about the the fees of buildings and it's more of an operational kind of topic that ties into the treatment of community palsy i just how do we respond with that kind of stuff? Is someone from the school district involved I heard from

119another community member over the weekend on the exact same topic. Yeah, I'm happy to follow up on that. And I can send information to the board. So the long and the short is so all school districts are property of the public. We all have the state's statutory um Well, they're they're parameters on spending. So we have to charge for facilities usage. When we have some of the very lowest charges in Chittany County. six wrestlers are quite different than ours. We have not raised those fees in quite some time. However, the cost of paying employees to open the Warner's locked doors, the cleaning fees of our custodial staff have all increased, we've increased them ever so slightly this year. Again, we're some of the very lowest in Chippend County. I'm happy to send you that facilities

120information. We have to charge all groups the same amount. There was quite a bit of discussion about this last year. And in order to practice non-discriminatory practices, we're unable to modify, but we have to offer the same rate for everyone renting it. So we have made a slight update of those charges this year. Happy to share any of that information with you. Some of the big charges are, you know, so time and a half for custodial staff, for instance, is one of the big impacts, but they're you know they're very modest grades comparatively and again it's uh It's a practice I very much want our schools to be places where folks can come and use our facilities and we have to maintain that minimum structure is something that is applied to all folks who engage

121in facilities rentals as other school districts do as well. Yep, I'll follow up on that. Yep, you can direct them to j murray barcode. Yep. So I will share information with you all. All right. Anything else? Agenda item nine, consent agenda. Has everyone had an opportunity to read and review the minutes from the October 9th meeting? Any changes or questions? Hearing none, the October 9th meeting minutes are approved. Does everyone have an opportunity to review AP orders 1089, 1101, 1113, 1114, 1116, and 1134? Yes. Any questions? I did have two. I sent them to Violet and Tim ahead of this just so they were aware My first question on AP order, and these were just more clarification questions not questioning the expenses themselves. So an AP order 1114, I just noticed a lot of athletic

122equipment was all categorized under program supplies. I'm just wondering if co-curricular costs are categorized differently or how that works because as we I'm just wondering how you roll up co-curricular expenses. Is that going to be a different category than program survives or how does that work? Yep, great question. So the chart of accounts is a split between athletics and non-athletics, which is co-curricular supplies. And the item booked on the October AP order 1114 for footballs and athletic tape. is booked under athletics program supplies yeah just clarification because I wasn't quite sure so Then my only other question on AP Order 1134, the line item for 36,000 for the precision 3460 small form factors those sound different desktops computer lab. Okay, that was the lab. I thought it would be something like that. I wasn't questioning

123the amount again. I just was… So they used virtual desktops, but the cost tripled in price. Yep. So instead, we're requesting, we had previously requested the purchase of 25 computers for that okay That's what I figured. I'd look up the price when I figured it was about that many. Yeah. Okay. Great question. Thank you. Any other questions? I know that AP orders are approved. Sorry, I went a little out of order here. So has everyone had an opportunity to review the bid recommendation for snow removal and salting? Yes. Any questions? The district awards the bid to all seasons cleaning Okay, that moves us on to agenda item 10. Just give me a second to open. get better at during my executive session notes right in the moment. I only prep them so much. Okay. Do

124I have a motion to enter into executive session under 1 BSA section 313A1 for the purpose of discussing labor negotiations and premature public knowledge to put the district at a clear disadvantage? Second. Laura Simmons. Should I have any discussion? We were signified by St. Anne. Aye. Aye. The motion passes unanimously. Chris, Laura, Violet, Tim Warren, Joan McNeil, attorney, and myself will be entering into executive session and we will not return to open session for during the regular session. Thank you.