March 4, 2026 School Board Meeting

001SBSD Owl Camera: 6 p.m. on March 4th, 2026. I call this organizational meeting of the South Burlington School Board to order. SBSD Owl Camera: Because we do not yet have an elected clerk tonight, I will confirm attendance and quorum. When I say your name, please say present. Mr. Abshear? Present. Ms. Williams? Present. Ms. Lawrence? Here. Present? Mr. Boyer? Ms. Boyer? SBSD Owl Camera: Mrs. Hoffman? SBSD Owl Camera: Present. Ms. Galvez. Okay, until a clerk is elected, I ask Laura to note motions and votes. If there's no objection, we'll proceed that way. SBSD Owl Camera: Alright, so you stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. SBSD Owl Camera: I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice

002for all. SBSD Owl Camera: Thank you for this stupid. SBSD Owl Camera: We will move to announcements. Does anybody have announcements? SBSD Owl Camera: There was an executive session scheduled today that was canceled, so we are starting the meeting at 6 instead of at 5. SBSD Owl Camera: All right, hearing none, let's move on. The next item is review and approval of tonight's agenda. SBSD Owl Camera: Are there any changes requested by board members? SBSD Owl Camera: Boom. SBSD Owl Camera: We can get rid of billing the possible latency. SBSD Owl Camera: So that's a good point. Yep, we can do that. SBSD Owl Camera: Okay, so is there a motion to approve the agenda as amended, where we take out the discussion item, filling possible vacancy on school board? So moved. Is there a

003second? Second. SBSD Owl Camera: Okay, all in favor? Aye. Aye. Any opposed? SBSD Owl Camera: Okay, the motion is approved. SBSD Owl Camera: I will preside over this meeting only long enough to conduct the election of the board chair. Once the chair is elected, I will turn the meeting over immediately. SBSD Owl Camera: Nominations for chair, Nope. SBSD Owl Camera: First, welcome and introduction to the school board member. I want to make sure I do that. Welcome! I'd like to welcome everybody here to the school board meeting and introduce our newly elected board members. We have three that were re-elected, Michelle Boyer. SBSD Owl Camera: Dan Boyer, Emily Hoffman, congratulations to all of you, and thank you for your service. Melissa Galvez, thank you so much for stepping up to be, to put yourself out

004there as a writing candidate. We're thrilled with the experience you bring and your knowledge that support us do, so welcome to all of you. SBSD Owl Camera: Okay, we will now move to the… nomination. SBSD Owl Camera: Or the election of a chair. Nominations for chair are now open, or members may nominate any eligible member, including themselves. SBSD Owl Camera: I would like to nominate Shane Sabcher. SBSD Owl Camera: Ben, Junior? SBSD Owl Camera: Are there further nominations? SBSD Owl Camera: Hearing no further nominations, if there's no objection, nominations are closed. SBSD Owl Camera: Nominations are closed. If there is no objection, we will elect Seamus Abshir as chair by unanimous consent. SBSD Owl Camera: you are elected And I am handing to you, the gap. SBSD Owl Camera: Did you notice that? 3 minutes.

005SBSD Owl Camera: The next item on the agenda is the election of the Vice Chair. SBSD Owl Camera: And… as… Joe said, anybody can be nominated, and you can nominate yourself. SBSD Owl Camera: I would like to nominate Sam Bourne, please. SBSD Owl Camera: Jim Lawrence is nominated. SBSD Owl Camera: Serving. SBSD Owl Camera: Are there any other nominations? SBSD Owl Camera: Can be closed nominations? They're the objection to closing nominations. SBSD Owl Camera: With those nominations, and if there's unanimous consent to make Jen, the Vice Chair. SBSD Owl Camera: Do we have any objections? SBSD Owl Camera: Did we know activation chemicals? SBSD Owl Camera: Interesting. SBSD Owl Camera: Congratulations, Vice Chair. Thank you, Vice Chair. SBSD Owl Camera: The next item on the agenda is the election of the clerk. SBSD Owl Camera:

006And we'll start, nominations can be of any member, and members can nominate for 12. SBSD Owl Camera: Homemade all rooms. SBSD Owl Camera: Laura Williams is nominated. Do we have any other nominations? SBSD Owl Camera: Do we have consent to close the nominations? SBSD Owl Camera: There are no objections, the nominations are closed. SBSD Owl Camera: Do we have unanimous consent to elect Laura Williams to be the clerk? SBSD Owl Camera: Hearing no objections. SBSD Owl Camera: Congratulations to therapy. The next item on the agenda is to designate a school board member to sign contracts on behalf of the board. SBSD Owl Camera: So… I think that last year, this might have been you. That was funny, yeah. SBSD Owl Camera: So, SBSD Owl Camera: I would suggest… I would entertain a motion to designate

007Laura Williams as the school board member to sign contracts on behalf of the board. SBSD Owl Camera: Second. SBSD Owl Camera: First wave, first we need to move. SBSD Owl Camera: Do you move? Oh, oh, yeah, sorry, I thought you were moving. Yes, I move. Okay. Emily moves. Alyssa, seconds. Any discussion? SBSD Owl Camera: All those in favor? Aye. Laura Williams is the designated school board member to sign contracts on behalf of the board. SBSD Owl Camera: And the next item on the agenda is to set the 2026 to 2027 meeting schedule. So, this was, I believe, sent out by Delina. SBSD Owl Camera: A few weeks ago. SBSD Owl Camera: And I did not see any issues with it. Were other board members able to review it? Did they remember reviewing it, even if

008you did review it? SBSD Owl Camera: Good evening, perfect. SBSD Owl Camera: I've got your name. Is there any, are there any thoughts on… the meeting schedule. SBSD Owl Camera: I'm gonna, I'm gonna put it on my screen, just so the way that people… Great, thank you. We are super eager about that. SBSD Owl Camera: You can find it. SBSD Owl Camera: Let me go. SBSD Owl Camera: It's… Sounds like you're gone for that. SBSD Owl Camera: So, it's not on the screen. SBSD Owl Camera: Also, the only two that deviate from the first and third are the July 8th, presumably, for the new hires. SBSD Owl Camera: And the to-be-determined board retreat. SBSD Owl Camera: Is that correct? And the date changed for the August 12th, so that looks like it's the second week

009instead of the first week, because it'll be the 8th. SBSD Owl Camera: The only thing that I would comment on with this, is that it would be really helpful, is if we could also have, SBSD Owl Camera: when our steering committee meetings are with the city. That would be really nice to have included on this, so that we can prepare, because sometimes those come up, and they're not on our regular… if they're not on our schedule, it might be something we miss. SBSD Owl Camera: So I don't know if that's something that we can integrate into this, but I mean, I don't take exception to the dates, I just think it's a horrible thing to have on there. SBSD Owl Camera: Okay. Let me go ahead and look on that. SBSD Owl Camera: Taking another

010nut, Joe. SBSD Owl Camera: Make sure… Get those set, and then on their website, remote everybody then. All right, go ahead. SBSD Owl Camera: Yeah, I think if anybody has, like, an unders… a conflict within the days, it's probably fine. SBSD Owl Camera: Right? Yeah. Okay, yeah. SBSD Owl Camera: I believe… Assume that any board training is happening during a regular standard meeting, or… SBSD Owl Camera: In the past, we scheduled them ad hoc, they weren't in the SBSD Owl Camera: schedule, right? Right. Except for that. Yeah, the one may mention that there's almost always a summer retreat in July. There should be, actually. Or some training, yeah, I agree. I think we usually kind of talk about it ahead of time, so that way we know there is no food conflict, and that people's

011summer schedules and all that, and so I do think… SBSD Owl Camera: there will be. SBSD Owl Camera: that training, but it's always been in this list of meetings. And that's probably fine, because the important thing for this is that the public can SBSD Owl Camera: Come to these committees, and it's… of course, they can also come to our train, but… SBSD Owl Camera: Couple that's important to them. SBSD Owl Camera: So these are intended to be regular meetings, and then special meetings and training. Those are all similarly defined. SBSD Owl Camera: All right, I would entertain a motion to set the 2026-2027 meeting schedule according to the draft meeting schedule that was sent out by the lineup. SBSD Owl Camera: I move. Laura moves. Second. Jen seconds. Any discussion? SBSD Owl Camera: Just the

012January 20th, it's my husband's 50th birthday, so I probably won't be there. SBSD Owl Camera: You won't let me start planning. Oh, we're already planning. SBSD Owl Camera: All those in favor? Aye. SBSD Owl Camera: Hope she passes. SBSD Owl Camera: The next item on the agenda is comments from the public. SBSD Owl Camera: So, at our school board, there are 3 opportunities for the public to comment. Right now, during comments from the public about any topic, whether it's on the agenda or not. SBSD Owl Camera: Another opportunity is before the board takes action. SBSD Owl Camera: On an action item, but only on the topic being action. SBSD Owl Camera: And the third opportunity is during specially worn community forums, but only on the topics worn for that community forum. SBSD Owl Camera: The

013board will not respond to public comments except in a specially designated community forum, and only if the comment or the question is on a topic warrant for that community forum, and this is not a community forum. SBSD Owl Camera: You'll be given up to 3 minutes. SBSD Owl Camera: Please do not violate anybody's privacy. An official complaint or agreements cannot be filed during public comment. SBSD Owl Camera: Do we have any public comment online? Yeah, well, there's somebody… JJ's a chance. SBSD Owl Camera: Daisy's been homesick for this week. Oh, Daisy, I'm sorry, her hand's over there. Would you recognize Daisy? Yeah. Daisy Brayton: Hello, everybody. Yes, I'm homesick with bronchitis and pink eye, of all things, but I wanted to make sure to take the opportunity to say thank you so very much for

014being willing to come back to the board, and we look forward to working with the new board, and I want to say congratulations on a successful Daisy Brayton: vote for the, both the budget and the, all of our items on the ballot. So, thank you so much for your commitment and dedication to the schools, and we look forward to another successful year. SBSD Owl Camera: Amazing. But I feel better. SBSD Owl Camera: Let's see anybody else on. SBSD Owl Camera: Okay. SBSD Owl Camera: Alright. SBSD Owl Camera: The next item on the agenda is the student representative report. SBSD Owl Camera: Talent Night, which is a class competition at the high school, where each grade puts on a 15-20 minute skit. They're in charge of building their own set, getting costumes, and writing the script,

015is coming up next week, with shows on both Friday the 13th and Saturday the 14th. More information about tickets and show times can be found on the Stop Burlington High School website. SBSD Owl Camera: or on the K-Club Instagram page. We'd love to see the community come support all the high school students. SBSD Owl Camera: The High School Student Council will also be hosting a blood drive next week on Wednesday, March 11th. Thank you to everyone who signed up to give blood. SBSD Owl Camera: Lastly, many students in the district have pieces chosen to be displayed at the Champlain Valley Art Show in the University Mall, so their work will be displayed until March 19th. So, congratulations to everyone whose art was selected, and SBSD Owl Camera: Community go see the art in the wall.

016SBSD Owl Camera: And that's all I have for you. SBSD Owl Camera: Is there any board comment or question? SBSD Owl Camera: If you didn't sign up to give blood, you can still just give blood at any time during the day. I'm assuming. I tried to figure that out today, and I couldn't get a clear answer for you guys, and so, if there is any questions, you could always reach out to Burke, I'm sure, community members. Is it really popular, though? I know in Essex, you can't do that. It's so wildly popular, which is a good thing. Yeah, which is why I'm not sure if it's open to the police. SBSD Owl Camera: Wednesday next week? Yeah. It's… they love it. Yeah. My daughter still gives, because she's 24, because she did it here, she

017still gives blood often. That's great. SBSD Owl Camera: Generally speaking, they encourage you to… to make an appointment. They don't necessarily take lockers at any time at this present time. Yeah, yeah, I guess that's true, too. SBSD Owl Camera: All right, the next item, thank you very much. The next item on the agenda, there's a series of action items. SBSD Owl Camera: The first action item is a revision to Policy E2 security cameras. SBSD Owl Camera: So, this is the third reading of this change to the securities. SBSD Owl Camera: cameras policy. It's also, I think, the eighth time that we've talked about secure… or that we've mentioned that we're talking about the video camera policy at schools, because it's obviously a sensitive issue. SBSD Owl Camera: Last month, we changed our executive limitations. SBSD

018Owl Camera: So that the security camera policy would only be as restrictive as required by law. Previously, it was more restrictive than the law. And as a follow-on to that executive limitation change. SBSD Owl Camera: there was a necessary change to the actual written procedure, policy, E2. So, I will bring that up on my screen. SBSD Owl Camera: And then, I would ask Joe if you would go through just a couple changes that our church SBSD Owl Camera: presented here. SBSD Owl Camera: Oh, so the, SBSD Owl Camera: Most significant change is… currently, the way the process works is if a principal, needs to review footage, they have to put in a request. SBSD Owl Camera: From… there's a whole committee of folks they send an email to, and we approve it, and then it

019goes to the tech guys who get it queued up and reported, and then they send it back, and it can be… SBSD Owl Camera: Cumbersome and time-consuming, and so this policy, as well as the limitations that you've already approved. SBSD Owl Camera: remove that middleman. It trusts our administrators to judiciously use the cameras when necessary for reasons of safety, so that they can get to work right away when they need to start reviewing. SBSD Owl Camera: If something, a foul went on. SBSD Owl Camera: it does not give that same latitude to law enforcement. Law enforcement would still need, SBSD Owl Camera: permission, from me and the Chief to view our cameras. SBSD Owl Camera: And finally, it would require, again, right now, people need to ask permission. They would not need to anymore, but

020what they would need to do is every time they did review footage, they would need to log that so we knew who was looking, what they were looking for, those sorts of things, just so we'd have a log to keep ourselves, SBSD Owl Camera: Keep ourselves honest. SBSD Owl Camera: So the… the two changes are in this section, And in this section. SBSD Owl Camera: And here is the section that requires SBSD Owl Camera: That switches it from being something where you have to ask for permission in advance, to being something where you have to log after the fact that you did. SBSD Owl Camera: And then this section is where it allows, administrators SBSD Owl Camera: administrators, director of operations, or Transportation Manager to do those viewings without the prior approval of the superintendent.

021SBSD Owl Camera: And so those folks would be trained on the system, and this is what is typical… what I've found is it's typical all across Vermont, and it was typical every place that I've worked also. Administrators have that right, because it's just… it's quicker, and, it can play a safety factor, depending on what it is that they're looking for. SBSD Owl Camera: Is there any board comment or question about this? SBSD Owl Camera: I would entertain a motion to approve the changes to policy E2 security cameras as shown in the board materials from today's meeting. I need to approve. SBSD Owl Camera: Laura moves. SBSD Owl Camera: Michelle seconds. Is there any discussion? And this is an action item, so we will be taking public comment on it. SBSD Owl Camera: Is there anyone

022online? Nope. Okay. All those in favor? Aye. SBSD Owl Camera: The motion passes, the policy's approved. SBSD Owl Camera: The next item on the agenda is to consider the, 2026-2027 academic calendar. SBSD Owl Camera: I'll pull that up with my screen. SBSD Owl Camera: So… Joe, would you kind of take us through any of the… SBSD Owl Camera: Yeah, so this is… I mean, this is a calendar that is very similar to the calendar that we have this year. Just a reminder that we are relatively hamstrung with having any sort of local control over this because of state law that requires regional districts. Districts in a certain region, they have 175 common student days, and we tend to have more student days than most SBSD Owl Camera: Districts around us, and therefore, SBSD Owl Camera:

023there's not a lot of latitude for us to make any kind of changes. So it's, it's, SBSD Owl Camera: it's pretty common. We start the last week of August. August 26th is our first day for all students, and we will be done… our students will be done by June 11th, which will also be high school graduation. SBSD Owl Camera: And the typical breaks are there a week in April, a week in February. The winter break around Christmas is shorter, because, just because of how the holiday falls, and the, SBSD Owl Camera: Bye. SBSD Owl Camera: Nothing more really unusual. SBSD Owl Camera: Than, what I've stated here. SBSD Owl Camera: Well, I guess I should mention that we do have… we have committed to having no after-school and evening activities on some of these, some

024holidays. Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, and Ein. We have, committed to not having after-school or evening activities on… on those days activities, also. SBSD Owl Camera: Can you explain what you mean by, SBSD Owl Camera: So the… it's state mandated that we have more days. SBSD Owl Camera: I don't understand. Yeah, so the state mandates that different regions of school districts, we're in the Champlain Valley region, create a calendar where they have 175 SBSD Owl Camera: days that are common, school days that are common. We happen to have our students come to school 180 days, so I'll give you… I'll give you one example. Like, Friday the 4th of, September. SBSD Owl Camera: is a day off. That was… SBSD Owl Camera: a day that I fought against, quite frankly, with the superintendent's group, and lost

025that fight. And we even went to them with a, SBSD Owl Camera: We went to them with a, appeal, and that was denied. SBSD Owl Camera: Because they have the say over what the calendar is. More importantly, I think, is this. We've had a lot of internal discussions about SBSD Owl Camera: the Wednesdays, you know, the early release and late start Wednesdays, where we do a lot of professional development. What I've heard from many community members and parents is that SBSD Owl Camera: They hate those days. It's hard to find, sitters, it's, or childcare, whatever it might be, it's inconvenient, I know it's tough for transportation, all of those things. SBSD Owl Camera: So, we had discussions internally about, well, why don't we make those days Full days. SBSD Owl Camera: Because we already go

0265 more school days than everybody else. Why don't we… SBSD Owl Camera: knock it down to maybe 178 or 177 school days. Well, the answer to that is because we have to have 175 common days, and because every other school SBSD Owl Camera: has that as a school day, those Wednesdays, we can't not go to school on those days, because then we would not be compliant with the 175 common days that other folks have. SBSD Owl Camera: The reason you're able to do an early release and an early… or a late start is because if you are in school for more than 50% of the day, it counts as a school day. SBSD Owl Camera: So, that's some of the uniqueness around the calendar. That helps, Joe, because one of my comments was, I wasn't

027keen on the last day of school being the same day as graduation. You know, I mean, graduation is usually in the morning, so that's going to be a gimme that kids are going to be missing that day of school, largely. SBSD Owl Camera: Right? I mean, or if you've got kids that happen to have a sibling that's graduating, they're not going to be in school, because they're going to go to the graduation. So, is graduation day also a common day across the district? Is it the same, or how does that change? SBSD Owl Camera: That is a common day, SBSD Owl Camera: Across the districts, I believe. I know. No, it's not. Graduation is scattered. Yeah, it's all… They're not graduation, but how about the last day of school year? That's… SBSD Owl Camera: Are

028we later than everybody else because we have 180 days? Oh, I'm not sure about the last days. I don't think so. No, I don't think so, no. And they have to stagger graduation, because we do it in the same event, so Essex is always a little bit later. SBSD Owl Camera: I mean, but I just think that… because that was some feedback I had heard before, and I recall, is that there was… SBSD Owl Camera: a graduation, and then there was another day of school, like, the following week, which we recently spoke 3 or 4 days after graduation. Yeah, and because if there's a snow day, they add on. And we are… this year, we are going a few days after graduation, so I think that's actually an improvement, that the last day of school

029will actually be graduation day. We do anticipate it will be SBSD Owl Camera: Below attendance, but… SBSD Owl Camera: I hate… I hate to say this, as a school superintendent, it's the last day of school, I don't know that they're learning polynomials on that day, you know what I mean? SBSD Owl Camera: So… Out of curiosity, how do, other districts do their in-service days? Do they also have these half days that we have? Well, because… some of them, because they have the 100… only 175 SBSD Owl Camera: student days, they make full days, and it fits within their calendar. They also do… there are other districts that do partial days. We do partial days on Wednesdays? It varies, it varies. And what is the reasoning behind us having 5 more days than other school districts?

030SBSD Owl Camera: I don't know the history. My guess is because we value, student, contact time with teachers. SBSD Owl Camera: Do you make up snow days? SBSD Owl Camera: Here's the other thing, there's a great question. Because we are required by the state to have 175 student days, we have… we're able to have 5 snow days without having to tag them on at the end of the year. That's the other thing. Yeah, that's what I think the reasoning is, is that SBSD Owl Camera: Snow days aren't made up of snow. Yeah, and in Essex, we do make every snow day up. 175 student day schools, if they have a snow day, they come one extra day in the summer. I wanted to talk about it here, because I know last year, we talked about

031this on my first day, and I was like, whoa, what? And I didn't really notice that we had… we ended on, like, a Monday, or… and it was just bizarre, and I didn't understand the extra days. SBSD Owl Camera: But it's also after exams, so some of the kids aren't there, and especially development days. SBSD Owl Camera: Yeah, I think what's interesting, or what's unique here, again, to my experience, this is… SBSD Owl Camera: I'm learning a lot coming here. This is the calendar. The lack of autonomy over a district school calendar is really unique, in my experience, and it's also really unique that the last student day is also the last teacher day. Typically, in places that I've been in Ohio. SBSD Owl Camera: the last student day is on a Thursday, and then

032teachers work on a Friday to get their rooms cleaned up, to have their service, or whatever it might be. That's unusual period. Was there any talk about SBSD Owl Camera: Do you think about using those extra 5 days as in service, and then going to the… we'll just make up our snow days? We did talk about reducing our student days, but every day that we thought this would be a great day to re… to not SBSD Owl Camera: Have a half day just to do… pin surveying was already matched with somebody else's 170… SBSD Owl Camera: the 175 days… No, I get that, but if other people are taking full days off, wouldn't there be other days in those calendars? Like, say, I don't know, I'm just saying Milton takes, like, two in-service days a

033year. Why couldn't we just try to match up with their in-service days? So, a certain amount of days we have to have in-service. Those days just aren't… they just don't match up with what our current student days are. They will do theirs before kids come. SBSD Owl Camera: Or after kids come, at the beginning of the year, the end of the year, or whatever it might be. SBSD Owl Camera: I know I'm maybe not as being as clear as I can, but we wanted to do everything we could to get rid of some of the half days and have full days. No, I appreciate the conversation, I just want to have it so people can hear it. I mean, I hear the rumor is that, you know, next year. SBSD Owl Camera: the whole state

034is supposed to be on a common calendar, but we'll see if that happens. So there's no way that we can change it now to say last day of school is going to be… SBSD Owl Camera: Geneva. SBSD Owl Camera: We can't change that. SBSD Owl Camera: But it's because we don't make this calendar. SBSD Owl Camera: Yeah, SBSD Owl Camera: I mean, I don't know that. I would have to look at all the other calendars to see if those are common days or not. And then the question is, right, because the contract has 189 work days for staff and 180 school days for kids, does that impact that? I think the expectation would be, okay, we're not having kids, but we are going to have SBSD Owl Camera: Staff members working. SBSD Owl Camera: Because

035I would just say, you know, because my thought would be. SBSD Owl Camera: Yeah, I mean, it would be nice to do it June 10th and have it be, that's your last day of school, bye-bye, and then the kids graduate on the 10th, and it never works that way, though. I haven't yet… I've been there 16 years, and I have yet to have that. I can't answer that. It's very frustrating. Intelligently, like, right now, but I do know that a whole bunch of people SBSD Owl Camera: spent a whole bunch of time trying to make all those problems, and we all just kept banging our heads, saying, they can't do it, can't do it, can't do it, because of this force. Is there any interest on the out? SBSD Owl Camera: side question. This year,

036with the, like, 3 extra days that are happening, are those common goals? And that's… I don't know the answer to that. SBSD Owl Camera: This combo has made it down my tanger. SBSD Owl Camera: And if you don't take the snow days, because we've only had one snow day, how does that factor in? SBSD Owl Camera: It doesn't, it just adds the end does. SBSD Owl Camera: So what's nice about SB, though, is that the end date is the end date. Again, at Ethics, our end date is never what it says it is. I always… so if you or a teacher asks if you want to plan… don't plan on a trip that'll wait a week out, because SBSD Owl Camera: We've got, like… By the way, we've got 3 or 4 days added on

037to the end of the year. Okay. So, I'd rather have, like, a firm date. SBSD Owl Camera: And one that keeps growing. SBSD Owl Camera: I do appreciate all the effort put into it, and I'm trying to explain it, because it is confusing, and it seems like, maybe we could just do this, but it's good to hear that… Yeah, and I understand the frustration, and I shared the frustration coming here, where, you know, I was being maybe too sarcastic, but my colleagues were saying. SBSD Owl Camera: you know, where I come from, superintendents are allowed to run their own district. They don't have to worry about running other kids' districts. SBSD Owl Camera: Yeah, that's interesting. So, is there… is there interest on the board on asking the superintendent to follow up on a couple

038different questions before we approve this, and moving this approval to the next meeting? SBSD Owl Camera: We're never forced to approve anything. I'd be interested to know, like, and maybe that's already been discussed, but I would… I'd be curious if there's any way we could do that. SBSD Owl Camera: Will it significantly impact your operations if we approve this? It will not significantly impact my operations. I know that I've been getting lots and lots of emails and phone calls from families saying, when does school start? We're planning our vacation, and I tell them I'm pretty darn sure the first day of school is going to be August 26th. SBSD Owl Camera: Well, that's… that's the only issue. Again, I think I… SBSD Owl Camera: Again, because I can't recall all of the discussions and meetings,

039I think what you're going to find is I'll come back and say, listen, we cannot do it. But I'm willing to do it. And your question is, can the last day of school be on the 10th, and then the graduation's on the 11th? That's your main question. That's the only question. Because, yeah, that just seems that… SBSD Owl Camera: We know, going into it, you're going to have dismal attendance on that day, because there's gonna be… SBSD Owl Camera: kids graduating, there's going to be kids going to graduation, there's going to be a whole bunch of unexcused, plus if you've got kids that are in other schools that are going to their siblings, I mean, that's the reason I'm asking. No, I know, that's it, right? That's true, but there's always the last day. Right,

040because then it's the day before. There's always the last day, so… If you're gonna have a last day when everybody is sitting on their graduation message. SBSD Owl Camera: We have the heat pump, so it won't be too bad. Maybe we'll get good, good attendance. I don't want to create a huge lift. SBSD Owl Camera: For this, if it's something that it's just going to come back, like, yeah, there's really nothing we can do about it, but I'm just recognizing the fact that we know there's probably going to be dismal SBSD Owl Camera: I have, I have the CVSA calendar right here. Someone look at it? So there's a couple things. One is that we have the last day on graduation so that staff can go to graduation. SBSD Owl Camera: Oh, yeah. And the

04110th is a… the 10th is a common day. SBSD Owl Camera: That's good to know. June 11th is also Common Day. Yeah. It's Common Day. And I… we've had, like, an… we spend a long time talking about this as an administrative team. Oh, thank you! So it's not necessarily that they can go, it's because, if we require staff to go to graduation, then it has to be on a school day. Yes, thank you. I see, yes. SBSD Owl Camera: And I think… K-12 staff should be required to go, not just high school staff. SBSD Owl Camera: So you have half day of school and then graduations in the afternoon. Or, we don't have… we just have graduation on the last day. SBSD Owl Camera: Because the high school won't be there on the Friday, right?

042Because all the high school staff will be at graduation, so it's only elementary and middle school in session. Well, it doesn't say that. It says… SBSD Owl Camera: June 11th, last day, elementary dismissal, middle school dismissal, yeah, it just says last day of school. The dismissals doesn't say when high school dismissal was, so my assumption was, oh, high school dismissal must be at the regular time. No, high school dismissal, high school students do not have school that day. SBSD Owl Camera: And staff go to graduation. And staff go to graduation. I should say this, I have a day of school on the calendar that we send to the state. Because they are required to go to graduation. Elementary and middle have early dismissal, so those teachers also have, like, room time. Gotcha. SBSD Owl Camera:

043So all staff requires more details come out. Exactly. SBSD Owl Camera: Yeah, that day, the June 11th next year, is a common day. It's one of the 175 common days that we do not have the ability to… we would have to ask for a waiver from the superintendents, and they would say, no, go back to Ohio, buddy. I should have said that earlier. I do think it's good, because at Essex, we are not required to go to graduation, which is why it's on Saturday. SBSD Owl Camera: And so, though… SBSD Owl Camera: At least here, we are acknowledging that… that kids aren't… people can go to graduation, whereas Essex that came. SBSD Owl Camera: Looks on a Saturday, so… SBSD Owl Camera: They're not requiring… they don't pay us to go there. I know most…

044a lot of people do, but… So, can we improve this? Yes, yes. Can I ask one more? Hopefully? SBSD Owl Camera: - SBSD Owl Camera: I… in no way am I intend… am I intending to, SBSD Owl Camera: start a holy war or anything here, but I'm just curious why Good Friday isn't noted as a no after-school evening activities. It isn't in service day. It's not clear if that's kids come in the morning or go in the afternoon. SBSD Owl Camera: I'm not sure. Sometime. SBSD Owl Camera: it's my experience that the school will do a no activities after school, even though, even if it's not on the calendar. I mean, I can just tell you what the discussions were internally, was, that SBSD Owl Camera: W. Dead. SBSD Owl Camera: Traditionally, the calendars have

045always gone around Christian holidays. The push was to, let's consider all of the other folks that we serve. We take a Christmas… we don't call it Christmas break, but we take a week around Christmas, because it's Christmas. SBSD Owl Camera: And so, the thought there was, you know, if you want to do anything internally, go ahead, but as a SBSD Owl Camera: As a region, we are not going to SBSD Owl Camera: Require that to be a no, SBSD Owl Camera: I understand it not being that school, but just the after-school activity thing. Anyway, I'm not gonna make a big deal out of it, but I just wanted to know what that rationale was. SBSD Owl Camera: I would entertain a motion. Oh, sorry, hold on. Did you have something you wanted to say? No,

046you were able to say it, okay. Thank you, yeah. So, I would entertain a motion to approve the 2026 to 2027 South Burlington School District Academic Calendar, as presented in the board materials for the meeting. SBSD Owl Camera: I move. Laura moves. Second. Jen seconds. Any discussion? And this is an action item, so we will be taking public comment on it. SBSD Owl Camera: nothing online. SBSD Owl Camera: Right. SBSD Owl Camera: All right, all those in favor? Aye. Aye. The motion to ask is… SBSD Owl Camera: So, the next item, I mean, we grouped all the action items together, so this is a bit of a different thing, is, something that the superintendent has told us, is that in order to have a strategic plan, we first need to have SBSD Owl Camera: gone

047through our ends and made sure that they are up to date. And so, SBSD Owl Camera: The action item here is to charge a committee to coordinate the board to update the ANS policy. So that is likely to be a multi-month, you know, that could take 6 months, that could take 8 months. It involves many community meetings. SBSD Owl Camera: It involves significant SBSD Owl Camera: drafting of documents, or at least, you know, collecting suggestions for the drafting of documents. And so, the idea would be to have a committee that's in charge of quarterbacking and coordinating, all of that work, getting SBSD Owl Camera: Things on the calendar, making sure that we hit our deadlines, all that stuff. SBSD Owl Camera: So, is that something that the board would, consider taking action on tonight? SBSD

048Owl Camera: This would be just to charge a committee. We're not necessarily… SBSD Owl Camera: volunteering to do it, or getting people on it? Are we just saying we're making one? It seems like something I know I personally would want to just kind of consider, because it is a heavy lift of, like, if I would be able to join… If we wanted to, we could nominate people tonight. SBSD Owl Camera: If the board is comfortable doing that, if there are members who are willing to do it, and people feel comfortable with them doing it, I would say that if we don't want to nominate people tonight, then we should kick it into the next meeting. SBSD Owl Camera: I would volunteer for that committee. So, at least there's one person. SBSD Owl Camera: I was

049gonna say, I didn't want to volunteer you. I do have a question, though, about… so, kind of the chicken and egg, right? Yeah. Ends, strategy, strategy ends. SBSD Owl Camera: We'll have vision? SBSD Owl Camera: I'm wondering, because I think that we may need to have a vision statement to drive both of those things. And I have been looking at a few of them. SBSD Owl Camera: on mute. SBSD Owl Camera: What's some thoughts on how to… SBSD Owl Camera: make that vision more action-oriented to your… to part of the conversation that initiated this whole discussion, which is that the ends as written are really challenging to talk about in terms of monitoring outcomes. SBSD Owl Camera: Anyway, I'm curious what folks think about SBSD Owl Camera: Isn't there a vision piece as a part

050of the ENS policy? SBSD Owl Camera: I think some people group it with strategy, and some people group it with… I mean, I don't… I don't think so. There's… there's the… the 1.0, which is the overall. SBSD Owl Camera: So I guess I should have provided more context for why we're talking about this to begin with, and that's that SBSD Owl Camera: The school board has chosen to use a methodology called policy governance. SBSD Owl Camera: That's a voluntary thing that the board has done to help organize our work. And as part of that. SBSD Owl Camera: We're supposed to set ends, which are kind of like goals, and limitations. And we say, hey, superintendent, you can do anything you want to achieve these ends, except the things that we rule out with the limitations.

051And so, our ends are something that were, I think, last updated in 2014. It's on the school website. SBSD Owl Camera: Under the, policy governance tag… And… The question that… SBSD Owl Camera: I hear you raising, Michelle, is… SBSD Owl Camera: whether revising our ends also means revising the district's vision. I would expect that it would. I see the global end statement, 1.0… I see that synonymous with vision, even though it doesn't use that word. That, to me, is the vision that the board sets. SBSD Owl Camera: Yes. Global End Statement 1.0. Students successfully complete their education from the South Burlington School District, ready for their next step. They will show cultural and academic competence appropriate to grade and developmental capacity. SBSD Owl Camera: All graduates will be prepared for college, career, or individually determined

052next steps. The ends will amend the cost that the community will support. It's right on our agenda. Oh yeah, there you go. Yeah, it's right on the agenda, that first page. SBSD Owl Camera: I know I'd seen it, I was just trying to remember the exact terms. And I think that becomes part of what the board re-does, too, but I… I believe SBSD Owl Camera: that that kind of is your vision, or your mission, or whatever you call it, and that will drive the strategic plan, I think. SBSD Owl Camera: I don't… I don't think there should be a… any kind of vision or mission that is contrary to whatever the global landscape is. Or even redundant with. It's like, you want to have a single source that you can work from. SBSD Owl Camera:

053You know, it's like, oh, well, we've got this policy going on this thing, but… and I'm not saying these the way you're suggesting involved, I'm just saying that I think what Joe is saying is, like, you want to have a single source. SBSD Owl Camera: So that it's not like you have to follow this PDF, and also something we put on our website. And I do think it's the board's responsibility to set the vision for the district, and then it's our job to get the district to the vision that the board has set. SBSD Owl Camera: So, for the context of tonight, I think that the idea of this action item is just to say, are we comfortable with assigning a few people to, keeping the trains running on time? SBSD Owl Camera: based on

054your comment, Emily, you know, we can also move this to the next meeting if we're not ready to nominate people, and if we have too many people who want to be on it beyond forum, then we'll just… I would suggest do a random selection. SBSD Owl Camera: So, is there any objection to… so, me and Michelle have nominated ourselves. Are there any other nominations or volunteers for the Ends Policy Committee? SBSD Owl Camera: And to be clear, we're not writing a Nuense policy ourselves. We're just making sure that, as a group, we have the meetings that we need to write them. SBSD Owl Camera: Can we not mute people? Yes. Melissa, can I not mute you? SBSD Owl Camera: Sure. I guess I'm a little confused. We're just charging a committee. Like, we don't even

055know what this committee looks like, like… SBSD Owl Camera: limited wives and things like that. We're just charging committees for it. And we're saying… and in policy governance, committees are not… SBSD Owl Camera: standing committees. They're always… they always have to have an end goal, and so the end goal of this committee, I think, should be something like SBSD Owl Camera: You know, this committee is done when… SBSD Owl Camera: we've passed a new RENS policy. SBSD Owl Camera: So, I would entertain a motion to charge… SBSD Owl Camera: a committee to coordinate the update to the ENS policy, consisting of Alyssa Galvez, Michelle Boyer and Seamus Abshur. SBSD Owl Camera: And that committee would end once a new ENCE policy is adopted, or the board decides that we're not going to adopt. SBSD Owl

056Camera: False it. SBSD Owl Camera: I move. SBSD Owl Camera: Laura moves. SBSD Owl Camera: I'll second. Jen seconds. Is there any discussion? And this is an action item, so we will be taking, public comment. SBSD Owl Camera: My only comment would be, the sense of urgency. I mean, you were just listing time, but I think beyond 6, 7, 8 months is too long. I would love to have this done by the end of August, or at the latest, the end of September, so we can get a strategic plan going by the end of the first semester. SBSD Owl Camera: It couldn't be ignored. SBSD Owl Camera: Right, because I think you also mentioned, I think, that… SBSD Owl Camera: things that are laid out in the strategic plan probably wouldn't take effect until the

057next year anyway, so… Right, right. When did you say August? Yeah, if the board adopted new EMS policies and limitations by the end of August, I would clap my hands. If it was another month, okay. SBSD Owl Camera: I'll still be happy if you do it. What I don't want is a committee to get together and then nothing to happen, because then we're a ship without a clearse. SBSD Owl Camera: There by September. So, SBSD Owl Camera: It is typically… I don't… I'm not suggest… or not bringing this up so that we can go in-depth, because I know that's not the goal, but I think this is an important time-level piece. SBSD Owl Camera: Which is that it is typical for doing something of this magnitude and importance to work with an external consultant to

058lead this, to keep a process in place. SBSD Owl Camera: And, you know. SBSD Owl Camera: generally bring best practice to the process. So, I don't know what our appetite, nor do I know what our budget is for them. I assume that the board has at least some small amount of budget for the year within our budget, but that may not be true. Well, I would suggest that perhaps the first SBSD Owl Camera: action of the committee, Before our next meeting would be to SBSD Owl Camera: see if we think that we should suggest that to the board, and if we do think we should suggest that, getting quotes from, like, VSBA and whoever else. So I would say that's a good first action for the committee to take, is precisely to answer that question.

059SBSD Owl Camera: And I think your idea is great, because when you have an outside person, it can reduce some perceptions of predisposition. SBSD Owl Camera: And I think that the VSBA did actually lead SBSD Owl Camera: this before, I think it helped with assets, I believe. SBSD Owl Camera: Updating meetings? Yeah, I remember going through… they did a lot of… the board did a lot of work coming into school and the whole thing. It was like the Portrait of the graduate, is that still… is that part of this, or is that something… No, I think that's… that's different, but they are… It's related. I mean, it's… it's, it's used nationwide, it's… it's, SBSD Owl Camera: something developed by a group called Knowledge Boards, and it really kind of caught on in this context to

060help drive the development of ends, because if you look at Portrait of Graduate, and you look at our ends, and they look awfully, so they look awful. Yeah, because our… because we have them on that portrait of companies, it's kind of the same thing. In many places, those portraits replace, like, a strategic plan. SBSD Owl Camera: Yeah. But understanding, like, what those are, and what the differences are, and if you can harmonize all of that, I think that would be really helpful. Yeah, that's a perfect word. I think we… I mean, there's some good stuff that's in our policies, but… SBSD Owl Camera: that harmonizing, definitely, and I think some… also some more action-oriented statements as a part of that. They're just, you know, it's great to have aspirations, but they don't particularly give you

061a good target to aim at. Start with the end in mind. SBSD Owl Camera: Alright, well, there's still a motion on the table. SBSD Owl Camera: Is that something that we want to vote on? SBSD Owl Camera: All right, all those in favor? Aye. Aye. The motion passens, and the committee is started. SBSD Owl Camera: Thank you. So, the next item on the agenda, it's a series of discussion items. However, I will note that we are SBSD Owl Camera: more than… SBSD Owl Camera: 50 minutes early, and our public comment section was originally worn here for 625. That's an approximate time. So I was going to suggest, that we, if the board is amenable. SBSD Owl Camera: That we add an additional public comment at this time, and also something that we maybe should have

062done SBSD Owl Camera: At the beginning of the meeting is just have… go around for every board member to just have a statement about SBSD Owl Camera: you know, opening up the new school board here. So, I'm proposing amending the agenda now to take another round of public comment, and also to have ourselves all introduce ourselves. I kind of object to the… I just find it interesting that when we're way behind, there's, like. SBSD Owl Camera: no sense of urgency to catch up, but when we're ahead. I just feel like, like, let it, you know. SBSD Owl Camera: I don't… I do generally agree with you. Because I just don't… I mean, either, like, we just… But it's our first meeting. SBSD Owl Camera: of the year. It might be nice if we could go

063around and everybody… Oh, I don't mind, I mean, that makes sense, but I'm just saying, opening up to public comment again, it just seems to, like… like, because we… I don't think there's any… SBSD Owl Camera: Well, Randy, yeah, anyway. Yeah. Okay. Okay, so it doesn't sound like there's support for another round of public comment. Do people want to introduce themselves? SBSD Owl Camera: I'll introduce myself so that we know. Okay, so it sounds like we do have SBSD Owl Camera: Support from at least two-thirds of the board to amend the agenda and add a discussion item of just who we are. SBSD Owl Camera: Does that make sense? Okay, great. So then, the next item on the agenda will be to just SBSD Owl Camera: Discuss who we are, and SBSD Owl Camera: And

064Allie, actually, would you start by introducing yourself? Sure. My name's Allie, Allie LaDude. I'm a senior at the high school, and I'm one of the student representatives on the school board, as well as my co-representative, Nolan Okar, who's not here right now. SBSD Owl Camera: I'm involved with things like volleyball at the high school, green team, those kinds of things, and I guess I joined the board in the hopes of connecting students SBSD Owl Camera: to the board more, can be a scary thing to come talk in front of a table of adults who are making decisions about your education. So, being moment are just trying to form a path. SBSD Owl Camera: for students to have that communication. We're hopeful that that will happen through Dr. Clark's Advisory Committee. We're still… SBSD Owl Camera:

065Just a little bit about me. SBSD Owl Camera: I'm Emily Hoffman, and I've been on the board for 1 year, and I just got elected for 3 more years. So that's really exciting, and, I've lived in South Burlington for the majority of my life until 1988, when I was 8 years old. SBSD Owl Camera: And I went through the system, honestly, my children have gone through, and I have one child still in the district. SBSD Owl Camera: And I just, you know, love South Burlington, and I am so happy to be a part of this group, and also the steering committee that we met with earlier in the week. It's just really… SBSD Owl Camera: energizing to be a part of the community that I love and help move us forward together. So, I'm really

066excited for this year, and that we're back together, and I miss Austin, but I'm so excited to have Alyssa here, and… SBSD Owl Camera: Yeah. SBSD Owl Camera: So… SBSD Owl Camera: And my name is Jen Lawrence. I have lived in South Burlington for about 4 and a half years. I have four children, three who are at the University of Vermont, and one who… my fourth is actually in Allie's graduating class. SBSD Owl Camera: And it looks like he will be going to UBM also this year, so that's pretty exciting. And let's see, I've been on the board also for one year, and I joined because it just felt like there was a lot of… SBSD Owl Camera: confusion about what the board was doing and… and how things were kind of working last year,

067and just having a seat at the table and trying to understand what's happening in our schools and how we can communicate that information to the public was very important to me, so… SBSD Owl Camera: I am also very excited to be with this group. I think we've had some very good cohesion, and I'm also really looking forward to working with you, Alyssa, and also very thankful to Austin, because I really appreciate the work he had brought to the board. SBSD Owl Camera: Great. My name is Seamus Abshur, and I have also been on the board for a year. I have, SBSD Owl Camera: second grader and a fifth grader at Brooke Marcotte, and I've been so appreciative of SBSD Owl Camera: The way that they've flourished there, the leadership, the teachers there, you know, just

068speaking as a parent, they have had a very… SBSD Owl Camera: a very enriching time there. As a school board member, I try to think About the whole community. SBSD Owl Camera: my retired neighbor, the guy who cussed my trees, you know, my friends who are not related to the schools in any way, and how they're affected by the decisions that we make. And it is my… SBSD Owl Camera: deepest hope. SBSD Owl Camera: That, next year, when it's budget season, we pass a budget SBSD Owl Camera: with more support. And then the year after that, we passed the budget with even more support. So, SBSD Owl Camera: Bye. SBSD Owl Camera: My focus is on how can we… SBSD Owl Camera: Build trust across the political spectrum in this school district is the best

069place to have your kids, and the best way to spend your tax dollars. SBSD Owl Camera: So, I was at Laura Williams. It's my fourth year on the board. I'm originally from Rutland and Hultney, but I've been here for about 16 years. SBSD Owl Camera: And my… my… both my kids rented here, and… SBSD Owl Camera: I joined the board just because I… well, I thought it's important to have a teacher voice on this board. It is my experience that school boards have absolutely no idea SBSD Owl Camera: what it is like in these buildings, so we're trying to… SBSD Owl Camera: My name is Alyssa Galvez. I officially moved to South Burlington in 2021, so it's been about 5 years. SBSD Owl Camera: I do not have any children in the district, but I…

070SBSD Owl Camera: saw a need in our community, I was actually kind of bummed out and a little surprised that Austin didn't run again, and so I saw the game wasn't running again, I saw a need for the community, and decided to step up. I think it's… SBSD Owl Camera: I think it's an important hot job that you guys know I'm doing here, and… SBSD Owl Camera: I am hoping to represent my community best for an idea, and all of my experience. SBSD Owl Camera: I used to work at South Burlington for about 4 years, and I currently work in the Addison Northwest School District. So I have some… SBSD Owl Camera: school district experience and operational experience, and second off as well. SBSD Owl Camera: Exciting here. SBSD Owl Camera: problems. SBSD Owl Camera:

071Dan's lawyer, been on the board a year, like, most of the board. Moved here 17 years ago. Both kids have found the system and gone on to… SBSD Owl Camera: other things now. SBSD Owl Camera: Racially joined, the borders expanding, need people, and just wanted to try and be a part of improving… SBSD Owl Camera: the entire… Process, we'll see. SBSD Owl Camera: Jill? SBSD Owl Camera: I'm ready to continue. SBSD Owl Camera: Michelle Boyer, has also been in South Brownsville for 17 years. I also have two children that have graduated from. They're actually both at UBF right now. One is a student, and then I've been SBSD Owl Camera: And… I, SBSD Owl Camera: There are a few reasons that… that I wanted to be involved on… on the board, and SBSD Owl Camera:

072Do my best to contribute to… Thank you. SBSD Owl Camera: Mostly in, just… SBSD Owl Camera: helping process so that the things that we do and what is happening in our schools, how our kids are doing in schools, is apparent to anybody who wants to know more. And one of the ways that SBSD Owl Camera: I felt like I could make a contribution there was through the monitoring process, and so I am deeply appreciative to this board, who gave me the latitude to do some deep thinking about that, and to work with Joe, and take one step forward, right, into improving that process. SBSD Owl Camera: I'm also very eager to work towards setting, goals with the community. It's a really critically important process. I think it will also help all the way around. It

073will help, give that sense of profusion. SBSD Owl Camera: if done well, right? And it will also give district leadership, Joe and his team, and the teachers and students, you know, some perhaps clearer direction on what SBSD Owl Camera: their community expects themselves, in really practical, tangible ways. And so, I really look forward to working with you all. It has been my great pleasure. I've only been here 6 months, and I'm on now for 2 more years. SBSD Owl Camera: gig. SBSD Owl Camera: So, thanks. SBSD Owl Camera: Thank you very much. SBSD Owl Camera: The next item on the agenda is an overview of fiscal year 2027 budget results. SBSD Owl Camera: That was what happened last night. SBSD Owl Camera: Both of the issues we had on the ballot pass. The budget was

074a narrow, win. It was 52% to 48%. The transfer of the funds, from the fiscal year 25 surplus SBSD Owl Camera: To the, facilities was a larger win, 72-28. SBSD Owl Camera: I believe, I'm grateful for the folks who voted. I sent a message out to the community today, talking a little bit about how… I'm grateful everybody voted, and I know… I'm not naive enough to know that, SBSD Owl Camera: or to think that everybody's happy that the budget passed. There were certainly opposition, thoughts about, taxes being too high, and I take that, those thoughts very seriously. I still believe SBSD Owl Camera: You know, our responsibility is to provide great opportunities for our students so they can, make, careers for themselves and be, good. SBSD Owl Camera: strong members of the community, and I

075also know that we have a responsibility to continually look to see how might we do things more efficiently and better, and that's my commitment to the board and to the community, is that we will always continue to look about how can we do things, SBSD Owl Camera: better, more efficient, and, so… so people like you said, Jameis, people are, really proud to be here, and… and, happy to support the district more and more every time we come back with another SBSD Owl Camera: Are there any other board comments on… SBSD Owl Camera: I would just say that I was so thankful for everyone who voted, no matter how you voted, thanks for voting, and I also were so grateful that the budget passed. I was in support of this budget, but obviously, it was very

076close, as it has been in the years past, and I completely understand SBSD Owl Camera: why people were not interested in voting for this. And what I was thinking is, and I think Joe basically just said it, is he's already, since he's been here, Joe has identified areas of savings for this budget we just passed, and I would SBSD Owl Camera: It sounds like you're already thinking the same thing. As this year moves forward, I want to SBSD Owl Camera: let the community know that you're continuing to do that work, and that next year's budget's already on our mind, and how we can find savings and efficiencies moving towards that way ahead of the schedule. SBSD Owl Camera: To try to keep it… keep it to a number that is… SBSD Owl Camera: the community

077can pass, and can feel like they can manage, because I deeply respect the money that is coming into our school, and we don't, you know, we want to be respectful with those funds, and I really feel like Joe is the person at the home who SBSD Owl Camera: Can really help us find the ways to save the money, and also offer SBSD Owl Camera: Offer the education that we want to offer for our kids, so… Thank you. SBSD Owl Camera: I, I will say that… my… Again, my single focus… Is to bring… SBSD Owl Camera: try and find ways that the community can talk through some of the issues that we have with each other, and it is the hill that I'm gonna die on. I'm not trying to start a flame war on Facebook

078when I post SBSD Owl Camera: my, you know, my… my beliefs about how we need to, you know, listen to the full political spectrum on this issue, and so I just want to SBSD Owl Camera: reaffirm my commitment to building trust and legitimacy of the school district as my personal political goal, and I hope that a lot of the community this year SBSD Owl Camera: comes to our meetings. I'm going to be working very hard to get people to come to our meetings who don't traditionally come to our meetings, because I believe that if they feel heard. SBSD Owl Camera: Not only will it help us make better decisions, but it'll also just make everybody feel better about talking to each other, which is… we're in a pretty rough spot right now. SBSD Owl Camera:

079So… SBSD Owl Camera: I mean, I would like to say that going into this, I know that I was one of the people who voted for the budget to be on the ballot, but I will say, going into voting. SBSD Owl Camera: I was not sure what I was gonna do on it, quite honestly, because I do also hear the community, and I feel that, you know, we were listening to SBSD Owl Camera: people who came and gave their public comment, and as, you know, as Seamus had pointed out, you know, being lobbied by teachers and by parents who have children in the district, but not everybody has kids that are in the schools, and there's a lot of people who are on SBSD Owl Camera: Fixed incomes and cannot afford to have property taxes

080continue to keep going up at an unsustainable rate. SBSD Owl Camera: So what I would challenge SBSD Owl Camera: our… our district and the board to be thinking about, particularly, is going into next year's budget cycle, I feel like it is very important to say we've got to keep those costs down, and as much as we can, stay flat going into next year. SBSD Owl Camera: We cannot just have blinders on and say, yep, this is what they… what schools need, but looking for the opportunities to SBSD Owl Camera: capture cost reductions wherever we can, and being good stewards of the budgets that we have. I know we're going to be talking about accounts payables here, and I've got some questions on stuff. Minor stuff, but it's… it's the little things that add up. SBSD

081Owl Camera: And so I really think that, you know, that was… that was kind of my position. And I, you know, it was tough, because, you know, even talking to my family, I've got now… there's 6 registered voters at my house, and we're talking about, hey, how is everybody voting? SBSD Owl Camera: what are the pros and cons here? And so I was working through it, and they're like, Mom, you're on the board, like, shouldn't you, like, have this all figured out? And it's like, well, it's tough, because, you know, when you're… when you're voting yes, you're realizing that this is this impact that is going to be, you know, affecting people. One other thing I want to add. SBSD Owl Camera: is I think that it was confusing SBSD Owl Camera: Because our increase

082was 3.4%, and everywhere that we're looking, you're seeing 8%, 8%, this is the 8%, right? Because of the way that that cascaded out and other factors that were included there. SBSD Owl Camera: But we did not increase our budget, right, by 8%. It was that we went up with, the cost of living, whatever the inflation rate is, right? And so I think that was also something important to dissect and communicate that SBSD Owl Camera: you know, I think there could have been perhaps more clarity, you know, around that. In the end, it's like, what is the bottom line? That's what people need to know, but… SBSD Owl Camera: Anyhow, just wanted to add that. I would also say you should bring your advocacy to the state level, because we're only responsible for, like, only, like,

08325% of the budget we can determine. Right. I did not hear the governor say one word about healthcare. SBSD Owl Camera: So, I mean, that's what the driving force behind these side costs. They, and I will also say that there is a plan to… SBSD Owl Camera: Their term buy down that they lose some excess funds to buy down the tax rate. SBSD Owl Camera: There is no long-term plan, as far as I can know. It's a temporary… It's a temporary, one-time fix, and it's not gonna solve much. SBSD Owl Camera: So, I would really, like, keep on… I, you know, maybe we'll get Brian in here, and Bridget, whatever, but we need to talk about, what's… what's the long-term goal, because we cannot… I appreciate all the comments, I would agree. SBSD Owl Camera:

084And there needs to be a long-term goal by the long-term plan from… coming from the states, because what they're asking us to do is… is… is really difficult in a… SBSD Owl Camera: Yeah, and so anyway, that's what I would say. And one thing, too, that I also want to mention is that… SBSD Owl Camera: What we passed to the voters was not the first crack. SBSD Owl Camera: at the pinata here, either, because the original number that came out, it wasn't the 3.4. For everything to stay flat, I think it was over 6%. And what that would have translated to, right? And so, I just applaud, you know, Joe and team for finding the cost reductions that you were able to. SBSD Owl Camera: And I think that speaking to that is really important,

085because I have seen some things online that, well, this is false, it's not true, you know, these positions from administration were, were not eliminated, and I can tell you, they were. I know that there were people that were in those roles that are not in those roles anymore, and so I know that that's a fact. SBSD Owl Camera: And so I really applaud the school for doing what you did in order to keep those reductions down as much as you possibly could, and not impact SBSD Owl Camera: you know, obviously nursing was impacted, but, you know, to really try to minimize the student-facing physicians, I think was really, was really impressive, so… SBSD Owl Camera: Props to you for that. SBSD Owl Camera: And keep going. SBSD Owl Camera: I mean, I agree with what

086Laurel said, you know, you can only buy down SBSD Owl Camera: Until you run out of money, and then you can't buy that anymore. So the state needs to… SBSD Owl Camera: Yeah, they actually can't say that. No, they need to do their job. 100%, yeah. But, I mean, there have been years where it's taken 3 votes to get a budget approved in this district. SBSD Owl Camera: The last two years, the boat has been very close, like… 52, right? Yeah, it was… it was basically the same last year, maybe even just a slight bit closer. But, you know, you're dropping almost half SBSD Owl Camera: The people who voted. SBSD Owl Camera: are saying no to what we're putting out, and so we need to do… I mean, I would like to do a

087better job SBSD Owl Camera: with the finances, so that we get, as you stated earlier, Seamus, more people supporting the budget, rather than these SBSD Owl Camera: You know, 5149, 5248 modes. SBSD Owl Camera: Enough. SBSD Owl Camera: That's a rude thing, too. Yeah. SBSD Owl Camera: It's not an invalid. SBSD Owl Camera: I dropped it. SBSD Owl Camera: Not a lot more, to what others have said. SBSD Owl Camera: I… I really… I guess one… the only thing that I haven't subsidized on the site is that… SBSD Owl Camera: I don't… SBSD Owl Camera: I worry about us taking a stance that would help us. Oh, there's only this part we can control. SBSD Owl Camera: And I think that… SBSD Owl Camera: has really kind of perpetuated the system for us to say,

088okay, there's nothing we can do until the legislation acts. That just gives another year to kick it down the road. And I don't think that we're held. SBSD Owl Camera: And, you know, like, like you have always said, I am so impressed with the work that Joe and his team have been doing. And I have really high confidence that some of the… SBSD Owl Camera: the operational changes that you're making are actually going to affect long-term expenditures, like efficiency in MTSS applications and processes, right? That's just such a critical piece on all fronts. So I just… I think we have… SBSD Owl Camera: huge opportunity with this group, and this leadership, and the staff, and the faculty to… to… SBSD Owl Camera: to make that happen, given that we obviously can't rely on, we can

089advocate, right? We can… SBSD Owl Camera: ring the bells and say what we like, and, you know, I've sent emails to legislators, and I don't get reply. SBSD Owl Camera: And so, yeah. SBSD Owl Camera: Can I say two other things real quick, sorry. One is, I also want to thank the community that stepped forward and challenged some of the things. Like, we had a really good call with Sereni last week. SBSD Owl Camera: And I appreciate that he came forward and he had some questions, and Gene Marie, your team, Elizabeth and April, did a great job explaining everything, and Joe, I appreciate the patience that you took to go through and really understand what his issues were, and I would encourage the community to continue doing that. SBSD Owl Camera: And then the other

090thing I would add is, we hear things that, to me, are kind of high in the sky, like, we need to advocate, we need to do advocacy. What does that look like? SBSD Owl Camera: And maybe we need to harness that and come up with an advocacy strategy that we can then take and deploy, and say, hey, this is what we need to do. What does that look like? It needs to be something tangible. I'll tell you what it looks like. So, SBSD Owl Camera: I show… I, I happen to be at the State House. Well, no, I saw… I went to the State House last week. SBSD Owl Camera: And I walked into the cafeteria, and there Laura was, sitting with two legislators. SBSD Owl Camera: So, just saying. Fantastic. So, yeah, and there

091are specific bills SBSD Owl Camera: Going to the point Laura was saying about healthcare costs, H842. SBSD Owl Camera: Email… we should all email our legislators about this. SBSD Owl Camera: it allows the arbitrator in charge of the healthcare decision at the state level to split the difference instead of just going with one party's proposal for healthcare. So that would be a great way to just have a little bit more of a moderate position, because SBSD Owl Camera: both sides, both sides, of course, when they negotiate the state healthcare contract, are going to take a maximalist position, because that's how you do it, you know? And so, 842 is a great place for us to start in terms of, SBSD Owl Camera: advocacy. And there's other stuff that is coming out anyway. It's not time

092for that right now. Yeah, well, I mean, I would just say on that, how do we, you know, if there's information, where can we, again, harness this knowledge and what we need to do? Can we put it in a central location? Can it go on SBSD Owl Camera: on the school board portion of our website? Like, how… and how do we then cascade that out to the community? Well, part of it is, like, when I meet with the VSBA, too. Like, they're… I mean, they are… they are working hard and advocating on behalf of school boards, and, you know, there's some HC thought, too, also, like, to get… to, like, get something in the middle. SBSD Owl Camera: Yeah, so it's… we need more, turn up the volume. Well, the other thing is we could

093be writing, articles for the other paper, too, which is something this board has not done, and we should… they… they are expecting it once a month, and no one's doing it. SBSD Owl Camera: That's me, too. I'm not criticizing. I mean, I've been on the board in August. I wrote exact… I've written the exact… Well, we've done a few. Well, you've all written… We've done a few, but not really from the board. We've never had a board… It should be, like, once… once a month, one of us writes one. Okay. SBSD Owl Camera: That's how it's… I think we'll get more success for that if… if it's not the board, right? I remember watching, like, one of your first attempts where you were all trying to wordsmith on… That doesn't work now, right? Or maybe

094this charge too many for the ends. Well, generally, like, what I… I remember what we used to do was, like, write it, and then we'd run it by the superintendent, and whatever, and just send somebody, like, Lance and make sure you weren't… SBSD Owl Camera: Completely wrong. SBSD Owl Camera: They're reading. SBSD Owl Camera: So… I don't know. It's just a Google Doc, and you come up with a… Right, and everybody signs, signs up. You just need to be careful about having those discussions outside of a meeting. SBSD Owl Camera: Whereas a big issue in Ohio, where we get a lot of trouble for riding a SBSD Owl Camera: Via, like, a Google Doc, a letter they sent to the editor. SBSD Owl Camera: Yeah, yeah, no, no, what I mean is that's just purely

095a sign-up. Right. But yes, I know what you mean. You know, not writing the article together, no, that would be… that would be… Like, the charge committee for what you're doing, you could do something on that, or is there an article on the budget, or… Yeah, we should have written in our budget. SBSD Owl Camera: So, Joe, is there… do you have any other, comment on… on the whole situation? SBSD Owl Camera: Not saying you have to, but… SBSD Owl Camera: No, I think that, I think that generally, elected officials listen more to citizens than they do SBSD Owl Camera: school board members, and certainly more than they do superintendents. I think if you really want to get action at a statehouse, you need to get a committee of community members who do not have

096ties with the school that feel meet and advocate, and that's hard to do, because SBSD Owl Camera: It's hard to do. Everybody sits around saying that they want change, but when you have to get off the couch. SBSD Owl Camera: it's hard to do. But that is… I think that's the best way to get change, is to get a vocal group of people that are concerned citizens who are active in the State House. I was thinking the same thing, because I was… when the numbers were very similar to last year, I thought to myself. SBSD Owl Camera: Did the same people get off the couch, go and vote the same way they voted last year, and the same way they plan to vote next year, and the same way, you know… We gotta break that

097cycle. SBSD Owl Camera: Yeah, there was a slight increase in the percentage of voters. 10 more people voted, or the difference was, last year, the budget passed by 127 votes, and this year it passed by 138 votes. SBSD Owl Camera: I just… I looked at the percentage of… SBSD Owl Camera: Yeah, right, exactly. But yeah, I mean, and that also speaks to the, like, the conversations you were talking about, you know, and, like, in person, which is so much better than on, you know, online, because… SBSD Owl Camera: We're… we all do want the same thing, even the person myself who advocated for this budget. SBSD Owl Camera: I do want my taxes to go down, but I also… I want that very badly, but I also am very conflicted because I feel my job

098is to provide the best for our students, so how can we all talk about it and, like, get to a place that… I would just second what Michelle said, which is… SBSD Owl Camera: we can't play victim all the time. There are things within our control that are hard decisions that we need to make, and you get criticized for hard decisions, but that's what leadership's all about, right? You have to be brave to be a leader, and that means taken SBSD Owl Camera: Yeah, I don't really see it as being the victim, I see it as being a realist. And if anybody in the community wants to contact me, and I'm happy to put you in touch with legislators, and I've gone to… I've gone to the Education Committee, and I have testified. SBSD Owl

099Camera: So, I'm happy to help if anybody wants to do that. SBSD Owl Camera: So, would it be appropriate to charge a committee, an advocacy committee, that we could at least start exploring this a little bit further, and what we can do to take it to the community? SBSD Owl Camera: I can connect you with a school board president in a school district in which I've lived in Ohio, who does this very thing. SBSD Owl Camera: They've been very successful. Great. SBSD Owl Camera: Here's the board. SBSD Owl Camera: Maybe we could add this to our… Sure, we should talk to the board president. Well, we have a big agenda, we have a big meeting on the 11th that's got some space in it that… SBSD Owl Camera: the discussion topic. I'm thinking, like, okay,

100starting with the end in mind, like, even though we've just got this budget passed, I'm already thinking about next year's, and how… what are some steps that we can start taking now to SBSD Owl Camera: And maybe… maybe the right way to round up this discussion is to, on the one hand, say, when we get to agenda planning, let's discuss the concept of charging another committee around advocacy. Although, I guess if we wanted to talk about the content of that, we should perhaps spend a little bit more time on it now. SBSD Owl Camera: But if we're okay with just scheduling a discussion of that, we could just schedule it first. And then the other thing we could do now, going to Laura's point about the other paper, is we could assign one or maybe

101even two of us SBSD Owl Camera: to write into the other paper. Or… and not really a sign, more like a… more like a request that they write in on their own behalf. SBSD Owl Camera: Unless we want to try and make a board statement. We've made, I think, maybe one board statement in the whole history of the time I've been on the board. So, do people want to make a board statement about the budget, or do we just want to ask a couple people to write in about the budget with their own opinions? SBSD Owl Camera: For the other paper. For the other paper, yeah. SBSD Owl Camera: I have nothing. SBSD Owl Camera: I mean, usually, yeah, that's how we've done it. Like, somebody says, okay, who's writing it for next month, and

102who's writing it for April? Well, my… my concern is just that… and again, we're still talking about budget results, right? That's the discussion I wore on, and I could imagine SBSD Owl Camera: multiple people on the board writing in with our thoughts about what… about the budget results, right? And I think that would be totally fine. I could also imagine this board saying, well, we really need to put together a statement that is supported by the majority of the board about the budget results. SBSD Owl Camera: I happen to think that we don't need to do that, because I think Joe's put out a good message already. So, I just want to note, does anybody want to advocate for having a board statement that is an officially approved board statement about the budget? SBSD Owl

103Camera: Nope. SBSD Owl Camera: Okay. No, but I do like the idea of putting out an article to the other paper, and I'd be keen to be one of the authors of that. SBSD Owl Camera: New London. SBSD Owl Camera: partner up with me, Shane, something to write something, or… Sure, so maybe we should just do that as in our own personal capacity. That's fine, but I think something like that, or… So we won't be using the official SBSD Owl Camera: I think that's right. Yeah, I think that's… I think that would be really good. Okay, and I would encourage anybody else who wants to write in to do that, because they probably will take your article. Yeah, they do. SBSD Owl Camera: Okay. SBSD Owl Camera: Is there any other board comment on the

104fiscal year 2027 budget results? SBSD Owl Camera: And luckily, we don't have to take any action. SBSD Owl Camera: Alright, the next item on the agenda, was removed. SBSD Owl Camera: Filling possible vacancy, because we had a successful wedding. SBSD Owl Camera: Congratulations on that. SBSD Owl Camera: The next item on the agenda is the superintendent's report. Yeah, so I have 3 items, to talk about today. I'm going to talk about one, Jean Marie's going to talk about one, and Nicole's going to talk about one. I'm going to start with the early retirement incentive, SBSD Owl Camera: As you remember, the South Burlington School District has initiated a one-time offer of the Employee Severance Plan for the 25-26 school year. This board approved that on January 14th. The plan is available to eligible teachers, administrators,

105and classified employees. SBSD Owl Camera: The enrollment period started on February 16th, and it closes on April 3rd. SBSD Owl Camera: Eligibility is for teachers and administrators who have a minimum of 10 years of service. SBSD Owl Camera: or are eligible for retirement under VSTRS by June 30th, and for classified employees, they only need to have a minimum of 10 years of service. They do not need to be eligible for retirement. SBSD Owl Camera: The packages for teachers and administrators, an $85,000 payment distributed over 5 years in monthly payments, and for classified employees, it's 100% of their 25-26 base salary, with a max of $30,000 also over 5 years. SBSD Owl Camera: To this point, we have… SBSD Owl Camera: You probably remember when the presentation, was going on, that the company talked about SBSD

106Owl Camera: You know, they anticipate 18, certified people, they anticipate 18 classified folks, and they ran their numbers based on, okay, if you get 18 and 5 you don't replace, or 3, so you only replace 15. SBSD Owl Camera: that's where you'll get your breaks. I just want to give you a heads up, or not a heads up, an update of where we are, so you can get a sense of, if this is really going to happen or not. So currently, as of today, 7 people have SBSD Owl Camera: turn in their documents. They have signed up for this. Four of those are teachers, two of those are administrators, and one is a classified employee. SBSD Owl Camera: There are 12 others who are ranked number 1. What that means is, they have said 100%,

107we aren't going to take this, they just haven't turned in their paperwork yet. SBSD Owl Camera: So, what was that number? 12 of them. Six of those are classified employees, 5 of those are teachers, and 1 is an administrator. SBSD Owl Camera: There are 10 more people that are ranked number 2. A number 2 ranking means that they are 75% sure that we're going to take this. Of those 10 people, 5 are classified, 5 are teachers, and 2 are administrators. SBSD Owl Camera: There are 2 more people that are ranked, number 3, which is about a 50%. SBSD Owl Camera: And one of those is classified, and one's a teacher, and then there's one person ranked number 4, which is… I'm not going to go for this, and that's a classified employee. So when you

108count that up, of the people that are 100%, we are going to take it. You're looking at 3 administrators, 9 teachers, and 7 classified people. When you add in the 75%ers, that gives you another 5 teachers and 2 administrators, so… SBSD Owl Camera: Doing my quick math, 4, 6, and 6 is 12, and 5 and 2 is 19. That's 19 teachers and administrators, right? They projected 18, and we have 19 so far that are there. Now, a few were classified staff, but you also remember probably from the presentation that there's not… SBSD Owl Camera: The reason you do classified staff is really an equity piece. There's not necessarily savings in classified staff because the salaries are just not the same as certified staff. SBSD Owl Camera: So, they have until April 3rd to sign up,

109and I will keep you posted, because as soon after April 3rd, this board's going to need to decide, are we going to go through this plan, or are we not going to go through this plan? SBSD Owl Camera: So, that's… that's where we are with that. Is there a max number that we will take? There's no max number we'll take. Nope. SBSD Owl Camera: And, of course, we retain the authority to, for any of these folks that we want to stick around a little longer for operational needs, we will have the ability to do that. So, that's where we are with it. They, are coming… they've done… SBSD Owl Camera: The company, EAP was here for 5 days meeting with folks. They are coming back for another day to meet with folks, and it's just

110now a wait and see who fills out the form and who jumps on board. SBSD Owl Camera: Okay, so… Sorry, quick question. Is it still possible that someone could just come out of the woodwork and say, oh wait, I want to be on that? There's absolutely… and they say that that's not uncommon for people just to play their cards real close to the vest, they know I'm taking it, I don't… I'm not gonna… SBSD Owl Camera: do that, you know what I mean? Yeah, we'll see. We'll see. I don't think it'll be… I don't think it'll be 100. No, no, it's just like the way you put that is, yeah, you know, wait until… wait… SBSD Owl Camera: I wondered if you were asking, like, is there or not, because if there are too many

111people, you're like, no, who knows? That's my point, yeah. Now, if there are too many people, we could say, okay. SBSD Owl Camera: you can't go because we need to run the school. I mean, I think we can say pretty confidently with these numbers that we'll be able to run. Oh, and you said that, yeah, for operation, we could put that offer a year. Yeah, up to a year, yeah. So, yeah. SBSD Owl Camera: I just want to point out that this is an example of this administration, you guys, taking proactive steps to deal with a cost problem in a way that is SBSD Owl Camera: fair to, you know, in a way that is, I think even… I don't want to speak for them, but I think the union also, was appreciative of this,

112program. Yeah, and I'm glad you said that, because it reminds me of a couple things. SBSD Owl Camera: I have spoken to a handful of people that are doing this who have said, I would not have considered leaving had it not been for this plan. So that is showing something. The other thing is that we have said… talked a lot in our cold meetings, and we'll reiterate in our principal meeting tomorrow that SBSD Owl Camera: Remember. SBSD Owl Camera: a part… a big part of the success of this is replacing people at the lower end of the scale, and not replacing everybody. So, to your point, you've heard me say a couple times when I interviewed that attrition is so much better than a rip. I would rather somebody leave and not replace than waste

113somebody off. SBSD Owl Camera: And that means that sometimes you have to restructure, you have to reorganize what we believe, so that we can make a savings without, I don't want to sacrifice, SBSD Owl Camera: opportunities for kids, but I think that we are really intelligent people that can be very creative in the way that we provide services for our folks, so we will continue to look at that. I would… SBSD Owl Camera: I can tell you already, one of the administrators, we know that we're not replacing, right? Tristan Roman resigned, retiring at the end of the year. We're not replacing her, so that is one position that we know that we're not going to replace. So… SBSD Owl Camera: And there should be a handful of them. SBSD Owl Camera: Okay, thank you. Any

114other core questions on the early retirement? SBSD Owl Camera: Okay. All right, so I'm going to turn it over to Gene Marie, who's going to talk about the… you heard me talk about the move from South Point coming over here, and for our offices going to a new place, and we have a small update. I mean, there's still a lot of work to be done, but SBSD Owl Camera: If you could give just a quick update about our plans to move. Sure, yeah, so we have confirmed that we will be moving to 462 Shelburne Road. That's a first floor suite, significantly smaller than the amount of storage footage that we have in this space, but really the goal is to, put the South Point students in a place that looks better for them than their

115current location. SBSD Owl Camera: Being so close to the high school, this really will be impactful to that group of students, and SBSD Owl Camera: I don't know if it's a larger space, it's a different shape of space for the South Point program, and we are eventually going to be adding some students to that program as well. So, it's all good, this, of moving the, that program to this location. SBSD Owl Camera: So we're looking at a July 1st move-in date on Shelburne Road, which impacts my favorite July vacation, so we'll figure that out. So there's a lot of work to be done around, you know, the physical moving of the organization, as well as all of the technological parts of getting us up and running over there. So, SBSD Owl Camera: It will happen.

116As Joe and I said earlier today to the team in this building, it won't be smooth, but none of it ever is, but we'll make it as seamless as we possibly can. And one big change for the team here is that we will SBSD Owl Camera: almost all of us will be sharing offices, in this space on Chilbrook Road, so… SBSD Owl Camera: That'll be an adjustment for some of the staff members here, but… SBSD Owl Camera: I think that's it. Yeah, just, when she talked about more students in the South Point program, that will include middle school students, so we have a… we definitely have a need with some behavior, matters at the middle school, and they will be able to be in the South Point program. SBSD Owl Camera: And the other thing

117is, this floor still will be ours, so this room exists, 4 meetings will still be here. We are going to move to a central enrollment, so anybody that comes to, new to the district will come to the Welcome Center, the South Burlington School District Welcome Center that, SBSD Owl Camera: Monica is going to be overseeing that transition, so, SBSD Owl Camera: It's going to be… it's still a vibrant place, and we'll still be able to have professional development here, and that sort of thing. SBSD Owl Camera: I should say that we are working with an architect on potentially renovating the space on the second floor to get it, as many of you have been through it, it's all individual offices, so updating it to some degree to, make our restrooms upstairs ADA compliant, that's, really

118important to me, and, you know, making the space just more conducive for education at individual offices, so… SBSD Owl Camera: more to come on that. We sort of asked for SBSD Owl Camera: the stars and the moon, and we'll see what the price tag comes in there and adjusts accordingly. But so, we've got to get out of this space first before we can get those, pieces of business done. SBSD Owl Camera: So there… oh, go ahead. SBSD Owl Camera: Any expectations and issues, or is the coordination with… I think the bond was approved, right? Yeah. There's going to be some building over there. Yep, I don't know what the timeline is on theirs. I mean, for the folks that… Yeah, and for the team here, I know that I personally like to exit on that

119side of the parking lot, because it gives me a longer runway to this intersection here, and I think that they will SBSD Owl Camera: ask, and they've kind of tipped us that they're going to ask us to not use that as an entry and an exit point any longer. But, one of the big things… one of the nice changes that I've seen over the last year is SBSD Owl Camera: It really feels like the folks at the city are our partners, and we've really been partnering a lot over the last several months. And so, in particular, in this building, you know, we lease this section of the building for a very reasonable price. SBSD Owl Camera: But they have really been a good partner. It's yours, like, do with it as you please, sort of

120a thing. But they came to, we announced that we wanted to move South Point to this building at the same time, coincidentally, that they were working to put a sprinkler system through the firehouse, and they opted to include this side of the building as well. That's a requirement when we have students in a building, is that it's sprinkled. SBSD Owl Camera: So, SBSD Owl Camera: And the city's partnering with us on the cost for that, which is huge. So, I've been working with Chris Corbin at the fire department, and that will… that work, hopefully, will be happening late this spring, early summer, as we are moving out and as we're starting our own construction, so… SBSD Owl Camera: Yeah, they're… they're really good partners at Mathurst to have. SBSD Owl Camera: Do you have an

121estimate at just even a high level, what the cost difference is for moving and being here? And, you know, is there a net benefit for having SBSD Owl Camera: South Point here, and maybe you've discussed this, but if you don't mind… Yeah, I mean, I can tell you that the rent at South Point is $300,000 a year. SBSD Owl Camera: the rent that is going to be at the Shelburne building that we're going to, because that will be the savings. What we're paying in, at some point to what we're paying at the new place is… $72,000. $72,000. SBSD Owl Camera: So there's some savings there, too. SBSD Owl Camera: I mean, it sounds like there's… SBSD Owl Camera: Big savings. The kids who are here will be more connected with their friends over there. SBSD

122Owl Camera: And I think you guys will be near Myers Bagels. SBSD Owl Camera: And, the Grand Harvest Bread Company, and, like… Is it Max over there? SBSD Owl Camera: So, five guys… actually, that brings up my question, which is, there was, I remember, concern about the central office when this… they moved into this department, this building, and causing a really big chasm between the schools and central office. And I do recognize that the elementary schools are spread out, so it's really just the middle school and the high school, but SBSD Owl Camera: I know you've been really present in all the buildings, and I just wanted to hear how you're planning to keep the connection. Yeah, if there's a negative, I'd say that's the negative, because we can't take all the staff here, so

123HR is going to stay here, technology is going to stay here. I'm not happy about that, but for the $230,000, I'm happy about it. And we've been… I think we've been doing, at least from our building, doing a really good job of building code. SBSD Owl Camera: community with the employees in this building, and we are also, I think, pretty visible in our buildings. I'll speak to HR, who is now, they've been going out having the HR, what do they call it? Onsite. HR onsite, where they go out to a building every month, and they sit there all day and answer people's HR questions. So I think SBSD Owl Camera: Great. Yeah, I mean, I think you have… I think you have to work a little harder, but… You do. You have to be very,

124SBSD Owl Camera: That's a clear one. SBSD Owl Camera: I can't think of the term. You have to do it on purpose, right? You have to be very purposeful about what you're… Intentional, and just mindful that that was a history that we went through in this district, and we don't want to do that. It is a little bit of a bummer, like Joe said, that we can't have the entire team together. SBSD Owl Camera: But… and I am a little bummed about… I love being able just to walk across the street. I mean, Suzanne and I have had walking meetings, right? I've had, walking meetings with some of my employees that work in the high school, and just being able to walk through… to… SBSD Owl Camera: you walk into a school building, and it

125makes you remember why you get up and come to work every day, right? And so, it will have to be more purposeful on our parts to go into those buildings to do that, so… And at the same time, we'll be right close to our chairs, those Hoffman kids, and we'll take them down a little bit. SBSD Owl Camera: So, square footage-wise, for South Point moving here, how does that shake out? SBSD Owl Camera: I don't have the answer to that question. It's… SBSD Owl Camera: This is bigger. It is bigger, which is… Yeah, this, you know, I could just tell you by walking through that space that South Point uses. They're in, kind of an L-shaped, like, office setup, like, with, like, a hallway with offices. They have a large kitchen area, and they have

126a pretty big size SBSD Owl Camera: Like, bike repair shop that they use there, and so, the, like… SBSD Owl Camera: traditional education space, I would say, that we'll be able to accommodate them with here will be that bigger. SBSD Owl Camera: But they will… we've already been working… they've been working with Pat Burke at the high school around, like, okay, where can we set up the bike shop, and how can we access the gym, and all those sorts of things. So, probably at the end of the day, it's like a, you know, SBSD Owl Camera: break even of space, but yeah. I did have a chance to see the South Point facility, so I know what you're talking about, but that is… that is how you're able to accommodate middle school students now, because

127you've got a little bit of a bigger footprint for that. So some of the work that we are talking about doing here on the second floor is removing some walls to make some individual offices into larger spaces that they can SBSD Owl Camera: use as classrooms. Right. Yep. SBSD Owl Camera: Great. SBSD Owl Camera: Thank you, yeah. Thanks, Jean Brief. You're welcome. SBSD Owl Camera: Right, and… It's more fun to be up here talking about this than all the stuff we talked about for the last, like, 4 months. I know. Absolutely. And, talking about the SPED reorganization, as you know, Christian Romick accepted her, retirement resignation at the, at the last meeting, and I… SBSD Owl Camera: was very clear that we are not replacing that position. We are going to… Nicole is going to

128SBSD Owl Camera: be in charge of both of those departments, and she's going to talk a little bit about that reorganization. There's still not, there's still things that we can't tell yet, because SBSD Owl Camera: We don't want… we want the people who are going to be impacted to hear it from us before they hear it at a board meeting, so she'll tell you what she can about where we're going with the reorganization. SBSD Owl Camera: She'd like to start by saying it's really nice to be here without a slideshow. Feels like free. So, Joe and I, over the past couple months. SBSD Owl Camera: have, attended three Q meetings, specifically one for, parents of kids who receive special education services, and then one with special education staff in South Burlington, to gather their feedback.

129We also, I think all of you have seen the special education monitoring reports. SBSD Owl Camera: So we combed through their… those going back to 2021. And then there's just been, like. SBSD Owl Camera: Observations and feedback and information that has happened, from all various SBSD Owl Camera: stakeholders over the past 3 or 4 months. So we went through all that, and, I was asked to figure out how to increase compliance. SBSD Owl Camera: improve best practice, and also strengthen Tier 3 specialized, instruction. SBSD Owl Camera: And so I brought drafts to their COLT meeting, and shared them with them, and reworked them, and reworked them, and reworked them. And we got to a final resting place, and then tomorrow I'll share them with administration, and… SBSD Owl Camera: they're really… and then after administration,

130I'll share them with teachers. And really, the goal is a three-year, stabilization and best practice planning. So year one is really just about getting SBSD Owl Camera: stability in the district for special education, ensuring compliance. Hopefully, at the end of that year, we'll be 100% compliant. And then, also starting to begin to launch with getting some SBSD Owl Camera: Evidence-based specialized instructional practices across the district for some consistency in how we support students specifically, but most importantly with, math. SBSD Owl Camera: literacy, executive functioning, and, social-emotional learning. Those are sort of the four big buckets. SBSD Owl Camera: And, all of this… SBSD Owl Camera: Magic will be done leveraging our federal IDEA fee funds. SBSD Owl Camera: that happens to be a place where we have the most flex. And so, I've been combing

131through them and working with April and Elizabeth, who are amazing, to make sure that we have all our ducks in the row, and we have the right money in the right place to do the right things. SBSD Owl Camera: And, I was talking to Monica about this earlier today. There's nothing radical in the plan, just to, like, maybe, like, literally… SBSD Owl Camera: I think I had one original idea. The rest are, like, what do I know and we know people are doing across the state that's effective? And so, I don't think it's going to be anything surprising in terms of how special education works in Vermont. SBSD Owl Camera: And there will be new items for… the district. SBSD Owl Camera: There might be growing picked in other groups. So, again, it takes bravery

132to be a leader, and there will be some… SBSD Owl Camera: But it's gonna work. SBSD Owl Camera: So the training you're talking about is for… generally for… SBSD Owl Camera: Jeanette? Seth? We're in the special education staff, and buck. SBSD Owl Camera: it's… sometimes it can feel like if I say we're going to work on best practices, that that means people haven't been doing best practices, and so I'm trying to be mindful. That's not what I'm saying. SBSD Owl Camera: And we could, as a district, strengthen something like structured literacy, specialized instruction, so kids and students who, are a couple grade levels below, that were using practices for literacy, that there's evidence works. SBSD Owl Camera: Across the district. That would be a good example. We will also work with general educators, but we're

133going to start special. SBSD Owl Camera: Is there any other board question or comment? SBSD Owl Camera: You're cold. You're welcome. SBSD Owl Camera: Anything else? No, I think we have a lot on our plate. It's great. I told you, I love it here. There's a ton of work to do, and it's great work, and I think we have a fantastic team. SBSD Owl Camera: And… I'm excited to see where we're doing this year. SBSD Owl Camera: It's built in by gender movement, so… SBSD Owl Camera: The next item on the agenda is consent agenda and planning. SBSD Owl Camera: So, approving the minutes, And approving the accounts payable, payroll warrants. SBSD Owl Camera: All of those things can be done with consent. SBSD Owl Camera: So, my question to the board is, are there

134any objections to the minutes, the accounts payables, or the payroll? SBSD Owl Camera: Yeah, exactly. SBSD Owl Camera: I have some comments. Well, you know, just very high level. As I was looking through accounts payables. SBSD Owl Camera: My comment was, we've had discussions before about how costs were associated with various partnerships and tutorings and trainings, and I guess the question would be, can that information be broken out so we can clearly see and understand the costs associated with some of these partnerships? For example. SBSD Owl Camera: You know, we see charges that come up, like, with Howard Center and tutoring and coaching services, and I just think it would be helpful to see how they're broken out, if that's something that we can do. I know that they are coded. SBSD Owl Camera: And

135there's an account description that's there to characterize, but I'm just never seeing how things are broken out, you know, annually or monthly. I know this has been a conversation before, but Clayton. SBSD Owl Camera: these are big charges, and you'd have to go back and reconcile what those were over the last year to really have a sense of that. So that was… that was one… And before we move on from that, are you saying aggregating and reporting out on, for example, this vendor received this much money. SBSD Owl Camera: Per year, per month? Yeah, I think that would be helpful. Something like that, I think, would be helpful. Just to understand in… and I mean, I don't know if that's not something that we can do, or there's some reason that we wouldn't do that,

136but again, just for transparency into what our spends are, I think it would be helpful to see something like that rolled up. SBSD Owl Camera: Yeah, I hear that. I've often wondered for particular vendors. SBSD Owl Camera: you know, what, you know, it's hard to get an idea of even how much money we spend on X or Y without, you know… SBSD Owl Camera: So, Nicole and I had a discussion after the last meeting around some of the questions that came up from the vouchers last time. And so, one of the things that we talked about is a lot of the things that you folks have questions about are directly related to special education services. SBSD Owl Camera: And so whether you think we've spent too much money to the Howard Center, you'd like us

137to cut that down, is not something that we're able… SBSD Owl Camera: Right. So I can tell you, okay, this year… this month, we sent this many dollars to this organization. SBSD Owl Camera: And if you, like, you can't necessarily come back to me and say, that's too much, you should look into cutting that, right? Like, there are educational services that we're not… that we are required to provide. Yeah, I think the only caveat I would add is, like. SBSD Owl Camera: Anybody. SBSD Owl Camera: here. Could say, like, you should spend less, and I think it's… SBSD Owl Camera: part of my responsibility to figure out how we spend less, because we are allowed to consider costs with special education, but we can't necessarily change the services that an IEP team determines this kid

138needs, right? So if somebody needs SBSD Owl Camera: something, needs clinical services, we can look at a Howard Center option or an X option, and compare those costs, and if the service is going to help the kid make progress, regardless of which one, we can choose the one that's less expensive. SBSD Owl Camera: That's… that's the path for… SBSD Owl Camera: If there is another option available. Yes, that is the Vermont, conundrum. And if there's space, and if there's no waves, and all of those things. I don't think we would… SBSD Owl Camera: want to get into the operational decisions, but I think that the general ask is just, you know, does the accounting software that you have SBSD Owl Camera: you know, let's say for the top, you know, maybe you say the top

139100 vendors, or maybe you say vendors where we've spent more than $5,000 in the last 6 months, I don't know. You know, some cutoff point. SBSD Owl Camera: that… and then for each one of those, it just automatically generates the, you know, the… the aggregates. Yeah. We… I don't know the software well enough to… I'm certain it can pull something like that for us. SBSD Owl Camera: And one of the things that my team, April and Elizabeth, who we all love, are working on really more transparency between the operations of the finance and this board. So, they're working on, in two weeks, or in the two meetings from tonight, they're gonna… we'll be here with another of the fiscal monitoring reports. I do wonder, as we're going through those, my team for the first SBSD

140Owl Camera: time, like, is that really filling the need for what you all are looking for? I also know that, some of the reports that the finance team and other districts regularly submit to the board are things that have not ever been done in this district. So, I think that you will continue to see more changes coming to the board, so you feel more comfortable with it. I think that's… SBSD Owl Camera: I want to speak to that. I think that's a great idea. We talked about, I mean, Jean Marie is in charge of two monitoring reports, and both of them report four times a year. So, 8 months out of 12, they are doing monitoring reports, which I think is excessive. SBSD Owl Camera: I also think it's unusual in my experience, and apparently

141even here, that there's not, like, a monthly discussion or presentation to the board just about the month and… the monthly financials. You know, this is what we spent this year, this is what we brought in, this is what we spent, a chart saying, 47% of it was for special education, 12% was for transportation, etc. And those are, I think that's SBSD Owl Camera: That's… SBSD Owl Camera: I want to say it's simple to get together. It's not easy to get together, it's simple, and I think when we do that, I think what I'm hoping is you will find the need for us not to have so many modern reports, because we're getting monthly reports here at the meeting about SBSD Owl Camera: Yeah, this is where my school. Yeah, and I think that's the norm

142in… outside of Sephron. SBSD Owl Camera: So, we're getting there. And I think that's exactly it, and I appreciate you articulating that, both of you, because it's just having that clarity and understanding SBSD Owl Camera: You know, these are… these are the spends, and you've got this $73 now million dollar budget, $71 million for this year, and to be able to break that down and really have higher level, it doesn't… you don't need to be in the weeds, but just for people to be able to digest it and say, alright, out of this, you know, we know that this percentage is salaries and blah blah blah, you know, all of this, but then you've got these other charges that are showing up. SBSD Owl Camera: there are these recurring charges, there are special ed, and

143being able to track how things are, even from one year to the next, to be able to look at that, I think is also very helpful, so we can see where are things going up more relative to others. Yeah, and if I could contextualize that a bit, like, I think that SBSD Owl Camera: there's at least 3 parties that are paying attention to the finances, and they each have a different role. And, like, you know, you guys are the experts, and you're running the show, and then you have your auditors, and they're… they've got their controls, and they are going to offer their opinion, and then there's us, and we're kind of, like. SBSD Owl Camera: gut, smell, intuition, you know? And, like, it helps… and so what Jen is suggesting is it's kind of

144just a way to support us, be able to look at it and say, is something right here? You know? SBSD Owl Camera: So, I do think that that's a good suggestion to have accurate. Yes, and I also think things do change, right? Like, what we have planned for and what we actually spend in certain categories SBSD Owl Camera: can change as the year goes along, but we know that we have to stay at our $71 million box, right? So we do move monies around from one area of the business to the other. I'll give you the example, like, as I was looking through some of the vouchers that you folks are going to be hopefully approving tonight, there's a big section where, Barr, our Director of Facilities. SBSD Owl Camera: asked the… asked Elizabeth to

145double the original PO for the purchase of salt. SBSD Owl Camera: For our parking lots, right? Like, it's shocking how much money it takes to salt this… these campuses just for, like, one day. SBSD Owl Camera: It's like 5 grand, and we do that. And we… we partner with an outside organization who does some of our, filing and salting, but we do a lot of it in-house. We just bought a plow, too. We're working on buying more to have… Yeah, yeah. So, it's in… SBSD Owl Camera: So, we didn't necessarily create the PO originally for the right amount of money, right? It all comes in at a different price, right? So, that's just one example of knowing that we have to stay in our box, but moving things around. Yeah, to go back to the

146aggregate, and even if you have, like, hey, this is what our goals are for the year, or what our target is, and then you put next to it, and this is where we're SBSD Owl Camera: tracking, so that we can see it, and you have that transparency to say, we put this amount here, and this amount here, and this amount here, and then we're, you know, 50% of that, and then at the end, are we going to have a surplus? And how are we tracking towards that? Again, it's just this high level. We don't need to be deep in the weeds, but SBSD Owl Camera: roll it up, you know, facilities, whatever, however you do it. I just, I think that would be really helpful, yeah, so… SBSD Owl Camera: what was your second? Okay,

147oh, well, then I just had questions regarding some of the specific things. Like, I wasn't able to see or understand some of the charges for students who are attending Rice, but they're receiving because it got cut off, and I was just trying to understand what those… I think that's proportionate share, so the federal government requires that, SBSD Owl Camera: That if we're gonna receive funding from the federal government, that students SBSD Owl Camera: It's different for Title II, I just have to make sure I'm saying the right thing, that if students are attending SBSD Owl Camera: independent schools, which is what we call them in Vermont, in our school district, we provide X dollars in special education services. Okay. And so you see things that look a little weird, like we're paying for this in

148an independent school, and that in an independent school, they're 100% proportionate share. Okay. And we would get in a lot of trouble if we didn't do it. Okay. Even though we're sometimes SBSD Owl Camera: Feels strange. Don't… Oh, sorry. Oh, no, no, go ahead. SBSD Owl Camera: I'm wondering if all or most of the costs that are using outsourced for the, you know, lack of a better word, because it's different, thinking of, like, Howard Center, or students that, go to another school because of the SBSD Owl Camera: need to offer certain services. Do all or most of those SBSD Owl Camera: situations fall under extraordinary costs, like that… that extraordinary cost of inflation? I think… so, extraordinary… so, reimbursement happens at $69… $65,000. SBSD Owl Camera: So, the majority of out-of-district places, the tuition exceeds

149that amount, and then there's transportation, so we are collecting revenue for… I can, like, see the spreadsheet as we're talking, we're collecting revenue for probably, I don't know, 50 to 60% of our students who receive their services outside of SBSD Owl Camera: Right, but when we look at, you know, the expense for the Howard Center, and we're thinking. SBSD Owl Camera: what the source of that cost is. I'm just wondering how much of that is… not exactly… is due to students that are under the extraordinary cost. Very few. Extraordinary expense really kicks in when you go to another school versus you receive a particular service, and part of that is because SBSD Owl Camera: places like the Howard Center can leverage Medicaid to help them keep their costs really low. SBSD Owl Camera: And just

150in general, if we could hire, like, Spiritually, if we could hire SBSD Owl Camera: Union staff to do all the special ed. SBSD Owl Camera: Would, you know, if we could actually fill those positions. SBSD Owl Camera: Is that kind of, like, well, the ideal, and then we wouldn't even need Howard Center and ProCare? Or, like, why… why do we do special ed outside of… SBSD Owl Camera: Good question. And if we don't need to answer that right now, maybe that's a good question. Great question. It's, like, spiritual, economic, like, getting all the gas. I think we are so… Send us an email. SBSD Owl Camera: But good question. It's a good question. So, last one was, okay, this may not be a very popular question, it's just a question, because I've had children in

151school districts all across the country, from California to the SBSD Owl Camera: East Coast and South and everywhere. SBSD Owl Camera: Is it expected that families contribute to any of the activities at the school? Like, for example, is music entirely free? Are sports teams entirely free? I've always been, in other districts. SBSD Owl Camera: Been required to contribute money, pay-to-play. SBSD Owl Camera: So, you know, so the question was, you know, also, is there any fundraising for sports or musical instrument purchases? Is there any financial responsibility for participation? SBSD Owl Camera: So, just a question. It's a great question. I… I was gonna say, I'm pretty sure we don't do pay-to-play here, or… for many of our school sponsors. Something, yes. We do, and we do also fundraise. I pay for everything for high school

152estate. Renting instruments. SBSD Owl Camera: renting instruments. Yeah. But there is… so I will say, there is the Boosters Club, and that is, the… I think the… pretty much the sole purpose of that is fundraising for supporting co-curriculars, and particularly sports, and so they do things like the ski and snowboard spot. SBSD Owl Camera: And, make… raise money through those… those activities. And they give scholarships. I remember. I know our kids have, like, you know, track and field, so there really wasn't, like, a cost for us. And our kids did skiing, and I couldn't recall. SBSD Owl Camera: But anyway, so that was something… Please, let's not happening? Students can also go to Boosters and, like, present to them work funding as well. So there's, like, a bunch of different ways to do that. There's

153always going to be costs associated with, like, if you want the new hockey stick, that kind of writing. SBSD Owl Camera: Yeah. SBSD Owl Camera: there's also a lot of fundraising. Like, I know band does a fundraiser. I know, like, the Christmas tree fundraiser was for band. SBSD Owl Camera: Because I'm just seeing, like, some of the accounts payables are, you know, we're buying a new tuba, or there's new gear for this, or this or that, so I was just wondering, because we're just seeing the negative, we're not seeing anything coming back into the system. They still have to write the check from here. Right, so that's why you're seeing… Yeah, so I was just thinking, also, along that same line of the roll-up. SBSD Owl Camera: That, you know, if there's any way to

154understand what are those offsets, you know, I think would also be helpful, right? And then my last question… By offset, you mean if some money comes in for Blue Star, it goes out through this? Right. Like, you don't see the… you're not seeing the accounts and how much SBSD Owl Camera: I don't know. Nope. They're not staying there. SBSD Owl Camera: You mean, like, if they're… The revenue. Yeah, if they make the revenue, like, $20,000 or something, but then they write a check out, you're not seeing that money coming in. Yeah, they're not our employees. Right. And I do want to point out that being a parent on… SBSD Owl Camera: On… of kids who are in sports and other activities. SBSD Owl Camera: They also, all the… SBSD Owl Camera: People who run those

155are very cognizant of how much money they're asking, and there are always SBSD Owl Camera: emails that say, if you cannot afford this for your child, let us know, and we will figure out how to get it for you. So, no one's required… I mean, of course, that's uncomfortable, and some people won't come forward, but I know it's out there that, really, you should not have to pay for your kid to have the same SBSD Owl Camera: Absolutely, and I think that's so important. Like, I want to preface that, too, that I believe that is so important that everyone has the opportunity to participate. I'm just looking at this as information that's going out to the community, because these were all attached in school board information, and if people are just seeing deduction, deduction, deduction,

156but you're not seeing, hey, there's monies that are coming in from fundraisers, from Christmas trees, from the boosters, from SBSD Owl Camera: I mean, I've been to Booster, you know, and donating on auction things. I mean, probably put out a lot of hundreds. Well, what goes out to the public and what you all see are two different things. Right. So they are not seeing… SBSD Owl Camera: spent, you know, 4 checks going to the salt distributor. Like, that is only for… SBSD Owl Camera: Or privilege. Oh, okay. They see what's in the agenda is just that summary of X dollars for payroll, Y dollars for that, yeah, I see. Yeah, that's all the public sees, yeah. So, okay, my last question on EC. SBSD Owl Camera: So, sorry. There's no rush. This is… we are…

157we are in an area that's not our job, is what I'm… Oh, I'm just asking questions, though. I know, but they… that isn't. We have an important role… I… I know, but I… The final check. I just think that I've… SBSD Owl Camera: Okay, I've been on here for 4 years, I've heard these questions in more than a month, so I'm… SBSD Owl Camera: Go ahead and do… so… Okay. Snowboard! SBSD Owl Camera: Ski passes for coaches. SBSD Owl Camera: Just curious. SBSD Owl Camera: You know, is that something that typically happens? That… that that's the school covers? Because I guess my question there was, if you don't have… if someone were to SBSD Owl Camera: stop being a coach, that is non-transferrable. So I was just curious around that. That's my last… I don't…

158I have the same question. I know exactly what you're referring to. I don't know what the answer is. SBSD Owl Camera: I think if you raise your hand and say, I'd like to be the coach of the snowboarding club. SBSD Owl Camera: then we would provide… if you… if you raise your hand to say, we're… I want to be the coach of the track team, we would provide you what you need to be the coach, right? So if you said, I want to be the coach of the snowboard team, then we would then provide you… I can't make you stand in the parking lot to coach the kids that are on the slopes, right? SBSD Owl Camera: That's my… and I will tell you, like, there's… SBSD Owl Camera: so many weeds to get into.

159By the time it crosses my desk, I'm like, hmm… And it's… it's not, it's not a Susan pass. It's not a Susan pass. So if it's still going the same way it was, the boosters, for example, in that case one. SBSD Owl Camera: they divvy that up for all winter sports. SBSD Owl Camera: And that is the budget for Rakespeare's… SBSD Owl Camera: or the… the passes and so on. They're… they're arranged as a part of the race, specifically within the race fee, and then they usually throw in one or two coach lift tickets for that day, so… SBSD Owl Camera: nobody was ever getting a season's pass that, you know, they could go and they could ski on Saturday, or whatever, if that's… Yeah, I would… SBSD Owl Camera: just say that this is…

160I mean, I think it is a little weedy, and we are… what you have is a high-level executive team. We're asking questions that, frankly, we don't know the answers to. I think these are great questions to send us to get answers. Okay. So… SBSD Owl Camera: I don't want us to say anything that's wrong. Right. But I just don't know the answer to this question. And I also would say that one of the things that we're working on is putting together a new financial handbook that will SBSD Owl Camera: be in place before the beginning of the next school year, so that all of the team across the district knows, here are the things that I can buy, here are the… here's the process of which I buy the thing, or get reimbursed for the

161thing, and I suspect that there will be a lot of changes from what the current practice is to what the new and improved practice will. SBSD Owl Camera: What's fine. SBSD Owl Camera: Perfect. SBSD Owl Camera: And I just wanted to say that at least my opinion about this is that as board members, if you see something, say something, right? Like, so we shouldn't self… SBSD Owl Camera: Yeah, self-help, yeah. So, it is, it can be… SBSD Owl Camera: we can get too far into the weeds, but if, you know, if you smell something… And it may be helpful for you, I don't know exactly when your folks are getting your materials or reading them, but it may be helpful if you have questions SBSD Owl Camera: for us to talk about them offline, just

162because sometimes it does get a little… Yeah, it'd be absolutely a public forum. Yeah, for sure, that's fine. SBSD Owl Camera: Is there any other questions, or do we have consent to approve the minutes, the accounts payables, and the payroll warrant? Thank you very much. SBSD Owl Camera: Okay, all right, well then those, pass by consent. SBSD Owl Camera: Is there any discussion of the AP voucher checks at the Notre Center? SBSD Owl Camera: Check it. SBSD Owl Camera: I would entertain a motion to approve the AP voucher checks to the Howard Center in the amount of $131,398.93. SBSD Owl Camera: Laura Milks. Laura Milks. SBSD Owl Camera: Second. Dan seconds. Any discussion? SBSD Owl Camera: All those in favor? Aye. SBSD Owl Camera: So… SBSD Owl Camera: At this point, we have two remaining

163agenda items, setting the agenda for the March 11th school board work session, and reviewing future agenda items. SBSD Owl Camera: So, my question on the March 11th. SBSD Owl Camera: school board work session. Is that a regular meeting? SBSD Owl Camera: It appears to not… it appears to be a special school board meeting. SBSD Owl Camera: And so I'm assuming that it's on there only if we don't pass the budget. That's what I… that's what I thought it was for, if we had to come back. That's what I thought it was. Okay, so would the board be okay with just saying we're not going to have a meeting on March 11th? SBSD Owl Camera: Does anybody want to advocate for March 11th's meeting? SBSD Owl Camera: I stay here till I can be better. Okay.

164SBSD Owl Camera: Okay, so it sounds like the decision on that is that we're gonna not have a March 11th… we're not gonna warrant a March 11th meeting. SBSD Owl Camera: And then reviewing future agenda items. I don't think I actually have the March 18th. SBSD Owl Camera: agenda drafted yet. She did send it to us. Yeah. It's… SBSD Owl Camera: The 18th? Yeah, the 18th, yeah, it's, 218, I'm sorry. SBSD Owl Camera: I… I'm… I lied. SBSD Owl Camera: It's 2… that was 2 and a tune. SBSD Owl Camera: Yes, and I don't think we have it. We don't have it, Chance. Okay, okay. So, one thing I know we were talking about earlier in this meeting was, SBSD Owl Camera: considering… Committee for advocacy, given the number of legislative issues that SBSD Owl

165Camera: are relevant to the district. Is that something that we want to either discuss or potentially take action on at the next meeting? SBSD Owl Camera: I would support the idea, at least, of discussing advocacy, because… SBSD Owl Camera: And then from there, we could consider, SBSD Owl Camera: From there, we consider charging a committee, so people object to us putting the discussion of legislative accuracy on the agenda. SBSD Owl Camera: I think I did. SBSD Owl Camera: Great, okay, so we'll do that. SBSD Owl Camera: Are there any other things that people definitely want to see on the next, agenda? SBSD Owl Camera: I think another thing is the, the ENDS committee if… We want to have… SBSD Owl Camera: outside consultant. We should probably make our recommendation and discuss that at the next

166meeting. SBSD Owl Camera: Yeah, so we should meet before and have that. Right, so we'll have an agenda item to the floor. SBSD Owl Camera: the update from the EMS committee. SBSD Owl Camera: Is there anything else that we need to put on our website? Because I did see the scorecard, which looks fantastic. I don't know if you want to pull that up real quick. SBSD Owl Camera: And show, because I just happened to see that, and I really like seeing it on the school board website. SBSD Owl Camera: So you can see the scorecard there that has our SBSD Owl Camera: I could see expanding, I just sent you a message, I could see expanding and having a separate one where we were just talking about, like, the vertex and the aggregates of information.

167I could see how it's something like that. SBSD Owl Camera: Also, but just as an idea for potentially another committee, is taking a look at our website and seeing if there's any enhancements that we could make to tighten up and have information visible to the people so that they can SBSD Owl Camera: you know, get in and be able to find things and just have some… And so, are you talking about the, just the school board website, or the whole, what, the whole district? Just the school board website? SBSD Owl Camera: Yeah. So, I think having a discussion of website update… school board website control and updates is not a bad idea. I don't think that's a great idea. Yeah, I had… disappeared, but I had both those things in my notes for things to

168talk about at some point. SBSD Owl Camera: you know, how to find monitoring reports. Right now, they're buried in agendas. SBSD Owl Camera: So, to… if we're going to put the scorecard… Although now they're linked from the scorecard. Oh, you did link it, okay. Yeah, that's awesome. Excellent, I didn't notice that. That's perfect, yes. So that's where we need to have that stuff, is that it's front and center, and I'm just thinking… SBSD Owl Camera: what other things do we want to have here? And as we were just talking about budgets, I was thinking that would be another one that would be great to have. If you could have, here's what your buckets are, and here's… Well, let's discuss it. I think the point is there's a lot to discuss, so… and we all… yeah,

169okay. So, SBSD Owl Camera: Those three agenda items, update from the ENDS Committee. SBSD Owl Camera: discussion of, of advocacy and a discussion of school board website page. There'll be a monitoring report in Marie's, and we'll be here for the monitoring report. Well, you know what, and that's actually a good, you know, you said… SBSD Owl Camera: you're interested in reducing the reporting burden on the finance team. That seems like something we should talk about sooner rather than later, because… SBSD Owl Camera: the longer that you guys have to be producing those excessive reports. Yeah, well, this is the second one, right? She's in charge of two. They did one last month, and they're doing this one this month, and I think that SBSD Owl Camera: I think it'll happen organically, but I would like

170them to give this one. Oh, yeah, for sure, yeah. And to be clear, we don't need to… all I'm saying is, should we, at our next meeting. SBSD Owl Camera: should we discuss the idea of reducing the reporting burden? Or changing it to the point of a monthly update to you all, you know, that is more fine-tuned, or, like, finer detail than what a SBSD Owl Camera: monitoring report would be different. So, does the board want to talk about that at our next meeting? SBSD Owl Camera: And we'll obviously look at the agenda, and if it's getting too big, we'll cut some stuff, move some stuff around, but… so it sounds like there's four things, four potential items that we'll be adding to the agenda for the March 18th meeting. SBSD Owl Camera: And do

171we need to consider, too, not that I want this on the agenda, but in our parking lot, the idea of even a retreat, because we need to do some BSBA onboarding, right, for policy governance training and things of that nature. I wonder if we can handle that. SBSD Owl Camera: We're all wisdom veterans, except for a year on the door and handle that. I mean, it could be, but I just… I know we went through it. I think there's some that did not go through it, if we can transfer that. I don't know what your knowledge is with the policy done, it's probably pretty good, but… SBSD Owl Camera: There's a… I think there's value in a board retreat, an annual board retreat. I know we have one in January, but I… I think the

172one we're supposed to talk about for the summer. I think there's great value. SBSD Owl Camera: So… SBA is, like, a two-member board reunion tomorrow, and I said at 4, so I'll see what they have to say, but yeah, but, I mean, I'm familiar, but I do think that, like, their form of training. SBSD Owl Camera: So… Should we… So what I'll do is I'll send out a calendar link SBSD Owl Camera: For people to look at board retreat days, because it's not going to be in the calendar of board meetings that we just threw. SBSD Owl Camera: So, okay, so I'll take that as a… That would be a good opportunity, too, to do some of even the updates for Darwin, you know, because sometimes these meetings, we don't want them to grow too

173big, so if we can break it out and have updates from the committees or something, it would be a great opportunity for your retreat also. SBSD Owl Camera: I want to do over my sounds like that. SBSD Owl Camera: Last question, when are we talking a retreat? Are we talking, like, in the next month, or the next 3 months? SBSD Owl Camera: Why do you think, Jake? I mean… SBSD Owl Camera: It looks like they've been done in July in the past. Oh, I thought we were suggesting another earlier retreat in addition to the July retreat. Is that an earlier retreat? 3 months or so would not be a bad idea. I'm wondering, could we just… SBSD Owl Camera: Train… the independent training with the eighth modules? SBSD Owl Camera: Yeah, would any… does anybody

174want to advocate for a board retreat in advance of the board retreat in the summer? I don't think you need… SBSD Owl Camera: Multiple norther trees. SBSD Owl Camera: I think… I hear that, yeah. I just wonder if anybody wants to positively advocate for it. Okay, so it sounds like nobody's advocating for SBSD Owl Camera: a new board retreat, and we're gonna work with Ulyssa to provide whatever… Great. SBSD Owl Camera: Any other final thoughts on agenda, scheduling, issues? SBSD Owl Camera: Alright, I would entertain a motion to adjourn. SBSD Owl Camera: And motion or a second. Any discussion? SBSD Owl Camera: All those in favor? SBSD Owl Camera: Alright, adjourned. Signatures.