001All right. So, I'm going to call this um work session for We do have tonight. Do we have any additional agenda items? >> Madam Chair, I'd like to make a motion to add to our second session. that second executive session in favor and share kind of what we're doing tonight. We have this meeting scheduled to kind of talk about vacancy or I'm sorry recalibration legislation things that are going on as well as we'll start with the section items for that and then we will move into executive discussion executive session for discussion on and I'm sorry 164 paragraph A2 so that's what we'll go into executive session and then come out and vote on the candidates that will move forward 13 candidates and five interviews so um after we vote on that during the vote We
002will announce them to superintendent to reach out to those people that are going to be selected if they're okay with continuing on in the process and then they'll announce that probably tomorrow candidates will come back on the 17th of our appreciate you and that we'll get started on our um something we've been paying close attention trying to get information. Welcome to our ad team. Um as the session approaches and begins next Monday the 9th of February select committee on school finance recalibrations met throughout the last 12 months of January and Cheyenne on 22nd 23rd made some adjustments to the final proposal that they put together. Um just now just I believe for me it was today I saw the spreadsheet but also changes mostly changes to the model. So just those changes but it does
003look different than what I back in January. the amount of money increasing into the system overall program now proposed to 54.8 8 million. However, within the components, there's still some big differences even on the date as a local estimated decrease in classroom teacher full-time equivalents are offset by the increase in instructional facilitators, coaches, tutors, and summer extended day teachers. And I guess from an instructional standpoint looking at this my own view is even if you replace teacher FTE or both equivalents with tutors and summer school books you're still not going to have the same level of impact on student learning you can't expect tutors and people who only serve at certain times of school year when classes normally not even session some of extended day programs they're not going to reach as many kids. So
004the general population, what what educators call tier one instruction, the general instruction for everyone, the number of folks available potentially decrease they're going to come the model with fewer of those folks, fewer classroom teachers, um fewer elected specialist teachers, fewer um just overall classroom teachers on the spreadsheet. Now instead of 1227 which is what it was in January now the deduction is 921.17 so 18 million million less than the current model concerning and there are some cases like you know like I said I mentioned earlier this person would increase so there are some some increases counselors would go up by FD um librarian aids would go up by 36 FD and again these are statewide numbers. So just some some some differences some major differences but one of the things I'm most concerned about just
005with this this spreadsheet is just this reduction in instructional staff versus sort of like staff as a replacement. So kind of what you're saying they they've done that before in the model this is how many we're going to right now in the current model they're going to teachers what they've done in the past is given districts a lot of funding said if you need to hire teachers work within this block a month pay them what you want figure out how many you I just stay within this general amount of money that they've given you. What they're proposing now is what we call categorical funding. But we can say for instructional resources, we want you to have just this amount of money within that category of funding. Instead of saying, hey, we may be able to
006get by with fewer activities, more teachers. Part of the budget in our in our example, we're going to spend some money and probably less on some other how they want to do it. And that's one of the things that concerns a lot of people around state school. It's been up to local Uh Mike, is is that part of the re that that concept the categorization is that part of the recalibration itself or is that considered another piece of legislation go sort of lockation I would let business managers probably answer that question first off. I have to apologize. Uh if anybody went to the governor's deal today, I did a terrible job represent sick. Anyway, um going back to the point, I have I've typed up a a letter addressing some stuff that just been discussing
007to answer your question directly. It is part recal bill set aside and it's part of hand estimated empty that's a separate piece that's inside the uh and might explain greatly. It takes that block of money that's earmarked for construction services can only be spent on construction services portion of ours. We also take part of that money currently and our rest. We have right now you guys have that flexibility to use that block to spend the needs of the district that goes away. I'll pass this out. You all have like reading it instead of me explaining it. Is this how you're planning on spreading your Ebola to the rest of the There's several points in this letter. Um, and if you don't mind, can I just continue? Sure. Uh couple of or a few things. You
008know, during the recalibration, uh when they're talking about determining teacher salaries, the the consultants used a 79% comparable age assumption, which to a lot of people that's flawed. Uh I would say educators spend a great deal more time 70 or 80 we'll call it 80% of time compared to somebody with regular work hours. So that's that's an issue. Um, the other big thing that I don't think is talked about a lot with this new proposal, they take out of the funding model funding for teacher experience and teacher tenure or teacher education, I'm sorry, experience education. So that makes it really difficult for you as a board to how do how do we set up a salary schedule for that our current schedule years of service education. So they take that out. So we're at the
009business range level all discussing this how do we how do we do that? Um although also within this proposal the normal annual ECA that weeks don't I shouldn't say back because some years it is going they proposed to do it every other year and then couple that with the pos state health insurance plan. If you pack all three of those pieces together from where are we all going as a board as administrators trying to do what's best for our staff all your decision making as far salaries stuff like that are really gone. So that's one big thing. Then we get to the categorical back. I have a question. So you just talked about the work experience. Would that also take into account like with career and tech teachers where we've hired them out of the
010private sector like talked about for those CT teachers because there's a shortage of including their work experience outside of teaching. So that would be impacted as well. or is it just years of experience in the state or in district? >> Madam Chair, so that was a decision made by you all I believe as far as to get those experience steps for those people. The way the the CTE funding currently works is it's based on percent of your student population to fund CT teachers. there like 20% or 34% I can't remember the exact figure >> and is that correlated with Perkins or is that separate >> M Perkins is totally that's fun yeah I just I would encourage you to read through this this letter that I if you have questions maybe how it affects our
011district. I will try to answer those but right now there's just a lot of notes working on this is the walk in my career. We've had big changes proposed so many ways talk about that state level just we all have different pockets of community talis and um ELLL students versus you know I just it's social emotional learning or you know whatever that's just madam chair I wonder if we could as a board write a public letter um to our own representatives and legislators would also want that everyone down at the state would feel and advocate for local control and the value of that to us. And then making sure tier one instruction is well above anything else without funding our primary teaching staff don't have a school. And I think getting a united letter from
012our board and hopefully nudge legislators, Mr. What are your thoughts on that? I know you're kind of hesitant about what was speaking in the board. I think we could word it where again it goes back to just the control decision making. >> Yeah. I mean I mad chair I think uh you know we I I felt pretty comfortable you and Travis or you and Mr. Harrison in conjunction with Travis coming up with some verbage and then then we can take a look at that and get something out. think I I think everyone probably I don't want to speak very >> I I certainly think that adequately funding education is critical in the state has a question about that I am a little bit concerned about uh how we're going about the uh recalibration um this
013year uh I really don't like erosion control So I think we can come up with something >> and I would agree. I think that maybe everybody else every district and we all have our own teams and I think that we should be able to control our tier one instruction taking away teachers to give us tutors make sense. It sounds like you're going to disrupt the system that's already working this week. the state is also the state or we're working really hard to look at project that and I just think about you know if you don't have this model set up where students have that ability to work with qualified teachers and staff and you know real world experiences I just think there's some problems there so I also think How can we be fiscally responsible
014for categorical for >> trying to figure out where we put them? Yeah, there are a lot of things. There's a lot of things in this that may make sense in some districts in the state. Maybe maybe a member of the committee is looking at their local school district and going this model doesn't hurt our local district about that. I think it's going to make sense, but there's so much difference across the 14 school districts. For example, one of the components is if you're at district level resources, which incidentally they're seeing fewer employees at district level, except for computer technicians, they see six more statewide. But they also envision that our utilities are going to cost $9.8 million less. We're going to allocate $9.8 million less for utilities. I don't know how it works at your
015house, but I'm not spending less on utilities in my house. And I would argue that it's going to continue to increase. is going to go up to go up. So, there's some pieces in this that I don't I don't see how they really sense instructions. Can you chime in? Are you okay with us drafting something? >> Yeah, I can you hear me? Okay. >> Um I I think that would be an excellent idea. I really believe that the loss of local control really erodess our flexibility to make informed decisions for our district. So, I'm on board fully. I'm also curious if we have a sense of when the select committee um will meet again and make any kind of final decision. There have been so many amendments um to their bills so far and I
016I just haven't caught that when they'll be meeting again. If anyone knows >> last J this January meeting last time the select committee will meet they have pushed forward a bill and how it's going to get rolled out whether it's going to go to another committee or to the house or senate nobody knows yet. Um that bill is supposed to be hitting the presses as this coming Friday but as right now there's no no more committee meetings. Now that depends I mean if it goes to say joint education then there'll be further meetings on the bill but nobody knows how that's going to play out yet. So I have one more question. As part of kind of the select final bill making, does it have to be reviewed by joint education or not necessarily? >>
017It doesn't. >> Madam Chair, I leave. No, it doesn't. I mean, they have the prerogative. They could give it to agriculture, tribal relations. They could any committee if they give it okay to a committee. Okay. Thank you, >> Madam Chair. >> Yes. >> I don't want to belabor this point too often. I do have one last question and that's to play devil advocate just a little bit because I I want to anticipate what might be said is the argument for this. Would this make it so that from districtto district perspective we would not be uh trying to compete with other districts in terms of salaries we offer teachers? I mean right now we we sometimes cannibalize each other's uh teachers and a lot of times because this district offers more language this district. Would this
018normalize some of that? Um, if we get rid of our staff, our veteran teachers, they will be gone. >> Um, one thing I was going to add as part of that overall compensation, it may help with the health insurance because everybody in all 40 districts will be on one plan. No, it's going to cost the state more money. Although they take money out of the school foundation program, they're still going to have to cover it, you know, for all state employees. So that although they look like it's the same for the school foundation program, in reality, it's it's more expensive. Along with that though, there's a thing called regional cost adjustment and part of the spreadsheet as I review it has a different wage index and we've rebased that. And so if you live in
019a certain part of the state that's more expensive, they have this index that applies to your your situation and some of those districts could pay more potentially because of that. So it's not going to be exactly like it's not going to be 55,000 across all the school districts. If you're in Ton County, obviously it's going to be a little more if you're at 1.0 zero on the on the index but one already state 1.13 and it's curious how we got to this because Campbell County is 1.12 for Washington is 1.15. So I'm not sure exactly how formula works to there's some questions in there. Yeah, >> I think it would really be detrimental for teachers when they go back on their own time in their own time and get better educate get more education better
020teachers in classroom. >> Yeah, I don't I don't disagree with that. I just wondered whether or not we'd lose teachers, you know, whether that would prevent us from losing teachers to Fort Washi or or to Campbell County or to, you know, whatever Rock Springs. And it sounds like it sounds like that that is probably maybe the one and only potential benefit I can see in this is that it would sort of level set those wages across across districts. Certainly doesn't uh in my mind make up for the shortcomings of it. I would I in a lot of ways I would rather be in a position where we can say you know look our our model is to pay more in benefits and less in salary and that's a strategic decision we make and we know
021that that might put us at at salary disadvantage relative to some of the other districts but that's you know like I said that's strategic we can explain that potential candidates will explain to to our existing staff um I'd rather have local control be able to do that than certain artificial, you know, one size fits all. But like I said, it may be the one small thing that I I do see that would be Travis with that is that with the reservations still get yes impact. >> So there were still so I think All right. Going to back to your question. You can see a combination of different ways. Like Mike said, the RCA is still in place. We still have room. I think we can still play with, you know, that categorical plot of money
022that we would not get. We can make adjustments within that to tweak our overall package, but I think once the health insurance piece comes into play that that gets eroded, right? So then it makes it more difficult. You said it does level the playing field. and and the ECA being done on a bianium instead of annually wouldn't that just mean that instead of say 3% increase in year after year it would be like 0% 6%. Madam Chair, absolutely could. Um, but like I said before, all you guys have all seen that before a proposed ECA of 4% or whatever legislature picks and chooses from here to here whether they want to keep it. So you can't bank on zero and six and two or Yeah. Who knows how that all plays out. If it were
023consistent, then you can bet on that. It has been in the past. Madam chair, if I could just one one point on this this whole concept, this paragraph here that Travis has about resources, you know, we have statute district local policies, not statute rather about local salary and so employee voice is also you know right now we have some committee members that sit down with certify and classify that as three separate groups and hear directly from the employees. this erodess that pipeline employees and their leadership like are they gonna sit down with our local people talk about this? I don't think so. So that's just one more inching away from what we've been doing for a long long time and centralized autocratic all the wonder how we would go about our current scale and just
024cut everybody like how does that work? >> Yeah, Travis, how does that work? that would be >> also because that's based on your three highest. So everybody's at the same time. >> Madam Chair, if I could part of difficult conversation about that state spend money on on an expert external So to provide input on this funding model, what to change with it and it's Larry Pas. He's been at this for years, I think, since the Camp decision, I think, and he's come back with his recommendations after these professional judgment panels all around the state, talking with people in communities all over Wyoming. His recommendation is that the model needs hund00 million more. And this committee's recommendation is for 54.6 six billion I believe this latest version. So not many people are talking about why aren't
025the consult why are people not listening to the consultant who went to meet with the people and communities and has experts his expertise finance and how are we not including that as as kind of a third leg in this consideration between current the committee's recommendation and then what does the consultant say it's like almost like just gets ignore whatever is just it's there but he gives his presentation and here's Reminds me of rule number one of politics. Never ask a question you don't want to hear the answer to. I the the the final point that I make is the one thing that I'm always concerned about and that's the legislature strive to do district consolidation and I think this is one step closer to bringing district consolidation right. Yeah. If you can state that hey
026why do we have separate districts when we create all features the same starts to make you wonder what point in all districts which would be disastrous Mr. I think there's only one state that does that in the US Hawaii. They have one state education agency that is also the local education agency. And uh I would you compare very favorably to Hawaii in terms of your student outcomes. I think anytime you decision making closely affects you're going to have that as an unintended consequence. Um when you're going back to your what was just being set by this bill potentially hitting the press on if we're going to write a letter trans people's minds or asking we'll let one Mr. Sweeny's because we can't vote via email. Um, could could we make a motion to uh have
027have uh the chair work with administration to to draft a letter and release that at their at their discretion? Would that be amendable to the board? Because otherwise they'll draft it and then we'll send it around and we'll say, "Yeah, that looks good to me." And then someone out there's gonna be mad because we voted we did. >> Yeah. So comments that we can discuss on that is a lot of what people even presented with in Travis's letter are probably just emphasizing your point discussion and employee leadership you know steps how that impact um local as we said and maybe adding a point about the you It would be our thought that if the state hires maybe we don't talk about it the money I don't know if we want to get into you know
028talking about the actual funding itself but if we wanted to add point insurance >> yes just I I think it would be best Yeah. >> But obviously you think with that local people, we can give some examples of our our local district has discussions where they're at and our teachers our local district you know funds activities and salary wages different than others. we have a different insurance and employee package just kind of emphasizing instead of because I agree I think that's the key point but I also think everyone's going to be thrown around the term mobile control that we can fix specific so I I've shared a similar letter with you all before I shared that at a meeting in Riverton some legislative uh might be after the meeting that I presented I was approached
029by a couple of local people that were there and they had asked for copies I haven't nobody's reached out to me since so I don't that's something you want to look at or address. Well, I I mean I encourage you with your business that you guys, you know, I think it's great for you to think many different. Okay. So, can we get a motion from someone to draft a letter? >> Favor further on I was just saying thank you for putting this together, you know, Yeah. So, um, Madam Chair, members, the board's part of this that has given me a little bit of heart is messaging with staff on this. There's a lot of stress involved with this. Uh oh, maybe we don't have steps and lanes. Maybe our insurance changes. Maybe there's caps like
030what's the point of continuing education. There starts to be this swirl of unknown and it has a very negative cloud around it. Especially at a very dry time of year when we're all worried about salary discussions. Like typically I would send discussions email yesterday first Monday in February we start that process with all of this we want to have that discussion first before we even send anything to staff but that is something that I would like you guys to be aware of and if you have guidance for me I would love to hear that some districts are doing like an all staff meeting I'm not convinced that's the best approach but I don't want to say nothing to the staff at the same time and maybe this letter is the the letter that you know
031that you directed. So I will work on maybe that's the the thank you vend or the vehicle that we then sent some staff that includes that letter that says hey your board and your superintendent business manager and central office people are all looking at this. We recognize the weight of this compensation the legislature the very real impacts it could have on our lives here. We're taking it seriously. We're not panicking, but we recognize there's work to be done to improve what the initial proposal is as of the start of the legislature, and we're working on that. Is there additional information that we should or shouldn't include that message? I do think it's it's time to say something to the staff without getting too far in the weeds or without scaring people, just kind of threading
032a needle with that message. Madam Chair, one couple points. I mean, the first thing that I probably include is and and this is just going to be a given, but that the staff certainly has and you know, best interest in mind because we know that their best interests are what is in the best interest of our kids and that's why we're here. But I guess the other point that I might make is that trying to do any salary negotiations or anything of that nature right now is is you know completely a loot point. We don't know what's going to happen. So you know not hearing from us in terms of salary appreciation doesn't mean we're not thinking about it or we're not working on it or we don't want to do that. We just don't
033know what we can't what we can and can't do. I think the letter that you shared it was great after school. Yeah, I was going to say I think walking the walk and showing our staff that we don't just care about them, but we're actively as a collective for United to say and say they don't take away our local control. I think it will say more action from us than it will public action directed towards the fake fake wallet. Not to say we can also do an internal email, but I don't think an internal email is going to go over well unless we put in the work first to advocate publicly. But I do think it would be nice for the staff to hear from you before we send something out letting us know instead.
034>> Yeah. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you for that. It's been changed like what I sent you in January is no longer accurate. What I signed from the WSBA update was still not accurate entirely. Now we got this and first day of the legislature. Depending on what happens that first week could change, Mr. I think too if we write that letter from the stance of local control is important and funding teaching staff is important. We don't need like we don't need to get into the all the nitty-gritty of 79% comparable wage assumption or whatever that all kind of toxic environment with our staff as we're engaged and Madame chair. >> Yes. One other thought too and maybe I've missed this in the conversation is simply to encourage staff members to participate. You know 61 people
035stood up to testify before the recalibration select committee and I think they you know their voices are heard and people are keeping track of that. So, if people have concerns about their, you know, their benefits and obviously worries about this, um, it's a great chance for them to add their voice to ours. Madam Chair, um I wholeheartedly hear you. Um one thing I think you need to express to which I I've heard I didn't know this was a thing is um I highly encourage you to reach out to legislators, but be careful of using district email, use doing it during school hours. Sure. Uh so putting some kind of note out to staff although we completely support this I've heard that legislators the legislators will frown bad time that so we make that clear out.
036>> Exactly. A very good point. >> Okay. Anything else on your mic is kind of related. It's a budgetary consideration. It's about the amount of funding to district for district for our students versus how much more school district. So the question talking about with you all what's the appropriate level funding can there be some other ways to assist the district and what does that look like for 26 27 for the upcoming cycle and I did sit down with with Mayor White a couple weeks ago and provided her with a copy of the 1975 was able to look at Yeah. And it talked about a kind of a threeparty approach to financially support the pool. It was the school district, the city, and the record were supposed to equitably share the costs. Um over time, as
037we know, that has not been able to be the case and district has since started funding at 100% since the fall of 2016. In light of these potential changes with funding and our declining enrollment, this is really coming to a head because our our budgeted amount for this school year is about $540,000 on all the expenditures. We do receive about 110,000 from membership fees and clubs and techitions and that sort of thing to offset some but still that's fun could otherwise for other parts of the budget. So we talked with with Mayor White about potentially what are some ways that we can collaborate is there some city funding put towards this. Um, as we all know, municipalities are taking a hit right now, too. >> Sure. >> And so I have a lot of what
038they're dealing with. We've got a lot of that are high priorities as well. Um, we didn't nail down any specific answers, but I talked this afternoon. We talked about some things that we talked that we talked about continuing conversations. Mayor White was interested in seeing if there were other grants available to support the operation. Um, we asked if there are some things like contribution, maybe not even as a fiscal contribution, but get a break on our water types of nothing. But I don't know if you guys have questionific information overend and then not just making sure that that's how and uh chairman just I just pull water information for the last three years in total districtwide it ranges from just under 100,000 to approximately Yeah. 122,000. That's districtwide water. District wide. Not just the pool,
039right? You would think be a lot higher number, but it's it's really not a huge amount. Um, for instance, 2223 is $2500 once a year,000. This past year was Roughly an average is close to $5,000. >> Yep. Yep. Yeah. If it does happen, we have >> well reaching out to the city about paying for district water or not paying for it. So, >> so Madam Chair, so right now each of the three entities in theory should be paying right around 170 grand each just right. So most of those fees are public they come for public. So it it would take from my just pragmatically if I was a city on the city I'd say well we should take that out of our you say that's probably so I would think that if the city would
040come up with their additional 70,000 after those that income revenue generated and then the record come out of 170 I think that would be a I mean that would honor our original agreement that we had and I think that would would be fair to all parties all >> probably. Now what is record Eileen? What are we getting right now? Mill levy. >> Um I'm not sure of the exact mill levy but right now we currently have you know 40 organizations this year that applied for grants and we have a a sum of um up to $360,000 available, but um in light of possible property tax um changes, um the board usually has a 15% hold back, which we um voted to do this year. So, but there's over, you know, $300,000 available for those 40
041organizations this year. >> For sure. U Madam Chair, another option that has been discussed in the past previous representatives is maybe getting together with the city to pass some kind of local tax basically like a 5% additional tax on your bar to help fund that. That's another option that's been discussed in the past. Don't quote me on, but something of that nature to help with that. >> Madam Chair, Mr. opinion. I wonder what also I don't I don't nothing about local tax law, but if a tax could be put on hotels or Airbnbs or like how we land such a popular tourist destination because of all the amazing recreation opportunities we offer and if there's a way to argue that or to collect more local money from people coming to visit or Landers specifically because
042of its tourism and then putting that back toward the record board and through that little pool. So that like it doesn't have to be tax just local. >> So a good idea. >> Yeah. I don't know the stat you know right now the one sent county level. So I don't know whether you can break that down or not. You guys have some questions discuss people around. means we're not in any way interested in eliminating that or curtailing that. help but issue as we see these declines in potential changes toward I mean think about just the legacy that they're country I mean the fact that here we are trying to talk about just keeping the school afloat and really should have the main facility, you know, and and you know, being able to host state tournament
043here in Lander, you know, the location and how much revenue that can bring to just the fact that this conversation, not even just keeping it afloat, we should be talking make this facility better our community and our students board. We want a resilient funding model so that we can sustain the pool for forever. I think there's a lot of fear right now that we're trying to get rid of which is absolutely not what we are trying to do. We're trying to make a more resilient model to school so that it doesn't just rely upon us. So, I know I've heard that had people come up to me in public and be like, "You're getting rid of the pool?" >> But, but you know, to your point with going back to the funding model we just
044talked about, it it is pretty fragile, >> right? I mean, at some point we're going to have to say potentially. Yeah. Do we staff? Do we pay teachers or do we keep the pool open? And we don't want to be in that. We don't ever want to be in a position where we have to make that kind of mad chair Mr. K to that point within the component. One of the things that's different on this model is with activities um statewide they anticipate with the model in the past is a reduction in funding for activities 3.9 million state that's huge especially given off to drive Anything else? Climate survey. we added this because that was something we had talked about certain things. Um I think there a lot more here that we need to dive
045into and I'm considering it just for a couple reasons. One of which is some of the the feedback from the climate surveyed compensation which is don't have the answers to that right now. And then also just with the school board appointee and that some issue that wasn't initially. So we okay with are you okay with or is there I mean you're welcome to talk about it. I just don't like we had talked about during the beginning of the year then the second semester. that that probably is I mean we talking about steps that probably is the next step right because we're really we're really asking the administration to to look at the results of this and you know make any course adjustments or whatever is required based on survey. So we do the followup and
046find out whe those course corrections correct. We also talked about the school year, you know, people are too checked out before might be a fragile time because I Spring break starts the last month after that be okay maybe the first week of May on that but I Madam Chair, Mr. Harris, I'm curious, has this the survey been sent to staff? I know we had some staff reach out to me and asking for results like that and I'm curious email could be sent thanking them for participating and sharing that we have a plan to administer the survey and just to keep them in the loop. This isn't something they did and the data just disappears but including a process or want to draft it and send it out. If you want to send it out or
047just >> um we took the liberty of posting it on website. We didn't we didn't contact all staff was it was it was more of a survey that the board did in conjunction with WSBA. >> So are you okay email with that? So if you look on the the school board's page on the left hand side, there's WSBA classed there along with the 2023. I envision that we just continue to put those on there. to do. It's just available by staff or others to see how things look for them next time just to get the idea of questions. I'm happy to help you that might Oh yeah. I draft your draft. All right. It looks like we just need a motion to go into executive session. Oh, before we uh go into executive session, I
048wonder if you could just share publicly what you learned from Scott about your vision for that. Um so we are going to we have 13 candidates that applied um previously interview five candidates. So we're going to go in how to pick our five candidates. Um we were given a list of things from Mr. Hill to consider. Um one of which is that confirmed that that person's a registered voter. through the residency in Fremont County which one community is a good question to ask and determine how long they work where they benefit in work education. So those are all discussions that we can have but just kind of an example of what we'll be talking about. Um, and so we're just going to be doing in the executive sessions those individuals. And then when we come
049out of the executive session, we will make a motion to direct Superintendent Harris to contact those candidates. We still won't list the names of the candidates until they've been contacted and have accepted it. And then following that discussion, Mr. Harris and those candidates, we'll make a press release, I guess, however you guys um but we'll do some sort of release of the five candidates names and to answer questions. I guess my question is just maybe not maybe fully understanding board processes, but how we respect open meeting laws while also deciding on five candidates off the public record while also protecting personal information. Yeah. All that mess in my head. Yeah. I want to make sure we're doing things in a way that is transparent but also recognizing Yeah. Yeah. So according to Scott is chapter
050too we could definitely hash this out in public and if we did that it would just be much more time consuming and what he recommended well he didn't recommend doing this I asked if he did do it that way is it possible he said, "Sure, we wouldn't recommend it, but he said it would be smart to assign a candidate number." So then we would be talking about each candidate. Um the other thing that we can do when we come out of session is talk about well each of those candidates, not listing their names, but saying, you know, candidate one had three votes, candidate two, you know, etc., etc. Um so that's those are some suggestions that he had mentioned but he said this is mostly done in executive session. Um transparency for the actual meeting
051he also mentioned I guess we should talk about this now um the candidates should not get questions beforehand. should be released to the public before for the candidates to just like when we had our legal voters, you know, those kind of things for um but that and then also when we interview those candidates that they're not hearing also talk about Yeah. And then, oh, the other thing we talked about is questions. So, I propose it each come up with a question, send it to me beforehand, and then we just need to be consistent. We ask the same questions, that kind of thing. So, there's no different questions. So, that's kind of more where the transparency lies. Um, it from what he explained. I also talked to Julie Free today. um and got her input on
052some things because candidates do need to be do need to have proof of residency. There's one candidate that we'll talk about that is not um registered as a voter and they don't have proof of residency. So when we go into executive discussion, we can just talk about is that just because we have so many does that person just is that a quick way to displace that candidate or do we want to reach out to them and say you consider to fulfilling your obligation to be able to fill this position or fill this. So all the ones should be able to So good. Um, so yeah, I we're working on a stat sheet that has a very small small um I'm sure >> I I think we're we're being as transparent as we need to be
053and should be. You know, we make a decision about the five and exact. We come out, notify them, notify the public who they are. Then they give public statements and we have public questions and then exactly basically one of those. I think that's a fairly public process of the court. And then just to reiterate um to remind us that after we don't make a decision majority decision 30 days then it goes to the county and we can give them recommendations or we can give them the group that we have or they might pick someone entirely different. So >> madam chair I uh move that we journ into executive session for a matter of selection. Okay. All in favor? >> I hit the ground. So close. for 95% by >> Madam Chair, I'd like to make
054a motion to direct the superintendent to contact candidates chosen the executive session and to publicize those names after the contacts have been made. >> Second first and then a second. All those in favor >> okay motion motion carries. Um before going into upcoming events and reminders, just want to thank everybody. It's amazing healthare team applicants. Very impressive. Love to see all those engaged in our community and willing to serve and step up in a situation like this. So, thank you all so much and we appreciate your willingness to do so. Um on behalf of the board, you all just are very thankful. You live in a great town, that's for sure. um upcoming events and reminders. February 9th, state legisl legislative session begins. So I'm sure we'll be hearing more about that as goes on.
055February 22nd to the 23rd is the school board association legislative forum. Anybody interested in that that myself? And then February 17th is our regular schedule meeting for Okay. Um and with that I'm going to call this picture. So any feedback or other ready to take care of the dollar? Oh no. Yes. >> Okay. Here.