001What are you? Okay gang, get my agenda open. Welcome to the June 3rd edition of the Dre and Schoolboard meeting. My name is not Ben Keiny. Ben Keiny is here, but he will be leaving. I won't smile too much. I I feel like he is simply just trolling me as the vice chair of Dresen, but um I will be hosting you all this evening. Um we do have obviously a quorum otherwise we wouldn't have gotten started. And I want to let board members in the room know that we do have two board members that are joining us on Zoom. Renee Sullivan and Michael Costa are with us on Zoom and administrator Mr. Tim Bole is with us on Zoom as well. I'm currently looking at the attendee list for other participants on Zoom and I
002see zero. So with that, we will move along to agenda review. Are there any items on the agenda this evening that board members would wish to rearrange? Deb, well, we need to add the NHSBA resolution. Okay, Deb, we would like add the NHSBA resolution. Please do that under business requiring a discussion. And would we also need a corresponding item under action? Yes. So, Mr. Superintendent, if you could do it in both places, discussion and action, that would be Gina. I just had a question. At the last meeting, we talked about possibly discussing the March intensive and is that and I didn't see it on the agenda, so I was just curious what we decided. I'm going to turn it over to Ben Keiny to opine on that one. I believe March intensive is going to
003be discussed early on in the next year. Okay. Okay. Thank you. All right. Uh Kelly McConnell, it's a followup question on that. Okay. I just want I just wondered when they start planning. I can't remember. Julie, when does the planning for merchant fencing happen? I'm sorry. I'm gonna wait for Julie to take a giant bite and then I was September. Uhhuh. Um, we have the proposals are due. There's a workshop day at the beginning of October. So, they're due on that day. I knew it's earlier than Yeah. So, we need to get that early next year. Thanks. All right. Any other items under agenda review, rearrange or add this evening? Seeing none, then board members, don't forget to refresh then your agenda to see those fresh new items that Jay just added. We're going to
004move on then to public comment. At this point in time, I would take any comment from members of the public. If you do want to speak, please give us your name and your town of residence and I ask that you please leave your comments to three minutes. Anyone here with us in person this evening? I see no takers and we continue to have zero attendees on Zoom. So, we're going to move on then to reports and first up is report of Hanover High School Council. Ian, tell us what's going on. Well, tomorrow council is going to be passing the council budget. A lot of clubs are allocating next year for uh money from council. As of right now, the council budget is $13,50. Right. board. That was a nice brief. Want everybody to note that.
005Any questions for Ian as our council represent? Seeing none, thanking his time. Wonderful. I have a quick question. Okay. Sorry. My Zoom. Very well. Go ahead. Rene. Um Ian, do you know like is that about the same as last year's budget? Higher, lower? How does that connect to what you guys have done in the past? I'm not sure, but I know that there's a lot of more clubs this year. There's new clubs. Cool. I think, Linda, sure. Details. Linda, Dante, Council, and Zach, I think it's about $1,000 more than last year. Um, and it may actually be trimmed down further tomorrow because council will weigh in on that and they can adjust the budget even was in the meeting before they adopt it. Awesome. Thanks for the info. Any additional information, questions, comments? All right,
006seeing none, moving on then to Annover High School principal report. The principal report is tapped in your board docs packet. This point I would ask if anybody has any questions on the principal's report. All right, seeing none. I'm also checking Zoom where I see none. Moving on then to the RMS, our middle school principles report also in board docs for your reading pleasure. Board, any comments, questions on the RMS principles report? I have a question. Um, I was enjoying reading the student climate schools climate survey and I noticed that the percentage of like in the yellow which is neither agree nor disagree was relatively consistent across a bunch of the questions and I was cur curious if on the back end we have any way of figuring out if like um the same people are
007answering agree or disagree not who they are but if it's the same cohort that's answering that way or if there's any way to try to learn more about I don't know. Let me look at you because I can't see Tim and you're doing exactly what you should by looking at the chair and then the chair is going to acknowledge Mr. Tim Bole to possibly answer that question. So I was just that was my question. Uh first of all I apologize for not being there in person. I was given the uh the link. Jay said go ahead and and uh meet up virtually so that's where I am. Uh we can certainly look into that. Um we weigh that when we send out the survey. I think we get a lot more uh interesting information if
008we make it entirely anonymous, which then makes it hard to track. Um but we'll continue to work on that in the future. So I I know that um for some of them uh we have like some questions like we've gotten a lot of feedback over the years about you know do you have somebody do you feel comfortable going to an adult and we have people who are like agree neither agree nor disagree and they're like I feel comfortable I just don't go to one. So you're like well that that's fair. So, uh, but I think it is fair to try to look and see if that's all the same people who are saying that it was those questions in particular that triggered it for me. It's the first ones about do they recognize differences, respect
009and value, trusted adult, uncomfortable asking for help. That percentage stayed very similar across those questions and which made me wonder, is this a similar cohort of people who need more attention or is it different people saying that answer different times? Does that make sense? Yeah. And that's we look at that and we have a number of um we have a number of like when we've talked to students they say I feel comfortable but I don't need help so I don't know what to say you know so they say neither agree nor disagree. Yeah. Got it. Okay. Thanks. Any other comments, questions on the middle school principles report? Oh yes. Renee, go ahead. You saw me. Yay. Uh Tim, just so just I'm curious to get a better sense of um how you guys utilize this
010data. So now that it's like kind of numbers are crunched, what are the conversations that are kind of teed up? What do you guys do? Uh the conversations that we have, they're always a number that uh that Anissa and I work very hard at the beginning of the year not to seem so scary. Uh because they're a number that like we think the administration is on our side, but we're not really sure. Um, and then we work really hard to make sure that students feel that there is somebody that they can go to, although a lot of times in middle school they're reluctant to. Um, so those are we we will work on these at our um after service days after the school is over to say, hey, this is where we are. This is
011what we're looking at. Um to be perfectly honest, a lot of times we look um very carefully at the do you feel safe? That's one of the most important things that we feel that is important. Students don't learn if they don't feel safe. So we want to make sure that that's a possibly what is expected. Um, and those are ongoing battles that we continue to to wage. That makes sense. Um, just a follow-up question on that. The the two that strike me as kind of really important to for the teachers to kind of unpack are the one that says teachers at RMS change lessons to match my learning style and then teachers are open to modifying lessons and expectations for individual students. It seems like those are very heavily orange, green, and purple. Um, so
012I'm just kind of very keen on hearing a little bit more about what kind of conversations come out of that. And we work on the conversations with the students as to be like what because part of what middle school is is trying to identify what would help you learn this better. Mhm. So part of that is we're trying to figure out is this is I I I'm not sure what would help but I know this isn't it or as opposed to I know what would work and it's not being done. So those are conversations that we have with students and with teachers to sort of say like hey there are people in your class who are not getting it. What are the next steps that you're taking? And that's um we're working really hard. That's
013one of the things we're doing next year with increased MTSS, increased sort of push into classrooms to be like here are alternatives that you can use for students who are on uh it it starts with ESOL 504 IEPs, but also it can work for everyone. Sort of how can you reach more students in your class as opposed to um just doing what we usually do. And we're fairly um we're in a good place here where most of what we do reaches most of the students, but we do need to reach deeper in to try to reach those students who don't quite get it the first time around. Thank you, Tim Kelly. I'd like to say my favorite answer is option seven that 12% of them picked which I thought it seemed like it was an
014error and I love that they went to that. And given that um I I would be curious if we took out neither agree nor disagree given the age group and their sort of I mean anyone who's asked a middle schooler how'd your day go and get it was fine. I don't know, right? Like I wonder if we took that out what how that would impact that might be worth considering. That's fine. I don't know. Yeah. Right. That's a really good question and I I think that would be something that we can uh do going forward. Like you know, we do that. I I talk to students. I'm like, "How was your day?" And then I'm like, "But you know, school is school." So they're like, "How was it as opposed to not coming to school?"
015Not good. How was it as opposed to going to school? somewhere else. Pretty good. So, right, um I I think it's it it is a sort of a a trying to reset the parameters and and you know, I've talked about this before. Part of it is this was a survey that started I don't know how many years ago and then we try to use them to compare. So, we try to use the same questions, but it probably is time to to rethink those questions and rethink how we ask them. Thanks. Ben, uh, two two comments. The first one in follow up to Kelly's question for the liyker scale like this, which is what she's talking about. The general survey rule of thumb is to avoid a I don't know or in between type answer unless
016it is a true factual I'm asking you a fact and you do not know the answer type of thing. For opinion questions like like these, I would advise avoiding that possibility if able to. And then my second initial question was going to be Tim, are you intending to slice and dice this at all by grade? I imagine that some of the grades might vary quite a bit, especially on the teacher modifying things in terms of the math discussion. Yes. Yeah, we're going to look at it in terms of grades certainly. Any large noticeable prominent findings? Nice to see them. Yeah. No, just I mean what would you would expect like uh we're we've had surveys from eighth grade math um that the eighth grade math teachers have put out that uh students didn't like it
017at the beginning and they like it now. Seventh grade math tends to be the one again that is is the most um where students show the most concern which is why we've made changes going forward for next year. Sixth grade math seems to be fine. So, um, they've really enjoyed their year. They've enjoyed having Mr. Hopkins in their class. Um, and they seem to be pretty happy. Okay, gang. Any other questions on the middle school principles report? All right, we're going to move on then to business requiring discussion. First up is a reading of policies board. We've got uh two policies here for a second read, one for a first read. Just a mental note, two that are here for a second read. It's going to come up for a vote later on this evening.
018Um I would like to turn it over to a member of my policy committee to maybe walk us through these. Ben, I can take that. Yep. Um so the two that are second readings, I do not believe we had any um large discussion over them last time. So there are no changes for the new one which is EHR1. There are multiple attachments for that one. The main one we're going to talk about is the actual policy. The other two are forms. This one was a bit surprising to go through. It is a new law on the New Hampshire side about how um right no requests generally work. We were expecting it to be a little antagonistic. Surprisingly, it was not. The policy committee was um happy to note that a lot of these things make
019sense and are helpful clarifications to us in terms of forms folks have to fill out, how much we can charge or not charge for the kind of work that we're doing in terms of pulling up physical documents, pulling up digital information. And we actually found nothing we wanted to change apart from what um that was given to us by NHSBA. The one thing that was up to boards to decide was how much to charge in terms of the efforts done by uh Jay or his representatives by the direct no requests. And we did decide after some discussion to charge the maximum allowed by the state which in a digital communication sense is $1 per bound discoverable individual electronic communication after the first 250 which are free and we felt fine asking for that given the
020amount of effort and he involved in that. There are sever for those who are concerned about um economics of folks asking there are several car modes in the in the forms about what they describe as indigency I think was the word indigency and in terms of determining income levels and things like that all of which were fairly straightforward and policy passes unanimously sorry I'm trying to open it up I was on a different thing um is that per. So if someone submits a right to know request that generates 300 responses, we would charge them $50. And there it's information that we would be required to tell them in advance what we would estimate the charge to be. Okay. What if that same person then submits a subsequent right to know request that also generates 300?
021Is that person then charged $300 or it would be per use? I believe per request per request. So it's still not it is the maximum allowed. Okay. I'll just you know express then publicly that that still leaves open one individual sort of paralyzing the district with multiple requests each one generating 250 requests with no like with impunity which concerns me. So I'll just I understand it's illegal but I'll just state that publicly. Yeah. And I will point out it it improves upon what it was before and maybe let's talk about the ideas but it also it gives us some rigor in terms of what the ask is and how to address it. And there are some various carves off thing if it's a media request if it's someone doing individual things for their own good
022or whether they intend to distribute it through some sort of social media posting. address those things which we appreciate in the sense that it was kind of come to ourselves to determine that perform uh follow just a final statement I guess for the right then that this also implies that those 250 cost us $250. So just sort of state that that would be the implication as people consider their right to no requests and the scope of their right to know request Lisa. Yeah. So, I also kind of want to be clear or to clarify for myself and then publicly that that in no way covers the cost of the time of the personnel involved in pulling these things. And I want people to be very very very very aware of that. especially none of these
023right to know requests involve can involve personnel which means that it is restricted to someone like the superintendent um to be the person involved in in getting those right to know requests. So just um yeah it I don't disagree with any of this but I it it's bothersome. Thank you. Uh Ben and follow both those comments which I agree with in full. It is explicitly in there that we cannot charge for time. It is purely the production of documents and that is what it is. Okay. Any other questions? Tara, go ahead. Is there a required um response timeline? Just curious. Yes. I believe it's 10 five or 10 business to five business days. Not necessarily the complete we're done now, but an acknowledgement and the anticipated time and workload and things like that. Okay. Yeah.
024Completion on that question. Thank you. Any other questions for Jay? I just say one of the things pleasing and interesting is that they they've kind of carved out we we've gotten some pretty spurious requests from vendors. Yeah. were trying to get information com information on their competitors and they they carved that out too. So, um that's that was an improvement in this. And the fact that we were getting nothing like Ben said before, it's not just my time. Um I always I I go to Bryant because yeah, that's confidential information. He has a way to query the database to get all those emails and he will typically put a substantial amount of time in before even comes to me and or Ryan. Uh, so there's at least three of us involved every time an electronic
025request comes through like that. Any other questions on our policies this evening? In particular, any questions on the policies that you're going to be voting on in just a short period of time? All right, seeing none, then we're going to move on to the Hanover High School student handbook. For those board members that are new with us, this is an annual thing that the board has responsibility for doing is approving the end quote changes um this evening. You'll see in the agenda we've got the high school changes, the middle school changes will come to us at a later date. And I don't know, Julie, do you want to briefly walk us through? Yeah, that would be wonderful. I'll start you. Yeah, sure. Um it was just a change changing the lateness to school. We have
026something in our handbook already, but um changing it from 11 from 12 after arrival back at school. So students arriving are allowed to miss part of their first hour of school. And so that was just changed instead of 12 to 1, 11 to 12. Um sports over break just moved April break in line with February break in terms of number of days of not having practice. Uh then the rest of it are motions that don't necessarily aren't like changes to the handbook, but just so you can see things that happened. For instance, um there was a request to maybe create honors in music, the music area. There's the student affirmation motion which you had before. A bunch of allocations which frankly you probably will glaze over on those. Um bylaw revisions which are about the
027workings of council. So those are things probably that interesting for you to see but not you know if you want to look at them great but not changing of the handbook but just things for Linda was kind enough with council to put together something so you kind of get a sense of some of the business of council. Um and if there's anything you have questions about. Yeah. So just to Yeah. Then so just to clarify for the board that the only two that represent handbook changes are the first one and two and the remaining items they're they're not so those are not handbook changes. Yeah. Any questions for Ellie? I'm not trying to ask. Sorry. Um, just on the on the sports expectations, I guess I I'm so in our experience, there have been situations
028where there were optional practices. Yeah. During days that were optional games during days that were supposed to be off during breaks. Yes, it doesn't feel very optimal to children and families. Yeah. So, I was just curious if the counselor in the handbook if that had been brought up. That hadn't necessarily been brought up. I think the main thing was brought up more about varsity teams having the varsity commitment because what happened with this vacation, the April break on one of the teams, all of their three games had to be cancelled because they didn't have enough people for a varsity team because they left anyway. So, they thought it was optional. Um, right. Right. Depends on who your kid is and what like, you know, my family didn't go anywhere over break, you know? So, it
029just depends on sort of your, you know, how people feel in terms of guilt about that. Um, and uh I would I what I've said to Megan is that we need to take that and put it out to the coaches. We have a beginning of the coach, you know, we have to put that in writing to the coaches. There were some new coaches this year who weren't necessarily like they they said it last minute, right? And so that's hard for families too. Um the break is moving next year to the heart of the season, right? So to give you an example just from personal experience, I wrote to the other schools that we race yesterday, gave them what I think our schedule should be. And then I'm going to send tomorrow the parents the schedule
030a year in advance. and here are the three days you have awful break. So that like everybody knows because often it's but we made arrangements but we didn't know and none of the ninth graders know, right? So that's the other piece. Ninth graders don't know they're going to make varsity. So I think there's the exception. They don't know if they're going to make varsity. They don't know what team they're on. They didn't know they were going to play it. Right. So I think it's hard to have expectations for them. Um Yeah. Right. So it's it's it's messy right now, I think. And so I think for co and I think the coaches when this came into the handbook 10 years ago coaches were hyper vigilant about it because it was new and now it's kind
031of faded a little bit. So it has to be a reminder too and that those days like optional can't on the days that are supposed to be off can't do right. Okay. They need to be off. Yeah. So we'll education piece on both sides. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I feel like it's messy. Like I didn't know for my own child until two days before the day the two days off that they were going to be Yeah. this spring and I like work at the school day, right? So like it's definitely messy. Lisa. Yeah. And I I just want to back Kelly up on that. From our experience and having pe students who played three sports, it makes it really difficult to find time to do almost anything, which is the choice that we made. But encouraging
032coaches for as much advanced planning as possible is unbelievably helpful. And also being careful about um calling things captain's practices or there are lots of euphemisms that come into play and just really making it like some of the coaches are really good of this is a time that you need to do anything but this sport um and other coaches are not so great at that. So any other comments on the proposed handbook changes? You have one more, Ben. No, I'm glad we're going in this direction of the clarity, but I guess call me an old family softy, which no one will ever say, but ask why are we allowed to have practices during vacations in the first place? Um because the NHIA schedule isn't um doesn't go along with like all the different schools have
033different weeks. There's three different vacations in New Hampshire. So then you would have to have three weeks if you're not playing. Um it's it's a n like for spring it's a nineweek season, right? And so um yeah. No, I get what you're saying. like I have three season athlete kids or I had now I have a two season which gives us one extra little time but um you know we yeah breaks weren't breaks but part of it's because they're they tend to be in the heart of those seasons and so to give the students a week off in the middle of those seasons has implications in terms of when they come back they might have four games in a week to make up for it which is not great for their schooling right they're they're
034potentially getting injured because they've taken off a week and then they're coming back having done nothing and then going straight into the heart of their games. There's like a bunch of reasons why. And then some would argue and have argued in the past when I was here when we made this rule that there are number of kids that don't go anywhere over break even though those kids are not talked about at handover. And those kids welcome having practice over break because it's something to do because they're here for a week and a half and everyone else is in the Bahamas and it's nice to have something to do. So there's Yeah. So I would point out that we we actually asked that in our last survey, not this one, but the last one. And it's
035across all four schools. It's ballpark. 50% leave the area and 50% stay in one way or another. And I I can double check where it is for the high school, but it's It's not 100%. It's not zero either. And that's just the people who actually go. It doesn't account for the ones that were planning on going and that are stuck. Yeah. For whatever reason. Lisa was stuck. Lisa was stuck. Any any other questions, comments on the proposed handbook changes? Lisa. Yeah. I I as I'm thinking of this, I'm looking to the chair whether this is a question that should be saved for the SAU meeting, but with the principles here, um there was movement from the calendar committee um to have a list of um holidays that for people to be aware of. The recommendation
036was to attach it to the school calendar, which proved to be electronically not feasible, but I'm wondering if the handbooks are a place that those could be listed. And I'm just I again I don't know whether it's this board that that could be, but it just feels like if we have these handbooks out there, I would assume the school calendar is part of the handbook every year. Maybe, maybe not. I don't know. And then if it is, if that list could be attached to that just for awareness purposes. So, just throwing that out there. Certainly sounds like something the administration could opine and and decide on her. Any other questions, comments, concerns about the handbook changes? All right. Seeing none, Julie, don't get too comfortable. We're going to move on to the Hard High School
037survey. Board members, the survey information was attached to your packet. We bid a due to Ben Keiny. We welcome Michael Costa, who has arrived after being online. We are about net even for in-person presence which is awesome. Um, Julie, did you want to give us a high level overview of things first or just Good. I mean, we have a a number of surveys we give each year um and different things that we do, right? You have a NEAS report. So, that takes care of that. And we have equity data that at some point we want to share with you that Ben's actually helping with um to try to figure out trends over the couple years. We've done equity data like a survey to the students about their social emotional health and equity, but then also
038grade reports and how students of different groups are doing based on their GPA and the classes they're in, the rigor of classes. So, that stuff you'll see at some point. And then there's this, which we started doing three years ago. We now have three years worth of data from it. So, we want to maybe do something with it. Um, just pointing out that only 145 of our families did it. So, there's a lot of people who aren't speaking here, but here it is. It tends to be moms of boys that are answering these surveys. Um, so take I don't know what that means. Anyway, moms of boys like to answer surveys. And then, um, we it seems that we are increasing power school checking, which is an interesting note. Um, in the mental health and
039well-being part, um, this is the part we're sort of puzzling on and thinking might be concerning. It feels like more and more parents don't know their kids' friends. That was an interesting thing. And that um, we're trending better, but 15% is not what we want of people having a sense of feeling like they don't belong or a bit of not belonging. Like it seems like that. Yeah, we're a little bit concerned about that. Then um study skills. People keep on talking about not being able and it's a trend over the three years getting organized for school. Um and so we have some thoughts about that and are easily distracted when doing work at home. Um and then academically um interesting. you've been really working for those who sit on some of those committees like rabbit
040right and right Deb to try to standardize some rating policies but yet we're doing worse in that category so who knew it's not I mean we still have 58% but we used to be 68% so why when we've actually been thinking about it maybe we're drawing attention to we don't know right like maybe by talking about it people are thinking about it more um and some people still don't even know what we're doing with grading. So, our communication needs to get better there. Um, a lot of people get tutoring in science and math. That's the highest areas. And that was on the other survey that you did or that Ben had done about tutoring. Um, number of comments you can see on grading inconsistencies. Um, parents not knowing friends. So, should, you know, we I
041wrote there, you know, do we need directory help? Do we have community events for parents? What should we do there? Um improvement in communication, especially around student grades. It seems like we need to do better with that. Um do we work on open house and try to make that there was a couple comments about being short, you know, do we do we see new families on an inservice day? Like what can we do to sort of bring people in? Um communication around senior stuff. we got a seems we could do better there. Um and now we have three years worth of data. So um the teachers are reporting from and this wasn't in the survey that good news from the cell phone policy. Um but clearly kids are distracted at home. So like should we
042try to help families come up with ideas about things like that? Um, I didn't I realized like gave you the redacted data, but you can I don't know if you can make it into the pretty charts that we have with ours, you know, that sort of like on Tim's you could see some of the charts. I feel bad about that. What you my or it was blocked for our Google account access. So, we should try to send again. Should you can I just send it directly to the board emails on the document in Google? We just need to say if we have a link or put our name available or private with our name like add the names in Google drive. Either way, I'm sure if you send it to Ben, he can make sure
043you can send the chat. Jay can make sure that it gets what we thought you were looking at was every single answer on a spreadsheet from 1 to 145 for every single question minus names. Um, and that doesn't give you the pretty graphs and charts. So, maybe we'll try to make it pretty so you can see it. Um and but most of the marks were high. It's just that what you focus on, you know, and and were positive are at least I focus on the negative. So, you know, for those 145 people, some of them things aren't great. So, wow. Didn't realize the survey results were that great. Anyway, and there's a lot of respect between staff and students, which is nice to see. I mean, there's good stuff in there. Um, we're just pointing
044out areas that we might be able to look at. And now that we have three years worth of data, we're thinking of trying to figure out a way to make it into three-year charts and graphs and things that we could bring to a staff meeting and say, "Here's some more information. Is there anything we want to do with this?" Yeah. Questions? I will start with Deb. I I actually am am really fascinated slashconerned that it seems to tell a story about boys in the school and distractions at home friendships, family connections. And so I think I mean I'm also concerned that we're missing girls and but I I have to look at what we are seeing and I think it would be a I would love to have additional conversations not necessarily at the board
045level about what might be able to be done and what ideas people might have if we treat this as a a serious concern. Yeah. Oh, may I respond to that? So, having a freshman boy, I happen to know that this class is like 70% boys for whatever reason. So, if we assume that ninth grade parents tend to answer surveys in greater number already, that might be skewing it a little bit. Um, and of course, parents who have concerns tend to answer surveys. Right. So I mean and you said that Julie I think there's you know there's probably some but not to discount the story but it is a particularly interesting class from that standpoint. I know going to the middle school they had home rooms that were all boys. Um because that's just you know
046it was either that or put two girls in with the rest of them being boys which is challenging for a lot of reasons. So um it's yeah it's an interesting class in a small school environment. Right. Yeah. Um, the girls are badass in ninth grade though. I'm biased. I have one. True. I say that. So, I think and I would say as a mom, I think that this actually might reflect moms of girls too. I can't remember if I filled it out or not. No, I didn't. Very small thing. I am not a power school checker parent. Like I think Gen X parents are not helicopter parents. I'm a freerange parent. And so my opinion is my kids have to get their own grades because I already did school. So if you email me when
047their grades come out, I will actually look at them. I never look at my kids. Just like if power school had that technology, I would be so thrilled because I never look at my kids when they come out and they're as a fellow Gen X member and we survived the Cold War unsupervised afternoon. Kids can do it, too. I love that. That's a great You hear my opinion. Yeah, I I never looked as well. Not once. Yeah. So, that's all right, gang. Let's get it together here. Who the chair is? Uh, Mr. Bo, you have your hand up. Yeah. I was just going to say it's uh it's rather interesting. In the middle school, we have the eighth grade is again like the ninth grade, we have uh over 23 more boys than girls. the
048seventh grade is skewed the other way. Um has probably 15 more girls than boys. So, it's been an interesting sort of dynamic to look at in terms of uh what people feel about behavior and all kinds of other things. And it's making us rethink sort of how do we do things? And we've had a fair number of years in a row where we have more boys than girls significantly. Uh, and now we're shifting back and the sixth grade is relatively equal. So, it'll be interesting to see how things do going forward. Um, I I'm not making any sort of largecale ideas about what's going on in society, but it's it's very interesting when you only have 130 of them and the skew is 20 one way or the other. It's it's an interesting uh situation.
049Any other questions, comments for Julie and the high school survey results? I'll try to figure out why you can't see it. Okay. And like I said, if you run if that is a child, the good, bad, and the ugly, it's all there. Send it to Jay and then more questions after seeing that. All right. Thank you. All right. We're going to move on to RMS school survey. I already received that RMS I think you said that was part of my report. So, okay. Sorry. I'm just going through the agenda and I'm on RMS school survey, but we're just gonna move over that. If you refreshed, you'll see the proposed NHS. Yes. So, board, moving on to item 5e, proposed NHSBA resolutions, which we talked about not even a week ago, and here we are. I
050am going to turn it over to our wonderful colleague Deb Bacon Nelson to walk us through some of this. So, you might remember we had a really brief free-for-all at last week's meetings suggesting possible resolution topics. um open enrollment, book banning, vouchers, funding, um the NRA mandatory training and resolution about civic engagement. And I spend a lot of time looking through stuff, both the actual texts of the bills. And what I am want you all to know is that there are actually two resolutions that are in the process. They are they come up for review for three years and then they become permanently part of the school board's resolutions. So, two of them deal with book banning and or curricular choices and decision- making and have them at the So, I crossed book banning off
051um short of adding a statement about that was specific to LGBTQ plus content, which I am not sure we want to do. um they stand intact and they've received the support of a majority of the people in attendance. I did check and language can be tweaked and it doesn't reset the clock. So if we were to change a line or add a line, it wouldn't mean that we go back to waiting three years um before that becomes part of the permanent collection. But my suggestion is that we not worry about banning books. I mean, we can worry about banning books, but not about a resolution. The same thing was true about vouchers and about funding. And so, the two places where Neil and I batted around some ideas were open enrollment and civic engagement. And
052open enrollment is is really problematic in my mind. Um there are a number of issues. I the bill says the sending school provides up to 80% of the cost of the of the sending district tuition. Um they don't have any clarity about what happens to cover the remainder. Um there's no reference for example to the family being charged. So there's just a lot of unknowns about a chunk of money. There aren't any we don't know what the implications are for this district and the missing revenue. We don't know. It says that districts have to expand the operating budget to include estimates we have no way to anticipate. Um we don't know how many students we might receive. Do we need to budget based on the total number we could fit in this building? Um we
053don't know if it applies K through 12. It simply says open enrollment. Um, I can't see a kindergarten or traveling, but you know, who knows? Um, if passed, the bill goes into effect January 1st of this coming year. There isn't a clear process for handling applications from prospective students. What are the rights of the receiving district? Can you set some standards? If people are bring behavioral problems, can you say, "Nope, thanks." Um, what are the rights of the receiving district? The language suggests students with disabilities can participate, but educational decision-making remains with the sending district. I don't even know how to unwrap that in terms of IEPs and needings to review IEPs. There's nothing in the language of the bill about transportation or clarity around the receiving districts obligations. What about extracurricular opportunities? um participation
054on sports teams, attending March intensive, receiving scholarship money we've set aside for that purpose. Um and there are enormous potential impacts on school districts that lose students both in terms of their costs, their staffing, and their ability to continue to offer programming. Um there's no fiscal note attached to this bill. They're very dismissive when it comes to fiscal notes. It's like, you know, you'll figure it out there. there's nothing. Um, and there are no disciplinary expectations. So, what what we've suggested is the barebones minimum here. And I anticipate because there's there's session on Thursday and Friday. I expect this bill to pass, but you know, who knows whether the governor will sign it. Um, I So, we're really sort of in this weird place of trying to come up with resolutions because we're not going
055to meet again except as a handover board until the end of the end of August, which is past the deadline. So, I thought what would be helpful is to have a resolution about an open enrollment. I have been in conversation with some other school boards members who similarly create um resolutions that we often agree on and they're happy that we are starting the process. But I think we could also withdraw our resolution if it looks like another district has a better one. But so I've given you I've given you I have this a very short resolution about open enrollment to consider the Do you want me to keep going or do you want to talk about that one? Why don't we pause and just talk about the open enrollment? Okay, before we move on board
056members have any questions, comments, concerns about this one and that's just a refresher for folks. Right. So, the way that this works is that school districts across the state Thank you. Thank you. propose resolutions to the New Hampshire School Boards Association. They are entertained at what is called their delegate assembly which happens in the fall. Um resolutions get voted on by all members of NHSBA. So if you're a dues paying school district or school board in New Hampshire, then you're part of that uh process. If they pass, I believe by twothirds um vote margin, then they become a position of NHSPA and they use those for their advocacy work and and other things. Any questions, comments on what we've got put forward here as a proposed resolution for enrollments? Right? I think it's good to
057move on to civic engagement. Okay. And I do know that just pointed out that we're missing the semicolon there after the word expectations. a civic engagement. Um Neil basically cribed this from um the Vermont School Board Association and in all honesty I thought we were talking about um you know teaching civics and government and which of course is in the curriculum. But so I'm just bringing this forward because I was somewhat confused about what exactly we were being asked to craft a resolution around. So and that may indeed be my confusion as well too because it could have been the other thing and I and I misinterpreted civic engagement. Well, both of us are at your command. I mean, I was thinking, um, what was I thinking? I don't know. I don't see it anymore,
058but go for it. No, I mean, I think you brings up a good point. Civic engagement, I think, could be interpreted two different ways. One is um, you know, uh, I think sort of like the instruction or the the promotion of of civics's instruction, right, at the high school or the middle school level. Another is just general civic engagement as part of the democratic process that we are all a part of as being members of the school board and engaging with our community. Um the resolution, the proposed resolution that you see here was stolen directly from the Vermont School Boards Association and was one that was passed a few years ago. um probably sort of at the height of a lot of these concerns that were happening particularly during the end of the pandemic where
059um people were getting pretty um tense and uh and and you know threatening in in schoolboard meetings and we didn't see too much of that particularly in in this specific area but it certainly was occurring in other places across the country and and even some places not too far from here. So that's I think what prompted the the resolution you see here. Um but it's up to this body to decide whether or not this is something that we would like to bring forward to NHSBA. Dev. Go ahead. And if I might, I think the the really nice part about this particular resolution is that it uh folds nicely with the most recent resolution of the high school council about uh civically engaging one another, but also standing up for and being a voice when things
060are not going well. So, it's a nice echo, if you will, of that. I mean, I I think this is fine. I don't mean to suggest it isn't, but I went off from last week's meeting thinking, "Oh, you know, we're going to have a resolution about volunteering on and and on campaigns and getting local electeds to come into buildings and talk about the the process, but I don't actually think we need a resolution for that. schools can can do that within the umbrella of civic instruction which we're already a part of. Gina, I don't have any problem with what's in this. And I think it's interesting for us to put it in because it makes you could interpret it that there was something that prompted us to put this in like that we've had some
061sort of univil engagement or discourse and in my short tenure I haven't felt that. And so that would be like my question as a board is is this something that we want to call attention to if there has not been incident of it or do we think it's important to put in because we think it could get challenging given everything that's going on and I I don't think I have a strong lean either way. Yeah question. Yep. K. Yeah. I think um I think my thought in looking at it was like and I'm not a words smithther but thinking about the conversations currently happening in my world in education and just like is like how do we get the civic engagement and how do we ensure that as opposed to a response to a negative
062but just like do people understand the process right? like some really wild things are being passed at state and federal levels that um and and do our youth are do they understand engagement? Are we sure that there's a sense of what their um role is in that? And that feels really valuable to me in this time that we emphasize that yes, a piece of education is teaching kids about our systems and how to engage in those systems and have your voice be heard in a civil discourse. um which is also in some examples that they do see and you're right I haven't experienced it here but you they see it and hear it on in media and so I think for me it feels really valuable and timely um I have only read it in
063this moment and so I haven't had a good chance and I feel like I feel strongly the emphasis is like how do we work on engagement as a core component in education and or acknowledge that like that civic engagement is a core piece piece of education because I think some of that is what's being shipped. I don't know. I don't know. Um I want to I'll get to Tara in one second. I want to acknowledge the fact that I am not your normal chair and while we are saying tonight that we want to make sure try to get through these tonight and approve so that we don't have to get together again prior to August 1st. There's nothing that says that we can't get together again prior to August 1. if there's some thoughts or
064some, you know, changes that we want to make here. I wouldn't want this board to feel pressured that these have to be set and determined this evening. Sarah, I just wanted to provide a little context and and this was brought up independent of that, but the last composition of the board, we had a conversation about the implications of having our personal home addresses and phone numbers posted on the website. And I would never have imagined that that would have been an issue, but it was. And so we no longer have that data up. Um, which is strange, but I guess sort of reflective of the times that we find ourselves. Um, and so I do think that that sort of freshening my mind that that this is a useful thing for us as a board
065to say. Um I I do I want to share just another aspect of this with with board members who may not be familiar with this. So part of what you see I I actually might recommend and and I understand that it seems a little awkward because I was the one that sort of put this language forward that we actually strike everything from accordingly um till the end of the paragraph and there's a reason behind that is that the uh or the last accordingly it says accordingly we as elected officials I would actually recommend that we strike all of that. Um if we roll back the clock a little bit one of the situations that happened um back during sort of this this this this the COVID era. Um and one of the things that led
066to this resolution um in Vermont was the situation that happened at the federal level um when uh then Attorney General Merrick Garland had made a recommendation, I think based on some conversations the Biden administration that we be a little bit more proactive about protecting elected officials, particularly at the local schoolboard level. that was um interpreted by some as school boards not wanting parents to engage in the education process um locally and really sort of uh spun in a way that was very detrimental to um the National School Boards Association which prompted NHSBA to leave the organization and so there's a little bit of background and history and I do worry a little bit Deb is that if we sort of were bringing this forward in its entirety as written tonight. Um, some people are going
067to notice that um, and probably not not take kindly to it or not be inclined to approve something like this. And so I think it might temper it a little bit to strike that last bit which I think is likely to maybe um, you know, irk some folk. Yeah, I would also be uh interested in sharing this conversation about the second point because the first one sounds like people didn't have really a problem with it. Um, but taking this language and sharing it with the group that I talk to and seeing if between the group we can get a different board that meets over the summer wants to tweak it and play with it. Um, and if something comes up, I mean, we will see all the resolutions in the fall. Um, and maybe not
068try to reshape this in a a board meeting. We can also fiddle with it and bring it back to the group. Yeah. Yeah. And like I said, I I don't think that's an unreasonable suggestion. I don't know that we necessarily have to pass either one of these this evening. Um, and I know that, you know, you all thought you might get your entire summer off with no board meetings, but to throw one in there, um, that could be all of a half an hour, I don't think is a is a bit that's doing too much, um, in order to make sure that we get these things right. Absolutely. Right. um any further discussion because with that then they were on the list for approval later on in the agenda and so we can certainly pull
069those out if you wanted to um vote on each one of them individually um and board it's okay right collectively if we just if the vote actually says no we don't want to approve these resolutions go ahead in the past I think we've given deb some latitude to make adjustments is Uh the latitude was the latitude was at the meeting itself. If something came up, okay, that we hadn't all seen, I had the flexibility to vote on it according to what I thought. And I do and Jada just made that recommendation. Technically, yes. Right. With the the board could authorize debt to make changes to these resolutions after this evening. I would caution against doing that. I think the uh having these changed substantively after the board's seen them and passed them um is not
070in our best interest, right? Because they're going to have the resident board name on them when they go to NHSDA. So, I think we want to be a little bit more careful and we just continue these. What's that? Should we just continue these to a future meeting? Uh we can certainly Yeah, we can certainly um any vote on these things this evening. I would I would propose that we vote on them separately because I think there's more alignment on one than the other. Okay, we can certainly do that. Any further discussion on these none then let me get back to my agenda. So let's do this board. We are now in business requiring action and we have a consent agenda that is B through G by consent. I believe that that is appropriate for this
071evening. We'll handle H separately. So if a board member would in be inclined to give me a motion, I move to approve items B through G by consent. Is there a second for that motion? Second from Lisa. Any discussion? All right. All those in favor? We are going to do roll call because I've got one member online. I'm going to start with Lisa. Christie, yes. McConnell, yes. Deon, yes. Yes. Yes. Nelson, yes. Russell, yes. And Renee. Sullivan. Yes. That is unanimous. Thank you, board. We're going to move on then to item H, which is approve of the proposed NHSBA resolutions. I got the sense that we might favor one over the other. And if some board member felt so inclined to craft a motion on the fly, but before we do that, Deb's got Well,
072the language here has what Terara was referring to, the second part of the sentence that should be dropped. uh our NH delegate to vote on any other matter that should come before the assembly. That's part of the what we do in the fall after we see all the resolutions. So just ignore that part. Yep. So I think you I think an appropriate motion would be something along the lines of move to approve the proposed resolution regarding open enrollment as presented. Gina, I move to approve the proposed NHSBA resolution on uh open enrollment as presented. Thank you. Is there a second to that motion? Second from Tara. Is there any discussion on that motion? All right, seeing none, we'll do a roll call vote starting with Lisa. Christy, yes. Yes. Kanye, yes. Bill, yes. Austin, yes.
073Nelson, yes. Yes. Yes. and Renee Sullivan. Yes, that is unanimous. Thank you very much board. We will continue to work on that other one in the future. We're going to move on to report of the chair. I have nothing to report and we move on to committee reports. Well, I could say congratulations on all of our new graduates soon to be. I hope they go on and do wonderful things. I hope everybody enjoys their summer months. Got those parents with small kids have figured out the camp schedule. I'm sorry it's painful. I've been through that before. I know it was bad. It gets better. It gets better. Tell you what gets better. All right. Committee reports. Anything to report from any of our committees? Central staff development. Anything happened there? No. Council, nothing there. Career
074tech center. Uh it was just a quick meeting. They vote to purchase a piece of land that they've been using that is Harford's piece of land, but the tech center is going to purchase it. Okay. And clever tuition committee. It's really hard to squeeze in a meeting when your last resin meeting was just last week. Going to move on to superintendent report then. Um I'm going to defer my report to the SA meeting. Great. I love it. Thanks, Lisa. Why are your meetings always uh Assistant Superintendent Steiner? I can do the same and defer mine to I love it even more directors. Sorry, Lisa. Lisa. Um, well, I have two different ones. They both might say a couple things. Duplicate. Um, I just want to say from the business office, obviously we're very busy winding
075down trying to get purchase orders closed out and everything else and try to wrap up this year before everybody jumps into next year already because I already want to create POS for next year. Um and then I've been meeting I met with the transportation Mike Gadet from uh student transportation of America just kind of formally introduce myself more and then talking about transportation and sort of going forward with what the plan is regarding um who's creating the roots and things like that and the we had a front desk person who was getting um busing requests and stuff like that. So things kind of shifted. So I'm kind of it right now um on any of that. So we're making sure that everything's still hopefully running smooth here. I've been meeting with maintenance department primarily Tony
076and Matt on the projects that are happening. The pavilion probably the biggest thing that everybody is asking about at RMS that pavilion projects moving forward. We have maybe one Tony's checking on one more thing. We've got our quotes and we pretty much know who the vendor is going to be, but you want to double check one thing. So, probably in the next week and then we'll get that ordered so that way that project can be done this summer. And that's kind of the happenings that just inside of it. Nice. Any questions? And I did upload other reports since it's only been a week. There really hasn't been any changes, but a detailed report from last week for fun one. Um I I got that uploaded because I realized I didn't do that. And then of
077course the march intensive and Yeah. Nope. Perfect. Okay. One, two, three, four, five, six reports attached. Okay. Y that means if you just rate that out, we're looking at about 40 reports if it was a month in between meetings. So be thankful. All right. We do have a brief need for a nonpublic session this evening. It would be for 91 A32C if a board member were so inclined to make that motion. Please. Oh, don't be shy. Dev, go ahead. I move to enter into non-public session at 7:13 p.m. under RSA 91- A3 Roman numeral 2 paren C paren. Thank you. Is there a second for the motion? Seconded by Michael Costa. Any discussion? Roll call vote. Starting to Lisa Christie. Yes. Yes. Odell. Yes. Yes. Nelson. Yes. Rosley. And Renee. Sullivan. Yes. Try to figure
078out how to get you into that nonpublic session. The surveys are shared with you now. Just so you know. I know. Gina has my number. Gina, call me. Yeah, I do have your number. Okay, cool. Hi Tim. We're coming back. Awesome. Thank you. Mhm. gonna uh get going here again. Um uh we're back to uh the second public comment of the evening evening. Any public comments? Seeing none, if you have any topics for the agendas for the next meeting, get them to Ben, not to me. I don't care. Ben does. I will look for it. I guess we're trying to get out of here, but on the agenda topic, I was in the car when I heard that we were punting discussion till next fall of a March intensive. March intensive. I understand that historically
079historically later is the best time to talk about March intensive. So that that's we're all comfortable with September or does that need to be talked about? I would say August. August. I'll take it up for August. Okay. Hey, that answers my question. We'll make sure that Mr. Keiny knows that the request was one of those we'll tell Ryan and then tell Ryan. So we need to make sure Ryan August minute taker please note that Mr. Ben Keaney needs to know about this request for August March intensive discussion at the August board meeting. All right if I see no other items that we need to discuss I'll look for a motion to adjurnn. Move to adjourn at 7:23. Thank you. Seconded by Deb. I'll give it to you this time. Any discussion? Roll call vote. Starting
080with Lisa. Christy, yes. McConnell, yes. Dayonia, yes. Odell, yes. Yes. Nelson, yes. Russell, yes. And Rene, are you still with us? Sullivan, yes. Unanimous. Thank you, board. We are done.