001I don't know. I'm not a chair. I'm just Okay, speaking of the chair, right, we're going to call this meeting order at 7:14 with apologies for the delay from the previous meeting and some technological setup. So, uh, guys, bear with us. We have a couple of things to go through. We'll get to you really fast. Does anyone have any wish to change the agenda around? We'll get to the two groups of students as soon as we're done with the hearing. Right. So, we're going to have um a quick public hearing to accept a donation from the Jack and Dorothy Burn Foundation. Julie, is this you? It is. Right. You want So, um there's been a history with Dorothy and this group for a long time. She's donating again, as you know, completely generous. Wanted to
002hear what their updates and wanted to contribute again. So, thank you for the fever. They're all here to present you. So you know about it. As always, we appreciate the foundation's work. Would anyone like to make a motion defer this public hearing? Done. I move to approve with gratitude a donation from the Jack and Darthy Burn Foundation in the amount of $25,000 for NEBP as presented. Lisa, all those in favor? Right. That is unanimous. Thank you much. We're moving right along to I'm going to close the public hearing and open the regular Dresden board meeting. Does anyone wish to p uh have any public comment on things unrelated to items already on the agenda? Seeing none, there will be another Oh, yep. Why are you sitting over there? Because um last week elected our new
003representative to the school board, which is Ian Sun. Hi, nice to meet you. Hi, welcome. Yeah, I just I wanted to quickly thank the board for welcoming me at the start of last year and bearing with me for this last year. It's been a great experience. I hope to carry it into next year even though I um will be gone for the first semester. So, I won't be the representative to this board. Um but I hope I know Ian's going to do a great job. So, I just wanted to thank the board. Thank you. Thank you so much. Your name and your talent. There you go. Thank you all. We appreciate your service and welcome. Don't feel free to raise your hand. All right. Any other public comment? All right. Seeing none, we're going to
004switch to the RMS vignette on robotics. That's you guys. Just want to introduce yourselves and tell us what's uh what's going on. Yeah. Cool. Uh well, thanks for having us. Number one, um do want to acknowledge Jack and Gory Bern foundation support for our recent crypto worlds. So we want we were invited to give a a quick talk on sort of what the first Lego League has been for these guys and a little bit about that. So my name is Eric Kitzki from Norwich Vermont. This is my right wife Raina. She's also in Norwich. We co- coach this particular team from RMS. And I'll just give you an overview first really quickly. She'll talk a little bit about how we organized and then the team will give you some talks. Okay. So, uh, First Lego
005League is sort of the first foray into the first series of robotics, right? And so, they kind of have three different levels. First Lego League, first tech challenge, which there is a theme here at Hanover, First Tech Challenge, and then First Robotics is sort of their marquee event that does have a significant side note. Um, so our our grades are basically six to eight here in the US about 11 to 14 year olds. Okay. Um so first level has a bunch of core values are really centered on uh including everybody getting everybody participating everybody bringing ideas to the table uh using their innovative ideas to improve the world uh working together teamwork having fun learning new skills and and really embracing technology in a whole bunch of different ways. Right? So kids at least at
006RMS in the two years that I've coached have joined primarily because it sounds like fun. It is fun and they learn how to code. They learn how to do Lego robotics or they love robotics and Legos in general and they just want to keep going with it. So that's why we see them uh at the beginning of each year for us. We kind of sat down with our team and say what do you want to get out of it? Do you want to do robotics? Do you want to do coding? And these guys said we want to win New Hampshire states. Um and which I'm not going to spoil it. They did. But uh we because there's so many facets, we let them sort of pick their own path through this process. Um and so
007I'll tell you a little bit about the the way uh this this goes. So you hear Lego Robotics. Uh what you see there on the screen, that's the Lego Robotics board. It's actually only a quarter of the competition. So there's missions on the board and then they have a robot that has to go and do these missions and each mission achieves them a certain number of points and uh they can choose how do we do these missions? Do we combine them in single drives or do we bring it back to the home area and change what the robot looks like and then go try to do other missions? So there's strategy, there's robot design, there's coding, there's a whole bunch of different pieces. Uh so you can just click there. So that's one quarter of
008it. There are three other quarters. Uh there's um a robot design presentation. They have to give a presentation like an engineering presentation. This is how we created it. This is the choices we made. Um and they give it to a team of judges. You can click the next one. Then there's a completely separate piece which is the innovation project and our team has done a fantastic job with that as well. Uh and this year was improve the lives of people working and living under in the ocean or under the ocean. So it's basically ocean research related and you'll they'll you'll hear a lot about that. And then uh the last piece is core values. How well are they embracing this idea of including people, sharing ideas, collaborating, working together, being positive in their feedback and
009not negative in their feedback? a lot of those pieces, but we get judged on those aspects as well. Um, and I'm not going to go through all these, but there's a lot of pieces. We only have 10 weeks between when our season starts and when regionals is. And as coaches, we have a lot of things we want them to learn. Bas skills and coding. Uh, creating this idea for the innovation project. It's all team driven. We don't tell them what to work on. They figure that out on their own. Um, uh, they have to figure out and create these, these are our final iterations, but the information they share with the judges at this competition is posters and presentations. how they stand up and communicate with everybody. Um, and then, uh, let's see. Uh, lots
010of different skills. So, I'll let Rihanna take over from there. I know you're here to hear the kids and not us. So, I'm going to just flash through a few photos to kind of show what was happening. So, for the robot work, um, they had to they had these missions they had to solve. They built attachments. Um, they built a base robot to move around the board and they did a lot of programming. Um, and then innovation project again was separate. Um and they did a lot of brainstorming and very late in the season they actually did a lot of testing and building and prototyping. Um and again core values was quarter of their score and a big part of that is communicating to other teams and uh just working well together and being really
011positive. So in the interest of time I'm going to skip through this but they went to regionals they privilege of going to worlds um in Houston. So in Houston the team represented RMS and a big part of it was sharing their ideas. So they had a booth where they had to describe their project to both younger kids and to adults. Um, and actually the Navy was one of the vendors there showing their work and they came by many times because their display model at their booth of an underwater nuclearpowered submarine was very much like the team's model. So they're going to tell you about that in a minute. Um, yeah, and they worked hard as a team in the robot game. So thank you for their support. Uh, Jack and Dury Burn Foundation, Hypertherm, and
012RMS school board. So you're here to hear them. So, I'm gonna stop now and they're not going to do their whole robot presentation because it's easier to just see what it's about. So, we're going to just play a couple videos and they're going to describe a few of the things of how the robot worked and what the game was about and then they're going to present their innovation project. So, I'm just going to hit play and you guys kind of talk about me a little bit. Okay. So, this is the bangammer. It's a mission designed to solve this which is hitting that thing down and launching the sharks. It was a simple up and down motion and it was the first mission we saw so it was pretty big deal. It was very heavy and
013clumsy but it was a pretty great uh we used the um no missions to solve multiple missions in one go without just doing the shark. So it saved a lot of time. 23 seconds for 110 points while solving the mess. Uh this is the Kraken mission. Uh you have to lift a mass and pull a chest out from like a Kraken's mouth. So it's really difficult to keep the Kraken up while you're trying to grab the chest. So um I created a mission with guide rails um which were a later addition because the wasn't centering properly. And then uh also a top bar to stop the thing from over rotating and flipping over. Uh we use this run to sweep up all the loose pieces on the board as you can see right here in
014order so our later missions would not fail and get. So, this was used to put a bunch of pieces in one boat. So, we made like a suspension system and we also solved two missions at once by putting out those poles. Uh, this is a picture or a video of one of our pit stops. We practiced our pit stops a lot because um if you have a faster pit swap stop, you can switch between attachments faster and do more missions. Um, we watched videos of um F1 and NASCAR p um pit stops to try to get um inspiration for our own. Um and we also did a lot of practice. Um so this is one of our test runs on a code we were making to get the robot from one side to the other
015while doing some different missions along the way. So you can see it did not go very well. We had a lot of tests like that and some tests that went well and we eventually got to a good plan. Um on the right side of the mission board, we coded this very complicated movement. Um took us a lot of tries to get and we ended up doing two missions there. Uh near the end of the season, we got this mission which requires really delicate movements and we attempted to move the boat. Uh but we didn't end up doing So, do you guys want to do your innovation? All right. Yeah. All right. So, we are the robotic rays. We're from RMS. Um, our names are Wyatt, Ezra, Otto, and we're here to show you our innovation
016project side. Um, no problem. The primary issue that we are trying to solve um is the lack of extended travel among autonomous underwater vehicles EUVs. The range of almost all of these vehicles is certainly limited by their battery life which um means sometimes they can't get to the area scientists want them to and some places remain completely unexplored. Um, in order to make these AVs travel as far as we want them to, we would need a continuous supply of power. And without sufficient energy on board the AV, there's a limitation that to the amount of data we can gather to the ocean. Our world has changed quite a bit over the season. We knew there was a lack of data and understanding about the ocean. First, we talked to two marine biologists about the data
017we might want to collect. Next, we talked to a saturation diver who told us information on which materials and sensors will work under what. Then we spoke to an AUV engineer from MIT. He helped us narrow down our problem to the on the lack of range in AUVs. We focused on battery life as that is the main limiting factor and we decided to use fuel cells which turn on hydrogen and oxygen inside the probe. Carrying the hydrogen is very inefficient. So we sought to find other methods to acquire it. He found a paper written by a group of MIT scientists who found a costefficient way to get hydrogen from seawater reactive aluminum and we could put that aluminum on board. So with enough of those reactants, we can make virtually unlimited hydrogen and extend the
018travel range of baiton significantly. So with a large supply of aluminum and a tank of oxygen, our AUV baiton is ready to go anywhere. So video um so we have a video on how to make hydrogen. So aluminum reacts with salt water to produce hydrogen but oxidizing the process. So the aluminum is coated in a utctic gallium mixture which is roughly one part indium three parts gallium and that helps it from to stop oxidizing and it still lets it react with the water. Uh through the testing we found the testing we found that uh the more of it that is on the more of the utcticium that is on the aluminum it makes the thing more potent in the reaction. And here's a little bit of our detected coated aluminum to pass it around. Um
019and the coffee is added because it is a cost effective way to get catalysts called emitzole. Um, emit is greatly needed because it's used the reaction 24 times and we did a couple of tests and as you may be able to see it's less beautiful and the more we added that made it more clean and last longer and faster. We estimated that with 70 watts we can power propulsion sensing systems and with a large amount of aluminum in reaction centimeters of oxygen which we can easily fit in our robot. We can run this side for 2 weeks without stopping moving at 5 km per hour. This means that we can travel roughly up to 1600 km whereas most AVs can travel 10 to 20. The solution to our project has gone through many phases and
020iterations. Once we secured our problem, we came up with ideas for a solution and started looking for feedback. professor of chemistry talked to us about adding a nano filter to the robot. We attended a lecture at Dartmouth from a member of team. We're launching a right now. From there, we developed concept art for regionals. We have a three we made a 3D model for states which we do not have with us today. But for worlds, we constructed this partially functioning model. [Laughter] So, um yeah. Um so the process of making the electricity starts here with the pump. It um pumps in sea water from outside and it goes into the reaction chamber where um the catalyst and the fuel of the aluminum are added and then they react to generate the hydrogen. And the hydrogen
021is carried over to the fuel cell here and um is mixed with a stored oxygen to generate power which powers things like the motor um and the computer and the sensors. This project will definitely help with the collection of data about the ocean by extending the operating range of each mission. There's so much data and information that we don't have such as mapping the ocean floor. Those report is only 25% documented and deploying Pyron could really assist with this like mapping as well as gather more data like water salinity and temperature. So thank you for listening to our innovation project. Is it a currency trade pins? A couple of us got a couple from like just going around and collecting a pin from each. Yeah, I got like one. Thank you guys. Does anyone in
022any board members members of the public have questions for the robotics team or coaches? We have some examples of other teams pins. This is the Vermont team's pin. Talk to them. uh this team and this is we'll say the pins are really cool because it gives you a reason to talk to people. So Otto, I don't know how many pins you ended up with, but he was weighed down with like 10 of pins, but it's really neat because you you get to talk to people from all over the world. Um and one thing we didn't mention is uh one of the neat things they do at Worlds is they they'll pair you with an international team and then they give you new challenges. And so we got paired with a French team where we had
023to solve all these new robot Lego robot challenges in a short amount of time which was really neat for the the team to participate. We had to like pass the language barrier and yeah Google translate. It was really cool to work with people and solve the missions. Question I'm super impressed. I've never been able to do something like this when I was your age. I'm really curious where the girls are. Yeah. No, we were uh well it was it was kind of we all we were all friends with each other so we decided hey let's join the revive team were randomly assigned there was uh what two other teams the other ones had some girls any other questions for these guys are all of you are are there any sixth graders on the team Okay.
024Is that a coincidence or is that mostly sort of like kind of divided by grades a little bit? There was a ton of sixth graders. Actually, there was another sixth grade team that did there was a team that was mostly sixth graders that made it six and seven. Yeah, there were some other teams that made mistakes and they like the submarine. It was I will say that um this year they tried to break them up by by grade. This tend to be in classes together and have the same sort of schedules. So that was new to this year and it just so happened that we have all twice. Anyone else? Thank you. I just want to say thank you all so much. This was great. Thank you all for coming. The board loves Thank you
025for what you learned. And uh you are under no obligation to stay, although you're welcome to if you want to. I'm sure you guys have plenty of things to do. Oh, all right. So um thanks all. And then we'll hear next. We do have a high school council rep presentation in between these two things. Ian, Ella, anything you want to report? I've been simmer now. Simmer now. You're the next. Well, hi. I'm Ian. I'm going to be a sophomore next year, but currently I'm a freshman. And I just got elected on the council this year. And then and then I got elected on to dress in school board representative also this year. Congrats. And recently in council we passed a motion where there was at large representative tie with me and like some other high
026school. And to solve that issue, we passed a bylaw where it said that we could have 13 large representatives if anything else. Uh, no. Questions for Ian. Ian sophomore. Sorry, freshman. Basically, thank you. Welcome. Then we'll move on to the high school vignette about the ballooning project. You guys want to model up in a similar format? Do you need So folks looking at the county, you'll see we have two vignettes tonight and we're meeting next week. As you heard from Lisa earlier, next week we'll have the principal reports. Yes, there you go. This is being recorded live on me. Good evening. I'm Kevin Lavine and I um teach chemistry here and also the STEM classes, wood, metal, CAD, and the engineering class CAT. And um I also do mentoring for the balloon team. Um two
027years ago, we were one of 53 schools selected to participate in the two eclipses. And uh out of those 53 schools, there were only five high schools. only two of them were public high schools and we were at the public high school on the east coast and we were so far over our heads really just thrown into the deep end. I had never flown a high altitude balloon before um but I I've learned a ton and it's been fun exploring it with the students. What I have here is Gus, Matilda and Chris and we're going to explain where we've come from and what we're doing now. Um, but this is a a nice photo because of this legacy piece now. Um, this was the originally clips team and has some of those seniors graduated and
028went off to do more with aerospace and engineering. We now have a new group coming in and we are going to continue to expand that. Um, yeah. Uh some of the goals for our specific team is just engage all students in science research and get our hands on real world data that we're collecting ourselves which is super super cool. Um and also providing us with student outreach opportunities to get more people involved in science and get more people going. So for example I joined this team because I was really into scientific research and I found this opportunity which is amazing. So as I mentioned we it's not off the shelf stuff. It wasn't like NASA said here go fly this and put it together. We've assembled everything. I um have taught the kids about the
029stacks. So, the balloons are latex balloons. They have a certain size. We have a certain weight limitation to get them up. The best term I've learned so far is our balloons have to be digestible. So, if they have to go through an airplane engine, it'll be perfectly fine. Not our balloon, but the airplane. And part of this experiment, we had to uh this was something for equipped. No one had ever done this, but we were trying to stream real time data. So, we sent cameras out that we made with raspberry pies and and we had a dish, you can't see it here, but it's a dish about this big that we would aim and you know, you're talking one or two degrees because our balloons go about 90,000 ft, 18 miles up and and so
030we're streaming data real time. This was us building that assembly to stream the data. Um, and then there's lots of testing. There's lots of testing of it. So, we spent a lot of time uh with this new project. We started in November and already we've got 130 hours in our new equipment and that's all volunteer. We show up downstairs on Saturdays and I feed them pizza and they design stuff. So, it's a great it's a great payback. But you can see here students learning machines, learning how to code, learning how to problem solve, learning how to break things and build quickly and move forward. Okay, so our first launch was from Randall, New Hampshire. Um, and we got our balloon to 96,000 ft, which is 18 miles. And then it did land in a tree,
031which is not ideal, but we were able to get it down with a slingshot. So, an overall success. Um, and then for the annular eclipse in Oregon, um, we flew out and launched. Um, an annual eclipse is like a total solar eclipse except the moon is further away, so it doesn't produce the um it doesn't produce the uh like the overall dark effect. Um unfortunately our balloon popped too soon so we didn't get all the data we wanted but um we were able to assemble our uh before we launched our balloon at Realms High School. So we got to um show the students um kind of what we did and do outreach in that way. Um this is a photo that one of our graduated members um Ki Patel took. Um it's a representation of
032gravity waves which is one of the things that we're researching. Um so this was taken during the eclipse and you can see the lines of clouds are the bottom of the ground waves where the um liquid has condensed um for the total soled from R's point New York um and we actually got to this like group of people gathered around us in this field when we were launching. So, we got to explain what we were doing and um talk about like the balloon while they while we were watching. So, a nice audience. Um and then this is a map of our flight travel. Um there were a lot of teams that were launching during this time. So, that one up there is us. So, you can see that there's a whole bunch of groups. Um
033and then we got some really good data from this launch. Um you can see here's like some of our altitude and velocity. Um and yeah it was a overall great success. So then as uh in the fall of uh 2024 we were offered the opportunity by NASA along with 23 other teams out of the 50 that participated in the solar eclipse. Uh we were the only public high school to be selected. Um and we we were uh offered the opportunity to observe CMEs or which are um coronal mass ejections basically like when the sun spits out a bunch of stuff. Um right now this was a great time to start observing them because we are in the middle of a solar maximum which happens every 11 years. And so this is why they want to
034get all this data right now because that's the best time to get it. Yeah. Um here's a little map of our latest flight. Uh as you can see we went up to 87,000 ft. This flight was specifically a shakedown of some of the equipment that we would be using to uh track uh coronal mass ejections uh because we're measuring radiation. Um and that's Mount Washington for scale. So it's honestly really cool how high we get to go. We missed Lake Nasoma by 30 feet. Six months worth of work would have just gone down in the lake, but yeah, landed on some deck. Um, and the really great thing about this launch is that our data in the top left and the um except the data in the bottom right uh for the radiation profile of
035a flight like this um were matching pretty well other than some sensor anomalies. Um and we were able to see the the peaks the known in the scientific community as the father maximum um that we were looking for uh which is a really great sign and right now we are currently awaiting a coronal mass injection to come our way so that we can get the real that's you know one of the things is not only do we have five different radiation sensors one of them is from cosmic watch at MIT where we had to assemble it all and solder the boards and I got to print my first computer which I've never done before. Um, but once you have the data, the machines don't the sensors don't talk to each other. So then you have
036to go through and tell them how do I extract data? How do we date stamp it? And and so it's not once again I don't do this stuff. This is something I bring to the team and we sit around and we hack at it and we contact researchers out there and we have a community that we go to um and and we figure it out and and so something like that for us is like we did it, you know, that's just awesome. Um, we're now beginning to pivot a little bit because we're not sure in the current climate what NASA is going to be doing. So, we're wondering how can we involve more of our community and so we're teaming up with the biotech class here at the high school. And this test tube right
037here has um halopiles. They're a type of bacteria that you find in extreme places, mostly salt lakes. Um, when you see pictures of Africa and the bright red lakes, that's a lot of halo files. And it turns out that when they're exposed to radiation, they'll turn from that red color to a white. And we sent this one up on our last flight and it worked. They turned white. Um, the experiment next week didn't, as you can tell. Um, the test tube cracked. We got some great footage of it blowing out as it came out down, but 65 degrees over there. And it was supposed to be a bubble tube. I had read about bubble tubes. And it's half water, half blister, and a little bit of uh dish soap. And it's mixed. And you should
038be able to capture data on muons, which are cosmic rays. Oh, by the way, cosmic rays are energy from dead stars, which I think is fascinating collecting energy on. So, right now, our we're going to drop the buckle thing. I don't think that's going to work for us and focus more on the halo bacteria and the biotech class will be able to culture, count colonies. They'll be able to put it through a mass spec 21 and look at absorption rates and also we think now they'll be able to run some DNA profiles on it too and just look at it and no one's flown any halo file during a CMA so we're pretty excited that even had the opportunity to do that. We're also reaching out to some collaborators and this was just for fun
039but um I stumbled upon this woodworker since I teach woodworking downstairs and um he has been trying to for the last year to get a rocket to fly his UFO I cannot smoke the rocket but I can get it up to 90,000 ft for you and he said let's do it and so we had to build the camera array to do this because we didn't have that setup so it's like how do you build an array to capture the whole video of it and so he sent the UFO. We spent time. We figured out the array and and so now that we that's what we took advantage of for the halo bacteria and also for the UFO. So we'll send up photos of you to be us. Um my CAP students engineering class downstairs um
040decided to under my suggestion strong suggestion to participate in cubes in space where we designed experiments novel experiments that we then competed internationally to get them flown on the sounding rocket by NASA and we put together five experiments and all that got selected and so three of them are going up in June on a sounding rocket and two are going up on a long-term balloon that'll be there for four or five months which we can't do ours goes up and comes down in a day. Um, one of the students was so excited about this that her family really got into it and when they knew they were selected, they looked at where they're launching the sounding rocket and now they're planning a family trip down to Virginia to watch them launch the rocket and then
041we'll get them back um in in June. And so the idea is that next year's CAPS will start by processing the data and then build them up for once again launching rockets. But this gave me the experience of saying we could do this with middle school. I mean I can get things in 90,000 ft. So why couldn't we do this with high school experiments here or start around area middle schools and say look we can come to you I can give you the engineering constraints. We will fly it. You come to the launch with us. We'll launch it. We'll retrieve it because retrieval is just as much fun. Retrieve it and bring it back. Um but that's the idea. Once again, an outreach to how can we connect to the community. Um we're also partnering
042with Dr. Vicks. Um she has two experiments. She's a material chemist. She was working at Dartmouth. Now she's working at Nor Eastern. And we've been written into two of her grants and she was really interested in microgravity. And I didn't know if I could achieve microgravity. But it turns out on our last flight that when the balloon pops with a free fall and we experienced microgravity here for 26 seconds. I think I can extend it. We have to delay the balloons. Plus and minus to that, but we have to delay our delay our parachute opening. Um, we did achieve it in Oregon. Matilda didn't tell you about that, but even though the balloon popped, our our shoe got tangled and so we hit terminal velocity and luckily it was a desolate place in Oregon where
043we impacted our balloon. English. Um, we are working with a number of agencies now. um not only at handover and the handover school board, but uh the New Hampshire Space Grant, the Vermont Space Grant, the American Astronomical Society. We took a crew down there last year to partake in a board and and present what we were doing. We're going to the um high altitude academic conference in June. Five students are going um the Civil Air Patrol wants us to help them start up team. And so we're really trying to reach out and say what can we do? Um there are very few high schools that fly high up into balloons and so it's just yeah it's awesome and this is our team and uh some of our locals we come up with amazing thank you
044for supporting us Chris and team any questions for them um actually for both teams I'm just curious like how important is the hands-on aspect of this to the learning because this strikes I mean this is this is different than sitting in a classroom and getting instructed right and maybe more towards the students. Do you learn better in this environment versus sitting at a desk and getting a lectures? Well, I feel like for some things it's really frustrating because you're learning slower because you don't have access like I know you would of a course to just like consolidate the material and like telling you what you need to know. But like at the same time, you get like the cool experience of like finding information. Like if you don't like know something, you have to like
045not only learn it but find out where to learn it, which I think is like more real world. And so I think it's like a good way to prepare you especially if you want to do a career in like science like this. Yeah. And I think tagging on to that, I think it's really uh two two really separate ways of learning that really pull together at the end of the day because you know you're sitting in your classes, you're learning the theoretical stuff, the context, but until you really get your hands on and you really dig into that, then you really feel what it is like to become, you know, a research scientist. And um I think it's definitely given myself personally and like I think definitely other members of the team as well an
046opportunity to delve into this um before before we go off to college and work and whatnot. And I'm super super thankful of Mr. Leen in giving us this opportunity. Yeah, just briefly adding on, it takes a lot of uh a lot more, I think, uh commitment and focus in whatever you're doing to to do this hands-on thing as opposed to learning it in your classroom and like they said, having having the documents that they're already giving you and having this all stuff already given to you compared to making it yourself. And it's just it's this really so you have to be committed to what you're doing. But if you are, it's so much more valuable than just learning it in a classroom. From my perspective, I think I'm excited to see where they go. You
047know, I'm watching the seniors now graduate and where are they going to take it? What are they going to do? I mean, this is just it's an opportunity to learn how to problem solve, whether they continue down the NASA or high altitude balloon path, but what they take away from them is I know how to solve a problem. And so watching them come in like I've watched in the last two years and initially uh there was a student who had no idea and he came right up to me. I do not know anything about coding. I don't know what I'm doing. And now when new members come in he instantly folds them under his arm and he's explaining things and showing them and it just that's that's fascinating and just watching what they can do.
048I just have a question. Do you are you guys familiar with um Jay Bucky who's a former NASA astronaut? Yeah. Yeah. You actually presented the der and the um astrophysical community up there. Um they were a lot of fun with offered us a chance to blow up. Um they're currently launching in Antarctica. So that'd be awesome. Or Tunisia. The ultimate would be I think it's 2027. The next total eclipse that year goes over the pyramids at noon. So like that's bad stuff might happen, man. Anyone else? I did have one other question. Matilda, I noticed that you're one of two girls on this group. So, what would you suggest for increasing the numbers of girls who are in involved in this project? I mean, I feel like a lot of these things start from a
049really young age. Like I remember in sixth grade I was on a robotics team and it was just like me and this other girl and like we were always like put together on the same project. So we never really got to like it never it almost didn't feel like this is a line like that you got to like kind of like collaborate between like both genders. And so I think that like now that like everyone's older like like you haven't like you're kind of starting into this with with less experience like a lot I think there's fewer girls who have experience in robotics while like there's like younger like a lot of the like guys I think start younger. And so I think that like encouraging it in like middle school and elementary school if
050there are programs is where it's really important because like I'll talk to my friends, they'll be like it's really fun, you should try it and they'll be like I have no idea like anything about robotics and I'm like I feel like it's just like encouraging girls to start like younger would be my recommendation. Thanks for making us proud all of you. Really amazing. And we live in an amazing community. Thank you so much. Thank you for coming. Yes. Can you follow that up? Are you going to stay here? Thank you all for coming. We appreciate it. All the girls involved. My kids were going to join the coding and they shut down that robotics club on on road. There's nothing Hello. We'll talk. Okay. Wow. Okay. We traveled. So, this is just about the high
051school um did a trip during over April break and the few days before to China. And how this all came about is um in 2023 Xiinping announced this program where he want to bring 50,000 Americans to China to have crosscultural connections and increase um educational experience. So 50,000 students um and so Jan who's in the back here um you know brought it to our attention and so the first thing we did was vet it. So Julie called around to some other high schools and said wait fair and was like has anyone done this and what was this like and people said yes um they had done it had a write up in the Chicago Tribune um and so then after that um we ran it through the if you don't know the high school before
052COVID when we did long-term field trips that traveled outside March intensive had a form that everyone had to fill out and then no one really traveled but that came back and we got to to that form as our reintroduction to it and it goes through um this time it went through CPP but normally it goes through coordinators. Um so we did that and it got approved by staff to run this. Um so once we had permission um we reached out to the embassy in New York who matched us with a school in Beijing. Um and so the school in and so this whole mission is this crosscultural exchange. So the school we were matched with is the Beijing National Day School and it is actually near where Jan grew up and it's an interesting school
053because it is a public high school of 5,000 students. Uh they have to pass an entrance exam to get in. So it's one of the elite schools in uh China and in Beijing. Um, and then within that there's a separate international school that's much smaller. And that's really where we were hosted and matched with. And within that international school, um, they have three programs. They have an AP, IB, and an A level program. And within that, even though this is a public school, those students actually pay $20,000 a year to attend that international school. So, um, these students are really going to the same colleges our kids are going to. So, for example, the first day we showed up, one of our students is playing, we all were like play playing sports. Our student was
054making, you know, conversation and this student said, "Oh, I got into Wake Forest." And our student said, "Oh, North Carolina is lovely." And the student said, "Yeah, but it's a red state. I don't know if I'm going to go." Um, so, um, it's very much, and this is their college counseling center. You'll see there Dartmouth, there's my college. You might recognize some of your own. Um so these are it was a very good fit for our students. Um they have um a lot of student choice at this school. Um they have a council umesque kind of situation. So every year the students get to choose a project they do. They're very proud of their gym which they had gotten to design um and bring to fruition as part of the project. So it's um it
055was a great match um for us. So the student experience, our students were matched with host families um where they stayed. And so every student had kind of a different um experience depending on what they were doing. The first weekend we were there, there were high wind warnings that hadn't happened in like 10 years. So some families didn't go out at all and some brave the winds. They were quite significant. Um but uh they ended up spending uh what five nights with their six nights with their host families. Um and then the other nights when we were in Beijing and then the other nights we were in Gian. So when we weren't in the school and in classrooms we were traveling and seeing sites. So we were there for 10 days which is really nine
056because you have to get there. Um and it was quite packed. So they had a tour company who would take us around to all these sites with a very knowledgeable tour guide. So for example in Shian we went to the national museum and it was 95 degrees in Shian and the museum was at least 90. Um and at the end the tour guides like went out of their way to say how wonderful our students were that they were most engaged students that they asked the most questions and I mean we were melting. So to show like it the students were so interested. Um it was just an amazing experience. So everywhere we went it was just incredibly informative. We were on the bus we were learning. We were in the places we were learning. Um
057everywhere went and then the school arranged a number of cultural experiences from tea ceremony ceremonies to making our own terracotta warriors. We had this uh interesting photo shoot where we got dressed up. photo in the case if you want to see that. Uh learned about opera and make noodle making. Um this is not the official photo shoot. This was just a a normal dinner uh experience. Um so kind of our observations of you remember April uh right before we left we uh the chaperon. So Matt Prince uh my husband Eric and Jan and I were the chaperones. We had great communication with this school. We felt very comfortable with what we were going into. But of course, these were our headlines leading up to the trip, right? And we were like, "Oh, could we not
058have a terraform on the day we are leaving?" Um, and so we were kind of wondering what we are going to walk into um having this kind of in our background. And what we realized when we got there was um it was very welcoming. Um and these two articles also came out during that time and I highly recommend people read them by Thomas Freiedman. He was also interviewed on the Edra Klein show because uh people there were no Americans there. We were the Americans there and it's that is kind of a sad statement I think. Um, and when we left, it wasn't just us who felt like this felt very important, I would say, being there. And our students, I think, felt that, too. That they made really strong connections in these host families. Um,
059and on the final night we were there, we had a dinner and we had our parting remarks and a host father got up and he spoke through a translation with his son and he clearly was a member of the government and he said, you know, this was an experience where he was very nervous about hosting an American student and I was like kind of fair to invite a teenager into your house of any culture. Um but he said you know um our two countries are the greatest superpowers in the world and our children are going into a most promising future and we want the best for both of our students and we need more of this. and he sincerely thanked the Beijing National Day School and he was quite sincere in his remarks and he
060felt exactly how all of our chaperones, all the teachers from Beijing National Day School felt that we need more opportunities for our students to connect that this was an incredible experience for all of our students who got to go. Um and so some of our and our feeling kind of coming back is that we would really love to partner with the Beijing National Day School to start an actual exchange program. The YES program um we can't actually partner with them again. We would have to go and we would get another school in China. Um the pro is it's the Chinese government supplements some of the costs on the ground. We just pay to get there. However, when we got there, it turned we have the bill for how much it cost there and it wasn't
061a significant amount of money for while we were there. It would increase the cost of going by maybe $300 a student. Um, and the school we just connected with on a philosophical level. Uh, we had strong relationships. Uh we can also if you have an exchange grow money where you can have scholarships where we can't with the other program because it's only going to last for a few more years. Um and so that's something that we're very interested in trying to do and we presented to staff saying the same thing. So it was a amazing trip. I don't know anything to add other chaperones in the audience. I'll say I have a good question. I would echo the same comments that Jess made. I also sent my son who's a sophomore um came along and
062I've been leading trips for throughout my career and I've had parents come back to me and say, "Oh, you know, my my child has been changed by this experience." And you know, to get to witness that firsthand with my own son, I think his sort of perspective on the world is so much broader. His confidence to sort of navigate uh you know, different sets of c cultural circumstances. He's talking about wanting to do a save up for a trip to Tokyo after he graduates. And uh I just think he sees the world as a more expansive and uh place and and just the potential that comes with even though headlines are bad and relations between governments might be one thing but relationships between people can be really strong. So I think that was a message
063that a lot of students felt during that trip because the host families they treated our kids remarkably well. I think their hospitality was was was truly amazing. So it was really amazing. Yeah. Anyway, it was an amazing experience. Thank you. Same thing. Um, questions from board members. I I'll I'll take I'll just do one. So, yeah. Jesse, are you okay? Go for it. So, for a trip of this magazine, we had this incredible opportunity. How was it decided which students and which chaperones would be applicable to go is sort of like Janice me and said, "Will you help me? Um so I guess chap is sort of just like who is willing uh within the school. Um at that point we would ex when we were on the trip we were expanding like who else
064could benefit who else could b bring it into their curriculum was our conversation while we were there. Um, so for Chabrons, that was part of our conversation, like if we were to keep doing it, who would make sense in our school to bring things in like we were spitballing like, oh, the art teacher would make complete sense. This is amazing. This would make so much sense to have someone to bring it into their curriculum since we don't offer the language for students. Uh, this was a kind of a more last minute thing. It always gets this one was advertised through schooly and through the parents weekly. Um it was a short turnaround due to we had to get uh visas very quickly. So it wasn't as long advertised as long. So then it became whoever
065gave us a complete packet first. You had to have a valid passport that was not expired in any way, shape or form and a deposit. So and then it came down to seniority and who had it first. Okay. And that's why if you see our list, it's very there are a lot of ninth graders and like so and a lot of different varying ages in this one. Okay. Yeah. Any other questions? I can't say that's how every trip went. This was maybe a very unusual way to do it because there was just a short window of turnaround on this trip. And so some people I know were like we didn't know about it and I'm was like par if your child does not read schooly announcements or you have marked the principal's weekly as spam
066which some people yeah you might not have seen it and I know there's a lot of email everyone gets I don't read it every week and I work here sorry but um so yeah I mean normally there is more notice and goes out in classes and things but I can't speak for Any other questions, comments? All right. Well, thank you all for coming in, giving us that information. We appreciate it. Great opportunity. Come on back and then don't get too comfortable. You want to come and tell us about how marching? Sure. All right. Hello everybody. Uh my name is Matt Prince and I'm a social studies teacher here at H High School. I'm also responsible for running the March Intensive program. Uh I'm excited that March Intensive celebrated its 18th anniversary this year, right? So
067it's not as old as our graduating seniors or older in some cases. Um I see some new faces. So just a reminder that March Intensive was created many years ago to celebrate learning for learning sake in a stress-free environment. Uh to broaden the scope of what's possible uh the what it is to study at Hover High School, learn in different ways and in different uh places. uh to build relationships uh between uh our students and between our staff within the building and also to build relationships with the community and the uh the upper valley. So uh that's that's what the objectives are. Uh our indicators this year seem to suggest that March intensive remains a very popular program uh with our uh parents and uh students. So for our student data, we surveyed all students
068afterwards. We got 242 different responses. Um, we came in at 88.9% said they would recommend their course to a friend. Uh, and 89.4 said that that experience was uh, good for them. I will say I'm a little sad that that percentage is about 1% lower than what it was last year. Um, it's not statistically all that significant. Although I will say that one hiccup we had this year is that the dates of March intensive coincided with playoffs for hockey and basketball. Uh and I think that was really upsetting to some of our winter athletes. We made a prediction about when we thought would be the best week and it was not. You know, ultimately we should have had it the uh the week action. So I do think there was some disappointment for some upper
069classmen who you know quite didn't have the the same number of options to choose from. Still had a lot of great options but really close. I think that you know that that ballpark of 90% remains there. Um parents actually we had 130 respondents from parents. 90.3% reported having a good their kid had a good experience. 9.7% said uh no. Um one thing that we're aware of is that there is always controversy concerning the you know the the the costs that are associated with March intensive and the travel options that are there. Uh we had a question on the parents survey that read the March intensive committee caps the number uh and the cost of distant and regional travel courses so that families are not asked to repeatedly cover the cost of these experiences and ensure
070that there is sufficient funding for scholarships for students in need. Would you prefer that the March intensive committee and the options were um uh sorry my uh my own page here uh 42.3% of parents said they would like to expand the number of distance and regional travel. 46.9% said that they would like the percentage to say the same and 5.4% of parents said they wanted to see distant and regional travel uh eliminated from the uh the March intensive program. The other percentages were were various comments. I would say half were actually when you read them in support of travel in some way, shape or form and half were were probably against that. But I think it remains fairly popular with parents in uh that uh that regard. Um moving forward, there are some changes that
071we're we're looking at. One is I attended a youth and action board meeting uh a few weeks ago and we're looking at the possibility of trying to expand service options within March intensive. Um, some of the ones that we have remain really popular and kids, you know, year after year report good experiences. Uh, Youth Action is looking potentially to to sponsor a class. We're also going to try to make contact with some charitable organizations in the southern part of the state to see if there's there's more opportunities uh there. We want to look at a uh maybe perhaps devising a cell phone policy or best practices for uh for trips. I think in some ways it can be really helpful and they can be there for emergencies but also sort of making sure that kids
072are unplugged, right, and engaged. Um, finally, we're we're considering eliminating the independent study option that's a part of March intensive. Uh, we limited the number this year. We had nine students that participated in independent study. We made the application uh earlier. um we do have uh a small number of families right that will go and perhaps take a family trip during March intensive time and I think sometimes the perception is that's sanctioned under March intensive because of the independent study options independent study ones are not family trips uh but uh you know it's a small number of students and one of the things that we're realizing one of the big benefits of the program really is the the connections and the relationships that are formed uh and although some kids are doing some really interesting
073things. They're not they're not taking part of that collective experience that we're sharing together. So, the independent study option was actually originally added 16 years ago, I think, by a request before to to do that. So, I guess we would consult you guys before we would eliminate that as a as a choice. But I that seems to be the direction that we're that the march intensive committee uh would uh would would like to go. Uh I will say that uh you know the the as a parent once again I have my two kids that are here and uh March intensive sort of changed my own summer plans and that I've got to take the hunter safety education class because my son did the the hunter safety class here for March intensive and he's determined to
074go deer hunting now in the uh in the fall. So I I don't want him to go alone so I have to do that. My other son who I've been begging to uh uh go out crosscountry skiing with me and never wants to do it uh he did the cross country ski program. we teamed up with the new facility out at uh at O'Hale and now he's you know we're looking for cross country skis over the summer. So incidentally two anecdotal pieces of information that show that our local programs too are uh highly impactful. So I was told to keep it short so I will stop talking and I will turn it over to you to see if you have any questions. Thanks Matt. We appreciate it. Anyone have any questions for my friends? Right.
075Terra, I was just concerned I was wondering if you were concerned about the quality of the independent study, the nine folks who did it this sample. Yeah. You know, I mean, we so we had them come back. I want to be careful because it's a small number of students, right? And so I think we speak largely over trends and I would say that some of them were really good and they used their time up really well. Some of the ones they they reached the bar, but you know, might they have had a more impactful experience? I do think that what you learn during March intensive is important, but I I kind of feel like it's the same thing with like going to a concert that experience of doing it collectively with your peers can help
076to sort of amplify what that experience is. So, so it's a little bit of a mixed bag like we had some kids who did it really well. Um, there was some talk last time about the concern about the locations. I kept data this year. So we had two that were in Utah, one that was in Syracuse, two that were in Quebec, one that was handover, two in Costa Rica, and one that was in Georgia. So they sort of spanned uh different geographic uh locations, but but that does it's a higher percentage of kids who are out of the upper valley uh than what's represented in the uh the overall program. Yep. So, I know the board has talked about getting information about the March intensive at a board meeting earlier. So, I thought I would
077just share that with you as a request for your planning purposes. [Music] Um, in part, you know, the presentation at CPP doesn't fit with um, you know, a board meeting schedule. But the other thing is that I noticed I think a year ago you started or at least I think it was a year ago um identifying the carbon footprint or the you know especially for travel purposes and I think you know that the SAU accepted the um sustainability report and one of the big issues for the students was travel whether it was on a daily basis to get to school but I would assume at some point march intensive of needs to be a part of that conversation too. So I hope you will when you come back to us as a board I it
078would be really helpful to have that carbon impact as a part of the presentation. Sure. And it is one of it was featured again in the program of studies that the environmental club does a a carbon estimate right for each of the courses so that kids can make informed choices because I think sometimes they have that competing interest in how badly do I want to go and do this what's the implication on the climate going to be and so we just want to spread that awareness and and you know I do think there sometimes can be competing goals just because you know the consequences of you know a world and communities that don't necessarily understand each other have exposure to each other also has costs, right? You know, in terms of conflicts. So, so it's
079sort of balancing that. We do want people to make informed decisions. So, at a minimum, right, we're going to continue to uh to to keep department footprint information in there. Uh in terms of the timing, um the this is I think been I don't know if it's an official policy, but when it was created, it was sort of saying that we'll come with the program of studies. The program of studies takes, you know, about a month and a half to put together at the beginning of the year. um you know it goes through the March intensive committee and then it goes to CPP and then it comes here um so I would say that if there are programmatic change or or or changes in guidelines it's not G October meeting because at that point you
080know we've put together this program the study that's you know past boards have approved something similar without dramatic changes right um so so if there are things like different directions you know that that that time October is would be a hard time for us because we've already put all that effort into. Yeah. Right. If I may, well, I I would agree because I know that when it came to the board this past year, it had already gone out to the students to sign up for courses. So, I I don't think that that's true to be honest with you. I do know it was I do know that when we saw it as a board I I I really don't think that that and the only way that it would be possible was that it's in
081the board docs and that through the board docs it had gone to CPP and perhaps had been linked but but definitely it wasn't publicized by the March intensive committee or by the school or widely dispersed. Um it may be that yeah I mean that that's that I would I would feel pretty confident about that too that that that unless it was leaked in some way. Um it wasn't about leaking on this we certainly as a committee we would not release it until the board had said they put their their stamp on approval on it. I make a comment. Yes please Gina and then Carrie. Yeah. Um I think two comments are um I think that this community that we live in is a really special community and it's a very small community and what I
082have seen through my kids participation is is the benefit of them getting outside of this community and do things in this community but um I think um in terms of their growth and experiential learning and thinking about the China trip that we just heard about I think there's real value in that. So, I hope we can balance the things that we've committed to on sustainability while continuing to maintain the opportunity to give kids the chance to get out of handover, which is a very bubbly place that we have here. Um, the second piece is um I I just every time I talk about this program with people who live outside of this community, my my colleagues and friends are so impressed that we do this. And I think there's a tension and a balance of
083the public school of what we can do and offer financially. But I think this is something that's really distinctive about our school and I hope we think about that as a board when we think about how we can go forward because it's pretty extraordinary what we do. I'm fan. I do not have big kids. I little kids. How long is the march intensive? The margin intensive is a four days a week. So it runs uh there's an inservice day on the Monday and then there's four days. However, because of the inservice day and because of the weekends on either side, it can be extended to up to nine days. So they vary in length from four days to the full nine. Occasionally a group will leave on the Friday before. Um so it could in
084theory be 10, but uh even the distant trips I think are a little constrained by budget and trying to keep cost down. So you know the the trips tend to be seven to to eight days typically. They're awesome. Um, and my follow-up question, which I think uh piggybacks on Gina's comment, is obviously it's wellreceived, 90% amazing. I am curious over time that 10% are there similar themes that you hear as a school about, you know, it's it's it's a when you read the comments, it's there there's a myriad of different things that come out and I think that some of it is that it's sometimes we don't get a good match between the student and what the course is. I think that there are times where the concern I have is that students are I
085think more socially riskaverse than they were in the past. And so what they're doing is they're saying, you know, Ian, what are what are you signing up for? And they want to be with their buddies. And so they they sign up for a course that necess that wasn't necessarily going to be a fit. So we try to encourage them, you know, to take risks. And you know, I think one of the the comments that we get from kids that I read and you know, sorry I'm not making it up is that they'll say that like, "Oh, I wasn't excited about this course because I didn't have a lot of friends in it, but you know, I ended up meeting kids I wouldn't have known otherwise because we had the shared interest." So, I think as
086much as we as a community can encourage kids to say, "Hey, go with where your interests are and trust that you know that group, you're going to have something in common and the experience itself is going to bring you together." Um, I think we're we're better for it. when uh here. Yes. I think this is great. Having seen um my kids go through and I hear Gina's thing, I guess I'm always just like I'm I every time this comes up, I just can't get my head around. I don't really know which way to go with it with the wide variation of the programs. And you know, you might have a junior or senior that put all their eggs in this like travel bucket to go to Rwanda to go do Habitat for Humanity in I
087don't even know, Puerto Rico or something and then they missed it and they're playing pickle ball and which again it's a great experience because I think there is value to just taking four days after exams and just you know doing something else, right? and learning a skill. And frankly, that pickle ball, they had a great time and they learned how to do it. Your son did skiing and learned how to do it. One of my other kids had done the backcountry ski thing. It was awesome. I mean, it was right here local. But then you've got kids that are going all over the world. And I hear you because at the end of the day, I mean, I I did this trip to Russia and as a junior and, you know, would have never gone
088on to Russia, but yeah. So, it's just this like push and pull of like do you somehow make the programs a lot more equal and that they're just like giving kids a chance to learn how to be a lifeguard, learn how to ski or still giving people the opportunity to tra travel halfway around the world with all of the other stuff that comes with that, right? As far as the cost and the expense and I don't have an answer, trust me. Like I'm just like, yeah, it's a hard one here and I don't know which way to go with it. I do think that in general the March intensive is it's just good for our students mental health frankly to kind of just you know get pickle ball with their friends so that we can
089learn a new skill. But you also have this other stuff hanging over and I just it's hard. Yeah. I I mean I will say that is for this year we've had a number of juniors who've got spots on distant travel. So if a senior is dead set on a a specific destination that that may not happen, but there will certainly have other distant travel opportunities. And March intensive isn't the only opportunity for Hover High School students to travel. There are, you know, curriculum trips like the kind of trip that we heard about at different times of year um that are offered too as well. So I think a lot of, you know, ninth graders and tth graders are content with their experiences, you know, and they look forward to potentially having that opportunity. I will
090say, I've said it before, that I'm a big believer that this creates opportunities for kids who wouldn't have them otherwise. I mean, we did give out close to $28,000 in scholarships this year to students to help them achieve, you know, get to places where they wouldn't have gone. We have a number of families that are, you know, solid middle class who perhaps they themselves can't take a family trip to one of these destinations, but can afford to send a uh, you know, a single child to there. So I do think that, you know, I it was the case for me when I was in high school that these types of experiences, you know, generated opportunities and sort of ignited my passion for studying the world. And so it's part of, I think, the the the
091you know, the people on the committee and part of the people why we believe in this because we believe that we're we're doing that and, you know, creating opportunities for kids who wouldn't have them. Yeah. Um Lisa, then I'll Yeah. Um I a couple of comments. Um, in the past, for those of you that are new, a lot of this has been what Garrett just touched on, the equity issue of fabulous versus not fabulous and who has access to that. And I just would continue, I know you all have been working on this, but I would continue to encourage you to orient new parents to the district that this happens and it's coming and that there are scholarships available and that there are ways for your kid to be financed because I think in this
092community it is very hard to be the family that has to ask for help. And so I just want to make sure that that that education happens early. sort of like what the kids were saying about robotics, like the earlier it happens, the easier it is for people to avail themselves of it. And then on the equity issue, um a majority of the kids in the school play sports of some sort. And so I know that you you flagged that you kind of missed the dates in terms of tournaments this year. I would just really encourage you um especially for those juniors and seniors who really wanted to travel and were looking forward to it and the fact that they had you know were going to have to choose between a championship hockey or basketball
093game and going to Spain or Italy or wherever they're I that's just a tough position to put an 18-year-old kid or a 17-year-old kid in. And so just you know being as aware as possible of the calendar for equity purposes. Thanks. So, as some of us have alluded to, this has been kind of an ongoing. We've asked these similar questions for years now. I think it's fair statement. And you have your survey data. We asked about this in the 2023 cost survey. Lots of great opinions. For those who haven't seen it, we asked about it again this year in JA that went out last week. So, if you haven't answered that as a parent yet, I I encourage you to do so. And we're getting all sorts of great data. anything from how dare you
094even suggest facing anything to how dare you even have this as a concept and they're not going away. And just to give you a heads up if you haven't heard the policy committee's sort of summer project is crafting a march intensive policy. Mhm. So, we'll probably be reaching out to you and your love to participate in any way you would hash this out, not necessarily a once and for all sort of thing, but sort of get the ball rolling on what do we want this to be, which all that comes under the board eventually. Then I want to move on to Neil. Well, and to that point, Ben, like I on multiple occasions I've asked the president chair, whether it was you or the prior chair or the chair before that for a board level
095discussion about March intensive and it nothing has happened yet and we get this presentation and then we get the list of course offerings and despite multiple requests, we've still not had a board level discussion about this program and I would like to request it yet again. you know, tada policy working on it all summer. But I guess my issue with that was I was never told that that was going on. And does that then replace a board level discussion? Not necessarily. It just it's one of our products that we knew would take a lot of time. We've been dancing about like you mentioned for years and we realized that policy what one or two months ago that we would have the ability to tackle at this in some detail including consulting with relevant staff in
096sort of the summer lull. We would this policy for those who don't know actually doesn't stop meeting in the summer. We still meet roughly every two weeks and that would be a great opportunity for us to work at the level of granularity that we typically can't achieve in a meeting like this. Those meetings are public. I'm happy to send those to you in advance if you want to try to attend and I think we'll see how those meetings will come out. Michael then Garrett and then be mindful of time. In the absence of the board level discussion that Neil describes what problems the policy committee trying to solve with margin intensive not speaking for the committee but a lot of it would be the equity issues the perceptions the very real anger about the whole
097concept we do get from a steady group of parents who have these concerns and from board members as I think well and that's reason why we had this question in the ongoing survey which the results are not out yet but for what I've seen of early inclinations there is a lot of dissatisfaction with the concept but very few people are saying don't are saying get rid of it but more let's try to work on the equity issues while also maintaining these amazing opportunities and how do we do that in a fair way both kind of was hitting with the kind of discussion about how are these kids and chaperones and teachers chosen, how is done equitably, how is opportunity and awareness given in a timely passport accessible manner and various related issues. Was that a
098question or something? So I think one of the other things we're talking about is so um chaperones, how we figure out like how to make sure people are trained adequately. Um rigor and trying to make sure that there's a system for like finding some kind of like even footing that these can be comparable programs and then equity. Those are the main things that you already question. So I was going to say I mean and again maybe this is suggestion asks for everyone's opinion is before we do much in policy should we have that board meeting where we actually talk about it and listen because I was kind of thinking at least from a policy member perspective more along what Marcel was saying it's going to be the policies would be a little more blocking and
099tackling as far as shaft rounds and rules and just making sure that we've got all the highest thr whatever highest dose for us but you saying Ben kind of would also be or I don't really know how the policy is actually going to start finding the program and limits to how far people travel and cost. I I don't know. But maybe we want to hear from the board first and get direction on that front before because we can craft policy as far as talking about pretty easily without any input. But then you were talking about banner what you mentioned Lisa that's going to be like more kind of our personal opinions than the board direction. Just laying it out there. Krie, um I think one of my concerns being it's so green and so new
100and it sounds like many people do have very sad opinions and perhaps personal experiences either from sitting here or from just having our own children go through this. Um to hear that there is an intensive committee team. I'd be really curious like I can't imagine based on the level of thoughtfulness that we've heard just in a few presentations that this committee hasn't done some pretty deep work about equity and thoughtfulness. And so I think for me I feel blind having a board discussion without hearing from the people that are like living this and thinking about it so intensely in a way that like it might be something on our agenda frequently but it's not like we aren't the people planning it. And I think I would really love to hear that before I feel like
101I could have an informed conversation. And not that my opinion couldn't be different than that, but I just don't mine will be based on perception as opposed to hearing from people that are in it. And I'll chime in. That's one of the reasons why Matt comes to us both sort of before and after each year. You come between January, February. Yeah. I usually come in October. Okay. October and May. Yeah. And then kind of before the thinking the list of projects we we approve the projects here by vote not usually in one sum vote and then he tells us how they they go across. Uh Julie so just in terms of dotting all the eyes and crossing all the tees just making sure that that policy committee meets with school personnel. Um because I think
102what you hear in a meeting is a small piece that's what you're saying and this would be if we were talking about a chemistry program right now and there was a policy committee meeting about our chemistry program without people who actually run the thing because you may decide things in your policy committee that makes it not palatable for us to run it. We might not be able to you know you're talking about chaperones like is there a vetting process we would know that like things like that. So just make sure a whole lot of conversation doesn't happen without at least people informing it on the ground who are actually in charge of it and running it. That's I'm sure you've thought of that, but like I just don't want like the question on the survey
103I didn't even get a chance to run by Matt um and or the committee which is fine. Um but I just don't want a policy committee to come up with decisions without it's hard when the people are in the room who are actually doing it. So you want to have the hard conversations and it might not be what we need to hear but you don't want to make those you don't want to have those conversations without the people who actually are doing the work right and just to point out as you know that policy committee like all the like all committees gets the stakeholders in the room before decisions made has outreach programs we have people come to us all the time in fight people all the time we seek out opinions and so that
104does not disappear which is why um Lisa some of them really need to move on. Yeah. Just a quick it there's kind of two parts to this. Um I mean there's there's the question of the people who are making the decisions are the educators who know what they're doing. The policy is to sort of protect you all. Um one of the things I will highlight for those that are new is that there are often perceptions in the community whether true or not. They are strongly held perceptions that some of these projects are vanity projects by community members to get a trip funded so that they can take a group of kids somewhere that includes members of their family and themselves. And so that isn't a really good look for public funds. Now there is a
105vetting process. There's all that sort of things happening. And so I think that one of the things I would hope the policy committee is doing is wherever we land on this in wherever the discussion is that whatever policy we comes come up to is helpful to the people that are making the decisions and and deals with the substance versus perception question which I don't think you can ever totally address but we can do a better job. So that's all I'll say. Thank you. Let's move on. You can tell we are long we designed the rest of the fairly succinct we hope. So with that perspective let's move on to business parting discussion. Um in terms of drafting NHSVA resolutions the deadline is getting closer especially accounting for the summer break if does anyone have any
106resolutions they wish to introduce in concept if not in great detail. Remember we are no under no obligation to come up with one. Just sometimes we do it, sometimes we don't. Yes. Someone just overview of what an example suggestion um just give me two seconds. Um so last year the resolutions um oh for example one of them was support for oh god these are just my abbreviated notes on them. One was about adding language about nutrition programs to continuing resolution, not adding a cost to local districts, but including nutrition as an issue that was important. They tend to well, we presented a resolution a couple years ago about gun safety. We presented a resolution about as as a school board about um the DEI law and we have over the years become uh kind of
107friendly with members with progressive members of other school boards like Dover, Oyster River, Lebanon and have at times worked together to support each other's resolutions, just to follow through afterwards on conversations. We had a school board member from Lebanon come one year to talk about a resolution that Lebanon was bringing forward. And you know, there was one that was very specific about gun-free zones and it only applied to conquered because of the language and so it was kind of the person withdrew it. But what a lot of times they are responses to what the legislature is doing in conquering and um so there and there's a but there's this narrow window you have to know about it get a resolution through by this August deadline and then October is when the actual representatives from the
108school boards meet and before that we talk in our schoolboard meetings about all the resolutions that are coming up and um of I usually recommend but the board also figures out what they want to do pretty easily. Yeah, Neil. Oh, sorry. [Laughter] Don't worry, I wasn't going to say anything until Ben, go for it. Good sir. So, just to um piggy back off of what Deb said. So, the New Hampshire School Boards Association is um a support and an advocacy organization for school boards in the state of Vermont, right? And one of the ways that they um determine what their positions are as representatives of all of us is through the resolution process. And resolutions come from member school boards like us and we send them to NHSA for consideration, what they call their delegate
109assembly. And that's a meeting where they get representatives from all of or they hope to get representatives from all school boards from across the state to meet and vote on these resolutions. And if the resolution passes typically with I believe it's a twothirds margin um then they become an official position of NHSBA. So that then for example when the legislaturator is doing something screwy and they call on NHSBA for like what is your position on X? Then NHSBA goes back and they take, well, do we have a resolution on this? It's been passed by our organization. And that's in large part how they determine a lot of the advocacy work that they do. Um, my question specifically for Deb though is given some of the shenanigans that's going on in the legislature, are there resolutions
110that come to mind for you that we might ought to get out to folks? I'm thinking like funding, tuitioning, those those sorts of things that we might ought to get out on there. There there are I mean those are exactly the issues. I haven't crafted anything to bring to you and I certainly can on all of those. Um, probably what I would do is turn to my my group of buddies on the other school boards and say, "Can we put our heads together and come up with some of this?" Um, I I do think that the New Hampshire School Board Association is has become increasingly very riskaverse um and and not always happy about passing these resolutions. But the group that has been promoting them has been very strong in their opinions at the conference
111and often sways other schoolboard members. Um, one that a teacher here at the high school brought to me this past week was a repeat of a resolution that came up two years ago about weather related conditions that could prompt schools to close that weren't snow related but heat related. And that got a lot of conversation two years ago. I don't think it passed. And J, I was gonna say given that the deadline for submitting proposals is 4 PM August 1st, you got your next meeting unless you call a special one. Yeah. Which is next Tuesday, right? So we can take So if you have a if someone has a concrete idea, you don't have to write it. What we typically do in previous years is if there is a consensus of something we want to
112support and initiate on because we don't know what resolutions the other districts will have sometimes there's alignment and they conflate sometimes they don't is we the chair designates one person historically it's been our rep in this case Deb to craft language that we would then support so we can have a more detailed conversation about this next Oh, okay. Deb, I am happy to help with Thanks. Okay, Deb, how do you want us? Sorry, how do you like us to handle that? Do you want us to just email you with ideas or do you want them right now? Oh, absolutely. Okay, I've got book banning. Book banning. Yeah, open enrollment vouchers. What was there was a fourth the word funding. Can I add um I don't know something about I'm thinking about what Harvard's doing and
113um and our role as like educating residents and citizens of the country. And so I'm wondering about a resolution that could be about recognizing authoritarian regimes about um how education is geared towards um I don't know civic engagement civil disobedience and civic well the nice thing about sorry the nice thing about civic engagement is that we could play off of the death the recent death sorry of justice Sudter who 100% this was his big issue. Great. So, we can Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. Cool. Um, one last thing, especially for those who haven't noticed it in the survey, is there is stuff moving through the New Hampshire legislature that would mandate an unfunded NRA created gun safety annual training for all kindergart kindergarters through 12th grade through the schools. Children? Yes. Seriously? 1 hour. one hour to
114be done annually. I'm assuming some of us may have thoughts on that one. Well, right. But to the extent that NHSBA does not have a position, that's exactly the purpose of the resolution process, right? Well, they'll love me. We have seven. All right. If you have any if you have any further ones, please reach out to Deb and we'll hear back uh next week and and like Neil said, feel free. Right, shifting to the schoolboard calendar and topic template and you will see if you click on the attachment that the March intensive annual discussions happen in October and May as the one just did. And this is where we look in our calendar, see if there's if it lines up. I believe some of the other boards have already done this. Gina, I just want
115to point out, and I think we noticed this when we talked about the calendar, but there's a meeting on February 28th, which is the Saturday of school break. And I want to express my strong concern about us holding a meeting on a Saturday of school break. I don't think that's appropriate. Agreed. if you want people and we don't have a choice in the matter because when we changed the calendar for the vacation schedule, we ran up against an issue in the Dresden Compact that that states when we have to have that annual meeting, the annual deliberative session for the budget presentation. So, it now needs to happen on that Saturday the 28th. And that's what I cautioned board members at the time when we adopted that calendar is we were likely going to run in
116a situation where there's not going to be people around and we not be able to pull together a quorum for that meeting. Can we and I guess uh my question is I don't understand the rules in the thing that you just called it. Um so y sorry sorry or whatever the the count compact. Thank you. So, I guess are there ways to have exceptions in a compact or can we um appeal for an exception to the compact to hold it on the Monday or like I'm just curious like do we have any flexibility or Neil want to explain the reason why some of us are smiling sadly. Uh um can you change the compact? Yes. Could we change it in time for this meeting? No. It would require I believe that one might require an
117act of Congress. Oh, I it it has to do with our interstate school district status. Okay. And the provisions that were set out in the compact as to when that annual deliberative session on the budget needs to occur. And the contact the contract specifically stated that if the the date falls on a date that is inclusive of a school break week that the session has to be moved to that Saturday prior to the school break vacation I believe is what it says. I don't have it right in front of me. And so the date that you see in there is kind of prescribed for us. and we don't have a whole lot of opportunity to change it now when we previously voted to accept the recommendation that that school break week fall fall on what
118is traditionally that town meeting day and we have heard complaints about this calendar in general both from that calendar serve a couple months back as well just anecdotes that some of us have heard the schoolboard calendar or the the general calendar just as a as a sidebar All right. So, noting that that date will be problematic, but that there's perhaps nothing we can do about in this time frame. Um, yes. Right. Uh, there's Wednesday, February 17th, followed by Tuesday, February 18th, and I'm wondering which is which. Uh, what that should be what is that's a good point. Rene, where are you? Wednesday. 2026. There's a se Wednesday, February 17th. Tuesday, February 18th. Okay. Like just a typ. Yeah. Carrie, I may be being obtuse. I just I think I might be with Gina in like
119what? So we don't have a quorum because too many people are gone. I guess my but I I like I get rules or rules for a reason, but it's June May. Um if if people are out of town and there's not a quorum. I'm not saying that's going to happen, but it could happen. Well, how does that shift this? And we wouldn't know that until much later. Just clarify, you're talking about the February. Yeah, I'm going back to the 28th. I'm hearing that it's unchangeable. No, because somebody wrote something. Senior board members, correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe for the annual meeting, we don't necessarily need a quorum because we're not making decisions. It's a presentation to the town, right? Okay. So, it just be the fewer people who are there, the people
120who are remaining have to talk more. Whether that's fair or not, I will leave it. We can't change that like the Thursday night before like Saturday and Thursday the understanding one discussions. Could we do it twice and assume that one person's showing up on that day to to check? I would check with legal counsel on that. It's typically on Thursday and handle it dressed in do sort of a backtoback thing for those who haven't donated. Yeah. And they're typically maybe an audience of six. Yeah. including Zoom that is very different from what happens in Norwich was my understanding. Yes, it was typically Thursday before break it just be a Thursday. Normally we do it the Thursday of break. Now we're just going to do a Thursday before break. I'm perfectly fine to ask because if
121we get six people and we're doing a holiday break, it just means that like now we're really going to get nobody. Yeah. So, gonna come on Saturday night. That would look good. I could eat it while he was I know. I'm just I'm just here to tell you like for all of you like this is what the compact says back in 196 when this district was formed. That's what it says. Jay will at our direction Jay will seek uh legal counsel on this particular matter and he will get back to us. Um I don't know if next week is feasible but we'll see what we can do. Mhm. And I suggest we move on. Anything else about the calendar and the template? We see that as problematic that that I'll move along duly noted to
122the reading of policies. Switching to my policy chair hat on. I believe all of these have been discussed at the SAU level previously. So um for the sake of time I would suggest that we move on. There's two first readings that were that were mentioned in policy or matchu in the last couple weeks and several second readings that we have discussed before. Any concerns with that? I will move along then to the tuition rate. Um Teresa, is this you? Yes. Um I buffed the documents for the um the handover high school tuition calculation worksheet. Um, I did put some chicken scratch on there. Um, just kind of like a reference guideline for the um, supporting documents from the MS22, the MS-23, and also exhibit three from um, sorry, from the budget book. Sorry about that.
123Um, so I've attached those. I've also attached the middle school calculation worksheet. Um, I can go through and explain. I'm not sure how in depth you want me to go. Um, but basically when the committee met and went back and forth on the best way to calculate this out and the tuition was it was decided that the really the best option was to use the lock method of calculating the tuition. um it keeps up with the current cost and expenditures related to the year that we're obviously charging the tuition. Um using our current in this reference we've used the FY26 budget that was approved and those were the numbers that we've calculated using um again using the MS22 the appropriations. So, what you'll get is your your bottom line on page three. And again, I
124made reference to where you can find the numbers that I have on my sheet. Um, and it's basically this method takes into account any revenue that we also take in that helps offset the um the high school expenditures. The old method that was being used um didn't take that into consideration. So it actually um in some ways made tuition a lot higher when we had um worked them out and we take also into consideration any outlay debt that we have um building aid um and the number of students um again I can go walk down through or like I said I've uploaded all the documents that way it give you a time to kind of like kind of go through it referenced. And the tuition rate for the high school this year, um I know
125we stated it before, was 24,470 is what we're looking to have approved. And then for the middle school, that one is 25,910. Do you mean 24470 for the high school? Did I say 24? You said 25470, but it's written as 247. Yes, 2447. You are correct. That's you on any concerns of using the Vermont method with this New Hampshire district or no concerns there? No. Um and again because the method that had been the spreadsheet that's kind of like the RMS method it doesn't take into account and it what was happening is the decrease that was happening with the uh tuition rate because it was not keeping up and it was a lag in um using actually like a year's data and backwards a year. So that means we're not keeping up with time and
126our tuition rate like this year um for next year the tuition rate was actually going to decrease using the old method. Um and the fact that and you have quite a few students also coming from Vermont. the the method was simpler to explain. And so again, I I could sit and walk through the spreadsheet and explain it to somebody much easier than I could the other any one of us could explain the other one where it didn't seem like there was any solid as to why we took this number out and why we put this number back in. May um did you raise your hand briefly? I just I wanted to ask for clarification. Um the If I recall correctly, the RMS calculation worksheet is the traditional correct way. Yeah. And I did upload that
127also. So it looks more like this. And what we were doing with the change of the handover high school was to try and with with the calculation change, the formula change was to try and make it more predictable and more reflective of actual costs, right? Because with the old mechanism which we determined had flaws in it including like a basic well from the beginning of time when it was first implemented it was while our expenses were increasing it was creating a tuition rate that was decreasing. Correct. So that was the context. Okay. I just wanted to make sure. Thank you. Any other questions on this matter? No. We are voting on it later tonight. God bless you. Seeing none, we'll move along to now business requiring action. We're going to take that vote right now.
128I have a motion for the consent motion for all the above items. Car. I move to approve items B, C, D, E, F, and G by consent. Second by discussion. Did we have cover policies? We did. We did. Wow. How did I miss that? So, any discussion first read though? There's second reading on some of them. All these have been discussed at SAU previously. Okay. I just Wow. I must have missed it when you when you brought All right. My bad. You said it really quick. I was gonna say I miss you, too. He was hoping you weren't. Don't put ideas. Okay. All right. Any discussion on any of the motions? Right. If you have you have I mean discuss I mean on the policy like do you have anything that we want to take
129back? No. No. All right. Then all those in favor we're all here in person. All right, that is unanimous noting Kelly McConnell's absence. Thank you everyone. Moving on to report of the chair. I don't have much to report this week apart from there is an active survey that Jay sent out last Thursday that I would we would really love to hear more answers from everyone. We're at about 250 or so at the moment and would love to hear more um from parents. So noted and um I will be out for next week's meeting. I might come late. have a different uh commitment. So Neil will be chair in his role as vice choice. Thank you very much Neil over there. And that's agenda review and that's all I have. Um any resident specific committee reports
130CSTC council corporate area and tech wishing that talked about anyone? Deb Kerry Harford area which I should know the name of uh is meeting on Thursday. So possibly next week or something. Right. Do you have anything besides what we've already discussed? I do not think so. Right. I guess moving along the superintendent report. Jay, you may have some news of some kind. Yeah, based on the essay you may have to say, but maybe another time would be better next week. But um I I really wanted to talk m mainly about how proud I was of our students and the environmental club who participated in a ma at the mart museum. They they had a um an opportunity to to showcase student action uh particularly on on climate and they did such an outstanding job presenting.
131I mean, if you think about all that they've done, they they um they took the board's charge to come up with a a SAU wide climate action plan, backed that up with all the data uh that they collected in order to to create that plan and then had um it was by invitation, but there I think about 80 people, and Linda, correct me if I'm wrong, I think there are about 80 people there from a variety of different walks of life and fields um with with strong interests in climate policy. and they were completely engaged. They we sat at individual tables um that were that were mixed on purpose and then a student joined each table and then participated in discussion uh with prompts and generated a bunch of suggestions for implementation which Linda has
132kindly uh reduced to a document which is a draft right now where I share it with you and u the club is meeting next Thursday. this Thursday, this Thursday to uh synthesize all that feedback and and look for the advice that they can actually act on. And so a really successful event and really there was a call in that uh I'd say consensus to to do more outreach. Um, what was really uh cool for me to see is is uh Marian Cross participated as well and highlighted their work on their super mega composter. And um they also provided us with a soup salad and bread dinner that they had procured with the help of local uh King Arthur and several of our farms. And it was basically a farm-totable soup dinner which was which was
133great too. And and one additional thing, the apparently both the Ray School and the Richmond School are going to be getting super composters in place. Yes. Awesome. Very cool. So, so that was wonderful. Um I do have an update I want to make publicly u on our the status of our lawsuit that we've joined. Uh so the um the lawsuit is is moving forward but there's no date for for any next court appearance but uh the ACLU did um reach out to all the participating districts about retaining some uh another law firm also pro bono and so I signed the engagement letter for this other law firm. Um, so they're they're stepping up their their preparation for the legal battle that they are sure is coming and and will be represented that way. Um, in
134in another um bit of news that you may have already read about, we we have every year you probably recall that we do the general program asurances for receiving all of our federal funds. And this year the state of New Hampshire um incorporated a lot of the directives that have come through executive order, dear colleague letters and so forth into the general asurances. And there are several districts that are have been sort of waiting it out to see what might happen. And it looks like we're the clock's going to expire and we're going to have to have these these uh asurances either signed or not signed or responded to differently than we have in the past. Um and we have two versions of a response uh that our lawyers have prepared that I wanted to
135throw out to you. Um we we either can respond to these asurances as we're required to just sign up and send them in. Um we could refuse to sign the asurances on the basis that uh they've gone far beyond the statutory requirement represented by signing the assurances. Uh and then there's a third option that we could sign off on the asurances but accompanying it with a letter essentially a letter protesting uh the changes to the asurances and just asserting that we are in fact abiding by all these federal laws. But we don't see why all these other things have been put in that seed the scope of the federal government's oversight of these programs. And so here we're signing this but under protest. And so those are the options we have at our disposal. Um
136which will talk about those in nonpublic right? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And so I know we had some members of the public there right being updated publicly and that's what I can share. Yeah. Linda just asking is there time for public comment um related to that? I know it's after all the report. So it's it's on the agenda. So the public comment would be anytime after the board is done deliberating. Thank you. And then last, I I just um I just want to thank the board publicly uh for agreeing to allow me to depart earlier than planned. Um I can only tell you that um I have a very big and growing family that will be really pleased with your decision. Um and and as am I and and I u I wouldn't be in the
137position that I'm in to be able to contemplate this were it not for the fact this board's been so gracious in employing me for last eight years. And it dawned on me that this is my longest superintendency of of the three that I've had the good fortune to to have. Um I was in Erie for seven years. It seemed like 17. Um and here I've been here for eight years. It seemed like two. Um so um interesting. I'll have more to say about that next week, but um I just want to thank you all. Um, I would only have done so, um, if I had someone as capable and professional and outstanding, uh, as Robin, um, who you seem fit to ent trust with this job moving forward. So, so, thank you. Any questions or
138comments for Jay or for the assistant superintendent letter since, as we mentioned, Robin is not here tonight or from the public? Yeah, you have a question or comment from the superintendent before um also the council. I wasn't sure where to bring this to the board was pension. Um some of you know um De knows about the council resolution that was passed the student affirmation resolution. And the reason I bring it up here is um you hopefully have a copy a copy of motions were sent to all of you. But in in writing that motion, it came out of the council. The motion was um submitted to the council by a uh a teacher at the school basically very specifically addressing some actions from the current president. Um it was then uh sent to the examining
139equity committee which is a student committee um that again is a part of council and um with some really I think impassioned and important work they drafted a resolution which is adopted by the council on the 15th of May. And I bring it up now because um I was um sort of one of the people that helped them think about writing a resolution in the template or and you know all those statements you say you know this such as and then where this where as you you say this then you must believe that and I had because of my NAS work accumulated all these policies that the board has adopted and rightly so and sadly so when the student looked at these policies they went we don't know if they're going to be there next
140And so they took that off because they wanted to make a timely statement. They wanted it to be unifying and they wanted it to address that what some students expressed to them the fear they felt even here within the building as to their declared identity and the risk they felt they were really at at this time in their lives. So I want to bring that to your attention because I think the council with the examining committee and frankly with the help of this teacher who said you know we talk about bystanders when we talk about bullying the people who stand by you when you're being you know passed upon or cast out and then we have upstanders and part of my role as a council executive to talk about citizenship and citizenship is about upstanding
141and so I just wanted to with pride um alert you to that and um and and also to say how much they depend on you to be standards. So, thank you. And Linda, I don't recall actually seeing that council resolution. It does get shared. I should tell you it might be in the paper. Can Can one of you send that to me and then I'll distribute it to I would have shared it but I have not either. Yeah. Thank you, L. Yeah. All right. and Teresa, any me updates in addition to what we've already talked about? Um, just um I've uploaded the Dresden draft for the audit for FY24. Um, the letter we just got this and just coming out back from the conference from last week. So, I'm going to get it to the
142auditors tomorrow and everything else so we can get that and then we'll get the final draft on addressed and audit and we'll have them all. Um side note um the other three districts uh you know we're talking about the fec program so we've moved forward done a little bit of training um already on that on the AP person and I did um it's last week anyhow so that one's already moving forward too so we're hoping to get that rolling by July 1 and that program um trick with that is it's kind of it's going to work just like the American express to that effect. And so the big thing is deciding like how the cards get distributed, who gets them, and then we set limits and things like that. So it it'll work in that
143concept. So um we'll um hopefully have that all going July 1. Any questions, comments for Teresa? And I did upload the financials and I also attached the first page of the very summary and the second page is a very detailed. get in a little more breakdown. Um, and hopefully if you have any questions that will answer all that information. Thank you. Thank you. Uh, we do need to go into non-public primarily for the reason Jay mentioned. I hear a motion involving clauses A, B, E, and L. You I move to enter into non-public session at 9:10 p.m. under RSA 91 A2 E Lan back here individually starting with Garrett or sorry starting with Neil. Sorry. Thank you for coming in Sullivan. Yes. I think everybody should be back in a little Okay. Okay. Thank you.
144Bring us back into public session. Can I see a motion for approving these new hires? Deb, I move to approve hiring Robert Vasmer as a 1.0 art teacher, Louis Vanjo as a 1.0 FTE ELO coordinator, Julia Gardner as a.20 FTE instructional coach, Amy Good as a one.0 FTE504 coordinator, Kaden Wilson Holm as a 1.0 FTE one-year PE teacher, Isabelle Caldwell as a 1.0 science teacher, and increasing Ulia Babu from 6 FTE to 1.0 O as presented seconded by Lisa. Any discussion? All those in favor? That is unanimous. Thank you everyone. We have a second opportunity for public comment which by my account means anything to say. Okay. All right. Moving right along. If you have any agenda topics for the next meeting, noting it's in one week, uh please let me know. And again, I
145will be tardy to the next meeting. So I'm asking you chair. And I'll take a motion to adjourn at 9:38. I wish to adjourn the meeting at 9:30. Thank you. Seconded by by Deb. Starting with Neil. Yes. Sullivan. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Nelson. Yes. And Keen. Yes. The next meeting is next Tuesday, June 3rd. Norwich. Don't go anywhere. Good night. Hand over friends.