001e e e [Music] you really we're going to call this Dresden meeting to order it is 7:04 p.m. and our first item on the agenda agenda is agenda review um we have quite a few presentations which we will kind of keep to the front of our meeting but um there's been a request to have the business administrative report held after the um high school council representative report so I think we will entertain that given she is um not supposed to be working today so um that's what what we'll do any other items on the agenda to address review add okay seeing none then then we'll move on to the next item which is public comment um if anybody has anything that they would like to say um from the public that is not currently on
002our agenda uh this is the opportunity to do so we have policy bedh which um kind of guides how public comment works and we appreciate you hearing adhering to the policy um so if anything is not on the agenda that you'd like to to discuss please feel free to come forward now if something is on the agenda we prefer if you wait until um that item is discussed so we will entertain public comment then anything great so moving on we will have the presentations and updates the first one we we have three of these um the first is a Handover High School vignette for the healthhub so if um whoever wants to introduce Julie I see you getting thr something so but I believe and Jane if you folks want to come up and um
003quick presentation and then if the have so we are um we are here as members of the personalized learning programs department at Hann High School PLP department and the helphub is one of the pieces that we're here to talk to you about tonight so Julie asked us to come and highlight some of the programs that we have have that um are sort of newer or you know exciting and so we want to first um allow these lovely people over here who will introduce themselves I'm Amy good by the way and I'm the coordinator of the PLP department and I'm the academic case manager in the response to need program um allow these lovely people to talk to you first about the helphub and then we will talk to you about academic coaching in RTM okay
004oh so my name is Jane leader I am an English teacher here at in high school and um half my job is teaching English half my job is supporting the healthhub in the humanities realm um I'm Matt buck and I do the stem portion of the help Hub so stem resource center and then the other half of my job is I do esol uh student services out of the same space this is Hazel I am Hazel Tomkins I am a Handover High School student and I volunteer as a peer tutor at the H Club um and we have 17 tutors so I'm one of 17 and um we've had about 347 sessions this year and I think I my I I really like the helphub and it's been a great opportunity to be able to
005engage with other students and also I use it as a resource as well as like as well as being part of the resource so when I'm there and no one else is there I'm able to get help and it's I've seen a lot it being very effective cuz I'm terrible at stem so all the math tutors are so nice and so helpful and are Lifesavers and then I'm there for anyone who needs like English help essays all that stuff so it's a great opportunity for me and I've been able to I've had the privilege of going into some classrooms and like working with students when teachers are overwhelmed and it's been really incredible great we felt as though Haz could best speak to our work if you um if you have any questions for any
006of us we're happy to answer them but I think the only thing I I would add just so understanding of the the help Hub it's a it's a it's a resource it's available to any students all day long throughout the day from when they walk in the door to when school is over so there's peer tuning available all day um it could be Dro in Services we also arrange uh students that come kind of regularly whether it's at lunchtime or through study Flex or if they have a free so we try to match them up work with counselors and teachers quite often um to kind of make it uh to build it into I would say like it's new so to build it into the culture of uh being open to that for to peers
007and to ask questions and find answers that's about great any question questions for them before we yeah what was the was the Genesis for the whole so um we used to have um a tutoring fund at hanur high school that was used um to help a few students so maybe 10 12 students a year mostly nth graders and so we eventually started looking at that money and saying how could we use that money to help more kids to to have it is there a way to use it to give lots of kids opportunity for help so it started last year with Jane we you know used that money to have Jane start with a Writing Center and it was was it like point four of your job two point2 of your job last year was
008very small and so we started with that and then when we were starting to want to grow that bigger then the math and science people were like well wouldn't it be great for us to have it be not just a Writing Center but this idea of kids also being able to get drop in math and science help so the intention is to so it so it's bigger than it was when it was you know that just this point2 tutoring fund um with the idea and it's in the computer lab because we really are trying to make that space where kids go to get their Chromebooks charged and fixed and all these places like that is a place where you could go if you need help if you're struggling with something academic or computer related go
009there and somebody in that room will be able to help you figure out what you need um and then get back on get back out and going and again some kids are you know are you know frequent flyers and some kids come in once and may never and it's can I jump on to what you said so and it's increasingly becoming we still have a ways to go but it's becoming part of our high school parament it's becoming part of our culture I was in as a teacher in my teacher role I was in an IEP meeting in the last week where a student has made such strides in their work that they no longer qualify for special ed and the helphub came up as an option as a place that they could have a
010scheduled appointment where they could come and get help and they can get help and it also in a lot of ways as you all probably know from all the conversations you have in here like Hanover High School is very much of a pre-collegiate environment sort of the students have free time they have Independence they have a lot of choice in the courses they take their English curriculum is very elective based very much like a a liberal arts college and this is kind of the industry standard in college there's places that students seek out and and I've spoken with I'm a part of a a organization a Writing Center Association and I went to a conference and online and whatever but you know so it's kind of giving them experience with this tool of teachers who
011are like go to the help Hub you know show your outline to someone in the help Hub and have a signature on it or something you know things so teaching them you know equipping them with that tool for when they go to college and they're seeking out a helphub type environment that makes sense Ben one of the comments we've got about this type of programming here is that some folks want to use it but don't because they're publicly seen using it in rooms like this where other people can see them getting help is it known that there are ways to get this sort of help not behind closed doors but in ways that might not be blaringly obvious to everyone what you're doing yeah I mean I think Amy spoke to that I can I
012mean I don't know if the two of you you can chime in but Amy spoke to that a little bit in terms of having this in the computer lab the the help H being and the idea behind that was that this is a our our original idea behind that was that this is the place where you can go if you forget your locker number this is a place where you can go you know we to your question we actually have had a pretty broad range of ability levels who come in for help if a student was was concerned about that it's certainly something we make appointments you know we we students can drop in and we can pair them up with someone because we have people scheduled to be in you know each period of
013day we have someone scheduled to be in there to work with students they can also make appointments and if that was a concern it's certainly there are certainly spaces that we could make available where they could meet with a tutor oneon-one is that does that answer your question yeah I guess so so some of these doors that are closed right now like our little office rooms I I had a zoom meeting in one of them just yesterday so you know there's always little spaces and Nooks where conversations can be had and also I would say that we have students who come in like at a level of math you know where you know even even Mr Buck is like okay that's like you know this really advanced math you're going to need to work with
014peer tutor who's had that course before or something like that so we have students who are coming in at all different Mobility levels it's not you know certainly not only low you know students in basic classes who come in for help I think we're trying to create a culture of asking for help right so that people don't have to feel embarrassed that they need help like there's a space in the building where anybody can go any time of the school day and get help and that that's just I hope five years from now that will be a very normal part of our culture yeah um what is just in rough terms the relationship between supply and demand like are you using half your time are you almost have capacity would you need more people to
015scale I just don't have a sense of how many people are using it versus how much we have to offer I think we have more to offer than is than is being used right now but I think we're also in our first year of getting this off the ground so I actually think I mean 350 times kids have gone to get help this year I think so compared to 10 kids 350 incidents and some of that is repeat I think that's a you know a good use of our time and our resources and our hope again is that over time as the culture of the school changes we're always competing with free time in hanb high school kids have free time right and so when they make a decision to go get help they could
016also be in the calf and they could also be in the atrium and they could also be hanging out so we we are trying to make sure and so again this is a shift in the culture to say like one of the things that you can be doing when you have free time is going and getting extra help so I think we're we're still building and growing but I feel like given what's happened and and the number of tutors and the number of kids who have gone it's been really successful for its first year great we also would like to see teachers integrating into their assignments you know I would like my students to integ to integrate into an assignment for students show you know show your out take your outline to the help help
017you know get another set of eyes on it before you turn it into me you know just to to start the training I have a question for Hazel um what have you learned going from student to tutor um as offering house um I think I've I mean in the past I've been a peer tutor in like classes English classes and I think I've learned that I can't be as harsh when it's someone who's you know seeking out help and I also think I've learned that people have enthusiasm about their work but it can just be frustrating when you hit like a roblock and it's really helpful to like add a new perspective onto a paper or something like that thanks yeah how does scheduling work like you know so say I need help in math
018I drop in do I see you first Matt and then you put me in with the student or does there is there always like on in that room some kids that are kind of the math people and English people like great question it's a little bit of both right now like I'm always in that space so um there's times throughout the day and through the week where we do always have at least one student in there sometimes three or four tutors available so if that's the case like a student will come in they might seek somebody out and there's you know like we've got signs up and places that are approachable for them to come um but like if it's another at another time of the day like somebody walks in like I'm I'm going
019to be like the first Contact you know in a way and I'm going to and then you make that connect because I'm thinking back like business school for like you know second year accounting people like you know they worked at Dee like there was no embarrassment like you were going to go work with that second year but you set up so you make these connections with we'll make the connections cuz like our tutors have gone through kind of like an application process and like there we kind of go through and like we ask for who would recommend them who were teachers we could go to to talk to them especially if we're looking at because we have kids come in for and calculus and physics and stuff like that so that you can't just drop
020somebody in have a random conversation on certain content areas so yeah so we'll do a little bit of both there's Arrangement um say early in the morning if somebody's there like I will I will I'll do everything I can to sit down but we might come to the point to say let's look at your schedule here's some times when these three people are available and then well I'll kind of wrap all three of us into a conversation about just keeping them positively coming it's definitely a work in progress and it's things that we're trying to tweak and polish as we go like we've played around with a lot of different ways of scheduling and different ways of giving the information out so people know when particular tutors are there who are you know experts in
021particular areas so we're we're still tweaking and polishing for sure but so one one last question before we move on yeah actually I I sort of had two um sorry like one if we could move on I mean if if we have time to talk about something other than the helphub I people who are here to talk about this and then just a quick helphub question probably for Hazel and maybe for Matt because it sounds like you sit there or Mr Buck sorry um you sit there um all day how do you find how are students finding you now like is it word of mouth because they know that you've used it is it that teachers are recommending it I I guess I'm just wanting to make sure that the the word gets spread equitably
022throughout the school and it's not just you know Hazel friend I mean not that it would I mean that's a great way for word mouth to spread too but just sort of making sure that people know about it so if you know the answer like are you taking an intake form or something just like how did you hear about us no no as you were asking this question I was like oh we're not collected information exactly but a few things like we do advertis throughout the school like on the screens stuff's gone up on schooly in the past like this past month we really did like a targeted advertisement within the science department and we we had one of our volunteers make signs and we said we need them to get all the information they
023need within two to 3 seconds cuz that's about the attention we're going to have them for when they're passing through the hall and but we work with that through um the science Resource Center John fips distributes it teachers have it up in the room so we kind of can go and Target things I mean it do feel like word of mouth is probably the best way to spread it but just making sure that it spreads to the appropriate Pockets yeah it's definitely something we're still working I know we need to move on to next group but we it's something we're definitely that's definitely an area of priority in terms of what working on we were recently invited to to present at the at our full staff meeting which we did we had a slideshow which
024we chose not to bring to you all because we thought that just talking to you was was like would take up too much time um and so spoke to the full staff told them ways they could use that we come into their classrooms they could send students to us they could make it as a component of assignments Etc and then we've followed up my on my end anyway with the essay and gotten like standard templates of like from social studies from English like what's your standard so that when a student comes in here and saying says oh I'm writing a paper for CW you know Hazel has a template of what that assignment is and what the students have been given so that she can provide guidance that alignance with the curriculum does that make
025sense so we're yeah thank you yeah thank you thank you all for being here doing um so as you can see on this sheet I we're not going to read these things because you obviously have them in of you but the helphub is sort of our most generalized support service right and so and then we have study hall and study strategies class and then we're going to talk to you now about two other programs that we have um academic coaching and response to need so um why don't you talk a little bit about coaching I'll talk about response need and then we're going to let Eva really tell you all about it and Devon is here because she's a mental health counselor who works with us and one of A's biggest fans so hi I'm
026Willie Johnson I'm the head of academic coaching uh it as Amy was saying it's on the spectrum of service is I'm kind of in the Middle where I'm have kids who are assigned to me in my classroom who meet with me three times a week two blocks one short on a Wednesday and I review both their school records informations on power school and school resource management system on schooly try to help them consider what needs to be prioritized what do they need to work on how do they have time management how do they record things to make sure that they know when they're going to be doing it how to develop plans in that sort of manner and try to account for the rest of their life you know try to help them think about
027are you playing a sport after school do you have other commitments that your family are going to be that you need to be doing with your family um so trying to help them see big picture in terms of how does school fit in with their life and try to help Coast them through that and other things like Resource Management you should clean out your backpack every once in a while uh things like that giving them folders um and also a little bit of response and aition of you're on your phone I'm taking nuts so I things like that little things and then um you know I think that's sort of I'm trying to help them be more independent you know I think having worked with Amy in rtn is one of my positions I had
028been previously you know I I've seen how Amy does it and I tried to kind of back off and I think it comes from what the lineage of my program is is from weekly academic advising and when it had been just once a week when I met with students for 20 minutes once a week I kind of did that for two years and I thought that model was such that I didn't feel like I was impacting the students as much as I could I wasn't helping them as much as I could so after two years of doing weekly academic advising I went to the counseling department and advocated to say can we grow this role a little bit bigger in terms of how often I meet with students to help make sure you know a
029week to week follow through is a long time for a high school student you know I think even sometimes the two days from a Monday to a Wednesday feels like a long time for me with my students but um you know I I think in the last two years I've been really happy about having more of a a classroom setting and having more distinct time when I can also monitoring students working because I think often prior when I set students out to work on something they would get stuck and often I'm finding in my classroom I'm helping students consider how to unstuck themselves helping them draft emails to teachers helping them consider do they go talk to Matt Buck about something in the helphub if I'm not so sure with sence um things like that
030just trying to help them not feel like there's an impass with their school and their education and then rtn is sort of our highest level of service and that is where we're working with students who are in a real moment of need things are not going very well and they need some help digging out and finding their way back onto their academic path um and so I'm actually going to let Ava talk to because Ava is a graduate of rtn and she is now in academic coaching so I'm going to let her talk about what that experience was been like yeah so um I started uh rtn because I was falling behind and I just really needed to work on my like time management and keeping up with work um and I guess when I
031first got into rtn I kind of felt like more of a punishment than I she like me very much now yeah but so the first few weeks were kind of tough but it was just like getting into routine and figuring things out transitioning building habits setting goals stuff like that and then um I had weekly meetings with a counselor that were scheduled for me which helped a lot with everything else that was going on and I had daily conversations with Miss good about planning what I was going to do for the day which felt like which did feel like nagging at first and then it was like oh no she's trying to help me and it really did it really did help set a basis for a lot of things and she made a plan
032book for me which was ended up helping a lot and I guess it was another thing that like rtn helped with sorry I mean no um yeah but I also gained a support system with rtn um uh Bethany and missg good became sort of like not only just like people that could I guess I go to for art because I have to but I can just go there as like a safe space if I need a break or if I need to if I need help with anything I can go there during a study hall and yeah I guess at the end of rtn I really began to apply myself I was motivated because I saw myself doing better thanks to the help of Miss good and um my counselor and yeah and then I
033graduated from rtn cuz my grades were better and went to academic coaching and it's it's not the same but he it it allowed me to like maintain my habits from rtn instead of just going from complete and total freedom my all my free periodes back afterwards I actually appreciate academic coaching a lot but um he does the check-ins the daily check-ins too and he helps with class if you need it and if you're done with your work you can go so in that way it's kind of a step up from rtn but they were both really really helpful for me and definitely got my stuff together that so yeah yeah good good could have said it better thank you so much any questions for us about either of these programs or I mean I guess
034anything else on the sheet are coaching in rtn something that a student it's on their schedule as a class they are not credit earning but they are in the schedule so they're attendance bearing but not credit earning so if when a student is enrolled in rtn or coaching it goes into their schedule and so we mark them absent present you know whatever um but as soon as the student graduates from it it disappears so there's no you know permanent record of it being on a on a student schedule and are they sorry it's uh multiple people at a in a session at the same time yes there's more than yes there's more than one kid I think we can take up to eight I think my en rolling cap is eight and I think my
035biggest section is seven six right now and rtn is a space that you know there's fluctuations and things that happen we also students who are on in school suspension spend the day with us getting this same sort of model you know academic case management and counseling so um it's it's a fluctuating space so there's always varieties of kids in there yeah I'm wondering like what is the timeline generally for the transition from rtn to academic coaching how long do students spending each such a good question so we rtn is a 9we program and we you know lay that out very carefully at the beginning when we're meeting with families about what kids are signing up for sometimes students are done with us earlier than nine weeks but nine weeks is a quarter so basically we're
036saying we're going to invest this level of service for a quarter to see how things are going and to help you get off the ground and most almost every student is done after nine weeks and then we say what's the next best step some students leave and they don't go to coaching they just are independent some students go to coaching if students are in nth grade they often will go to study strategies class if it fits into their schedule so we try to look at like what's the best match for a you know the step down that we possibly can and then we also are supporting um students who are making a transition to speci education so if we feel like a student really is going to continue to struggle without this level of support
037my background is as a learning specialist I was a special education teacher at Haner high school before I did this then we might make a special education referral and that student would stay with us until that process was complete Lisa yeah um I know study strategies is a credit course um does it make sense or is it would it be cumbersome to have coaching and rtn also get credit like I'm just thinking about the kids who are sitting there having a credit for the work that they're doing just might be helpful to them I guess in terms of because I also teach study strategies um in terms of the lessons that I present in study strategies versus what I do in academic coaching I I don't provide in the academic coaching setting I don't provide
038uh a lesson to the group of five six students I have um from when we've had conversations it's been a possibility but I think it would take something else like that to to have either setting be credit baying and I don't want to yeah and I think I mean learning strategies are our special education services are credit earning and um I think that some of that is protective of students privacy right like I I think things that are credit earning show up on a transcript and you have to explain them and I think these are things that are meant to support students um but not you know I don't I I don't I don't I don't think I don't personally feel there would be a need for that but um and uh and and yeah
039there are kids who don't like it at the beginning and they want to have free time but usually kids come around and are and kids some kids are with Willie for right and so in terms of yeah and I do quarterly reviews to try to turn over my enrollment uh my enrollment is not elective based it is something that is by referral based from counselors um and also students who come off of IEPs sometimes land with me when they're going on 504s so yeah and is it is hard I just want to say I really appreciate you're talking about the privacy of being an rtn which makes me even more grateful that you're willing to come and reflect in a wonderful way about the benefit and the value because that serves to model the validity
040of the program and also how important it was or could be for other students so thank you Neil um it and this I think I heard the answer that Michael got from the question but I want to ask it again for both the rtn program and helphub are we uh are we undersubscribed at the moment I'm going to turn to Julie and figure out like is this something that we need to consciously look at maybe increasing budget funding for like what's the trajectory of this what are we looking at from a like funding responsibility so 40 so up to now there have been 48 students who have used academic coaching over the course of the year and we've had 26 kids go be enrolled in rtn we've also had 38 incidents of in school suspension
041that we have you know worked with for the day um and and RT you know rtn is a point is six of what I do um which I mean I think it works out um it's been bigger certainly during the pandemic and and we were grateful it existed I think at times during that because it gave us a you know place to flow and to grow I don't feel like we're overwhelmed right this second um I feel like we have the resources we need to do what we're trying to do um you know there are some days where I'm like whoa this a lot and then but it it evens out and it figures itself out so we also have an ed assistant who works with us in rtn so that I have the flexibility
042to be able to go and do other things as needed overseeing all these programs and and that's Bethany who FAA was referring to she stays in the space so and likewise for the help of too it's it capacity exceeds I would say I would say it's I mean it's growing I think I would say it's sort of in its infin stage and hopefully getting bigger I don't I don't right now I don't feel like with any of these pieces we are in need of more Staffing um for where we are right now and rtn this is the sixth year of rtn actually um and so and I think it's you know the numbers of it fluctuate between what we're doing on On Any Given year but it feels like it's just a solid part of
043what we're of what we're doing um but I don't I don't feel like it needs to be more at this point Ben um just to clarify is rtn required and it's referred um it's not no so it we meet in PST and so a referral is made we meet in pstd and say yes we believe this is the service that the student is in need of and then the counselor reaches out to the family so a parent is asked would you like to put this add this to your student schedule ual and only then do we do we put it in so we we would never say we've had people refuse us you know people say no thank you I don't we don't need that that's not for us um so no it's not required
044any other questions thank you so much for your time we really appreciate thank you thank you thank you all right so our next presentation um will be an athletic director update um I think Megan's going to be coming forward um but we just wanted to get an understanding about what's going on with Athletics um and we've um hired an assistant athletic director past couple of years and so as this is kind of a growing Department we just wanted to understand what's going on and if meeting can let us know what's going on that would be great yeah so right two years ago we added the assistant athletic director position um which um I think has been a great benefit um to not just Athletics but the school overall um we have a really robust Athletic
045program um and you know as I talked about when we added the position um you know we have more participation more teams um more opportunities than any school of our size in New Hampshire um and I think that's an important part of what we do at hanar high school and it was very difficult to do without an assistant athletic director um with an assistant athletic director it is definitely more manageable um it's still a lot and there's still you know more to do but I think that we've um you know added some things done some things better than you know previously because you know we have the time um to be able to do that I think um partly um we're we've been working on more opportunities for more students and I think part of
046that has been our development teams um which we've been able to expand um which I think has been really important because typically these you know as we know our Athletic program is very competitive and most of our programs you have to have played from the time you were this big or you know um you can't be on a varsity team um and that's that's a challenge for kids that just want to get involved so I think that um the growth of those has been really important um some of the other things that we've done um social media because that's what kids want so um we've expanded that and I think that's helped you know obviously with the new mascot as well um and branding and you know getting people excited about coming to events and
047and all of that um just looking through some of the notes that you guys have so I don't want to go over all of that um but some of the things that we've been able to do um equipment and uniform management that was mostly in the coach's hands before I mean with 66 teams trying to manage uniforms for 66 teams is a lot um so we've been able we set up an inventory system so we're able to check it out more like library books and all that so we can keep track of stuff um which has been important um and holding kids accountable when they don't bring it back like that could be a full to get them out and get them in so um that's been great um we've increased participation part of that
048is development programs and part of it is just you know expansion of teams and um I think doing more Outreach uh we started doing Outreach um at RMS um we actually have a a lunch gathering on Friday for fall sports for eighth graders so we're going to have our teams go and talk about the opportunities um we started a survey so we have an idea of kind of what's coming um from RMS and then also sending schools so anytime the counselors get something we send that out so we can get an idea of you know who wants to do what and just make people aware of you know all the programs that we offer um the facility use um has increased a great deal and that's helpful to have two people because someone needs to
049be managing the weight room um in terms of the gym like we only have that open when someone's here um which you know with two people we here a lot more well maybe not a lot more I might be here less but we're both here more together um and I think one of the big things too is been able to be involved in the school Community um better able to we all did March intensives in our department um which previously I wasn't able to do the week before spring Sports start so it's super busy um having an advisory I have an advis our system ad has an advisory um I think having we've just had more interaction with students because we have the time to do that and I think people feel more comfortable because
050they see us around rather than me being in my office behind my desk answering emails trying to do scheduling all of that so um just better able to be a part of the school Community better able to attend meetings um that before it was like no it's raining I can't do anything today except reschedule events um so I think that um that's been important too to um to the school um we have a new registration system which has been great for any parents that have done that when you have to just resign someone up it literally takes like 10 seconds versus before it was we had to fill everything out all over again um we started pep rallies which um still working on um getting a little more school spirit um so so some students
051seem to really like it some not so much so you know we're working on that um but I think trying new things is important and see kind of what takes um and I think us being able you know we have 70 paid um coaches that's a lot to supervise for one person so I think that's been helpful we actually I think we had six new coaches last year um or this year so being able to Mentor them head coaches so being a to help them um you know navigate the school most of our coaches come from the outside so that's a little bit challenging so being able to be able to spend time with them and Mentor them has I think been really important any questions for Megan Ben H thanks for this Megan really
052appreciated um I'm a little nervous with the increase of three Sports student athletes in terms of time management and whether they have the time to realistically be in three Sports and do well academically and there were several comments on our recent survey that said similar things and what are your thoughts on whether it's that's a good thing that we're seeing a pretty big expansion um I think it's a good thing um I think that you know the input that we get is that students are better able to manage their time when they're busier um and I think that you know kids you talk the kids that are in season and it's like I know I have to get this done I need to use my study hall time I need to make sure I'm using
053my free periods um rather than just go home and oh I have you know a lot of time it's like I think if you talk to students it they're better off when they're in season so I think that's something we've tried to increase and tried to we started giving out three sport athic t-shirts um just to encourage you know more participation I think what we're seeing across the country is specialization of sports and I don't think that's healthy um you have kids playing soccer year round and that's the only sport they play so being able to say oh I'm going to play JV baseball and I can still you know and these kids are still doing their sport year round like I I'm coaching softball I have two girl freshmen that have never played ninth
054grader sorry that have never played um softball before and we only have a varsity program they're very athletic but they're year- round soccer players so today they literally had their softball pants on their lightning soccer team was practicing on the field over there like coach practices over can I run over to soccer take off their pants they had their soccer shorts on and ran over and played soccer so those kids are going to do that anyway um but it's going to be outside the school and I think having them inside the school and us being able to have a little more um control and so support for what they're doing is a good thing do you track how many are doing non-school sports at the same time that are doing school sports we don't I
055mean there so there's a state rule that you can't you can't miss any inse in school in season Athletics for out of season stuff um so you know it's difficult to do but people navigate it but we don't we don't keep track of that any other questions NE uh two questions if I may chair one is uh new title and regulations just dropped uh any impact that you're aware of at this moment in terms of the state legislation or about the transgender that's where I was going to go with my second question the first question was just I don't know if anybody's had a chance to take a look the revised Title 9 regulations I don't know if anything substantially has changed that would require anything for us to do at a policy level here
056we haven't had a legal update yet now okay um not that I'm aware of okay then I will go so the second question is have we had issues yet in New Hampshire um I'm I was looking specifically at our policy just before I asked this question so we're explicit the inter Scholastic competitive sports teams those students can play on the team with the team that they identify with have we had issues with that we have not had issues and we have quite a few transgender students participating um and I'm very concerned about the legislation that's out there um because that would have a huge impact on our programs and our students any other questions uh just a quick two-part question uh first part is do you think there are things that we can do to
057strengthen uh Middle School athletics that would help High School athletics and if so like what are your ideas on that well we don't have have Middle School athletics so um I think fre to opine adding adding Middle School athletics would help strengthen our program um you know I think that right now because we don't we don't have control over it and the rec department is running it we don't the sports that they offer are the sports they offer you know there's not softball there's not volleyball there's you know um and you know a lot of parent coaches not that that wouldn't necessarily happen because it's hard to find coaches for Middle School sports but I think what we found being able to reach out to RMS and sort of um talk to those kids before
058they get here would be and enhanced by having Middle School sports because we could have you know we could do clinics we could have them come to varsity practice you know those kind of things was that cover Waterfront I'm also a tribute to what happens with parent coaches I what you get as a baseball coach it's program it's a good thing in a lot of cases in many many cases many many many cases Lisa yeah I just kind of wanted to go back to the three sport athlete thing just to be clear about what like what that means from our athletic department it means that a that a student is playing a sport in each of the three seasons um you know and I would say from my perspective having had two three sport athletes
059now it encourages them to try something that they wouldn't have tried otherwise and I just came here from the lacrosse team where there are three seniors on it right now who have never played lacrosse in their lives and just decided why not we did football and we did you know basketball or hockey and we don't have anything going on right now and let's triy lacrosse and I really appreciate the fact that the athletic department is open to that because there aren't a lot of high schools that would let you as a senior pick up a lacrosse stick for the first time and actually be on the field so um any other questions a question but just I really thought Megan since our athletic committee advisers but just so you know and I think Tim I'm
060not sure if I CC you guys but obviously the athletic advisory committee we disbanded just because it didn't have a particular we were obviously spending a lot of time on Middle School sports when we're meeting and just so Megan knows and I think Tim as well I did take all of I kind of put together bunch of slides and bullets and summarized all that J along with some of the data we got other area programs and stuff so all that those I six or seven years worth of meetings have now over to your group any other questions um I have one but then also I note that there is a member of the public online so if you have any questions um I will be opening it up for public comment in a second um
061but just kind of going back to um the assistant athletic director position when it was um created and and formulated I think the idea was to kind of help transition some of these developmental teams they didn't have to travel so far to kind of create more of this like inter local school kind of play like what's what's the plan there or what's the Thought yeah and we have done that um and you know with our either developmental or jb2 or freshman you know basically what happens at the state level is if they other schools have programs they build you a schedule where we would be traveling all over the state but with the assist athletic director we're able to say actually we don't want to do that we're going to go to Hartford and we're
062going to go to Woodstock and we're going to you know so more local competition um I mean we when we were talking about this is deaththe position one of the things like kept getting brought up was inter murals um but we found that I mean that's really hard to do because Inter murals is you're going to play this team we don't have enough students that want to do that because we have so many students participating on teams we have um but what we've done is we've taken those lower level teams and made them more local competition and open to everyone um unfortunately in some programs we still have to make cuts um but you know at philosophically we have a sport at least one sport each season that does not have Cuts so you can
063participate you know it might not be the sport you want if you didn't make the hockey team or you know but there's something you can do um so I think that um yeah I mean I think we'll we'll continue to work with those and figure out you know what the right sports are I mean one of the issues is facilities so you know I feel like we could have a tennis program for sure but we don't have any courts to use it's hard enough for our varsity and JV teams to find you know you know so just sort of navigating that and figuring out where the need is um what students want you know the increased use of the weight room has been great we have a new class where they can use that um
064so you know I think developing some more Fitness sort of training um might be a direction we could go where we be competition but you know that kind of stuff so mean it's kind of like what Neil had asked the previous group so just as far as with budgets plan we've got our offsite so where do you think like when you're looking ahead and you're just like there's 33 of varc sports 500 kids participating like what if you had kind of need more budget for things I mean you know I look we've got that one turf field we've got that new field I think that's going to open up now that was grassed and hopefully you know it sounds like we've got at least the baseball team got off to a good start I mean
065where would you kind of look at the budgets because we never got to there as our athletic committee that was way we're going to get into kind of how we can help advocate for what you need when you get down to budget season right because the athletic budget at the of the day it's pretty small like there's not you know coaches and the uniforms and there's not a lot there for what you're trying to do so what do you have any yeah I mean I think a couple things like one thing being facilities is a huge issue if we had another turf field that would help us a ton because there's lots of times we can't use you know the the wet Fields um particularly in the spring um so you know that that's one
066thing you know tennis courts you know developing The Dresden site we have no bathrooms out there we have no shelter out there you know that's I think an issue um just with weather and lightning and all that stuff so you know I think facilities would be would be one I think the other um you know we rely a lot on friends groups um and that's a whole another can of worms in terms of what they're doing with money whether they're internal accounts external accounts but a lot of our programs you know football has to raise a whole lot of money to buy their equipment because you know their budget's like $2,000 for us to you know that buys 10 helmets you know um so I would say that's the other thing and then and then
067I would say let me add one more is you know going back to the whole pay to play um we're still I think in the minority of schools that charge athletes so you know that's a budget issue um most people don't blink an eye at it and we have a waiver process and and all of that but I think that you know if we want to support our teams fully then maybe we shouldn't have to you don't have to pay to take a lab class or you know so questions okay um members of the public anything seeing none thank you thank you oh you did just have a hand go up oh did we yeah can you move Kate over Kate if you unmute go ahead Kate hi thank you this is Kate Hilton this
068isn't the actual public comment it's just comment on that last piece it's agenda item yes yeah okay great I'll stay silent till the last thank you so much okay thank you yeah so we we tend to open up for public questions based upon the agenda item and then we will also have um just confirming that it is there yeah number 11 public comment will be at the end of the meeting um in addition to what we had at the beginning so thanks okay me ask Linda would you like to hi um Linda Dante and um I'm here to just give the board a a very quick update because you all know how much I love talking about Nasi and councel um and and this is basically the context I want I just want to frame
069it a little bit for those who might be listening um so that you know the whole Nas thing is a probably a more extended process than people realized last year the school was involved in a self-reflective collaborative process where they looked at the practice according to the standards that Nas has and then they wrote up a report we had a visiting teamc com um they basically met with students teachers community members they reviewed our report and we received their report which is now on the website so people can go in and read those details about what the visiting team said about us there are also commendations and recommendations there and you can also find the N standards which we try to align with so there you are you're up to date so why we are
070here tonight is because now we're going into the next phase there is a desial visit which happens about two years after but not really because we start preparing for it next year and then we'll have a visiting team come back to our high school in March so March 30th that's a Sunday they'll probably arrive on Monday stay Monday Tuesday and Wednesday um I have done a denal visit yes it was at an elementary school but this kind of gets me to the point which is probably the most important point I'm going to share tonight because Neil had asked why do we do Nas and I have to say first of all it is a process that goes from K on up through college so it is across all grade levels um it is also incredibly
071important because there are standards that are research based which we are as schools asked to align to and so these are again sort of that you know hard critical factor that we often say what are we talking about we talk about what we need to do here if we want all of our students to be successful Learners so that's the criteria that's used another thing that happens um that I have to say that is just amazing is that we know when you're in a school it's really busy and finding that time to sit with each other and reflect about things of importance is really challenging and Ne ask that's part of the process you buy into when you go for accreditation and I have to say what you have noticed or what you would notice
072if you looked at the report and then what we've done which is in the slide presentation I want everybody to know that will be up for the community to see as well as the board there are some comments made about what has already happened this year in response because the biggest Banner item from the denial visit when they come is they're going to be looking at our four growth areas two of them involve curriculum documentation okay and then also a way of looking at it and assessing it and helping it to say right as sort of a growing representative document of what we do here to help support our Learners that's one and two of our our our goals that we have in this school goal three is about looking at Tada the Strategic plan
073which you guys worked on right portrait of a learner which is community critical thinking come on guys can you name it what are the other two responsibility and responsibility and responsibility came from our students right okay so those are also described and then we have the Dresden mission statement which by the way is also the high school mission statement okay so that makes it easy doesn't it because we're talking about and I always put Hearts first Minds hearts and voices my point point is this is important because we're all on the same page now and we have goals and our charge for the high school is to demonstrate how we're growing you just heard three fine presentations that really named places where growth is happening right and that's the same thing we'll be doing when
074they come back and that's why part of what's in the slide presentation are some of the areas where you know theyve targeted growth and they're looking for what's going to happen next so that's all I have questions any questions oh yeah just thank you for being so excited about this it's almost pathological but I just just don't ask me about counsel oh no wait I have one thing about Council so the fourth one is is well-being of students and staff and I'm looking at Josh because Council has really taken up the mantle of bringing that topic into students uh frame of reference there's a mental health motion where it's was Student Life committee they're looking for a wellness room there's a 5 minute break which was a resolution which really had a humongous well that
075word amount of brain research which again you should go to the council page and look at so you know students are really looking at how they can take some responsibility to to think about well-being and they've also called upon um the administration to look at two things one kind of the beginning of the day so that late start I'm looking at Josh again this is one of his favorite items late start to the school day again for mental health re reasons and and the other one um blocking on the other one so you'll have to look it up but I'm going to stop now because you have a long meeting and I'm happy to answer any questions thanks Linda thank you anything from the public um seeing none we'll move to uh council rep um
076well first I want to thank Mr Dante for just highlighting uh I guess council's Focus I think over the past year on student well-being um and some of the things that Council has done recently align very much with that Focus um so I gosh about a month ago more than a month ago Council uh failed uh the No Award ceremonies motion which was brought way back in the beginning of the year uh it was a recommendation though by the Admin committee um to fail this tion because they wrote up recommendations to the administration about changes that could be made to uh end ofe award ceremonies which uh I read were accepted and imple have been implemented by the administration um so some of these changes include uh like parents being notified by the main office
077if their student is receiving an award in advance um in addition coordinators will review uh lists of Award winners um at the coordinator's meeting um to uh review any major overlaps one of the main concerns of among students were uh a small group of uh students receiving too many awards essentially um uh in addition including a common format for announcing Awards um and putting criteria for Awards in the program of the awards ceremony so basically uh for the common format uh students would there wouldn't be any specialized uh message that's read out to the entire uh student body it would just be uh the awards read then the student stands up they wouldn't walk up to the stage and then after the ceremony they would go and collect their uh award um Council also passed
078the f- minute break motion or resolution as Mr Dante U mentioned and so this uh encourages teachers to allow students to move around the room in the middle of our block periods um and as she mentioned this is really grounded in lots of uh research uh done about like the brain and how students learn best um and I think Council really um uh heavily supported this um and I think many students who you just talk to uh at the high school uh typically have this feeling where it's difficult to uh sit through almost a 90minut block period so uh I am hopeful that this will uh really help um then Council also passed uh the curriculum committee's retrod day motion so which me and Miss Nelson were involved with um and this recommends uh that
079one Monday would be set aside for a retro day um which would be in the theme of Y2K um this was a recommendation to the administration so we wrote up a schedule essentially and this would encourage students and teachers to give up technology so they're like phones and computers for that day um so we're thinking that's something that will be exciting and hopefully can happen this year um and then we also uh have been discussing and reviewing uh council's election bylaws um so one motion which was brought at the last meeting but hasn't been formally voted on but I still wanted to share with you guys was the staff membership bylaw revision So currently the process for uh electing staff members to council is that uh any vote any person who can vote in the
080election so a student or a staff member can vote for a student or a staff member uh then staff and each grade gets a certain number of representatives and then there's an at large delegation um that's like the most barebones uh way I can Des describe it as uh but this motion would change it so that uh staff representation would be by Department it wouldn't necessarily change how staff are voted for students could still vote for staff uh members of all departments could vote for staff uh but this recommends that or suggests the idea that uh staff membership be made more equal throughout departments rather than a few departments being heavily represented um so that is something that council is discussing currently in addition to uh several other uh changes to uh our bylaws in
081regards to how elections work any questions yeah please is this your last meeting with us I think I have one more so I think this is my second to last okay then we won't say goodbye thank just wanted to make sure that we weren't going to miss that opportunity and you better come to last minut probably questions comments no I did have to chuckle when you were saying y 2K is like without technology because you know we didn't have any technology in the year 2000 for all of us that remember that um okay anything from the public great J yeah okay great and now um we did adjust our agenda at the beginning of the meeting to have our business administrator report happen now so if Jamie if you are ready good evening how are
082you good um I remember why I have to tell you a quick little snippet Y2K I was at uh Vermont Yankee at midnight when the Clock Struck midnight and went over we were I was helping a group feed the troops down there it was very exciting um anyway if you drop down to uh the business manager section there are a host of attachments apologies for doing it um yesterday and today I've been traveling for family so that's why they got done later um the first one that you'll see attached is uh just an overview I was um one of the class of 1974 uh Dave crory reached out to me I I'm gonna say it was um probably January or February with some questions about an idea that the class of 1974 was uh discussing
083about an alumni Legacy gift fund and so I've attached uh a brief about that idea and what they're potentially hoping to do at their 50 th um anniversary which I believe is occurring in August so that is just for your review to see you know what may potentially be coming up um and if you have any questions you can reach out to me I do owe uh Mr Cy a phone call he did reach out to me to try to have a conversation while I was away uh so I'll do that this week coming up but that's just for your review and for your information um I also attached the UN audited uh Surplus projection overview and that is through April 22nd which is yesterday uh the very uh first item is the overview of
084all those other documents that are posted it's the general fund document um and so sometimes I share this with you and walk you through it I don't know if you want me to do that or not but I'm going to do it quickly because I do know that you have a lot going on here we go um so on the top it shows you an overview of all the expenditures that are on the second page and where we're trending at the moment so you can see for expenses we're trending a surplus of about 434,000 at the moment I do have a few requests for transfers of funds um that I've been sitting on because I wanted to see where we were at uh also in revenues there's a projected variance that's favorable of about $29,000
085um it's a couple reasons for that tuition came in a little bit higher than we had initially budgeted and we also got an offsetting revenue for um an additional expenditure for the Christen mff um uh we had a teacher who won a Christa mlli award and has been doing some work on that so when you put it all together the operational fund balance for the general fund is about 643,000 we add in the retainage that we're sitting on that would bring our projection up to 9113 we would give back 400 which we've done during the budget process for 2425 which if my numbers come to fruition would give a unassigned surplus of about 513 at that point we could decide uh we would decide what kind of um retainage that we would want to do
086uh you know because we set the revenues get set in October so we look at all of ours for 2425 and as long as they're on target then this may be what would be available um and you all can look through all of that and if you have any questions uh just let me know just reach out and let me know um then about a few more items down there is an un audited surplus of and I don't know can you see that one um this is all the special Revenue funds and so it goes through the grant funds the food service operations March intensive your athletic funds which is what Megan was talking about um the special gift funds for both schools and then each of the schools has uh student activity funds so
087you can see what we started with beginning balances what the revenue has been so far and what the expenditures have been so far um and so anybody has any questions uh public included please email me uh and I'll be happy to answer any questions all of the expanded reports are here for your review um I do just want to speak to a couple of the items I have a really early um meeting in the morning at Maran cross and so I need to get prepped for that but thank you for letting me go at the top of the agenda um I'm just going to point out that you also have attached The Dresden ms22 form uh which is item f for action and that's just the report that we file with the state of New
088Hampshire based on what the Appropriations were as voted uh we do a similar thing for Handover as well I believe I put the front page that needs signature in with the expenditures um you also have as item G the tuition rates to set for uh Hanover High School and Richmond Middle School and they've been done in the traditional manner they're down just a little bit not a heck of a lot um due to the change in the payoff for the building costs but as we were removing that we approved a teachers union agreement so they kind of almost they almost washed it was pretty close um so the that information is there for you as well I don't think anything else is mine tonight great any questions for Jamie comments okay great um Jamie I
089do like to see that we do have a surplus which will help bolster our um our retainage which is a bit lower than um we would probably prefer since that is our really only Reserve type Fund in Dresden um so I putting a a a prediction out there that we might be uh looking to to see some of that in October so absolutely great thank you and again reach out if you have any questions because I'm Gonna Leave You Now all right thanks Jamie thanks very much public so then Tim for an RMS principal report and um just given the time too if you want to be brief I don't think anybody woulde I'll entertain any questions the only update we had was it was too windy on Monday to launch our balloons I know
090we would have launched them and they would have ended up in Li um they didn't want to chase all the kids down lime Road Chas your so hopefully on Friday we'll have the Bing launch it's been rather difficult to get everything done we have to get it done before next Wednesday because that's when our eighth grade takes off from Montreal and or New York so we come to that time of the year when everything gets really compressed so other than that that's pretty much the update we have it it's busy busy between now and the end of the year testing started today we got through it nothing crashed everybody seems to be okay although the energy is a little off but it'll be all right so most of it done by Thursday good to go
091after robotics robotics team this is it depends on who you talk to um they all think that they did we didn't do very well they finished in the top 50 out of 150 teams um Tom Hermanson and Jess workan tee who were there said that one of the teams they talked to um from one of the organizations has had a team with the World Championships every year since 1987 so or 19 1997 so we're up against some teams who have a fair amount of consistent past experience all of our students are brand new so they had a really good experience I think they had really fun time individually I think they did well there were some great pictures of them working collectively with teams from Thailand and Switzerland who didn't really speak English very well
092so they had to sort of figure out how to make things work so I think it was a great middle school experience they didn't win which for some of them was you know exactly what they needed to do we're hoping to go back next year thanks s and it looks like from the picture at least a cardboard cut out of Taylor swith was there as well right I was wondering if Taylor Swift and U Travis Kelce were coming back with them but they didn't make the flight Julie for the high school principal you've had a high school update for the last hour but I just if you want at some point to hear from our balloon NASA crew let me know and they can come and speak to you um I would encourage you to
093come to Mean Girls which will be on that 10th 11th 12th weekend if tickets are an issue let us know um same thing mega concert would be good to go to our art art show all the thing things that are there are just everything's on display and it's uplifting so please please do that and um you know we're in sectioning that we just decide on what we're running next year what we're not going to run we're now putting the students into that Matrix and mixing it up and we'll see what comes out but we're using everything he gave us um so in order to run all the things that we feel like our students are asking for so thank you thanks any questions for Julie anything from the public so moving on to business requiring
094discussion uh Jamie alluded to this before but um our first item is the uh doe ms22 uh this is the report as as Jamie mentioned um if we have any questions on that we probably need to call Jamie back but um any questions you have a cover sheet um yeah I don't I don't think this is something else that I'm supposed to sign every page okay just one yeah okay seeing none and nothing from the public U moving on to committee assignments uh I believe everyone has seen seen a version of this before this is just um kind of our board committee and Leadership assignments some of this we've already voted on as being you know board leadership positions um and some of this uh was kind of discussed after a four chairs meeting to
095try to balance needs and availability and fairness um across all of our different committees um of course this meeting we're just kind of looking at the blue section The Dresden um assignments but um this is kind of the opportunity to speak now or forever hold your peace and that kind of thing and and we wanted to show all of them um even though this isn't the Handover Norwich or sa70 boards but just to kind of get a level of fairness across that that was kind of the point so you didn't just see one board at a time um so if any questions on that I think norch and hover have both kind of looked at this before so shouldn't be a surprise all right and then of moving on I doubt there's any public comment
096on who does what but yes I I don't know so on those right so we did look just so people like why did I ask for something didn't get it like we also looked at time commitment and then sometimes even simple things where this year's time commitment might be less than normal because the negotiations for something is not happening this year so therefore so that part of consideration as well keep people even as far as bus just not number yeah and if you're thinking you can do more there might be more opportunities throughout the year so um you know feel free to uh to let us know but I think this is kind of what we're moving forward with and I know a lot of committees are already working in schle meetings and stuff like
097that and then the next is kind of board retreat topics um this was actually we had a four chairs meeting uh this morning to kind of talk about more about the board retreat topics um it seems like there's a consensus that we will likely have some sort of pre-work for the board um to do before our Retreat they'll be um there's listed here kind of what the general topics for the retreat would be um kind of a a prioritization um think about all of the kitchen sink items that have been discussed and and thinking about kind of what's the temperature of the board on um urgency importance uh don't do this at all kind of feedback um so we can at least kind of start to consolidate and I think it would be helpful at
098least this board chair would really appreciate understanding what Dres in topics people want to hear throughout the next year um you know we kind of think about goals and our strategic planning alignment so there's kind of this priorization work so I think um Jay will be developing a survey that will go out to board members before the meeting um kind of asking what your priorities are um and I made my add to what we discussed this morning um is you know if you can kind of send Jay sooner than later um we created this like 20 plus list of topics that could be prioritized but if there's something you think needs to be a priority and it it might not have made the brainstorming list um please send it to Jay so you can includ
099it on the survey so when we try to consolidate and prioritize that that it's on there to be considered in the first place and it doesn't always just fall into other that might not make the survey so um uh any and then that kind of prioritization kind of work um and we also talked about just reviewing the strategic plan um we're kind of I think I still think it's a benefit we had kind of a veteran Board of members have been on the board before so we're not all new but not all of us were there during the strategic planning development and so just kind of understanding what what we agreed to as our strategic plan is um and then some other kind of team building stuff so Jay or any of the chairs do
100you want to add to that review I can't I will say that um we are tentatively U planning to have this outside at stores pond so we have shelter Reserve if it's in Clement weather I'm sorry to say we'll be back at the RMS Library although that is a lovely space it's a lovely space so as far as Logistics that's that's my big announcement um survey what I've done so far is we do have this list of 20 some potential topics that been brainstormed I categorize them by relevance to the four pillars of the Strategic plan so in my cursory initial riew looks like we're a little light on the academic part so if any of you have specific things that you think we should focus on academically there may be room for you to
101offer those but I'll have I'll definitely have a an other category for for you to add those I mean I think this is a good idea Kim came up with I think and Ben kind of made a comment this morning and that was you there's a lot of things that are kind of just hanging on right like Middle School sports that just keep keep going dragging on and we don't really get anywhere and I think the idea is not to discuss any of these in depth at the offsite but rather to figure out what at least does the board feel is important and then what's the time frame on these things then we can give the administration some directive or the administration can and folks in Sal so we're already on this SK like don't
102you don't need to worry about it that's really the idea it's not to dig into all of them overwhelming obviously we're not going to solve any of it's more how do want get these or not like yeah it's not the do we do X or Y it's when do we want to make a decision about X or Y or do we not even that's not important to us so we can kind of we just trying to want to make effective meetings basically and we talk about the things that are important to us that are aligning with our strategic plan I would just add that looking at the list we were talking about prioritizing they're all things that I look at the list and say oh we gota we have to do all those things so
103so really there'll be a a space on the survey for you to be thinking about where that is temporally so like my hope is that we come out of the retreat with a sense for how we're going to spread that workout over the next five years it's one one and what role the board plays too I think we discussed that too right some of the things are very important but we don't have a role to play right and that's important yeah for for the items that it would be appropriate or do we have cost estimates for that so could we could we when having the discussion would we have some idea of the relative cost of the things that were considering so that that you know factors into the the consideration I mean the only
104thing that I can think of that was on there that I think has a cost has been shared right which was the Norwich sixth grade and I think the point was not to talk about the substance of the matter because I actually think a lot of these is we don't have enough information currently right and so it's okay in the next year we need to have enough information to make a decision about throwing an idea there middle school students right like that and we don't have the information right now but what when do we need to have that information and when do we you know what kind of steps or goals we would have so I don't anticipate us kind of again talking about the substance I don't think we'd have enough time um or
105frankly the information to do that um but I think that's kind of the idea so it's very processing which doesn't sound very exciting but um you know I think that's at least trying to get us all kind of on the same page kind of kicking off the Year by saying okay these are things we we want to know by what time we can kind of map out our committee work our agendas goals that kind of thing and I just want to emphasize um it would be important to do the advanced work like it'll really help us at The Retreat have a have discussions that will help us make some decisions by the end of it otherwise we'll spend the whole Retreat doing the advanced work if we can do the advanced work in advance that
106would be great um and then also please send Jay I mean there will be on the survey in other line yes so you can insert topics that you feel are important but if you can send them to Jay first it means other people will be able to vote on it as well like all the others obviously we won't be able to get a vote on so if you you know the list is 22 items it's the Strategic plan it's sixth grade moving the sixth grade from Norwich over to RMS it's Athletics it's you know it's stuff like that so think about things like that don't worry about whether it's already on the list Jay will take care of the duplication just or maybe J you know if just talking out loud Jay if you don't
107mind just sending what the list currently is and if your favorite one didn't make it send a quick email back can we attach it to the agenda now uh I I could yeah yeah there we go then it's done you can look at it and that the order is not any particular order right oh definitely not you know you're cost comment we probably wait into priorities too right like if we can probably talk about potential costs we think it would be and say this a$ million thing yeah I would say um I mean not surprisingly right we we are rapidly heading in Vermont towards another funding crisis um for norch that I think is going to has the potential I think to drive discussions around any of this stuff um and the issue being is
108that we're not going to know the outcome by May 11th so I mean we can have all of these initial discussions I think the it's the money aspect that is probably going to be crucial both on the revenue side as well as on the expense side and I don't know I'm pretty pessimistic right now not everything on and so that's good like if there are things on the list that are not nothing to do with funding then let's talk about those I'm keeping out of yeah yeah not not everything involves actually some of the things involve you know cost cutting right like I mean that's an idea right like so you know I think there's um again I don't think it's uh I really don't think this is a commitment to any particular decision it's
109just what do we want to be talking about in the next year um as far as in our meetings what kind of decisions do we want to make do we want to make a decision on on X topic you know not we know that the X topic is going to cost $2 million $8 million whatever um you know it's just more like do what do we want to hear which is more um you know is it's still on that more processed thing like how do what kind of information do we need to know not we're we are doing this which I think is a little different you know you might for example you might see an item on the agenda say I think we should really put this to bed I think it's a terrible
110idea but I want to have a discussion about it so we never talk about it again right like that could be a high priority and you are not in favor of it right it just just to kind of give you a sense of I don't know I guess what what we're kind of looking at because you look at this list and it just feels very cumbersome to think about how do we do all this how do we have these discussions and and yeah um so then not seeing any other comments moving on okay perfect um so moving on we have business requiring action um do I hear a motion for items B through F by consent I move to approve items b c d E and F by consent great do I hear a second
111thank you very much um right discussion just on pointing out that those two policies are yearly things that we all sign off on for Investments and conflicts of interest that are fairly B if you don't remember those thank you very much any other comments anything from the public all right so can I hear a vote Neil Odell yes Chris yes C yes ke yes Nelson yes Harry yes Harman yes and I realize that we are all here in person nobody is so I guess we could have made that a little bit more efficient um and then the next item is G do I hear a motion for that I move to approve the tuition rate for Richmond Middle School in the amount of $2,254 23,41 19 for Hanover High School do I hear a second
112Lisa any questions comments anything from the public right all those in favor raise your hand yes all those opposed and abstain and it was a unanimous yes thank you very much um so the report of the chair that is me um I I just uh basically kind of gave a little bit of it we um worked as the four chairs to look at committee assignments and the board retreat um we we also talked a little bit about um you know whether we want to have a um kind of more discussions basically about State Legislative and how to have those discussions we'll probably have more of those at the ATU meeting um coming up but I think Deb will also be reporting in committee reports about some state legislators so that's what I think is listed
113here under the chair report um so any other questions or coms the public seeing none um we can move to committee reports so anything from the Comm D sure I just wanted to let everyone know that um we have the opportunity to sign onto a letter that is from Educators to it's described as local elected so it could absolutely be from select board members as well but it's to the State Board of Education about the Ed education 3 306 rules so these are the standards that are revised every 10 years and the hope is that the board will simply renew the current standards and in a conversation with Kim she said what are some of the issues for us at Dresden about the changes in the standards and quite frankly many of them will be
114um of greatest comp application for schools that are struggling to pass their budgets so there are changes from standards that say you shall do this to you may but you you know you don't have to there are changes for example removing maximum class sizes those are things that we are not likely to do here but if these changes go through there are some things that will have an impact on us simply because we are in the state of New Hampshire and these stand standards are going to diminish The credibility and the um importance of a high school diploma and I think we will become regardless of the fact that we are Hanover High School we are Dresden we will be one of many high schools in New Hampshire which will not have a diploma that
115means what it used to and I want to speak only specifically about one change which is that the the state is looking at moving from instruction with certified teachers to learning opportunities and we saw this with craer so we have teachers here at school prepared to teach financial literacy but now the state has said a student can take a 45 minute online class without a teacher without any follow-up instruction and receive a half credit that we have to award to um any student who chooses to follow that option and there is little question that these revised standards are moving to a place where there will be many more online opportunities for students to pursue and we will have to accept them we will not know who's offering them we will not know what the expectations
116are we will not know about any kind of Assessments we won't know whether they meet any sorts of Standards we will simply have to give credit for them and I think those are probably the two issues I would speak to the most I can talk ad nauseum but there's also a a website that I sent to Jay that he can share in the agenda if you want to see a really quick little for it's all the material on this website is presented by a nonpartisan group and they have a a little video and they talk through scenarios there's one child who goes to a you know Oyster River or Handover high school it's not called either one type of school and then another student just to show points of comparison as you go through the
117changes in the the document the letter was shared with me by a member of the conquered School Board who's also involved with her job with Granite State progress and she has shared that with me and I can again share it if anyone is interested in signing on to it and it's very specific and the letter as well as looking at that website perhaps seeing the video should inform you if you have questions but I'm also happy to answer any got them so it's a letter it's about standards um and one other thing that I want to point out is that through the process has been appalling and teachers have have not been involved um educational administrators have not been involved Christine Downing who is a force of nature she's director of curriculum for cornish planfield
118and I think Grandam I'm trying to remember what the three schools are she took it upon herself to form a group of people to pull together Public School Educators to talk about these standards last spring um and she really she got an incredible document again which I can share if anybody wants to see it but she didn't take the fact that we were omitted that professionals were omitted from this process she just she just refused to accept it she said well I'm we are doing the work anyway and here is our you know outside group report if you will so there's been a lot of push back but as I'm sure you know if you're paying attention to nhpr um it's not a good situ and conquered with the Department of Education right now any
119questions what's the what's the timeline on this the timeline is I Believe by the 29th of April let me just check so yeah I that's that's the time the the timeline for the approval process with a change in the rules that's the timeline to get signatures for the letter yep I am less clear what the timeline is for when the Board of Education will probably shortly after that that's because it's unclear because I went to something that Christine did a sorry I went to a PD that Christine did the day that it snowed so we did it all virtually there were probably 35 of us going over all the 306 rules and various different um you know various different subjects to look at it and it it really is it's you know takes something that
120used to be four pages long diminishes it to like three sentences I have something that actually Compares what it used to be to what it would be now I don't know if you have the same I do yeah and and she said you know they all showed up thinking that they would get a chance to talk and sort of the meeting ended so yeah it's um I have sort of the same feeling like I I think we'd be fine in Handover because I think people would continue to do what we do but it it could be really difficult in other places especially if you take away you know you know you don't need 24 in a class 50 in a class there are lots of details that I could go into that will have an
121impact on other school districts so but I see it more as us having an obligation from a c point of view to try to push back and the letter that Sarah Robinson is circulating asks for um it says the State Board of Education is accepting public comment online until April 30th so I can share that with you if you want me to I don't know what the best format is whether it's to just send it to Jay to share out with the dress school board I would send it to Kim and and then have Kim BCC it to the rest of the board did I send it to you already I think you did yes and I think we just wanted to have this discussion and then now it's in the public we'll be sending
122perfect I could I could not open that link for whatever reason it was it was G me a blank screen when I tried to okay open the attachment so it might be my problem no it's probably the way I sent it Le yeah just a quick question and thanks for keeping track of this um I haven't been as on top of it as I should I am wondering if in this work where does that include the divisive concept stuff that is going on so that is also those are separate house bills this is um this is a process that happens theoretically every 10 years they're the state standards yeah and and so I mean probably not for tonight because I know we're short for time but I'm just wondering if we could get a little
123bit of an update on those sorts of things that affect teacher licensure because I am concerned well part of concerned one of the things about the standards that would be changed is that if you're only that you don't have to have teacher certification if you're hired on a part-time basis to teach a course I'm I'm more worried about getting in trouble if you air in teaching things that people are get that but I'm just saying this is the one piece of the standards that has to do with teacher certification yeah thank you and my my question about the Ed 36 so I've been following this along and actually if you remember made have been a year ago kind of gave a presentation that was a copy and paste essentially what nsba was reporting out on
124what's happening with the minimum standards um and I think I was like 11 bullet points or something like that and and I really did copy and paste because this is very much out of my realm of like what the what these sentences mean in actuality um and so my I guess questions that always percolate as far as like what how does this impact our school and it's kind of two things um one what I'm hearing don't know right like it it is it does seem to be kind of um deluding the the shs to maze in a lot of different areas um which really does open if this is the minimum standards for education of what is the um uh kind of what is the per pupil funding amount for an adequate education and does
125that mean that it would still be that same $7,600 that was kind of ruled or is it less you know I I think it's a question I don't and I think that's what I'm hearing is like the the questions around the shs to maze um and then the other so that would be kind of a funding part of it um in addition to a now we're in the realm of Mays versus shs which is really hard to navigate um from an operational perspective and then the other thing is we have minimum our our current policy right is to kind of just mirror the minimum graduation requirements and if the minimums change does do we need to have a thoughtful policy review about graduation requirements and do we want to continue with that or or not
126you know I I think that's just another thing that I'm think there is also if I may um the issue of local control over our diploma and what it says to get a Handover high school diploma and we won't have that control if they continue to say it's all of these learning opportunities are available to students and you must give them credit for doing that work yeah Julie I'm just kind because I said some things that you probably no it's just I was curious if it's a hypothetical or not in terms of are these laws that are going to pass but they won't impact our community and we just got our first feru personal finance credit that we have to award which we have to it kills me to do it because the class here
127is so amazing and that class is not amazing in any way shape or form and so we're certifying that that graduate has this requirement met so it it it's coming here too like at first I thought it might not we just won't have to deal with it and then just the diploma piece the there's a small group in the high school just for you to know that there working on different diplomas like this idea of having like the standard Hannover high school diploma and then the Arts diploma and the St diploma and the and creating different requirements that might Beyond be beyond the basic that we're going to then start to run by the staff but we're like trying to create those down standardize them and then see what the staff thinks before we eventually
128maybe approach this group of changing how a little B too now you're right so just to answer I guess to clarify right this the reason why we're saying like Ed 306 versus like HB or SB right these aren't House and Senate bills this is an executive branch re rewriting of the rules so um there isn't that same legislative process right because it's the executive branch so I think that's also why we're a bit unclear on timelines Andy Julie is that sort of separation of degrees is that in response to this or is that a separate thing no no that was more in response to strategic plan and conversations that were happening about the different Pathways to Han for high school and preparing students for that so that was that was all right thank you Deb
129as our nhsp rep really appreciate your work there um any other committee reports for Dres see um moving on to the superintendence report thank you and I really will be brief um we had a meeting this evening at RMS which was the parent meeting to review the RMS specific survey results from the 2022 strategic plan survey and the 2023 costing out survey and um I want to thank Ben for lots of hours of work and disaggregating all this data and putting together the presentation my big role in the use are facilitating some conversations and introducing Ben so um we didn't have much of a turnout um but we did spend the entire 90 minutes went through both for um both surveys with both of our attendees and um had some great really did have some
130good conversation and for us reviewing it each time again informs the work we're doing on the Strategic plan and also on what we might want to ask when we do follow-up surveys moving forward um so that was that I do want to address the recent nhpr article which made reference to our district and me personally um like a lot of Articles I'm sure they had a lot of information to cover and there was a lot that wasn't printed um I believe the reporter uh did a right to no request for me which I gave her out I can't remember how many different documents uh interviewed me at my office interviewed me on the weekend at home um and I said a lot more than was in the article it's maybe better for our district that
131it wasn't all printed um but uh I do want to say that on both sides of the river right now it feels very much like we are in a defensive mode against our own against elements of our own government um in terms of um just a a real sort of brazen out in the open attack on public education it's being done in a meaningful way on a culture War Front that that was the focus of that particular article but just some of the legisl legislative moves and and and just bumbling that seems to be happening um right now I I I I can't tell if it's all intentional but the net effect is that we're finding ourselves uh in in the case of the Ed 306 standards reducing the that essentially what Deb referred to
132essentially just decreasing the value of the diploma uh on the Vermont side number of my peers and I met met with the incoming Secretary of Education in Vermont um who was quite interested in the idea of an interstate school district and said that she's eager to learn about it um her her her background and experience really is in the charter world and in in uh bringing alternatives to traditional public education to scale um has never taught been a a school administrator or a superintendent or curriculum director any like that that you might think would be helpful in run governing the public education system uh so it feels very much like we are on the defensive and that's the tone of all of our meetings our superintendent meetings it's it's essentially what do we do and
133what I found throughout my career is that we as educators are not Fighters by Nature um we try to collaborate get along and we're pretty we can be pretty easy marks initially when those sorts of things are done to us um it takes us a little while to rally and and we need to be making it very clear to everyone out there just how important vital public education is um those who began our our Democratic experiment knew it um depart it didn't matter which side of the aisle they are on Adams and Jefferson both uh just emphasize the importance of an educated electorate and and I I really feel like we we need to be not just engaged with legislature um but we need to be making sure that we are doing our absolute best
134to continue to prove our worth and just seeing the presentations we had today assured me that we are the efforts underway here at the high school are impressive we have a lot to be proud of and we need to keep it going and so um that's I guess all I'll say for the moment on that yeah I just wanted to add that that's the story is not over there's another part today a ly piece on NR um a sit in your car when you've got into your destination piece that's a followup and also includes an uped that that a blue root so it's it's now two days in a row so it's it's not was that the one about the art teacher yes yeah it's not over it's not over they're really sticking with it
135sure well and the last thing I want to mention just you should be aware that um in addition to the work that we that's been going on on both sides of the river with teacher evaluation in the last couple of years um I want to thank Robin for spearheading administrator evaluation as well and so Robin and I have been working we we will be doing principal evaluations together this year and the administrative team had come up with they wanted to adopt a rubric in much the same way way that both um both of our teachers associations did with regard to the Danielson model they've adopted a rubric with eight different uh domains and 55 different rating categories within that rubric that Robin are using to evaluate our principles and they'll be in turn using to
136evaluate their associate principles we range some range finding there day Robin and I both did individually an an assessment of one principle and then we did another principal together and we found that our ratings were amazingly consistent and we had different evidence to to provide for each of our ratings but then we did the next one together and that's how we're going to be doing them moving forward but um we'll be rolling that out with with our administrator we had a meeting with the the team to identify from that those 55 items on the rubric which ones they felt were were most amenable to employee feed back so we'll be using that same rubric in red redeveloping the um the staff survey that goes out for the principles as well and that's it and Ben
137I'll Chim in on G good discussion about the surveys um also since we last met we presented to the RMS staff which had about 60 some people there and that went very well just like the ray school one did but we're getting lots of very positive feedback both about how interesting the results are but also actional items they can take in the future as well as what they would like to see on future surveys and we have the Maring and cross staff tomorrow and the mar cross parents next week in the high schools in May so we will continue to provide updates on that so for Jay and Deb maybe I should have asked Deb this question what so and again we can't we all thisd what do we think so what's the goal right
138so the Ed 603 so like is it to help other lower schools come up or is this really an attack on public education where the idea is it's let's stop funding public education and give people their money back and is this really what it is like property taxes are too high let's let people keep their money in their pocket spend on private education's is that the the the Secretary of Education in New Hampshire homeschooled all his children has no Public School experience teaching experience no administrative experience no license has put people on the board of education who have no experience with education and his goal I I would say it to his face is to diminish public education to help facilitate a shift to private schools to homeschooling um to diminish the me the education
139that students are receiving receiving um and to that end has taken millions and millions of dollars out of the education trust fund and refus to implement any kind of system of overview of evaluation of accountability I mean it's it it's extraordinary and it's very very transparent other questions or comments for superintendent sorry if that seemed like an ignor question but it's just to get anything from the public thank you Jay sure and Robin assistant superintendent report okay my very brief tonight you have your general assurances form for Dresden who just did this recently for Handover but it's our requirement for accepting the federal grants we accept Title One title two and title 4 and srsa will provide us with all the professional development some the summer programs and some of the other things that we've
140been able to purchase like this year the world working equipment for through title for so this just guarantees that we'll follow the requirements of the title grants but I'm happy to answer any questions about that I've been doing lots of work on those recently they've added several new reports that we have toly quite time consuming great and any questions for Robert as I sign every page of this front and back with my initials okay anything from the public thank you Robin you're welcome thank you and we've already done the business administrators report earlier so we will move on to nonpublic session and this is if we decide we require one um we if do I hear any motion to go into nonpublic to discuss hiring if nothing then we can maintain public session um okay
141do I hear a motion to approve new hires de I move to approve hiring Richard campanero as a one-year English teacher and hiring Elizabeth burrow as a 1.0 school counselor as presented do I hear a second is that Ben Ben seconds any discussion anything from the public seeing none um and since we are all here we can do all those in favor res all those oppos and abstain and it passes unanimously thank you very much so we have um still have a member of the public and now is the time to um do our our final public comment period if Kate I see her raising her hand so we're still alive at 9 past 9 o' so Kate if you'd like to move over and um you're good Kate thanks so much everyone hi it's
142Kate Hilton from Hanover I have a child at the race school and another at RMS and I apologize I meant to speak in person um so I could see all of you during the first round of public comments this evening but I was late um just juggling a little too much this evening so um you may recall that in the midst of the very busy sau70 budget s uh budget season in December and November and January you all heard from me you heard from a variety of other SAU parents um who are sharing their concerns uh at your meetings around the proposed RMS math curriculum changes and I just really wanted to come to just genuinely offer my thank you um to to the board uh big thanks to Jay and to Robin to all
143of you for taking those comments seriously for looking carefully at the proposed changes and simply recognizing the need to slow things down and to look at a full District math curriculum review one that documents the curriculum across the district one that gathers Baseline data in non-pandemic times one that sets Improvement goals one that's targeting truly Equitable and truly evidence-based teaching practices one that's putting safety net systems in place in advance to support any Learners who might fall between the cracks um one that takes seriously supporting all Learners to be successful and one that is um supporting I hope adequate teacher training uh to execute effectively so just really a huge thanks to the board J Robin for slowing things down to ensure that all of our math Learners needs are being considered in review of
144the math curriculum and offerings um I'm really looking forward to hearing more from the administrators from the teachers uh from uh you know the the the broader District administrators as well uh about the thinking at next week's math meeting it's at the RMS Auditorium on Tuesday April 30th I did see somewhere it started at 600 and somewhere else that it starts at 6:30 but either way I'm hopeful that as many board members will attend as possible I also can I interrupt you it looks like it might start at 6 okay great saying okay great thanks thanks Tim sorry keep going and um I just wanted to also encourage the board to consider more broadly than just beyond the math curriculum the ongoing resources needed to support Rob and Jay all the sa70 administrators and teachers
145to do the documentation of the curriculum that's a part of our strategic plan and applying a very thorough process to the curriculum review um it it takes time it takes energy it takes resource uh it also takes resource to support teachers to build new skills needed to deliver pedagogical changes so that they're effective in doing so so um you know right out of the gates um so we you know just want to I just wanted to um continue to encourage you um to also incorporate parent and student input in the process uh and really look forward to future board meetings uh in which curriculum review is a regular board topic I guess I would add that to the the public request around constant review of um curriculum topics at the board meetings and I guess
146that's it for me so just a big thanks and looking forward to more meaningful dialogue thanks to to all of you thank you for your comment Kate 2 minutes and 59 seconds well [Laughter] done okay um any other comments from the public see any then moving to our enurement portion um if you have any agenda topics for next meeting um please submit them I will also add please submit your um kind of key priorities um after you receive to J um to make sure that they're included for the board retreat survey um and our next meeting is Tuesday May 21st and um see nothing else and just so you know Jay um if you refresh the potential Retreat topics are already there perfect yeah so they're they're under board retreat topics on the agenda do
147not M around perfect for everyone um and do I hear a motion to ad toour the meeting at 9:05 p.m and everyone seconds but I I'll give it to Lea I sry first um and we do have to go around the horn so Neil yes Christy yes yes yes Nelson yes there yes Harman yes thank you very much have a good night f