Norwich School Board 04062022

001okay all right jen jay we've got everyone i see robin's joined us online is there anyone else we're expecting jay all the students are here i think we're all set on administrator okay great well then uh if ca tv is ready all set may already all right and i would like to call to order the norwich regular school board meeting of april 6 2022. and let's get right into it we've got a busy schedule tonight so the first thing on our agenda is the agenda review i'll turn to uh folks there in the room to ask if there's anything they would like to see amended edited deleted from our agenda this evening and give me a cue because i can't see all of you i see nothing tom okay lisa reminded me that i should

002include in my report later discussion of committee assignments so please remind me do that when we get to that but i'm happy to consider that then um and we'll do that i'm again apologize for not being there tonight um but let's move down the list to public comment i know some folks are in the room there and we've got eight attendees online now is the moment to raise your hand and comment on anything that is not on this evening's agenda and i'll give a couple minutes for you to tell me if there's anyone in the room with the hand up and i'll check the zoom hands online here any public comment in the library it's nice [Music] seeing none of that okay and i'm not seeing any online either so let's move into our regular

003agenda this evening and the first one up and this is a special evening for us we have a student presentation and again this is especially why i'm sorry not to be there today because i got to see these students and their teachers briefly at work during the march intensive week a couple of weeks ago so uh without further ado i'm going to turn it right over to i guess teachers jeannie kornfeld and chrissy morley and they want to go from there and start us off with this presentation yeah i think that that would be fine because um mostly what we'll be sharing on the screen is that presentation for the folks at zoom at home and then these are our microphones so where they are right now i think would be perfect okay hello everyone

004thank you so much for having us this is a insanely cool library jealous i didn't go up here uh my name is neil barnes and me and madden i'm alison wait i'm tally daft all right let's get right down to it um um who are we we are a group of hhs students and marion cross alumni who during our march intensive wanted to explore potential solutions to mcs's septic problem and we see it not only as a problem to be solved but as an ecological and educational opportunity so during our march intensive we've met with state engineers more specifically the state engineers who are going to be looking at this site in particular and innovative alternative technologies we've met with sales reps for innovative alternative technologies we've met with the facilities directors at king arthur

005and at the montreal museum and school and business administrators um another thing that we did in our action-packed march intensive was we toured the sharon restaurant and the hanover wastewater treatment center and we toured by doing this we toured both an ecologically based and a conventional based wastewater treatment system so we could fully explore the options before us um at merry christmas slide please okay i made this i'm very proud [Music] so can you i'm sorry to interrupt you but can i ask a question can you can you define ecologically based wastewater treatment versus conventional or will you get to that later you can say what do you think yeah um yeah so i mean as miss porterfield has drilled into us i uh was her chemistry student and was her persistent student you know

006we have linear systems right and linear systems are we're going to create a product and we're going to use it and then we're going to dispose of it and then we have cyclical systems like um you know the worm you use the waste the worm gets eaten by the hawk the hot gets eaten by a bigger hawk the bigger dog dies eaten by the worms starts all over um so i suppose in a nutshell my colleagues are agreeing with me ecologically based wastewater treatment would be not having a giant landfill somewhere with all of the waste and all of the stuff that we can't do to trying to make it work in a circle like the rest of nature um okay so uh according to state and local engineers marion cross's current civic system is

007a failure and it's one that has to be solved um although it has been designated as a failure it is not a failure a failure in the normal or conventional way and we're going to get into that uh in just a second the history of the problem um it's been a documented problem for about five years now but uh anecdotal anecdotal evidence suggests that it might have been a problem for quite a while um and getting into the science of it it's more about the topography than the uh than the bleach the topography of the green makes it naturally sort of like a pond as you can see in the picture um and we're going to add on to that a naturally high water table and the deep frost walls that are being formed by

008main street route 5 and gerard way those are going down far down um and the effluent cannot move outwards so as you can see in the picture it doesn't really have anywhere to go so it has to go up so as i mentioned before the system has not failed in the typical way where the leech field has some sort of issue um the problem is an unusually high water table the problem is uh more about the topography the problem is deep frostbolts that's running so throughout our research we explored multiple possible partnerships with king arthur the monsieur and hanover and hartford's wastewater treatment systems due to institutional priorities the mantra was unable to partner up this time different needs made partnership with king arthur not an option and it is our understanding that sending effluent

009to hartford or hanover is not currently an option and though perhaps any of these could still be options in the future they did not meet our educational and ecological priorities for this project so from this we concluded that the best option is to treat mcs wastewater on site okay so the solution as we see it so pre-treatment is removing harmful fecal matter bacteria some nutrients will also be removed and we recommend an innovative alternative that is state approved technology called an algae wheel which is shown in the left-hand corner to be used for treat pre-treatment because it is highly efficacious state approved technology and is proven in the field it is a rough ground and has potential to be solar-powered valuable teaching opportunity for both students and community members it has a low cost of

010maintenance and operations compared to other pre-treatment options and is durable and energy efficient and as you can see on the image in the right hand corner where it says algae wheel those are three options for the effluent as we see it okay so the algae wheel so a grease truck would be needed if the cafeteria were to be added to mcs and the grease trap is located right before the algae wheeled septic tank it aids in removing fats oils and grease from the wastewater which is harmful to the septic tank and algae wheel and the best time to add a grease trap is now when the algae wheel is being installed so the septic tank the wastewater would be directly pumped into the septic tank after leaving the building the solids would then then sink

011to the bottom while the liquids could continue to the pipes to the pre-treatment system the algae wheel the septic tank would just have normal maintenance and we would be able to keep the existing septic tank so then the algae wheel which is a pre-treatment technology that does not replace the septic tank the wastewater would be pumped into the algae through pipe from the septic tank so the algebraic technology has particles of fecal matter that remain in the effluent that come from the septic tanks the bacteria in the algae allele decompose the fecal particles and the algae provide the oxygen for the bacteria to work the bacteria provide the algae with nutrients for the growth of the algae and so why we thought the algae field was a good option was because it has improved ecological

012alternative it's a learning opportunity for students and adults lower maintenance and we hope to generate the power to heat the space using solar energy and this technology is a lower energy option to compare to any off-site treatment options and so for the question mark is we know we want to pre-treat and propose the algae wheel but we will discuss later there are several options for dispersal of the clean effluent okay so an algae unit for marion cross we estimate you'd only need one algae unit for the whole school however the system is modular and additional units could be added later so one unit is 10 by 20 feet and the estimate we got from chaplain associates the algae wheel contractor was that one unit is approximately a hundred thousand dollars and our projected clock cost

013including the structure and installation is one to three hundred thousand dollars one algae wheel can process two thousand to ten thousand gallons of wastewater per day and after after the water has been processed by the algae wheel it can be disinfected either by uv light or chlorine so some ongoing considerations so we would due to the living components of the algae wheel and with the school year seasonal plans a plan would be needed to put in place for the reduced summer input so an algebra operator is 200 to 500 a month a month and we have to pump the lgbt wheel units annually and do any replacements to the piper wheels and then with the extra algae we would be able to close the loop which by using local farmers who could be potentially interested

014in using the algae wheel as a natural fertilizer and this meets our goal to close the nutrient slope so we proposed on the algorithm about where the x is right on the screen um where the current playground is located and that the playground will be moved to the somewhere only known which lead in addition the current takedown is also rapidly deteriorating and so it has been suggested that a new playground will be able to replace it and so in the process of moving the old day down we could build the new playground on the north screen instead the arduino uh needs to be at least 25 feet away from the walls of the building and also requires a stunning location so that the algae so that the algae in the algae will undergo photosynthesis and

015produce oxygen for the bacteria however as you can see highlighted in blue those trees right there might cast a shadow that will block the sunlight from reaching the algebra especially on shorter days when the sun is lower in the horizon because of this we might have we will have to ask saint barnabas if they can either trim or cut down these pine trees it says if they choose to cut down the pine trees you can ask them to replace them with native plants that are simply shorter than the current trees right now and so as for more visual the red is where the outer wheel would go and then the purple uh symbolizes the represents the moving of the playground somewhere to the lower screen and then to the right is a word-side visual of

016what it would look like so we explored many options for dispersing the clean sanitized water that would come from the algae wheel and we've come up with three options that we would recommend it's important to know that this is clean water being dispersed and although some of these options involve leech fields they wouldn't have the same role that leech fields traditionally have in septic systems so our first option that we'd recommend is the perk right system perforite is a system that pumps treated wastewater into a network of pipes with little holes that release the water evenly over a large area perfect must be installed at least six inches underground we're recommending kirklite because it's easily scalable which would be important for future expansion of school it also comes with an energy efficient pumping system it's

017low it has low maintenance and operation costs it would work with the algae meal system it would be spread over the whole green which would help irrigate the green and provide nutrients for grass and plants using the perquite system we would not need to create any new leech fields and the system would also be easy to turn off during the summer when water flows lower and you can see some pictures of the system on the screen along with the perfect system we recommend adding a garden somewhere on the green the nutrients especially phosphorus and nitrogen and the water from the treated effluent are perfect for growing plants a garden would be educational it would help students and the community understand their waste is another organism's food which emphasizes our connection with the world around us

018okay so this is the second dispersion option instead of perk right is to install a long narrow leech field trench along the church side of gerard way the effluent would be pumped under the road to the leech field this would require us to move gerard way onto the green at least 20 feet to make room for the leech field existing state requirements say the least field must be 25 feet from a property line but we could move it from 10 feet from saint barnabas with their permission and from the state we would need to create a goalie to prevent effluent from going into the safe bar of this property the old road and compacted soil underneath it would be replaced with new perkable soil to create a new leech field including the space for the

019road the leachfield and the goalie 20 feet of the green would be need to use for this option another possibility is putting the perk right in these trenches instead of the conventional leash fields a garden could also be planted where the perk with the perk right or the traditional field two okay story out so currently the leash fields on marion cross green cannot accept the amount of water flowing in during the winter from january to april due to the frost walls that form that leo previously mentioned the store method would use the current leash field along with the new leech field the store and dose method would be used along with the algae wheel and would send water to the current leash fields until the water level gets too high then the water would be

020sent into a new leash field positioned on the other side of the frostfall formed by gerard way this system requires that the under surface water levels be checked often weekly fortunately there are already monitoring wells in place to take these measurements so after our discussions with the designers in the state it is our understanding that current range issues flood the green each spring with the snow and ice cream smell and that this is preloading the soil so that it cannot hold the upgrade that it needs to and this is further exacerbating the frostbolt problem so the entire green is sort of sloped inwards towards the middle on all sides right now which is turning the middle into a very wet area each spring and throughout the winter when it thaws so the designers from the

021state of vermont recommend that we re-grate and fill the green to make it slope downwards toward main street and out outwards towards the streets so this could be either supported by a wall next to the school with stairs built onto the hill so it could get up to the green and then water would be able to drain down toward main street and this look would be very gradual um there would be catch basins along the edge of the green on main street under our way and group by so that it would be convex and kind of shed the water off to the sides um drainage is an issue that needs to be addressed with the um [Music] with the sewer problem because it is adding okay great that was fantastic thank you very much to

022all of you i realized i should have done a much better job of giving an introduction there um can everyone hear me yeah yeah okay so so i like i was saying i i should have given you much my better introduction because i knew what was coming and i realized that uh we've been on a septic journey here as jamie teague refers to it so i just assume everybody's been along with us but we have a number of people on line participating today listening to your presentation who may not have realized what uh how long the septic journey has been and that we've been looking at this as you guys mentioned for four or five years now and a number of different options to go on as well and to have you step up with

023your teachers and get into the level of detail that you did in this project has been really impressive and really helpful in what i see as our continuing research on what is going to be best for this project that this was one of the areas that we had not been able to put much effort into yet as we've been looking at some of the other areas that you'd mentioned but the level of detail the people you've reached out to the considerations you've made throughout this whole process have been phenomenal and and given that it's a march intensive i just got to say this is really what i think march intensive is all about to give opportunities like this to students at the high school to really dig into a topical area and come up with

024some potential good solutions while learning along the way here as well and providing frankly a public good to to all of us here um i have some questions but i might turn it over to some of the folks in the room first if they have some uh questions for you but i'll say thanks first before it comes back around to me if that's right jamie has a question tom jimmy just has a speech um so i do have a statement that that i just want to put out then great job you guys did an amazing job i got a chance to meet with the students on a couple of different occasions i just want the board and the general public to know that some of these available alternative designs that they've unearthed which is great

025um have come about in recent uh in the recent like year year and a half there's been some changes at the state level both in personnel and in some of the rules that were in play before um so your work is great it's timely because it's really brought that to the forefront for us to be able to take a deeper look at now um so i just wanted folks to know that in in speaking with um terry shearer and kristen um at the state level which the students met with quite some time on a thursday and then put their presentation together uh that this really is an alternative design that's just been used in one other location right yes yes it's been approved in one other location which design sorry uh the lg wheel design

026it's unused in other places yeah yeah so new york new york so it's an approvable design alternative now for vermont and so really all of their really great understanding of what they're trying to work with and their work with exploring into alternative designs has really brought this to the forefront so we want to thank all of us tell me myself the engineers i want to thank you for a great job and a great subject matter so we hope you'll come back and work on this looks like jay has a question there yeah first i want to echo the thanks and just the admiration for a wonderful job um i i was curious about what happens to the algae wheel in the winter time it operates just the same the only concern we had was during

027the summer because it still needs input into the algae wheel so a plan would need to be put in place for the summer and that's where a possible partnership with st barnabas or other locations could be made possible however it there wasn't much of a concern for winter so is it the greenhouse that then allows it to yeah okay great uh time you got a couple of board members here uh just go back to the last slide where you guys were bracing the field so that would have to be done over the pipes that go back and forth regardless or was that just kind of another it was kind of tacked on or if that was part of is that also a necessity because obviously that could actually obviously be part of the problem already

028so the design state told us that we we should do the rewriting of the green before we would install the corporate and that sort of started part of the same process to install the perk right we would be um so to to like reflect what happened as we start incorporating so there but what about would you have to remove the existing leaks field up there isn't there yeah yeah you can can you install it underneath it or is it above it [Music] i mean they're saying you can't drive a truck this way my burning question for you is has anyone smelled an algae wheel does it smell like is it contained in a greenhouse or are we going to be smelling the sewage coming out and effluent as it goes into the algae wheel well

029we actually heard from um one of the automobile contractors had actually been to the algae wheel in new york and said that it wasn't a problem with it yeah but a problem where it's 20 feet from the library at school and it's going to be coming in for open windows no it's not okay and this is also the one in new york has been used for an entire town which is like a much larger scale than it would use here so if it's not a problem there then we've got sean in the room with a question tom thank you sean very curious i don't think there's one in the school yet i know there's the one from the town but i don't believe it should be as much of a problem since there is a

030barrier around the algae wheels themselves it was i think it said that it has been used in like in a few schools across the country so i'm sure that there could be things one place to make that not a problem that looks like all the questions in the room at the moment okay i have some more but uh there's a barking dog in the background so i'll first ask the attendees if they have any questions first okay not seeing any i did want to return to one so with these options here and with the uh the perk write system and the re-grading you may have already said this but would you need to do all three of those in combination with the algae wheel and and if so did you have costs for the perk

031right and the regrading that was given to you by the folks you talked to we did not have costs for the perfect or for regretting the grain um the corporate system would be uh used with the algebra the perfect is the dispersal system for the clean water that will come out of the algebra there are other options besides the perk right so we wouldn't have to do the perk right to do the algae wheel we could do the algae wheel with like a leach field or there's other things we could convert okay thank you so as i said again at the beginning this has been really helpful really educational and i can tell there's a lot of research behind this too that i think would be helpful to us so if you don't mind us

032reaching out to you as we have more questions on some of the uh the things that are in your slides here as we continue on with our research we're probably going to call on you with some of the expertise that you've developed over the course of your time looking at this so uh i will be reaching out to you and miss cornfield ms morley for help but again thanks again for such a great job on this this is uh extraordinary work and to do so in such a short period of time is really just impressive so thank you all and thanks for coming out this evening too one more question from jamie todd and jamie share the presentation with us yeah and then we can post it so everybody who maybe didn't get a chance

033to see it yeah of course that would be wonderful thank you yeah thanks for that point jamie we can put it right on the website where we're storing the other research we've been doing so that would be perfect and i do have a version from uh from miss cornfield so if she's okay with me using that version i could post that one directly too great well thanks again everyone i really appreciate your coming out tonight and congratulations on this great work yeah thanks guys thank you thank you yeah and you gave them a's all around right thank you all right uh that was it's always nice to get uh something different from the normal agenda going and especially when it's so informative so let's uh return to the agenda and we'll move on down our

034list and we have got our pto report next and i believe i saw stephanie and the attendees so i'll try to bring her over practice hi stephanie hi good evening everyone um pto news for the month of we're in well march and beginning of april um in march we had our bingo night which was online and we had a repeat from online bingo from the year before it was uh fun a lot of fun and even the greatest part about it was even though um we ran out of prizes or we gave all the prizes away the kids still wanted to play just for the fun of it without the prizes so that was pretty cool and pretty sweet um we did our spring grants um the award letters went out i think yesterday um

035five grants were awarded um chairs and bean bags for the library um some a new chess club for the third grader some new magnets for the third graders and a rug and some lego sets for the tech room and um tech supplies so it was nice to say yes to everything and get some really good grants for the spring total about a little under three thousand dollars um we had our um april meeting a little bit different instead of having it after you guys on a thursday night we had it last night on tuesday night um outside in person which was nice at the gerard fire pit and during that meeting we elected our offices officers for next year um so rebecca reed and molly riordan will be the co-chairs next year um christina aquila

036and leah fosco will stay on as treasurer and secretary we are in need of another co-chair um to kind of help rebecca and molly next year and then the year after they would take on the lead position um so we're still looking for that but we can proceed um without that um upcoming events mud stomp we're going to be doing may 22nd in person at mcs gym again i've never been but from what everybody says it's awesome so i'm really looking forward to that we have david millstone the person who's been calling in the past and he has a um i can't remember her name right now but a woman accompanying him on piano and then family members making up the rest of the musicians mcs family members which is pretty awesome so that will

037be on the 22nd um and then we have teacher appreciation coming up and pi day and then back to school and then our final meeting for volunteer appreciation is may 5th which is kind of crazy that we're already approaching the end of the year so anybody have any questions i'll first say thank you uh stephanie for uh the usual great work of the pto and um glad to hear that the mud stomp is returning and that bingo went forward and thank you for all of uh as always for all the gifts that you provide to the students in the school it's remarkable how much you continue to do for the program and uh i'll say this before we wrap up here but thank you for your service on the pto too uh over the past

038uh couple years and uh handing off to molly and rebecca we'll look forward to working with them but thank you so much for what you've done uh in an incredibly challenging period of time to gather uh people together to do these types of volunteer activities so i'll i'll just say that thanks for now and turn it over if neil if there's anyone else in the room there who has questions i see no questions [Music] okay thanks so much stephanie good night let's head down our list and into the business requiring discussion and uh we're back to our typical uh discussion item we kick off with at every meeting which is the facilities update and we've got a good uh lead into this given the march intensive uh presentation already this evening so that was uh

039very helpful uh in terms of where we are with our wastewater and septic analysis here and i don't know that we have much more to add at this point but i'll turn it to jamie jamie is there more that you wanted to talk to with regard to facilities this month there's uh and tony's here with us tonight as well great so i think we should discuss the septic and what's been going on the last one um in addition i would just like to add um you know our engineers been in involved throughout the whole march intensive and actually spoke with the group many times as well as the state engineers there are a couple of other parts to the alternative design that we'll also be looking into one of them is the possibility of being

040able to use our own beds still if the water coming out is shown to be swimming water quality you can sometimes have what they call controlled breakout if the water is that clean um so there's some other pieces to that we still need to do some testing on our strength and we can't test our strength until we start dosing our fields again um we have not started dosing the fields even though it's april first for a very specific reason i'll let tony speak to that because he was directly involved in some other information that was brought to light that kind of dovetails into what the kids are saying about the swift the bowl that we have here right so tony here um for a few years now we've been watching the drainage on the green

041and how it all flows to the southwest up to the south subtly portion of the green and um so some concerns came to light from the community of smells and or sightings of ground water so we decided to take samples of the storm water and of the soil and on our initial stormwater samples we actually had received a hit of e-coli in the water which was above a level of swimming pool [Music] either lakes pools and rivers so we immediately fenced off an area out there where that was we took a few samples and we only received negative uh results from the other samples and a positive one golden so we sectioned off that area of the green which was right here most southern part of broadway and our process was to retest a few

042days after that and we did that three days later we took more samples from the same spot in other locations around the green and all of the samples came back negative at that point so um i'm told from different ecologists and lab folks that you know e coli comes from many sources it's in the water from animal feces and other things and ralph and maybe somebody else's leech field or whatever so but we did a series of three or four rounds of sampling and all the latter samples came back so we are pretty confident that the issue was a localized issue it was in the storm water that i collected the ice melt the snow melt and the runoff at the end of the green where all the water comes so that that was good

043news um the smell i can't i don't have an answer from the smells that people smell out there i don't ever i used to smell it when our bleach field effluent rose to the top of the green and uh you could see it and smell it out there we don't seem to have that since we're doing the pumping tanks so and what's like what one of the most important parts of that is really in speaking with tony and our engineer tom you know and folks even at the state you know level because we report it uh to terry shearer who's our local um person at the state level um is that we're not dosing our vets okay and we haven't been so there's no way that that's being caused by us um so tony also

044took some tests um at the storm drains coming down the side of main street they were not they were non-conclusive um and so we're we that's why we haven't started dosing again we want to try that one more time you know maybe with this next big rain event tonight tomorrow night in the storm drains to see if we can localize what drain it may be coming into because that's very important for us to be able to document as we move forward with some of these alternative designs that we want to look at okay it's very important to have that data um so so we've been you know working through what some of the possibilities may be and you know with an eye on what we're hoping to maybe keep our an alternative system closer to

045us that will be you know um a more reasonably a more reasonable cost perhaps than what we were looking at and educational you're going to be on the map you have people coming to learn about stuff here um so that's the septic anything else so we're not dosing yet we're not dosing it we usually we would we would have turned on our windshield on april 1st because that's you're pretty confident defrosting out of the ground and we did this last year and the septic system does work when there's no frosting but it was designed but caution we're going to pull off for a few more weeks it's relatively inexpensive to pump the tanks and we're going to do a little more gathering of water samples and soil samples if we see a concern out there

046i did take some soil samples also which i might not have mentioned and they also came back so we're just we're trying to make sure the kids are safe this faculty is safe and the public who visit the property it's safe and tony you may have said this but it's been shut down since december 1st correct we when we got into this a few years ago you know we made the decision that four months december january february and march for our worst months of frost state agreed in my opinion that i've been in that five years it's been a tremendous move forward uh because i've seen it at its worst out there i'm pretty confident it's we're not producing any smells or we could be doing smells but yeah uh that might come this is

047your third year then pumping the tanks this is our second second year yes sorry i might have got that wrong apologies we dealt with the effluent rising to the green i have for this is my sixth winter so the four windows we tried different things we talked to engineers at the time right yeah alternative yes alternating our pump cycles we try to uh aerate the field we try to keep we i don't know if anybody remembers what we fenced off the lynch deals one winter because and this is some of my concerns with any leach field that's on the property is you're not supposed to have traffic on it whether it's foot traffic any type of traffic because it compacts the soil and uh it hinders the process of the evaporation of the effluent so

048um did i don't know if either one of you but have you spoken to saint barnabas about any of the intensive plans that they're okay with yeah we've met with them uh in one of their trials we met with the pastor and one of the trustees um they're very excited and wanted to do anything that they could to be a part of it and to move it forward if they needed to and what about extending into milk fry on the wetland there is that yeah um i don't know that that would actually extend into that section they were really when the students were talking about bringing it up here it would actually come right up where the road is and then the road would be relocated off to the late and we had had earlier

049discussions a couple years ago i think before covered about potentially looking at something similar to that but again when we had asked that question that alternative type of design because we talked about putting a really long leech field all the way down gerard way and then moving the road over and making an exit you know an alternative exit um and and it wasn't an option at that point um so it's great to know that that's you know that that's then opened up because basically what you're doing with a treatment any kind of pre-treatment is you're bringing it to a quality that where if there is a breakout it's not hazardous basically right so um you know that's in the nutrients that are there are beneficial to to plant by um so it's all great news

050everything we're going to move forward once we start dowsing and testing the strength that's one of the next steps in the process um and then reach out to uh to tom's point reach out to some of these other alternative um to get the costs right we're hoping and we need to discuss it as an administration and possibly in a long-term plan about whether it does make more sense to move some of that to a different location or and we have the conversation with the students as well or using our beds even on a temporary basis because you know moving or dosing the the f4 and water to another location can be redirected after an algae wheel is put in they're actually quite portable assuming you put big buildings all i can think of is a

051scummy pond yeah you know it would be a building out there um but yeah there's going to be smell associated with it how does that fit yeah and i you know our system is vented now i don't know if there's a vent on the other side of driveway and that could be smells that people smell um yeah you know with the low pressure of the air and the way the wind blows i'm not sure and keep in mind i mean they did this in like four days right it was quick fast furious you know it hasn't been engineered okay right so i mean there are more questions that may not be the best location you know it may be a different location if we choose to go that direction and the state gives us a

052you know so so but you know the whole idea of it is very exciting so want to talk about the fire jamie before we before we move on can we just i've got one thing about the septic too and just to follow up on a point you just made too is that uh we are obviously continuing our review of the other options which do include um dresden fields as well and potential with uh hanover connection too i know that you've been in touch with uh folks there too so those are not off our table they are still uh very much in consideration as we move ahead here i don't know if you want to add anything to that but i do see a hand up as well from mark aquila aquila and i suspect that

053the question is related to uh septic so maybe you want to take that now sure you can ask your question just uh state your name and where you live thanks tom uh mark aquila on new boston road in norwich um you uh correctly assumed that my question was on the septic so great job um first of all i just want to say for all the folks involved thanks for being very responsive uh over the past couple weeks to inquiries uh for myself and some from some other folks in the community um i i noticed the cores were dug i noticed the the cordoned off area i appreciate that the tests were made and i'm glad that we cordoned off that area for a bit um from a bigger picture i guess is the plan just

054to pump in the winter until there's a longer-term solution can you can you guys address that for now or no it does work um now but it's not we don't look at that as a long-term solution it's just a temporary keep you know to keep the green as clean as possible because we can't because i don't know how long you've been here mark but it's it's been was pretty bad out there for a number of years yep thanks tony can i can i ask a follow-up question go ahead mark i'm sorry i'll make sure i wasn't breaking the rules um no thanks i've been here 10 years i i appreciate that um you said it's not a long-term solution is this a is it an approved by terry shearer three year plan five year plan

055like can you give any guidance on that he did not put a limit on her mark he just he hasn't proved it knowing that we are working towards a solution that they will eventually have to approve okay great thank you so much he's been briefed mark every step of the way we've kept him completely involved great no i assume so thank you thank you that's all for today thank you all right jamie and tony thanks very much so there's three other facility sections um i figured our fire suppression system yeah to give a quick update on the fire suppression system for life safety than anything it's not as oh well there's a yes correct there is a small suppression system that we are installing in the kitchen to get our kitchen exhaust system over the

056cooking equipment working again so that's almost complete and actually that'll be completed tomorrow once the electrician comes in and puts in the contact so that's that's related more to kitchen equipment um but the other part on life safety is we embarked on you know upgrading the fire alarm system here at mary cross which included a new panel all new devices smokes and horns and strobes and uh and then we will be our last phase we'll be adding door magnets classrooms so the fire when we keep the fire marshal happy when he comes through and sees doesn't see wedges holding the doors open um he's put threats out there for many years but he knows we're working at he's also very lenient and knows that we are working towards the solution so hopefully we'll complete that

057project uh this summer of 22. other things they're just quickly working on is cleaning up the grounds for summer and they want to think about installing a swing set that comes in out front and then just other improvements to the ground of course we're not trying to do too much because we don't know how all this septic equipment will lay out and road fixing and sidewalk fixing rooms [Music] tony are we able to do a lot of this stuff in-house or are you having to go out to subcontract and if so are you seeing lots of uh challenges uh with the difficulty and scheduling given shortages of the various organizations that do this type of work yeah i don't know so we were lucky to get the fire alarm folks in uh last last summer

058and that so then that's been going it was a hold up on some devices but those came in and we're working through that and we kind of planned for that when we started that project uh other projects though getting the hood back online has been fairly easy we've actually bought some kitchen equipment getting that installed has been fairly easy swing set was a little bit delayed but but it's coming in right at the right time swings here and you can now you know big big and good stuff so i think what's going to be a combination of some some contracted health to get that swing set installed but we'll probably put it together in-house because it's more of uh the site work will probably be contracting that's already is also replacing some of our aging

059doors and that is turning out to be the wars are 20 weeks out 20 to 24 weeks out but we're going to just keep our old doors for now and make it work and uh yes so on some projects the supply chains is a problem luckily outdoor spaces i said and that maybe this is already out there but i would like to kind of understand at some point but kind of what the long term plan is just for the outdoor spaces because i have to admit the scrubbing with my kids coming down here and there's a lot of stuff around the school that leads some repairs the basketball courts are less you know there's like a pond up there in the back yes i think it's gonna pretty much be mud all year which should

060i think it could be pretty quickly you've got the swing set project like in general i think and even just listening to my kids like there's just and we have this sorry we've got the storage unit that's still there and i know our guys almost mounted it three times on sunday their kids are banging their heads on it multiple times i think um i think at some point this year someone hit their head pretty hard because it's right near the three-point mark on the playground committee that we're meeting against kevin here because there are some things that should go away actually and i know that back structure's done anyways my point is there's when we send our kids out to recess right now there's just not a lot of things for them to do and

061then we wonder why they're not really expanding energy and they're getting into trouble there's that little thing yeah i mean that's for a little bit i'm talking about getting kids you know well i think we just need to maybe it'd be nice to kind of there's a place we have a community that we're working on we're trying to integrate all of these things at the same time right you don't want to spend a lot of money and effort but this is also moving right correct so this is the thing where i think we could also get some private donations just to start funneling here it's we started the committee pre-covered but then that blew us off again we've convened a few times already we have a meeting after april break to discuss some more um

062playground equipment and we're taking now some of the aging equipment what would we do in that space again it's i i think i i don't know it's just my opinion i don't know how much stuff we actually say there's nothing we're going to do i put a pile of wood chips out there and they all play on that they don't play anything else uh i just put a couple logs out in the back and that's what they're playing so i don't know what they're wrong i don't know the right answer for playground equipment again trying to basketball courts okay this committee would also be looking at the the forest space and the trails or no that's a different one okay yeah we don't actually have a community that's more of an administrative yeah okay that's

063that's the on their list okay so are we uh good in the room there i think i would like to move along and i think garrett to the point you're making there and that tony's and jamie are making is uh these things are being a little bit held up by our desire to uh figure out solution to the septic until we can do that it's going it's hard to figure out the longer term strategic plans that's going to be part of our strategic planning process too but it is kind of getting lined up in the queue behind our ability to move forward with the um with the uh septic solution the long-term septic solution i i am going to i see christina quilla has her hand up and i'm going to let her ask that

064question now go ahead christine hi tom thanks so much christina aquila on new boston road i just didn't hear was there a timeline on the installation of the new swim swing set tony probably a few weeks after it gets delivered have we had an updated delivery date from them yet no because i wasn't in charge of ordering it so i don't know i we were told i think you were on an email mid-april okay all right i will happily follow up for you and let you know thanks christina thank you okay uh jamie and tony did we have anything do you have anything more on the facilities or are we covered i think we're covered okay thank you very much uh let's move down our list then uh next on our business requiring discussion of

065retreat topics i think this can be a relatively short discussion because i think we've got a pretty robust agenda that's building for the retreat that can be led by strategic planning but uh jay do you want to give a quick overview on this sure so we last met with the chairs we had decided that uh we definitely want to have an update on strategic planning uh which will take up a good chunk of the retreat but we also address the need to discuss pending legislation in both states so um we're anticipating inviting legislators to that and like we did i think two years ago maybe when we had members of the delegations especially those who are involved directly within any sort of education committee or ways and means as well so those would be two

066of the major issues that we'll be bringing up in the course of the retreat great and i just want to give board members a chance to chime in here so i think we have talked about this in other venues as well but uh if you do have anything i think we have heard from folks via email but the day is uh is going to be pretty full just with those two discussions did any other board members want to add anything to this strategic plan and agenda at this point okay jay i think it is important to bring up too i think there are a few folks that mentioned that they wouldn't be able to be uh attending the retreat on that saturday and so there was some thought that we could consider an alternative like

067we've done in the evening in the past or over a course of a couple of evenings so something else to consider it probably would make sense to have ryan paul everybody to see their availability in the 14th she has sent that out and uh i am one of the ones who cannot attend but i know she's gathering that now i think most have responded to her but that would be good to get that polling from her soon okay so to be continued to be content yes all right thank you jay uh as mentioned if things pop into your mind with uh regards to the treat do reach out to us to jay uh with any thoughts on those let's continue down our business crime discussion list the next item is the meals program uh we've

068got this on here because there are several things percolating at the state national levels and i know jamie's got some other things that she wanted to discuss again this gets back to considerations of our own food service considerations of kitchen expansion use and other things but i'll turn it over to you jamie and then maybe i'll refer board members to a couple of articles that have come out recently with regard to some planning at the state level and funds being infused into uh school meal plans but go ahead jane sure so i thought it was important to discuss this um we the administration has been having a lot of discussion since november probably about well since our last meeting where we discussed it with the parents and all who are present um and we've been

069looking towards what needs to occur in that space in order to um increase the quality of what's being served um as tony mentioned we have bought some equipment um with some of the funds that we had had from the prior year when we were running the seamless summer food service program as well um and so we've also i think are going to have some donations for some other equipment that we're going to be able to procure um we're just still working through the the where and what size on that um so as you may or may not know for everybody there is a bill right now at the legislature in the state of vermont to um to start to have free breakfast and lunch for all school children uh in the state of vermont um

070and i think that they are really hoping to kick that off with the next school year um in addition i have heard actually just today in meeting with our food service providers um that there's a bill in congress at the national level to um extend the ssl i don't know what it stands for it's another it's a it's a nslp based uh free food service program that was extended summer food service wasn't but the ssl program was this past year the feds said they were not going to extend it again but it looks like that might get legs and get pushed through so either way it's made us really uh look here at the possibility of joining the national school lunch program or let's put it this way if the state of vermont passes that

071uh bill we will no longer get away okay we'll be required to participate in something which is fine we can do it um and so at that point we will need to go out to bid for a food service vendor because that's how it works um luckily i've done this before so we'll be good so is shawn you know and so has uh so has the rest of the administration here um so we'll work through that um and make the changes that need to occur for next fall um so i i guess i just want to get it out there tell people stay tuned um part of whether or not we can actually prep and produce on site really is the septic system um as the students mentioned you have got a grease strap you

072have their treatment in place you know all of that um that's not a problem we actually have some of that that's already in existence it's a matter of making sure it's the right size for what we're looking at that though coupled with the other issues that we have i don't know if that's approval we will work through that as we're working through the rest of our questions about the uh alternative potential measures that we might be able to use that being said if that's not a possibility then we would still look to a vendor whether it's the same one we have our another one close by to do um you know to do a master prep off-site with a finish perhaps on site to make it more like a batch cooking so it's fresher than

073when it's served and we've procured that equipment in order to do that so just wanted to update everybody tell them on where we're at i've not seen i'm not a chance without seeing they haven't taken a final vote i don't think i lost 100 uh it is s 100 and i did not check the latest news that i had was they were possibly voting on it today today tuesday well but it wouldn't be the final vote that would just be i believe in [Music] i think we're making great progress by getting what we need so that whatever we decide we'll have the equipment space set up we left out one important piece perhaps and that's how we're gonna serve where we're going to have lunch so we're looking at serving kids in this amazing transition

074actually we'll solve a few problems in the building to have kids eating lunch together tony has found some tables for us so that won't be an expense and i think that kids will enjoy with the right type of supervision and the right parameters will enjoy seeing each other at lunchtime so we're working through a lot of possibilities sean broke up when you said where you might be doing lunch could you just repeat that for those of us online that's what i was afraid of yeah we are considering doing lunch in in the gymnasium um over a period of probably an hour 40 minutes four probably four turns um usually that's how it's done four turns twenty-five minutes ish kids so you'd roll out protective flooring some tables and in and out [Music] okay we would

075roll out tables but we were just we're just gonna go a little heavy on the floor maintenance it's not unusual i'd say 70 probably 60 percent of your small schools in vermont use their gymnasiums for casualty okay all right thanks for the update uh one thing i was thinking we could do um in jail i'll ask ryan to help with this is get to get posted to this discussion item after the fact uh some of the articles maybe s 100 and the corresponding house bill that are coming out too so people can reference those through board docs uh in the future too all right uh thanks for that update on the meals program jamie uh next on our list business requiring discussion is item d residency slash tuition and uh i know this is one

076that jay has asked to include here so i'm going to turn it over immediately to jay for the background uh on this one great and i appreciate i know if you like the agenda and this is one of those things that we won't resolve this evening but i want to get it out there for at least a preliminary discussion each year i'm approached by parents on either side of the river uh who have circumstances that that compel them to to request that they're allowed that they can send their children to the other states school so i've had i've had norwich parents who who've asked for one reason or another to be able to send their kids either to ray or rms and um in that it would be sixth graders uh and then i've had

077i most recently had a request from a family that's that's moving to norwich um and has a child in fifth grade and would like to have their child stay with their class and move to sixth grade at rms instead of leaving for one year going to marion cross and then the next year going to rms well right now we have no policy that allows that in fact uh that would be a tuition situation and there's no there's no policy that allows me to grant a waiver in a situation like that that to me is reasonable and then later on that the financial considerations involved with tuition and that sort of thing so i really think that it's time for us to consider maybe within the context of the policy committee making some provision for situations

078in which parents make these requests and having a good way to deal with them other than to simply say that we can't do that two superintendents ago there was an administrative um dictate that came down that said that nobody could attend schools in the other districts even on a tuition basis though that's not supported by policy that can find anywhere it was simply a memo that came out from from then superintendent gerson's office i haven't followed that we've allowed the boards to allow families to pay tuition to privately send their kids to either side of the river but i think there are situations that that argue for some sort of allotment if it's if it doesn't cause the other district to have to hire additional staff it seems that we could come up with some

079sort of policy that would allow let's say two or three seats at each school that could be used for these sorts of transfers i'd be curious to know what board members think about that and and um i don't want to wait until we i don't i think this is the sort of thing that comes up every single year and doesn't necessarily need to be a big focus of strategic planning for these isolated requests i don't want to get into too lengthy a discussion here but do any board members have some initial thoughts that they'd like to express at this point yeah um it's lisa tom and just two i think it's reasonable i would like to see us think about that and then the other part is the sixth grade i think the sixth grade

080question though is part of the strategic planning process so correct as a whole i'd agree with you lisa i think yes uh when when the task force did its work last year and the voters approved the warrant article that enabled designation of rms as the sole provider of sixth grade it would require a vote i believe on the part of norwich voters to make that designation say that that now rms is going to be the provider of sixth grade services that's a bigger community discussion and probably you're right i think that's that is a function of strategic planning um but we do we always have these these specific sort of one-off requests that i think we could we could handle with policy or modification of existing uh tuition and attendance policy yeah tom i think

081i might just add um and i'm you know i don't want to bring in attorneys for everything but this one can get a little um particular i think in relation to the interstate school district status how we count students in both districts for purposes of education funding and so i just want to make sure that we entertain all of those considerations when we have this discussion just one thing i think also maybe it could be a slippery slope because all of a sudden everyone here is like you know what i would rather send my kid to baseball for some reason because been over there for five years one more year left there that seems to me so you think about things where we prove it i don't know right like something like that seems to

082make perfect sense to me whereas if you say well anyone can go back and forth well you know i think i might want my sixth grader to go to family that wants yeah sorry just go ahead i can't it doesn't follow as quickly as i thought so that's i guess what i'm i'm asking is is that if the board thinks it's worth the policy committee entertaining at least a short-term discussion about um what to do in these in these cases there are provisions in the existing policy to give me the ability on a case-by-case basis to do things like waging tuitions for for seniors or juniors at the high school that are in this sort of situation we also have a 40-day waiver that i i can administer in the case where someone is attempting

083to purchase a home and wants to attend our school before they actually take residency and i have a 40-day waiver period where i'm still just waving tuition and then and um but i'm thinking that there's there's probably there are price situations where a waiver is required and whether that was something that i could do or that i could bring to the board um i think having some provision like that in policy would be helpful in these these unusual cases we could even put conditions on it i guess in the short term uh tom i might add them to jay's last point i actually think so the the um we've got sort of one request on the table for immediate review i might be more inclined to have you talk with aoe and maybe an attorney

084about what what the possibilities are um because i don't i don't want to rush the policy discussion because i think there's facets to this that we may not be just fully thinking through i don't want to rush the policy discussion to try to satisfy a case that we've got before us i think that might be better ended by the superintendent you know reaching out to aoes and also to attorneys to understand what the what the possibilities are and then take our time with that policy discussion a piece of things can do so just to clarify too you're you're really talking mostly about this sixth grade cohort right because we have had i think questions in the past about moving back and forth across other grade levels yeah it's it's extreme it's much rarer to have

085somebody who wants to attend the elementary grade levels below grade six on either side of the river but this this one is becoming more and more of an issue requests either to go to rms or or in some cases to stay here in sixth grade so okay yeah i'm i'm personally in favor of you uh looking into this i i think uh neil's uh in the right direction in terms of what would be allowable given the compact uh we do have obviously some attorneys are pretty familiar with our the specifics of our district here too so i i'd welcome hearing from them before moving on to potential policy considerations but if we do get to the point of potential policy considerations uh you know i know every case is probably going to be fairly unique

086but it would be good to come up with some specific examples of instances when this might be implemented great thank you any other questions before we move on okay thanks for uh raising that jay uh next up is uh the memorandum of understanding with the town this is a memo that we work to come to resolution on every year this one specifically is with regard to use of the school facilities for the uh recreation department uh on the town side and i say facilities that's both the uh fields and the school itself this year we have had in the past but this year is a bit unique as you know given that we are working to include construction on an aba trail through the milt fry nature area so that is reliant moving forward on

087that is reliant on this mou with the town as well we did receive uh from our from the town's attorneys to our attorney a proposed mou that we reviewed with our attorney earlier in the week jay uh sean uh jamie and i and uh had some uh questions with regard to what's in there and provided back some of the things we were hoping we could add as amendments to it mostly with regard to cost sharing measures with when the rec programs are in the school and when we're using the uh melt fry nature area we have sent those back and hope to get some feedback on those to move ahead in this process to come to resolution on the mou hoping to do so relatively soon as i mentioned so that we can consider moving

088forward on uh the other things that will be waiting on this including both that trail work as well as agreements with use of the school for summer programs in the rec department and so on and so forth so that is the quick overview of it um jamie was there anything else you thought we should address at this time or jay given our discussions earlier or sean no i think we're hoping to bring it to the next meeting we are moving forward on potential opportunities for grant funding for this type of update for educational and social national purposes good yes and as referenced earlier too as and as tony mentioned it is getting harder to find contractors to do this type of work in a timely manner so hopefully we can come to a resolution on

089this relatively soon and i'll provide an update as we as we move forward but as jamie said hopefully we'll have this before us uh at our next meeting any questions at this point i know that's a pretty broad brush overview for you right now okay i i can't see everybody but i'm assuming there are no questions nothing in the room tom all right thank you neil um all right with that i think we can move on down our list and uh the next item item f is the summary of a special meeting on the waiting study which uh took place on march 24th maybe a couple of weeks ago and uh i want to start off by thanking neil for putting together a fantastic presentation that brought the complexities of the potential uh implementation of

090new weights into a format that made it almost understandable for the rest of us too so that is now posted to a special page on the sau 70 website all about the waiting study and all about the work that has been done at the state level to get to this point in the process and then neil's presentation and a video he recorded after the waiting study meeting that we had given that there were some challenges with the audio at that point in time so that is all online and we'll keep tracking where the legislature is in their considerations of the study and i think uh neil pointed me earlier to some updates on that which i did not get a chance to read through from the vsba so neil do you have some updates on

091where the legislation is in the process right now that you could provide yeah i do so for those folks that are looking to track things through the legislature there's now a bill number associated with it it's s-287 it is crossed over from senate to the house and was taken up by house ways and means [Music] just this week i have not had a chance to watch the videos from the committee talks regarding this yesterday but it is my understanding and from looking at the draft bill language you know so there's the legislature can always be a surprising place what passed from the senate over to the house was a focus on going with the change in pupil weights uh what the house is doing right now is considering the cost equity approach so um the

092numbers that i saw that were shared in the committee yesterday actually are showing an even an even greater potential tax rate increase for norwich using the cost equity approach than we previously thought and the proposal that they've been discussing so far is also got a shorter implementation period they're looking at implementing this over three years rather than five so from a norwich perspective we're kind of going in the wrong direction here uh with this so a greater tax rate spread over a shorter period of time um but you know things are early uh these these discussions um have a tendency to you know go every which way as it's moving through committee um so we will continue to keep an eye on it um that information has been posted as tom said to the website

093uh to the webpage on the smu site and we will try to continue to keep that updated as new things happen and if folks are interested in weighing in on this i would highly encourage you to get in touch with your legislators so um in particular and maybe jim will shoot me or give me for saying this but our legislator jim maslin our representative of this area sits on house ways and means which is the committee that is currently entertaining this bill so if you've got some thoughts on it jim would be a great person to talk to thank you neil and jim's contact information as well as tim and our three senators is are also on that website that neil referred to so feel free to reach out i can say that two of

094our senators had reached out prior to the meeting as had uh tim and jim tim and jim listened into it so they are well aware of the concerns but it's good to keep in touch with them as well and they can provide us with updates too so um please do reach out if you'd like to uh express your concerns are there any questions at this point in time on the waiting study all right question sergeant can you just i know we spent all this time explaining the people waiting formula so the cost equity could do maybe you just say no here but in two minutes or less so cost and equity what you know people waiting now i think we all but now we've cost equity which has not really been addressed much right so

095uh the short version is that cost equity would take those new weights and then use them in a different formula that would determine direct grant payments to school districts based on the weights so rather than using the weights in the current formula that determine your education spending for equalized people that calculation goes away there's a calculation that i assume is going to happen with aoe with those student league numbers but use that as a way to determine grant payments that then would be funded straight to school districts thank you neil any other questions okay not seeing any uh let's uh move down our list and for those attendees who are still on to i am looking for hands raised there if they come up over the course of our topical discussions here too so feel

096free to raise them if you have questions and we'll call on you at that point but not seeing any there either we can move on down our list and the next item up is uh g policies gbef and dfa on staff acceptable use and internet safety and policy dfa on investment dfa is just one that we annually renew the staff acceptable use internet safety i believe we've seen at the other boards as well and this is working its way through the rest um that is my understanding jay um are there any other updates on this point or anyone acceptable use agreement was um a procedural regulation that we had in place that that um we were advised should be a policy so that's why that that's now going to be made policy so um and

097we've seen it at least four or five times in the other boards and no changes to the policy dfa this is just an annual renewal of this one as well okay we will return to these shortly as we approve of them in our next section so no if no questions here uh let's keep moving down to uh item h donation from edna halley's labor fund and friends of hanover norwich schools we do have an attachment there but uh sean are you going to be able to talk to these i will so thank you and the house over children's book fund is an annual donation that comes our way about the same amount each year very generous and just use books in our library and second the friends that hit over norwich schools we have one

098grant funded it was a community read that our librarian julian manos submitted for it's a really cool idea it's going to give every family a picture book the same picture book and activities and resources for some exploration of the summer and then we come back to school in the fall that's going to be our beginning of the year to bring us all together a great idea so that's quite exciting and that's it well that's great thank you very much i'm sorry sean do i miss it did you say what book it's going to be that has not been revealed yet no okay keeping us um yes we'll look forward to that uh announcement later then uh thank you very much for that and thanks for the generous uh gifts does anyone have any questions um

099we will turn to this next actions uh for items for action too okay not seeing any let's move on hope sorry no questions when we get to the vote i might suggest that we pull those two out from the consent agenda and handle them separately agreed thank you and and i think this next one as well which is anticipated donations for ukraine relief efforts and sean is this you too this is me um actually this is the marion cross school sixth graders and some dedicated staff rooms that have been working with them they put together a pretty fundraiser it was really child centered it was a coin drive of course we accepted bills and checks as well but sixth graders decorated glass bottles distributed and then did a great job going to each classroom and

100explaining to the younger kids in a kid-friendly way why am i raising funds for children in ukraine there are two organizations that we're going to donate to one is the backpack for kids um effort that packs backpacks for kids who have had to to the second is going to go to the american red cross to help with that direction we're anticipating that we'll probably raise a thousand fifteen hundred dollars with the coins and bills that are coming i'm pretty excited because i get to go with jessica tomorrow after we collect jessica suggested that we put this on here for anticipating donations okay thank you thank you very much sean uh great initiatives there and looking forward to hearing the final results on those as well any questions okay let's uh move into our business requiring

101action then um we do have it set up currently as a consent agenda but as uh neil suggested i too would like to uh just consider items b through f for consent and then let's pull out g and h if board members are willing and i will entertain a motion and i can only see lily right now so if someone else raises their hand i can't oh lily would you like to make a motion sure i hope i don't screw it up um i move to approve items b c d e and f by consent thank you second by lisa thank you very much and uh i'll have to do roll call and it's my fault so my apology but uh all those in favor uh starting with lily evan yes garrett yes lisa christie

102neil odell yes and camden yes thank you very much let's uh move down to item uh g business requirement actually accept donation from the edna howly stoyber fund then lily would you mind uh can i just say move to approve item g or do i need to save both of the if you uh if you open that part on board there's a recommendation it gives you the motion ah okay thank you oh no wait no i lost it again i can do it okay move to accept with sincere gratitude the donation is 606 from the edna howie stoller children's book fund as presented thank you do i have a second second yes bye lily wonderful and again roll call uh starting with uh lily all those in favor yes and garrett [Music] lisa christie s

103and neil yes and camden yes thank you very much again to the edna ali stoiber fund and that brings us to our last uh item requiring action which is the donation from the friends of norwich i think lily is ready to take it yes i found it um move to accept with sincere gratitude the donation from the friends of hanover norwich schools in the amount of three thousand four hundred seventy four dollars and zero cents the community read the proposal as presented lisa thank you very much uh and uh roll call one more time all in favor starting with lily carmen yes and garrett and lisa christie yes and neil adelia and camden yes and yes thank you again uh to the friends of hanover norwich schools for supporting marion cross all right that brings

104us into our communications and reports and uh report of the chair is uh me i don't have a lot to report at this point in time i will say that i believe jay myself and lisa has recently signed up for board chair training and are very much looking forward to that which will start on april 25th i think for four mondays so we look forward to reporting out on that and hopefully exhibiting our uh chairing skills in the efficient movements of meetings such that we don't end after uh two plus hours um but there's a lot of great information there uh the vermont school board association i will remind people as i try to do always uh does a lot of great training and a number of excellent webinars too that are posted online that

105you can turn to at any point when you want to review certain things that come up before school board members i'll also note we've discussed this several times already but the strategic planning is moving along a number of you have started participating through a portrait of a graduate and thank you for that and we are branching off into our subcommittee work very soon each of the chairs the four chairs are chairing a separate subcommittee i have facilities uh rick johnson has uh governance uh lisa has social emotional learning at least now yes and uh and can you remind me of ben's uh academic so we'll be reaching out and uh asking for interest uh in participating in those uh if you have interest in participating in those separate uh subcommittees we hope to get going

106uh just after the april break and moving relatively quickly to come to some recommendations on all those areas the last thing i'm going to touch on right now is that the fort chairs did get together i think it was last week and went through our committee assignment spreadsheet and attempted to bring some equity to the participation in the committees too and i just wanted to go through those i probably should have brought up lisa lisa's email lisa do you have the email in which we uh made some suggestions that uh for each of the committees and if you don't i will find it immediately here let me look for it i don't have the i mean i've got the chart let me see if i can pull up these is the chart up to date

107i'm not sure yes i just i was literally rudely typing during someone's presentation to make sure it was up to date ah okay and i just found that what i think is the latest email as well too so uh why don't i read through the email that way you don't have to scroll through the chart you can scroll through the chart as i am and if i get anything wrong just correct me but uh right now in in uh alphabetical order uh canden uh is assigned to the fort chairs committee norwich negotiations support committee norwich negotiation teachers committee and the norwich budget committee lisa christie is four chairs superintendent performance evaluation committee dresden negotiations uh number two norwich negotiator negotiations diversity equity and inclusion um that's at the dresden board level and uh excuse me

108sau board level and then norwich enrichment grants committee and i'm continuing on down the list neil o'dell is on dresden evaluation at least for one more meeting dresden negotiations won norwich budget norwich negotiations with teachers negotiations with support staff uh diversity equity inclusion vsba liaison to the norwich board and dresden negotiations one i feel like i just said that twice because i did so those are the ones we currently have appointed uh there for garrett's we have athletics on the dresden board sau policy norwich budget dresden budget and csdc and then lilly norwich negotiation support staff president negotiations three i think that is support services there sau budget uh superintendent performance evaluation committee and uh pto liaison and if these are new assignments to you uh and you would like to ask for other assignments

109please let me know and i will relay that to other board members or other chairs so we can reconsider assignments lisa did that jive with what is in the spreadsheet i think it did i can also send a link to the spreadsheet to everyone just so that they can double check um and if you see across the bottom we added total committees so we're trying to make it a little more equitable um there were some people that had eight committees and some people that had two so we were trying to give everyone sort of an average of four or five um and it worked for some people and it didn't work for other people but yeah if you have problems let tom know there [Laughter] please do you share those i'm getting ready to share

110it right now yeah and just to give you some background spreadsheets something we put together a number of years ago so you'll see kind of a stoplight chart on that too which was an earlier attempt to um outline the level of effort for lack of a better word with regard to some of these committees some are pretty heavy-lift like budget committees and we also try to reference times of year when they tend to be pretty heavy-lift so that you can consider that uh with regard to your assignments as well and as lisa mentioned there still is some uh are some inequities in terms of who has a lot of committee assignments right now neil i think we should talk about the number you've got um and uh review those but uh as lisa mentioned if

111you have concerns about the committee placements you've got if they didn't go along with what you had suggested you were interested in please do reach out to me and we can look to potential shifts on those as well any questions at this point on that and uh thank you lisa for sending along a link it should be to everyone right now in a shareable form okay all right if there are no questions at this time let's um move on that is all i have for my report this evening so i will turn it over to sean for the principles report i think my hour long report is trying to get the highlights this 5th march was the month of great stability we have exactly the same amount of students as we did last month exactly

112the same amount of places we have 310 students total our class sizes range which means all the way through except for first grade library news i asked jillian to give a little update in case you didn't know we hired a really fantastic library who has come in just every week done something to improve the library of the library program some statistics that i thought were great so julian is into data so she's been checking keeping track of how many books are checked out she's looking past history to see what the difference is and check out his checkout rate has risen over 16 percent from pre-coping times so we didn't count last year because that was just an unusual experience but before we came to town we had a rate that were 16 higher as of

113march 31st students have averaged 39 checkouts for the year for a total of 11 604 books circulating um and i thought of interest this is something new to our library 1419 ebooks and audio books and she's added that performance accessibility i think i said this before but julian instituted self-checkout so kids in the upper grades and the lord from second grade up can come in any time during the day our students are super responsible so they come in they pick out their books it's fun to watch they browse for a while and then check them out and go on their way and enjoy their books we have one student who showed me his goal to read every single book in this library and i've seen that here multiple times during the week she sports noting

114her report all the different ways that she's trying to get reading exciting not just in the library but with school she's instituting the home in your pocket days so every little experience where everybody picks up their favorite moment throughout the day you trade it with somebody else and they read it and sign their name and trade with another person we hang them all up she held a little banquet in here with all the new books that were ordered for the teachers baked us brownies and cookies and treats i don't know if she could get teachers and she's done the things that we've done traditionally in the battle of books having visiting authors read clover and then she's added lunchtime book groups of kids that come down and she'll pick a focus book they already mentioned

115the whole school read so i'll skip over that part second thing to update you with this is peak hiring season this is when i've found that the best candidates are found this is just before people have to sign their contracts so anyone who's considering looking for another job this is the time to do it up until about two weeks from now and then so far we have brought recommendations to you for pre-k two kindergarten positions in a first move position we have sent recommendation over today for a pe position we have interviewed and are sending a recommendation for a math coach anticipated special ed position that we've interviewed for and we have someone waiting if that materializes the fifth grade position that's been posted and we're accepting applicants the environmental educator position has been posted

116and accepting applicants just this week one of those other positions uh impact the third grade position so we've just cut that out headed over today and we have a part-time french position that's dependent upon the scheduled committee and what we determined but we've had i think i had almost three quarters of the staff involved in some way in the hiring process [Music] my colleagues across the state it's not the case this year happy with our progress and i want to give you an update on our schedule committee we have a great group of people representative of all the different teams within the building all the grade levels and the special features and the interventionists related services with robin and rhett who join us we're really looking at what makes the best sense for kids in

117the schedule what what do we want for our balance for academic time what kind of specials we're going to want for our time outdoors with kids and really looking at [Music] what we can do with the amount of time we have in the resources and not being stuck in what we've always done in the past because sometimes uh so we have a few things that we've agreed upon our new math program the western math recommends a 75-minute chunk that's 60 minutes of instructional time broken up into different groupings and then a 15-minute intervention time that we're going to use some of our current mean time bets so we've agreed that it doesn't make any sense to adopt the program not at least for the first year to give it to what it requires we have

118a very long discussion about literacy across the marine corps schools literacy instruction varies greatly so some classes have small chunks of literacy other classes are larger it doesn't really sometimes make sense how that's divided out other than what the other demands on the schedule are different areas so we looked at best practice robin helped us with this and said best practice says that you can't give kids good literacy instruction reading writing spelling grammar mechanics speaking and listening in less than 120 minutes a day so we've agreed to the community that that is our goal for each of our classrooms knowing that we might have adjustments okay we looked at the experience between mcs and race school students we hear a lot before i hear a lot but the race school has this that the others

119and lauren was nice enough to share the racist schedule with us and actually there's not a whole lot of difference in the baseball office and what we offer but it's really helpful for us to think about balance something about kids feedings at the same middle same high school to try to keep that experience similar we've been using that and one of the things we're recommending is that across the board at the right school specialists are 45 minutes so right now for very costly some special product hours some are happening spread across 20 minutes and chunks it makes a lot of transitions for kids and a lot of little tiny blocks of time so we decided as a group we're going to go with a 45-minute block and see how that works for us and and

120then we also looked at language instruction thinking about we want to get that technical experience as we go through and we're going to align our language introduction more to what the race will does so we have a similar experience instant hesitation yet to advertise so i think this is exciting it's one of my favorite times during the month when this group meets it really thinks about education with kids and what we want to do right across school we have so many resources sometimes if you have try to pack so much in it so i really appreciate this committee and we hope that by the time we leave for summer vacation we can all leave for the schedule and arrange it on it yesterday um worth noting first picture in particular i love lindsey smith she

121loves being outside thank you sean did you uh raise enough money in maple syrup to pay for a septic system [Laughter] we're trying to just sweeten it up around here yeah all right good i'm sure the smell is offset so that'll be nice the smell could offset each other you could just boil it year round well thank you for that very lengthy report sean it was great uh great information in there um i have some questions uh off the top if you don't mind just uh first is with regard to current enrollments for pre-k and kindergarten are you what's it looking like for both of those uh pre-k we have filled or offered uh spots to both pre-k rooms and we have a waiting list of about brexit 16 kids in kindergarten we've been collecting

122from people that we know and i think to date we have 45 which for the seven years it's pretty good so we anticipate sending out again another wave of registering kids now okay i'm sorry did you say only 25 for kindergarten so far or 45 okay good all right thank you and then for those 16 who are on the wait list are you have you heard from uh the norwich child care center and the norwich nursery schools to whether they have room at this time i haven't heard from them but i've heard from people on the list that are pretty desperate that there's not a lot of opportunity out there so we send them in those directions where i believe that they're reaching capacity okay that reminds me because we had talked about having so

123we had the child care committee through the select board i was wondering if we still want to entertain having members of that committee come in and just give a review of what the report said yeah i think that would be good um are you thinking the next meeting yes okay yes let's uh coordinate on that and uh i'll try to send a reminder and to uh ryan jay for our next agenda planning meeting but if you can remember too that would be two of us working to remember them um sean i had one more uh question with regard to the scheduling and these look like some great recommendations and great work to uh come to alignment on a lot of the different programs and areas what is it going to take to come to resolution

124on those is this when are you going to decide that and how yeah so we've made a lot of progress from the beginning just just in the group sitting down and talking about what we wanted for our goals getting this far i anticipate that by mid may will be at the we will have agreed on what we want and then the process to just be taking that and putting it into this good which is much easier than in our basement that's in mid-may we'll start crafting the actual schedule and that will take a week okay thank you does anyone else have questions for sean at this point i said a quick one to kind of so literacy development is that ela yes and then second question so 110 minutes what you say that there's a

125range i mean anywhere between there's currently 90 to 5 or 20 minutes or so to get 60 and then the second question is so the illustrative math program is based on the new curriculum that robin reported [Music] yeah that was a great question um so your first question about time to different places we have some places at our school well example fifth and sixth grade they get a 45-minute ela block so within that block they have to fit three writing grammar mechanics there's some great some of the lower grades that spend about an hour on literacy there are a couple that have chunks so right now we run again we have our first attempt is going to be let's dedicate the time let's see what we can see what we can do that we have

126to then look at their best approach i think one shout out for rob and she's been really great about bringing grace to the very class together saying it makes sense for us to work together this is great it sounds like it's moving in the right direction and definitely addressing something before we go further it's getting a little hard to hear you sean it's coming in now i don't know if it's just because you're further from the owl but if there are other questions if you could move closer to the all that be helpful for the both for those of us online are there any other questions for sean at this point [Music] [Laughter] one thing about the schedule that's been great is that the agency of education gave all vermont schools free access to software

127for building your schedule which came with free professional development and our schedule team went to two of those professional development types now that's just been instrumental in showing what best practices elementary schools and then taking that and having the software plug things in so that you're not creating the whole thing which has been helpful how's that for bali i think it was better but my wife's dog is barking in the background now so it's uh anya says better his dog is really well behaved my dog when she's not barking um no anya said it was better so thank you for that test run there sean other questions okay not seeing or hearing any uh let's move on to our assistant superintendents report and robin steiner is here online with us so robin hello everyone so

128i thought i'd begin with a covid update i know that hasn't been my usual thing recently but i wanted to let you know that cases are remaining steady at a very low level generally we're seeing zero to one cases per day at marrying cross school so that's all good news continuing we um i have an update about an additional grant we received from the aoe we applied for a grant based on our vaccination rates and because we have such high vaccination rates at marion cross school we had i think at that point 89.3 percent vaccination rate so we received a an almost 4 000 grant from the state that we can spend on what basically whatever we want there are no restrictions to the grant so we're looking at helping out with some of the

129playground equipment so that will be exciting and we're happy that we're able to do that and i've also started working on all of the other vermont grants so i've been working most recently on the latest esser grant and then all of the new title grants will be coming out as well so i'll be working on those um we have been continuing with our curriculum work i just finished up with the grade level teams and the only team that i've not met with from mary cross is the fourth grade team and we're hoping that we can do that before the end of the school year but that has continued one final thing i'll say about the math program is that we've scheduled our first professional development sessions for all the teachers and that those are going

130to begin to take place in two weeks we're doing three two hour sessions between now and the end of the school year and then we'll have some sessions for new teachers this summer and then the professional development will continue into the next year and i think people are really excited about it we've done a little bit of work with it during our curriculum days and um it really is exciting bringing both schools together and i met with the middle school the other day and talked about that now you know once we have the program in place students will be coming into the middle school with consistent backgrounds and mathematics from marrying cross and from the ray school so i think that's really exciting and i've enjoyed working on the scheduling committee with sean as well

131that's been a really um just very excellent process so i'm happy to answer any questions anyone might have great thank you very much robin any questions for robin and i'll turn to people in the room who can say something i'm in the room okay thank you for all the updates and it's good to hear how the curriculum is coming along robin um and thanks for the update on kova it's great news to get that four thousand dollar grant coming to us as well uh there may be some confusion if anyone saw a vt digger article out earlier this week which referenced uh norwich is only having between 50 and 79 percent vaccination rate do you think that that's just they haven't got the updated rates or something i mean that's they're as much as 10

132off there so i'm not sure where they're getting their data from i don't know either but yes our rate was based on our student percentages and the numbers that we had for vaccinations so it's quite high i can probably answer that if you want um oh sure good it's lily i believe the data is not shared between vermont and new hampshire so if your child is vaccinated at dh they're not counted in the official vermont numbers ah okay thank you well at least the state's counting it in a different way and got that grant so thank you for that thanks to everyone who's actually got us to the 89 parker any other questions at this point otherwise thanks so much for the update it's great to hear the curriculum work moving along all right next

133up is our superintendent's report so jay thanks tom tom alluded earlier to uh strategic planning and i wanted to give a little bit more of an update about what's been going on uh we have sort of two two prongs of this uh process that are underway right now one of which is the development of our vision which is focused on a portrait of a graduate and that that needs to be extended extended to for us let's be thinking about what we want for our students as they leave marion cross and going to middle school where and what do we then hope for students in the transition from middle to high and then ultimately from high school to whatever they do after high school and we've had now several sessions with the steering committee and then

134now we've had two with a more uh broad-based what we call the design team which is uh folks we've invited from different stakeholder groups in the community who have been helping us uh with the guidance of patel for kids to develop this portrait of a graduate so at our last meeting actually at the first meeting we talked about sort of the changing landscape for education it was a very future focused look at changes in technology changes in the way people are acquiring information and what those implications are for students as they work through school systems that have really resisted change for a century or so um and uh and it sort of shook people up a little bit it's kind of a frightening thought when you see [Music] all the mechanization of processes that were

135typically the domain of human beings and and there's a thought that like where's the humanity in all this and the second meeting was about then talking about what are what are our aspirations for our kids and what are the competencies that we hope that they acquire while they're with us so given the fact that we sort of had this future shock presentation it doesn't surprise me too much that our our group came up with uh the following as their sort of top priorities for kids critical thinking came in first empathy second collaboration followed by curiosity adaptability communication and and then environmental awareness so we were really choosing from a pretty lengthy list of potential competencies and attempted by consensus with groups that then also come up with sort of group focused priorities and we're still

136tabulating the group results but it looks like it's coming down to critical thinking and empathy as the um top of the list for five of the groups curiosity was top of list for four of the groups and um it goes from there to adaptability collaboration and innovation so there's um there's an interesting spread there but it's interesting to us that we're seeing critical thinking and empathy being two of the most valued attributes that we're hoping to to base our system around so while that's happening we talked before about the fact that we sidetracked this process a little over two years ago and we're we're bringing it back with a greater sense of urgency so at the same time we're working on the visioning we're also embarking on the actual technical aspects of planning so to

137that end each of the board chairs has agreed to spearhead a subcommittee in the areas of academics and then student support operations and systems and facilities and so [Music] ben keaney's heading up academics and he's going to be working with robin as his partner administratively and then lisa's taking on student support and social emotional learning with rep derrick as her administrative partner i'm working with rick johnson on systems and operations and jamie will be working with tom to look forward uh for a facility so that's that's where things stand and the those subcommittees are just not forming we're deciding um what expertise we need to seek from from within our organization and also within the community and we are anticipating beginning those meetings when we return from break after the 18th so um where my

138my sort of aspiration is to have an outline have the key goals identified for each group before school is out so in june so it's going to be a lot of work but we've been talking about this for a long time thinking about it for a long time and i think people are ready to actually roll overseas and get it done so i am excited about it so i also wanted to mention tonight something that's just on my mind it's so i guess by way of therapy i came here five years ago because i was in a district that was required a lot and not to say i ever imagined this would be easier but i worked in a district where the social and economic challenges were so great that it was every day was

139a struggle for a lot of our families kids and for the people that serve them and yesterday [Music] there was a school shooting in the high school that i helped to to form right before i left and uh it's the first time we've had a shooting in this week we've had gangs um in our school district that that was a real problem for our youth there was there was youth violence in the community but we managed to really work really really hard to keep violence out of our buildings and i spent a lot of time on the phone yesterday with my successor who had been my my cfo and with a member of the community who i've worked with for many years and non-violence initiatives and uh it was a sad day and it reminded

140me of something i feel like i left behind but it also it also reminded me that we can never take student safety for granted and as much as we hope that it never happens sometimes things like that do happen and one thing that brian polito the superintendent and urina mentioned to me after we spoke was that the systems that were in place worked the way they were supposed to what could have been a much worse tragedy resulted in no loss of life which was amazing given the fact that a ninth grade student discharged eight rounds from a nine millimeter pistol in attempting to shoot someone and uh feel horrible that the staff it's just bad students saw that sorry it's just on my mind so i'd share it just uh kind of as a way

141to recognize just how lucky i feel but we don't have quite those sorts of challenges but i never want us to to think that it can't happen and um we need to make sure that we're keeping our kids safe too my report thanks jay and thanks for uh passing that along too and keeping that at the forefront of our minds as well because it certainly is something i think we've gotten all wrapped up by these past couple years and keeping people safe through the pandemic which i think you and the rest of the administration teachers and staff have done a great job of doing but there are other things that we need to keep at the forefront too and we have been lucky but we need to remember that there are other challenges out there

142i'm sorry to hear about that from your former district and i'm sorry to hear about it almost every other day it seems in newspapers across the country so hopefully at some point in time our legislators will come to some reason and get us to a point where we can be safer and held more accountable from the top as well so thank you for that um jamie business administrators report yeah and thanks for sharing that jay it is very important a lot of folks in new hampshire think that it can't happen in the community what's happened in our communities and we need to remember that that you know everybody can have a bad thing so be prepared um we've posted the audits it's finalized yay four of them it was a struggle of getting legal letters

143out of the lawyers offices this year they're very busy kind of shorthanded and we had to kind of you know pester them to get the letters they will not release an audit without the legal letters on thought um so uh norwich came out you know in in good shape um based on what we had projected as a surplus we actually received uh more reimbursement after the last quarter on the special education uh the seer report i never remember those things were special education expense report right so that's where all of the costs in the special education section of our school district the reimbursables we file three times a year a report and we get 56 ish back they actually do a finalization on the percentage that's reimbursed usually like in july because it has to

144be voted on in the energy and so sometimes we end up with more money um so the audit's very long please take the time to look it over and for the general public as well if you have any questions please email them to me or jay we'll get back to you i think the most important pieces that are the easiest for folks to take a look at are on page 51 two and three they're your schedules these schedules align more with what we report to you because they're not combined asset sheets or combined financials for governmental accounting they have to do combined financials and so you look at all the stuff before these pages and it will it will not line up with our reports but the reports and schedule in the back side of

145the loop this audit uh this schedules one two three four five i think uh those really line up with what we were reporting and or projecting so the first one is your major general fund and it's scheduled estimated in actual revenues we ended up with a positive variance in revenues 432 dollars over what we have projected again some of that is your special education reimbursement with 75 000 there and miscellaneous which are reimbursables as well so schedule 2 shows you an overview of your appropriations and expenditures again you know due to a lot of the coded challenges that we faced with running the school district in the 2021 school year we had a surplus of expenditures in the amount of and then you have encumbrances from prior years that they carried over so they're just

146showing you you know where we stood on those and so those are usually you know end of year purchase orders or purchase orders that are usually made maybe haven't cleared by june you carry them over in the next year they're purely they're fine schedule three just shows you like the whole change in the undecided fund balance remember that this is a two-year lag in vermont it's a little different when you look at it in new hampshire it's a one-year it's like an actual in vermont it's a two-year lag so when you look at unassigned fund balance ending at 563 644 we don't really have that amount available because we had already earmarked a portion of that for the fiscal year that we're in okay so and somebody's going to ask me how much we airmarked

147and we don't remember i think it's about two i think we had earmarked right around the same amount that we had the prior year um and so i'm going to say it was right about 283 000 and i think we had an earbud for offset in this fiscal year and then they'll do combined balance sheet for all the small accounts that are not your general fund balances um and so you have five of them going on right now which is kind of funny because they show the hvac project um even though that was money and money out right it was exactly what we spent came in um i don't know why you didn't recognize it you probably will recognize it on the next fiscal year so food service um we have a fun balance here

148special gifts we have a fund balance medicaid we have a large rundown because we haven't used any of that offset we did not draw out any of the money as offset last year because we didn't get the offset expenditure we will be drawing some of that out this year because we added the extra ftvs that were unbudgeted and right now we're um you know we're in a negative position on our salaries so we'll pull most of that out this year um and then the cable drop project that's in a negative position chilling there and that's just because we we started for it and put a deposit on it before the fiscal year opened okay so that'll wash out the index fiscal year and then if you go to the very last page it's just another

149recap of that combining the revenues against the expenditures and showing the actual change in the fund and that's where they show the hvac project because they're netting it against itself and that's the uh the monies we've got from efficiency vermont for the air handlers that has been reopened we're waiting for it to post we're gonna go after the other additional funding to do four more so that's still on the table let's see what happens i think there's 10 or 12. um so the other document that is posted and it's not posted for we can discuss it um but per the instructions coming from your auditors this is a document that is for the governance board of the entity a lot of times they don't share this in its entirety because as you will notice they

150go through and they send recommendations for us to possibly change our process or procedure um we had a food service fund comment that we would share with everybody about the um this is a posting that we neglected to do um on our balance sheet and we normally do it at the end of the fiscal year they really feel that we should be doing it monthly um you know we had some challenges in the finance office last year with some outages and towards the end of the year and some other things going on so but we understand that it really needs to be done monthly you know we'll be sure we start doing that we're also looking at maybe a different type of food service software for the 22-23 year in line with potentially nslp and

151then the other one has to do with i.t policies and procedures i am not going to read that to the general public some of it has to do with risk okay and so that is for the board to know and that i can say to the general public that we have been embarking on technology upgrades um in policies that we're putting in place that really answers any concern that the auditors might have this year we've made some payroll systems we had a parallel system change and we've done a process change um we had basically we had an employee who started we issue letters of intent early in the year for the next year out so one of our employees got a letter of intent issued in may it was made last time two years ago

152and then when they got here their schedule changed and so their schedule i think went up in hours and in the system i know their schedule went down an hour so in the system because we smooth payrolls which means that we take somebody's um basically base amount that we expect them to earn and we divide it by the number of pays for the fiscal year so that they get the same paycheck every time that way when we have all these breaks people don't go without pay and so because of this it's called smoothing because of the smoothing that we do when the folks were putting their time in our time management system the time management system was still set up to think that they were working 30 hours not 20 hours so we neglected to

153pay them their extra hours each time the paid period went by so we issued them a check for the amount of money that we owed them and they didn't they didn't realize they were so we have changed the process there so that that should not happen again um and our apologies for that um that employees gave them um and it wasn't a huge amount and those are the three areas that they thought you know that they had come across and said you know this is what we suggest that you do you know and and uh so we complied and told them what we were going to need to fix everything everything else is fine there are no there are no major findings um so everything is good and again if you want to look through

154all the bulk of the rest of the audit there are notes in the financial statement um you know let's talk about your loan payments which are almost done some of the assets that we have that were still sitting on the capital assets which was basically what you got the lump sum money when we did the renovations and then basically it's the dollar amount that we show that comes off of tax money for assessment um it's a revenue talks about the retirement the open which i think you've heard about a lot on the dressing board other post economic benefits of course employment benefits we do have them here too because of our agreements so they will show on on here and it will make it look as if that your assets are lower than what they

155are because you have this liability hanging out there but it's the liability that we have to recognize that comes off of the vermont state retirement fund it's our portion they changed that years ago it messed up everybody in a mistake um so other than that it's pretty good take a look if anything you don't understand you have questions on please reach out thank you very much yeah other than that i think everything's moving along fine other than that good well that sounds that's great thanks for all the work that you put into that it's an extraordinary amount i understand especially with everything else going on as well so thank you when i said you uh that was the uh yes the royal you thank you personally and pass along to the team for that as

156well um let's move on to the committee reports i don't think there are many tonight i can report very briefly that we are still in negotiations with the teachers association we uh did not we've uh gone to legalism questions on some language or we're hoping to get that back soon and then meet with the teachers i have to reach out probably sometime after the break at this point and with the support staff we are hoping to finalize soon but did not don't have an update on that quite yet uh certainly hope to have some have it by the may meeting other than that the only other committee i think that is uh able to report his uh enrichment grants i know that uh anya white reached out as the teacher representative to our board reps

157lily and lisa for that committee and um have they been able to schedule that lisa lilly yeah and lily and i we both got the information and it's later this month i can't remember when the 19th 19th 19th of april great well thank you for that i i don't think there are other committee updates at this point but correct me if i'm wrong anyone there all right with that uh we have entered into our three this evening so we do have need for executive session and i think we can get through it relatively quickly but let's uh proceed there and i will entertain a motion to take us there i'll do it um okay motion to enter into executive session at 59 pm in accordance with title 1 section 313 for the purpose of discussing

158personnel i think ryan's just trying to stick it to this new uh time entry here but uh that's fine that's do we have a second second by lily and uh roll call i see lisa first all those in favor christy yes lily oh yes yes and canon yes okay thank you very much uh i sent neil a zoom length for the executive session if you wouldn't mind zooming me in i'll join you in the classroom soon robin thank you very much have a good night thank you see you unless you wanted to join the executive session it's up to you it's all right okay we'll update you later okay i see you right and for those of you online we will return to this link after the executive session [Music] to do that now lily's

159got it okay all right are we all seated and ready to move on yes we're all here all right let me first make a point that uh i should have pulled this approval for the teacher agreement it's uh something that we hope to address soon but uh not tonight uh so let's move right into the approval of new hires and i'd be happy to entertain a motion lisa the camera's on you oh it's on me lily is all set she goes lilly sorry lily go for it i'll second her okay i move to approve a pre-kindergarten teacher a kindergarten teacher and a first grade teacher as presented lisa and do we want to actually say the names at this point i'm just i see that it's not there in the recommended actions but maybe we

160could just uh uh maybe yeah i would do do names and then you can't do it right all right that's not your following exciting yeah you don't know how to do it right yet to do it it's okay i have a review of the movement i moved to approve sarah burkhart to fill the 1.0 pre-k vacancy i moved to approve hiring katherine fritchey as a 1.0 kindergarten teacher who replaced ashley morris and i moved to approve hiring sarah reinheimer as a 1.0 first grade teacher to replace jimmy anymore at least a second thank you very much and uh roll call i see uh all those in favor lily uh kevin yes lisa christie yes neil yes and camden yes thank you very much uh that moves us into our well we first welcome all those

161teachers looking forward to having them join us uh over the summer into the next academic year thanks to everybody who is on the hiring committees there too so i know a lot of work went behind that and is looking forward to welcoming welcoming them to mcs with that uh we can head into our adjournment phase of the meeting agenda topics for the next meeting we've got a couple that are already on the list if anyone has more do email them to me jay and ryan and i would be happy to entertain a motion to adjourn and thank our two attendees who are die hards linda and patrick at 9 31. thanks for sticking with us tonight motion to adjourn lily hi lily yes i move to adjourn the meeting at 9 32 p.m thank you

162second goodbye lisa lisa and all those in favor lily garrett lisa christie s neil yes cannon yes and thank you for all bearing with me from afar here via zoom uh have a good night everyone hey