001this webinar is being live give it just a couple minutes but i might i'll let you know when i'm ready please with you that's happening okay i feel like i should run down to the school and join you guys this is just easier than getting back home that's exactly i was coming from hanover and i was like i yeah i would not have been on time plus this way no one has to see my face at this point in time all right well given that we're all here richard and cedar you're okay for us to start up okay uh we do have garrett's not able to join us this evening um so let's get started i'd like to call to order the regular north school board meeting of february 2nd 2022 and we'll begin with
002the agenda review pretty straightforward this evening unless there's anything anyone wants to add or move around any desire to change the agenda at all not seeing anybody yeah okay we're getting some feedback i do see jay has something he wants to say yeah sorry tom in the um in the executive session there's uh the last item on there is a principal survey i have nothing to report to the board now we're we actually met with the principals and we're actually looking at using a new instrument that we haven't completed yet and so i'd suggest that we push that off to another meeting okay and uh what about the uh update is that still ready the other teachers that's that's some pretty spoiler plus standard uh reporting sean are you prepared to do that this evening
003to report out on the non-tenured teachers i could okay good well i've got some updates on negotiations too so if you want to add that in the executive session okay thank you guys nothing else for me not seeing any let's move down the list to public comments uh there is no public except richard and cedar from ca tv here one member public online and i'll give a second for any questions not related to anything on the agenda this evening okay not seeing any we'll continue down the list i uh did hear from stephanie this evening she is running a bit behind schedule so we may just pump the pto report into the uh communications and reports further down the agenda so that if she joins us then we can go with that if not she
004has attached brian has attached for the cto report this month so moving right along that annual meeting preparations um it's just a short item where we need to uh make sure everybody knows where to go and then to uh understand the agenda that evening so in the public content of board docs you can find information about uh both the dresden annual meeting which will be all on february 24th at 7 00 pm the uh physical location where board members or most boardrooms will be is the hanover high auditorium there will obviously be a zoom option as well and we'll have that link available in the near future uh the norwich town meeting is taken entirely online uh that is monday february 28th at 7 p.m and the link is available in the board docs as
005well as well as a calling option to participate in that uh zoom meeting uh the meeting does start at 7 pm that night the select board goes first this year and then followed by the school board so we'll be on after the select board's presentation on this uh so the next order business i need to fill up my lawrence articles here just to see what needs to be covered that evening uh and uh some of these we normally go through rather quickly i am going to reach out and i think you know expressed interest to reaching out to john carroll who's the town moderator to just get the flow of the show for the evening and article one and two are not articles that need to be presented are three article four is pretty straightforward
006is the board members salary and then uh neil has kindly agreed to continue his uh excellent presentation of the overall budget this year which is great thank you very much for that and then article 7 is a pretty straightforward two so i will uh talk with uh john carroll or town moderator maybe dale and i can get on with him and just make sure that we understand that albany wants to run the flow of the meeting uh if board members don't object that i'm fine taking the other articles as john may want to reference them since they are all pretty straightforward there unless anyone has a great desire to uh present during attendance just get in touch with me happy to have you do so we will go around the zoom room it looks like
007based on the link i'm seeing that it is a zoom meeting again which is a bit different than the way we run the meetings here so everyone will all be in the same meeting space if it goes as it did last year john will ask everyone to mute themselves and turn off their videos all with the exception of those people presenting at the time so i think the select board will be on when they present and then i'll schedule the week but i will provide updates on that when we talk to john as i mentioned does anyone have any questions about uh town meeting if we hear anything else it's uh it needs to be passed along we'll certainly do so uh if you can all join us that evening that would be great if
008you would like to join a little bit later and even getting the school presents later and even i can provide updates as to when that is coming as well i don't think there's anything else that needs to be covered at this point uh town meeting day voting takes place the variance day from 7 00 to 7 pm in tracy clark all right this is you might want to let voters know um budget brochures yes budget brochures a lot of work went into those thanks to everyone on this call as well as uh all of the chairs who reviewed it and a special thanks uh they got two to liz geminani who for the fifth or sixth year has put her graphic design skills to work and put together another really nice uh presentation in the
009brochure they should be uh something compared to i think in people's mailboxes within the next week or two i know that they're at press right now is that does that sound about right mailings one or two weeks to people's i'm not thinking long i think they might have them by monday all right and uh even so you can go to the sau 70 business and finance page and download the pdf of them right now for the sneak peek i did post yesterday to the norwich listserv just information on where town citizens can go to find previous budget meetings as well as the budget books that jamie puts together in the presentation and links to the videos of previous uh board deliberations on the budget as well as a link to uh where those pdf groceries
010can be found jamie do you have a question for me yeah i just want to point out that i need to update a couple of exhibits in the budget book because that's the original one and since the changes that we know about on the 13th which are somewhat confusing uh with the potential differences in the tax rate setting due to the yield so um i hope to have those posted by tomorrow okay just want to make that comment and also when the when the annual report book comes out we've made a little graph in there to try to make it easier to understand all right great did uh i should have asked this earlier too but you mentioned uh i think you were shannon was going back to brad james to ask if there was
011going to be potentially more movement on our people counts have you heard that from the state i have not heard back from them because they haven't come out with another version yet they should be coming out with an updated version here shortly i expect it to go up a little bit but not a lot i'm not sure there were two students they weren't counting one was middle school one was pre-k and depending on whether they were counted the prior year it adjusts what the weight would be because it's a two-year adjusted average um so i don't know if it'll come out at 1.43 above it or if it'll be a fraction thereof all right well hopefully we'll have some more information before the town meeting presentations uh anything else at this time on this regarding
012ten meeting preparations i'm not seeing any let's uh move ahead on our agenda item and next up are policies which we have all seen i think this is the third time policies on efa meals charging gaav on telecommuting and the regulation is tied to it for requests for individual telework and telework agreements and then policy igg ijoc on volunteers i think we have discussed these a bit bit i know volunteers uh had some updates uh is that right jason's our last meeting at dresden referencing some of the badging possibly and uh questions about uh needing fingerprints was that uh resolved in this version that's the the change that we're proposing there's a there's a requirement that if someone is working as a volunteer and is unsupervised that is with children without having a school employee
013supervising them that they must have a full fingerprint background check and volunteers who are not going to be alone with children i don't don't have that same requirement so there there's um we really feel strongly that there needs to be um a way for us to make distinguish between the two because it's it's it's one thing for us to say uh that we're going to make sure that we we properly uh screen our our volunteers but there really isn't a good way for us to know whether they're a what we call a designated volunteer that is somebody that's that has been fully background checked versus someone who's who's maybe more ad hoc uh who's who's around kids and we don't know for sure what's what their status is so we thought by having a different
014color coding for badges we'd be able to make that identification and people would know that that certain people should not really be left with children alone all right any board members have questions on this on any of these three balls actually just one and i i apologize for not catching this before or maybe i i'm just not really right so if i'm looking by looking at um sorry ij oc the volunteer one there are a couple of references later in the documents to other policies and i think in some cases norwich may not have the other policy so i was looking at i'm not sure i had this right e-a-g it looks like norwich does not have that one or if we do we've got it coded under a different [Music] transportation so that's that's
015great a great catch what we'll do is this is a first read so we'll make note of that um and double check that make sure that we're cross-referencing the right policy thank you for that okay if it is the right policy just based upon the title it sounds like one we should probably think about having here anyways enough private use of use of private vehicles to transport students so maybe we should just keep it in there while adding the policy that's not listed among them sure i think we may have that content in a different policy it might be in uh in the travel policy right it could be a coding issue we'll we'll troubleshoot that and make sure we rectify that for the when it comes for a second ready any other questions or
016thoughts on these policies all right not seen any there were no changes in the meals charging whether since the last um [Music] otherwise some discussion but i see this update on february that's this one okay were there any substantial changes david you know this one after we discussed that addressing nothing substantial now all right well then let's move along we'll have those come up all of those except for the uh long tiers for them uh next up uh is 5c review of the 2022-23 school calendar i assume this is basically the same as what we saw at the uh dresden meeting last week is that correct jay and sean anything uh that's right sean i'm not sure if anything i don't believe that we've got any changes to offer or i think we're all set
017we there are a few changes we uh greg and i went over the calendar with the mcs staff and we changed a few of the in-service days that were specific to norwich just to make them work a little better with with conferences and with where we wanted to do pd opportunities so those changed a bit but those are reflected in this document correct they are oh good yeah yeah this this calendar is the calendar that the staff went over with greg and i and that that we would like to have adopted for next year yeah and sorry sean should have been clear that when i was representing since we had a dresden board meeting we saw with an updated version since the last week okay so you agree with what's in the quarterbacks yes all
018right uh any other questions or comments sorry i just want to and i don't mean to be nitpicky but i'm looking at the grid on for at least the explanation on the bottom and how do i tell the difference between a teacher and service day and a parent teacher conference for a minute [Music] facilities updates jamie and i met with tony and jeff goodrich and james jeff goodrich patrick baking company the other day just to talk about uh our options as they currently exist and to uh also reference the large intensities going on because i think since our last meeting jamie and i met with chrissy morley uh um who are leading the march intensive training are looking for information to put together for the students for that class who are reviewing uh the separate
019situation here and the possibility of other options so they are well on their way now thanks to jamie and actually james and some others who have spoken with them as well to prepare their clients amy do you want to give any other updates on the uh discussion we have today sure as i'm and if you're wondering why i'm bouncing back and forth i apologize i'm babysitting like two kittens who had surgery i'm trying to keep them from fighting um so anyway uh we met yesterday and we discussed um a couple of interesting possibilities that jeannie and their group with the mi are looking into and so we're going to be doing some follow up with our soils expert on some of the questions that they raised some on some potential alternative situations that maybe the
020state might allow if we had further information so we're going to be looking into that in the next month or so um there are other facilities updates other than the septic um we are in phase two of our fire system upgrade update and there'll be some work being done over the february and april vacations to complete hopefully complete phase two and then look at scheduling phase three for the summer where we're putting in all the automatic door closures um we have been in contact and went a little bit gung-ho and then we have to pull back a little that's okay on kitchen equipment looking at updating a couple of the pieces of kitchen equipment so that we can perhaps start to look towards some changes in our food service operations um we just need to
021we have our maintenance director um contacting the uh fire safety folks to make sure that we will be in compliance with anything that we want we might want to do so we'll keep you posted on that and and what kind of um progress we can make um thank you for um looking at and approving a meal charging policy because that is a portion of what we have to do in order to participate in the national school lunch program should we decide to do that for the next school year you have to have that in place some of the other things going on at marion cross let's see fire suppression oh technology project yes the technology project is uh just starting and i know they're gonna have some um scheduling going on for february of course
022you're ahead of the ball game because your phones have already been in for quite a few years here sean right [Music] and they should be hopefully wrapping up that tech project by the end of april vacation i think is what they've got it scheduled for there's one other thing going on over there the field no the the oh yes the trails the trails project right we're working we have to supply i think the town with um like an aerial type of mapping and a map of what the idea is for upgrading the trail system through the milton frey forest so we've been working uh with engineers on look taking a look at that because we'll we'll need that in order to apply for permit once we figure out how we're going to do that with
023the town obviously we don't own the land but they've told us what pieces that we need to do in order to take a look at upgrading the rest of the trail system i think that was oh no and i signed today i signed the purchase agreement for the new swing set that's met on order and should be coming in and we'd be putting it in i believe once the weather clears so that was exciting i know for everybody and thank you so much to everybody on the parents and the public and all of the groups who helped make that possible that was very kind and i know the children will really appreciated um did i miss anything sean you did a great job oh good thanks okay so if anybody has any questions on any
024of that uh you know feel free to reach out to myself sean tony tom um i know we'll have more information on the septic within the next two months so uh and and march intensive is uh doing a great job and they're um really looking into a lot of different possibilities from an environmental standpoint so we thank them thanks for that update and actually your reference will be in there the march intensive reminds me that they have asked for the opportunity to brief the boards um based upon what they study if it's dresden fields i'm going to recommend that they do one presentation to the guest board rather than [Music] possible are there any questions on well please just briefly from board members or attendees yes not to say thank you jamie move down our
025list here and that brings us already to the business requiring action we do have an opportunity to do consent votes here on the approval of expenditures approval from the special day of january 13th the adoption meeting of january 13th the regular meeting of january 5th and then the approval of the policies bfaa gaab that we just referenced in the discussion on and television yes charging policy as well as the school calendar so if anyone would like to offer a motion for example lisa move to approve items b c d e f and g by consent neil and since we are somewhat uh online here this morning i'll start with lily yes thank you very much and uh moving right along we're already into the communications and reports first up is the report of the chair
026uh most of what i have to report on i gave which is with regard to the upcoming town meeting day uh information as i mentioned i did put up some uh information on the list here yesterday uh we do not have any scheduled information sessions between now and the meeting but if any uh residents would like to reach out to any questions based on what they see in the materials that we have provided or brochures that will be in people's hands soon i do encourage people to reach out to me or board member or the administration with any questions you'd be happy to follow on any of those another thing i'd like to provide some updates on um not too specific but the waiting study is obviously working its way through the state house now
027um thanks to the senate finance committee today neil is able to watch some of the deliberations there and uh as we get more information on the progress of that uh we'll work with our representatives and senators and track that as well as the potential for uh putting in some of our own thoughts to uh the senators and representatives as it does proceed through the various committees in the two chambers and uh we will also try to get some more information to the town as we uh understand which direction is being recommended in the statements now you have a better beat on some of this than i do the others things are a little complex at the moment so i believe the last that i knew i think that there was somewhere around 11 different bills
028at this particular topic all working their way through both the senate and the house pretty much at the same time i can understand why they did that because i think it's a pretty no pun intended it's a pretty weighty topic to address but by doing it that way it makes it extremely challenging to track the progress of things so there have been discussions actually today there were discussions in both senate education and senate finance related to this bill i believe that there have been discussions as well in past education so it's going to be this one this one is a big deal and we're going to need to follow it closely as tom mentioned too i think it is worthwhile for um for this board to maybe weigh in through one of our school board
029members uh with at least one or two of the committees as it progresses just to let them know the potential impact of norwich and how it might affect both the taxpayers here but potentially the students of the school system as well [Music] so i don't know there's there's another issue out there really that pertains to schools in vermont as well too that is going to i think be a big deal shortly perhaps in this legislative session but certainly afterwards it has to do with sending a public dollars to religious schools which has some tie-ins as well to how how we've set up tuition in vermont particularly for those schools that have not some non-operating grades and they're allowed to basically send their their public tuition out their place there's a supreme court case right now
030um that was just heard uh regarding a case in maine about this and we believe that the results we those of us that are following this um the results of that supreme court decision could have a dramatic impact on how things play out here in vermont with both religious schools and the funding that we have so that's another one that some members of senate ed are considering right now trying to get out ahead of the potential supreme court decision by tightening up some of the the legal items around education funding and where those public dollars could go so that's another thing to maybe keep an eye on as it progresses and then i think one of the final things is what the legislature proposes back to the government on the nine million dollars that's been
031uh mentioned uh by the government the state of the state that was actually from the finance commission and prior to that the governor's proposal is to split uh the funds 45 million dollars back to uh offset tax increases and uh 45 million dollars towards other school aid projects that's gonna depend on what uh how that proceeds through the state and i think most of the same committees that are looking at the waiting study too i would imagine so we will check that jamie did provide some guidance on what uh those three different uh outcomes could lead with our own tax rates in the uh budget documents brochure so we will be uh tracking that closely too i don't have anything up to date on the cla i know that we have tripped the uh 85
032percent differential there so i'll just keep track of the that goes as well with regard to our timeline assessment because that obviously has a significant impact on the educational tax rate too and uh that is all i have for an update at this point in time although i will um preserve the right to come back with things that pop into my head while others are given their updates as we use the atmosphere so next up is the principles report and uh prince has posted that to board box but uh if you wouldn't mind walking us through that would be great sure i'll start with enrollment we have 315 students which is about we had last month just not the same 315 students we've had some come in some that have left our classes stay pretty
033stable in size our pre-k has 18 kindergarten 44 first grade 31 second grade 43 third grade 42 fourth grade 43 fifth grade and sixth grade both have 47. so they're right in the in the 40s all the way across um i also mentioned the swing set it's quite an exciting moment today the uh last 4 500 of the swing set was raised with a raffle that christina akula put together for us and helped coordinate and it raffled off some of the maple syrup that lindsay made with the kids last year and today we did a live drawing at the end of the day and it was it was a lot of excitement at the school as kids came down to gather their parents belongings and bring them home so that was that was a lot
034of fun just want you to notice a couple of the photos this first one so we have a an sau 70 photographer emma cottage and she's been coming over and photographing some times with kids and she got some great outdoor photos so just enjoy those as you go through we had an author visit from james yang it was an online author visit which we were a little questioned question which was questionable to us but it worked out great it allowed us to to have this author visit with everyone in the building on the same day and do some cool projects which wouldn't have been possible with an in-person piece so it's actually a time where an online format worked better for us i wanted to highlight leap so leap is one of the programs at
035the merry cross school that touches every kid from pre-k all the way up through sixth grade and lindsay does an amazing job with working with each and every grade level to schedule adventures outside that relate to their science curriculum today the staff spent some time outside with lindsay during our wednesday afternoon time and just did a little science investigation and um it was just as much fun for us as it is for kids i'm not going to read through all these but you can get a glimpse of what lindsay's been doing with kids outside this month i wanted to give you a pbis update so greg is our pbis coordinator we have two committees that meet a universal committee that works on all of our just basic pbis pieces like recognition celebrations how we communicate
036with kids and then we have a leadership group that talks about the bigger picture and where we're headed with pbis we put together an action plan at the beginning of the year we wanted to improve universal pbis to have 90 percent buy-in by marion cross staff we wanted to support teachers in reviewing expectations every six weeks with students we have our four school expectations kindness respectful responsible and safe we wanted to share data monthly with staff do student staff and climate surveys as well as parent surveys and to create time during staff meetings to discuss data and share ideas and strategies the leadership committee reviewed that we sent out some surveys to see how we were doing and um we're pretty happy we're right about at the 87 percent range of implementing those goals for
037this year which we feel really great about and last piece i want to update you with with the pre-k update today we had 49 families who expressed interest in our pre-k program greg has gone through and used our criteria for ranking those applications and sent out letters to 16 families saying that they are definitely in for next year another 16 saying that if our budget goes through successfully that we're planning on having spots for them with our second pre-k and then a letter to everyone else saying that you're on the waiting list and what number you are on that list seem to work smooth this year and we were amazed with the amount of interest and i noticed that there wasn't a coved related update in here um i think that we are taking a
038little sigh of relief that this week has been better in the covet arena than last week was for us our case numbers are going down and we're feeling good about that and other than that i do want to send a thank you we've we have advertised for parents to come and substitute for us and we have a few who took us up on the offer and it's such a relief to have people that come in in the morning when staff are out and know our kids and enjoy being with them and i would say if there are any other families out there who uh who parents would like to come in and substitute just give us a call and we will hook you right up and get you in the classroom as early as next
039week any questions or things i didn't hit on that people are interested in sean i uh if i missed it i apologize but that last paragraph of the week uh update was pretty extraordinary too did you actually um i didn't quite hear you can you say that one more time there's a little movement in my house right now sorry the last paragraph in your leap update uh i thought was pretty extreme i couldn't i'm sorry if i missed it but did you speak directly to that because i think that was amazing with those numbers sure are 2500 pounds of food that was uh donated to willing hands that that is a pretty amazing number um the testament to lindsay's great gardening skills with kids and uh kids super harvesting i think that is amazing it's
040probably we turn out more in our school garden than i do my home garden so it's a good feat the other question i had sean was related to the uh the pre-k enrollments and obviously you've got a huge wait list have you heard from the other two uh nursery schools in town as far as their uh enrollment at this point i believe that they're filling up as well they moved a couple of the programs moved their dates up where families had to commit earlier on so i think that they they're filling up as well there seems to be a lot of need for pre-k and child care in norwich well everywhere but we notice it notice it in norwich any other questions you're showing neil i've got one and actually was your enrollment um that
041prompted me to remember this i think a while back we had talked about whether or not you might be able to put together figures about um the the student capacity of marrying cross if if we were to entertain some hypotheticals of how many kids you know we could comfortably educate in our building i'm starting to look for it and i think some of that information might be useful in the near future i think you would find that in the last meeting ah okay my bad great job great job a great job tony tony and i worked on that together so we've we've got all that for you it might have been the meeting i think it was yeah okay sorry sure that was a great meeting without me there other questions for sean all right
042nice to meet you thank you sean for that update you're welcome robin with the assistant superintendent hello everyone i first need to apologize tonight i erroneously reported that marion cross had a coven case today that was not in fact true they had zero all week which is wonderful and go ahead it's just because it's the kind of error we like yeah i know it's good error so we've had no cases as you know all week which is showing us a decline which we're seeing across the district which is really wonderful news we now have 83 percent of our students at marion cross fully vaccinated which also is another really wonderful step that we've taken um on another front we have received extra help for nurse jane in her office from the state she's um we've
043been able to hire someone to work 20 hours per week with nurse jane because as you probably all know she's had quite a lot on her plate with surveillance testing and all the other duties she has on a daily basis so that was good news as well in terms of curriculum we've begun working on the curriculum again and this week we've had the sixth grade meet tomorrow the kindergarten teachers are meeting with the ray teachers and then we'll meet with the other grade levels in march i've rescheduled those and we will move forward with the math curriculum work and um on thursday next week we'll have a math program for all of the teachers at the marion cross school in the ray school that it will just be an introductory hour with the um publishing
044company and they'll be able to ask any questions they might have and i'll be working with sean and lauren next week to determine dates for rpd for the end of this year and next year for the math curriculum i think that's all i have tonight well thank you very much i see one hand up from lilly um robin i've gotten a few questions from people asking what your criteria is going to be for removing masks in school because the governor seems to be moving in that yeah um so i was wondering if i can direct them anywhere or if i can sure the task force is working on it yes generally our um protocol has been we look at the case numbers in the areas in the state and also in norwich and then we
045look at the vaccination rates and our threshold before was 80 percent vaccination rate was the minimum that we'd start thinking about removing mass barring any other issues such as you know high case numbers and things such as that so right now we have passed the 80 threshold so we may start talking about mass again if we continue to see a decline in the case numbers but that will really be one of the big things we look at but you can ask people to email me that's totally fine any questions you might have i'm happy to answer thank you you're welcome so robin you referenced we just passed the 80 vaccination rate within the last couple days and does that mean i reference that too because of the email we received from the parents yes is
046that correct right so i'm going to see what i can find out about that i know it's great it is well thank you questions for rob [Music] all right thanks again you're welcome jay thanks robin thank you so much for all of that work i i feel a need to publicly apologize every time um she gives a report since we hired her under the pretense she'd be working full-time on curriculum um so much so much for promises um i i was uh glad to have had a chance to visit marion cross yesterday and uh it was interesting while i couldn't see kids faces i saw a lot of kids who looked really happy and were like skipping down the hallway like i felt like it was in a cartoon or something um but it was
047it was just nice to see joy and uh it was a beautiful sunny day and then uh i visited the uh howe library where the sixth grade team was working on curriculum and i had a really nice conversation with them too i think the teachers i talked to said that sure everyone's exhausted it's been it's been really an emotionally stressful year but the people they seem to think are have an attitude that we're going to get through this we're going to get it done um and and they're they're really pleased with how things are going and that was that was refreshing for me to hear um i feel obliged to kind of share with the board and with the public in norwich sort of the status of an ongoing discussion we've been having really in
048the context of the policy committee the sau 70 policy committee met today and uh we meet in my office because there's typically no public there but but we had uh standing room only this morning and uh there is there seems to be quite a bit of concern about our transgender policy that's for reference that's um that's norwich policy jb ab and there's been some press around that as i've i've been interviewed a few times and i think um there may be some more articles to come um but as as you're aware we've had at least one resident who has during public comment expressed some concerns about a variety of of issues related to our transgender policy and i i said in those interviews and i i shared again today that um that's kind of the
049only negative feedback i've received about the policy in fact it is the only negative feedback i've received about the policy and i feel that it's important to talk about it here because i've had a number of parents and community members contact me in support of the policy as it's currently written and they're expressing their concern for students um mental health and safety um if if we were to alter it uh and the key provision that that is in question uh that was written about that's the subject of a legal inquiry that we received is the very first part of the policy that talks about how we're to treat information that we receive from students about gender identity and and the policy that we have which is based on a new hampshire school board association policy
050is perfectly in alignment with the best practice guidance we receive from the aoe that marion cross sent out to its parents and essentially it assures uh it assures our students really that um that the um that that information when revealed to school staff is treated as private information and that the disclosure of that information is is protected and um that's that's really probably the the primary argument of the lawyer that's challenged our policy or has clients who claim to be interested in challenging our policy and um and again we heard from several norwich residents and some other folks who attended our meeting this morning about just how important that safety provision is in that privacy provision so um just wanted to update the board on that i'm sure we'll hear more about it but right
051now there's no change to the policy contemplated by the policy committee there's nothing proposed there's nothing contemplated we are still waiting for an opinion from our lawyer about the legal arguments advanced in the original letter that was publicized and i believe that our attorney is scheduling a non-meeting that is just an informational session with the policy committee members to give her her legal opinion on the legal arguments that were advanced and once we have that we'll be able to update the entire board and that's my report well thank you for that thanks for the additional background too i know that it was of interest uh here as well even though it's been lodged on the other side of the river um next up business administrative reports and jamie yeah the auditor's report's not finalized yet
052um there's a couple small things they're still waiting for sorry for it being a little disjointed this year they've had as much difficulty with staffing and all as the rest of the world um they're just waiting for a couple small things that my team is working on wrapping up so we should absolutely have that by the march meeting it has to be filed by march 31 i did just recently post um financial documents through 1231. i only posted the general fund and the grant fund revenues i'll post the food service revenues and expenditures shortly i just i have not had a chance to follow up on what date it's posted through those are billed a little bit in a rear so i'm not sure that 12 31 is posted through um so and i haven't
053had a chance honestly with all of what's been going on in the last four weeks with the budgets to do any uh deep digging or write-ups on where we're at at 12 31. um we are at a first glance a bit over budget in the salary lines which we knew we would be we have some unbudgeted positions that we put on board this year i see when i look quickly at the grant funds that we need to make some grant fund uh transfers into the general fund that will take care of some of those overages um so i will for march uh do a projection for you we added one point well we added one fte for teacher this year that was unbudgeted and we added um one position that was slightly unbudgeted although we
054did some offset with another position being adjusted so we'll bring that to you i've got my helpers working on all of that for the ftes as we need to provide that information to the auditors as well so i'm not terribly worried at this point that we'll be over budget in the end we're we're over budget and some of our special education costs as well but in vermont we get reimbursed for that and so uh the reimbursables then will come in probably higher than what we initially had projected so i don't know anything else that's going on we talked about food earlier we talked about custodial maintenance earlier you have a full complement of custodians and they've been doing a great job which is awesome it's one of the only schools where we have that going
055on which is great and um and food service we talked about another realm oh transportation transportation seems to be settling down a little bit in norwich i think we've got a couple of situations occurring that we've been notified about uh was some of our high school middle schoolers that are not fond of wearing masks we may be putting a couple of monitors on board just to remind them what the requirements are of the district in order to ride school buses um and that you know it's uh it's a privilege to be able to ride on the school bus and so i think we need to remind everybody that they have to play by the rules so you might look to see monitors in the afternoon on the afternoon runs next week probably myself and a
056couple of our sau staff will just be boarding to have a couple conversations with them other than that i think we've settled into a pretty good routine um with timing and all well i think that's it for my realm thank you well i would listen to you if you were my bus monitor jamie so thank you for taking that on and thanks for everything else you've done obviously this is an incredibly busy time with budgets uh at least a couple of negotiations going on and i know that there are a few hundred children who are waiting to hear your voice on friday morning uh but i just hope that doesn't end up being fixed we'll see um thank you for everything else so with that we get into our committee reports uh i will just
057uh note that we are uh still in the midst of negotiations with our support staff and um with our teachers association which we've just began and we are well along with our support staff negotiations so um i'll provide more background to boarding the executive session and both of them so we do meet again on monday with [Music] i do yeah so the the child care committee actually wrapped up its work on monday evening uh finalized the report the report is on its way to the select board and i wanted to check with this body to find out i had offered to the to the committee it might be a good idea to have the committee come and present the report to a school board uh at a future meeting so i refer to the chair
058for um timing but those folks were certainly amenable to it yeah where is the chair um so it is available online um i don't know if it's available online at this exact moment i believe it was being sent to the select board and my understanding is it would be included in the packet for the next meeting and i think the next meeting might actually be tomorrow yeah so it is possible that it is available okay so yeah whenever i think whenever the packet gets published the report will be included all right any questions um i will commit okay not seeing any we do i see stephanie i believe has joined some of the mcs pto account so stephanie if you are able to uh join us you are welcome hello sorry i'm a little late
059thanks for joining us yeah um so uh this past month even though it was january and cold we did do some fun stuff we had to get creative with our um our skating party that normally happens it was a little bit different this year working with the rec department we had something on the 18th um martin luther king day and um it was snowy but it was still fun and uh we um kept shoveling out with youth in action in the rec department and had a pretty good turnout considering the weather and some kids skated and had fun to keep things safe uh the rec department had it kind of staggered by age and grade and registered um and like i said youth in action helped out and did a lot of shoveling so it
060was fun i was there a lot of hot cocoa it was a good event and i was happy that we were able to come up with something that was safe and um covered conscience but still had some fun so that was a bigger event in january and then another thing that um sean touched on and was the raffle which we were hoping to raise about two thousand dollars and we raised four thousand four hundred and thirty-five which was the result um and a big shout-out to christina aquila who's i believe on the call our treasurer um did a lot of the work on that getting all the donations but it was nice because it was a group effort um i think it was lindsey and jessica's idea without the syrup and um because everybody worked
061hard sean's going to be swinging on a swing this summer i guess um so that's pretty cool um so far that's i think been our best pto sponsored fundraiser so keep that in mind raffles work uh upcoming events we're doing our um valentine's day staff appreciation breakfast um because mcs is awesome we send out the spreadsheet and it gets filled with people wanting to donate food pretty quickly so i think it's pretty much all filled up for february 11th we'll be dropping that off to the teachers to say thank you um and then we're planning to do a little thing for the bus drivers uh staff appreciation um just ha uh bus driver appreciation day is february 22nd which i did not know some um christina um let me know that which thank you so
062we're gonna just print out little cards for people to take home and decorate and then give it to the bus driver and then our monthly meeting is next is tomorrow night more zoom if anybody wants to come and another coffee and conversation with greg and um shawn on february 9th another zoom we had a zoom two weeks ago when it was our best turnout so there's something about zoom any questions questions thank you very much first of all that is an amazing tool thanks well thank you as always to you and the pto and thanks for uh joining us uh later in the evening tonight too so always appreciate it thanks all right and um [Music] a executive session this evening since we don't have to return to do any voting i will just note
063that our next regular meeting is wednesday march 2nd that is the day after town meeting day voting it is the organizational meeting and of course as mentioned earlier there are two meetings prior to that one the uh february 24th deliberative session for the dresden school budget as mentioned earlier high school and online zoom 7 pm and then 7 00 pm for the norwich town meeting informational session on monday february 28th uh if anyone has any agenda topics they would like to join up for the march 2nd meeting please do feel free to pillar them along and with that i will uh ask for a motion to enter us into this active session electionism yeah uh moving in the executive session including title 1 section 313 for the purpose of discussing personnel and negotiations second one
064lisa lisa and i'll start with lilly all those in favor and camden yes and uh for those of you watching i will send a link to uh our executive session by email look out for it there take a couple minutes john i'm not sure if that back office is open so is there another room we might go to if that's not even um let's see i could find daughter in the hallway because they would all be all the doors would be locked right now okay we'll figure something out we'll figure it out it may just take a few minutes we'll see you in a minute thanks the everyone you