Dresden School Board 20220125

001everyone ready [Music] test one two we can hear it a little better i'm gonna go ahead and call our meeting to order at seven o'clock we're gonna start with a bond hearing for the hanover high school athletic renovations including the track and the hanover baseball so discussion of the athletic projects is that eugenie sure sorry publicly here shortly we need signatures and all these documents i want to sign in where you are a lot okay and we've updated some of the documents for tonight's discussion as we discussed at the last meeting the eopc was out for review and updating because the original initial baseball field won not the track one the track one hasn't changed um the eopc for the baseball field was out for review and update i have to apologize to the board

002uh that i made an error when i presented it at the last meeting i presented that eopc as infield only because there was back in 2019 four iterations of that and one of them was infield only the one you saw with the dollar amounts attached at the last meeting was actually for the entire field to update the dream so the good news is the dollar amount that we discussed was not for just infield it was to be able to do the whole field i guess if there's bad news it's because i misspoke um sorry tony wasn't able to be here that night like i said we were went through four different iterations back in 1819 and 20. so um it was purely an error and i probably apologize i hope that doesn't uh negate how

003we feel about the project um we will of course still be going through all of the motions as we did during the turf field uh rebuilding where we'll meet with megan and tony and the engineering firm along with the coaches and get input and take a look at it before we do build documents to go out to bid um at that point in time you know we'll bring that information back and share it with the board before we go out to be on what we feel the best course of action is on both the track and the baseball field because well the track lanes right are determined already because it's an oval and there's only so much space the track specialty pieces that go within and inside of that can absolutely be moved if it

004makes more sense for them to be in a different location um so all of that assuming the articles pass and you you ratify it tonight and that they pass the voters we would have those meetings prior to sending out the uh card to drawing up the build designs and so on so the other good part is that that must have been a long day for me i don't know if anybody had gone back and looked at the bond project financial overview page i'm sure they would have looked at the bottom left box and tried to figure out how that mass looked so it's good news in that in 2425 there's 2.3 million dollars worth of debt rolling off okay it's a higher number but when i built it i was miscalculating and i was pulling

005my savings from the interest column only not from the interest and principal claims sorry about that i knew when i looked at it at night that it wasn't right but i did not realize how much it was off so okay so anyway next year hopefully with more time to pull all this stuff together than an afternoon from the bench right anyway um those have both been updated so you can see on the 2425 on the overview sheet i will say that that only shows you the expenditure changes to what the budget would look like for dresden it does not take into consideration that there are also revenues that are attached that are offsets we do presently get money in a revenue offset for the field that we built about three hundred thousand and i think

006we get a hundred thousand from the town ahead of working on that project um um so there are some different revenues that will go away when that debt goes away okay um but even at that number uh after making one payment we should still be able to pay off everything that we're allowed to without penalty a couple of the other debts there that you see that have to continue are because they were bonds and you can't pre-paid loans like prepaid loans done at convention so none of that information changes the tax rate projections for the different projects that was based i did the projections based on what the navs were and the pure cost of the project so none of the dynamics would change what the projected other than if your net assessed valuations of

007your talents change with formula in vermont is the formula of changes it will absolutely change that goal or any other pieces of the formula so that's the update to the financial overview um we also shared a letter that's been updated from the engineering firm pathways in it i think it gives you more information about the evolution if you will of the school baseball field project discussions in that it started quite some time ago around 2000 i think it actually started before 19 i think it started in the fall of 18 but and i know that the baseball coach has probably been talking about it for many years um anyway this uh overview gives you an idea of what's been looked at what's been done tony's here tonight with me tony david our athletic director um

008who was involved with some of the facilities director facility structure when i call you oh um and so this gives you some more information and it was the information here was also shared back in 2020 i believe january it was an expanded version of the letter in january of 2020 because it had some other ideas in it uh where they were thinking about um moving the field okay we are not looking to move the field at this point we're not going to push it out there have been some discussion about that um right now we're gonna hopefully rebuild it make it better where it sits in its current format um no brand new dugouts there were a couple other iterations that had all kinds of random stuff involved um the other thing that we shared

009is an existing it's mentioned in that letter which is the um picture aerial picture of the baseball field that kind of shows and this was done yeah it says october but i think it was actually taking over the sun so um you can see some of the dry spots where they reference where some of the older would have been origin original probably drainage pipes were laid in those yellow lines that kind of fall [Music] we don't have as built for the original design it was done by the overseer i've looked and looked and looked through all of the files the original overseer was white construction 05 and pathways was not the engineer on record on so a question i'm not cash casting aspersions or anything else so i know jeff goodrich gave the quote from

010pathway consulting michael goodwich is one of the baseball coaches is that a clerk segment i don't know i don't know jeff himself has been a baseball coach over the years but not paid ten years i'm just i i'm just making sure that there's no potential michael's one of the assistant coaches okay and they're brothers or they have uh but we've looked into that he's been involved in the baseball in fact the first few sets of designs that pathways did was pro bono charges for them um and i there are back last year maybe of the year that they brought the warrant article that they petitioned the warrant article that was made known at those meetings that the designs were pro bono because he was involved in the baseball program but yes thank you for bringing

011it back up so does anyone have any questions for jamie regarding the track and or baseball i will note that uh david ortiz was just elected into the hall of fame he's got that notification um any comments or questions jamie last meeting last meeting i had asked the question about the um the track and the report by the testing company that indicated um that they thought it could be resurfaced and then you talked to tony like by email or whatever and said that that wasn't directly i talked to that company okay and they said they did they're not recommending that it be rebuilt they're recommending that whoever's going to do the work on it make an assessment on whether they can repair the areas that have that are lower and need to be repaired or

012whether they think it needs to be rebuilt they said one of the track builders um one from new york it was not pathways who was involved in the discussion that's fine it's just information sure there are too many thoughts why hasn't there been a that geotech investigation and typically an engineering a capital improvement project that's ground-based that's what you did you do you hire someone to do a geotechnical investigation to look at the sub-surface conditions to make an assessment when we have the money to do that they're going to do that because before we build a design we're going to do some effect investigation that's in my experience that's done before you determine the total cost of the project and we'll start looking for money but this is an estimate of the project so i

013can't say it's i don't think it's going to go up but it might go down after we figure out what the sub-soil is out there this isn't a bond kevin this would be a conventional loan super payable the any monies remaining to go right back against principal the very next year only if you bond it through the new hampshire bond bank is when you can't do a prepayment i personally i would never do an engineering project in this way i never have i never would any other comments or questions yeah can i just ask that just sorry jamie just a quick clarifying question um so the numbers as they are presented for this bond we thought that they would only do the infield for the baseball field but they now cover the entire field yes

014thank you that's what i thought you said when the numbers were reported was for the whole field but we had the wrong right we just had the wrong but that's what i thought i just wanted to the updated eopc that's here yeah was based on the other one that was shared right because it's three years old but yeah i guess it's three years old now so it's been updated with the appropriate figures um and yes based on and and i i should have realized that there was uh an issue with that just because the design picture that i showed also showed the hash you know this i think they call it a fish okay does it proving the bond warrant article tie us in the pathways directly is that a separate discussion after the approval

015like so like signing the contract for whoever this goes to would be separate after the warrant article signed correct this is just provenly taken out of the money this is not contractual stuff correct yeah it's our intention to have pathways do our engineering and design that would be the administration's uh intention at this point i guess that's a different discussion um are there any other bidders or things very impossible well it would go out to bid tony has already contacted okay so so one i guess that's a different discussion about accounts payable and how we do accounts payable and our purchasing policy and how we have settled on pathways as our engineer of record on most of our projects we went out for a request for qualifications a few years back and took bids from

016or information actually on different costs and pricing and all of that for many different engineering firms at that point in time we look through all of them for costs you know familiarity with the area a bunch of different criteria and chose pathways okay um when tony and i or anybody any administrator in the district who has a task to do that's part of their job when we look to hire somebody for something we have a policy that tells us how we should go about doing that um for i believe it's under a hundred thousand we've discussed this at the board many times for under a hundred thousand dollar contract it requires us to do phone quotes right with others that do work of a similar nature so tony's done that with regards to somebody overseeing

017the project which will be similar to a job superintendent right other than other than the engineering costs or design um and the person and the firm that we have been working with for many years is still the most reasonably priced firm i think that one the other one was up around 100 000 and one was up around 110 or 115. uh the one we have the contract i think since it's 60 i don't remember i've been doing numbers the last four weeks uh 62 i think it's on the last so basically in short the process was false our engineer of records to do these type of things is pathways if and when we decided to go back out for additional goods absolutely did you ever head up no kevin last meeting baseball coach said they

018need drainage under the outfield and we needed it under the infield for the project so since this cost estimate now is including the infield and the outfield is it going to be scoped down [Music] i don't believe he ever said it's not needed he said if i can only get one thing the baseball field would be the so the infield would be the priority followed by the outfield if i can get both then that's necessary hold on john can you introduce yourself and what time you're from uh john granger here head baseball coach i live in wilder um you guys hear me okay yeah um yeah so i mean during a baseball game if the infield is soaking wet you cannot play but if the outfield is wet you can so the lowest hanging fruit

019to get our field improved would be to fix the infield if it it has already been approved and we don't have to spend more money to fix the outfield that creates so much more opportunity for us to um you know for our team to play more but also for us to rent out the field in the summer because now we have a field that can be used all the time it's not ideal to send your kids into the outfield and have them come back with cleats that are soaking wet or to have to use yellow rubber baseballs in bp because the field's too wet those are things we have to do so you know obviously my vote would be to get the whole field drained if it's possible um you know it's it's not we

020would have games canceled because the outfield would be too wet it just wouldn't be as much of an impact as the infield um i hope that clarifies a little bit so to your point kevin um if the warrant article passes then we will be sitting down to meet to come up with what would be the best design based on what we know of what's there okay and as tony said we don't contemplate it would go higher if anything it would go there yeah i would just want the proper site investigation to be done before that's done i don't really understand however many years this has been going on and the changes in the documents that have been presented in the last few meetings saying you do need drainage you don't need drainage you need it

021in the infield you don't need any outfield there's clear piping under the outfield now there's drainage under the first and third baseline it wasn't known before i'm not doubting that there is a need for drainage improvement on the project and i'm not doubting that there's a need to improve the baseball field my concern is that we don't know what the solution is based on a proper investigation of the site and we're looking at doing a bond this sort of a loan or whatever it is for a lot of money and a plan to fix something without knowing what the proper fix should be and you've got a plan to fix it a certain way already i'm skeptical or i'm wondering whether or not there's going to be any desire to make a change from that

022based on what's there you've cut piping under there you've got piping under the infield infields are fairly small if you have edge piping under them it's not uncommon to drain an infield without piping under it and to do it just with proper gradation of soils which is what i think your turf specialists have recommended before it's just not the ideal way to go so any other comments or questions so um so because this is a project obviously that's over a hundred thousand dollars just can you maybe explain what the process is or what the board will see as far as updates on this project going forward or basically what can we expect sure assuming it passes the vote that's um on any projects over 100 000 that we have to sit down and go through

023all the design faith the formal design phase right we don't spend money prior to historically here sorry we've not spent tons of money prior to bringing an issue to the board such as we did with the turf field um you know and then we go through all of the motions and the processes to get to what is the correct and right build for the situation that presents itself you know we during the turf field i've only done the turf field project here okay i realized that the softball field was a whole other situation but that was probably um as we were going through we reported on it at each board meeting and then all of the bids uh were it's a formal bid process that goes out you know to the public and then the

024bids are managed as they come back in and then we go through we have a committee of folks usually made up of the superintendent tony myself a board member i think it was jonah on that one i'm not positive um you know and they look through everything with us um and then we proceed forward and we make you know we sometimes we ask for options when we send them out um you know if there's different ways that something might be able to be accomplished we'll say okay could you please you know get it this way or did it with this alternative or did it with this option um you know and all of that is brought back the board has to vote on um awarding the bid thanks i think that's what i was just

025trying to get to is that like we don't want to work a business this isn't going to be the last time we see this project coming forward and since the pathways proposal was less than 1000 the contract for them to act as the job superintendent and engineer and the designer right now we don't have to do that so so their proposal the way it's written doesn't say that's what their cost is their proposal the way it's written says we will put in a certain number of hours on each element and if it actually takes more than that we're going to charge you more on time materials basis that's what the proposal actually says which if i would either do a timing material not to exceed price or a firm fixed price then it's neither of

026those so moving on so what are we doing here in this bond are we voting what are we voting on though i don't see go ahead john motion to restate the warrant article see information below we're going to do that it's just rewarded a little bit from last week correct one it's two letters two letters two c c i don't see it rick i know that in two b it also says the public really wants to ask questions [Music] 2c bond hearing warrant article for athletic bond vote yep where's the motion recommended action motion to restate the warren article under fiscal impact it says recommended action can you see january okay so does anyone in the public have any comments or questions or comments regarding this [Music] my name's steve mcconnell i'm the head track

027and field coach of boys and girls for winter and spring at hanover high i just want to encourage you to support this this motion [Music] hopefully get to vote on it to encourage it as well i'm sure you've heard all this before the track gets used we as a track team use it in winter when we can and then all spring we host meets a few schools around that have the ability to host meets as the infrastructure and the technology with the cameras and the expertise and the facility to do that um that that ability is coming under a little bit of scrutiny at the last big meet we tried to host there's some question about whether the track was too rust heaved to do that so we're to continue uh hosting meets using the

028track for the most advantageous again this is necessary as i said it's used by us plus used by you know gym vests and other sports it's used by world-class athletes who come here to train you know live nearby it's used by little kids learning how to walk it's used by old people who need a safe place to exercise so it's really a community you know place to meet and use and it's a bonus for everyone it's been a while since we had a new track um the surface itself is wearing out which there's like a cushioning which leads to overuse injuries ankles and shins and knees also it gets slick because it's not enough there's the sub surface that you know i'm sure you know about um which leads to the frost tv touchdown so

029there's lots going on i talked about it with mike jackson when i started as a head coach nine years ago he assured me it was getting done before he retired uh so i would have support from the friends of track so let's look at them if they have any questions i'm happy [Music] well so when we voted on the warrant articles a couple weeks ago we didn't have the language yet for this one so this is all the other one articles we all proved two weeks ago this one we just didn't we didn't have the exact language it's just it's just the word yeah yeah you have two people waiting in the attendees and d richard uh d richards uh are you yeah you can just talk if you introduce yourself what time you're from

030yeah hi this is dan richards from aetna can you hear me okay great uh so i'm probably one of the few people who's part of this meeting that uh remembers running on the track when it was new i was class of 1991 from hanover high school and was on the track team and in fact i think our 4x1 team may still hold the school record so um maybe coach mcconnell can can weigh in on that but you know look i'd be the first guy to want to have dan you're being informed that got broken two years ago okay well i'm gonna have to go for myself a stiff drink and uh you know saw myself asleep tonight but um suffice it to say i'm like i'm the first i'm the first guy to want to

031have you know great athletic fields and great equipment you know for our sports teams um but uh you know the i ran on the track this past summer and i was sort of surprised that it was in as good a condition as it was and i'd be curious to to know how come a more in-depth review of having it resurfaced and or you know having the you know the rubber pellets um at a probably a much lower cost than 1.4 million dollars uh wasn't explored you know number one and number two you know did you guys go out to at least three firms and try and get an rfp for a you know a competitive a series of competitive proposals in addition to pathways given the size of the project it would seem to me

032that that would just be best practices for a uh an expenditure of this size so thanks for the time again uh stuart richards uh you hold on you're permitted to attack if you can introduce yourself on what time you're from i think i'm unmuted [Music] can you hear me okay but we've got a lot of feedback if you have someone else on on the same zoom call in your room you're getting feedback let me let me walk away for a little bit and see if i can see if that impressions how about now is that is that any better [Music] i'm still i'm still trying that's good that's good that should be improved perfect okay i guess my first reaction a very very long i think you've now walked away from the wireless signal i

033the amount of um research that's gone into the uh baseball field if i'm reading this correctly and i may not be what's happened here is that there have been hand auger determinations and if all it took was hand auger determinations to see that the drainage was poor the question really goes back to when it when the fields were actually put in if all it took was hand orders to put those fields in why didn't they do a better job to start with but leaving that to the side for one moment um i i really feel that that the amount that is going to be spent really it's premature without it's premature to approve what's before us without doing more due diligence so i uh i really feel that you need to go back to go

034back and as previously stated that there's that there's more that there's actually more uh research done by different firms in order to in order to justify or or perhaps not justify the the proposal and the direction that that things are going in so i'm i'm hopeful that you will perhaps appropriate a an amount a small amount to do more due diligence so that the initial first cut can either be confirmed or perhaps altered so that there's a more effective and cost efficient way to approach this so thanks very much thank you john to be clear can i have clarification we've already voted to support this correct as a board yes yes okay we're just deliberating and about to vote just the wording of the war correct if folks don't support it they're more than welcome

035to not support it on march 1st but i think i think we're kind of going down a little bit of a into the weeds more than we probably should be okay so at this point i'm going to read the article as drafted and then we'll have a motion so the new article 2 shall the district raise and appropriate the sum of and 1 seven thousand dollars for rebuilding the hanover high school track along with the specialty areas in the middle grass field and rebuilding the dresden fields hanover high school baseball field with appropriate drainage upgrades as necessary in conjunction with the hanover high school athletic program and further authorized the school board to issue bonds and or notes in accordance with the provisions of the new hampshire vermont interstate school compact article 7 and to

036authorize the school board to issue and negotiate such bonds or notes and determine the rate of interest there on the school board recommends this article note one no payment will be due in the 22-23 school year the board may accept public donations to offset a portion of the cost of the projects and any unused funds will be returned in the 23-24 school year in order to offset tax assessments do i have a motion shot motion to restate the wall we have a second then since some of our members are calling in we're gonna have to go around the horn so i'm gonna start on zoom neal okay oh yes sorry i just wanted to add just from a discussion piece so this is um something that is new that has been since we last voted

037and i just wanted to clarify since i am the person on the hanover finance committee the hanover finance committee discussed the prior so obviously not the minor change that we're talking about now but the project and they were in full support it was unanimous 7-0 so i just want to let you know that that was discussed since our last meeting and i'm just going to state that before we finalize them and i'm sure if they want to amend their language since we'll be amending i just but i did want to let you know neil odell still yes nelson yes thank you so at this point i'm going to go ahead and close the bond here and on the athletic projects and we're going to move on to agenda reviews they're going to have anything they

038want to add remove or change in our agenda i just want to ask if we can add to the agenda um a quick clarification of whether the two resolutions we passed will be posted on the sau website and if the four chairs just a quick conversation about those two resolutions is that possible um we'll do that during the during my shares discussion perfect thank you just yeah expand it to resolution so um public may address the board i will give members of the public three minutes each to commence comments on items on the agenda the board respectfully asked members of the public to state their name and address before commenting on agenda we have any there is no one here anyone in uh the audience on zoom stuart hold on just say okay you can

039talk can you hear me now are you able to hear me yes we got you loud and clear terrific so i've lived in uh this part of the world for about 50 years and in norwich for 38 years stewart richards live in norwich and over those years i've seen a tremendous change in the demographics we have been successful in pretty much eliminating farmers blue collar workers single parents and others because they can't afford to live here anymore so my comment really goes goes to the budget and the money that we're spending i just believe that it's excessive and i think you need to reign it in so that we don't become any more of of a gated community both hanover and norwich than we already are thanks a bunch thank you anyone else anyone else

040have comments okay moving on to report of the hanover high school [Music] council rep are you ready to go um yeah hi can you hear me i thought you loud and clear perfect um so council recently in the past month we've had a lot of discussion and debate about the social studies curriculum specifically honor social studies classes and whether those should be added or not um we sent out surveys to get student opinions since we realized council opinions might be pretty um representative of only one demographic of student um and we were came across we ended that debate pretty split and ultimately decided it was up to the social studies department and it was not really our territory to be discussing how they teach their classes um recently we passed a three tests in a

041day motion um which means that you cannot have more well you can but if you would like to move one of the three tests that you have in a singular day you are allowed to do that you need to fill out a form and then you can choose what test to move and so it was an official way um to lower that stress we also implemented um a gender inclusivity policy handbook change which is basically just um for the beginning of the new semester that started today everyone um wrote down a name tag in their first period with their name and pronouns and you bring that to every class just so that everyone feels um included and we don't misgender people or just get people's name wrong and we are waiting on a mascot update

042however i believe it is going to be um we're going to redo the voting process with um ranked choice voting for the name first and then ranked choice voting for the designs second thank you kate does anyone have any questions or comments kevin what do you do if there's a student who doesn't want to wear um we have them as little like instead of wearing them you kind of take them from class to class they're like a folded piece of paper and we had a lot of debate about that about whether it was mandatory or not um it's honestly kind of up to the teachers whether they enforce it or not i have some kids that chose not to put pronouns um most people did choose to put their pronouns but it's also just helpful

043for the teachers to have a visual of who everyone is and what their names are um so i believe it is everyone had to make one first period today and we're gonna kind of it's kind of a test to see how long they last don't have to do if they don't want to i don't believe so um we had a lot of debate about that and i'm not it was a little unclear i think nobody's going to force anyone to but it is highly encouraged thank you any other comments or questions for kate thank you dan uh do you have a commented question yeah this is dan richards from edna what are the penalties for people if they don't want to state their pronouns um there is no penalty it's just encouraged okay and what

044and how is it encouraged um it's just there was an email and teachers say hey we have this like in my first period class we were just handed out paper and markers and they said okay um please write your name and your pronouns and so we did that i have a few kids in my class that didn't write their pronouns and um nothing happened it was just that most people did okay thank you very much yep lisa yeah i i just um i have the privilege of being the board rep to council and i have to say that the council itself had a really thoughtful and involved conversation about all of this and thought about how it would feel if you wanted to if you didn't want to and just felt that this was at

045least where i heard the land is that this was something to try and see what happened to make people feel more at home and if everyone has to do it then you're not singling out the people who are preferring pronouns that do not match the gender to which they were born so i just wanted to say that i feel that they've been very thoughtful about this process so yeah we had a lot of discussion and just like the mascot thing if they get it wrong i'm sure you guys will circle back to it do you have a comment yes i do um i think being the council executive i live in norwich um yeah i i think part of the discussion also um there were some very um pointed and heartfelt comments one from a

046teacher who said that getting to the end of semester and students recognizing they don't know the names of other people in their class that they felt like they had failed their students so this idea of building community so when we ask someone to put their name on a name card it's really about saying who you are you know this is part of who i am this is my name so yes the pronouns are not mandatory but the name card piece is really also about building community you know and and making hanover high school a place where as one student put it who described this making hanover high school a place where you want to be because it's your community so this is part of the 2016 gender inclusivity policy um that was part of the

047handbook first it was passed by council and then i believe school boards endorsed it so this is just the student's effort to make suggestions to administration that they feel help implement the policy in a way that really honors its intentionality thank you linda okay at this point i don't see any other comments or questions thank you kate yeah thank you so we are going to move on to julie hanover high school principles report we had a change of semester today it seemed to go pretty well um we're in the middle of a sports season we're in the middle of an a theater season um we're trying to keep things as steady as possible while navigating students quarantined in the middle of exams and trying to figure that out sometimes it's bumpy um we don't normally

048deal with this situation so we're trying to do it well and sometimes we get it right and sometimes we don't and we try to fix that if we don't um and we're i'm trying to sprinkle into my reports i'm hoping you enjoy them i'm going to start sprinkling department information just so that because it's pretty obvious that what's happening in sports what's happening in theater how are we doing right in the hallways but i wanted you to get a sense of you know there's a lot happening in all our departments in our classes and i'm gonna try to sprinkle those in for the rest of the year so this this month it was english and we'll pick a couple other departments next month so and if there's something you see and you want someone to

049come and talk to you about it let me know and i'll bring someone along julie i enjoyed reading i i think yeah every month if you could highlight a different part of the curriculum that would be great any comments or questions for julie tom well i know you discussed this at length a couple meetings ago but could you just remind us the details of that this uh the decision on um decision making group promotion four yeah so four was the one that um was that you could overrule the the principle you could appeal to the superintendent and you could overrule the cpp group that was the that was motion four i think it was the motion that we talked the most about because it seemed disturbing to some um and so that's the one that

050passed it passed actually by a number of votes i mean it was unanimous for our staff i mean there was probably 16 people who voted against it and that's not many um what where the decision making group is now motion five and six were about the coordinators group in the cpp group and what role they play in our school and what we're realizing as a decision-making group is things have changed considerably with motion one through four and how we're doing things as a staff in terms of staff getting their voice back and so what people have what we're thinking as a group is we need to go back to the staff and ask us ask them where they are now on the other decision making groups do we want to leave them as is because

051the staff feels empowered a little bit more now or do we want to keep going with what we're doing so we're going to bring that to the staff before was the override one tom if that's what you were asking i guess i'm just do you mind if i do i guess i'm just wondering again too so what is the actual process so say you know just for example they want to pass something you uh veto it they override your veto then it goes today and jay has to say yay or nay is that the right so it's more the other way around i decide all staff have to assign five papers in five weeks in all of their classes right they say that doesn't make sense for us you should have talked to us they

052get two-thirds of those people to not override my decision but appeal my decision to j they would appeal the decision to jay and jay would say i support principal stevenson and five papers in five weeks is the way we should go in every single class and it would be done or jay would say you need to go back and talk to the staff that didn't seem like a decision that should have been made with such haste and without talking to anyone so that's how that piece would work the piece with cpp and coordinators is they might come up with a decision we're going to do a credit recovery program and this is how we're going to do it two-thirds of the staff the staff decides that's not the way we should do it they would

053appeal it they would override the decision of cpp and would come back to the group and the group would have to rework the credit recovery program to get it to be something that the staff feels is palatable okay thanks dude yeah thank you julie i have three separate small questions um first i know i asked this last time but i can't remember and what a cpp and if you could try not to do aggregations yeah committee on program and procedure and secondly i love the idea of a horror literature elective that is awesome and then um third was that a question and i'm a little confused about the relationship map that the intern is doing um oh yeah do you want me to tell you a little bit about it yeah yes please so and

054and um so what she's it's happened in other places but what we're gonna we're doing at this wednesday um we're gonna have a list of all the students in the school we're going to decide what connection me like we're going to state do you have a connection with a student this is what a connection with the student means the staff will be given half an hour 20 minutes to go through the list and put in a box an x check mark next to any student they feel like they have a connection to based on how we establish connection and then we're going to meet in small groups looking at that list and talk about it and then share out as a large group but notice things such as well there's some students who have seven

055check boxes next their name and there's some students that have none um is it you know then there's some students that don't the alarm bells don't ring when they walk into school but but maybe they should they have no check boxes what do we want to do about that um you know they're not screaming from the mountaintop but is that saying something or do we want to dig into it a little bit and realize well they have a really great connection with their karate instructor outside of school with their pastor and right and and and so that's fine but at least we've looked into it and been proactive about it rather than reactive when things start to head south because people aren't connecting so that's what we wanted to do and then i'm hoping that

056it goes well and we do it every year thank you as the decision making group gets closer and closer to finishing that work i want to remind everyone here that we have a policy that established the committee on instruction which is now cpp so we'll want to make sure that the policy committee receives whatever change you're hoping to make so they can uh great let's talk let definitely let's talk about that because the committee was saying today at some point we've gotta put this in front of the board and so you can help me navigate that um julia you mentioned on page two of your report that you had an issue with um peripherals and mac operating system not being backwards compatible to some of those so there's an unexpected expense um how big an

057unexpected expense was it i don't know i don't know how many macs you have in the school system and how many pcs you have and that's a notorious problem with macs is that they're not backwards compatible i if i were to tell you that right now i wouldn't be giving you the wrong numbers so can i research that a little bit more and get back to you on it i don't need a specific number i'm really just wondering if it's a big problem for you or not or if it's a minor headache i think more of a minor headache but wanting to just make you aware of all the the tech issues since tech is a huge expense for the taxpayers stuart richards norwich uh julie i'd like to thank you for inviting me in

058to chat i'm still hoping and planning to uh to get there to sit with you for a little bit um but i i wanted to just go over what i see as a real problem in the transgender program or in the policy and i'm going to refer to what's going on in the state of connecticut where all of the track and field records are held by transgender boys and i i would hate personally since i've got a uh an eight-year-old granddaughter i would personally when she gets to high school i would personally hate to see that to see her competing against transgender boys because i feel that they have a uh a real advantage it's not a level playing field as far as i can tell and i i and correct me here if i'm

059wrong but my understanding is is that intercollastic interscholastic sports will be available to everybody including uh those who are not birthed as as uh girls uh is that correct so yeah uh so we'll get back to you on a response to that i'm not sure if julie or we are in a position to answer that right now with regards to policy or law anyhow you do understand my concern hopefully yes thank you uh dan yeah hi dan richards uh aetna so i think i understand what i heard principal stevenson um describe with respect to the social mapping but i gotta i gotta be honest you know socially mapping uh you know ninth graders to me sounds well well-intentioned maybe i'm not the only one listening to this that's founded a little bit creepy um so

060it seems a little bit odd to me and out of place and beyond the jurisdiction and probably the mandate of the school and i'm curious to know what kind of disclosures and or to parents and or permissions you have gotten from them before you start uh digging into their social lives social interactions and other personal information and whether or not you put the proper protections in place to keep that information if and when you get it safe thank you so we um dan we didn't do any permissions for parents we feel like it's well within our purview to check in on our students their well-being and make sure they're connected to people at the school i'm sure if we went beyond digging into really personal stuff you know we would be talking to parents but

061um we do not feel that it's beyond our purge to care for um be concerned about our students before um things happen to them that nobody wants to happen because of that lack of connection so no we haven't done permissions for the mapping and i don't feel like we need to thank you any other comments or questions for julie so at this point i am going to ask tim to report on richmond middle school good evening everybody so um as usual when i go last now i have all kinds of other things to say i just like to um we started the year 2022 off very well i did want to it's not in the report that i gave but i wanted to give sort of special thanks to a number of people that we

062usually talk about only in the abstract and usually when they're lacking that we had three substitutes who really stepped up during the first two weeks that we came back over 2022 when we started and we had a number of our staff members out with the new testing protocols for the omicron surge so we have herb dietrich who's in our building just about every day zoe starkey and jane chambers who all sort of did yeoman's duty filling in and i think if people stop and think about what substitutes do on a regular basis which is you know one day you're the sixth grade pe teacher and the next day you're the eighth grade spanish teacher it can be a remarkable job and they do it really really really well combined without our front office staff does

063an amazing job sort of juggling and making sure that all the classes are covered all the way around as well as a lot of teachers who in the first few weeks gave up a lot of their planning periods so that we can make sure that we had all the classes covered um so i really just wanted to say thank you to those people because we had a tough a tough go we had a number of people out we're getting a lot more people back and it seems as if all of our protocols are working people seem to be safe so we're obviously very happy about that um our third quarter began it's always fun to watch all the students sign up for all their new electives as they get sort of geared up the days

064are getting longer so the energy is coming back in the building certainly we're starting our transition the high school guidance counselors will be over next week to talk to our 8th graders sort of the beginning part of it the eighth grade parents will come to the curriculum night and then we'll talk about what those classes should be make recommendations for those classes and then actually do the sign up right after february break so we're not looking forward to the eighth graders leaving but i think part of being in eighth grade is getting ready to leave so i think they're getting geared up for that um other than that i just wanted to pass or dovetail a little bit with what both kate and julie were talking about we did something equivalent in the richmond school

065in terms of offering people the opportunity to put preferred pronouns into powerschool it was just a blanket hey if you want to put it in there you can we had over 90 percent of our students put it in we have 30 or you know 10 of our students who decided they didn't want to put anything in all of it's fine so i think it's just a way to normalize people putting in to a way to introduce themselves the staff is about 95 but again people who don't feel the need to do it don't have to it's not a big deal and we also almost at the first part of every year do something equivalent to what julie is talking about where we just have teachers sit down and think about okay who are the students

066in your class that you know something about that you feel a connection with you feel you could go and talk to them about something that they would be interested in just so you don't assume hey i know 18 kids in my class out of 20 but surely someone knows the other two sometimes they don't and those are the students that we have to try to identify and then not do anything more than hey make a concerted effort to talk to them about something because um the biggest concern we have mental health wise for students in middle school and high school is students who don't feel connected to the school in any way shape or form so i mean i wanted to pass along um it was on there is sort of i hope people didn't

067mind that i gave everybody a little bit of math homework just as sort of an insight into what goes on in middle school math classes that's certainly very different than when i went to middle school math classes i was significantly older than middle school before i realized that math formulas represent more than just written numbers and letters on a page that they actually stand for something or measure something or show something and i was really thrilled to see that our seventh graders are starting to figure that out and also have the ability to talk about different ways to do some of the things rather than here are the steps to solve this problem how can you look at something that grows how can you figure out how to express that arithmetically um and then you

068know also be able to have a little bit of uh time to be creative and and show what you can do so um this these are the kinds of things um that we try very hard to do at the middle school there's a lot of collaboration there's a lot of discussion as well you did it this way i did it this way which way do you think is best could it be done a different way everybody talks about it and usually they come to a pretty set conclusion as okay this this seems like it would be the simplest way to go about it so it takes a little bit more time but it's really fun to see people engaged in math so and if anybody wants to come and watch any of these other things

069and i will try to i've done science and math um we'll certainly have some insight probably into some of our social studies classes who are doing some pretty amazing things right now and then english as well but i'll try to do the same thing that julie was doing and sort of give insight into different departments at different times so um i think that's all i have to say for right now thank you tim any uh jed i said one comment tim i'm starting to do some preliminary data analysis on test scores which is something we haven't really done a lot of traditionally here but in addition to us typically sparring pretty pretty close to the top of the heap if not at the top of the beach here relative to the state i just wanted

070to alert you to the fact that we haven't seen the analysis yet that your science scores went up um from pre-pandemic to post-pandemic last year by by over 20 in science while the state dropped across the board in each area uh so i don't know i don't have any more information beyond just the raw data but your science department is doing something amazing so i'm seeing a similar phenomenon in other schools in the districts too so kudos to teachers for keeping our kids in school and learning i would agree that they're um they've done a phenomenal amount of work uh together as a department um implementing the new science standards um and a lot of it is is very much inquiry-based and really engaging there's hardly any kind of lecturing going on in a lot

071of independent study i walked in i walked in the other day to talk to mike lepine about something and he had four students in there building a robotic car out of cardboard and something and they'd all come out of their study um just to so they could go into his class and he lets them come in after after class i know we have all kinds of people doing that but yeah thanks for that information i think that's great they're um needless to say we don't teach to the test not that i would think anybody would think that but uh that that's an added bonus to i think what what people are really having fun learning about any other comments or questions for tim thank you tim okay at this point we're going to move on

072to business requiring discussion policy so i'm a little confused it says first reading of the revised policy regarding volunteers or also do a second reading of method of public participation of board meetings and then the gaav series regarding telecommuting what about this conflict of interest is that a second reading or it shouldn't be okay ben do you have anything to report on you sure um so volunteer one that brooks said as a first reading i think the main difference here is we want to introduce a badge system for all volunteers whether they're designated or not probably just so teachers can kind of track who this person is if they're wandering the halls i don't think there's been a specific issue that has prompted this morning's trying to improve things as they are and then some

073general word smithing uh throughout um kevin and jake and add more details if they feel needed to and uh derek was not here to lead to who has not gone through the background check which is the average system that differentiates and it was proposed as a potential change by the volunteer coordinator these are wrong so i remember we did this one two years ago so other than the section on the badge there's just some tweaking of some of the grammar and wording of the rest of the sections regarding i would say that sounds amazing okay questions or uh comments regarding this question yes so the background check requires fingerprinting at the designated volunteer level it would yes okay and the nearest place to do that is in behavioral apparently actually you want to test the

074possible change for more people yes we are actually looking into i think jamie you talked with bridget about the possibility of us being able to do our own fingerprinting equipment due to chips not being available is about six months old so about six months we'll be able to handle it ourselves okay but for now it's april why can't our local please yeah i'm not i wasn't aware of it no handlebars or yes we did discuss another we haven't investigated really when you go through if you're going to be a coach called sayer or usa hockey or something there is a less involved background check they do based on their social security number it doesn't involve fingerprinting we haven't really gone to when i was going to call the company that does that and find out

075what they're actually checking for so i volunteered to be a driver for one of the fs and afghani families and we used the company camera syria i just gave them my name my social security number and then within two weeks they got back to me and said i was cleared and i didn't have to get fingerprints or anything else so they must do like a lexus nexus search to see if there's any case files on me or anything else but you may want to see what that company charges and also just want to distinguish when we say the word volunteer designated volunteer is not kind of the person who comes and helps once in a classroom these are for more regular you know who might have more um solo student interactions versus a volunteer you

076might just come in your general and now volunteers would not have unsupervised student contact by that definition and also the question like sort of fingerprinting that would be something that'd be more temporary and under the regulatory called the r policies which are not shown here so that would be that sort of how it actually happens and so that kind of temporary change will be done in our policy rather than the overarching four level policies yeah i just want to just check making sure that people were alone with students i just wanted to distinguish because i think the only volunteers that are at mcs right now are recessed volunteers would those be considered people that needed to be fingerprinted and badged because there are technically no policy side go to gary who's not here okay i

077um don't have to look into that specifically whether they're fascinated or not if the the rule in both states really is if someone's unsupervised then then they have to be they have a full background check and we have not required that the policy changes that we're considering here are out of an abundance of caution that we we're not 100 certain that those those supervised volunteers might not have an occasion where they find themselves alone with a child right and so to protect the child also to protect the volunteers and make sure that we get through the process um kind of two questions is one fingerprinting is a clause so is the volunteer gonna have to pay for it or we're paying for it so that that's an added cost for this program and um i

078ran a statewide volunteer program in vermont for years and we chose not to do a fingerprinting background check and instead did a reference check under the theory that references are a much better way to determine what might happen whereas the background check is what has happened for that person prior to this and so my question is i found out like was that considered was it like a more robust reference check system considered instead of a fingerprinting background check and then the second part is who's going to do all of this um because it just seems like it's a lot of work and i'm i'm really worried about how much work we're asking everyone to do and so um i'm not opposed to this and i think there's a reason for it i just we keep

079adding one more thing and i i just kind of worry about when somebody's going to break yeah and um i'll try to get all those questions yeah so it's just basically two did you consider doing it like more of a reference chapter um at all to be honest and my first initial just been talking response that would be one of the things we were doing was actually trying to lighten the load by having a simple visual identification system rather than having to have to keep track of volunteers they know or may not know which is a problem with all of these schools so those people going in and out for whatever reason um and i would also argue again without thinking through too much is a reference check could if you wouldn't actually follow through

080on it could be actually more work than individuals no it is but i i just i'm wondering it it gives you a different piece of information than a background check does correct but if i think of this with my gaming hat on that would be just as easy to gain more so if someone really wanted to it's also certainly we'd all know that reference person which we might some small communities like norwich but we may not personally move the district etc etc what are the state laws required emma was pushing for everyone including ad hoc and general volunteers to get fingerprinted out i might push back against that in terms of both the burden as well as that might push away any volunteers who actually wanted to they may not want to go through all

081that really well may not want to name some database the fingerprints somewhere so that also wants to reduce the burden of the various staff members again i'm not against ideas the only thing in this policy that we're talking about so the fingerprinting for volunteers has already been in the falls yeah that's been the policy if they are unsupervised the badging system on a way to make it a simpler thing so you don't have to worry about whether this person can be alone students or that one because the concern that the volunteer coordinator presented was how do you know most persons in the school teachers don't know all these things right i agree yeah the only real change on this is coming up with a visual identification system and when the person walks in the school

082say okay you have a background check you get a yellow card you haven't had one so the front office staff would be responsible for that again like the specifics of how that would work um so this is kind of ringing something in my head just so you know there is a bill pending um in the state uh legislature which you know it's still early days for this but it is um it is hb what is it six one six six four i believe um it's actually it's a bill requiring non-public schools or education service partners that accept public funds to perform background checks on all employees and volunteers which makes me think that there is some sort of legal for the public schools that we are required so it just maybe if we can just

083double check what the um you know kind of current law is um since that is a pending one for non-public schools um i am assuming there's something similar so well it's ours it's rsa 189 13 a school employee volunteer background investigations so there is there we go there might be a decision already made for us i guess um okay so then which one do you want to do now the public participation one was the second reading i don't recall there's been any changes prompted by addressing discussion or um in my handlebar chair rule i don't think there was any changes at hanover for a fifth or second reading although there was some discussion thank you kim um and same thing for telecommuting i know they're calling me changes made after the first reading so does

084anyone have any comments or questions about those policies [Laughter] ben's statement there have been some slight changes uh the one thing we had to do before we brought it for the second reason was to meet with those affected by the policy so i had a meeting with representatives from the aha and the hss i'm sorry the um for the telework and we had a meeting and just cleaned up a couple of of references that were in there that were unclear and made no substantive changes but we i just wanted to let the board know that i have talked to the groups that will be directly affected thank you any other comments or questions regarding these policies so moving on to budget overview and i think this is where i ask for volunteers and you don't

085have to do a background check or the different presentations at the meeting so for the new members in the end of february we will all convene here at the hanover high school auditorium we will then do the hanover school board presentation and then the dresden school board presentation will be moderated by coach grebel and it'll be cctv so people come along can watch it so during those presentations we have different school board members present each of the articles um so i'm looking for one i need eight volunteers um and we already know one of them was ken always volunteers to do the the budget that we you see me already stepping up are you sure she's dropped it so i'm gonna go through here and i'd like everyone hopefully to pick one of them i

086will take as the chair um i will take the two uh bargaining agreements that because i was involved in one of them and i'm familiar with the second one so i'll take article uh four and five i have to take one of those was that kevin was the chair of the number five no ben i said i'm happy to do four or five four or five i'll take i'll take four because i wasn't part of the support so you got five okay so let me go to one i know john's gonna jump on number one that's a good one um article two who wants to do the warts for the tracking i think i think john should do that it should be john's going to take one and two sure i think it'd be a

087nice play well john's got what john scott wanted to article three uh which i'm like that's pretty simple john's already up there yeah i don't just keep him like let him do a little uh lisa or really i'll take either seven or eight oh thank you everyone for volunteering except for neil and who else is a great one uh tom marcelo and marcella jones are graciously here too though yeah john i'll do and i'll take off my mask and it'll be a really short discussion yeah so um again i just need your signatures so they only post on the second second of february so i'll pass this around [Music] and is garrett's name on there um garrett does sign the wall you all need to come into the sau office at some point in the

088near future to sign some paperwork for the watch or i could send it to know if it's easier next monday okay thank you so much to [Music] first draft of the school calendar so we discussed this last week at the hanover school board that norris discusses well which this is a new version [Music] well we looked at it at august 24th certainly yes yeah it's the very first right that's correct so does anyone have any other additional comments or questions about this new draft outfit i'm just assuming it matches hartford that was a discussion yes that's always our constraint and we're one one day off on the start day and um we the alignment with their major vacations perfect so if we're one day off on the starter day does that mean it doesn't match

089the handover account this doesn't mean the end of the calendar wasn't changed to match well we aligned it to be as close to the first to the start date our schools are all on the same page of the 31st but hartford area career tech center starts on the 30th we moved it to the 31st so we could um provide our our teachers with our in-service days and align all of that jamie you were making a bus driver right for that one day extra and the thing is we i explained at the hanover meeting that our career tech students will end up two days earlier uh from hartford so they'll have at least two half days uh so they'll come out even as far as fairness for a number of days of instruction and this was

090just sorry um this was discussed at the hannover meeting but just because it's actually more of a dresden question um there have been concerns in the past when we have um school elections which happens in the first day of march um and just to make sure that we are okay with hanover high school because we can conduct those with the elections here so just wanted to make sure that everything is good there since that was a question asked if you know and also isn't there also primaries this year for legislature and state offices is that all don't accept that we typically don't and this is something we keep on playing with the idea especially during the pandemic we've been thinking maybe it makes sense now to not have students in session on election days but

091we we feel like we've been able to do a good job of sort of separating the voters from the general student population and we gave julie the option we actually thought of of having march 7th off as a student and use it for an in-service day or something but that's also the beginning of march intensive yeah and so they they need an organizing day on that monday and so we moved that that day back to monday from the 7th okay any other comments or questions about the challenger so moving on to requiring action do i have a motion to approve johnson yes the report of the chair so kim did you want to kind of uh what was the item we wanted to add to the resolutions oh the resolution so just more deb yeah

092so dad can you just bring up your your question or yes i just i had two parts to it one the resolution that was passed last year is on one of the pages for the sau and i just wondered if we could get the other two added as well so that the community is aware of that and the second piece was to suggest that before chairs um write a letter or just send the resolutions to the education committee in concord and it's very easy to get their emails i'm happy to send that link to you or send it to our four state reps as well as our state senator and cc the education committee the local reps and state senator are all aware of the resolutions but i think there's a formality to it that

093would be beneficial for us to follow if that makes sense so uh does anyone have any concerns or issues with hosting the new resolutions on our website so can you just have that journal i sure have been there no karen right we'll take care of that great um and then we have a four chairs meeting thursday so we'll put that on the agenda to discuss them i just had a question um i feel like usually with a resolution we also do a letter to the editor for the valley news um and or take out an ad i feel like we did that for didn't kelly sen kelly mcconnell sent something last year to the valley news for the 544 resolution and i'm just wondering if we could do that again yeah i don't think we'd

094take an ad out but if someone you know i think she's she was listed as the chair of the school board she didn't send it out as a i don't know i feel like i saw it in the paper as it was written no no she she sent it but it was not an award-approved yeah so i believe actually kelly did send that out and i think it did go with the authorization of the dresden board to do that she was very curt in the lead into the letter to the editor it just said that the dresden board passed the following resolution and that just listed the resolution i would highly recommend that if this body wanted to authorize something similar whether it be a letter to the editor or sending this along to state

095legislators that this body tonight entertain a motion and pass it that way to explicitly authorize the chair to to do so so uh i don't think i'm okay but on your role the chair's law allows you to be the public speaker for the board according to um so i guess i just want to kind of clarify so 12 55 if you help me with the numbers because it's not in front of me right 12 55 is so is one talking about expanding um the socialism communism is that that one yes yes yes okay teacher loyalty um so i just i just want folks to know so i actually watched the the public hearing and so there was a public hearing that happened on january 20th i believe and the the prime minister of the bill

096is recommending an amendment as their initial um so i just i just want folks to kind of get updated on that as well like so it's not um the way that it's written i don't even think the prime sponsor is supporting currently so i just want us to be um i just i guess when i'm trying to keep our powder dry if it doesn't look like it's gonna go anywhere just hold off i just think that there might be multiple versions and so i just want us to think about this as the bill moves along the committee process i just want us to think about that so here's my suggestion because i'm in charge on both of these two bills that we've written resolutions and if and when it gets to the point where it

097looks like they're both or one of them's coming up for a potential vote in the house or the senate at that point i don't have a problem sharing our resolutions with the legislators right now but maybe holding off on a letter to the editor until it looks like it may come to fruition if it comes up in a hurry you don't have to schedule a special meeting to authorize you to send in that letter to the other person so i'm not going to take a formal motion but uh can i get a head nod from everyone if everyone's comfortable with me doing that isn't when it comes neil are you not in your head i i i am nodding my head but i believe it should be a formal motion would you like to make

098a formal motion move to authorize the dresden chair to submit a letter to the editor consistent with the resolutions that have been passed by this body relative to the two bills in discussion uh second john neil odell yes nelson yes yes ks genius yes okay great so please if someone sees something uh just keep me apprised uh so we can move quickly and if you can get me the information for our legislators and yes um i'll i'll send those off okay um the other thing that kim wanted to bring up if you wanted to kind of give everyone yeah let me pull it up on my phone um it's house bill 1058 um and it is um i actually think that this might be a good news thing so i think this is i don't

099think this is necessarily anything we have to do necessarily but i do want to kind of bring it up it's a house bill 1058 it is a bipartisan bill i believe there are four democrats and three republicans signing on to this and it's relative to the time allowed for public school students to eat lunch so prior um to this year we um since we've moved at the high school level moved to a block system we didn't necessarily have a dedicated lunch time this bill which has bipartisan support in the new hampshire state is actually requiring lunch periods so i just want us as we're kind of evaluating our block schedule this year at the high school level in particular i believe at the middle school and elementary schools at least on the hanover side has

100what lunch periods um but i just want us to um be aware that um our our new shift this year might um be required by the state in addition to kind of just us thinking it's a good idea as well so i just wanted to let everyone know there's that bill out there so that would change the way you calculate hours for state or instruction because launch periods aren't counted as hours but you know it doesn't make lunch periods correctly we'll definitely be paying attention to that but i think now the change in making the current schedule we're probably okay yeah the the all right it's still available bill says that lunch will be between 11 and 2 30 minutes at least 20 minutes for eating uh and then uh that 20 minutes cannot include

101time to get to the to the lunchroom get your food and all that stuff and then kim was a little concerned about our wednesday hanover high school council whether our our current schedule will still meet that requirement that i think it does yeah i just didn't know if unscheduled time versus we know we have council during lunch so it's just a question that i wanted just to make sure we we know the answer to before it becomes um [Music] an issue with someone's yeah it's at the very end for a number two oh yeah k-a-p-a-d-i-a i think uh okay so i don't have anything else to report we do have a four chairs meeting on thursday to talk about certain items if anyone has anything that you would like before chairs to potentially entertain let

102me know um moving on to committee reports does any of the chairs of the committees have anything reported superintendents report i have just a few things uh first of all as i said the handover meeting i just want to read yes sorry under a committee report i guess can i go back no so i just kind of i know i talked about this at the bond portion of hearing the hanover finance committee um who also um when there is a norwich finance committee merges together to make a dresden finance committee to opine on the budget that the board has approved and we'll be writing letters to the editor you'll see that in the valley news and others but um they made it uh we met and i am the school board liaison to the hanover

103finance committee member there's also a hanover select board member on it as well and they voted yeah actually unanimous support in all of the budget related war articles so just want to let you know that in addition to just the field fund but also our general budget first off i just want to reiterate my thanks to everyone involved in the budget process from our earliest meetings at the end of august everyone every every organization whether it's the school itself the sau the boards the finance committee there's there's just so many moving parts to developing this budget and to get to the point where our budget mailer is just waiting for a little bit of additional editing and i mean maybe a bunch of editing it's just about ready [Music] it'll be better it's cool we're

104just about there and i just the countless hours of work to go into our budget process are greatly appreciated um a quick strategic planning update uh robin and i met today with a consultant from battelle for kids who's going to be running our february 7th strategic planning committee meeting we're really excited this guy kind of took charge and said it sounds like you guys are primed ready to do this work and he said we've got four meetings on the portrait of graduate we're going to pull in community input and we're going to get this thing done by may of the latest on that piece of it and battelle for both robin and i were really impressed with our consultant and well he's the chief learning officer the guy we're working with he's going to conduct

105the first two meetings we will broaden that committee we have a steering committee right now we'll be trying to get greater representation from folks that who are outside the schools themselves from the community um for the design team that'll help us uh with greater community engagement um i alluded to my remarks to tim during his report uh the state released assessment data over the over the holiday break and i've begun to do a rough analysis of that data so far and and really i don't want to say shocked i shouldn't be shocked we were able to stay largely in person last year and there was no assessment the assessment was suspended in both states for the shutdown year when we certain pandemic began but then we our assessment program kicked back in for the 2021

106school year and i'm super impressed with the work that our students and our and our teachers did when i looked at the loss that occurred across the state in every area every subject and across each grade level and in our in our case we had a couple places where we went down marginally but in many of the the tests and grade levels we actually increased our percentage of proficient students and that's uh that's really uh pleasing uh to say the least in on the vermont side we have the same phenomenon at mary cross we had certain secretaries in grades where there was significant improvement and in vermont there's a mandatory uh recovery process that we had to participate in even though we really didn't have anything academically to recover from at least as measured by

107test scores so um so we're just really grateful for all the hard work and uh and just people sticking to it and it really to me just reinforces the importance that we placed on trying to make as normal a school year as we could last year and continue to do that work this year so that's all i got oh i just remembered a quick principal search up there for hanover high school so we we have seated the committee we have screened resumes we have identified three candidates for interview and those interviews will be conducted um next week and it's our it's our intention to have our interviewing done prior to the hot to the uh february break and our ultimate goal then is to um in a second round have have candidates finalists or finalists

108uh here for a site visit and we'd like to make a recommendation to you um by the end of the month preferably by the by the february dresden coordinated and there may be a opportunity depending on cohen to have it like an open house like we did with rms where the community can come in and meet the candidates thank you ted sure moving on to robbie machine oh she's skiing robin is on vacation um she ran the principal search committee today on her way to park city utah so does she have anything to report she did and i'm going to read it to you let's see no her report is in the form of a rather short text but i'll share it with you and i crack up i was reading and getting ready for

109uh our annual report i pulled last year's out in which i confessed to having lured robin here under the pretense that she'd be doing exclusively curriculum instruction assessment work and then immediately appointed her covic coordinator um she has been incredibly busy with that work more more so this year than last year just because of the number of cases but um she was tickled that today we had a decrease a pretty significant decrease over the previous day and the number of cases reported um i shared in my quick email sending that letter out today that it's a decrease but it's not a trend i'm going to be really guarded in my predictions about what's going to happen tomorrow but but we hope that like the national trend we start to see a tapering of this latest

110flare-up um she [Music] robin's also continuing her curriculum work and most recently met with the world languages department and had some some great sessions with them and right now is working on trying to find dates uh for both the summer and the beginning of the school year next year to do the necessary professional development for our elementary math program so there's a lot of enthusiasm on the part of our teachers to now have a common a common math program across both our vermont and new hampshire students so we're we're excited for that to be our first area where we're actually getting this kind of alignment and uh really looking forward to that work so that concludes robin's report thank you [Laughter] so park city huh that's nice i have cousins in berkshire you should go

111next i should i'm going in march hopefully somewhere but i don't want to go skiing i want to go swimming so it says i'm going to update the board on quarterly financials and recent initiatives so recent initiatives is all about budget um there's not much going on in my world well i should say there's a lot going on in the custodial realm we had some turnover again today outsourcing some more help for this building we're down two ftes here the firing school is non-existent so the custodians are really um they're putting in a lot of extra hours at this building big broad richmond middle school has a full complement so everybody there is doing fine we have posted uh i posted the reports today um on where we were at as of twelve thirty one

112twenty one i've not had a chance with writing all the stuff through brochures i've not had a chance to do a written overview of what's going on but i have a couple of just quick comments about it to share with you i'm looking at the revenues we're about in at this point we knew early on that our tuition revenue was going to be off that continues to go up and down the glass i looked at it and i just wrote the content for the brochure i think we're off about 160 000 in tuition revenue at this point goes up and down kids come and vote like often here at the high school you know because they withdraw if they go to ski school and then they come back and they click so it's back and

113forth um we also uh in non-discretionary funds if we look at the general fund we have 1.6 we have 1.6 million dollars remaining that has not been encumbered for expenditures um of that 1.6 million approximately 622 000 is non-discretionary and when i say that i mean it's a form of salaries and benefits okay so it's not discretionary for the department heads and the principles and all those folks to spend on that 622 000 it does include 84 000 that has not been spent or encumbered that could be spent for professional development funds so i would say that would be spent there so i believe on the expenditure side we're in pretty good shape we really understand 100 of our discretionary funds when i do the overview on the write-up i'll project that out for you

114based on historical spending and what i know to be true of past and also right now because some of that is only spent during certain civil rights our grant awards which is your 02 federal and state grant funds we have awards in the amount of 441 thousand dollars that's spread over both of the schools return middle school and hanover high school in food service that's broken down into the old four fund which is hanover high school and the 21 fund which is richmond middle school the heights school is outsourced so those numbers are through november we i'm not sure that decembers are posted yet the richmond middle school is through december both of them appear to be on target for breaking even if not possibly ahead um 34 is the tech project we before well

115canberra high school through middle school so far we have spent 337 000 uh and we have 109 000 still income in march intensive we rolled over twenty thousand dollars from prior year because that is a special revenue fund so it has monies that roll over from year to year and we receive fifteen thousand dollars in donations that fund will start being utilized here in the next month so next month i'll do a projection of where i think we're going to end up the fiscal year and bring that to you based on these numbers because then we update that in our april meeting after the march uh after march posts who donated the 50 is that the boardroom uh i think it was but we will have other monies come in and be donated between now

116and when march intensive exhaust usually but sometimes with the earmark them for specific um yeah specific types of events so the other thing is the audits the audits are like so close to being finalized we're just waiting for a couple little um pieces everybody's uh working feverishly as of this afternoon i think we're just down to one thing i have to do for them um and that's for i think he can know there might be done for foreign so um we should have those reports to you next month okay i'm shooting for next month to get those finalized and have the reports to you so we can take a look at that um the governance letter will be issued and that we have at this point no um considerable findings that i know of um

117there are a couple of procedural things that they write in the government's letter every year that you know that we're supposed to work on some of them are repeat ones um and they have to do with management stuff so but we'll discuss that when we get the letters um if you've never seen those let me know you can look at some from prior and worse um let's see what else going on thank you [Laughter] i want you to be thinking too hard today okay you've done it you guys have done humans work over the last five months so and neil i sent you a text are you picking up the dresden questionnaire that the auditors are looking forward to yeah i'll take care of it after this meeting thank you at this point we're going

118to move into non-public to talk about some hiring and then for the people of the uh zoo audience uh if you want to you can hang out it'll be probably five ten minutes and we'll come back into a public session uh julia if you want to call julie i would just say that if you're if you trust me to handle this i i've got it i've worked with all of their applications i can cover it for you if you need [Laughter] yeah i can trust you on this one okay yes i am i just want to make sure can you give me somebody's cell phone number to call usually it's marcella but i don't have anyone else's can someone text neil your cell phone dev i just sent it via email thank you public information

119okay so at this point would someone like to make a motion to move us into non-public it should be to be i think [Laughter] rsa 91a 3 roman numeral 2 b second lisa neil yes nelson yes yes johnson yes thank you we'll be back dab just so you know you're not muted thank you and i also can't figure out where foreign thanks actually yeah so move to approve hiring english and social studies long term substitutes for hanover high school as presented second ben who's still on the call neil rodell yes johnson yes thank you everyone so uh if anyone has additional agenda topics that they want to include next meeting please get them to me i think my scheduling meeting will be um [Music] sunday yeah probably in the next two weeks so get it

120to me in the next two weeks and our next scheduled meeting is february 22 tuesday and then the the presentation is thursday the 24th so just make sure you have those on your calendar and if someone would like to make the motion to adjourn to be clear that is 2 22 22. and nelson yes i guess yeah yes genie yes hartman yes