SAU 70 Regular Meeting, Public Hearing and Budget Adoption 20211116

001these are actually [Laughter] um while we're refreshing uh but then just reminding me i should welcome and i should have done this i did this while we were not live um i want to welcome lily to our to the sau and the dresden and the norwich boards she was newly elected at the last norwich board meeting so thank you lilly so i've also posted it to the executive session section of the board docs and for the public out there the reason this is happening just to the board is because there is um specific personal information about specific staff salaries um which is not shareable so are we so the agenda doesn't say we're voting on these things tonight are we voting on that tonight we are number well now number 4b is adoption of the

0022022-23 budget so that is something that we will be doing this evening so i i don't think we should be voting on stuff helping providing the information in advance i don't think it's appropriate it's not on the agenda and it doesn't provide um it we at the last meeting we agreed that jay would present his findings with specific numbers based on what happened at the budget meeting which i understand happened yesterday correct the budget meeting was yesterday we had a bunch yeah so um that it would be presented to us orally with specific numbers so that we could vote on it at this point in time um may i ask why he hasn't done the attendance it is it's listed right now as number three public hearing which is now number four um public hearing

003on the budget and then the adoption of the budget and but we have preempted that with the discussion of these two items for that very reason so that we know what we're voting on so that we have some numbers that are attached to both the admin administrative salary view and the possible addition of an equity position which also isn't on the agenda as an action item it's on just for discussion neil help me out here yeah so i mean typically we wouldn't um kevin i understand what you're saying but typically we wouldn't make each separate budgetary impact a separate line item and an agenda it would fall under the discussion of the budget as a whole so for example tonight if you wanted to go in and you said you thought that the budget was

004a little too high in one area you could certainly propose to rest the board members that we cut something out of the budget in order to get it down right but then it wouldn't appear as a separate item on the agenda so okay so i read everything in advance of the meeting i tried to be prepared for the meetings i read what the proposed budget is that's here that we're supposed to be discussing this isn't done there and this neither one of these two things is on that level that is absolutely true the two percent is on there when it says business requiring discussion there are two items neither one of those is listed under business requiring action so if it's going to be an action item i think it's appropriate to have it included

005in the agenda so we know what the action is going to be that we're going to be just taking in the meeting i think it's just appropriate ben so correct me if i'm wrong no but uh kevin right now we're in the public hearing portion of the meeting actually we aren't yeah the public hearing portion of it is the actual agenda this uh sorry the actual budget discussion which is now 4a and 4b right but i mean the business action portion in board docs covers the meeting itself not the hearing exactly right right this is something these two items are things that have budgetary implications and are because of our timeline of planning our budget so far in advance the people in the communities who were involved in that did not meet until very recently

006and so their information from those meetings could not be part of the warned budget is that would that be an appropriate way to say it and so that is why we have it as a discussion item now um because if we are in favor of raising the administrative salaries so that they are comparable and competitive with neighboring districts and if we are in favor of adding um an fte or a portion of an fte to do some eff some equity work that has implications for all the budgets and we did not want to adopt the budget without having that discussion first so it is it is not ideal um but it is we're we're trying to have the discussion now the best that we can um based on the fact that we knew that this

007was coming and the language has been here since friday so i i hear what you're saying and i would love for this to have come out a month ago but i just don't think we can always we can't always work that way so the the policy the sau 70 policy on public comments and board meetings doesn't say it specifically but it says that items that are brought up for discussion are not normally voted on for action in the meeting in which they're brought up for discussion they're brought up for votes in a later meeting i i hear i absolutely hear and agree with what you're saying um normally we would discuss something and then discuss it again and have a motion to vote on it but that's why the word normally is there in this

008particular instance we we just don't have the time to do that with our budget adoption piece the sau budget needs to be adopted in order for their in order for the other budgets to know what to do like we can't keep having we can't keep kicking the can down the road because come january 6th ish when does the budget have to be kind of cooked for lack of a better term mid-january mid-january thank you kim is here so i think what we are under a time crunch because the sau budget has to go first this is our meeting before the other budget meetings are happening where we'll be discussing and passing the dresden meeting the hanover meeting the hanover that dresden budget the hanover budget and the norwich budget and so yes under ideal circumstances

009all of this would have been discussed at our october meeting and it would have been baked into the budget adoption which is currently 3b which is now 4b and that's how we would have functioned that unfortunately is not how we are able to function this evening and i guess i'm just asking for some grace to see if we can push our way through these two discussions um it is my understanding go ahead well you can still discuss changes to the budget while you're discussing the budget so absolutely we could cut some stuff out of budget too it's just a matter of whether or not we look at the numbers that are proposed tonight and want to add them into the budget so it's just all part of the budget discussion discussion which we aren't technically

010in yet well yeah jay so we had this conversation in the last the last seo budget committee meeting and i shared what my estimate was and then honed it because we're talking about the siu budget and carved out the portion of that that i thought was applicable tonight shared 7 000 estimate was and then and owned it that's that i guess that's the ultimately they ask is to is to bump that by seven thousand dollars beyond the two percent already allocated um so i guess there was there's not another budget committee meeting between that meeting and tonight's meeting so here's here we are having the discussion and and so i think what i'm hearing is that what we're we're talking about tonight in this meeting is the sau budget so the portion of this that

011would be applied to the sau budget is seven thousand dollars what i am also hearing from garrett and say stated it pretty eloquently is that there's some concern that the other budgets then would also have to adjust and we don't currently in this meeting know what that would look like and that is concerning but i don't know what to do about that because this meeting is just could you try hey deb this meeting is just about the sau budget i'm going to call this the technology blip meeting from beginning to end um and so i'm wondering kim and ben might be able to help me out here kim especially as our finance person yeah and so and sorry i was trying to drive over here and welcome and thank you sorry she came straight from

012the airport so um domestic so so i guess what i'm trying to understand is kind of what we're talking about and so i only got bits and pieces of it i think what i'm hearing is a little bit of concern that there wasn't enough uh warning of this particular budget item i think in this particular case i might push back on that a little bit just to remind us what where we've been on this process so we kind of charged jay months ago with looking at administrative salary review acknowledging you know kind of asking the question where are we he came back to us at the last sau meeting with some data saying this is kind of where we are and we seem to be falling outside of that finding assist a specific solution was

013then discussed at the sau budget committee with tom and i as the sau budget committee members and was discussed at that point that two percent which was already included and presented at the last full sau meeting our first draft sau budget but that two percent essentially would cover the majority of what's being requested um jay wanted just to double check to see if that made sense for sau and apparently now it is seven thousand dollars which i frankly would argue is is not a huge number when we're talking about our whole um school district needs so i i think maybe a little bit of grace on that 7 000 is is reasonable um and we can certainly discuss it i think so that's kind of the history kind of how we've got here so we

014have talked about this and before we've seen the number before because it was presented in our first draft absent 7000 and kind of now we're here to eventually once we get to the public hearing and for the adoption that's where we would be um so i think that's that's the history of it now of course we do have options i mean i just want us all to know that we do have options i think there are um practical and logistical reasons why we do the sau budget first because as it's driven into the other budgets as we all at least hopefully know you know we don't vote on the sau budget itself as the public we that just gets divided up and there's a hanover ballot and a dresden ballot or a norwich ballot and

015a dresden ballot that you receive in march there is no sau ballot and so that's because those numbers are allocated across those districts um so that being said and we we so we typically do it before because poor jamie and staff have to keep dividing the number up and um you know kind of try to keep it simple and keep things going um however we have done in the past as as early as last year decided to adopt a budget and then adjust it later due to information that we receive later um and so those are options i think you know kind of the question is what will we know now versus then we always just need to think about what that means and what makes sense as far as kind of where do we

016want to set our adoption if we want to adopt tonight as we typically do um and then we can always reopen it if need be later so i just wanted to kind of give you hopefully and maybe you all talked about that while i was driving but i just wanted to kind of like what our options are and my personal opinion i think we have talked about this this topic in open session i think the specific number particularly the 7000 we haven't talked about and then kind of getting to what the other school district budgets would be we are talking kind of that senior leadership level so we're not talking a lot of ftes for a salary adjustment at the district level we're kind of talking school district so if you're trying to think of

017what a possible number could be realistically we're talking basically those number of ftes if that also helps and it sounded like that would be well i'm not even going to go there because ben had a question and actually kicked off the team's quiet realistic so i'm looking at this sheet that you sent this job there's 13 positions on there is that for the 7 000 is that for the 47 000 that's the total amount yes so forty seven thousand these thirteen positions all percentage-wise equally distributed not necessarily that's how far off they vary from the mean yeah and that warrants further questions further analysis too i wouldn't commit to a specific dollar figure per position until we look at each one individually and it's 47 among these 13. yep okay yeah kevin i don't object

018to the request james mcmillan i was at the meeting i think his request makes sense and i support it so i don't object to their number or what jay is requesting or proposing at all i went to the meeting i thought his rationale made perfect sense i do object to bringing it up for a vote in a meeting when it's not on the agenda in advance and doesn't give the public adequate time to consider something that should be an action item on the agenda so i would think it makes sense to do what kim said and approve the budget as is and then make an adjustment later if that's deemed appropriate okay great thank you thank you for that clarification um it's not time for any emotions because we still haven't had public comment but

019neil yeah so i guess i my opinion differs from kevin and that we're tonight we're here primarily to talk about the budget right right and as we talk about the budget there are a lot of things that make up the budget um and so uh a the budget it was warned as a public hearing so folks very well know that we are talking about the budget tonight that could include additions or deletions from the budget and i just find that the items that were brought forward for the board's consideration tonight to be items related to the budget the way that this would proceed then when the board goes to take an action is that i would anticipate some board member might make a motion to approve a budget of a certain amount a certain dollar

020amount when they make that motion that dollar amount may or may not include certain additions or deletions to the budget based on some discussion that this board has had during the course of this evening i am aware that i need to say something right now um we are already at like we're already pushing hard on we have a meeting after this the dresden meeting and i can hear rick getting antsy next to me and we have to one of the things that we have to do this evening is get to our public hearing which is about the budget and the budget adoption but it is also important to have this public discussion so what i would like to do now unless any of the board members have anything new to say that hasn't been said

021already and what i hear is in the future it would be great to have more specific numbers further in advance couldn't agree more um kim gave us some options for getting around that um it feels as if for this particular item the two percent covers it with the exception of the seven thousand dollars um and we do need to be concerned i want to be aware of garrett's stated that statement that most of us seem to agree with that we should just be aware of what the implications are for the other budgets which don't sound based upon who they would be applied to as if it would be applied to that many people in the other budgets not to say it's insignificant but just it may not be as big as we think we're panicking

022about right now um i would like to now move to some public comment on this item we then need to talk about the recommendation from the equity committee which will start again with the school board discussion and then some public comment at some point in time and i am hoping well since we started a little late i was going to say seven but now let's say 7 10 ish i would like to have us close our discussions wherever they are and move into the 4 a and b which is the public hearing about the budget and the adoption of the budget because that has to happen this evening and the rest of it we can kind of come back to in other ways through committee work and through emails to me as the board chair

023shoot me any email you want don't shoot me but shoot me any emails that you want based upon this and we'll go and deep breath um i would like to because we have a lot of school new school board members here and we have members of the public who may or may not have been at a school board meeting i just want to give a couple of reminders about public comment um there will be a time limit of three minutes per person we would like to hear from everybody once just so that everybody can be heard if you have something super important to say that is in response to something else you heard i will think about if we have time letting everyone speak twice if needed but we really are trying to keep the

024comments um to one per person for this evening and again if you have something you need to say please email me and i will make sure the right people get the information and we'll get answers back to you somehow i want to watch repetition and being off topic so i ask the public to just if you've heard something you don't necessarily need to repeat it i mean sometimes it's nice to know how many people in the room feel one way and sometimes it just repetition isn't always helpful in moving the conversation forward and i want to remind everyone that i cannot allow any marks that are personal in nature so just help me with that and be kind so um and with that [Laughter] and with that i would like to open up to the

025public for any comment on this particular issue there will be a public comment time for anything else but for right now limited to the administrative salary adjustments yes sir oh yes i'm sorry um could you stand up and announce your name and where you live yeah dan richards i live i live in i want to come closer yeah just so that al can see you speak to the owl this is the album i'm dan richards i'm from etna um so i think it's great that you're considering increasing salaries for administrative staff who are typically on the lower end of the compensation scale you know protecting them from inflation and cost of living and all that is really important however inflation last month was 6.7 percent it's likely going north from here probably significantly north so

026have we done and has this board done any analysis as to how to basically reserve for these inflationary pressures and not just for administrative staff but across the entire district personnel and non-personnel kinds of expenses because there will be uh it will living here will be a challenge for some of those folks number one and number two there could be a fairly significant tax impact on the community as a result so just wanted to raise that thank you and another reminder public comment the board typically does not answer the questions which i know gets frustrating but it is just a chance for us to hear what you have to say so thank you very much dan anyone else in the chairs anyone on zoo okay great i would now like to move this into our

027item 3b which is the sau equity committee um they have forwarded a recommendation to the board um the charge that this school board gave to the equity committee was to discuss issues related to diversity equity and inclusion in areas such as curriculum instruction student support services policy recruitment and hiring practices and to come to the board with recommendations for us to consider um because the equity committee was aware that the school board was talking about the budget and the budget adoption this evening at their meeting last week they put forth their first recommendation um i have asked neil to speak to this because he is the chair of the equity committee marcella is the co-chair of the equity committee so she will be going second vice vice chair sorry the vice chair and then jay

028has asked to speak and then we'll open it up for the rest of the board okay thanks neil um so i really don't have too much to add beyond what but lisa outlines so the equity committee has been meeting since june and at our last meeting which was on november 8th there was a motion that was made to recommend to this board that we include a position as a coordinator or director of equity for the sau 70 school district the motion that you see in the packet is the motion that was passed at that last equity committee meeting the motion passed on a vote of 18 to 5. the motion as you see there it was also amended to include a list of priorities that the committee [Music] defined at the at the previous meeting

029at the october meeting um and they were included in the motion um to give a sense of the type of work or the roles and responsibilities or activities that would be associated with this position and as lisa mentioned yes there was you know the committee was aware that the sau 70 board was going to be considering and adopting a budget this evening and so that's why they felt it was important to get this recommendation before this committee in this timeframe thank you neil marcella or the vice chair sorry of the equity committee you're now you're up next next okay so i prepared some thoughts because i don't like public speaking and it's easier for me to read it's a feel thing in literature we just read papers it's appalling to everyone outside of our field

030but okay so um diversity equity and inclusion work benefits all children i feel the need to say that because in some of our meetings in the past it has seemed that some folks seem to think that dei work is just about a few marginal groups okay so a dei coordinator would benefit every child in our district when we assume that a dei coordinator is only needed for marginal children who are discriminated against or for children who are harassed we ignore the reality that all children are denied access to their full humanity when they are made to learn in a setting that does not strive to help them understand the social context that made that discrimination and harassment possible when we learn best practices for diversity equity and inclusion that means creating safe and welcoming spaces

031for all our children as they learn how to be citizens in our schools this is the second point this is not a new idea for our district it may seem a little bit new um since we voted on it at the last equity committee meeting um and i'm very grateful to the work for the work of my colleagues on the committee and also for the work of all of the volunteers on the first equity committee this is the committee that existed before it became a full school work enemy this push for someone to do to ei work at the district level has been a part of the conversation since the school board's equity committee began meeting because it was one of the conclusions of the previous committee regarding what would help sau 70 move forward

032equity work is not extra it isn't something that comes after we get all our ducks in a row it isn't a part we can put before the horse because with every decision we make as a board there are implications for diversity equity and inclusion with every move to document curriculum and every effort to just to strategically plan we are making choices regarding inclusivity everything we do already has implications and yet we don't have anyone at the district level to monitor those implications collect information about the climate at our schools liaise with the board and campuses to coordinate information about campus culture the potential differential impacts of our choices or help us navigate moments of crisis fourth we decided to make the equity committee an official committee of the school board because we understood that questions

033about how we create diverse spaces and places of learning for our children couldn't be thought of as extra or secondary or peripheral we as a district have already lost a dedicated teacher because we have not had the system in place to support her ad hoc labor on dei work in the district for the same reason that the equity committee needed to become an official school board committee we need a designated employee whose labor on dei work is compensated but dei work has been politicized the remnants of hp544 survive in the trailer to the budget that has been passed and that lingering language effectively encourages educators to censor themselves when teaching about race class gender sexuality and society our educators who try to do tei work are asking have asked for help in navigating this legislation

034and they have received answers i'm not saying that their questions have gone unanswered but dei leadership at the district level could clarify the impact of legislation including future legislation and provide coordinating efforts to teachers across the campuses who are asking how to proceed um and i just want to clarify a little bit about the list in i think it's in the agenda right of the the items yes okay um instead of thinking of them quite as like a list form i just like to clarify that the equity committee sees this dei position drafting a district-wide are helping to draft a district-wide equity policy supporting equitable and culturally responsive curriculum development supporting strategic planning efforts coordinating support for students across campuses establishing implementing and reporting incident procedures coordinating efforts to gather information from focus groups students

035family and community recruiting and retaining a diverse staff coordinating professional development opportunities with regard to tdi work designing and implementing exit interviews for families and staff establishing priorities for di work in the district facilitating conversations with families and students at all campuses collecting and analyzing data about campus culture and student needs the creation and maintenance of an information bank for all stakeholders and identifying problem areas this is a lot of work and this is all work that the equity committee has set out to achieve and right now there are people who are trying to do this work and either it's not compensated labor it's volunteer or it's again viewed as extra right um i understand that budgets are real and have a significant impact on our community members community members like me who are still

036reeling from the last change to the town's assessment which again had nothing to do with the school district um as we navigate this recommendation from the equity committee i am asking us to think about what it means when we decide dei work is the work we can't possibly afford let's think about it not just let's think about it as not just signal signaling our values but making a step forward thank you marcel jay all right so um i i told lisa before the meeting that for some reason all day long i've had tiny tim's tiptoe through the tulips ringing through my head and she corrected me and said it should be tiptoe through the my field um and i want to be like clear that when i when i'm considering things like adding a major

037administrative position um to our staff that usually comes with a lot of a lot of planning and the reason i voted no on this measure in the committee itself came from a position of pragmatism not an opposition to the to to the work or in any way a diminution of the importance of of equity in our district but rather i pointed out that we've already identified that one of the biggest areas that we have to improve in in order to ensure equity is documenting our curriculum and this came after a grant funded curriculum audit and quite a bit of deliberation up front and then essentially three years in which during which period of time i was told to build a case to restore that position to the budget and as i shared with the committee

038we did that and and gratefully the the board agreed to restore that position and we now have robin um who's joined us and is is finally able well i shouldn't say this because covet is back on the rise again but but she has been able to squeeze some curriculum work in in between uh cases of covetorizing and so we're we are moving forward on that important work that was also identified by the equity committee as an important place for us to focus the uh the fact that we don't really have an operational plan and that we're on the verge continually seem to be on the verge of strategic planning is another reason that i felt this should wait and strategic planning was another idea area that was identified by the former equity committee as a

039major priority which we restored to the list at our last meeting and was also the predicate for one of our local districts hartford which has chosen to hire a dei and j coordinator following that strategic planning process with the charge of implementing the strategic plan and i completely understand the sense of urgency that the former committee members have they've done two and a half three years worth of work only to have the committee structure changed and and still feel that sense of urgency and when when when that urgency is discussed as marcelo mentioned earlier in her comments there's the sense that one of the things we're concerned about is the fact that there are marginalized students to this day like within our schools who need support so if that's a if that's the proximal reason

040to act my feeling was that we we can look at other ways to provide those resources and those safe spaces while the committee continues to do its work and plan to figure out how best to to operationalize the work and and that that's essentially my position it's it's one of pragmatism and it's also like again yes we do have to pay for things and there really is a checkbook and i i just i've asked for some additional funds to be put into the budget that really go back three years again or more as a priority and and we now have preliminary budgets that are coming in considerably in excess of the thresholds that the board already already provided for us so i'm going to be going back to the the school-based teams the district-based teams

041to help them with trying to carve their budgets down to that level or make a recommendation to the to the the committees to um to to to again increase those levels but those are gonna be very very difficult trade-off conversations that we have so to add a position with with benefits we're looking at probably 125 to 150 000 is going to make that chore that much more difficult and so for that reason i i i will reiterate my my feeling that we should find some alternative in the short run and consider this in our ongoing planning process and kind of maintain and continue to maintain that position any other comments from the board or questions kevin i haven't been able to participate in equity committee meetings because most of them have two o'clock in the

042afternoon i appreciate the last one but unfortunately i wasn't able to cover that i have a problem with my throat right now so he has a sore throat issue so do the microphone yeah i can try so um my question is so i read through the survey results from the center for equity education and the survey says that um it describes it and it's quoted as parent perspective and student perspectives both as overwhelmingly positive and their recommendation was to sustain current efforts you know i also looked at i saw some of the graphs that were presented in equity committee meetings but not all of them i don't think and i understand there are some disparities among races and there's also an issue potentially with sexual harassment of um in the school that seemed like a

043greater issue just based on numbers so i recognize that there's always people should always be striving to improve in all these areas i think it's more of a general teacher and administrative role to do that when we're in a climate where the survey these experts determine that we're doing things well right now and the recommendation is to keep doing what you're doing and try to improve on what you're doing right now so i'm not really sure what the need is for a specific person to focus on that when it sounds like from the survey that the administrative staff and teachers are already doing a pretty good job across the board recognizing that as what i said that it's still a lot of work um there was a request that i summarized what you said for

044the people in the audience um so please correct me if my summary is inaccurate what kevin was saying was he looked at the equity report that came out in 2019 yeah it was late 2019. late in late 2019 an outside group did came into our schools and looked at equity issues for us and this report came back with 90 ish of the people involved saying that everything was good um there was some data diving and some data digging done by the previous equity committee and i can answer this um which he also mentioned that disaggregated the data according to different identity groups and when that happened what the data shows is that things are not great for certain identity groups here or less great i guess it would be a better way to say it

045and so kevin alluded to that as well um he also said though that he felt that if everything in this report says keep doing what we are doing and everything's fine that he doesn't see a reason to have a position that focuses on dei at this at the district level at this time would that be i don't see a need for an independent position when it appears that administrators and faculty are already doing reasonably well but also recognizing that there's always room for improvement so yeah so the correction is that there would be not an independent person doing this um recognizing that it seems to be going really well and recognizing we can always improve so my teacher voice comes in handy every once in a while um okay any other comments on this garrett

046so is it overall a statement i absolutely support with the echo humans do so don't take these comments the wrong way but i think right if we're going to prove this position i think we just need to i just want to think about and make sure i understand you know marginalized identity groups i think so when i go around town and i hear parents talking to me you know having issues with this school with their children i'm hearing things like you know enforcement of iep and 504 clients right so i've heard numerous parents complain that some teachers at the high school don't even read these plans and that their kids are basically you know needing to advocate for themselves that's a problem you know i hear from a lot of parents that they've got kids

047that are in the i call it the middle right so at the high school i think everyone knows that it caters to some very high level performance kids but there's a lot of kids i believe who i talked to parents this week because i felt like i kind of got sold a bill of goods when i moved here because their kids were in the middle and they've pulled them from the school and are sent them to kua into other private schools around the new england area um same thing i think with the standard kind of the student profile which we have here i'm kind of picking on the high school a little bit but kids that maybe aren't interested in athletics and are interested in other things um you know and then i even you

048know we had our off-site which was my first interaction with most of the people sitting around this table here and over and over and over we were talking about the um you know what it was called the profile of a student it kept coming out from all you guys you know emotional well-being depression stress bullying so i think it's just if this position maybe it needs to be broadened i i don't you know minors a little bit when we talked about equity and maybe i guess what's the need and can we is it going to address some of these issues as well which i think are as concerning frankly and even just culture right like is there anyone that's paying attention to the overall culture of our schools which frankly solves a lot of these

049equity problems when you have a good culture right you just you don't have these issues because i think you know at the end of the day to summarize right we're we're all squeezing juice from a lemon here in our budgets just to go back to that so it's it's really tricky because just so the public knows you know the the health care and election and the retirement election so these are just the changes in elections based on the people that came into our system as teachers based on their family that's going to cause over one and a half percent increase in dresden and a three and a half percent increase at rms so we set the target of two and a half percent yet before any of these anyone even gets in the room yeah

050now we have less than one percent to play with okay garrett can we hold that for the budget distance i'm just saying like if we're going to have this person yeah it's going to i think be really well utilized and solving a lot of these things that i'm going to support it so equity is one thing but also making sure that maybe they're gonna help a lot of other great needs yeah um i'm gonna summarize here for a little bit in the hope that we can then move to a public comment section and get into the actual budget oh sorry then um i had a general thought more on the kind of adjacent about pragmatic stuff is feasibility in terms of hiring and retaining do you think that there is past president for something at

051a school district level to hire someone like this we've seen that large corporations and large talents but is this common at a school that should be able to hire this person and would you be able to find this person you know how much you've got trouble recruiting for other positions that are far more common um so yes these positions do exist at the height of the k-12 level i hired one certainly one of the last things that i did before i left erie was we appointed a diversity equity inclusion person um locally hartford has recently done it and i know that lebanon is contemplating restoring and or changing their curriculum position to an assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction as well as diversity equity inclusion they haven't made that decision yet they're in the process

052of investigating that as well so i know that it's being discussed some of the larger towns and cities down in southern new hampshire have a position like this so now what is the what is the candidate pool out there i don't know and and we would have to there'd be some work for the committee to do if this were to be approved by the board to come up with a job description and decide on how best to recruit anyone else i i just want to yeah him so just wanted to clarify what the position is being requested it's a director level position because i believe it does not say right so yeah i think um and um yeah so i guess i guess my question is around how and maybe it's the committee members right

053so how did the committee um why is this position kind of the best right use of 120 000 or whatever it is versus i guess how other ways did the committee discuss um kind of implement an hr resources you know kind of how would how did that get decided why was it just kind of at a director or a coordinator or not it it's specifically not so i guess i guess is would it be helpful to have more time to have that discussion to make it be more specific of a request i'll let neil take it first and then i can sure so you know i think i mean if you look back at the charge for the committee right the committee was charged to provide recommendations to this board um so there there was

054not a discussion of a how much it would cost b are we better off using those funds in a different mechanism i think the focus for the committee and at the time of the meeting was whether or not uh you know a position they felt was warranted and then you know obviously through the vote on the motion i i think it was and so um i would tend to think that that monetary level decision is this board's debate not necessarily the committees because you gave them a specific charge to take a look at issues related to equity right if you're going to take a look and then decide whether or not the cost right for as far as we're considering here is commencement with the benefit right that's this board to make that call in

055addition to i think read the motion and the recommendation as a desire to see an sau level position to address this work figure out you know how much does this board think that they want to fund that position could it be funded differently all of those other sort of nuances or other ways to look at this i think are this body's purview makes sense yeah i mean i guess so it would be i guess the question is how did this committee come up with it why it had to be an sau level position as a recommendation right so versus because i think that they felt that the work is not the work pertains to all of our school districts and so it made sense i think then to have the focus be at the sau

056right because i believe some people i'm sorry yeah keep going so i just i believe some people had made recommendations for alternative ways to implement um equity work right so you could and was discussed in the committee so i just things like um you know having a recommend from a member of the public i believe said something like um you know consider having this individual have a job out in their experience which they have done work and equity to have a job outside of equity work um i think it was something to like lending credibility and what not in the work um other things being i think maybe there was some discussion about in within operations having folks in the district level and maybe it's part of their job and having kind of more folks

057be part of that i mean just thinking about different permutations on how this work could be divided and kind of shared um and so that's why i was just trying to understand how the committee came up with this kind of proposal that's all what i'm trying to understand if other alternatives were considered um if not you know other there was not a discussion of alternative structures to to this it was focused on this position um i i wanted to so it one thing i just kind of wanted to answer garrett's question um all of the discussions and i've been was part of the old committee on the new committee have focused on the fact that equity it's not just for kids of color it's not it incorporates gender it incorporates low income it incorporates people

058who have other abilities um it incorporates the 504 the ieps that i mean it really is to serve all the kids um who might benefit from having someone thinking about the work of this school through their lens um and that would you know in this district it might include the middle kids um you know like we would have a weird category kind of i don't know if i've ever heard of it applied to middle kids before but it really would be incorporating any child including the ones who are our high achieving kids who might need different things to help them when they get out of here and they're in a situation where they're not surrounded by mostly white students and so um or mostly students who are cisgendered or you know like whatever is happening

059to help all the students so if that helps it would be it would be someone who would be able to address some of those concerns that you just listed um at least in the way that this particular equity committee has always spoken about who this work is for um and then i do remember in the meeting someone saying something about it being partially part-time versus full-time like i don't you know like so and and then it was just worded very vaguely i i think my question was people just wanted this debate to happen at a school board meeting to have a public discussion about this work and and what it might look like to move it forward here i'll now speak for myself personally i am concerned that unless someone gets paid to do this

060work or some people get paid to do this work they're either doing it on their own time and they get burned out or it doesn't happen at all and that to me is not something that we would like to continue doing and so um that that's what i i have to say personally about this marcelo just briefly um and it doesn't speak to the exact structure that the position would have but it does sort of speak to your question about like why why a coordinator or a position at all um we've had six meetings isn't it is that right yeah roughly all right we started in june okay so we've had five meetings and again repeating much gratitude for everyone on the committee we have a diversity of opinions we have lively discussion we have

061a lot going on in the meetings and i think that one of the reasons that the committee sort of settled on a position at the sau level is because we also saw how hard it is to get things done in the time that we have as a committee um and you know which is sort of another way of rephrasing what lisa said like having someone whose actual job it is to do this instead of volunteer sort of meeting or in a subcommittee seemed necessary to accomplish the goals that we had already articulate articulated right the long list of goals yeah let me just i guess the plan tonight is to actually talk about whether we would have proved to hire a full-time person i guess and what the budget might look like for that and

062i guess the question is is to jay's point to your point everyone's point is there a way to compromise a bit in whether we decide that okay maybe there is some budget that could be given to some people who are already employees or something to solve that because i keep hearing people aren't getting paid for this and you know i don't you know it's already midway through the year and i know these things you don't want to have to move glacially but you know maybe it's someone that would have spent some time again over the summer and allocate i don't even know right maybe this doesn't have to be a hundred thousand dollar position with full-time benefit it's someone else that's someone that's already at the school district maybe a part-time person that would move

063up to a full-time ft i don't know yeah something that would kind of blunt it but also would help get the stick going a little bit and also maybe give them a few make sure that they're addressing some broader issues because i think part of my issue concerning that with jay and his team is that there's a lot to do and we still have not i mean we keep talking about our portrait graduate and our strategic plan and there are so many things right now there's just not enough people to do that so kim and then i think i'll wrap it up for some public comment so so i think this is where i am at and and i am very i'm supportive and i am supportive of this work so i'm trying to do

064this in a as helpful of a way possible what i'm hearing i'm hearing a few things one i'm hearing that it is difficult uh to move things along in the committee without kind of a point person and that need is now um and not you know in next year's budget right and and that's that need and what i'm so just gonna park that for a sec and then what i'm also concerned with is um the process on how we came to this decision for this senior level administrator sau and i hear jay voicing some of those kind of strategic planning initiatives and wanting to be partners i'm also concerned with how glacially slow our strategic planning has been and i've voiced that in several meetings whatever the next time we're gonna have that meeting so

065i'm wondering if we need somebody now actually and i and i and i know our sau budget is constricted with an sau and so we'll have to talk about what that means for where can we find resources but i'm just wondering if we have somebody that actually we need now and i'm not suggesting that this is the senior look because i think what we need right now is more of a coordinator type position in this year's budget is what i'm talking about to talk to look both at equity to support the equity committee work and also strategic planning to make sure that we have somebody within that can help offload both of those i mean jay obviously will be very involved in that but hopefully at a senior level position versus trying to take minutes

066or that type of thing that i think maybe a coordinator type of temporary position would be so i'm envisioning this is not a full-time but maybe a temporary position for the end of the year to kind of get the committee work done so that there could be a process to say yes we were able to look at alternatives we were able to to think about this because we don't have to approve but trust me i would love to improve a budget today because it makes a lot of other things easier but i think in this particular case i'm worried that the committee hasn't had enough enough of a thorough debate frankly about what the options are to support this i'm not saying that there aren't members who have done a lot of work there's been

067three years i'm just concerned that on whole there hasn't been enough of a debate with our current committee structure to recommend for our current board what this is and i'm not saying that this is a long-term push because we have to decide january mid-january but i'm wondering if it's helpful for the equity committee to have just a couple more months to talk about what this job description is define that is it a coordinator is a director because i know that was a question um and you know it does it need to be at the essay you level does it need to be more than that i don't know like so i just i just feel like from a process perspective it might make sense but to get there it's kind of a chicken and egg

068i think we might need a resource now to help us both with strategic planning and equity and i hope that that addresses jay's concern because i honestly as a board member i don't want to do anything that our superintendent doesn't feel is practical right so i want to make sure that we are addressing the strategic planning need in order to get that done right i just feel like we need something and so i i wonder if we can look back and i think this has to be worn for the next meeting um to consider if this board likes that idea of course um you know what potentially what that position could look like as a temporary short-term position for this year just to kind of get us because the strategic planning hopefully will get us

069by the end of the year too so they kind of both both can kind of speak similarly that's just where i am again i am i i really i really hope that we can get dei worked on and i have been supportive of this work um i just it just makes me uncomfortable from a process perspective that we that the skills may be a little bit rushed because we just happen to have an sau meeting budget get approved before the rest um so folks can you know kind of think about it because i think it's two two pronged there um but that's kind of where i'm standing on this one thank you ben i said that i had concerns that we could hire a capable qualified person if it was marketed as a temporary position

070thank you okay i'd like to move to public comment again just a reminder um three minutes and speak once and um we just can't talk about any one in particular personally so thank you yes and just come forward state your name and your address or your town and then a couple steps back from the owl from everywhere [Laughter] so i'm dan i spoke earlier i'm from aetna so i attended the equity committee meeting on the 7th and i think it's important for the board and for the public to be aware of a few important things and the first is is that the equity report that was referenced by a couple of the board members here was done from 2019 to 2020 and i think we're all blessed and fortunate in that the report came back

071overwhelmingly positive and that's their words not mine they looked at staff they looked at students and they looked at parents and they surveyed all three groups and i jotted down a few notes here just so you don't have to take my word for it but so for instance with students the equity report said student responses to the survey were overwhelmingly positive what was the recommendation the recommendation was the effort should be sustained and analysis should be conducted to determine any lack of student connectedness or disenfranchisement with regard to the parents the parents said parent responses to the survey were overwhelmingly positive again their word's not mine and that analysis should be conducted to determine the source and type of any negative comments the third was with the staff and the staff came back with six

072professional development points training board policy protocols parent family engagement um and then the last and and the similar theme here is data collection with respect uh to the staff so there were a number of people who spoke at the committee meeting and they unif they uniformly said that a the idea of hiring somebody now is premature because we don't know exactly what the nature of the problem is where the goals are that this person is going to pursue so what i came away from when looking at the disaggregated data that's been reported there are apparently or according to the data somewhere on the order of five ish or so minority students that had negative interactions or a negative uh issue with the school 30 stan i'm sorry 30 seconds left those should be investigated number

073one number two the second issue that was identified was somewhere on the order of 65 which is not an inconsequential number females who are reporting or have reported some kind of sexual harassment so these are two very wide and separate divergent kinds of problem sets that need to be solved so i urge this board and those who are deliberating on this if you're going to hire somebody be darn sure that you're going to solve the problem that actually exists and not you know just simply be hiring somebody to add a warm body so thank you very much for your time that was pretty impressive three minutes exactly um next thank you i'm stephanie duran i'm from hanover and i'm a molecular biologist with two decades of experience calling genes using pcr i can read the

074scientific literature on various topics and understand it i could talk about why pcr cannot be used to assess a person's a person's infectiousness but i want to talk about the masks today i've been patiently waiting ma'am i'm sorry we're not having a masking discussion right yeah what is in your budget um can you cannot comment wait to the budget discussion this is this is this discussion right now is public comment about the equity position but thank you appreciate that just a few more minutes i hope thank you very much anyone else wishing to have public comment on the equity position come on forward lisa you just wanted i'm thinking i'm joe anderson from hanover and uh you know just look at that sign over there more together than we are apart and i think that

075you know a lot of the comments that were made are very very on on on target i think jay's comment about the curriculum is very important i think that our school is underperforming when you look at the privilege when you look at all the schools that are in the you know the top you know to your point as well you look at all the schools that are doing well that have actually a large percentage of under under privileged kids we're doing very poorly we need to do better so with regards to the position i think it's very important that we take into consideration what we need when you look at that survey the survey the question is was it done was it appropriate for our school district i don't think so when you look with

076with regards to the data i agree with the previous speaker that uh as a parent of any child that's certainly your daughter i'm i'm alarmed by the sexual harassment i think that speaks a problem so i think we have to define what the problem is before before we hire somebody we're going to be investing 150 000 in a position and we have to know what the metrics are to see what the outcome is with regards to specifics of the survey i'd be more than happy to look at it it's in my opinion it's barely hypothesis generating if you look at the numbers they're very small groups that are 10 or 15 are very small and certainly we're not one group is not the same there's going to be the age and sex once you start

077adjusting for those any differences that were there are going to disappear so i really think that we need to follow through in some of the things that we were doing if we relied on this survey we need to really look at it in detail and i think the last one we made an excellent point about the fact that the deadline was coming we had a rush i don't think we want to rush this i think with with inflation with the money being such so tight that tax is going up we really need to think about it because it's going to affect the whole school district and and once again the last thing i've said this in other schools of school meetings but we had one one graduation rate that i saw was 92 percent um

078one in 10 of our kids may not graduate and please disabuse me if that's a wrong statistic we have to do better because our kids can get educated and potentially help the world in that way so once again thank you thank you very much anyone else from the public i have some people on zoom too so um the woman in the very back i saw your hand next and thank you zoom people for your patience yeah i think that's the spot okay so my name is beth ames i live in hanover and i just um maybe that's our new spot so my name is beth ames i live in hanover and i just want to lay the landscape a little bit so on october 19 2021 the american academy of pediatrics and the american academy

079of childhood psychology declared a national state of emergency for child mental health and so clinicians who see kids at dartmouth-hitchcock from our community are seeing a huge rise in anxiety depression isolation and specifically suicidality and so i feel like from a provider standpoint at the hospital our resources are tapped out and i'm hoping to be able to partner with school community members and school staff to try to help those kids who are feeling isolated and alone during this particularly challenging time in history so it's my personal opinion that we have a particular uh expert or leader in the field who can help with an intentional explicit way to help support equity and inclusion within our student body thank you beth orange shirt my name is jim larrick i live in hanover i have four children

080three are from the schools one of them will be in about five years i don't i don't know everything about dei i will say that you know it is being discussed at every for-profit institution across america it's extremely important it's discussed at my for-profit institution um i've had the opportunity to go to seminars and understand a lot more about dei and what the impact is and how we have implicit bias and i think there's just so much to be understood about it and the fact that we can't find a way to include that in our schools i think would be a shortfall i think we should really be looking at it when we talk about rushing it it's my understanding we've been talking about it for many years uh jay you you said you employed

081someone at your last place that you worked at so it wouldn't be so foreign to figure it out and i understand it seems rushed at this moment um it does seem like it's the will of the community i believe there's a letter that had many signatures that were in support of this the committee that was set up is in support of it and so i really feel like it's something that this group should have done every organization or private organizations across the country have been doing this um and waiting i don't think it's going to get us anywhere i do understand that you've rushing it put a lot of work into it because you had to put together a structure to make sure it was effective but i think it's worth that work thank you

082thank you anyone else from in person yes hi my name is keith hilton i live at hanover i have to visit the race school specifically to address your question kim was my sense from being at the last equity committee meeting that the recommendation was in fact to this committee to sort out the details of what this should look like and i think that was for numerous reasons one of which is the difficulty in deciding on some of those um specifics given the the makeup of that group and the challenges that they encountered in as marcella said the discussions prior to that in the past four or five months um and also since it's been a recommendation of the previous committee so just to reiterate that um i've note as jim said that there was a

083letter that was that garnered 400 plus um signatures from the community in less than a week in supporting the work of the di committee and appreciating its members for their very big commitment but i would also note that despite the 90 minutes to two hours they spend each month to advance dei work in this district really takes having a leader whose job it is to get it done and that that is up to this board it's up to each of you in terms of what's possible in terms of the choicefulness and then ultimately it'll be off your hands it'll be the choice of our community and they'll have the final say on the budget as a whole so just to remind you that there is wide community support there are i'm sure you know places

084where that's not the case um but certainly i support you and uh and i encourage you to make the choice to support all of our children uh in diversity equity inclusion by funding this position now thanks thank you um let's go to zoom because i feel like they've been waiting for a while tom all right well you've got allison captains first do you guys want me to move over allison capadi yeah that'd be great thanks chris hi you can hear me okay great can you hear me hello yes i'm unmuted i swear can you hear me try again can you hear me allison we're trying to be able to hear you sorry okay again i'm calling this the technical issue meeting allison can you try again there we go thank you yes can you hear

085me now okay wonderful thank you so um i'm i'm not there in person because as you can tell i have a respiratory infection that is not covet but i don't want to give it to anyone i want to start by expressing gratitude to the school board and all the committees i know this is a ton of work and to all of our school teachers and administrators our school board and administrators and teachers have done a really great job of prioritizing equity in small ways and big ways and that is wonderful that said the people on the ground the teachers and you know the counselors are asking for help on equity work and and that is why we need a coordinator or director a district-wide leader on this we are already doing the best we can

086and it needs to be better and a great way to do that is to have a leadership role to you know set the tone and to coordinate efforts so um i know that there's not a ton of data on this for equity specifically because this is you know a new-ish thing that's arguable but i will say that i am involved in equity committees at two different hospitals as well as the medical school and the places that have an actual senior leadership position to work on this are the places where actual work is accomplished at the hospital where we have a committee that meets once a month our committee members have learned a lot and we have accomplished nothing at the hospital where we have an a part-time employed equity coordinator there is actual work being

087done and it's not just by that coordinator but the actual efforts of all of the on-the-ground staff members are much more effective because they are coordinated across the institution and so you know i don't think we're asking for a sea change in the work that's being done but you know we have limited resources and we need to use those effectively and to do that they need to be coordinated across the district so this is you know a synergistic position uh i know it costs money i know that this board has spoken out vocally in support of equity in general and you know this is your chance to kind of put your money where your mouth is and um try to you know invest in equity in our uh district and i completely agree with garrett's

088point of i think belonging is one word that i would use to describe what he was describing is you know trying to create a culture of belonging where every single person every student every staff member really feels welcome and they like they truly belong and that is exactly what a role like this would do thank you didn't mean to cut you off i just wanted to give you a warning okay next on zoom tom richard you should be able to speak richard out can you hear me now yes hi so i uh i'm richard adams i live in norwich i have three kids in the schools um thank you so much for having this discussion um i i should also mention that i'm on the equity uh committee um thank you so much for having

089this uh this discussion and doing this work this is these are really tough questions and i think we knew sending this to the board that we would be giving you all a pretty difficult topic to consider considering all the other things that you're you're balancing so i just want to thank you um it's been a really great discussion so far this evening i do i didn't want to point out that i think the asking for more data and more studies and more time it's a bit of a stall tactic i think of people who are comfortable with the way things are and perhaps can't tolerate change or maybe are afraid of that change and i really think that we need to be courageous and brave and move forward i like some of the ideas about

090how we can do things now um i like some of the consideration about how the budget process you know has has a time to it and those are realities that you all are very well um immersed in right now so again thank you but you know considering that data asking for data and asking for studies can be a bit of a way to stall things out i really think the best information and this is something i've learned by being on the committee and listening to the teachers and the counselors and the administrators the best information is coming from the people who are working with our students every day and we need to listen to them and we need to support them and so however that whatever that means to you i'd really encourage you to

091sort of prioritize what's coming from people who are directly doing this work already above um above other things so again just thank you so much um find a good balance we trust you guys we trust all of you um and uh appreciate your work thank you richard is there anyone else in zoom tom okay so i see one more hand and then i think we have to close our comments because we do have to get to the actual budget discussion so stuart dealer's choice stu richards norwich two grandchildren in the school system and two kids who went through the entire system and i've only lived in vermont for about 53 years and been in norwich for 38 years and i've seen lots of changes during that time i'm really thankful actually to hear different perspectives

092that we've heard tonight and it's it's really hard i think to to synthesize all the comments that have been made but i there are some comments that that appear to be to me anyway to be rather persuasive i don't agree with the last speaker who talks about stall tactics i mean the conversation and a tribute to all the people who put in three years or whatever the time frame is of hard work and i don't i don't see the harm in trying to understand what the definition of the of the actual position would be i don't see the harm in actually trying to understand what alternatives there might be i also don't see the harm in trying to figure out what the actual cost would be so when i suggest and it's just a suggestion

093obviously i mean i'm not i don't vote on anything here but my suggestion is that that there actually should be some more study by this group to narrow down and understand better what the actual position would be what it would cost and how it can benefit the community and i'm not necessarily saying that that there is no benefit to the community but i'd like to better understand how an equity director or coordinator or whatever you want to call that person how that person actually will benefit and move these things forward in contrast to the existing staff who could be either compensated or not compensated or however you want to structure it so i just i just think that that having if having a few more meetings and trying to pin some of these things down

094is not hurtful i think 30 seconds yeah i think that is thank you you're welcome i i think that it's a benefit so and thanks for hearing me out thank you and thank you everybody for uh contributing your opinions because i think they're valuable so at this time i think we need to move into the we'll close discussion on those two items and let's move into the public hearing and budget adoption portion of our evening good okay so um we'll start with the presentation of the budget by jamie are you still with us i am with you okay by jamie um and then we'll again have some comments from the school board members and then public comment and then we will hopefully move on to the rest of it because i see that there are

095high schoolers here who are supposed to present at the next meeting and i'm aware they probably have homework as well so thank you um so jamie go ahead so this will be a quick review as we've already gone through this uh at our last meeting and there have not been any changes other than the one proposed by jay earlier i will point out to folks that the sau budget is 91 salaries and benefits because it is basically all of the management arms of the districts that's shared um so there's not a lot in the budget that doesn't have to do with personnel um that being said the bulk of the changes that you are seeing are definitely being um caused if you will by a change in salaries um we've had some changes in personnel

096that have allowed us to restore uh 12 hours a week in the accounting department which i oversee finance and accounting and specifically that 12 hours or 0.3 fte that's being restored from an earlier cut back four years ago i think um is budget neutral because of two positions that were hired at different levels than what they were projected so those two positions netted a 15 hundred and forty nine dollar uh decrease and the twelve hours that are being restored in the finance and accounting department um at point three fte that will help pick up transportation and food needs and all those special types of projects um that fall under my purview that will cost um 15 hundred and eighteen dollars so that's kind of a wash uh step changes are included and that's six thousand

097nine hundred and one dollars there are five i believe five folks who um have that available to them so that's the uh salary and benefit line breakdowns if you look through the rest of the budget itself um there's we're really holding the line and keeping it pretty flat we have we are decreasing eighteen thousand dollars in the um network admin contractual costs that's those are folks who we would normally have hired to bring in to work on our infrastructure and our hardware and all but we have our new staff member on board now um that's been handling that so we're lowering that by eighteen thousand dollars uh the copy machine interestingly enough there is a um there's a supply and demand issue because most of the copy machines i believe are probably made in asia

098they can't get new ones here to america so our copy company canon reached out to us and said if you keep your copiers another year we'll give you another year or two extension on your lease agreement we'll give you a better deal so we saved 1200 by keeping our two machines at the siu office which they're running fine there's no reason to replace them we probably would ask for you know an extension anyway but um but that's a good deal the telephone we're just adjusting to actual billing levels this may go down a little bit because we are putting in voice over internet protocol but we're not sure um you know what that will do to our lines we still do have to maintain at least one uh copper line the insurance property liability that's

099a guaranteed not to exceed number we have moved about 1800 out of the organizational dues line due to adjustments that actually occur the bills go out to the districts uh and we've added that 1200 of that up into the publications and software line and the other 600 was added to the public relations and correct and curriculum resources line um so that's really the overview any i'm sorry the whole piece to note would just be the revenue change uh in the projection of you know revenue offset which is actually surplus from this year's budget that's down five hundred and seventy dollars thank you jamie any questions from the board on this second reading of this okay any comment from the public stuart stu richards still in norwich so having lived here for such a long time

100i've seen lots of changes and some of the changes really have been not to my liking i i like the idea of diversity and you can talk a lot about diversity but unless you do something about it it doesn't amount to anything over the years what i've seen and this is more of a budgetary question than any anything else over the years what i've seen is the loss of blue-collar people i've seen the loss of native vermonters and native new hampshire people i've seen the loss of single parents they're people who just can't they can't afford to live here and what's the reason they can't afford to live here and you're talking about the school budget which is the biggest part of every town's budget so i would urge you one man's opinion i would

101urge you to be very mindful of increases in the budget wherever they wherever they come from regardless of whether it's a new mascot regardless of whether it's paying for groundswell change 65 grand regardless of whether it's adding 125 grand for a new director so i i really don't like having lost many friends who couldn't afford to live here anymore thank you thank you stuart ma'am i think you had something that was had to do with the budget before is it the last one for public comments no no okay so yeah okay i thought you had said it was a budget item so um anyone online yeah okay so i actually have a question um it sounds as if we are considering i just procedurally i'm not sure what happens next um we are considering adding

102the seven thousand dollars in addition to the two percent um i didn't hear sort of a conclusion from the equity conversation of what that might look like some of the things that i heard were trying to find money now to get some you know to help the equity work go forward but in terms of this budget um perhaps sending it to i don't know to the administration to a budget committee to the back to the equity committee to see if there's any room to have some form of money set aside for someone to do this work or someone's to do this work and i don't know it felt as if that was something that i heard and i don't want to speak for the group but i'm just trying to figure out what to do

103about that part of the discussion we know what we're doing about the first part of this discussion we i don't really know what we're doing about the second part of the discussion so then wouldn't that be an implementation question and if it gets approved or we approve it then it would go to jay and his team to figure out how to interpret our move in terms of salary and budget and all that sort of thing tom is shaking his head yeah i mean you have to approve of a dollar so we do need to if we do it tonight we need a specific dollar if you're going to approve the full budget yes i mean i think can happen i think she was going to [Laughter] i didn't mean to complicate things but i just

104want to know i want you to hopefully it's coming across i am very i i would i would like to have a good discussion for our consideration before it gets to the voters in march right something on the ballot that you know and so i think i think what would make sense because it's also i was a bit surprised to hear that maybe it would be the budget committee or somebody else doing the detailed on what the structure of this organization or admin or not the equity committee i guess which was a bit surprising to me because i would have thought that that was kind of our expert knowledge base um so because in my mind i was thinking we don't we don't have to make a decision tonight on on this and that actually

105um and i can go into the other budgets because we've had kind of first drafts of those if that's helpful short story so far early stages but double digits so uh increases so i just i want us to kind of it would help me to have more information before making a decision like this i also watched the last meeting for the equity committee in its entirety also read the minutes from previous meetings and i just feel it might be helpful for the for the committee to have a couple more meetings to have not a temporary job description or at least understanding kind of why it's at the sau level and what kind of the organizational field would be and i would love to have jay administration weigh in on how that would make sense with

106working within it's before i feel comfortable as a board member approving a position and i think i mean honest the if it's 120 or 150 i think that's frankly not as important to me which might be surprising to a lot of people because usually i wear the finance hat but i think just from a process kind of understanding who and what this person would be doing or for people um you know kind of would make a little bit more sense and i and i would have thought it would go back to the equity committee for a couple more meetings um so that we can look at it in january when we also know what is going on with the hanover budget what's going on with dresden what's going on with norwich to make an actual

107informed decision of what our tradeoffs would be because unfortunately there are a lot of really good ideas in the budget right now and i just want us to know what we're talking about right instead of just looking at one which i know there's a lot of support around the table for but if we have the time i think we have should use it so neil can you help us move forward you can't handle that kind of pressure so if it is this body's desire that we take this back to the equity committee then i can certainly do that if that's what we collectively want to do i do think that there's a a little bit of a challenge there associated with you know there may be some education that's necessary in the equity committee to

108have them fully understand the organization of our school district in order to be able to make some determinations that i personally think probably really fall into the purview of this body but if it's the will of this board for me to bring that discussion back to the equity committee i'm very happy to do that personally i will say i am extremely conflicted on this one i do think that a position is important to the district i do think that there is value to it i do think that it would address a lot of the issues that not only board members have brought up but also members of the public have brought up as well too i believe that there's this notion that um that this work only benefits a small number of folks and i

109think that's not true i think that there's benefit here for the entire student body if not the entire community from the work that we're engaging in and so i think the lens that that is being used to view the benefit of a potential position if that's how you're looking at it i think it's an accurate view of things because i do think that a lot of the points that garrett made i think a lot of points that dan and stuart and others made could be addressed by this position whether it's the sexual harassment issue or whether it's students of color whether it's students that are on ieps whether it's students of a different religious background or upbringing whether it's students that come from a different socioeconomic scale i think i mean basically if you go

110through the list that's every kid in our school system right and so i i don't this notion somehow that it's only benefiting some i think is is inaccurate um i am worried about the budgets though yeah right and so that that is where my conflict lies not in the notion that this work isn't important or that it doesn't need to be done or that it wouldn't benefit from a coordinator it's the ability to pay for it and and move forward on it so sorry no that's that's fine and i think you probably sum up the the trade-off for a lot of people sitting at this at this table um i am wondering does it make sense to instead of turning it to the equity committee to have it go to the principals and the nj

111and jamie and have them talk about what might be possible or what sort of structure would work best and then come back i mean because because as tom said we can't really vote on anything if we don't know what the cost is especially when it comes to the adoption of this budget today so then could we craft a motion to direct the administration and the finance committee to craft specific numbers for us jonathan so i think it sounds like we are looking to have this group um either okay or not okay the idea of this position to be further researched and i think it sounds like it's not just an equity committee job it sounds like it should be a blend and i can't believe i'm saying this but it sounds like another committee should

112be created that should be a couple of equity committee members a couple of administrators whoever that mix is that can come up with what the position should look like and then from there working with jamie and jay and figure out what the numbers look like that's what i'm hearing um and i have been wrong before and i probably will be again but that's kind of how i'm seeing this that it sounds like it should be moved forward to further research the position okay tommy had your hand up there now uh no i was just going to suggest too i mean i think it certainly needs to be equity committee membership uh involved in this because they're the ones who've been doing the most research i'd also be interested in hearing you know what our options

113are too because just going straight to a senior level administrator in the sau is concerning to me for a few reasons cost as well as how that person fits into the school district and we've heard that other districts have this type of position but i don't know how that position works in those school districts or how that would uh you know relate to our school district no no district is the same so i'd be interested in seeing that from this whatever group brings us together but i do think it's going to have to be a combination of yeah administration and uh equity committee recommendations yeah i would like more than so so i will put it back so being that we have an equity committee meeting sorry an equity committee that does include at least

114two three members of administration if it makes sense just to bring it back to the equity committee okay so it looks like i need a motion for that no no i don't so that we are just having a charge that this question goes back for specifics about the equity yeah we brought forward a recommendation and you're sending it back to the committee so all right bring it back to the committee great do i recommend bringing the other inviting the other principles to this particular meeting so they can yeah we can look into and inviting folks in that the equity committee might want to you know be able to ask questions of and talk to and work through this so we can make sure that that happens okay okay okay great so now it feels as

115if comment on the budget is over do i have a motion for the adoption of the 2022-23 budget rick to approve the 2022-2023 sau 70 budget in the amount of 2 million eighty-six thousand one hundred and ninety-five dollars as presented with a resulting district assessment total of two thousand there are two million nine thousand and eleven dollars a second i guess i can't ask the question do we have to add in the seven thousand dollars i was going to offer an amendment thank you i would love an amendment from your neil we amend the motion that it be um two million ninety four thousand hundred and eighty five dollars good mental math resulting in district assessment total i believe that would also increased by 7 000 am i correct jamie yes thank you jamie i

116wow thank you for thinking that my math was good but tom pointed out that my math was inaccurate okay my amendment is two million i mean three thousand one hundred and ninety five dollars thank you tomorrow yeah i was trying to squeeze in another thousand for myself [Laughter] and then sorry jamie is the uh does the assessment go up as well by seven yes okay with the resulting then and then my amendment also includes then modifying that uh assessment total to 2 million 11. i like the teamwork at this board meeting today rick's been keeping me timed and yeah um okay so my my proposed amendment would need a second yes so i'm looking for a second for the amendment tom okay we can vote i'm starting with jonathan because you've always spoken first you

117would call to see if there's any discussions sorry sorry sorry i'm trying to move this forward no that's okay is there any discussion of the amendment all the numbers wow okay so we may vote and we may vote by raising your hand yeah we have all opposed any abstentions the motion and the amendment the amendment of the amendment now you have to vote on the amended motion okay now i have to vote on the amended motion holy shimoli all in favor all opposed any abstentions i need to go to more council meetings um okay thank you guys so much i will try to shorten the rest of this report rick um at this point we are at item number five public comment on anything that has not already been discussed if it has already been

118discussed oh sorry thank you i have to officially close the public hearing which we never really officially opened so yeah we sort of did um so can i have a move to officially close the public hearings thank you deborah and a second thank you ben all in favor all opposed any abstentions the motion passes we are officially out of our public hearing and budget adoption session we are now moving into public comment at this point anyone has a point to address the board on anything that hasn't already been covered um if you have any questions about things that have already been covered please just send me an email at this point in time thank you go right ahead and thank you for your [Music] i have patience kids in the school district and i'm a

119molecular biologist with two decades of experience cloning genes using pcr i can read the scientific literature on various topics and understand it i could talk about why pcr cannot be used to assess a person's infectiousness but i want to talk about mass i've been patiently waiting for some common sense to come back to our schools regarding mask wearing i brought a review of scientific report of harms caused by face masks even without looking at a single study it makes total sense to me that impairing someone's breathing and providing a breeding ground for microbes in front of their face is a bad idea back in july hhs principal mr stevenson wrote please enter your child scope in 19 vaccination information this this will allow us to assess new covet protocols the vaccination rate among hhs students

120is 92.5 and for staff it is 97 how high would be high enough to loosen the protocols and make mass optional and in august superintendent adams wrote mask will be required of all students and staff inside buildings for the first two weeks of school the committee will then reassess however it looks like sau 70 is receiving grant money to keep the children masked so it remains to be clarified whether or not you have the freedom to do so no one in new hampshire in the age group zero to 19 has died from probate 19. why think he can't grant the authority to make medical choices by what right do you have such an arbitrary and fraud medical policies this mass policy is harming children and you should be held personally responsible mandating anything under an

121eua is against the law and some parents have sued their sau and won over this and i got to add um just for those who are planning on having their children injected with a product manufactured by convicted balance and for which they have no liability i would suggest reconsidering and if you want to pat yourself on the back and think that the measures are working because there are no in-store transmission and you think this is as contagious as the spanish blue 30 seconds there's a study on the cdc's website that shows that two different military u.s military locations tried to show transmission of spanish flu and they were unable to do so thank you for your comment and thank you for your patience any other items from the public yeah if you want to leave

122that in for the information with me i can i'll look at it okay great thank you um thank you so much anything online okay we are now to item number six business requiring action i am looking for a motion to approve items being received by consent jonathan to improve items b ends bnc by consent kim it's a second all in favor all opposed any abstentions it passes thank you so much we are now into reports and communications um report of the chair i'm going to be quick um thank you all so much for being here thank you for the public coming and thank you to the board i know this was a very long meeting it's been i'm sorry about that um i also just want to say um a shout out for something that

123i've seen in the schools last week i am the school board member that gets to go to the high school council meetings and i have been learning a lot from them i plan to incorporate some of the things that they have taught me but one thing i want to say is i was especially moved during last week's meeting when the mascot committee stood up and talked about what they have learned from the process of the mascot debate and the mascot motions and the mascot voting and i was extremely impressed at how humbly they admitted they had learned a lot and that they humbly asked for a chance to do it again learning from their mistakes and i just i was incredibly impressed with their poise and their ability to sort of say a maya culpa

124in front of their peers so i just really wanted to give a shout out in particular to the hanover high school mascot committee because it has not been an easy task for them and i feel that they have handled it with grace and poise and with that i will turn it over to the assistant superintendent robin hello everyone a few things to talk about tonight as you all know we have had some increases in our copic cases and many of these have been identified for our surveillance testing so we were able to do the surveillance testing early this week which will help us to hopefully bring all the kids from marrying cross back to school on friday during this week as well we have been approved for the test to stay program so we will

125be able to put that in place we've set up the protocols for that over the past few days and have looked at you know ways that we can implement it successfully in the school and i think actually going through this um these waves of the surveillance testing is helping us tremendously in moving toward that test to stay program so that's the big news on the copic front and we are continuing to see again increases in the community which is not helping us in terms of moving toward removing mass in the schools we do have high vaccination rates they continue to increase with our younger students being able to be vaccinated now so that will help us unfortunately we are not seeing um really high numbers of symptomatic cases so that's also good news on our

126childhood front um in terms of the math programs we have been working as you know on a new math program and we have narrowed it down to illustrative math this is primarily an online program the resources are are free they go with the program but we would need to incur costs in professional development and in resources materials for teachers and for students so i've been working with the company to gather lists of um what the cost will be it looks like it would be about fifty thousand dollars right now to approve for north for the marion cross school and for the race school that's all together and that would be with the highest level of professional development that we could receive it's about twenty thousand dollars so um i'm continuing to work on that and

127to survey and inventory the materials that we already have because i don't want to repurchase items that you would have anyway so i just want to update you on that the curriculum work is continuing we've had some bumps now with the covid situation but i do have i had to cancel one today for marrying cross teachers and then tomorrow we will have the high school english department will be together at the howe library and then on thursday i'll have the second grade teachers from mary across so i just wanted to give you a little update on those areas any questions for robin ben do you anticipate asking parents to report their child's vaccination status for the under calls yes we've done that at all the schools thus far so yeah i don't think i've gotten

128that information no we haven't sent anything out yet we'll probably wait until later when we have higher numbers that are able to be vaccinated because we'll have to wait until the full vaccination too so but we will be sending something out about that yeah kevin you said the math curriculum would be an illustrative math program that's online does that mean the resources are online yeah education itself would be on the resources are all online for teachers to access the students won't have to do it online no no the materials are online okay thank you so it does mean it's a less expensive program for us too with the jobs and so the fifty thousand dollars would that be next year this budget that we'd be approving now yes but we have not put that in

129the budget yet because we've been working through the process of trying to figure out which program to consider and now i'm gathering all that information about that cost so i've been trying to do it as quickly as possible but you know and you anticipated so that would go into the end of it hannover dresden college budget right and i just had a question the return um program which the name of which i'm totally spacing all of a sudden is that going to be in all four schools the test discovery the test to stay programmed to say no that is a vermont program it's a vermont and it's different because as you all know you know in dealing with the covet situations that we've been facing the requirements in vermont are different from the requirements by

130new hampshire so that is an added element for our vermont schools so that we don't have to foreign as many students will have the option of bringing students back in and providing them with an antigen test and then they would be able to go into school so they'll still have to quarantine outside of school but they'll be able to continue attending school as long as on a daily basis their antigen test is negative so it will help us to prevent kids from having to be in and out of stuff thank you you're welcome okay jay you're up all right i'm going to um thank you very much robin i'm going to ask the board to count this report as my dresden report as well and uh and truthfully the conversations we've been having lately um

131nationally and locally it can be quite contentious at times and the um sense in each of the buildings right now is is one of i would say uh pretty high stress and an anxiety i'd even use that word this year in in many ways is as difficult if not more difficult than last year and we're seeing a lot of challenges in our buildings around issues like coverage when teachers are out and and and part of that is simply because we're being careful and we're following protocols and teachers are being asked that all of our staff are being asked to stay home when they're ill just like our kids are and it's it's really stretching our system and so there's there's that there's political discord with the passage of of the budget bill in new hampshire

132and and the subsequent posting very recently on the doe website of the reporting reporting protocol for divisive concepts there's there's that anxiety out there as well and then all that sort of political ranker that has decided to settle in schools and school board meetings is just it's just always there and for us here i think it's really important to take a collective deep breath and be grateful with thanksgiving around the corner as corny as it may sound i wanted to just express my own gratitude but i urge all of us to take a deep breath and and think like just before march of we we were all so i was i've always been grateful i came here as a final resting place [Laughter] this place is paradise to me um and and i refuse to

133let all these these matters of conflict ruin my paradise um i love it here and and i love it for so many different reasons i love working here it's interesting even the little conversation we had about erie brought me a little bit of a twitch because of the conflict that i had there but in this time of stress and anxiety and frustration and political discord whether it's the pandemic or all the other stuff associated with whatever it is i i'm so thankful to live here and thankful for the meaningful work that i'm blessed to have and that you've entrusted me with and and i hope we all are i hope we all take the time to like just take a deep breath and and say you know what wow we're lucky um i'm really really

134privileged to work with the the board members administrators all of our teachers and support staff that we work with and to serve the kids and families we do who so strongly support education that's something else that i craved in my my previous life and and that that's something you you don't get everywhere and when you watch these news clips of places where there are fights breaking out at board meetings and um and problems that that simply don't exist here um that's we're all really privileged to to have that and to to to not have those things but it forces us i think to also be mindful that that's not the way it is everywhere else um that's that's really all i wanted to say i i i hope that we can we can channel that

135remember that and hold that gratitude as we move through all the difficult decisions we have to make um with regard to budget and some of these policies that that sort of uh bring forth some disagreement within the community we're right now negotiating contracts which should be really a collegial business proposition and not a source of conflict i just hope that we can get back to that notion of of what it's like to be here in upper valley and to be in a community that is interdependent and and caring and we really really need to strive to reach back and get that and uh that's my reward thank you jay jamie you're next do you have anything else for us i have nothing else to add thank you um so i don't we have no reason

136for non-public correct not an sau yeah so we have no reason for non-public so we are now on to adjournment um if you have any agenda topics for the next meeting please shoot me an email um i just want to say i know this was a long meeting but i really appreciate how engaged people were and how many people spoke up and i'm trying to balance the need to hear from people and the need to be respectful of people's time and i haven't quite hit the sweet spot yet so thank you for tolerating me until i get there but i appreciate it and i am looking to a motion to adjourn neil i saw you first moved to a journey with recognition at the chair did a wonderful job thank you guys um so our

137next meeting oh do we have to vote no yeah we have to vote everybody is all in favor of return thank you oh no abstention's good we are adjourned to our next meeting our next sau meeting is tuesday march 15th but there's some budget stuff before that so i'll get a correction to that to the rep somehow and um hi rick and i owe you a six-pack or something okay that would be irresponsible for me to give you okay and