Norwich School Board 20211006

001[Music] hi robin hello how are you i think i'm okay how are you bye i'm still part of me is still in me were you on vacation i was there for work which was super common um but it was an intense eight days of living together with all these people that are on this project together and so i'm not quite i haven't quite adjusted to like living with civilians [Music] speculating [Music] hello [Music] fortunately [Music] that makes you wondering yes okay can we just start at any point yeah all right great thank you uh i'd like to call the order the regular march school board meeting of october 6 [Music] this is the time for a public uh comment on anything that is not currently on the agenda season [Music] if anyone does have any

002questions or comments at this time i'd also like to point people to board docs where we have posted the method of publish participation and board meetings um policy which is saying we have there and their nice connections that tracks with the way we normally run these meetings but are there any questions either in person or comments excuse me in person or online at this point in time and if it's online please raise your hand your zoom hand and all of that but we do have a uh in-person contour so please uh name and uh so um stuart richards 82 ohm street and i i'd like to comment on uh greg mcnatto's letter to parents i my take on it is that it's not only he'll advise and unwise but perhaps also illegal i'm not sure

003i could do some research to comment further on that the things i object to in section one it appears to be a local horrendous it appears that the parents are being cut out of this equation i'd like the book to be i'd love to be informed that that was wrong and that they were not being cut out of equation the second point that uh that i'd like to make is related to the use of the bathrooms i i feel strongly that it is the age that we're talking about is up to what 12 12 years old plus or minus possible so you know to have boys and girls in the same bathroom and or and i don't know if you're going to be doing this competing on the same playing fields to me is just

004simply wrong i feel strongly that that my granddaughter want to compete against girls and that she should not be displaced by by somebody who is physically more able because of their gender regardless of what the declared gender is so and i feel also strongly that it's wrong to have genitalia perhaps in evidence in restrooms at that age or any age for that matter there's no reason for that and i say all this without any ill feelings directed towards those transgender people who who have things hard enough you know they've got a difficult a very difficult road and i i certainly don't want to make it any harder for them but neither do i want to place at a disadvantage or or see girls put in a position that they shouldn't biologically be put it so

005thanks for hearing me out appreciate it okay hopefully you'll take money on my comments well i'm not this isn't time for debate but thank you for continuing that i will back up with the provides of context to people who are listening and this is a letter from coordinator student services great bagnato that was sent home with regard to uh fostering understanding of gender identity within the school community we are a different opinion uh stewart but uh i'll also point out that uh this is not necessary this is guidance that uh the school is providing to follow a state law um is my understanding and i think that's correct because sean agrees with that so this is a guidance for this whole community based upon state law too so that is just to provide the context

006there are there any other questions or comments at this point in time okay not seeing any we'll move down our agenda list here and the first item up is the pto report the report is attached to board docs there and uh let's stephanie has joined us online so richard if you could allow stephanie hamilton to speak and the attendees yeah that'd be fine or you could just allowed hi stephanie sorry my dogs are barking and hopefully they will stop [Laughter] and when one starts the other one starts anyway um happy october everybody um so we had a pretty good september at the pto um we had our uh you know uh directory drive which raises um the most money for the pto grants and it was pretty successful this year was four thousand dollars over

007that raised so thanks to jessica eakin for working really hard on that um and reaching out to as many families as possible to get them into the directory um and then we had our first meeting which was pretty well attended and outside as well as the new parent night can you guys hear me or do you hear dogs we hear you it's fine thank you come here come here um so that was i thought the new parent night sean can um talk about this as well but i thought that was pretty well attended and pretty good bernadette come here come on come on um the ups truck um so that was good and then um oh we had our uh mcs fall um sale and uh lucy rozenski is new to the school and new

008to the spirit wear store and she did a really great job it was our best um storage sale so far so that was pretty cool and we got new the pto gifted um shirts to all the new staff so i thought that was fun too um let me see what else do we have here um we are up on our corporate partnerships so that's pretty good we're up to 13 and last year we had 10 so that's pretty hard work on jenny barbour's part so thank you jenny and then today we had bike to school day which i thought went really really well we're sticking to the train as opposed to going down main street and i guess i've never done the one that's down main street but i guess the train there's a lot

009less accidents and it's um just better for everybody involved and it seemed a lot of fun um kids that when i was there seem to be having a really good time so there's that um we opened our halloween collecting for halloween candy if anybody sees one of the orange boxes around and wants to put candy in it that would be awesome and this year we'll be able to put them back kind of to the places they were as opposed to outside last year which was that was creative um so there's that and then our um grants are open and they'll be closed on the um 15th with decisions by the fifth so i'm looking forward to reviewing those and hopefully getting some good um grant requests that's pretty much it any questions thank you stephanie

010thanks as always for all the great work of the pto uh just with regard to the grants that those are open to anyone uh applying or any community member teacher staff members right yeah yes they're on the link is on the website under the grant tab um preference is given to grants that support um the most students so like you know k pre-k through six those are preference but it can be a grade or even class specific need um so yeah and it can be students teachers like any any parent anybody that that um has an interest in mcs excellent well thank you again any questions thanks again stephanie you're welcome moving down our agenda we are entering into business requiring discussion and the first item up is enrollment as of october 1. i know

011uh this in this principles report too but if you wouldn't mind addressing this now as we do annually at this time that would be great sure so currently as of today we have 311 students enrolled pre-k is full with 18. kindergarten has 42 first grade has 32 second grade has 42 third grade is 43 fourth grade is 40 fifth is 49 and sixth grade is 45. we have three teachers in each section with the exception of first grade has two sections and pre-k has one and that was pretty much how we entered the school year with much higher than what we budgeted before it is we're down for what we entered with we have some [Music] yeah um not specifically related to this but kind of related so we had talked before about the actual

012capacity of the building for students and i don't know if i could maybe if we could pop that back under the radar it's been a conversation that's happened to come up a couple of times at the child care committee through the select board it might be good if we give some thought to what you know what what we think that number could could be do we want to clarify questions do we want the capacity to so there's a capacity that the building is waiting for and tony's giving me that just right number like almost 500 and then there's a capacity that's reasonable do you want both um yeah i mean because the first one is probably easy to guess right it's the second one that's a little bit more important and i think if you

013take into account sort of our class size recommendations and then the actual just physical space of the building how would that work out and then also if you think about you know the flow of kids during the day and these are the hall spaces and the gymnasium and and you know all of that what would be a number i guess that you know in your opinion would be sort of the max or the upper limit of what we would want to do here i can do that any other questions yes and this is directly related to what name just asked i know i brought this up [Music] if before this point when we're looking at capacity would it make sense to contemplate what the space would look like if we sent sixth grade to rms

014um which there may or may not be enough support from the community to do so but if we did would that be a viable um forward-looking question thank you and again i think that will be part of our obviously strategic plans we talked about earlier i think though so maybe this is i'm sure that you would do but i guess look at just a number of classrooms based upon the higher end of our class sizes because i assume that 500 is people in the gym at the same time as classroom skills other questions all right not seeing anything [Music] wondering if you could provide a prospective historical perspective as to what has historically been the enrollment at the mcs and i know at one time we had a much greater goal but i don't know

015what the number is but perhaps yes we do and actually you couldn't even look at last year's budget documents because we go back about 10 years in the budget documents uh as well i confess that i haven't researched that's fine it's online uh i could probably send the link later if you send me a reminder you know okay do you can you just without taking up those trials just give us a couple of those we don't have them available right now oh okay they're in the documentation too 64 carpenter street also a fifth grade teacher here is a the news of the potential of moving sixth grade to the richmond middle school i know you're addressing this as a capacity question it sounds right now but i'm curious where else this has been and then

016you're talking about bringing it up in other places but um so it hasn't gone anywhere at this point we are starting a strategic planning process right now and then as part of that strategic planning process where this is a consideration this would be a topic for that process which would include uh community forum and other discussions throughout the schools and across the district too okay and there have been close to 400 students here about 18 years ago [Music] i think i was addressing that sorry i think one of the things the just listening to all these meetings i think part of it came up with regards to hanover doing all the recalculations if you recall they were recalculating the sixth grade math on how it was built back to norwich and i think that kind

017of was part of the conversation and what happened if we brought norwich kids over there yeah sixth grade math builder correct billy and said norwich remember that i think that was kind of where this got a little bit percolated too right with regards to the building right because i never had that big analysis so anyway that was i think also where this got a little bit started over there so an rms other questions we do have uh allison linton um richard if you could uh promote collaboration um hi i don't really know how to turn my video off on on in a situation like this um you can admire me and my birds um my name is allison litton i am a president of wilder but i teach french at marion cross and one thing

018i just want to mention with respect to class size is that we do have some sections based on the way the schedule has worked out this year that are pushed the limit of our um recommended class size i have a because of the schedule for every one of the grade levels that has three classes we've had divide those into two bigger groups um and so i have a for example i have 22 kindergartners in a class and 24 5th graders and so as we think about this idea of enrollment and class size um it's the specials who are affected by these larger groups and so i don't want that to be left out of the conversation um as we go through this and i understand that this is an extreme year with sort of last-minute

019editions of um sections for basically each grade but i think that's an important thing to take into consideration that we do have some areas in which students are either pushing the limit or exceeding the limit of what we would consider our ideal class size so just to throw that into the mix thanks thank you awesomeness thanks for the context there too that is important um other questions at this time not seeing any i'll move down our agenda list uh next up is a discussion with the sba resolutions this is the the law school board association resolutions that are considered annually uh usually at an in-person conference but this year given current circumstances will be a zoom uh annual meeting on november 4th in board docs we have links to the proposed resolutions with backup materials

020for all those including video report of the resolutions committee of the school board association and some other uh background information as well as proposed the sba's bylaws and neil who is close to the action with regards to all of this has offered to give us a quick overview of what we're looking at here i will note for uh board members already know but for the public as well this is something that we will vote on once we get to business requiring action as with regard to um whether we agree with the resolutions kennedy's thoughts on moving forward with the resolutions as proposed to the vspa that will be considered at that annual meeting as well as the changes to the vspa violence take it away take it away um so i'll try to be as

021brief as possible this year we have six resolutions three that were submitted by member school boards and then three that came from the usba resolutions committee the first one from addison northwest school district is in reference to the school district financial software system board members may not be as familiar with this but if you have somebody like jamie the implementation of that system has been a bit of a nightmare for a lot of school districts and so there was a resolution that was brought forward by addison northwest that we advocate that we basically abandon that effort that was met with a lot of enthusiasm from the folks that are on the committee and so the vsba board is recommending a pass on that resolution you'll see that the language there for the board recommendations has

022passed as a regular resolution i'm going to get to that a little bit later because there was a whole process that we went through this year to try to make sure that we were approving resolutions appropriately according to the bylaws but i'll get to there in a second the second one came from the otter valley school district and that was a recommendation related to independent schools that all public funding you know goes and is used appropriately with equal and equitable opportunities and admission programs and practices so if your public dollars are going to a private institution and we want to make sure that those dollars come with the appropriate strings attached um i don't know if you want me to pause going through each one of these if programmers have comments or questions if you

023want to yeah any questions actually if any board learners have questions just raise your hand or speak [Music] there's only six yeah i will also say that when it comes to independent schools and religious schools those two items are a hot topic currently given that we do have some court cases at the moment related to both of those things in vermont so public dollars following both private and religious schools um i skimmed through this and i didn't quite process that point i didn't know the court cases but one question i did have was will this in real terms affect the way that the dollars for the students needing special services will be assessed no no okay no thank you yep um the third one um actually originated from burlington school district but um was with

024the cooperation of eight other boards and it is related to the weighting study and that one is that the sba association fully supports the findings that is presented in the future weight infections report um from december of and furthermore the vsa request the legislature thoughtfully and expeditiously establish an implementation plan for reports recommendations you'll see the other member school districts that were part of this resolution proposal and the vsba board is recommending it passes on this one as well i don't know if you want to pause here um the implications for norwich are a little bit different yeah i think it would be good to follow briefly as this has been the topic of conversation for us since the study was released a year and a half two years ago and that they're in the

025middle of the review now with recommendations around december i believe that will then go to the legislature for consideration during the next term for implementation yeah so there is a by state statute there's a task force that was created at the end of the last legislative session it's a group of legislators looking at the waiting study and then basically trying to figure out how to implement it um and part of their work um through statute they are to come back with some proposed bill language but start the next legislative session related to this so um i the work is still ongoing at this moment i have not seen any draft language of any builds yet i think they're still trying to work through some of the trying to establish the groundwork getting everybody up to

026speed on what this asking some questions getting some answers um before they you know dive into that second half of the world and see that it's right there um the implications you note for norwich which we've also been discussing and discussed with uh representatives uh national management we are pretty significant based upon initial calculations with uh tax increases that were you know passed in the original form as much as 50 plus cents on the doll um so you know i i think obviously looking at waiting of the study is certainly something that needs to be done but i think at least i read into this thoughtfully expeditiously and hopefully that thoughtfully expeditiously can consider uh what the effects will be across the board and how that gets implemented think that we've uh to be able

027to talk with our colleagues at the sba about uh how that would have an effect on atmosphere and other districts as well so i guess at the end we were voting on this so obviously my guess is is that veronica came out in a very positive way based on the way study if i go back and look at the data and um so that day i mean we wouldn't we would just say no to voting on this right like we would just is that what happens in this meeting we actually vote this we would we will vote as a board as to whether or not we um uh follow along with the recommendations right but so the question is if we vote no it means we're saying that we disagree we disagree with their recommendation

028suspiciously and i think uh yes i mean i think that's how i i'm personally reading into that that um the thoughtful and expeditious implementation will be one of these thoughtful and expeditious across the board for all of the school districts whether or not they're it's impacting uh very differently in terms of move forward there this my opinion is that the reading is something that needs to be reviewed it doesn't have much behind it as was stated in the study um that was released earlier but yes that is what it would be essentially saying we agree with the languages written here to move towards a regular resolution and just so to comment on fair point um i don't know i would have to go back and take a look at these but i believe not all

029the school districts that you see here that have jumped on board with this might necessarily see a a favorable outcome in terms of taxing capacity so there are some school districts out there that find themselves in a unique position where some some member disc so if you look at the supervisory union level some member districts may actually look at some additional taxing capacity coming from this and other districts are looking at you know their taxing capacity going down so at the end of the day at the supervisor union level it can be a little bit of a wash for those but they've got member districts that are falling on one side or the other of this and so it's not it's not a clear cut case to say that every district that supports an expeditious

030implementation of this sees a favorable taxing capacity out of this there are some nuanced scenarios associated with all of this that don't make it that clear-cut we're standing from the german gem report was is that the study itself even was going to be re-evaluated possibly at least right there that is not my understanding so my understanding is the the study that was done back in 2019 um was was rather comprehensive and there was a lot of data and a lot of thought put behind the proposed new weights um and i think one of the things that we found from everybody that's involved whether what i've heard but from school districts whether or not they were sort of adversely impacted by the proposed new tax rate or favored within your tax rate everyone came to the

031agreement that a the existing weights were not based on any empirical data whatsoever they were just sort of fabricated at the time that they were brought into play and b the weights that are being proposed more accurately represent the true cost of educating kids in these different categories and so i haven't met a single person yet who thinks the study is flawed everybody thinks that the study was pretty much thought on accurate i think the the issue for a lot of folks is the implementation of it because of towns like norwich that we're going to see a potential um you know significant tax rate increase and how do you introduce that you know because we i think a lot of folks know and what i've heard going on task force is if norwich were to

032hit with it all at once that's going to be a real big shock to the system and probably not going to work and so part of the effort that the task force is engaged in is trying to figure out for those districts that are going to see their tax rate potentially go up how do you phase in that or how do you you know how do you introduce that and and not just break the system for those towns and again i thought that i heard from them that yeah i mean there there's equality and there's equality right so there's a point at which like it's a nice thing for vermont to think that they're going to do what they're doing but there is a point when that also is not realistic so that's what i

033heard from jim and gentlemen there will be certain people that just leave town yes i mean you know there that certainly is weekend possible it's a nice outcome to try to you know have equality across the state but there is a reality in life all right any more questions on the the study or this resolution yes that's the third one and then tom just to clarify so in case folks are confused the way that this works is that um every member district that is a member of the vsda so that they paid their dues they're allowed one vote at the annual meeting for these resolutions so uh you know what we try to do tonight is to figure out who how our voting delegate is going to cast their vote for each of these resolutions

034at the end i'm sorry i missed did you explain what a continuing resolution was i haven't gotten there yet um move on then i think we can move on we may want to consider later whether we vote individually or high school yeah so the next one that actually came from the vsda resolutions committee and as related to funding of independent school kindergarten and after school programs and similar to the previous one related to the use of public dollars um basically what you see here is is the recommended changes rather than me reading them if there are no questions on that one then the next one from the resolutions committee is in regards to equity and anti-racism you can see the language in that resolution there also recommended as a path okay and then the last

035one um appointments unified boards uh for norwich you probably wouldn't be familiar with this issue at all this is particularly just a handful of towns across the state and we're trying to get things set up appropriately so that folks understand who's responsible for appointments for vacancies when they occur so those are the six resolutions that will be voted on at the annual meeting okay just pause again for any questions here and then maybe move on to the dialogue i'm going to move on first to the other so if you take a look in the document the second link right after the first one or sorry the one that we were just looking at for resolutions actually references the complete slate of resolutions for 2021-22 according to our bylaws vsba we were supposed to when voting

036on a resolution um vote as to whether or not it was a regular resolution there's called a resolution or a continuing resolution continuing resolutions were intended to remain on the books indefinitely until changed at the future you know at a future meeting or deleted uh regular resolutions were intended to only stick around for one year so trying to to determine and distinguish between um you know items that are sort of a perennial issue that come up year after year after year and we wanted guidance on there that remain in the book so they called those continuing resolutions we realized that over the past recent years we have not been voting on the resolutions that way and so i asked the resolutions committee to go through take a look at all of the existing resolutions that

037we had on there because we were essentially treating everything as a continuing resolution i said try to figure out which ones you think are continuing which ones were regular resolutions and will vote on those changes so what you see in that second document i think are the ones that are all marked with an asterisk are the ones that are recommended as a regular resolution so what we will do is if it if approved those resolutions will remain on the list for the next year and then the following meeting come you know october november of 2022 we would either need the the membership would either need the votes to continue that resolution to amend it um or if they do neither of those things then it will just fall off the books so this is a

038one a one-time effort to try to get the existing resolutions all into the right state okay can i go back i'm sorry my brain is still um at a work retreat that i just came off of um can we go back to proposing number six which is about according to unified boards so the way i read this is that if one of us were to leave we would not have what happened so i can i'm not didn't mean to cut you off this doesn't apply to our board okay perfect we are not uh we are not a unified board i didn't think so um but so then do we even do you vote anyway because it doesn't apply to i mean how does that work uh so basically what we're what we do at the

039annual meeting is vote on resolutions those resolutions then become right um that document that you showed us right which is what the vsda uses for admins gotcha okay so we're in this case we would be informing on something that doesn't really apply to us nope but if you agree with your friends um that you do have an impact related to this i'm sure somebody will speak to it at the annual meeting okay so i guess then that begs a question that i have which i don't think this is the time to have the discussion but having watched the hanover board replace a member at their last meeting i'm curious about how that would happen for us because if it doesn't happen does it happen this i don't want to have that discussion right now that

040i would like to have that discussion at a board meeting at some point like if we do have vacancies i have no idea how those get filled do we have to interview people and vote in person just like the hand of report did even though we're vermont we do i stay with hope in my voice that we do not have to do it that way uh we do accept obligations we do interview people um and then we vote in front of them i i found that uncomfortable and i shouldn't but it is okay thank you uh are there questions with regards to general definitions of those opinions or anything on those six okay did you want to address the bible yeah try to do this quickly the article four dues we have just recently completed

041a transition we changed the dues structure over the last couple of years and but that phasing in of the new zoo structure is complete so we're just changing the language in the biological reflect that that work is not done and that that's why we're striking the language in there the second issue for us though is that there was a stipulation in there that the percentage increase of the vsda budget could not exceed the annual percentage increase in education spending in vermont so what we found from year to year that could have a pretty significant impact on the sba budget most recently we had had discussions as to whether or not we wanted to hire an additional staff member the workload over the past year has been pretty significant and we were wondering if we could

042you know add another person to staff um but when taking a look at the budget and then what the the annual increase was in education spending in vermont i think that number was rather low this year and it wouldn't have provided us the flexibility to be able to hire an additional staff member because our bylaws say that essentially our budget is capped at that we recognize that making sure that we handle vsda funds is important to membership because that's how we get our money is through dues that members pay but we also wanted to see if we could come up with some language that would allow us a little bit more flexibility in the budgeting aspect of this so we tried to split the difference here recognizing that um we want to keep a sharp

043eye on finances and not um you know put an undue burden on membership but also trying to relieve us from what we thought was a rather strict um cap on on spending for vspa so the languages you see here tries to split the difference there the next one related to when do's need to be paid and we just set a fixed date rather than a number of days after the invoice being sent out because sometimes the invoices all didn't go out on the same day the next one board of directors we're just striking the language that was there because it was also included in a later section but had slightly different wording so we just wanted to remove it here and have it appear only once in the document so that it was consistent proper

044system duties this is where that new language will seem elections and turns um it was a little confusing for some folks as to how the president the vice president and the executive committee were elected so we tried to clear that up in this language regional organization is complete we reorganize all of the regions for the sba so that work is now done so we're just checking that language that's there um there was uh one item in here too about regional representatives saying that no person served more than five consecutive elected years in same office in practice we have never enforced that so we just decided to strike the language in there fiscal year we recently just finalized changing the sda's fiscal year so that now aligns with the school calendar that work is done so

045we are changing just directly the language there the the bylaws also said that officers and staff needed to be bonded um added an offset by the board in practice the board was not setting that amount because it was set through our insurance agency um so we wanted to strike the language there so it actually represents what we're actually doing in practice i think that was it questions okay yes sorry a simple question the bylaw changes the representative will also be voting thank you other questions if none and then our agenda here to uh policy requiring discussion uh the first of which you've seen before there's a delegation of authority policy related to uh our continued uh time in program 19 and the delegation of authority to the superintendent which we have already passed at the

046other awards and this is uh because we have not had opportunities so here on norwich we're seeing this uh policy here and then we'll vote on it in the action items do any board members have questions or yes kelly mrs that i take responsibility for not catching properly in sau the very last phrase that was added at the essay you're meeting by someone in absentia doesn't make sense to me when i read it either needs a connector to the sentence before it or at the end of the 2021-2022 school year seems disjointed to me and i don't see what we would miss if we simply struck that yes we're able to make those sorts of uh editorial changes without board action so we can take care of that i've noted it are there questions yeah

047so we're saying we're going to strike that because i thought we put it in there just so that it was clear that this if it's not an honor to to borrow the language from the sba it's not a continuing wrestler it is a continuing resolution it's not to forget but there's an ore so it's sort of like it will end in any of those in any in any of those situations and then if we need it again next year we would just do it again which implies that we won't um need to take any action if the pandemic is over but that seems a little bit murky to me that we're not actually voting to say it is valid am i reading that right i think this could just use some editorial not striking necessarily

048editorial commentary that would just say if not if we're not out of the imminent danger to the students and staff investigation before at the end of the school year then we'll reconsider the end of the academic year yes sure and i was really going to simply um take that that standalone inappropriate sentence fragment at the end and turn that into a comma yeah it just means that we're not giving jay this power for forever [Music] christmas yeah exactly sorry other questions and the other policy that we have here for consideration which has also been considered across the river uh is with regards to staff conduct uh policy gb eb uh was written for the state of new hampshire originally i'm saying actually so i think uh that needs to be changed obviously but the rest

049of it does anyone have any questions i do believe we had our legal counsel review the rest and provide us with the video i haven't gotten feedback from him yet okay i sent it to him and still haven't received an answer so okay so this the vsa is what we put in for a confirmation right so we will have an opportunity to get confirmation on that from the council before we vote on it at the next meeting but this is considered the first read of this uh policy which we have like i said some across questions or kelly or jay as anything i'm sorry i keep forgetting who's on the sau policy committee are you on the policy company i'm sorry we're not so gary yes i mean you've already addressed this uh president meetings

050but is there anything you want to delay about this policy here i don't know that there's anything more that changes with one election no uh this tip this evening on the uh on the policy delegation of authority but not until next meeting assuming we get real council confirmation on the staff contract policy all right so i'll check the zoom make sure there's no questions there we're not seeing any we'll move down our list and next up is the facilities update and i do see director of facilities tony daigle online with this this evening currently muted but uh tony whenever you're ready to speak uh i'm happy to turn over the facilities update to you okay um i didn't know i was giving a what part of the facilities am i updating the home i thought

051i was going to speak about this excuse me i thought i was going to speak about the trail we were building that is correct we have that in our documentation the only other thing tony is the uh is the test pits which we did reference uh okay so i'll give you i can give an update on that where we are with that um right now currently we did do some test pits out at the dresden fields roughly 15 of them and uh we have a consultant lincoln applied working on the calculations of what a leech field system could possibly take at that site we haven't we don't have that data yet but i know it's close at here we'll probably have that maybe for the november board meeting but that's where we're at we've done

052some surveying we've done some test pits and um we're waiting on the gallon gallonage that can uh building a leach field out at the dresden fields could accommodate that's that's that documentation is attached to board on the trail well no well on the test bits the the report we received from lincoln applied is there but we also do have the trail information both your um uh your permit request as well as the packet that's included for tomorrow night's meeting that i believe you're attending and presenting right right so yeah so which again i'll move to the to the path because or the trail um because we really we still are i i didn't look at board docs so i don't know what you're looking at from lincoln apply but i have not received uh a

053final letter from them yet or our office hasn't on the on the test pits so anyway the the path we want to see we're seeking a permit to build a path up in the back in the rear of the school up where the bus parking cul-de-sac turnaround area is on our north north side northeast side of the property it's it's a path or trail that will be accessible built to um the u.s accessible board guidelines uh so we can get folks of of all abilities uh up into the forest i think that's been the goal of administration at the school and uh so we're seeking a permit from that so what you have in front of you yeah is this is just the zoning application um the trail itself is roughly about 63 feet long

054it's gonna be four feet wide and it's going to start at the the parking lot up on top and end up actually eight feet from the property line i think we um we can't develop we have an eight foot setback from all the butters to develop anything so but where we're gonna stop it's it's relatively flat and um we'll have access from there into the forest so i am attending the development board meeting tomorrow to to talk about this with those board members and see if we can get their approval to sign off on the permit build this thing okay and now this is uh just the the first uh permit that we'd be looking at right there's there would be more coming after this to get further into the no yeah so the the

055other project which is a roughly a 1200 foot long aba trail it'll be totally on town property this this particular trail is on on school property um so we have not worked out the details yet of who um applies for that permit seeing how it's town property and not school property but the school um walk would you know would like the trail for part of their future curriculum efforts and so we'll we'll talk about that in the months to come um we'll first see if we get through this to build a little trail on our own property if the development board sees that you know it's feasible then we'll have a little bit of a guideline as to what we need to do for the longer trail that's in the woods in the town forest

056and hopefully we'll work on that we'll talk about that next month if we have more information or i i think it's probably more for the december board meeting if we'll have more by then because this if i won't even know about if we get a permit on this trail for possibly another 30 days um the wheels of government need to run their course uh yes and after the permitting process assuming that uh there's approval after the 30 days then we open up a bid process is that correct does that have to happen now this particular trail is um all donated labor and materials this 63 foot four foot wide path is going to be donated by some generous parents community members okay good thank you to them and uh your point to that reminds me

057that i've been meaning to thank our i believe they're referred to as our outdoor enthusiasts incredible work to uh make a number of outdoor areas possible and i believe they've been helping support this work too if that's the group you're referencing as well but uh certainly have been doing a lot of great work around the school so thank you to uh to that parent group and obviously to you tony and sean and everyone else here who's been working toward this end any questions at this time on either the trail work or the uh septic testing yes um yeah just a quick question about the trail work meeting tomorrow tony do you need support or i mean like how does that work like do you feel comfortable handling all the questions from the select board is

058um jay going to be with you or do you need any sl any of us to be there do you need shawn to be there no actually this this process is not really open to the public they tell me it's just uh just me because i i'm on behalf of the school district i've applied for the permit um they will take probably questions from a butters if they're there but they will not entertain any um questions from the general public thank you i just didn't want you to leave you standing alone oh no this is this is very minor in the things that we do so i think we can get through this it's just it's just a something that's amazing that takes a while um not with this like where's the design uh okay

059the drb yeah yeah thank you all right um thank you other questions sean not a question but i just wanted to express thanks to tony because he spent a lot of time and energy getting this small permit together it's much appreciated by all of us so thank you john thank you welcome uh there's stuart so sue richardson mom street uh i'm curious to know what next steps are on the septic who needs to approve it what's it gonna cost if you have any idea of that and what are we gonna do if we can't get the approvals that are needed what's what's plan b yeah so can you i can i can just like ask a question so the uh thank you for asking here though to provide context for the community watching here but

060uh the next steps are to get an update from uh mr bell and lincoln applied uh uh lag and we can apply a geo survey i guess i'm forgetting the acronym right now um once we have that in hand and and determine whether or not dresden is a good site we'll get the pricing done on what it would cost to actually go go that route uh and then would uh bring that before the board and obviously the public which would this board as well as the dresden board too which would need to be part of the discussion as well so maybe i'm misreading the what's already been submitted my understanding from reading what's been submitted is that the septic is relatively good and that there is sufficient capacity to deal with uh marion cross as

061a result of the test that's done at uh yes yeah yeah so yeah there may be more more environmental information that's necessary but every indication seems to support the idea that uh marion cross's septic could be satisfied well satisfied provided that you get the approvals from providing this board approved and are there any other boards that need to approve the dresden school board would need to approve because of this dresden's property do you have any sense of whether that's likely i'm not going to speak for the hanover members award i would as a norwich member i would hope that it would be considered but of course there's also the other things that i talked about as being factors that will have to come into play which is the final costing and design of what it

062what it would take to actually create a septic field over that way yeah if if it doesn't work what what's the likely next steps well we go back to the drawing or we uh we have done some uh looking at uh keeping it in place here that obviously was not deemed desirable based upon some of the uh um findings that uh both lincoln applied and uh and um our engineer group i found with jeff goodrich's team there um but uh we would probably have to bring some new uh thoughts or ideas to the table and test those out as well so i mean we do know from best from past testing that paich and and on site here are not we're not particular design or not well they're not workable solutions from a uh from

063the testing perspective so i mean if the president doesn't work out then you really are back to square one unless unless there is something else that's in the hopper that i'm not aware or that hasn't been publicized we have been putting the material out there so uh you are aware of it uh there are potential i guess different types of uh systems that could be considered as well uh at those places but i think what you said is correct and uh right now dresden is uh what we're looking at obviously we're uh um there's some ongoing studies too that are going i know the town is looking at the place water too but uh this is uh this is where we are in the testing currently and as you noted the dresden test results did

064come back positively but there are a number of other factors that are coming into play uh and like i said especially with regards to pricing and design those sorts of things too yeah i'm probably speaking out a term but i heard the number 1.5 million but and i don't know if that's uh you know that's a possibility yeah i wouldn't quote anything until we go uh back to uh our review i'm not asking you for good all right tony did you have anything you wanted to add clarify or correct in my uh statements now no no no you're right we'll be back to square one thank you and i do see stephanie you can just unmute yourself stefan and introduce yourself again hi i'm stephanie hamilton um i have a hawk pine road i have

065a couple questions and forgive me if this is kind of general understanding but it's from my own understanding if the for tony if the drb approves the permit in like october 30th can you guys start construction in november of the trail the smaller trail i i believe that's our plan yes as soon as we have a permit i will uh circle back with sean and the the group of volunteers and we will try to get it done yes okay it's all weather related right and we're hoping the weather is gonna be favorable this year okay cool and then i have another question um about the septic so um i know a lot of things are put on hold like great playground improvements or you know expanding the um the kindergarten area all these things end

066up being put on hold because of the septic but is it agreed at this point that like the the field is not going to be where the new septic is and that these things can move forward uh no we can't place stuff on top of the septic system right now we do use that septic system eight months out of the year um so we are going to you know try to add things here and there for our for our students um but full-blown you know uh new playground setups will it just can't happen at this time out on the field but what about like the periphery of it like closer to the school yeah i think uh sean mobby hasn't made it public but we are looking at trying to put in some pieces of

067playground equipment maybe some more swings move some things around a little bit related to this and i forgot to get to say it because of my very vocal dogs um was that sean had a a coffee and conversation with some parents at the beginning of the school year um and we kind of urged parents to to come to the school board but i think it's not the you know the best timing for them but most of the questions were regarding access to the forest the septic and then the delays by not making a septic decision on everything else in the school and and food services as well and those were like the three topics that were of concern of the parents that were at the meeting um you know again we encouraged them to come

068to the board meeting but i just kind of wanted i can't speak for them they're not here but i just wanted to share that feedback it was in the notes that i submitted as well thank you and i won't speak on behalf of the rest of the board but i can tell you that those are my concerns too so thank you we will do our best to move forward on those items and then uh you know stuffing too as you can relay back to the ptr meetings as well uh we are in the budget process and we started to hear from some folks about things that they would like to see included in the budget i'm sure sean has heard some of this as well and in future meetings we will be having discussions about

069what is actually in that budget that will go before the town in march um so we very much encourage people to participate in future meetings and if they can't be here just to reach out by email to any of the board members or the administration as well we'll do thank you guys i think sean has some comments i can just give an update since it was mentioned about outdoor equipment we have a playground committee group that tony and i are part of that have looked at what can we do without getting involved with the testing so we've decided that for this year what we could do is look at moving the gaga pit over and where that guy that sits now we'll be able to put a set of swings in there which would be

070something that wouldn't impact any future septic work we also looked at this wooden clay structure that's right outside here because it's falling apart piece by piece and removing that and putting a new structure in that spot because that also would not act so those things are in the works and we've got a great community working on finding equipment that we can use for our school thanks for the update uh other questions on uh anything to do with the facilities update the client is provided on septic or trails or otherwise related to facilities okay i'm not seeing anything on again just a reminder participate in the budget process and uh as we also referenced earlier the strategic plan is going to be considering facilities not only at the maryland crossfit but across the uh the district

071as well so please plan to provide uh feedback at those times too all right not seeing any other questions uh we can move into our business requiring action uh we do currently have it set up as an approval by consent i'm going to ask that we pull out the sba resolutions so that we can vote on that separate from others does anyone feel the need to approve the approval policy at this time i'm not seeing that [Music] kelly all as a favor unanimous thank you uh with regard to the sba resolution uh as we're going through this too i realized we also need to appoint someone to participate in the annual meeting and express the board's uh thoughts or vote on this uh we do not need to do so tonight but i am taking

072over to myself and maybe jay's reminding your agenda planner that we will make your plans on our november 3rd participating november 4th if any board members are uh able to attend that november fourth uh annual meeting and are interested in playing that role please do contact me in the premieres so with regard to the vspa resolution this is also with regard to changes to the bylaws um is there a desire to take those on one at a time or why don't we just take them all the time [Music] uh of the resolutions or the report i think that would um would someone start us off with uh um votes on those i think it was a move to approve espa resolution numbers one two as they are right now you wanted a group okay let's

073do one more yeah yes uh move to authorize the norwich does the need to vote in favor of resolution proposal number one second bye lisa all those in favor [Music] in favor of resolution proposal number two well uh second eye kelly all in favor yemis number three [Music] always because i think everyone needs to realize that again i'm not against the idea it's just that the goal is unreasonable right like what they're trying to do with the state i think is a valid everything that president the study said is absolutely reasonable it's just that the implementation of it and don't forget that the proposal was actually to propose the weight changes right and there's just no way if you look at it first of all of the nine or eight or nine pounds that moved

074only one had a positive or was going to get negatively affected taxes were going to go up all the other ones are going down and if you look at the weightings 38 districts are going to have higher tax rates 75 lower so again although it's a great idea there is also just a limit in what's feasible in this world which is to all of a sudden have 38 districts 8 or 75 to make the entire state equal again just seems it's i mean it's just it's just financially you know it's difficult and if you look and then break down the 38 districts with higher tax rates there's only one two three four five six seven eight nine could go up over 20 cents right up to 38. that means a lot of them did neil's

075point yeah they're going up a little bit but not marginally affected but again you're talking 75 districts are having their tax rate go lower 38 are going higher and nine of them are actually going over 20 cents 52 cents and there's one other town that's going 52 cents i think it's something stratford so it's great right i mean so again i'm not voting against it because i think that it's a bad idea it's just that it's just it's nice to be able to say okay let's cure cancer and let's fix poverty just like that but there's limits to reality and as i told our jim and jim there's a point where people will just walk with their feet in this town and they will just go across the river and what what happens in 30

076years from now once this is implemented which is it meaning that you know this school because all that funding is going to be taken elsewhere so what's our town and our school district look like because we're already paying some of the highest taxes i think our property taxes are some of the highest in the state aren't they yeah pretty sure they are so just because of that it's like by definition we're up to even more taxes and then pretty much in 30 years you may come back to norwich and the school's gonna be in shambles that's my concern and that's [Music] my concern too with this is that it is not implemented in a way that's more gradual or understanding of the people in the town i mean we're also looking at issues with people

077in our town who are of moderate means uh that cannot necessarily be those sorts of things so that's why i while i'm going for i would certainly keep that line of communication open to our representation and want player to uh express just those concerns that you're stating because like you said there's clearly a need for a different structure for this waiting system but there's also a need to understand that even if certain towns have greater wealth that doesn't mean every single individual in those towns separated all smaller people stay there based upon culture and what's it going to mean for the town down the road that's kind of scary for me yes and i think that's why i'm sorry that's why i'm staying i i'm absolutely for this in principle 700 and i just don't

078know what thoughtfully and expeditiously means um according to whom and that's not defined the way this is written so i just i'm not comfortable supporting it but i do support it so i think that because it says therefore it be resolved so as the most aware is i agree with neil absolutely yes the outcome what they found okay but then it therefore it should be resolved that they support the findings as presented and the finding was we should change all the factors to this and you can look at the report i mean that's what i'm sorry i was typing here doing that but years because i have a report from june and i was searching and kept counting them all up unfortunately one by one and microscopic detail it's all there yeah yeah so i

079just want to you guys probably all know this right but just a little clarification as to what we're voting on here so the all of the school boards in the state that are members of the sba vote on these resolutions right the resolution then becomes the basis for the advocacy or the work of the vsda so the vote that we took here is when vsda is called upon to testify in the legislature about the waiting study what is the vsda going to say it's not tonight we weren't voting on whether or not we support the implementation of the weights or not this is what guidance are we giving to the vsda when the vsda is asked to testify and to weigh in on this in the legislation i just want to make sure that everybody

080understood what we were yeah voted but it says it supports the findings as presented and everything i just said i don't actually support the findings are right the findings are that we should 38 districts should pay more taxes and 75 should pay less taxes that's defined um that's not oh yes so that's not what the waiting study said the waiting study did not say some towns should pay less in taxes and some towns should pay more what the waiting study said was the weights that we're applying to these pupils right now are inaccurate they don't represent the true cost of educating those kids the suggested new weights what it does according to the waiting studies author right is it generates excess taxing capacity in those towns the thought process here is that by changing so

081essentially what you're doing is you're changing the denominators right the number of equalized pupils and when you change that and you change the tax rate associated with it the premise is that by giving those towns a lower tax rate they would spend up to their previous tax rate so basically for the same tax rate that town can now generate additional revenue that's the intent right so the intent is we know that these students cost a little bit more than what we've traditionally been saying that cost right let's give these towns the ability then to raise the appropriate amount of money through their taxes in order to educate those kids the the waiting study did not say you norwich you need to have a higher tax rate and you know you that forget a lower one

082that's not what the waiting study said just to be i want to make sure that we're all understanding what what what the waiting study said yeah i mean i'm looking at right here it says recommended weights and they're looking at the weights those are the weights those are not the tax rates right but then the appendix right here is the effect of those weights on the tax rates so what i feel like i'm someone's like pulling tricks on me here at the state level like this isn't this isn't right like you can't say we recommend the weights but there's it says right here our tax rate is going to go up 50 cents in the dollar if we if we spend the same amount of money [Music] we have to spend the same amount of

083money to fund what we have here right yeah that's what i'm saying it's like i'm just concerned that the state's going to be doing one of these things i'm like oh look over here right like i mean by passing this resolution that's why the resolution just seems like it's easy to be like i agree with this it's such a great idea it is a great idea i mean i love that i said cure poverty throughout the entire world i mean it's very noble and vermont has a very noble i mean of all the states it's a great everyone wants to do the right thing that lives here and i do too it's just that there's a limit to reality and i disagree a little bit i don't really understand how anyways again i'm sure there's

084smart people up there and i'm sure it's not going to be as bad as what we all say which is even with our annual tax rates it's always not as bad as what we say because somewhat their figures are that [Laughter] and i would not consider this our last uh engagement with the legislature and representatives so i i will as a current chair uh say that we will continue to keep our direct line of communications open with uh representation as this moves through the state house so but all of your points are taken well taken and this is there's a lot to be considered here but uh i think we can move on now sorry yes number four um yep move to authorize the norwegians need to vote in favor of resolution number four second

085of i lisa paul is in favor number five move to authorized email which says they need to vote in favor of resolution number five second guy lisa all's in favor yes and number six to authorize the number that you need to vote in favor of resolution number six say my lisa all is in favor yeah thank you and uh with regard to the changes to the violence yep um move to authorize the door which doesn't need to uh vote in favor of proposed changes to the vsta violence lisa all those in favor yes thank you the other one you'll want to do too is that the ones that are switching from continuing to regular resolutions because that will be voted on as a basically open source i would be happy to hear you entertain them

086move to authorize the norwich busing need to vote in favor of the proposed changes to the existing uh 2020-2021 resolutions thank you second goodbye lisa [Music] yes thank you uh with that as we've come to the end of our business requiring action and we'll move right into the communications reports uh reported the chair is first i will again state uh thank you not only to those parents who are volunteering to work on the outdoor area but there's a lot more thanks to go along around especially to our teaching staff and [Music] others here at the school uh teaching staff support staff custodians principals coordinator services everyone here is doing a phenomenal job and uh just so grateful for all that i've been able to do not just now but over the past year and a

087half so hopefully one of these days we will come out of this on the other end but thank you for uh for everything you've done uh thus far uh my quotes for all those at the sau office as well um i did already mention a couple other things i wanted to update on and which we've been spending most of our time discussing this evening which was uh the vsb annual meeting on november 4th there was also a regional meeting that took place for a windsor region last week i believe i was able to zoom in for a bit of it it did include a presentation by secretary of education and fresh and he provided a good deal of update on the approach to codewood this year and testing and then going through the tabs on

088my computer and realizing i had closed that presentation no um and that was a helpful background i also talked about some other things moving forward i did jump off was there anything else uh like that neil was able to stay for the entirety of the region we did also elect our regional representatives too um and then there was an update from the employer commissioners on the status of the statewide healthcare party yes okay thank you um and other than that i do not have any other updates at this time so i'll turn it over to um [Music] just a review of the preschool priority list and i think of where we are with that so i'm going to go through my schoolwood report quickly just in the environment some interesting information greg's been doing some

089background work it has better that we have 26 four-year-olds which already identified worlds for next year it could be potential pre-k students um just a good thing to keep an eye there because that's a mcs but two things changed in our closing protocol this year to make science and mr buckley a little more enjoyable one of field trips so we can do walking field trips which the fourth grade has taken advantage of already by reporting like the blood work and looking at damn building by beavers and the other thing is allowing people to come in and give presentations to students and the productive advantage of that was dr k coming in and doing some work in this classroom substitutes are really hard this year um someday one day last week we had 10 staff members

090out with zero substitutes to come in so just a shout out to the mcs staff because on a day like that everyone has to pitch in and do their job plus more to make school work if you know of anyone who has the desire to come in and be a substitute please send them our way a little shout out to robin with the curriculum work she's planned a great uh joint effort between the race screen and marion cross the woodpecker curriculum we've been able to participate in one of those so far because of able to go subjuga many of those opportunities but we're hoping as the year goes on and we have more days dedicated to doing work and more substitutes come forward and you know want to do that a little more and one

091of the big initiatives this year at america school is our wing block whatever i need block uh identified two years in a row from staff as a need how do we serve kids who either have special education services they get pulled out of their class during core instruction where students are just in a little extra boost so that they don't fall behind or kids who need to have some sort of enrichment during the school day how do we do that and not um pull them from the core instruction so we're implementing a wind block with any uh new piece of the program that comes with some growing pains so i think we're experiencing some of those but it's not worthy that even though it's hard to think about something new putting something different in place

092looking at our resources differently it's an additional teaching piece for the staff to take on i i'm happy with the staff for taking that challenge on and and moving forward with it knowing that what we do this year will be very different than what wind life looks like in three four five years now um we are continuing our within a lot of aea around dancing training to look at what what does good instruction look like um how to get feedback that helps people to not only appreciate what they're doing while they look for ways to improve and [Music] a little bit surveillance testing that this is inaccurate we were getting a little nervous we thought we had over 300 people signed up for our first weekly surveillance testing and nurse jane was wondering how we

093were going to do the testing get it all turned in and ready by the end of the day actually we have parents who are super eager and signed their kids up like three four five times so we actually have about 150 people that are doing the weekly testing this week um i want to skip this and come back to it fire safety week was this week chief northern uh northern and this crew did a great job with the pre-k k yesterday monday coming over and teaching them about fire safety the focus is on the sounds of fire safety this year so they talked about what the smoke detector sounded like how you react they also got to see the guard and dressed up from one in the truck and tomorrow we will be partaking in

094the fire house that comes from the state it's a trailer that's set up to uh practice what an evacuation look like so kids in the first second third grade will go out they'll learn about it's more about fire safety and get to go in the fire trailer there's some smoke there's actually some kind of powdered sugar that comes down and they'll get to evacuate out and have that experience today was a super fun morning with bike to school day rebecca reed who organized that every year did a fine job this year i think it is so much safer to do the route that we have been doing around norwich the first year i was here in back sandwich between chief frank and the truth and the cruiser car and 300 bikers behind me it didn't

095feel all that safe this year and last year we've been going through different streets and picking kids up along the way it's a much smoother ride and then finally i just wanted to end this before with an appreciation to our staff uh school is hard this this year even though last year we had lots of rules and guidelines this year we have people coming back in that still retired from last year but giving 150 every day sometimes literally 150 percent doing their job of having somebody else's so that school can go forward so just a huge shout out to our staff i'll take questions on that part before i go to the preschool piece here what are the requirements for a substitute teacher if someone in town wanted to step up on their own that's

096a great question the requirements are not that you have a teaching certificate you have to apply um if the interviews have to be willing to come in that's a background check and then there's something to teach you so we will grab it out and support anyone with any behavior pieces that they might want to put in their back pocket before going in a classroom just interested contact you were great and we will we will set them up okay other questions i just wanted to add on that this has been such a such an issue that we'll be meeting as a leadership team to discuss the threshold at which we decide that we can't operate in school it's it's been that significant and part of it is that we're we're insisting that people sit home when

097they're sick for one day which is just good good uh precaution in this in this pandemic but it also is this uh dramatic shortage of substitutes and we've raised our substitute payout to pay issues we're having a hard time finding people to fill all sorts of positions um one of the things that one of the things that was done in hanover is that the race school they appealed to the families that if anyone was interested in something to try to avoid having a school closure for lack of staff um that um we can certainly try to encourage our parent our parents uh base to see if there are folks out there that are willing to come in and and actually have a really enjoyable time as a teacher um we will be like i said

098taking this up as a leadership team bringing recommendations to the boards if you come up with any any ideas that will require some further action but this is something that we really didn't end we didn't anticipate um the degree to which we had this issue this year but it is i'd say worse than last year what have you been seeing in terms of the substitute need and uh and actual considerations how close have we gotten to that what does that mean just get a number wise um well we don't have any substitutes so there there's no one to call we should say we have a couple of people that are willing to come in once in a while but every day actually i dread waking up and looking at who's out because every day we're

099shuffling around our head assistants have been really wonderful they get pulled from their position which pulls the support from the students to substitute for the day and so far they've been more than willing to help out and do that but it ranges today we had two people out last week we had 10 so anywhere in there i don't think we've had a day yet where everyone has been here and a lot of it is because we're asking people when you're sick you can't come in and those are people who typically would have come in feeling a little under the weather so people are following the guidance it's not going to do anything wrong it's just that we don't have the yeah and i'm just thinking like people might be intimidated by the thought of being

100a teacher for the day which is basically what we're asking people to do so i knew you said that you and greg would help people with behavioral stuff and i'm wondering um is there some sort of training or like a general lesson plan that the teachers that the substitutes would have just to help them so like you know i'm thinking of myself like i'm about i could i might be able to do this but not if i just have to walk into a classroom and say hey mr bucks fifth graders let's do this science experiment that i don't even know what a bunsen burner is which i do i didn't know that but um but you know like there might be things that i just don't know and so just like what can we do

101to sort of raise people's comfort level that's a great question because teachers leave great plans so you can come in at 805 and everything is there it's all laid out you've got the schedule for the day you've got some ghost cars to put some verbatim language in or something but everything is there for the day yeah and greg and i are a radio call away so anything they need comes up people can radio us and we support them and then kind of my fellow question then is does that place too much of a burden on the teacher who's sick and then i'm now feeling bad that the teacher who's sick just have to do this lesson i'm looking at mr buck sorry about that um don't speak for all teachers but you know i i

102want to balance that as well so like the comfort of the sub and the comfort of the teacher you know i don't know is there like six or seven standardized days that if i was a substitute teacher i could come in and be like you substitute you have a background in literacy here's like a something you could do all day that has to do with books i don't know i mean that may be silly but just to i don't know i'm trying to throw some stuff out there that would just make me feel a little more comfortable if i were to be doing this which i can't as a board member but um yeah so um i think i would say that it is a burden for teachers direct sub plans but it's an expectation

103school has to go on and it wouldn't be sure to have someone to come in and make it out for the day because that would just be okay neil so so aoe just recently announced the test to save program yes so two questions really said hey do we have enough people to be able to do that and b could it also apply to staff so if we've got a scenario where somebody is not feeling great but they think they could teach otherwise could they do the test to stay for a teacher and and might that help relieve some of our issues i think that's a good question for our colleagues and we will be able to do that that's actually going to talk about and i was like maybe we should talk about it at

104least if it helps there are resources out there like films that you can watch about substitution with reaches people who might be interested in doing this so just yeah that came through today we subscribed to this program called mystery science and i think nationwide there's a substitute issue and they did a survey that said if we were to be able to provide a canned day of if you come in substitute we have everything for you we've got some videos we've got the lessons we've got the work is it something your school would um take advantage of so i think bigger than us yeah people are thinking about okay how can we do this get people into classrooms and have something unique for them right thank you also not to be confused mystery science theater [Music]

105have a separate little spot where you post about how dire the need is in town and in the school and show your support for the school in a way that will really make a difference we were originally going to do an in-person open house and then the phone numbers went up and we [Music] so we're thinking about revisiting the sleep after january we could do it in christmas it's just not the same probably more but especially at the elementary level to see which uh other questions comments please all right uh matt buck fifth grade science teacher in social studies and wind and parent of a first grader also in school i think one thing like uh covering for a sub like i think you will find in classrooms like i'm gonna i'm gonna compliment my

106colleagues and i think the faculty here are pretty amazing they're gonna provide good plans so i don't think it's a question not getting good plans maybe technology not working the most appropriate at times like i think for the most part you're gonna get that we really have a spectacular school um sometimes cookie cutter plans just to plunk in for a day is not appropriate so if i'm doing something like i'm gonna make sure i have the best thing for that guest teacher that they can reach that they're not going to be teaching about hydrocarbons for the day but i'll have something appropriate that can keep my kids moving forward i do try to set that up as best possible so i think whatever guest teacher comes here i always say like i wanted to love

107being here and i think for the most part they have that opportunity in this school in this community so i don't know if as much about sub plans in this conversation as it is pay i know you've said that's been more appropriately brought up and i hope it's not just competitive i hope it's luring for a guest teacher it's a hard job so those are things i want to put out there that i think and i also believe in the somewhere in the board box all of you can substitute teach is that correct i remember hearing something in situations that mr camden so yes we'll see you next time my gut says because this there's no longer a state of emergency i think that probably happens that's it thank you a different way to context

108i'll tell you what i'll serve by recruiting yeah so being on the policy committee i should know this answer but can relatives of us do it so that's fine absolutely look at him and actually uh richard is uh alison whitten has her hand up and the uh attendees too so if we could just uh give her the ability to speak right here looks like i can actually [Music] allison um hi um i still don't know how to get off my birds but my birds and i will say all of them and i say hi um i hope you can hear me i'm dealing with weird speaker issues um so if you can hear me please say yes perfect okay um so as someone who was actually out for three days last week um i was

109not feeling well um on wednesday morning and so i said i'm not coming in i'm going to get a test so i had to wait for almost 48 hours for my coba test and to me it was i felt morally responsible to not come into school and to be honest it was really hard because i i was feeling a little sick but not sick enough to stay home but i knew that it was absolutely the right thing to do and so to hear what my colleagues went through to support my students during that time was unbelievable i mean i was writing sub plans at 3 a.m because i couldn't sleep and i didn't know who was going to show up that morning and knowing that an ed assistant was pulled from there normal assignment to

110cover my classes made me feel just i don't want to say it was disheartening but it was distressing on multiple levels and so i think this issue of pay both for subs and at assistance because i truly believe that if we had more adults in the building we wouldn't be having these crises and so this is very close and very dear to my heart obviously because it's been very recently that i've felt these problems and i think also there's an idea of time i mean i remember i this is scary but i've been at marion cross for almost 20 years which just is astonishing to me and i remember having had time to prep emergency plans and i don't have that i was out all of a sudden and so there's this whole time factor

111that comes into play and it is a very like everything is right now with respect to education it's a i have a this is a weird analogy but i have this pile of necklaces that i have and they're all tangled up and i have to i have to sit and untangle them and just spend a half an hour you know unweaving them in order to be able to wear any of them and that's kind of what i feel like we're in right now where it's a situation of there are so many issues that are intertangled and it's hard to separate them but i do strongly believe that there is a deep element of if we had more hands on deck in the school we wouldn't be scrambling like this sean and greg should not be

112in my classroom trying to figure out the technology piece that i thought was going to be clear and wasn't and luckily i was feeling okay that before i left school on friday or when i was not in school on friday i was able to spend three hours preparing subplants but if i were in a situation where i was not able to do that that's tough and so again i sort of hearken back to this idea of this tangle of necklaces and i don't necessarily have a solution i'm not coming here to say this is what we should do but i again as someone who experienced this massive stress last week [Music] i know that there are gaps in the system and i think it's important for us to take a couple steps back and look

113and say where are the gaps where are the problems and what can we internally do to fix those because if we have neighboring towns who are paying their ed assistance more than we are and they're gonna go work there instead of at marrying cross that's a problem i am thrilled to hear that our subpay has increased i didn't know that and that's great but i think there is a tipping point and it's tricky because you hear about restaurants closing around and you hear about various businesses that are not able to hire but there are people out there and so i just implore us as a school as a community as a town to think about what can we do how can we incentivize people to come and help us because obviously what we're doing isn't

114working and so i'm taking the micro and trying to make it a little bit more macro um so i apologize for this mini rant but this the debarking point said a word in english to parking the parking point the launching point of this conversation hit me really hard um so i will uh now she's talking thank you for your attention thank you for providing that context allison um it is much appreciated obviously we do need to uh figure out ways of people uh in school applying of course it is a challenge in many many walks of life too so it's it's not an easy thing to address but i know that we are trying to figure out ways to do it and it's not just within the schools it's throughout the whole school community too

115whether it's the bus drivers food services and well beyond that but uh thank you for providing that context um and and know that we are working to alleviate that and thank you matt for your special on the substitute teaching as well uh is do you have any more shawn yes uh first before i go on this lectures i want to send a thank you to boy who both helped us start the year out of kindergarten um both are amazing teachers then we're sad to see them leave but later on today we're going to approve two new hires and that's equally exciting moving on to the priority order for pre-k admission so last year we looked at how we were going to decide which pre-phase students came to our program and which were on the waiting

116list and since last year we learned a few things number one we learned that we need to get our application process out early so we are going to send the application for next year's pre-k out in november november 1st and let people start to fill that out we've had almost daily calls from people saying how do i get on the list uh we have a great program at very high school and an outstanding teacher where does that now so we're going to start advertising november 1st we're going to close our application on january 31st and then we're going to go through and look at this priority order there's six six criteria the first being residents of norwich so if you're a resident you get first priority the second being children who are currently enrolled in

117our pre-k program if we start here we want you to stay here third students with a diagnosed developmental delay or disability pre-k programs by nature are supposed to serve a particular population kids who need that education most fourth students are at risk as defined by homelessness dual language learners foster kid care migrant and pre-reduced meals looking at their need piece then fifth would be siblings of very possible students until we have very classical staff and then get beyond that we would look at children's children invading older students by birth date feel like probably with the interest we have with phil's our program will definitely be so fast for next year we also have added a little bit about how we're going to outreach last year because we were deciding whether it was going to be

118a full day or a half-day program i really couldn't make that decision until after budget went through we did not reach as much this year greg and i have been doing some work and the this document we're going to do some digital outreach reach on the list serve the term website facebook page pto distribution crosswords emails families and values and then we're going to make a flyer to [Music] the local preschools and town hall just so that we can get the word out a little bit more this year i think it's a great problem that we have that we have more people interested when we have space and when you get a chance there is a form that we're going to send for people to fill out there's a link in here you can send

119it do you want to fill it out right we'll evaluate whether your children can come we wanted to just run this by you so that we can send it out november first and start gathering thank you for sharing that any questions on this i don't know if this point is relevant from who you but looking at the list of criteria in number four we want to specify freely reduced meals recipients or eligible or does that matter just if you're if there becomes a squabble with places available yeah that's a good point it should i think we'll edit that to eligible with regards to the night i've asked this question before i apologize for answering but with regard to the budget so a couple years ago we had a pre-k as i recall right and i

120remember saying the audience when mr bill was putting forth the plan for pre-k and now pre-k is here so the budget definitely had to go up to take the pre-k and now we have a bunch of applicants and there's a decision to make another pre-k then the right so the budget's going to keep going up which means obviously the tax rate is going to go up i was but then there's also some money coming back from the state i think was part of the calculation of pre-k there's an offset about 3500 because you would give i mean i was one of those stupid people that moved to north and didn't even know that you could get 35k to send your kid so but you can it's not 35k sorry 30. so that's an offset because

121otherwise we are paying out of the school budget for every person with a pre-k child 3 500 to take to put their 10 in pre-k somewhere no it has to be but we get to count the adm or at least the equalized number for that student so they get factored into the denominator again so yes you've got money coming in but then your denominator is also going up at the same time i wouldn't say it's a wash right but it's not all just a budgetary increase there is some benefit of having the kids in the system here okay versus having them take those monies and go someplace elsewhere okay that's part of it okay and do we look at that then when we're looking at adding another pre-k because i'm assuming based on this we

122may not actually know based on the applications demand for a second pre-taped class [Music] i would certainly think we should look at that as part of the budget process yeah so we can kind of see what the demand is based on the applications and then other questions sean just a comment yeah there is a noticeable difference between the students who were here even last year during the pandemic that was an unusual critic uh students who come here who have some sort of a disability or delay get their services right here it makes a huge difference so this year in our kindergarten there is a difference between children who came and attended the very best school pre-k and those who didn't not that the other programs aren't great but i think just being in the building

123getting to know the staff the teachers the surroundings having immediate access to pt ot speech oh that just makes a huge difference so we're looking at that's a good expansion of pre-takes clearly we're seeing a lot of demand for hub how do you think we should think about it more than the impact on your local nursery schools i also hear that from people as well that you also have three pre-k classes then the nursery school i don't even know what the nursery schools here in newark are but this i don't know how many there are but those two aren't going to be the big two that they could be impacted negatively which is honestly also yeah i don't mean to catch up but that's always been part of the consideration as well and this year

124they were all oversubscribed as well so that's that's that's been part of the consideration and you know that's our request and guidance to sean and craig and others who are working with the program is to make sure that there's outreach to those supervisors reaching out to those okay cool why sorry just a quick question i'm assuming that this one through six worked well this year because i feel like this is the same the criteria you used for this year um otherwise it would have changed but i guess i wanted to test that assumption did this work and did it help you out of any tricky situations or did it create tricky situations that you had to navigate that's a good question because the one through six is the same the order of them is different

125so there were some things if we change number six we used to say um that we would be preferenced to four year olds but then that was hard because there are four-year-olds yeah so who do you think so then we've decided we want to give opportunity to the oldest students first so we did some some specifics in here also we moved up currently enrolled at mcs closer to the top it was down a little lower and we added in a couple eligibility categories of number four uh just we did some research with what other pregame programs do we added just thinking of other things that would send kids behind in their education and helping us give them that boost to a level so they worked well with the order wasn't close okay thank you other

126questions do you have any other questions okay thank you very much for that report and for uh the updates on pre-k program too uh so i'll just reiterate a few things we have been beginning the curriculum work and that's well underway um we have gone through first grade and through fifth grade now and sixth grade and then six will be this week and next week and we have been dealing with some issues so i'm hoping that we will end up adding a few more subs so that we can reschedule some of those days for marine cross we have also met to discuss math programs and we had a meeting last week and that will continue next week i'm going to come back with some recommendations of programs based on research and it's a great committee

127it's comprised of teachers from both elementary schools so it's really well balanced different grade levels um and the administrators from both the schools so i think we'll have some recommendations there and we're looking at a variety of programs some are i say free but ultimately you end up paying for coffees and things like that and some are much more much more expensive but we're weighing out all the possibilities for that so i'll we'll have some updates soon in terms of covid we are beginning the surveillance testing but i received information from the state earlier this week as neil was mentioning regarding response testing and so that can provide us with some other opportunities that prevent you know large numbers of the hydrogen teachers in the building if we have close contact cases of unvaccinated individuals

128and things like that and it allows us to do some testing in the school and at home those are potential so i'll meet with nurse jane and um shawn about those programs as well because those are things that we can add to our surveillance program of possibilities and i think that we have i've been looking at the research regarding those types of programs around the country there are other states that are doing that so it's a good way to the state is doing it to try to keep kids and staff in schools and just provide more of a daily testing scenario so those are my updates for tonight thank you very much i think i asked this is the resident even too but in the context of new hampshire sign if everything moves along as

129we hope it will by the end of the month so we have the shots available for the under 12 at least five and twelve each yes yeah they're saying hopefully maybe five thanksgiving oh thanksgiving i was hoping october but i know yeah but hopefully it will be sooner rather than later yeah but my question then i'm sorry i've already forgotten if we were to offer a clinic here or report collaborate with someone nearby is that an option to do so i have been speaking with public health and i think we are going to be able to offer one on the hanover side so that would be obviously open to everyone but we've had a hard time offering clinics in our district just because we have such easy access to dartmouth hitchcock that's been the issue

130so they've tried to do clinics outside of our area but we had flu clinics today at high school so uh i'm sorry about those two but uh i haven't been following close enough with some of the guidance but is there any indication that uh school workers may get uh access to booster shops yes mm-hmm yeah and we i've gotten information from dartmouth again about that but again remember it's for the um only one of our vaccines right now so they're looking at additional approvals for the other vaccines so that will have you know it will have some effect on our staff but it will be limited because so many of our staff receive the mederna magazine so yeah so sorry just a quick question so i say in mr guy's report just that the surveillance

131testing is going to be for over the 300 staff and students that it's voluntary it's cumbersome how is that i've maybe i missed anything i mean how for people's kids in the school like how is this working and then i don't want to get into a debate about the validity of time yeah we don't know yet because it hasn't started you know it's been getting pushed up a little bit and then the additional guidance came out this week so we haven't actually done surveillance testing and as john said it's actually a much lower number than 300 because some people registered multiple times so we'll see how it goes you know i've been hearing different things from other districts in the state about doing the surveillance testing it's really complicated it's a it's a a large

132undertaking in a school of this size with one nurse and you know again when we're dealing with the absences and things like that so i think the response testing actually may help us more being able to you know test people on a daily basis that may have come in contact with someone that's positive or that maybe is experiencing symptoms so they don't have to stay out like some of our teachers have to do so but people are doing the right thing here they're staying out of their exhibiting symptoms and that is so important for us to be able to stay in school when i was a board that we don't have that sorry but just thought that it's boring i don't have the ability to control that but i do i think we think that

133given all the conversation tonight and just one more thing i mean yeah we just need to make sure that everyone on the top that's saying that we're going to be doing this also realizes the impact yes right it has to be tenable okay so it's not someone's keeping an eye on that yeah so we'll see after either our first amendment's testing you know we've been having these conversations in new hampshire too because yeah it sounds great but it's not as easily accomplished as one might think so yeah um and that it was actually to that last point really i think i mean there's a part of this i appreciate to some extent what the state's doing through the department of health right but the other part of this is that they seem to be a

134little bit toned down this is actually what's going on in our schools at this moment in time right right i can't get bus drivers and substitute teachers where the hell am i going to find people to do surveillance testing for this chest to stay program right and you know i guess i would put it back to you guys like if you look at this and this just doesn't work i think that there needs to be a very strong message that goes back to secretary french and the aoe that despite the good intentions they just don't get it yeah they don't know what's going on and and the proposal is just out of line with what school districts are capable of failing at this moment right yeah i agree totally that's why i think you know

135we begin we try this and then see how it goes reassess and look at the additional programs so i appreciate that support you're welcome other questions i'm sorry how is it working too did parents actually sign up to have their kids randomly tested is that what yes and if you signed up and said yes to what happens so your kid is going to be pulled out of class at a certain time so they will have the tests and the kids will self-administer the tests but everything you know it's a it's a process because and we saw this last year with surveillance testing on staff they're all individually marked you know they have to be shipped back sean at one point had to run to several ups didn't get there in time and so it is

136it's it's a big undertaking and last year that was just with the staff and that's the other thing with the response testing it's two different types of testing so then we make decisions about advantage testing or pcr tests and so response times yeah questions complicated for sure sure but the yeah so all right well thank you for all the work you were doing and the uh response team uh but also encouraging us yeah thank you and i've actually been able to spend four days out of a week in some cases doing curriculum work which is amazing i don't want to say that too loudly but you're going to say nothing that's right yeah way to yeah i really have very little to add because the sheer volume of work that's being done right now not

137just the the routine work the important work that happens every day the most important work which is the teaching that's happening in classrooms but everything that's enabling that trying to maintain it is putting as you can tell from everything you've heard tonight so far and an incredible amount of stress on our system and on our people and so i want to add my gratitude to our teachers and our support staff our principals who are making this all work um when our hopes were sort of elevated in june and july when we thought oh the worst of the pandemic is behind us we're gonna have a cool normal year um and then uh and then delta through us occur and so here we are and even though there are fewer restrictions it's almost as sean said

138more difficult to manage and then on top of that for over a year and a half we've put aside other priorities at the boards and the district has had things like the curriculum work and other efforts that are underway and those are layered on and so i imagine as a teacher those those are additional expectations additional demands on time when just doing our regular job is difficult so you know i continue to be uh incredibly impressed by the fact that our staff here is making it happen and so i just wanted to add my thanks um yeah i guess the trends right now should give us some hope we're seeing another another hopefully it's just not another down cycle in the new cases of of covid that will be followed by underway hopefully this is

139this is the tapering off of the disease but um you know again that that nagging sense that this is still with us that that is ever present is is just a real drain the other things that are sort of attendant with that this whole notion that that there are fewer people in the workforce right now at a time when we need people is another stress on the system and it showed itself um you know prominently when we're trying to start school we're trying to fill vacancies for teaching positions trying to fill vacancies for at assistant positions um i think robin mentioned bus drivers there's just been so many uh in fact our hr department is still doing in processing and hiring people uh as we scramble to try to make sure that we have all

140hands on deck and we're still short so i don't want i don't see all that to to give a sense of gloom and doom there's a lot of things just the fact that we are having conversations about curriculum and instruction is a wonderful change of pace after the last couple of years i i want to add another bit of gratitude to the marion cross staff because the work that you initiated here with the danielson training has now been picked up by the entire leadership team for for the district for all the districts the leadership team completed a second training and thank robin for organizing that with julia the same trainer that's been working with marion cross to bring the danielson training to all of the leadership team and the idea is that the work that's

141ongoing right now with dresden and hannover with regard to teacher evaluation it's been agreed that the denison model will be the basis for that work as well so it was great to spend two days with the leadership team talking about really nothing but teaching and learning which which uh we hope to continue that momentum and and to really change the whole notion of teacher teacher evaluation supervision to one of partnering and collaborating with teachers to improve all of our practice and so we'll continue to do that um one last thing i want to mention i know the business administrators report is next uh jt has been uh just uh i i can't imagine the pressure she's under she's got things that she's dealing with in addition to her job and uh at this time is

142working on budgets for all four um all four entities within sc 70 as well as numerous negotiations um an audit all at the same time and uh so i want to just recognize her her diligence even at a time when she's done with many other things and thank her for her work she's she's up to her eyeballs right now and can use our support in any way we can offer it so with that i will conclude my report well thank you thank you for all you're doing thank you for uh mentioning jamie too uh this was the time for her report but uh she couldn't be with us tonight but she has been in addition to what she has done she's also update um so thanks so much to jamie um she will be providing

143updates on financials but of course all of us budget committees are aware uh of all the work she's been having to put in lately with that too and those committees continue to meet which well is a big segue to our committee reports we i actually don't know what our next budget meeting is for so i'll have to go back to the schedule we do continue to meet with regard to our ongoing negotiations with the sports staff and we will be kicking off negotiations very soon with our teachers association here as well i don't think there's anything with regard to enrichment grants at this time obviously and um i think that covers do you have a child care we had a meeting uh monday night um and uh so over the past two meetings we've heard

144shown some experts in the field of child care both at vermont and at the national level as well too um all that to say this is a pretty complex issue um both the funding and the providing of child care but this last meeting that we had on monday i think started to really sort of coalesce around some of the main themes that will appear in the final report going before the select board um so is that what is that report december i want to say okay and then i'm sure you said this here but what is the intention of the select board of that function what kind of recognition right now it appears that the the the major recommendation i think from the committee is going to be one of that see that this issue

145is so large and so complex that from the idea that a single town might be able to effectively do something locally is just really not feasible and so i think it will be an advocacy issue with either the state and or the federal level in similar ways that climate action communities have been taken off yeah you know i mean i think that at the end of the day right one of the determining factors here is that the the salaries for child care workers are orders of magnitude lower than what you know the salaries of elementary school teachers are and that is i think at the essence the crux of the problem and in order to get those salary levels up um right now i think the committee is looking at that the only way that

146that seems feasible is if you've got this publicly funded the the economies of scale are just not there to be able to generate the dollars needed for the salaries for these folks unless you're looking at a publicly funded option and when you start talking about that there are implications you know far beyond knowledge well thank you for participating in that uh to me as well because it could be on these so uh are there any questions on the committee work thus far not seeing hey we do have need for a brief executive session that's sean another earlier personnel so if someone would uh [Music] and all those in favor thank you we will be back [Music] could could read that meal uh move to approve the hiring of lead gossip as a one-year kindergarten teacher

147thank you i have a second lisa all those a failure yes thank you and did you take excitement yeah so i moved here for the hiring of elise des moines as a one-year kindergarten teacher one second lisa always a favor yes again thank you and welcome to liat [Music] [Laughter] um with that as usual anyone has a gender topic for the next meeting that you'd like us to uh include please get in touch in between and i would be happy to entertain the german to this meeting kelly meeting at 9 13 p.m second bye lisa all's in favor yes great next meeting wednesday november 3rd thank you all thank you thank you thank you can i give you something for next time