SAU 70  20211008

001welcome to the regular sju meeting uh of the 10th of august um the first item on our agenda is the agenda reviews to change [Music] okay [Music] [Laughter] um uh next setting on our agenda is the general discussion of the process that we would like to um amend if necessary for next year for the review the superintendent's review we've talked about amending a number of years in a row it would be great if we could come to a consensus and actually pull it into a more concise process this year we've talked about i've contacted the lawyer at the at the uh the sba and they they offer um surveys and they offer assistance i don't think we need that having looked at what we do and listen to what uh sue zablowski said that they

002do for us i don't think it's really worth the money but it is worth i think followed um getting our process in line and so i'm going to turn that into lisa became the chair of that committee um great i will try to make this quick so that we have time to discuss if anybody has any discussion um but the spec committee is myself and kelly and rick and jonathan and this year was my second year of being on it and every time we sort of tweaked it and so some of our recommendations for going forward include the following um one that the bulk like basically the entire evaluation criteria will be jay's goals for himself [Laughter] and i i wasn't going fast enough um it's like the hunger games um and so that would

003be instead of having the categories that we sort of make up and use every year which are useful but really just have it be based on the goals that he sets for himself that we approve the second part would be to for the purposes of his evaluation speak to the people who are his direct reports at the sau office and then the school board members and that those two groups would be the people that we would talk to directly about his performance okay so that means that we're sort of leaving out a group of people that we've been surveying the past couple of years and so the idea was to have a community survey about the schools themselves rather than the superintendent in particular um because what we found in surveying the community is most

004people are like i don't have any direction at all with jay he seems nice um which is not necessarily i mean it's lovely but it's not necessarily productive and so the thought was sometime in maybe march we would do one survey tech people you're welcome out there that would go to everyone instead of four separate surveys that always get confused um and people when they took the survey could indicate whether they were a member of the public whether they were a parent or a guardian whether they were a teacher or staff member or whether they were what's the other group that we normally i think that's it so the three groups of people that we normally survey and so one survey would go out in march and it would be sort of more about how

005are things going in the schools that you have direct interactions with and we would use those survey results if needed to inform jay's performance review which usually starts in may and june so um the example kelly and i talked about was like let's say in this community survey it turns out that jay uh every tuesday um serves coffee to the entire hanover community and nobody likes coffee they prefer tea um you know and that came out and we felt that that was something that we needed to ask about in his review coffee versus tea preferences we would add that to his performance review but other than that it would just be something that would be shared with the principals and with jay as to how people felt the schools were doing um and so that

006is really where we are and the other part is every year we try to make jay's reviews shorter and shorter and pithier um so that it's not a 25-page document that he has to read through so i think we went from 25 pages to 15 pages to 7 pages so we're getting there but the idea is to keep the reviews short and concise um with maybe two or three quotes to back up every one of the points that we make instead of we tend to do 10 to 15. so we're just trying to make it a little bit shorter and a little less less to read more to act on i think is our is our goal and so just wondered if anyone else had any feedback based on the process of the past couple

007of years including jay um and then i think that's it so we just said that we would talk about it at this meeting so that we can make changes so that next may we're not being like oh we're just going to do it the same way again because we haven't had time to change anything okay i was just going to say um i like that idea i think it would be really important for the board and me to establish the goals up front and and then i think it'd be really kind of cool if we did that survey and somehow we're able to structure the survey so we get some feedback on those goals in whatever themes we choose and the questions that we pick that'd be helpful for me using it as a professional

008development tool okay so i like i think it's important that the superintendent evaluation process focus on people who have direct interaction with the superintendent i absolutely believe that i guess my question on the community survey while i think you need to do a community climate survey school climate survey etc i guess i'm confused about whether we need to do that with the superintendent process at all i mean i think we do right i think we do a school climate survey already for parents um and i think less is more in terms of surveys so i just i don't know that it to me i don't know that we need that piece of the puzzle to be able to do the superintendent evaluation okay well then questions were required yeah a question that i would have

009is that would mean that the teachers would not have any direct input into jay's evaluation um and how do we feel about that so yeah i've always had a problem with employees critiquing their their bosses so i've always thought it very weird that we have people who have accessed the grind possibly participating so i think it's direct reports school board who we supervise jay and and then you know i know the race school does their annual parents survey that lauren briefs out like in may or april so i don't know if the high school does something similar i'm sure they do so but i've always had a concern about staff and faculty creating their boss so then that leads me to to suggest and i agree with you um ken also had a point too

010so i'm sorry can you no it's okay we just complete that thought and then um we we also have traditionally surveyed the sau office who are um under jay and they would be reporting a director tj so that's a direct direct report i i i don't have an issue with okay go ahead can yes i just wanted to get that out um so yeah i do i think a little bit of an opposite view on rick on this one i mean i i'm just curious if at no point throughout the year there isn't a staff climate survey um i think that that would be helpful information and it doesn't necessarily have to go to the level of detail that we would ask a direct report but if we're not doing that then i and it's

011not part you know the parent survey right i hear that um i would be in favor of doing some sort of staff climate survey is there already mechanisms in place of someone has an issue or a concern there's plenty of ways for that to be brought to the administration and or the school board so i don't know would that be enormous what could be anonymous they could also put their names right i just don't know i i believe our school districts are very well versed in letting people know if they have a concern or an issue or they're happy so okay [Music] i'm wondering if that could be achieved via the principles if the principles could somehow be i guess gather that information summarize that information and share that as part of their responses to

012the superintendent evaluation i i really like the idea of a school climate inventory there are some very well documented well validated um school climate inventories that have a section on leadership and that and i would that we could we could kill two multiple birds with a single stone in in that the same sort of thing applies when i do the principal surveys every year there's always i can always pretty much just from the open-ended questions i can see what percentage of people are giving the the um disagree and strongly disagrees and there's always a small number of those folks at each school who are using that opportunity to voice their their anonymous raspberries toward the the leader and then everybody else gets their glowing uh comments if we did a validated and reliable school climate

013inventory i'm trying to i think it was the university of kentucky has a good one but something like that could achieve both purposes they can make comments on district administration and they can make comments on school administration but it wouldn't be quite as personal and what i find myself having to do is to share that information with the principals without i i like to spare them the angst of having to read some mean pot shot and so i'll typically summarize it um because i i did just go over all of them with them up until this past year and i i just uh it's just not i don't think productive to have some of that just sort of bitter often groundless stuff that comes out especially when when people people who are at different levels

014in the organization have their perspective on leadership which in itself probably is it has a a useful application but often is is just not well informed i was just saying i'm absolutely in favor of doing school climate surveys in all of the schools i just i don't think that that needs to necessarily it can certainly inform our summary of the superintendent's evaluation but i don't think that it needs to be tied to it time wise necessarily or in name if that makes sense and i guess i'll i'll piggyback off of kelly's last comment i think for me the school the results of any sort of school climate survey are important to the superintendent's evaluation if the board in in collaboration with the superintendent set a goal for the superintendent such that school climate was an

015important thing to achieve right or to get better at and so i think where the whole process sort of falls into place for me is a making sure that the board and the superintendent have set the appropriate goals and then b that we um then elaborate on what the measurements are going to be for each of those goals that then that informs how do we determine whether or not he's done well in those areas and that could be through a survey that could be through conversations with the people that are involved in that and so just making sure that this whole process is is tied together in such a way that it makes sense and that we just don't do a school climate survey and then take the results and realize that you know maybe

016jay was doing um not well in a particular area but it wasn't an area that we were particularly concerned would start with right and suddenly it generates an issue that didn't previously exist and i just want to be careful that we don't if we're going to ask for input that the input is directly related to the items that we thought jay really needed to work on and my response to that might be that if we were to do a climate survey and feel a need for a climate survey then it should not be connected to jade's review whatsoever unless jv includes a goal that specifies something about school climate that things correct that i state that right right and to the extent that i mean have and pardoned my ignorance on this one first for

017having to know that have we finalized the goals for this at what point we do do that okay so i think then you know in order to make this all sort of fit together like a puzzle right and i think our the board's first step might ought to be finalizing those goals with the foresight right that however we evaluate those goals at the end of the year they all need to sort of make sense absolutely sort of did in your this year's evaluation you gave me my marching orders essentially so i feel like i feel like i've got my goals um but that is different from what we're talking about that we have done in the past where i discussed it together and everyone agrees as well as you that this is what you would

018like to be working on and we expect that you need to work on for the next year and maybe that's a starting point maybe that like those those marching orders are the place to start the discussion to make sure we're all in agreement that that's what we would be evaluating you on okay i assume that you'd already discussed those when you're supported so what we might do is put that topic discussing forward goals for next year on the october meeting folks if that makes sense for the october meeting using the document that's already in place as a starting point right and then see if we need to fine-tune or delete anything does that sound like that viable agenda item to address what we're talking about i do think that he settled on let's go and

019james we're already into the season jay started his planning so i'd be more comfortable sticking with the goals and then maybe just a discussion between the board the committee members and jay if there's a need to find too many things but not to stray from what we've already agreed was in the uh rejecting that yeah um i would agree with what tom said and i think if there's any action left to be done it might be just reviewing those goals and making sure that we've defined the adequate measures by which we're going to determine whether or not they've been met because then that can directly feed into how we're going to actually perform the evaluation yep um and i i would also echo but i wouldn't want to change things now and typically the timing

020for setting these comes earlier in the year not in october so i would still argue with let's keep things the way they are and maybe just do a little bit of addition add some measurements undefining um implying of course but not specifying yeah and can you have a question i was actually almost about to say the exact same thing but also uh that you know i think when i brought up the point of having a staff climate survey is just because i think that that's the only place my ignorance but i think that was the only place that it was happening district-wide before and um you know i want to support the idea of continuing to have staff have an outlet in a survey form like parents do that we give them the opportunity so

021it doesn't have to be within the spec process i just would support that going forward any other ones wouldn't you be able to get that through like the teacher's moment isn't that a major source for getting feedback i'm just wondering if they could like collaborate with the union as we have in the past right like to it seems like an inorganic place for teachers to voice i mean potentially i mean not all staff are unionized right not all staff right we were talking about teachers specifically right i'm talking about everything every step yeah okay yeah as i said all this this is great i think we can use existing goals you gave me to create the outline the framework for what the process will be and the way we're moving with our teacher supervision model

022is is toward an evidence-based we have a framework it's called the danielson framework and and in those in those evaluations we're looking for sources of evidence to see the people that made those goals i think that's the next conversation i think that a couple of you mentioned it that we would i think we would meet together to figure out okay what what sources of evidence will i be able to bring to the table to show you that we've attained or we've progressed on each of these different goals okay so to summarize my marching orders are to work with you and the committee to look at those goals and find measurements and then we'll bring them you know we'll just do an update in the october meeting about what we decided and see if there's any

023issues from there and then we in this way we may be skipping the teacher input and the staff input of you know process so perhaps someone not the spec committee but someone would do a school climate survey that would include all the various schools and all the various constituencies together to get some information about how things are going that would not necessarily inform or not inform the superintendent's review but might be useful to use going forward okay [Music] it sounds good let me just change the language on it a little bit to say that um i think where the committee is of value right is to to talk through these things and to come back to the board of suggestions on how we do these things and then they have the board agree rather than

024for the committee to decide this is how we're going to do it it's just a slight i and i maybe it was language that you didn't mean to use or or i misinterpreted it but i heard you know that neil was asking for him yeah what i was saying is that we would we would come up with something and then presented in october for you all to say yay or nay or you forgot something or that's ridiculous and then the only piece that i might add to it is to the extent that we want to actually codify this process moving forward you might want to develop some policy or small p policy or regulation around this so that future boards then if we find this to be successful know that there is um a framework

025by which we handle this going forward so that when everybody here is gone the process doesn't change that much or is forgotten okay hi then and then not to derail us but um at one of the last meetings um we did talk in terms of the evaluation about sharing of the raw data from the surveys which were now that we're not surveying it feels as if we don't need to have that discussion would that be correct but we'd steal the direct reports right yeah but the direct reports we might be able to interview i mean we interviewed the principals there aren't that many direct reports so it might just be that we have a focus group with the direct reports or i don't know that that's a good question so but it just doesn't there

026aren't it's not like it would be 400 like it has been in the past it would be 10 or so so um but i just i i didn't want to skip over that piece of it so but for now we'll just say we're good unless we decide to do an extensive survey and then we'll talk about data sharing if that happens okay that makes sense to me um to that point sorry ben but i don't know what our policy is on this but i know that in in the past year or so the members of the public have asked for results of surveys that have been done so we probably want to make sure that our policy is clear on that climate survey how those results will be shared um at what point you know

027what levels will be shared aggregate data etcetera yeah i'm not sure but i'm not sure about policy offhand but i think historically we've shown general results on powerpoints right right yeah okay thanks guys on that topic well done thank you lisa um the next topic that was suggested for tonight is the uh reviving the administrator's salary committee i don't know exactly what that involves but i do think we've discussed this many times and i don't know why this is not too early dissolved but what we do need to consider um [Music] [Laughter] she answered everything so if there are any board members who might think they'd like to serve on that committee i will um open my email to any any uh suggestions or any volunteers how many people you look out for well maybe

028before we jump right into that so a couple of ideas here right one is um so if you make it a community of the board right has to adhere to all of the open meeting laws and stuff like that so we want to make sure that any folks that are participating in this committee understands that that's the ground rules for that alternatively if the board were so to decide this right you could simply task the superintendent to look into this issue and then bring back their recommendations to the board if you do it that way then we don't well we don't then have board member participation in that effort the final decision can still come back to the board for deliberation and decision here so two different ways to handle the same topic i i

029personally would like to second the latter plan uh partly because i think some of the groundwork has already been done on this and i know jay has access to that um i also i guess you know the last year or so has really shown me the extent to which we need to look at this and look at it quickly um and i've been hearing that from members of the public too it's really overall a drop in the bucket in our overall budget um to try to make our salaries more competitive um on a on a period basis and so that would be in the interest of expediency um that would that would also be my recommendation any other responses so is a new word how is it typically done maybe this is an answer for

030jay or people that have been on the board for longer but how what is the kind of collection compensation analysis process i mean is there a professional firm that does it do we just go look at other school districts and pull public records how does that so the last time this was done in a more formal method we had a member of the board a great deal financial expertise who worked with jamie and amy to to do a sort of a comparable study um now since then the does are putting out the salary like names everything for all administrators i have the copy of the spreadsheet i hope to pin to board docs but i can't get it off out of excel for some reason i'll do it and post it for because there were

031a couple missing but looking at the spreadsheet the reason this is becoming more and more of an issue is because as statewide teacher salaries increase by step and by track movement and by raises we've been steadily providing either a two percent or this year one and a half percent administrative raise with no steps no other adjustments and so we're seeing the gap between the per diem rate for teachers and administrators widening um and that might not be a fair or a financially proven way to analyze the situation but from the perspective of the administrator who who would have had his or her most difficult year of their career to see their a little increment of a little incremental growth in their salary this year even compared to previous years while the teaching staff goes up

032another step and sees another two percent raise it just doesn't feel right and where we're going relative to other districts in the state with jim gone jim we paid jim roughly what he was making in keene which was a higher salary than almost higher than what mr campbell had been making but if we take that one out and i look at the salaries from last year of about 300 300 or so administrators that are full-time our first uh our highest paid administrator would be number one would be at um ranked at like 112. there are 112 administrators deep to get to that salary from highest salary to lower so and then everything's below that i mean our lowest paid assistant [Music] is down i'm going to extend this analysis to include assistance principles as well

033but we're not among the highest paying and when people are looking looking at job openings is that's the other thing that's a pressure on us that makes this more urgent is that there's a shortage of administrators and and people are scrambling and people are trying to make the best decisions they can for themselves and sometimes that a lure of a higher salary overcomes any loyalty people have to the organization and you can't blame people for doing what's best for their own and their families interest does so i think what would be helpful is to think of this also not as salary but as compensation so we want to think about um you know kind of retire i don't and i don't know how much of this is able to be accessed but for you know

034our health plans and you know retirement and whatnot so i think that that should be broadened because it's not all just salary um and then second um you know i i'm wondering if we should think about what the time frame is to have if we're leaning toward jay coming back to us with some analysis for us to deliberate um what the time frame is thinking that this does relate pretty strongly to our i would imagine negotiations um you know for for teachers as we're talking about you know kind of step tracking which would be under discussion so i'm wondering if we can agree on a time frame maybe a meeting so that they can come back with to discuss i would love that in fact i really feel like it needs to be something that

035we we do in conjunction with this year's budget process which means it's it's a pretty compact timeline which to me argues for neil's second suggestion because i think that's faster i'm looking at jamie with benefit my distance glasses but i'm wondering is that something that you think is doable jamie we've done a lot of pre-work already but i mean i'm happy to do a ton of as much of the research as i can handle and like i said a lot of the data is available yeah the data is available on both sides and yes [Music] yeah sure so i think that to me there's there's there's two pieces to this right i think that there's some work that could be done in the short term um specifically related sort of where we stand now in

036comparison to other districts you know in our area or where the pool of candidates might be coming from that we're looking to attract and i think that that could probably be done fairly quickly given the data that we already have but to jamie's and i'm going to put words in her mouth or the sense of hesitancy right on this is that i think that there's a bigger aspect to this that might take a little bit more work um that could continue beyond that initial effort because i think it does relate to exactly what kim pointed out to as it relates to our current or our contract negotiations um and there's some hard decisions i think that the board is going to need to wrestle with right because um our general approach historically to negotiations has

037resulted in a certain level of increases that do you find yourself having to keep pace with on the administrative side and that always hasn't worked out quite well and so if we want to take the long view of this i think the board needs to consider the types of stuff that we're going to consider in negotiations the positions that we want to adopt there in order to be able to get the outcomes that we're hoping to get okay i agree with that i guess the only thing i would add is the first piece of it i think we need to look at a comparative study but i don't think that we can do that in the in a vacuum i think we have to look at also a comparative study of our teachers and i

038suspect what we're going to find is that our teachers are among the highest paid in the state and our administrators are nowhere near that and that is i mean i think that's the gap that we're finding and there's a whole host of historical reasons for that experience reasons i mean we have also a very experienced teaching staff right um and so i think there's a lot of factors going to that but at the end of the day it means that we have many teachers in the district making more than our administrators on a permian basis right and i think he's been lucky in the past few hires to find wonderful people who had connections to this area and wanted to be here and and it didn't push us to make some of those tough decisions

039and i think now that we're looking at the principal position at the high school we're seeing that that you know we're not finding that person who's you know the administrator that our community is um or we haven't been able to find the person that our community expects for the salary that we're able to offer um with a whole host of other factors pandemic and whatnot going on obviously but i think we're at sort of a critical moment and i guess i'm also a little nervous about waiting too long to make this so make this decision so um well i think there is sort of there are some immediate steps that can be taken there's some long-term study to be done i also think there is some urgency and so i don't want the long-term piece

040of it to be too long-term because i think we're seeing ourselves by doing that all right last question so who when we're designed to hire say a new principal or that sort of thing is it jay is this superintendent that comes up with sally recommendations or is it us because the other day i think it sounds like too also based on what i'm hearing is is that there probably are going to be some decisions being made that are okay who are key administrators that are all administrators is important but the really important ones that are the leaders of the you know the principles and that type of thing versus maybe other administrators right and whether those folks need to either as new hires or just to some of the step increases start to get back

041in line with something more competitive because there's they're cr so it's jay that makes those recommendations right i don't make them solo i always consult with jamie yeah and and uh and the board obviously ultimately approves the the whatever the the salary package is um and to the point of benefits one of the things that jamie and i started working i think when i first got here was starting to think about what what options could we have where we figure out what is the cost of our benefits package now and could we just use that standard cost but create options within it that might make it more attractive and customizable for for our leadership that wouldn't necessarily cost us more but might be more attractive to them like a younger administrator might be more interested

042in vacation time than than 403 b matches and those sorts of things so um so yeah that's definitely a big piece that put together so two things to keep in mind as we work into this one is that your administrators are non-need okay so you don't have the same time constraint that you have that you're going to be facing with your teachers union support staff union in new hampshire there are deadlines by which time those agreement terms have to you know come come to pass or or you don't put a warrant on right they can petition around you but it's a whole other situation um so you have a deadline with your support staff from your teachers union that you don't have with your non-meaning and i just want to make that point because it

043is kind of tied um but you don't have the same you know pressure i think when is that deadline it's uh kim it's usually by the third it's the third week in january it has to be on okay you have to come to an agreement so it can be placed on the warrant for new hampshire so i think the warrants are due the third week of january third thursday it's 20 20 days prior to when we have to do another warning so the dates are all tied together but it usually falls about third week of january about the 20th so i'm hearing that there were two options oh can you have another question oh so well and it's more of a question for jay and jamie i mean when would this review data as much

044as you can get done so that the board has something to sink its teeth into um at least the first crack at it be able to be produced is it our next essay you meeting is it three sau meetings or not i mean just kind of i would is it before january or not i guess is my question yes and it's not just me doing it we have an hr person who would be involved heavily in gathering the data new hampshire gathers a lot of it i don't know about the principal side they usually run a year behind on their principal data um you know superintendent assistant superintendent va data is very readily available in new hampshire requested every year vermont does it as well principles i think they're they're probably doing it more readily

045now um so so yeah the part of it that skews it you know like you pointed out which is also what took so much time the last time we did this was that you know we picked the top 20 um school districts who were comparable to hanover right in expectation in you know teaching salaries in size somewhat and we asked for their human resource department to send us what the benefit packages were because while you look at the per diem rate that's one part of it right um you know i know our benefits packages here are very very rich they are i can tell you that i've researched that so when you look at a total compensation package uh that's what we want to be able to look at we want to ask you know

046at the other school districts you know how long's the principal been there that makes 158 thousand dollars you know has he been there 30 years does he have you know what other benefits does he have you know how many days does he work so that's what takes a little bit more time the raw data of just the dollar amount of the numbers is quick and easy and so i would then want to say to jay and and eugene would would your portion of this review to get to something where you could actually leave changes into this current budget isn't there time to do that because obviously coming back from the october 26th meeting isn't going to work is that right and so that's sounds like that's where we are i mean i think we need

047to make it work right because that's when the sae budget needs to be looked at and ratified and i don't think you can you know there are so many administrators sitting within that budget alone that we can't ratify an sau budget and then go back and change it because it's solely supported by the school districts so and my announcement was it would be next year who didn't do it now and i'm just asking if we could um concretize where we are right now and say to the two of you who it sounds like unless folks don't agree um that would be placed on your task list to be done and woven in by that we can get all of that data i don't know that we would be in a place to be able to

048make well-thought-out solid recommendations on how to change the whole entire package we can try i would suggest yeah that would give you a status update and whatever data we do have and whatever progress we're able to make again we make that progress toward that goal but just just to rattle off a few and again we're only looking at salary numbers here and we don't know all the variables but it used to be that we had this select group of similar types of communities that we compared ourselves with and and now i'm looking at hinsdale seabrook windham uh hopkinton merrimack valley milford new boston dairy hooksett fall mountain manchester laconia windham uh john stark portsmouth obviously rye dairy litchfield i mean there's it's a much broader bunch of towns now that are paying their principals more

049um and it's no big surprise some of some of these just like jamie said you look at some of these some of these are unionized they have administrator unions and um and those would have scheduled salary increases and they would you know sometimes those those could be two three percent a year um so we have two things happening we have a we have a separation between teacher salary growth and administrator salary growth and then we have the comparatives what's happening in other systems that all conspire to make us either attractive or not that attractive kelly one other um sort of non-quantifiable piece that would be really helpful to me would be to understand what our current wonderful administrators would like to see i mean i think that that would be important to me also to

050understand um you know we know that we we lost an administrator to teaching partly because of this right we lost another administrator to something else partly because of this and you know we need to avoid that happening and i guess i want to understand what what they would like to see as well i would say anecdotally i mean probably the thing we hear most commonly is is that that concern about the fact that when they're looking at and they're looking at what their their annual raise is for example and they see i mean they can do math and they figure out what their hourly difference is and they look at what their responsibility is and again this this year made it stand out a little more just because of the high stakes work that they

051were involved in all their regular duties plus managing their schools through a pandemic and all the additional communication um i think that's got a lot of folks looking at it and that was a big thing they said when when they saw their increase relative to the increase in teacher their their own teachers received it just just didn't feel right and they get it they we started the year really unsure of our cash flow we really had no idea how the federal funds were going to flow and and so everybody knew that and i think everybody was more than okay with it we wanted to make this all work but but then when reality hits and you have a little time to reflect that's where we're hearing the the biggest concern that there seems to be

052an unfairness in salary growth among the people they lead and their own group so so in the interest of time are we content to do we accept putting this in jay and jamie's hand is it possible jamie and others to do this you know not you don't have to have everything but you kind of have it almost a living this in my business we kind of are constantly collecting salary and bonus and all that kind of data and every year you know but we always said what we just have left so it's not like all of a sudden we do it like every five years but you kind of have a living breathing comp data so maybe it's calling for schools right it's not all of a sudden doing all 30 schools and getting everything

053all done and then we're kind of like okay we're done for the next five years because you know you add a few more schools into it or we focus on just the principles or just people that we're really focused on hiring now leave the rest of the administrative analysis administrator analysis to the side taking chunks right i'm guessing that's what jay and jane would be able to exactly i'm trying to kind of make it a smaller task a little bit with everything going on does that sound invaluable to everyone and more who we're mostly concerned about i think right now like if we're you know obviously we're hiring a principal here i think we i would want it we should have the absolute best data so we can make sure we pull the trigger on

054a principle here that you know when and if that time comes hopefully that we are have the best data available that's just one position so any other plumbing move on the next item budget guidelines budget committing you will have something to say about this no doubt yes so um so actually but none of the budget committees um have met yet but um i think that um you know i think maybe in a change of pace or see if this goes anywhere um we we will be meeting as a budget committee um on august 17th both dresden and hanover will be meeting and i believe norwich is meeting sometime um and um but instead of surveying those um couple of members who are on the budget committee then um to create the draft guidelines for them

055the full board um if anybody has any um either economic issues that they like to bring up kind of best practices from last year um uh kind of what did you like what did you think could be improved just it's kind of easier to do it now than after we write the one to two page budget guidelines and think of what the cap would be for next year um you know kind of i just wanted to give a little bit of space here um to have those discussions if anybody has anything that they had off top of mind we can incorporate them as we meet as a group on the 17th i would also say that you know as we all know this is a negotiations year so um thinking about what is our traditionally

056we do a budget kind of cap right we say do not exceed three percent or whatever it is increase over the previous year um a lot of our budget is salaries right for our in our union contracts that we'll be negotiating so we're gonna have to think as a budget committee kind of how do we create those kind of guidelines that are flexible enough to accommodate the negotiations track which the budget committee really doesn't have purview over um specifically so um just wanted to give a little space right now for that and just to kind of give you an update on the kind of what are we anticipating um going forward so does anyone have something to affect so i think i'm on the sa committee and uh so i think it's also structured based

057on the current schedule that we will meet uh to establish these guidelines actually after all the others others have gone first which is good because tend to drive this but then the challenge is that this is the first one that we approve before all the others have been discussed so that's one thing i we never seem to be able to figure out the best way to mesh that and in the end we sometimes have to go back and readjust the sau and i i just think maybe even the three of us or for us jay as a budget committee could think through i don't know if we need to come up with a slightly different schedule as far as how to approve the sau budget so that we're not always thinking we may have to

058reopen it after we've gone through the norwich dresden and hand over budgets and realize that we need to adjust things after we've already approved them so that's without even thinking through the um guidelines themselves just process wise i think that might be something we also want to discuss in our first uh meeting there if there's any other way to do it yeah i don't either it's just it seems like you keep running the same issue and there doesn't seem to be one but so it may just be a matter of being flexible i think it's not hard i mean we've done it especially this administrative compensation group has gets kicked off i totally see it does anyone else would anyone else like to weigh in on the guidelines so much on the guidelines but i

059really appreciated the process that we used where we tasked the principles with setting their own priorities and we avoided the nitpicking of are you sure you need this thing are you sure you really want the risers carpeted right and we trusted them to make those decisions and i thought that was a much much healthier process for all of us the other comments well then we'll move on we have the approval of expenditure do we need to discuss that one do you just think you want to yes for good okay does that mean you have a question no i want to approve i do have to ask if we can just pull out the july 21st minutes because i was not here i'd have to abstain from july 21st you don't have to abstain from yeah

060four minutes according to robert's rules to clarify you don't if you weren't there for a meeting you don't need to abstain from voting on the minute so your vote on the minutes is just a reflection that you believe that they accurately represent what happened at the meeting even if you weren't there it's still okay i was thinking about you all from my vacation do i need to pull out the approval of expenditures as a separate item or can that be lumped in with the uh sorry all those in favor thank you that's quick um the next item on the agenda is the report of chair i have nothing special to report if anyone has any issues at all they'd like to talk about on that october 25th 6th meeting please let me know um committee

061reports we have heard from the respect committee and i suspect there will be um at least one other committee sure the the sau diversity equity and inclusion committee has now met twice um both of those meetings focused primarily on hearing from the previous group and the work and the efforts that have been done to date we haven't quite gotten through all of that information yet so we will pick that up um in in our third meeting that has yet to be scheduled at the second meeting we also began a little bit of work on trying to have the committee develop their definition of equity and i think that's going to go a long way in helping establish a baseline for everybody on the committee to work from as we move forward with some of the

062other things since a lot of this is going to be based around equity we're in the process right now of trying to nail down a standing meeting time for this group and given all of the other meetings that we've got going on plus the large size of committee we're about 20. it's been a little challenging so i've just recently sent out another doodle poll asking for folks availability around two other recurring dates and so i'll give it another day or two to see what the results are better and hopefully we'll be able to establish a standing meeting time that we'll be able to get together every month thank you i would just like to express my extreme gratitude for your stepping up to the point and taking that committee over it's really been a godsend

063for the board at large because you are so well versed in all of the procedures and the right to know and open meeting laws i think you've also helped 19 other members to understand what their job is so thank you so much for that thank you any other committee reports um we would like to hear next from the assistant superintendent hello everyone we met today for our um pandemic response committee we changed the name now move away from the cobig 19 committee um but we basically looked at the decisions that we made at our last meeting and looked at the new guidance that came out yesterday from vermont and it's really in line with what we'd already previously decided they recommended 10 days with math in school and then an 80 vaccination rate again following

064the guidelines that we've been following so it matches perfectly what we're doing we moved our we talked originally about having vaccination rates of 70 to go along with you know looking at the other data and the state and surrounding us and the towns around us and area so we decided to just make that consistent though and moved to 80 overall district for vaccination rights now given that we do know that hanover has implemented a mass mandate and we'll continue to follow that um so i don't see us changing dramatically in the next few weeks once we begin school but we'll see what happens and as of yet there's still no vaccine for children younger than 12 so that again is going to you know take us quite a significant amount of time i feel like

065to get to any kind of 80 vaccination rate especially at our elementary schools but we've made decisions about each of the you know really pertinent pieces like the boxes we know that everyone's students and staff have to be maps on buses um i did include the i did a little pandemic framework to try to just have kind of some bullets on each of the major topic areas that i did include that in the packet and i revised the opening reopening guidelines that were done last year i just simplified it i took out a lot of the information that was in there that was no longer pertinent or not pertinent at this point so i've included those in the packet but i'm happy to answer any questions that's really the big thing that's changed we talk

066about field trips um things like you know allowing for walking field trips at this point and allowing for field trips in the two states vermont new hampshire at the principal's discretion so we're giving the principles i feel like more discretion too for big events in schools and determining whether you know those will be appropriate we talked about staff meetings being in person this year and again um you know wearing mass and trying to maintain social distances and things like that so we've gone through all of that i feel like the major major areas of concern sports will continue with we will not a lot have mass outside so we'll continue to walk with um sports to be played masculist except for volleyball which will be indoors we are allowing spectators following the guidelines that we've

067set in place we're allowing visitors and volunteers in the schools as long as they've pre-arranged and again are following the guidelines so i think that it's basically all the big big topics that we've covered but i'm happy to answer any questions if you have any so the opening plan is this going to be shared with the public yes so i want to share with all of you first and then we'll put it on our website and yeah absolutely there's some like typos i assume this is just draft right now but the travel restriction about international travel is confusing [Music] um because it talks about international travel other than canada or cruise ships requires self quarantine for 10 days unless a negative pcr test is administered on day six or seven one may return on day

068eight for those who have not been vaccinated that doesn't yeah i know i thought that was confusing too okay i'll work on because it's different requirements for vaccinated versus unvaccinated i think yeah maybe just break it out say if you're vaccinated this is your restrictions if you're unvaccinated this is your restriction any other questions yeah okay can i follow up on the travel one too because so domestic travel does not require quantity is that for non-vaccinated people too right so someone could go to florida that's under accident come back and right really yeah there's no that's unfair um domestic like yeah um and that's been in place actually since uh my second question was about the uh volunteers people coming into the building as volunteers how are we going to have them show that they've

069been vaccinated no we are not going we are going to ask questions about vaccination status but we're not going to ask for proof of vaccination status and do we get to improve this back-to-school plan because i'm not is that that's going to be the case even in the elementary schools well you know i find different information from our attorneys you know send some information to you today and it's hard for us to i think it's hard for people in the front offices to monitor that you know we can ask people and we would still obviously have people follow all of the protocols that we have in place masking social distancing and having an appointment before coming into the building but that's a tough one too well it is unless it's an elementary school we just

070said no volunteers and i could ask sean if that's something that would work well or not but uh i don't know okay thank you well so forgive me for this um it's more thinking out loud and i apologize to bring it up but um seeing sort of the reaction of my dartmouth students and my own teenager at home to masks again um i'm sort of anticipating a point where the high schoolers kind of go enough we're vaccinated we've done what you asked us to do we want to take our masks off you know this is so i i guess i'm just sort of wondering um if there is a mechanism or a time and and it's not now given delta and everything but um if that's part of the conversation with the town of hanover

071with um within the committee about you know disaggregating the populations and if there's a point at which within your classroom where we can identify close contacts you are allowed to take off your mask to learn and then in the hallways you'd have to put it back on or i don't know like i'm just thinking out loud but yeah definitely i mean i feel like this will evolve as we move forward like last year too and that's why we've set the parameters in place for you know the vaccination status for infection rates um and all those pieces so right i do feel like we have the ability to evolve as things change around us and i feel like we did that last year too of course you guys are the phenomenal so it's just taking all

072that information and you know trying to make the best decisions that we can with it so i don't think that will necessarily it means that we're going to stick with this for the entire year that's why initially we said you know we look at it after the first two weeks so garrett you have a question yeah and how do you guys think about just kind of you know so obviously tom raised the point about the domestic travel quarantine but then i think the bigger thing is how are you guys thinking about it's okay to say okay let you know the high school has reached 80 vaccination rates so let's just get rid of all the mass but then you've got a high school student at least in our family who then has two siblings that

073are unvaccinated so that actually is like the biggest that's why at least our family right now is actually asking a lot when we go places because it's the two little ones that and not little i mean they're both elementary schoolers but they probably are now at the highest risk which is completely upside down from where we were last year as far as risk factors right that there's more of the older population that we're worried about younger kids like yeah they'll you know they'll be fine but now it's like so how does that go into the planning as far as like you know because unfortunately that's kind of a big deal when our middle schooler might just be like right pass off we're all free now but yet then he comes home infected he may be

074fine but the two little ones now are like right now that is i mean that's a big concern and that's something that we've talked about yeah whether we maintain you know separate policies for different schools depending upon vaccination rates and things like that so right for sure that that's definitely an issue and then also i mean this plan goes with the research that we've been talking about too that you know if you look at the research that's just come out recently with the high numbers of school data that have been examined masking is it helps tremendously from preventing the spread regardless of vaccination status so you know we feel like that's the one mitigation effort if we have it in place that regardless of whether which is a vaccine or not that's helping that's good

075to hear because i think that's why i keep caring for at least from why you know towns neighbors and stuff is that releasing everything else and outside and all kind and even the potting seeding and the um contact tracing we won't be doing contract racing in the schools next year because again the research shows us that there were not high numbers of kids across the country that became infected in schools that did have masking in place so it was a really rare occurrence so we were doing all this contact raising but in fact we were not finding the spread in the schools that was happening outside of the schools and generally when students were not maths so you know something that supports us returning to school with mass on at least initially too so it

076sounds like sorry to keep going so it sounds like this plan is kind of built around masking and if we suddenly start dropping the masking then there's going to be some bigger decisions that can be made yeah and like i said none of these decisions are easy yes you know we have struggled and we have varying opinions on the committee too so it's besides because you know someone will say something you know counter to what a majority of the committee is saying i think people are comfortable expressing um their opinions regardless of whether they're in sync with one another or and it i think it's brought us to some big conclusions yeah so lisa yeah um so we've talked about the different we might have different policies for the different schools based upon their ages

077and the vaccination rates but one thing i remember from the last meeting that julie stevenson was very clear about is that whatever happens with within a school needs to be exactly the same and i just wondered if that was still what you were hearing because i i guess i'm a little leery about having a policy for vaccinated kids and a policy for unvaccinated kids that feels yeah i i don't i mean on one hand i can argue that i can argue it both ways but it just feels and julie was very clear that that would not happen at the high school that there would be a problem you know as far as she was concerned it needed to be all or nothing um for everyone and i just wondered if you were still having those

078sorts of conversations i think if we get to the point that we are starting to talk about different um policies for different schools then yes you know that will definitely come up again and then my second question is i sort of feel like the first two weeks of school are crazy like and i'm not sure i'm comfortable having a discussion about taking maths off after only two weeks based upon everything else you all are going to be doing so i just wondered what had been discussed like if you needed more time kelly's shaking her head but it's not going to happen yeah right okay well that i guess that affects us too because it's just kids underneath initially okay because you know we were thinking okay well at that point the numbers were not significant

079okay and so but now two weeks later after our initial meeting things are changing and so we thought okay well we can see if it does have an impact once we get back to school and if we're seeing increasing numbers and things like that returns to its session so i think realistically at this point given the town of hanover's requirements given what the state of vermont has said we have schools to elementary school where kids are not going to be vaccinated so i guess i would just argue we need to say that out loud because people are people are talking about it's only two weeks and i just i'm sort of like no it's two weeks and then it might be more right so um that that doesn't that part of the message seems to

080have been missed by some people so yeah i mean and the kelly's candy we just need to drop them entirely it should not stay on their two weeks it should say until further notice because they're going to be like oh good that means two weeks and then they'll be horribly disappointed when we know that's not going to right yeah and teenagers are literally yes yes they are and you have a question i don't have a question i just wanted to say i want to apologize if i came off this criticizing your commitment directly that was nothing it was more just trying to sort through what guidance we're getting what legal requirements we are bound by so that was not the intention no i know jamie you had a question i have a question i just

081want to make sure that and i i am just you know restating this for the all of the dresden and sau board members if you weren't privy to the fact that in the state of new hampshire the governor signed a bill where you cannot require public schools all right so you also hence my apology all right i just some people don't realize that and they're they're you know taken aback that we can't mandate that everybody get a vaccine from an employee right and and so there's only a very few things in that are new hampshire public where they can require it and they're mostly in medical facilities not schools not colleges not epw's or towns or thank you volunteer section the last sentence says visitors should follow school mass protocols we can't say they will

082follow any other points for robin questions moving on to superintendent's report jay great thanks and i know we're digging into the forward school board's time here a little bit so um i just want to add to what robin just shared in addition to the good and important work that she and the committee are engaged in preparation for the new school year is well underway as you can see in the hallways our custodial maintenance staff are hard at work getting getting all our buildings ready rit folks are ramping up and testing out new equipment and so forth hr scrambling to onboard new hires which is of course the purpose for all these special meetings and jamie and her team are already gearing up for the next budget season so it's uh it's a busy busy time

083now all of a sudden our building administrators are likewise working with their staffs to to get ready as well and we've got a lot of teachers i've seen quite a few teachers in and out i know rob has been busy working on curriculum projects with them uh counselors are getting to work on all the sort of schedule changes and all the last minute work that they do and then on top of that we've got our major initiatives that again we're sort of back burner during the month of july but uh we'll be getting back on the strategic plan it's time to resume and get the yeah you'll be reaching um ryan will be reaching out to board members on uh convene that committee again um the evaluation committee is ready is set to complete its

084work and the next step will be to make formal recommendations to the board and the aga and then to devise an implementation schedule so should the board agree to the changes that have been uh farmed out and sort of shopped around for feedback we'd be looking at some sort of a pilot group this this initial year and then be ready to go wheels up come the next school year with a new the totally new system already we've um we have a test uh case going on right now at marion cross even though they're not part of that committee other than sean does join us for some of those meetings they've already moved to the danielson framework for the underlying basis for the evaluation model they've already engaged in some pretty substantial professional development with a

085focus on equity and and that professional development has been provided by a trainer from the vermont nea who has a counterpart in new hampshire and i've already had conversation with the acting head of our aga group here about sort of mirroring and replicating the training that's been happening at marion cross both robin and i were able to join sean for some of those sessions and thought it was really high quality so we're excited about that the aside from that there's there are lots of other professional development needs that arise from that because many of our staff we've been working with what we call the sau 70 standards of best practice as the basis for our evaluation supervision system and so there are many folks who are familiar with danielson because it's used almost everywhere else

086and uh but we will require that we do some professional development on just that which is the framework for for teaching and um so so that's something that we'll be we're looking at uh devoting our october in-service work and some more long-standing sessions to be able to provide that that training for folks so we should be able to get all that done and really have people up to speed in a way that everyone can handle the new information and so when we go fully live that's the following year um we'll have our training taken care of so i'm excited about that that's going to i think it could be an important change for us aside from that i've had a really it's there's been a lot of folks that we've brought on um sean's doing

087his part to make sure that we bring in fresh new ideas to the school system [Music] and i've had a chance to interview all these candidates and i'm really excited we're bringing in some some folks from different places with different different points of view different backgrounds and a lot of added value a lot of experiences that i think will make make for a really rich staff that'll have other things to share with students that make learning relevant so great job for all of our principals that are doing great job hiring so that's my update for now uh and we'll send a formal one to the community i sent a little sort of a teaser out last last week and rob and i are working on a more comprehensive message to go out to everyone staff

088and families about two weeks out from the start of school well actually about a week and a few days up from the start school um i think i missed it but can you maybe quickly repeat the strategic planning update i missed that one it was a brief mention that we're going to restart so we haven't met through the month of july we had our last meeting with four chairs and a couple of the other volunteers that we've had from the board who are interested in working on this and so ryan's going to be reaching out to schedule the next meeting can you remind me who those four board members are each of the chairs and then look what's on the chat yeah okay all right a couple other folks that joined us not from the

089board but there were so weren't you weren't you there at that last meeting no okay no because i didn't know anything about we were okay so right now i'd be happy to help but i didn't know that was an option so any other questions um so i'm sure you've had your screens of the boy dots for longer than when i've just posted the new end of as i was working on it while we were sitting there so if you want to refresh i've posted um a financial projection which is better than the one you saw in may for the sau 70 budget wrap-up we had promised um 78 to go into the 2122 budget year and we'll actually be carrying this is unaudited approximately 156 000 in surplus most of that was off of operations

090um the bulk of that was in salaries you know we had some folks who left us mid-year and you know we had some difficulty and fill in a few of the positions getting the right fit so it provided us with some savings and salary lines predominantly um so that's good news as we go and start to build the next one forward we'll be able to use some of that surplus as an offset and we'll also apologize that i had thought we had pulled in the non-public session section 7b i thought we had pulled that off so i would ask the chair to disregard that for tonight specifically because we are going to be rediscussing the administration's salary compensation committee and all of that so that'll come back as a part of that so please disregard

091that section thank you um [Music] move to enter into a non-public session under rsa 91-8 colon 3-2 personnel thank you is there a second lisa and all in favor that needs to be a role called folks that's right thank you kim kart minis macaulay yes christy f's d blessings percy yes thank you okay um agenda topics for next meeting if anyone has anything please let me know our next meeting will be on the 26th of october six o'clock motions return move to adjourn at 804 pm thank you seconded by kelly all in favor [Laughter] come on guys stay for the