001okay you're all set great thank you so at this point i'd like to call the hanover school board may meeting to order at 702. at this point uh public hearing for the burn foundation get a donation for ukulele program for six thousand dollars is that you lauren sure i'd be happy to speak to it briefly hopefully you had a chance to read the attachment in board docs which really explains the rationale behind this request from our music teacher becky loos it's something that we discussed before she went ahead and wrote this grant the ukulele program has been a loved program when it's been in full function and just provides another access point for students to enjoy the musical side of themselves or ignite something in themselves they didn't realize they had so i was very
002excited in in becky's interest in pursuing the purchase of these ukuleles and we are extremely grateful to the burn foundation um for taking a look at this grant and being able to provide a sum of six thousand dollars towards this cost wonderful so do i have someone who would like to make a motion john as an avid supporter of the ukuleles i would like to move to approve the burn foundation donation in the amount of 6 000 for a ukulele music program as presented great do we have another fan of ukuleles who would like to make a second ben ben seconded it uh john for discussion i would like to point out that during the um past year of quarantine my goal was to learn how to play the ukulele and i am not good
003at it great well maybe you can attend classes at the race school and we would say at ray you're not good at it yet yeah there's that growth mindset good so going around uh john hunt yes marcelo john you know the first step at being really good at something is being terrible at it yes de blasio i guess profound profound kim hurt mania yes and johnson yes great thank you again for that wonderful donation um now we're going to move on to agenda review does anyone have anything that they want to reorder or add or remove from tonight's agenda okay this point uh public may address the board um the chair will give members of the public two minutes for any comments they may have regarding items on the agenda the board respectfully asked members
004of the public to state their name and address before commenting on agenda topics stuart uh mr richards i'm gonna uh josh i think you need to give me permissions there we go mr richards you can uh talk now thanks for the opportunity stu richards 82 elm street norwich vermont and i had a question relating to the agenda and wondering under item 8e can you tell me which which bodies are going to report so usually we wait until uh it's kind of whoever has something to report uh at that point i can ask right now if any of the committee members plan on reporting later in the uh the board meeting kim yes so i'm the hanover finance committee liaison the student board rep and i plan to give an update about the hanover finance committee
005great anyone else so it looks like right now just the hanover finance committee there mr richards john and i know uh kelly mcconnell is uh running a couple minutes late but she may have something with one of her committees or the hnsb uh yeah great which which committees would uh would those be if in fact they get uh reported on well so they're all on that there's a number of different committees so we got spec which is the superintendent's performance evaluation committee we've got um for hanover what other committees are there that we report on typically typically budget budget um finance committee are our main ones yeah most of the committees uh are either housed under resident or sau not as many committees under hanover that's great thanks for your help have a great night
006thank you and uh ms hutchins oops it's not allowing me to there we go hey uh josh i can't move jen over or allow her to talk i'm not sure why either it's almost like she disappeared one second she may have dropped off yeah i don't see her in the list anymore he did disappear can you enable kate uh there's kate uh kate hilton you're uh if you could introduce yourself hi everyone it's kate hilton i have a first and third grader remote at ray i just wanted to offer my thanks for the support that the school has given to the public trainings across the upper valley community around multicultural education and becoming a bystander i participated it was absolutely terrific i didn't fully appreciate the the rigor of multicultural education and its focus on
007social emotional learning and critical thinking i learned a lot from these sessions and i really appreciate the board's commitment to making transparent through those sessions what it has been doing in its training with the dei um efforts among teachers staff and administrators as well as its overarching commitment to dei and you know at the ray and apart from the hanover schools across sau 70 to curriculum review and just wanted to say thank you and keep up the good work thank you and uh narov kapania yeah hi nirv kapatia i'm a parent of a uh a second grader at the rey school uh live in hanover i i also wanted just to echo kade's comments uh that the trainings have been fantastic and i also wanted to apologize on behalf of the community uh that there
008have been uh obvious myth truths and misrepresentations uh floating around and uh appreciate uh dr adams's clarification email that went out to the community uh regarding those myth truths and to quote liz cheney ignoring lies only emboldens liars so thank you dr badams for calling out the lies thank you and let me know if we see um jen hutchins come back in i'll let her speak at that point oops um i have ames thank you hi this is beth ames i have three students in sau 70. and i just want to say a global thank you to jay and the board members the teachers the staff the administration i have been it is beyond my wildest dreams that we would be in school full-time this whole year and that just has not gone noticed um
009in a way that and recognized in a way that it should i really appreciate everybody's hard work dedication willingness to pivot around obstacles and i just am thrilled i i feel so grateful and lucky that i have three students in sau 70. so thanks for your hard work and dedication thank you i think the board's uh echoes your your comments we've been very happy that this year has actually gone very smoothly and that the all our staff teachers and administrators have done a phenomenal job and uh jen hutchins if you or i'm gonna allow you to talk now there you go hi rick thank you sorry my internet went down um and it sounds like i'm gonna be echoing a couple other people but um oh i'm in hanover as well uh i just wanted
010to share some gratitude um first to dr adams for his email last week i was listening to the exchange last week when you know those lies were said about our district and specifically the ray school i was upset but even more so i was concerned that people would believe what they had heard on public radio and so thank you for sending out that clarification email and then the trainings were fantastic um i participated in both of them i've had really good conversations with parents as a result and my biggest takeaway was that the professional development that our staff and teachers have gone through this year it really supports us as parents and raising kind humans so thank you for your support thank you for all of your time and thank you for your hard work
011thank you and mr richards you can have another minute to make any comments it's uh stu richards i just like to respond to the comments that have been made regarding lies that appeared on the nhpr program and i i would just ask you to reserve judgment until you see the newspaper article which will be in response to some of the comments that have been made this evening and also some of the comments that have appeared in the uh newspaper so thanks for reserving judgment and uh have a great night thank you okay seeing no more comments we're going to move on to uh the principles report lauren good evening everyone i have some just sort of updates about what's been going on some of them are more of that just the nitty gritty things and
012then some are just the celebrations that we've been having so start with start with some nitty gritty uh just update the board in the community that we despite all of the protocols we've been following have continued to participate in our mandatory safety drills which have included our fire drills as well as a recent bus evacuation drill so we're maintaining our schedule and carrying on despite a pandemic and making sure that we're doing all things to keep our kids safe here at school and prepared for things that we um may be considering unexpected and hopefully don't occur at all another nitty gritty item we're right in the middle of our statewide assessment system testing it's called the nhsas new hampshire statewide assessment system and this is the state testing that occurs on an annual basis in
013grades three through five uh we did not complete this testing last year due to uh the pandemic and being um in our homes but this year we have resumed our fifth grade students have completed their testing and in fifth grade students take science math and ela which is english language arts and includes writing and reading our third graders are taking their tests right now uh this week as well as next week in the areas of math and ela again english language arts which is a reading as well as a writing module and then our fourth grade students will be taking their tests uh the weeks of may 24th and may 31st in math and english language arts uh something that was just really nice and kind of exciting is that this testing cannot be done
014remotely so we welcomed in our remote students and remote staff members to complete their testing and we'll do so for fourth grade as well it's been really wonderful to see our students here in person behind masks but many students that we haven't seen in person in quite some time and it was just heartwarming to be able to welcome them back into our community for a little bit of time though for maybe not the most exciting thing it was certainly exciting to see them for next year's enrollment which i mentioned that i would update the board at our last meeting uh for this evening's report um i'm gonna give you some numbers just with the caveat that these are uh numbers that are pretty loose still gwen desert our registrar here at the rey school sends
015out a preliminary enrollment response form for families to be able to fill out that are current race school families to let us know if they have any plans for moving or staying whether that's you know moving out of state or moving to a different school or private school we still are missing quite a few responses to that so we have lots of little undecideds as we look through this enrollment and so these numbers definitely will be changing and fluctuating a bit but i'll continue to update the board as we go along the numbers that i will share include the confirmed yes coming back and the confirmed for sure we're moving um but we even have some in there like i said undecided with no responses or undecided because potentially there may be a move in
016order so again just sort of loose numbers as we go through but here you go we are projecting at this time in kindergarten 79 students next year in first grade 82 students next year in second grade 72 students next year third grade 72 fourth grade 80 and fifth grade 91 so that brings us to a grand total of a projected enrollment for our school of 476 students and when we built our budget the number that we went back to was 473 so we're kind of right in that range given what we know about people moving or or staying at this time and again just a reminder that we are maintaining our 27 classroom teachers uh and today in earnest we began our placement process for next year based on the information that we currently have
017okay on to some other fun stuff uh you may have seen some of these things in rays of sunshine but just in case i'm going to repeat a little bit of it we celebrated walk scooter and bike to school day last week despite it being rainy a little bit dreary outside we had a great turnout of students and families walking scootering and biking to school all of our racks were all full and everybody still arrived almost exactly on time or early so we're very grateful for that sometimes we see an increase of tardies but just a big shout out to our community for continuing to support walking biking scootering to school when possible as well as the hanover police department staff members from the ray school and the richmond school who posted up on corners
018for safe crossing and then again the students and the families for their participation we hope that we continue to see people using alternative modes of transportation here into the school as the temperatures get warmer and the weather gets nicer with a quick reminder to bike smart and be careful and stop at all of those stop signs and crossings and walk your bike across we teach our kids to do some eye contact and wave at vehicles to acknowledge before they cross the road so continued smarts as we bring our students into school on a daily basis an update about our may dei training uh the district focused um on data and data driven decision making this month during our our trainings we walked through the steps of building data teams and an improvement process model based
019on collected data some of those steps included organize for collaborative work build assessment literacy create a data overview dig into that student data examine instruction develop an action plan plan to assess progress act and assess and then begin again in this spiral with creating a new data overview as was acknowledged earlier in some of the public comments we also were had the fortune of hosting some community sessions that focused on educating interested community members about multicultural education and the upstander model much of the material that was used with our community trainings was also used with district staff so we're grateful to have some common language and understandings as we move forward together and then i'll end just with staff appreciation week and a gratitude for all that participated thank you to the community for wonderful
020gifts kind words and gestures of gratitude we're very fortunate to be working to be working in such a thoughtful and generous community we received potted bulbs and flowery masks from the pto along with messages of support printed on posters by our district volunteer coordinator and we have those still displayed in our front office area we had burritos and bowls from beloco notes of thanks from the board and the sau we had lou's and some salads with sweet treats and then we celebrated a new version of flower day as students wore outfits and shirts with flower designs on them so again thank you to the pto the sau the board our volunteer coordinator belokos luz and all of our families thanks thank you lauren are you going to move right into the survey or anyone have
021any questions or comments on the principles report okay lauren you're up okay um so it was just kind of an interesting year to conduct a survey probably not surprisingly a lot of focus was around the school being open in the pandemic as well as our continued work around diversity equity and inclusion so those were some of the big themes that we saw especially in the comments in each section of this survey so we received 150 responses which is significantly lower than the response rate that we've had in previous years the survey was sent out in the rays of sunshine but then two separate reminders were given over the course of about a week while the survey was open we did notice in sort of trends as soon as we would send out a reminder we
022would get a bunch of responses and then it would stop and then we would send out a reminder a bunch of responses and it would stop we did request that families complete one one survey for each of their students but also in some of the comments parents indicated that they completed a survey on behalf of several or both of their students um so it's difficult to really determine um the the sample of uh responses that we got and how many folks were actually represented but we were working with 150 responses um i hope you had the opportunity to take a look at the attachment that outlines all of the questions and those responses as well as the sort of more disaggregated data that said how many folks responded to each of the questions in each
023of the indicator areas but i'm going to speak a little bit about some of the comments and general themes from those comments as we found those to be particularly useful as we think forward to next year and reflect on the year that we're almost completing so each section of the survey did have a comment section um to clarify or add any additional comments around each of the the categories and then at the end there just was an overarching um tell us anything that you might think would help us as we move forward together into the next year in the school climate section of our survey um here are some of the themes of responses from the comments there was an acknowledgment of the challenge that cohorting created this year with our students in that it
024limited social interactions here at school so folks are looking forward to not having so much of a cohorted model so students can interact a bit more across classes and at recess times a desire for continued communication around dei work as we move forward and how that work will impact the curriculum a desire to be involved in giving feedback and input around curriculum and curricular changes encouragement to continue work around diversity equity and inclusion gratitude for both the remote and in-person options gratitude for the school board for handling of the pandemic proud of how the ray school is working towards improving practice around equity continued vigilance around handling bullying situations and tricky social situations many comments about how staff have shown the remarkable will to be flexible and adapt to a challenging situation and a desire
025for remote classrooms to feel more included in the day-to-day happenings at the race school in the section uh called classroom and learning here are some of the themes from the comments covet has been a game changer both positively but also with some challenges an acknowledgment that there's some different homework practices across grade levels and classrooms and sort of a side note on that i think that homework question year to year tends to be one of those questions that we look at and ponder about and think about the best practices around homework gratitude for supportive learners who need additional support both in an informal way and more formally a desire for more extension or electives to challenge more proficient and advanced learners again we had the divide around homework we want more homework or no homework
026and some people said homework was just perfect a desire to know the vision for technology here at the ray school just an acknowledgement of amazing teachers both generally and then some specifically named as well and i thought this was interesting um several parents also shared that they felt a lot less pressure this year as working parents we typically at the race school have a lot of opportunities to be in the building which can be challenging for parents whose work schedule don't allow that and they feel that they let down their students by not being here so for some of our families there was less pressure because the school was not open and that felt really good for them in the area of communication love and support for the front alpha staff the question around communication
027some folks have felt it's just right some some people feel like there's been too much communication and some people want more so we'll have to continue working with that again more continue more slash continued communication around curriculum dei and new initiatives and then there were some special shout outs scattered throughout to our school nurse laura paris as well as to our school counselors and that's pam graham and karen strickland and then overall overall uh towards the end of the survey folks wanted to share their love for our wonderful caring teachers for our remote teachers and staff for their amazing work and dedication a gratitude again for opening schools for the school year a gratitude for time learning outside our outdoor classrooms and being able to just spend time outside the courage of staff was acknowledged
028repeatedly folks really appreciated the ability to move between remote and in-person options creative hands-on curriculum a general dislike of standardized testing but an acknowledgement that it's not our choice and that we have to do it and uh several keep up the good work comments i'm happy to answer any questions so lauren i will start there there seems to be one two or three individuals that either put down strongly disagree or disagree and i know it's anonymous but how are you gonna try to figure out what exactly the issues are with i assume it's probably one or two or three individuals that have had a problem um so i don't know what what how you're going to try to do a reach out to figure out what what the issue is yes that's a great question
029um you know we really support an anonymous survey because we want folks to be able to share honestly um and and feel that they can give feedback to the school at the same time it does limit our ability to reach out directly to folks that have suggestions or have had struggles with our school so what i can say right now is that um i know i am very open as well as nan to hear from folks and we hope that they would feel comfortable to reach out to us directly with specifics around their concerns so that we can help address them it is it's challenging to be able to um understand exactly what we can do to help and support and improve uh without specific comments um or contact information for folks that may have
030some feedback so we would encourage community members that are watching now or perhaps watch the video later if there is something that we can do for you on behalf of students and our families and our community please do reach out thank you anyone have any questions or comments for lauren regarding the survey ben hi lauren i just want to say it's great where usually when i see surveys as part of my day job it's always you know comparing the agrees to the disagrees and here it's like do i make a stink out of there's less strongly agrees versus regular agrees and having that kind of problem is a rare one indeed so hats off thanks ben um we're just so so proud of our school um and what we've done this year and our sort
031of continued vision for the future and our work together um it was very heartening to to see the results of this survey and just also acknowledging there's so much more that we wanted to know but we also didn't want to have our families spending 20 to 30 minutes on the survey so we tried to determine some questions that would give us some really valuable information and go from there but we were also very proud of the results of the survey acknowledging that folks also had some very real and helpful ideas for the future ben did you raise your hand again or i did um and then secondly lauren sorry about you again um so in the comments you mentioned things that seemed on the whole largely positive were there any things that were negative either
032if there's just one-off persons rather than themes that the board should know about either here or non-public i can certainly share specific comments with the board if you feel that would be beneficial ben do you want to see the specific comments um it might not be a bad idea if you can send them to us or if there's anything that um just that we don't know about that perhaps we should so i actually can't know without reading them first absolutely as as i was writing the themes too i did try to provide a balance between things that were positive and things that um community members stated were challenging but i would be happy to share the individual responses with with folks if um that feels appropriate and helpful thank you any other comments or questions
033for lauren okay moving on to business requiring discussion first reading of policy uh is this you ben yeah i believe so um and i'm actually first question for jay is this the final version i think there might be a sentence missing on this one after the last policy meeting do you and i don't see it in there where we thought about adding something near the beginning like a one sentence that was discussed at the dresden or sau meeting right right yeah okay so policy hasn't well no policy has met since then so i guess my question to jay is is this the final version well we didn't get it we didn't push it out to the individual districts from our sau meeting at this point okay all right then so i guess we will say
034that um you guys have said this before and read it before dresden for members of the public typically we do sort of the deeper dive discussions of policies at the dresden meeting in conjunction with our norwich colleagues so i don't really have anything new to add on this particular comment that we've on this policy that we've talked about before at dresden and this is just a first reading right so the second time it comes around in june we'll make sure that we have the additional language added jay yeah the the really the language that's being added is simply to make sure that there's a statement that this policy is meant to be inclusive not exclusive and to have that um in the foreground not buried within the policy and this is the first read so
035it's essentially the same as the as as what we saw in dresden but at the sa policy committee meeting ben did request that change and ryan's making it so by the time you see this in second reading it'll have that language change it's an actual copy paste a sentence from later in the document we're moving to the front essentially great thanks kim thanks i just wanted to clarify when we say we do deeper dives it's at the sau meeting um not at the dresden meeting so that's all thanks kim okay uh any other comments or questions about this policy okay moving on to the school board calendar and topic template i would assume the topic template is what i use when i do our agenda settings so we have standing your uh standing issues that
036come up year to year so um we made some changes last i believe at one of the meetings uh removing some obsolete uh reports does anyone have any questions or comments about the template or the meeting schedule okay that was easy now moving on to business requiring action would someone like to make a motion by consent john uh well first i was going to ask if we need um a little bit more background outside of just reading it on our own the proposal uh the bridgeman proposal about the playground stencil kit and paint uh yeah that wasn't discussed was it can someone uh i guess it's lauren it says can you talk about the bridgeman i would love to so recess we always want to provide a lot of opportunities for students to be doing
037a lot of different things um and students have shared in the past ideas around other things that we can paint on certain areas of our school yard like the sidewalks and even the green top our basketball court that would provide other opportunities for some collaborative or even independent games and activities for students to do our two pe teachers this year took that to heart and created this proposal to purchase stencils and paint to be able to put some new activities out for our students during recess time and just to be clear these these ideas also were run by buildings and grounds and tony diegel to make sure that this is sort of an inappropriate thing to be thinking about and that it's something that would last uh and continue and that we could have the
038go-ahead from that crew to be able to do this work so our pe teachers are pretty psyched about being able to provide more opportunities and also in their pe lessons be able to teach some of these fun new games that could be stenciled onto our sidewalks and our green top and i'd be happy to answer any questions it's a pretty cool idea though so is it permanent paints and permanent um or and then how do you keep the kids from getting covered in permanent paint and going back into class yes so this great question i think i understood it um so this work would be done actually during the summer um and it would be after some of the cracks and other things are repaired um on our sidewalks and on the green top so
039the painting would be completed and it's not chalk so this this painting is not going to get on students it's actually the work will be completed by our pe teachers and then enjoyed by our students got it okay i just saw a whole bunch of oil paint being tricked traps back into the school so okay anyone else have any questions or comments then yeah i totally misread it at first i thought it was like painting kits that would then wash off with the rain it's like an activity for kids to do for those who don't want to physically play or something so thank you for the clarification kim um lauren or jamie whoever might know this i guess where do we stand overall in bridgeman for this year and kind of lauren do you expect
040more of these projects to kind of come in or where where do we stand on that roughly 40 000 target that we tend to have so we're well within uh the forty thousand dollar mark for the actual 21 22 year we're still trying to spend down uh the monies that we've had in the fund um on the books so this won't cut into the the what year am i in i'm sorry i'm in like three years right now so this won't cut into the 21 22 fiscal school year we're still using the funds that were um that were um you know encumbered basically for the 2021 school year so there's room for this project yeah i'm actually thinking if there's more room even more room than that i i wasn't anticipating us hitting the 40
041i was just wondering um how much we had available potentially off the top of my head and we just took a look at that the other day um i'm going to say we've probably climbed up around the 19 000 mark 19 you know when i don't think we've hit 20. yeah we're trying to spend down this year keep the projects in this year whereas in past years kim they've they've approved them in the spring and not embarked on them until the next fiscal year which i think was a practice that happened once um before me because they had spent up to that limit but we really i really feel that the ones that we've been approving we need to complete now because we have capacity we have capacity within the year where we're in so
042as not to touch the capacity for the 2122 school year yet i know there's a lot of capacity we haven't hit the ceiling for the last you know four years so if i can add if anybody has great creative ideas to reach out to lauren i think we have some uh some capacity for other projects i think right and i was gonna touch on that briefly and then let you finish it up when we hit the financial and committee section and i'll just add kim we may have one additional proposal that will come forward but um we're just making sure at the school level that it sort of hits all of the markers that it needs to hit to qualify for bridgeman and there was a bit of a question there so we're working with
043that proposal and will certainly stay within the monies that have already been drawn down and projects that should be and could be completed this year and yes richmond is amazing anybody that has other ideas please feel free to reach out thank you so at this point do i have someone who would like to make a motion by consent john move to approve items b c d e and f by consent are you angry tonight john no okay feeling great man kim is seconding it uh kim second yeah i'm going around the horn now oh hartman yes john hunt yes uh marcela iglesias ben bikini yes kelly mcconnell yes johnson yes great okay report of the chair so our next board meeting will um be june 9th wednesday night we do have our school board retreat
044tomorrow night from six to nine on zoom everyone should uh have received the invite uh laura or kim had a meeting with the i don't even know what the title is the trustees or the the trust managers and we're going to ask paul gardens to come in um at the june meeting to kind of give us an update on the burn foundation and or bridgeman with bridgeman and uh talk about the any potential issues surrounding the move of the sixth graders off of our books to the uh dresden books so i'll be reaching out to paul this week or next to see if they can attend um and that's all i have to report tonight so i'm going to turn it over to jay thanks rick and so for anyone from the viewing audience who
045tuned into the dresden meeting i'm going to to run through a pretty enthralling recitation of the general assurances that we're obligated to sign off on in order to receive any federal program funds we we did do this thoroughly at the at the dresden meeting so i will i will do this in a little bit abbreviated fashion but each year um we are obligated through federal law and through the new hampshire department of education who administers federal programs to the districts to sign off on on a series of general assurances that essentially um commit us to obeying federal law not just federal laws that are specific to education but everything from um discrimination statutes to procurement to a variety of other assurances and the the doe now requires both the superintendent and the board chair to
046sign off it's really another exercise in writer's cramp we sign off an initial every page of the document and then we submit that in order to be able to access the federal funds that we use at the ray school and this and to in our dresden schools as well uh so just to quickly run through what these assurances cover uh the general assurances portion uh cover establishment of our legal authority as an entity to be eligible for federal funding and again i'm only going to hit a few of these but um also uh is is our attestation that we will comply with title six title nine section 504 the age discrimination act of 1975 the drug abuse office and treatment act of 1972 um title 8 of the civil rights act and a number of
047other non-discrimination laws we will comply with the requirements of titles two and three regarding uniform relocation assistance and real property acquisition policies uh we'll comply with the provisions of the hatch act which limit the political activities of employees whose principal employment activities are funded in whole or in part with federal funds um there are human subjects uh protections lab animal protections uh lead-based paint poisoning prevention act there are single audit requirements and uh we sign off on section 106 g of the trafficking victims protection act of 2000. um they're i mean everything this thing covers everything from um signing off that our our the grantee and subcontractors will adhere to a prohibition from text messaging while driving in an organization-owned vehicle um we're going to adhere to the pro-children act of 2001 the stephens amendment
048and essentially all other federal laws that have even some remote application to the business that we do as a school district so there are also requirements that we have to have written policies and procedures which our policy committee has done a great job along with jamie in making sure are up to date uh and again jamie's department has done an outstanding job in making sure that our policies regarding financial management are are in line so those are the the other significant portion of these assurances including internal controls and what costs what costs we can cover out of these funds and that's the nutshell version if you want to the document's publicly available right through board docs i'm reading from it as we speak and there are 17 pages worth if you want to read more
049detail what we are assuring both the public and the state and the federal government that we are doing so that is the general assurances so i um i also want to talk a little bit about some of the topics that were brought up by members of the public there have been over the course of the past months some statements made some suppositions made about the activities that the districts engaged in in the area of diversity equity and inclusion and i understand it's it's it's really important around issues of this magnitude that there is an open public debate and that that debate is respectful and the the problem i have and and one that i will continue to point out as as this debate ensues is that uh we need to be really clear about what
050really is happening and what isn't happening and there's there's a lot of um i think a lot of many assumptions being made that because we're engaged in the work around diversity equity and inclusion that this is somehow um sort of a statement of a political position or that uh the district is is wholesale changing everything we do in terms of curriculum instruction and assessment and that's not not simply not the case um as i said in the the letter that i sent out to the public we're simply safeguarding our kids we're making sure that no kid is discriminated against or marginalized period and beyond that there's been no formal adoption of the um of the the details of critical race theory which is one thing we've been accused of there has been no indoctrination of
051children that's another thing that we've been accused of and um there's been no effort to make our children feel that they are guilty of things like oppression that that some people have mentioned um i think lauren mentioned something about just the whole notion of we we want to make sure that we do our part to ensure that our kids are nice to each other that we as members of the community are nice to each other and uh you know i i would suggest that as people start to voice their concerns about what may or may not be happening um that they make sure that they make every effort to gather the facts first and and then we need to provide and i say we meaning we as a board we need to be able to
052provide the opportunity for people to interact and to ask these questions and to to access the actual information so at our last sau meeting the board did decide to inaugurate a equity committee of its own it will it will build upon the work of the committee that has been at work uh to this point but it will do its work in accordance with open meeting law uh the public will be able to to participate in those meetings to the degree that is practical and there will be agendas and minutes produced and it's my i continue to suggest that at some point it may make sense for us to have a less formal public discussion um again in the interest of transparency to make sure that everybody knows what we what we really are committed to
053what we're doing and what we're not and uh i've seen a lot of the sort of national debate that's been going on where where this particular issue has been highly charged and politicized and i can only say to everyone here that that's not us and it shouldn't and really um when i see how vitriolic those those conversations can be that that's certainly we can't allow that to be us this community is is one that i've i've been really proud to get to know over the last four years and it's been really impressive to me that we can have discussions and and we we do keep the best interests of our kids in our community at the forefront and i think this issue should be the same and i look forward to engaging in that conversation
054with all of you and i know the board is eager to make its own statement about where it stands on on these issues and and we'll we'll continue to to move forward so um i'm eager to see what's about to be printed and again if there's anything that that is something that i feel is not accurately representing the work that we're doing here i'll make sure that i respond accordingly and i guess that's my report thank you jay any comments or questions for jay seeing none we will move on to jimmy what happened to your giant bee there jamie i would love to go next but i think the assistant's superintendent i wasn't even looking thank you robin you're up all right thank you i have good news on the coveted front as you've all
055been seeing the numbers of cases and deaths and hospitalizations are all declining more people are getting vaccinated they just approved the pfizer vaccine for children 12 to 15. so our covid committee has been meeting weekly we have now moved to every other week and much of the work that we've been doing recently has actually been quite positive we've been talking about many end of the year ceremonies and approving those so i feel like we're moving in a positive direction in that area i've also had time to work on curriculum and um jamie loves i developed a nice spreadsheet with the help of ryan and we have many people from the rey school who have signed up to work on curriculum this summer i have at least one person from each grade level who is going
056to work during june and so that's exciting and lauren and her staff have already gotten a great start to the curriculum work and so we'll just continue with that as we progress through the summer but that also is very exciting news and that's it for my report tonight thank you for such an upbeat report robin you're welcome so lauren do any of the potential end of the year events at the race school get impacted by potential changes or you you're all set on your end we're doing really well um you know we run all of our decisions through um what's best for our students and what's feasible and what's best for our families and so we're making some really good decisions around what end of year celebrations will look like that strike a balance between
057honoring and promoting our fifth graders celebrating our staff and thinking about our remote families as well as we close out the year so we're doing really well and the kovak committee is a nice spot if we need to run any ideas that are a little bit trickier or stickier and get some input from other schools and and i really appreciate the kovid committee because we're all trying to do things in a really similar way as we close out this school year and make sure that no specific school is doing particularly more or less unless there's a real reason why that might be necessary like celebrating our seniors as they graduate um but we're doing really well here at the ray school and our staff has come up with some super creative ideas for the end
058of the school year to make sure that it feels great great thank you any other comments or questions jamie you're up okay my b is still here but i didn't want to scare anybody rick oh kevin good sorry for robin um have you done any thinking about next has the committee done anything about next school year and i'm thinking in particular it'd be helpful for i'm sure faculty and staff and parents to understand kind of what next year would look like and give enough time to do planning for that have you thought about kind of timelines for when those discussions would happen yet yes we have actually i've set up meetings for the summer so um we are going to meet through the end of the school year and we'll start talking about next school
059year either toward the end of the school year or the summer but i think at this point we kind of need to see how things progress over the summer but um we'll definitely be looking at the protocols that we put in place this year and see if we need to maintain all of those protocols or if we'll be able to eliminate some of them so it is on our radar and we have a plan for it over the next few months so we'll update people as we go along as best that we can you uh ben thanks robin i wonder if it would be prudent to acknowledge that it's it's my understanding that there's not going to be any realistic chance of elementary school children being vaccinated until roughly november-ish so theoretically i don't believe
060they're allowed to travel so should we have some sort of notice to parents that if travel is going to be happening during the summer whether they should finish that travel by two weeks before the start of the school year it's difficult because the state is allowing for travel without quarantining so we face this during our most recent spring break and we you know we said that we were following the state guidelines but we strongly recommended still at that point because we knew most students were not vaccinated that people at least quarantine for three days and then be tested during the five to seven day period and return upon a negative test so it's it's difficult because we've said we'd follow the state guidelines but we've tried to you know have people be more responsible and
061more stringent about the guidelines so we can continue with that you know and just strongly recommend against travel but it's difficult for us to enforce that thank you okay jamie now you're up okay so i'm not going to do a quarterly report because we did that last month okay and as far as financials go um we'll be updating information about bridgeman in june as you mentioned and i'm going to let kim expand on that in her committee report we have some documents that we gathered lauren myself della other folks we went on a hunt to look for some documents that would help us understand more of the history of what's gone on with bridgman so we'll be sharing those with everybody in june and i think we found some really good documents but i'm going
062to let kim expand on that not much change in the spending or projections there's been no negative you know changes that would impact the numbers that we looked at last month we'll bring extended information and an actual write-up on where some of the differences are at the june meeting bus information some really interesting and exciting news here um we're going to we were um notified by vikrant vase and i'm sure i probably butchered his name and i apologize um and prabhat hedge who are at dartmouth and they had started a project with us about looking at the school bus route efficiencies and not just about looking at it from a lens of you know how we can cut costs but looking at it from a viewpoint of the students and parents and the length of
063the runs um so they've reached out to us again and we're going to start reviewing that um was this the group that i sat in on like two years ago yes yeah wow yeah we're going to start a meeting tomorrow we have a really great um agenda so i'm really encouraged and excited about that so just so the parents know we'll be reviewing roots and taking a look at them for efficiencies not just money wise but time wise we'll also be sending out a request for ridership updates because as you know you know the ridership levels were lower this year obviously because we couldn't um you know um people chose to bring their students to school we were able to accommodate i believe everybody who asked or inquired for a ride this year in one
064manner or another we moved the routes around in order to do that other than maybe one senior that we couldn't fit on that lived pretty close to the school maintenance we've been working with lauren and her team over there to plan for the summer projects including some interior painting and flooring so we'll be on schedule with that i know she's been meeting with uh tony and robin to discuss you know what the future of summer camps will be on site at the ray school and i'm sure we'll be bringing you more information on that the june meeting today with tony daigle the director of facilities and mats weirs we kicked off a monthly custodial meeting of all of the district's custodians at the richmond middle school auditorium it was awesome to be able to bring
065them all together in one room socially distanced um we discussed some personnel changes and some movement of custodians between schools somewhat most of that movement was had to do with the race school we've changed some of the hours of the lead custodians so that he'll be spending some time on nights which brought us a new addition to the race school uh anna devereaux on mornings she's comes in i think it's 6 a.m and works till about 11 30 um or 12. we also discussed recent training models that we had the modules that we had all the custodians go through it was done by the facility masters and it was called kings intelligent cleaning for health they all really enjoyed it we debriefed about it today and there was some really good feedback we reviewed the
0662021 school year and what they thought had gone well and what if anything they thought didn't go very well so we can be prepared to make decisions if we need to be for the future we reviewed policies specifically we're going to try to review two policies a month with them and make this a monthly meeting today we reviewed the gbed the tobacco policy tobacco and um it's not just tobacco it has to do with vaping as well we also discussed gbef which was the school district's internet access and acceptable use policy with them as well as expectations regarding cell phone usage and end-of-shift procedures including safety and security and then lastly we discussed with them the summer help needs last year as you remember we closed in march so they had five months to get
067ready for the opening of school and do deep cleaning um with nobody in the building so you know that was a luxury that this year we won't have this year we'll be going back to our normal deep cleaning cycles which is about an eight-week period if you're lucky because a lot of portions of the building will be used for you know summer camp and summer learning so the timing gets very compressed at um richmond middle school and race school so we talked about what we thought their summer health needs might be um we met with cafe services regarding the food program uh had a discussion that you know although it started out somewhat slow it's been picking up since the first of the year it's been picking up some momentum right now we don't think
068that we'll probably break even um but it's going to be a lot better than what the last report as of 331 was posted we should probably end up around 10 or 000 dollars in deficit with the food service program which when you take a look at all of new hampshire and their food service programs and many of the other school districts it's been nightmarish for them which is too bad because they weren't in full session so thank god we were in full session even though we started slow i think the food service programs have done a great job um i think that's everything human resources we're kicking off open enrollments right now for insurances 403 b's you know any type of elections that employees will want to do for the upcoming school year the new
069school year it's been busy yeah thank you jamie uh so clarify for me so at the uh the articles that were passed back in march the one regarding the sixth grade is there anything hanover now has to do to take the next step is there another vote that has to happen at the board level no no the board the the voting at both hanover and dresden take care of that what we now need to do is file an updated articles of agreement with the state of new hampshire for both dresden and for hanover i've been in contact with the department of education we have our articles of agreement and association for dresden but the hanover school district predates some of the records at the doe they've been going down into the deep depths of the
070basement looking for our original articles of agreement uh yet to be located um so but that doesn't you know that doesn't stop us from filing our changes um so i thought the warrants only authorized us to if we so dis desired we could move our sixth grade to dresden i thought i may be wrong i thought we had the board had to vote on that to approve it i don't believe so i believe we voted to make the sixth graders a part of the dresden school district okay with the hanover vote that we took it rescinds the tuition i'll double check that just to be sure um so let me get back to you in june to make sure that we don't have to do anything else there but i i know we have to
071file our articles our updated articles yeah but i thought yeah i just mechanically i thought that the school board if norwich decided or hanover then dresden would have to approve it so i thought there was a like an intermediate step that had to take place but i may be wrong okay let me follow up on that and we'll if we do we can do that at the june meeting or even the september meeting because it wouldn't take effect until the 22-23 school year yep okay kelly just wonder jamie if we're gonna be able to go back away from all the plastic packaging and stuff with lunches that we have this year yeah we hope so kelly that was due to covid regulations on food service awesome i figured but my kids have been mentioning it
072actually so i thought i'd ask yeah it was um it was uh requirements cdc requirements for serving food in schools or anywhere really had to be you had to have um complete packaging so that no germs could uh touch the food has that pre-cost as well just yes it has yeah it has increased cost that section yep any other comments or questions for jamie okay moving on to committee reports i know kim has something to say anyone else have a committee report for tonight okay uh kim you can go first sure i think i thought kelly had her hand raised but i'm happy i think she was raising her hand saying she had a report so okay great i'm happy to um so i really have two points for the hanover finance committee update um
073so on the first point which is a follow-up from jamie's um thought to potentially include the hanover finance committee in a negotiations committee or you know have them present either in the full board or whatnot if you recall the hanover finance committee as one of their goals for the year would like to conduct some sort of compensation analysis to support the negotiations that are going on this year and um i tried to be the intermediary as is my position and and kind of ask before we as a school board contemplate whether we would include um i guess a third party into negotiations or not which is a as jamie mentioned is possible for us to do i wanted to make sure or ask if the hanover finance committee had any interest in doing that and
074essentially um their discussion concluded by saying um they would like to conduct the compensation analysis first um and see what the analysis reveals to figure out which venue would make the most sense to report if anything either to the school board or um to a negotiations committee so if it's possible maybe wait i know they are looking to do um analysis in june it's just to kind of give you a time frame there essentially kind of put a pause on that thought um any questions there if not i'll move on to the second point uh jamie's got a comment yeah and kim i can follow up with you later on this i'm just um i'm sure that they're going to want for us to probably um give them some expanded information so you know whatever
075they need in order to do their analysis you know yeah i think um at least at this at least what they were considering been doing in june is in the publicly available information but we'll see kind of where that takes folks okay great thanks not sure why i muted myself again um but so if that's it then the second uh point is again rick actually stole my thunder a little bit on that it's about the trustee of the trust funds paul garden the chair of the trustee of trust funds for the town and the school presented to the hanover finance committee on monday and it was a great presentation and that's why i kind of asked rick to set it up another meeting for the hanover board meeting in a nutshell we learned more about
076the history the limitations and the opportunities of the bridgman fund which as you know is our main um quasi endowment fund that services the hanover school district from a private donor bridgeman and we also learned about the brisette fund which we'll hear about also in june it's an endowment controlled by the hanover select board but i learned that um you know the hanover school district could technically also apply for for that endowment fund it is like i said controlled by the hanover select board but um the terms of the endowment which is actually a larger endowment than bridgeman uh it's just kind of i think we'll kind of learn some interesting nuggets there um the hanover finance committee asked about ways to increase the returns of the investments but it largely seemed to hinge upon
077the trustees receiving a withdrawal schedule first from the school board or the select board so that they can in turn set aside money to make longer term investments which agenda carry a higher return and it appears that we the hanover school board have done that years ago um you know before my time so i'm not sure when but we asked the the trustee we the hanover school board asked the trustee of trust funds to treat the bridgeman fund like an endowment with that 40 000 cap we we've mentioned earlier um to withdraw each year but that could change we um that's kind of a self-imposed request so paul will be able to explain that a little bit more in detail about bridgeman and answer any questions um at that future meeting um i would kind
078of also include that um kind of answering my own question i think i asked um when we approve the bridgeman fund with the backpacks and whether the replacement supplies could be purchased again with bridgeman either at a following year or what not um and paul said i mean i asked a very general question about replacement purchases but essentially it sounds like we could ask for the same item every year um and so um you know i think so kind of some those clarifications or questions you might want to think about um as far as kind of asking paul who is the chair of the trustees kind of what his his opinion on some of those things because we might be able to have more opportunities to use bridgeman funds or other funds for the school
079district so that is my report any questions kelly sorry no i just had um a different report but yep okay all right um so i just wanted to remind everyone about the nhsba resolutions that will be due we're going to be talking about them at dresden um but they're due beginning of july so we don't have a lot of time to propose discuss adopt for us before they would need to go to nhsba for a broader adoption by the body so i'm going to ask ryan to put up the ongoing resolutions that the nhsba has already adopted and just a reminder that last year for the first time i guess it was two years ago now for the first time they actually adopted the restriction of firearms or supporting the restriction of firearms um which
080was a big shift a big c change for that body so i'll make sure those are available to you guys in case anyone has amendments to those that like to propose or additional resolutions that you might want to propose any comments or questions for kelly okay do we have a need for non-public tonight i don't think we do great so at this point um if anyone has any additional agenda items they would like added to the june uh meeting please let me know and i'll make sure we tee it up for the agenda setting meeting at the end of the month um and at this point if someone like to make a motion to adjourn kim move to adjourn at 8 18 p.m do i have a second john kelly yes john yes kim hartman
081yeah marcelo iblassy yes ben keaney yes and johnson yes thank you everyone so i'll see you all tomorrow night at six o'clock bye bye thanks good night thanks