001okay you're good you're good to go good thank you um good evening i'd like to call to order the may 3rd meeting of the siu board and i'd like first of all to thank board members and members of the public who attended our last march 16th meeting just to let you know that it was a fairly rough first zoom hosting on my part and i'm vowing to do a much better job this evening can't promise it but i will try first item on our agenda is the agenda review i have an item i'd like to adjust i'd like to if there are no objections pull out item 5a under the items for action and remove it from the consent agenda so that we can approve 5a on its own with its own motion language does
002anyone object to that change any board members do any board members have any other deletions additions changes they'd like to make on the agenda see none um we'll move into public comments but before we do i would just like to respond to a recurring question that we've had from the public the zoom webinar format versus the zoom meeting format we've gotten this quite a few times we've gotten calls the administration has gotten calls and i'd like to do my best if i can to clarify uh we've been repeatedly asked why we don't follow the practice of other organizations who use zoom meeting versus zoom webinar and i'm fairly sure that the board and the public will agree that we've been lucky and we're all grateful that in his wisdom josh malloy has been able to
003keep our boards free from disruption and inappropriate content for over a year and he's done this mainly by having us use the webinar versus the meeting format so we will continue to host our board meetings as webinars not as meetings and i really hope that this explanation will put the issue to rest so with that said i'll move on to public comments um does anyone in the public in attendance have any items they'd like to speak to that are not on tonight's agenda and if you do um i'd like to request again that you speak only once and that you speak only for two minutes i know i had some um snags at the last meeting keeping track of the two minutes and who had spoken this meeting i have now put together thanks to
004josh's help a timer that i will activate in the lower to your lower left in my window this timer which i will out now move up because it is not visible with my name um but it will give you the there it is it will give you your remaining time left so that you can keep an eye on that window and we don't run over our meeting schedule so that said josh will be helping me unmute the attendees could you please state your full name and your town of residence let's see we have uh first on our attendee list is stewart richards could you please unmute uh you've unmuted there you go you're all set stewart stewart richards norwich vermont i i think what i would like to address is what you may have already
005addressed i i think that you're remiss in not showing the participants to each meeting that is the members of the public who can be seen and also also identified in a uh in a paragraph as to the side of the actual pictures of the people so my understanding from having attended so many other meetings from so many other organizations including uh zoom meetings and microsoft meetings where you can have as many as 75 or 100 people is that it's entirely technically possible it's not a hard thing to do and i just don't i really for the life of me i don't understand why you're not showing the people who are actually participating in the meeting including members of the public uh in a sidebar and also allowing people to see who is actually speaking you're
006the one organization or the one group of organizations that don't do that so i i would appreciate you're correcting that without without too much uh you know too much lesser than us i mean it's just it's an easy thing to do and thanks for hearing me out again on this thank you for the same topic thank you for your comments um and next we have alison capadia i hope i'm pronouncing your name correctly could we move allison over to speak please josh and could you unmute yourself and state your name and town of residence i'm not sure if it's just on my screen i'm seeing her show up three times and i don't see any hands raised so i'm not sure which one to unmute okay i'm not sure either let's move on we can
007move on to uh chris putnam could you please unmute chris i think i think we're good for now we don't see any more raised hands usually you're right i'm sorry people are raising their hands thank you all right um seeing no other no hands raised other than stewards and we've heard from stuart thank you we will move on next item on our agenda is business requiring discussion first item up for discussion is the first reading of policy ebcg communicable and infectious diseases we saw this before at the dresden meeting last week and i know it's on the policy committee's agenda for thursday but i i wanted to be sure that no one had further edits or suggestions and make sure that ben do you feel that you have um recorded what happened at the dresden
008meeting adequately so that doesn't need to be repeated there were some additional comments um apart from that meeting that i'd be happy to hear again in a public forum if someone wishes to do so apart from that i think we have all we need unless someone else can comment do we have any other changes or comments on the first reading of uh eebcg from board members okay there there's a hand raised by oh there the hand raised by lisa which i didn't see in the window um go ahead sorry thank you hard to see i'll try to move my picture um no i was one of the comments opposed to the dresden meeting and then i was reminded that i should not be doing that so i will now make my comment public um in
009our discussion during the dresden meeting i spoke to on my first reading of it it made me a little anxious um that while the intent is to be as inclusive as possible and on a first reading it reads as exclusive and so just a suggestion i had was to move some of the language that's further down about wanting to be inclusive to the very beginning so that it lowers the temperature of people like myself um from the get-go and so that was just a suggestion that we have some sort of sentence at the very beginning that this the intent of this policy is to be as um to do two things to be as inclusive as possible and also keep as many members of our community safe or something along those lines so thank you
010i just wanted to be public with that suggestion is that clear enough do you think uh for policy committee members yeah ben uh yeah the policy committee will uh take that back we have another meeting this thursday i believe and we can see if we can either move some things around or add a new clarifying sentence to the beginning to allay those concerns so thanks lisa great thank you thank you anyone else thank you lisa for raising your hand electronically does anybody else have any um questions or additions suggestions mark marcella does your daughter no thank you um seeing no other comments or questions we can move on to uh item b under items for discussion and that will be the authorization or realignment of the existing equity committee so that the equity committee that
011is already in existence and has been working diligently for well over a year will become officially a committee of the sau school board and will be allowed to function in that official capacity with all of the um responsibilities and oversight and and guidance of the board and vice versa we have board points listed in board docs that should help inform our discussion but i would um love to turn it over to jay if you'd be willing to give us some of the history and the issues surrounding the formation of the committee sure kelly thank you so this is a uh to me a very important discussion and one that is sort of like um we're i keep using the metaphor of building uh uh the foundation of a house uh after the house has been
012built um and and i have to give credit to students and staff and community members who who seized the day while we were um i say we while the administration and the board was uh understandably uh intently focused on what we were going to do to finish last school year and then uh begin this school year during the pandemic uh we were also as a community as a community as a country reeling from the very uh public and widely displayed just gross um horror that we saw in the murder of george floyd and and and just we're struggling to figure out how what does this mean for us how do we um take a look at our own practices our own history our own policy everything and and make sense of this all as the
013whole country and in fact world uh had this sort of reawakening of a sense of of what do we do about racial injustice and we we were actually already i say we um that's uh taking credit for other people's work really but we had students and some of our staff who had already established an affinity group and had begun to wrestle with these topics well over a year before that tragic event and so we weren't starting from zero and the um that group quickly be uh became a committee uh quickly got broad membership in terms of staff and members of the community the equity committee began doing a lot of uh look at our own organization in fact culminating in a a professional equity audit that they they uh they took uh we took part
014in and uh established the committee continued to grow after some focus groups where we invited the community to come and tell us their experiences and what their sense of equity and inclusion inclusion were with regard to sau 70 in our schools and the committee has done amazing work they've they've identified some key areas that we needed to begin this journey one of which was to provide professional development for our staff and now our community they took that on they took on fundraising because this this effort really began began after the the budget was already already established so it's it's been a very much an organic development of this committee what where we are now though is the committee itself has had a number of questions that have to do with process and policy and funding
015and budget and we've also had inquiries from the community about transparency and open meeting law and the fact that we've had those questions asked in the context of board meetings um really sort of pushed this to the fore [Music] but at this point in order for us to continue this work to give it its proper authority and to protect it and make sure that we're expressing our our values through the committees we form and the policies that we enact and the budget that we devote the four chairs and i thought that now is the time for us to again build that foundation by making this an official committee of the board so we've had conversations with the equity committee about this since it was first mentioned a couple of months ago and the equity committee
016gave us essentially a um some of the not just their concerns but what they thought this sort of changed governance could look like they have very legitimate questions about what does this do to the work um i think we can have that discussion tonight but in the end i feel very strongly that in order for us to prioritize this work support it appropriately and and protect it that it it best uh resides as an official committee of the of the sau school board thank you jay are there any other comments or questions from board members am i missing i had yes neil uh thank you kelly and i um i'm fully supportive of this i think it's the it's the right thing to do and probably a place where we we as a board should
017have been at a while ago um my one concern just has to do with the mechanism for actually making it happen and i might suggest that a more appropriate approach might be to end the current committee and establish a new committee by the board um and you know is the board docs sort of laid out with with a specific set of goals in mind rather than taking the current committee and renaming it you know you could end up with exactly the same membership as the committee that's there um but i think for the purposes of making it a board level initiative um and carrying forward with the work that the cleanest way to do it and then to get this thing all lined up with um you know open meeting law and um as a
018public body um to constitute a board level committee you know have the first meeting where that committee would then elect a chair and just move forward that way with sort of a clean break from what was an administrative level committee to now a board committee not suggesting that the work that was previously done be forgotten because i think all of that stuff should carry forward i think it's really just a matter of semantics as to how we establish the committee and then move forward from here thank you neil um can i uh i'd like to ask jay though is that possible for us or neil or anyone else on policy-wise can we or procedurally can we simply shift our motion language to dissolve the existing committee and re-establish a committee would that in in your
019opinion meet the um the concerns that you have neil um i i would argue that there's no need for the board to dissolve the current committee because it wasn't a committee of the board so therefore it's not you know no official action of this board is required in order to have that committee sort of stop um and you know current bylaws of sau absolutely um empower us to create ad hoc committees at the board's discretion okay so i'm jd you see any problem with what we have now as our motion language which would simply establish the committee i guess that's my question neil do you see a problem with the wording of the resolution as is currently in board docs are you suggesting any change to that sorry let me get to that because it's
020later on in the agenda right 5e i i i would suggest that rather because it than the existing committee and there is no existing committee correct because it says clarifies that though sau equity committee and we don't have an existing sau equity committee that is the official title that it's going by however that's why that's in the the language yeah kelly yeah go ahead yes so yeah i made reference to the the um the formal title of the administrative committee that we've been using is the sau 70 equity committee uh so so the way i had worded it was to authorize that committee so i think if if we want if if the board feels that we should start fresh even if it is the same composition then i think we need to change the
021motion language because what this is saying is that we're going to take the administrative committee that already is functioning and simply authorize it as a board committee so would you suggest that we simply say move to form an sau 70 equity committee and continue with our language uh yeah i believe that would be appropriate or reasonable yes so we could amend emotions [Laughter] but i mean jay are you able to change it in board docs on the fly which i'm not when when i get the the wording i will do so okay can i uh would anyone like to neil would you like to try to reword that in a way that you think is proper before i do that you have a couple of other hands raised at this point so maybe you ought
022to hear from some other board members before we decide which way to go good idea thank you lisa i see your hand raised um yeah i i'm feeling um i'm gonna i'm gonna talk for my feelings again like i did last time with the policy comment sorry about this guys um but as someone who's been meeting with these teachers and these administrators and these community members who have been working really hard on having hard discussions about dei work in our schools who are really putting the students front and center as to why this work is important and they've been doing this work on their own time um you know it's extra it's on top of everything else that they've been doing and when i hear language like well we're going to dissolve the current committee
023i understand that that might be what they might be part of the new committee but it just i worry that we sound a little bit ungrateful and i worry that we are discounting the two years sort of of you know work from the ground up for lack of a better way to phrase it that these teachers have been doing and i no matter what we do with this board equity committee which i do think needs to happen i just want to make sure that we we honor the people who have been involved in this work up until this point and when i hear words like we're going to dissolve the current committee it doesn't it doesn't it doesn't hit me right and so um i would be concerned that i would be concerned that this
024board committee would go forward and would not include the people who have been doing this work all along i think it should include other people as well but um there's a lot of knowledge that is contained in people like deb and nicole and devin and chris and i can i can name quite a few people and i i would hate for whatever this new configuration to lose that because we didn't handle this transition well and i'm not saying that we won't but that is that is a concern of mine first and foremost as we move forward to have a board committee is i want to make sure that we honor the work that's already been happening and the fact that these teachers have been doing it on their own time um and really working hard
025to make sure that they represent the needs of their students so thanks thank you lisa um do we have any other comments from other board members yes kim thanks so much questions about bullets two and four on the agenda um so it says the board will discuss making the equity committee with the following considerations so i guess my question is what you know maybe looking to jay to propose a recommendation what would you recommend the um goals and timeline of the committee to be and then the kind of the fourth is kind of composition um we obviously need to have at least one board member on this committee um would you recommend more or kind of who would you recommend so composition and then goals and timeline well i will speak um i don't want
026to speak for lisa but lisa has been involved with this work since before she was a board member and we've turned to her as a board this is again another reason why i think it's important for us to take this work um as as very serious work of the school board but we've turned to her for for updates periodically i know that marcel has been involved to a certain degree with subcommittees of the equity committee and i think that there may be other board members who might be interested in joining as well but that initial work would be would be just that organizational work to determine number one is is are we going to continue with the existing committee structure and staffing um what will be how will we work with the subcommittees that have
027already been established that are actually involved in some very productive and important work and i think those are all conversations we would have in an organizational meeting once this this committee began and amongst the board members that do choose to join when we we have a committee that is comprised of board members and staff members and members of the of the public we we have typically elected chairs as one of our first order of business and then and then made decisions about further um both uh charge of the committee as well as composition of the committee so uh once that's done i would assume that during the report of committees each time we have an sau meeting that that whoever is the chair would be able to report out and give the board a status
028update on what's happening and to lisa's concerns we are the board um we know the the gravity of the work that that this committee has been involved in and how just how important it is and i can't imagine that the board would simply either disregard it or or not respect the hard work that's been done already i know that you value it which is why we've had these conversations leading up to this so i'm i'm not fearful that we won't be able to take it over organizationally and maintain the spirit of the work but i will say the equity committee itself has asked many of the same questions kim that your question embodies so they've been asking what's next how do we how do we move this work forward who should be in charge um
029what is the timeline i can't answer the question about the timeline right now because i believe that's work for the committee and really as importantly for the board one two of the things that have been identified by the equity committee as um requiring their input as well as you know identified as priorities and looking at the overall equity audit are things like curriculum and strategic planning so those are key responsibilities of the board so it's it's a natural marriage to have the committee um be part and parcel of the the work that you're doing and um so i've not answered your question other than to say that once we once we reform and we we bring folks together the answers to those questions should be first on the agenda for that initial meeting thank you
030jay that makes it much clearer to me and i don't does that answer some of your questions lisa oh yeah i didn't mean to imply that the board was mean-spirited i just i wanted to be careful about how we presented it to the people that have been doing this work this whole time um and then the only other question well i had another question but i'll i'll wait my turn thank you does anyone else have any suggestions jay yes go ahead just just to clarify one other point that might be a a little bit more of an answer to kim's concern was one of the things for example that the equity committee is working on and has been working on is a statement a an sau 70 wide statement of about diversity equity and inclusion
031and they've already done a lot of that work and have expressed that they would welcome the board to also work on that so that's something that is sort of a work in progress and draft form and and and really i think is going to be an important thing for us as an organization to establish first and foremost almost almost like a mission statement uh combined mission ambitions vision statement that that will help um help us center the work and um and so that's uh again the the first agenda is getting longer um but again that's another important piece of this that's already underway so we certainly wouldn't want to um ignore what's already been done thank you and neil you had another question um not a question i just wanted to clarify and um all
032the points that lisa made are are great points and i actually agree with her i mean the work that the echo committee has done has been phenomenal work and i i greatly value that and my suggestion that the board just established a do committee on this is not a reflection of the work that's been done or the people that have been involved i think that they've done tremendous work it's merely a board process question as to the the best way to handle this work going forward i could see the committee consisting you know by and large of all of the exact same people you know maybe with the addition of a board member too that are currently doing that work um and and i just would like to say thank you for all the work
033that they've done so far so this is not it's not meant as a sub it's not meant to devalue the work that's already been done it's actually just quite the opposite i want the board to set the committee up properly for success moving forward that's very helpful neil and i i was thinking something along similar lines but a lot briefer than that when i was imagining if we simply chop out all the um language that talks about dissolving the existing committee in the beginning of the of the motion and simply say move to create an sau 70 equity committee charged with and then lay it out as it states does that seem less objectionable in your opinion i'm asking you directly lisa because i think your comment made complete sense and knowing that people on
034the inside it's what we need to hear so yeah i i think so um and i really appreciate what neil said i just it just i think it helps to have that stated out loud so um the appreciation doctor um and um yeah and as long as we're within our legal responsibilities in terms of dissolving not dissolving i think that that language is great so great so that sounds like i have it jay are you willing to put that in the um in the board docs simply move to create an sau 70 equity committee charged with and then continue developing recommendations to the board with regard to diversity equity and inclusion through the rest of that statement working on it as we speak okay that's great thank you thank you any other questions from board
035members on that topic um i just had a quick one kelly yeah lisa yes um i'm assuming if it's a board committee the chair needs to be a member of the board would that be true false and question and i i don't have a specific answer i'm guessing neil might do you know neil if it is a board committee do we need to appoint a board member as a chair uh i believe the answer is no the chair can be anyone okay um but it needs to be elected by that subcommittee aha okay by the equity committee you're saying yep so the committee that you established yeah one of the first items of business that they will need to address in that very first meeting is to elect a chair okay perfect thank you um
036any other point yes kelly yeah i just wanted to make sure that you'd seen nicole's hand over oh gosh i'm sorry i'm having the internet issues do you see nicole's hand over in the attendees kelly i just want to make sure that you'd seen that i did not yet but i wanted to get bored comments first and then i would go on to the attendees but thank you did you have another question kelly no i did not thank you absolutely not okay sure any other board comments or questions before i take questions from the attendees see none nicole josh would you be willing please to move nicole over and let her speak and if you could state your full name and your town of residence that'd be great hi i'm nicole hanson i live in
037lebanon but i'm a teacher in uh at hanover high school and i'm also one of the three staff members who kind of co-chair the current equity committee in the district um and i just wanted to make a couple comments um first i want to say you know thank you for your time with this tonight um this is such important work and figuring out kind of this next step is is really the highest priority for the committee right now um and i just wanted to read um part of the kind of proposal that we sent to dr battams as well as you um kelly with what we hope um this this new version or this new stage of the equity committee could be so the equity committee proposes the next step be the formation of a
038sau 70 board committee which is what you're discussing tonight whose first task would be to make a strategic plan specifically for equity in the district the committee would follow board committee regulations and consist of school board members dr badams and robin steiner and representatives from the executive equity committee and school leadership the group would work to articulate the goals moving forward determine which goals fall under whose purview and leadership and re-envision a structure in which to coordinate all of this work um and it seems like as you're moving forward i think the the final language of the um of the motion as proposed maybe won't now use the word dissolve the current equity committee um but i did want to bring up that the current equity committee currently has about 50 members across its subcommittees
039who are all like those subcommittees are planning to meet through the end of may this year and so um it would be helpful if this new committee could start meeting as soon as possible to figure out what this work looks like moving forward and we would like to kind of finish out the work that's planned for the next month as part of this transition and so it would be helpful uh i think we can talk about the details but i just want to make sure that you know at the end of this meeting tonight that work isn't completely dissolved um that we're able to transition there so thank you thank you very much uh that was always my understanding that that would not that the committee as it stands if folks are still willing to
040be participating as they have been would be entirely uh welcome to continue with all the subcommittees in place and and whoever else is contributing as they're contributing but i think um the initial agenda will probably include as i think jay and neil both suggested the formation of the committee as a board committee will want to review exactly where you are and and what each subcommittee is going to be doing uh we have another member of uh public um josh could you please let linda adante speak hello my name is linda dante and i'm in norwich vermont uh actually i'm on one of the subcommittees the equity committee joined this year uh council advisor and um so i've been involved in the staff trainings around equity and i absolutely find it you know just very impressive
041and very helpful but my question sort of harkens back to when i was on the school board and also watching school board meetings i'm very aware that when there's an sau committee things oftentimes still pass through individual boards of the individual schools and i guess i just wanted clarification on this where i'm coming from is we all know each school has its own uh culture its own little community and i was wondering in the big picture kind of thing when this moves forward we're talking about centralizing and helping things move a lot across the district in a consistent manner but i guess i'm looking for is there room for each school to have their own individuality as we move together as a district and i was kind of looking for some reassurance in that regard
042too thank you thank you linda uh i see no other comments from the public do uh kim yes you have a question i think it's kind of more just a a recommendation i mean i don't know i just i when i hear you know the subcommittee sizes of 50 participants i think we will have because this is a board committee need to adhere to a quorum um and so i just want to make sure that when we think about composition it's a workable number um to have a committee however it's organized and i you know i'm not the person to answer that question right now it's just more of a recommendation to make sure when we think about um planning and minutes and everything that that makes sense to have it work yeah i i
043certainly agree with that um and jay if i could just respond to that the rules the rules governing board committees are a little different than than for a regular meeting of the board and we have had ad-hoc committees for example we had a rather large committee on a proposal to have an a later start for the high school for the school day um that at one point i think it's swollen to well over 20 members and um so we're uh we'll be we'll have we'll be sure that one of the things that will happen by this becoming a board committee is that we will review open meeting law um and ensure that we are operating with transparency and in compliance with that law [Music] thank you jay and lisa i apologize if your hand was
044up first i see it again did you have another question i did that marcelo was up before me and i didn't see your hand either both of your hands are in a white area at least yours less so sorry marcella go ahead no no problem at all and i at least you may have more um a more informed response than i do but i just sort of wanted to reiterate my gratitude for all of the work that so many volunteers have done um already for this equity work um as you mentioned jay i am participating um in whatever way i can with this work but what really blows me away is how these volunteers have dedicated their time um how they've put all of their um considerable faculties into thinking about how to improve the
045education experience um of students in our district and i'm so grateful and so inspired by their work so i just really wanted to mention that first um and then you know the other thing i wanted to say is um i hope that in that gratitude the people who are on these committees and listening are hearing that these questions are all a matter of how to ensure the longevity of an equity committee in this district in the long run and i know how these details about size of committee and about structure um and really they're not details they're essential right um but they can seem at times to be at odds or they can um in the ways that lisa mentioned before they risk maybe alienating um some of the people who have already been doing
046so much work or um in case anyone listening thinks that we're in any way minimizing the work that's already been done um i just want to make it really clear that this is about ensuring sustainability about making sure that we are inside the law so that there can be no reason to find any fault with any of the incredible work that these volunteers are doing and so i really hear that and what neil is suggesting and in kim's questions about size and quorums and so i hope that we can find ways to encourage this kind of participation that's gone so wide in the district there are so many participants um and um still you know make sure we as jay said revive uh revisit and review those open meeting laws thank you marcella lisa yeah
047i um jay sort of answered my question or my concern from kim's question about quorums um and about maybe the subcommittees might not need to have one because their reporting structure might be able to be different um so i think there's some flexibility there which makes this feel like it is doable to still you know to have the wide reach of people who are participating which i think is sort of essential for this kind of work and yet also have a board structure that makes sure that it keeps going and i think that we can do both um and then i also just wanted to reiterate for anyone listening who's been participating in this work sometimes when we're talking about equity issues we are talking about socioeconomic status or other personal information about students or
048members of our district and even though this will be a board committee with um open meeting laws and the need to be transparent in public it is my understanding and this is sort of my question for you probably jay um that when we are discussing sensitive information that can be tied to a particular member of our community when we're doing this work we can go into a non-public session correct and then come back out just like we would in a board meeting when we're discussing personnel and i just want to make sure that that's possible because for me that has implications about how this work is structured so thank you jay yes yeah it's it's my understanding of the law that we can in fact and have in the past gone into non-public session as
049long as we're in accordance with existing rsa [Music] whether it's in a committee meeting or subcommittee meeting we can certainly do that thank you thank you i see one more question from the uh public side um josh could you please under mute uh stuart uh tell you rick with a stand up i'm sorry i'm not doing so well this evening uh rick go ahead please so i i'm still a little confused about exactly what the role of this committee is it sounds like some people view this as an opportunity for issues or specific cases to be discussed by the committee when in fact i would view this committee as ensuring that we have created the proper processes within the sau on how to how to resolve issues on how to create policy that's uh inclusive
050and equitable and not to be a place where someone who has a potential claim or complaint is going to be discussed that's going to be discussed at the sau level by the administrators and um not not in committee so i just uh when we talked about this a couple days ago during the four chairs meeting my thought was this committee would over the next two years go through and help us create what the structures we need and the processes we need and then at that point the sau would be able to handle uh potential issues that come up jay would you like to respond i'll give it a try and anyone from the equity committee can can jump in if they if they can help um elucidate further but i would say that there are
051we still don't know exactly what those structures are going to be that the equity committee might recommend to the board so that's why the resolution has uh that as as um essentially a two-year charge to make recommendations to the board uh right now we don't really have aside from our our title ix our sort of federal federally mandated reporting obligations we really don't have a specific process or mechanism let's say someone was was feeling marginalized how do they express that who do they go to and we don't have those sorts of non like less formal processes in place for people to experience inclusion right so um so i would think that one of the charges of the committee is going to be to investigate that and part of it might be uh hearing from our
052community their own stories uh which we've we already have in some cases but i can see some of those conversations continuing whether it's in a subcommittee or a larger larger group setting and we'll need to preserve the safety of those individuals coming forward until we do have recommendations for the board for creating the sorts of supports and procedures that you're describing rick great thank you jay lisa do you think i've done this i explained makes sense i think that makes sense and i think we can get even more specific that a lot of the conversations that the equity committee has been having about procedures and what's needed and how to formulate the professional development or the community workshops which happened last thursday and this coming thursday emerged from the focus groups that happened this summer
053and those focus groups were spaces so to speak where we promised that the stories would not go public and so um you know it i i think you're right jay until we sort of know what sort of things we need we have to make sure that we have ways that people can come forward and talk to the committee in a way that we respect their personal information because some of the stories are really hard to share in a public manner thank you lisa any comments questions further discussion from anyone on the board am i missing any virtual hands so sorry guys i see none so i will go back and give stewart a chance to speak josh if you wouldn't mind unmuting stewart could you please state your name in your town of residence stuart
054stewart richards still from norwich and a question for you are you able to see me on the screen is anybody your name and that's all okay so um there are two there are two laws that apply here and jay i think has has mentioned them one is the right to know law in in new hampshire and the other is the open meeting law in vermont and it seems to me that that there's a real concern about adhering to both of those laws in each of the two states i attempted to join a what was billed as and it was on the internet an sau 70 equity committee meeting this was a couple months ago and i was asked to leave and i had thought the purpose of the announcement for the meeting and also the
055purpose of the meeting itself was was to create transparency and get public input and being asked to leave without i didn't get a chance to say anything i just simply was asked to leave and that to me was uh wrong so i'll leave you with that thought and hope that that doesn't uh reoccur and i i really don't know why i was asked to leave i wasn't intending to be disruptive or or to be a problem or to create any sort of issue so i don't know if you're all aware of that particular instance but and i don't know how many other instances like that have occurred but to me it's not a good way to proceed so thanks for hearing me out thank you stuart do we have any further questions from the board
056on this item and if not we will move on um i do have uh when we move on to business requiring action which is next um i'll bring up my point later with the equity committee motion um before we uh vote on items b through d are there any um amendments to the march 16th minutes that are part of the consent agenda from the board members seeing none uh do we have a motion for the consent rick go ahead you're muted rick sorry about that move to approve items b through e by as amended by consent uh no b through d sorry rick d we're taking e by itself okay to approve could you amend it yeah items b through d by consent thank you do i have a second lisa i'll take a roll
057call vote uh lisa christie yes wasn't expecting that neil yes kim hartman yes kelly mcconnell yes uh rick johnson yes garrett i'm yes and hersey yes thank you very much um moving on to the second item requiring action um [Music] i would like to take a motion unless there are any further points of discussion for um item eve with the revised motion language bin i actually have a question based on the new one oh i'm sorry yes and that is um there's there's discussion of policy in there and of course we have a separate policy committee and whether that is going to become an issue at some point if we have two separate committees formulating policy my understanding was when policy was noted in the um in the motion language it is simply referring to
058what the subcommittees and the the equity committee will be bringing back to the board as recommendations which would be a policy recommendation as i understand it coming to the policy committee am i correct about that jay that's correct okay just so i can clarify so you mean there's a you you're there's intended to be an equities a policy subcommittee of the equity committee if they come up with recommendations that would be then forwarded to the stand to the overall equity committee if that get approved and that would be forwarded to the policy committee for separate approvals at the intent well i would i would yeah i would say it would actually be the sau policy committee who writes the policy yes not not my understanding me i i understood that that they're not is not
059necessarily a policy subcommittee that is still to be decided by the equity committee what the subcommittees and their makeups will be but that the committee at large as other committees at large bring back recommendations to the board should they come up with the policy recommendation they would bring that to the policy committee do i have that right jay that's correct and i can think of examples in the not too distant past in which there has been a recommendation for us to to uh consider a certain policy and that gets referred to the policy committee okay does that answer your question ben ah yes it does thank you and rick does that make it clear as well am i restating it properly and you're okay great um are there any other comments before we make before
060i request a motion on item 5e seeing none i'd love one please rick move to create an sau equity committee as an official committee of the sau 70 school board the committee is charged with developing recommendations to the board with regard to diversity equity and inclusion in such areas as curriculum in instruction student support services policy and recruitment and hiring practices such charge will extend through the 2022-2023 school year thank you do i have a second kim and i'll take a roll call vote lisa christie yes and neil yes and marcelo iblasi yes and kim hartmannius and kelly mcconnell yes and rick johnson yes and garrett lomus and hersey yes thank you um my point i wanted to make after we've approved this committee is that we will need very likely we'll need to enlarge
061our board membership on the committee it would be great if we could get i'm hearing from some of the members of the equity committee it'd be great if we could get some mail members from board as well marcella has been generous enough to offer her attendance on the committee and lisa has as well obviously but if we could get other some male members to uh consider joining this committee just let me know by email no pressure tonight but that would be great it would be helpful with all the subcommittees and the potential work that's been going on to have a little bit more board inclusion so just keep that in mind please and we will move to the um item six reports and communications i think ben has his hand out yes i'm sorry again
062i've done it again ben just a clarifying question for meetings like this you know would be good to know before recruiting with new members if there's an intended date time frequency you know all that kind of stuff before we would consider joining this was given to our work schedules and such yes that's great and and i had um asked lisa if she might address the board with that question which i assumed we would get tonight so thank you ben go ahead lisa um you know i think all of this is up for discussion but if we want to keep teachers and staff involved it the meetings can't be held during the school day so um any committee meetings have to be held after 3 p.m um you know i know some of our subcommittees meet
063during lunch or in the morning and that would not be possible with this with this committee if we wanted to keep the teachers involved and then i think realistically for a couple of months while we answer all the questions that people had tonight about the structure and who's on it and what the charges and how to keep the work moving forward um i think the committee would have to meet twice a month um and then probably after that once a month but i will say that under the leadership of the three staff members who are co-chairing we never go over an hour um it is incredible the amount of work that gets done in about 50 minutes so um i don't know if that helps but that's the best answer i can give you based
064upon past experience that's a great answer lisa thank you any other questions and i'm going to scan for hands guys i'm so sorry i keep missing uh see i see no other hands physically or virtually so i will move on to reports and communications um the first on the agenda is report of chair and i'd like to report that we've left off committee reports so if any committee members would like to report into the board on what's happened in the last month or so i would love to hear it i know one committee that's met the superintendent evaluation committee and i'm guessing policy but maybe not since the last sau meeting and if no one has anything to say that's fine we can move on yep ben yeah the policy meeting the policy committee meets
065frequently i just typically don't bring it up here because we discuss every policy once it gets to the board anyway so we meet every two weeks okay okay thank you lisa i see your hand yeah um the superintendent review committee has been meeting and the surveys were sent out by josh malloy today and to the four constituencies that we are surveying one being parents and community members um one being jay himself one being the teachers and one being the board and the sau staff and i think that's all that's in that one so everyone listening should have hopefully received a survey we know that there was a mistake in the parent survey the parents all got jay self-evaluation so please if you're listening ignore that the proper survey will be coming um but i'm choosing
066to look at this mistake as one no one's dying from getting the wrong survey and two we know that people are paying attention because my email exploded as with parents saying they got the wrong survey so um the correct survey should be coming within the next 24 hours and thanks everyone for their patience it's already there it already went out before the meeting lisa so any other comments i was in a baseball game i didn't know it's all right um report of the chair then i'll go on um right kelly kelly sorry i don't think you can see me kelly has a question now i see your hand both hands kelly go ahead thank you um i just wanted to you possibly all saw this in your email but i know sometimes the nhsba emails
067get a little buried um but the nhsba just decided to do their annual meeting in october which means if we want to do resolutions we have to have them in by july so i sent an email asking that we put those on our next couple agendas but i just wanted to put that out there for you guys to start thinking about if there are any resolutions that we want to propose to nhsba or any uh amendments to current resolutions um and if anyone can't find the current resolutions and wants to take a look at them um let me know and i can help you find those so thanks that's all thank you kelly it's a great one um any anyone else that i've missed seems to be endemic tonight um the only other point that
068i wanted to bring up was brought up to me yes uh that yesterday the valley news had an article with strong public opposition to what was originally hb 544 the bill that was prohibiting teaching and disseminating of so-called divisive concepts the letter that went out apparently was signed by numerous local businesses including dartmouth college colby sawyer college dartmouth hitchcock medical hypotherm escoma bank co-op food stores among about a dozen total the supporters aren't alone last april the article said the business and industry association of new hampshire which is new hampshire's chamber of commerce came out against the bill it's now unfortunately been more or less buried in a in a a budget bill so we don't know yet what the governor will do with that but um originally there was notice or or hint that
069he would have vetoed this as a standalone bill but that this came out yesterday so thank you for uh to tom for letting me know about that um the other point i have is that our board retreat is scheduled this year for two remote sessions um not one thankfully so please mark your calendar rather than one marathon we'll be doing thursday the 13th of may from six to nine remotely and wednesday may 19th from 6 to 8 also remotely um and now i'll gladly turn the reports over to our superintendent oh wait we have a question from marcella i saw a hand hi um i just wanted to follow up on the hb 5 well it's the hp 544 that's since become hb2 so it's actually slated to be heard i think tomorrow for public
070comment at i think 1 p.m and 6 6pm and um you can sign up online to give testimony if you'd like to opine um so that you can have your opinions be known thank you very much for that marcel no other hands so jay superintendents report please you would love it well we've had a pretty wide ranging discussion so far about the importance of our work and diversity equity inclusion so um i just want to share that we while we get our committee uh sort of um formed and then restarted if you will the work goes on we've had one community meeting already and another slated for next week there's there's ongoing work in my own office i've been working with karen wright to establish a framework for a website that we can devote to
071diversity equity and inclusion and it was actually i'd love to take credit for the idea but it was actually a request that i had from the vermont superintendents association and for possible location for a meeting and i happened to take a look at the work the i was thinking about perhaps the hulbert center and went to the aloha foundation's website and i thought that they had a really nice um a nice presence on the web and uh so we're looking at attempting to provide a a way for us to have a location where once we do establish our statement that it can be housed there and um and a variety of other um areas of focus that we could post on the web so just uh one way we're continuing the work uh until we
072reorganize um another thing it's it's it feels like spring now and seeing our student athletes and our students a lot of many of our students outdoors right now is is really refreshing and we are we're on our staff appreciation week now and and again i say this every time uh every every level of this organization every different particular type of employee has done amazing work this year in keeping our schools open keeping our students learning keeping our schools safe and again i think it's it's easy to take for granted when i continue to hear people argue in different communities about how and when to open their schools it just again makes me really proud of our staff for the work they've done [Music] one other thing that you should be aware of it's it's a
073dresden issue i guess but it's really an sau wide issue is i notified the staff at hhs today that our search for hanover high school principal has again stalemated we have we have a committee that had um reviewed resumes that were submitted i think i shared with the board before that we really didn't get many and i've heard from people around the country that it's been a tough year for people to hire new leaders as people sort of hunker down during the pandemic and and keep some stability in their lives so we are at a point now where we'll need to start to consider our next step in terms of interim leadership until we can do yet another search and i will be uh coming to the dresden board to talk about what those options
074would be and um and in the meantime we'll assure the community that we we will continue to provide um support for the high school and we uh we know there's a lot uh that that remains there's a lot of things like schedule changes a lot of important aspects of the high school's operations that will require attention so we'll make sure we do a good job of setting up a team to to make sure that we have a smooth transition for the end of this school year and then moving into next school year overall we had 10 applicants total in the pool and of the 10 who applied there were we found three that made it through initial screening and um and so uh we're we're hoping that our next our next try will be sort
075of post pandemic if i can knock wood and that will have a bigger field to to consider so um that is my report for the evening thank you jay um and now i'd love to hear is robin here tonight oh i'm sorry um well first i see marcelo's hand up is that a question for me myself okay right i forgot to put it down before i'll lower it oh good thank you so rob robin oh i'm sorry you asked about robin's report um i am authorized to speak on her behalf this evening um okay very briefly thank you robin's out of town and is on her way back she she probably is landing in boston right now so she told me that she's excited that curriculum work is um is being slated right now for
076the summer and she already has a significant number of volunteers from each school to begin the documentation work uh they already have a um a protocol for doing that and so we're we're excited to get get that work underway finally even in advance of the the strategic plan the other a big portion of her responsibility that's taken most of her time is the the work around covid and she said the committee is starting to approve end of year events now with some limitations and as those uh as those events take shape we'll be sure to make sure that our principals are notifying their respective school communities about them and we'll report back to the board as well so that concludes my my substitute assistant superintendent report thank you from us and i'm sure from robin
077as well um and now the i'd love to hear from jamie our business administrator please good evening how are you how are you fine great i think i figured out how to share my screen okay look at that somebody gave me screen sharing uh ability tonight which was very lovely when i went and looked problem is i think i have other abilities and i'm i'm glad i didn't start clicking on buttons it might have gone bad quick um so i've gone through the financials for sau 70 district and this is the overview the expanded reports are posted please take a look if you have any questions give me a ring or send me an email i'm happy to answer any post them here and share them with everybody the revenues at the district assessments you
078know we always get all of our revenues because it's based on the districts paying the sau to manage uh the different uh school districts so we have uh or i think we're going to hit earned interest right on target this year which is interesting and we had prior year refunds coming coming in a little bit higher than quite a bit higher than expected um and you can see here our total budget for 2021 is 18647 so therefore your expenditures should match because it's in and out here we have encumbrances and projections i've highlighted the professional services line because if you go out and look at the expanded line items you're going to look at legal and you're going to go oh my god it's huge and it's way over well what occurred this year is
079that we had a lot of legal fees because there was a lot going on during the year for covid but many of those legal fees should be pushed out to dresden and hanover because they had to deal with union agreements so we're in the process ryan and i think amy and probably jay are reviewing the legal bills again to be sure that the only charges that remain in the sau budget are the ones that belong to it um so i've made the adjustment here to where i feel we're going to end up um so we'll end up with a variance here of 32 000 approximately and the variance up top of 3679 put those two together and i'm projecting a variance of 35 709 a positive variance uh add to that our actual fund balance
080from 1920. you can see up here that we had projected a fund balance earlier last june of 29 449 we actually ended up with a fund balance of 54 427 so we carry that forward along with the variances from operations and i'm projecting a fund balance of ninety thousand one thirty six um we did uh promise as an offset for the twenty one twenty two budget an amount of seventy eight thousand five fifty four so i'm projecting that we'll hit that target otherwise we'll be cutting our budgeted expenditures because we can't raise any more funds than we and we already have um i did wanna mention a couple of items um within the expenditure lines just briefly and i'm not going to show them because i know it's got a lot of meetings this week
081so um as i mentioned if you look at the the expanded line item report you'll see a lot of variances in the salary lines there's a couple reasons for that we hired the assistant superintendent later in the year although we did hire that at a higher salary than originally budgeted we also hired one of our administrative support staffs a little bit higher than originally budgeted and we had an administrative position that went unfilled for us little spaces of time at the front desk here at the sau um in addition to that there's going to be some variances in the salary and ben i mean the benefits lines just due to people's different elections than what we initially had budgeted um the legal lines again you're gonna look at it and it's gonna show that we're
082about eighteen thousand nine hundred and eighty eight overspent much of that i know at least 16 000 of it just off the top of my head will be moved um you look at service contracts that's going to show a little bit over as well as publication software and books couple reasons we had an additional forty six hundred dollars that was carried forward from nineteen twenty uh that wasn't paid and for whatever reason they did not rebuild us until the new bill came in with a dollar amount still due that was for our human resources um software that we use to send out all of the notifications and track the required trainings for the school districts we also have an ed week subscription in there that we hadn't originally planned our equipment and furniture lines are
083overspent a bit whenever we have new folks coming in there will be expenditures attached to that we also had two laptop computers that had to be replaced that we weren't planning on um and some of that money also is because we decided to move forward like we did with the other districts on some um purchasing some hardware for our section of the technology upgrade um and then in the recruitment line where we're trending over there as well um a lot of that is expenditures for the hanover high school principal ads that were run about two thousand four hundred and five dollars um over and above what we would normally spend but even with all of that rolled in and projections of what i think we'll spend over and above what we've got encumbered now we
084should be okay that's it for me tonight thank you jamie any questions for jamie a lot of material as always thanks for all that thorough and complete work um i don't oh yes kim kim has a question thanks jamie and actually you answered all of the ones i had about the report so my my only question i guess is um on timing for and this is kind of an sau wide question right but timing for the technology bond um i just want to make sure that we have it on our agenda in a timely manner um so i'm just looking at interest rates and everything i just want to make sure we um so if you can you just tell me when um i guess or how soon we can look to consider that so
085initially we want to look to sorry my phone somebody's texting me or sending me an email um i had it up higher earlier because i'm working from home and i don't want to miss anything um so initially we wanted to write the debt close enough so that we wouldn't have to have any payments until the following fiscal year so that means we can't really write much debt before september i have had conversations with the folks at the bond bank and i do see what the rates are trending right there um we're waiting for the rfps to close josh has the we have the one for the hardware done the one for the cabling and i can't remember because i'm not i have it on my desk i'm sorry uh the one for the cabling i
086think is just closing we're due to close this week and the one for the phone system upgrades is due to close by may i think it's the 21st or second so once we have all of those in kim then we'll send the rfps out to the bank or the banks right we send them to multiples and we just wanted a target of what the dollar amounts actually looked like also he's working with the e-rate consultant and i'm trying to find old documents uh that they require to prove that we're a public school district um so we're working through all that as well so i i think we'll be on target uh we can spend monies in advance of debt being written i believe it's a 90-day window for reimbursing yourself because we'll we will have
087retainage um and that's allowed we did that when we wrote the debt for the um turf field we did a few you know we locked in some pricing uh just so the markets don't go up on some of the tech pricing we may lock some of that in early um but it's okay because we can reimburse ourselves as long as we write the debt within 90 days thank you jamie anybody else have questions for jamie yeah garrett jeremy sorry and hopefully i'm putting you on the spot but um and maybe totally unrelated to sau um but the ess er email that you sent out last week and i heard some of your sau stuff talk about covid and the technology and stuff can you just talk for a minute so it looks like you know
088hanover's you know a couple hundred thousand on that but i see towns like keane and others that are like 3 million how did that all get distributed around new hampshire based on title 1 and our title 1 numbers are very very very low because we don't have high poverty and we don't have high um and jay can speak to this better than i can because i don't honestly know all of the different pieces that go into the title one um determination um i believe it has to do their poverty level is one and then also isn't it educational attainment j at certain different grade levels yeah it's both but it's primarily a measure of of socioeconomic variables so it's like really free introduced launch applications that are what the primary considerations are so because we
089have relatively low percentage of our students that are eligible our federal funding is is considerably lower than neighboring districts yeah we're in the single digits here on that so if you're looking at the ones like manchester that's huge right i mean there's a there's quite a few of them that are that are very large and that's why yeah i mean i was looking even like dairy dover you know four million six million sometimes that you would think don't have that type of poverty but anyways okay that makes sense yeah and i you know it's a great question and so what i'll do is just as a follow-up i'll share and and maybe i can post it as well um i can share with you the free and reduced percentages for the different districts but that's
090okay i don't know what great work it was just i just want to ask just because i saw that and again the numbers were all over the place and some towns that you know even exeter stuff i saw got over a million bucks so it was just kind of interesting i was wondering how we got that and how it was applied so that's okay i'm all good kim you have another question thank you garrett thanks yeah just on that i this is a statement but it's really a question to jamie i believe though um you know despite our if you look at the in totality of the federal um covet relief funds we've been able to cover our additional expenses with the revenue that we've received and jamie can can confirm if that's a true
091statement but i think if you look in the totality of it i think we're able to at least cover our kind of upfront costs that we've made [Music] yeah and that's true kim the only part probably that we didn't fully cover because the crf funds went through december 31st and then we made the conscious decision because we were trending okay with all of our turnover to not cover the second part of the year for the unbudgeted bus monitors we allowed for those other esser funds to be used for the technology purchases to try to relieve you know some of what we're going to write debt on but those are really the only pieces that we were not able to cover i think in in and so a little bit of the purchases on ppe like
092um um plexiglas lexan and things like that a little bit in dresden we didn't get fully reimbursed but um everywhere else yeah we're pretty good [Music] thank you jamie any other questions for jamie or comments nope see none i don't think we have a need for a non-public jay do we no not at all uh so um the board members have anything else that you might like to have discussed at our next meeting which is scheduled for june 8th at 6pm if anything if nothing is on anyone's mind now please feel free just to email me if you have questions or points that you'd like um brought up at the next meeting um if there's no further business i'll ask for a motion to adjourn from someone kim please move to adjourn at 7 25
093pm thank you second lisa thank you i'll take a roll call vote garrett please bomb yes and neil yes thank you lisa mistias and tom and dania and ben ini yes marcella de blasios and kelly o'connell yes and rick johnson yes and kim and hersey yes thank you see you next time see you soon i'm sure in a day or two thanks everybody thank you for your patience with your hands thanks kelly good night yeah thanks