001best we're somewhere between cleveland and chicago so if i disappear it's technology understood thank you that can happen in vermont too so yes or new hampshire or new hampshire that can happen in vermont too so okay you're good to go we're good all right super thank you so much josh so i will call us to order and our first order of business tonight is our public hearing to accept a whole series of donations um gratefully i will add the first donation is from the jack and dorothy byrne foundation and i believe we have jenny chambers here to speak to that joy hi everybody sorry i don't sound like a chorus teacher tonight after our block schedule and singing like seven hours um thank you first of all for having this meeting to to get these
002in earlier i really really appreciate that so i wrote to dorothy vern who's been a phenomenal donor across the chart to our whole upper valley but particularly to the music department um to help fund an opera documentary which is provided we're hoping to create an educational tool for classrooms across the country honestly on how you can approach opera in the high school setting and then how that translates to working with professionals in the field uh working with philippe chabatti who's at dartmouth world renowned conductor and coaches such as marsha cassidy who's at dartmouth as well and and then obviously nora jacobson is a very accomplished documentary artist so dorothy graciously made this donation toward this project with with joy and we're we're so so deeply grateful to her and and how much she supports the
003arts thank you very much jenny and thank you um obviously to the door the jack and dorothy burn foundation um is there anyone else who wanted to speak to this i just want to commend jenny this is a huge undertaking for her you know she's she's not missing a beat with everything she's got going on in school and this is just adding so much to her plate so i want to thank her and everybody else that's involved in this agreed are there any questions yes neil um just trying to understand so the the uh the money will be used for activities at the high school like how is it associated with the documentary i'm a little confused so the students auditioned for this quite honestly has taken on a life of its own as most
004of my projects do much to my husband's um amusement or just pleasure depending on the day so it started as just being a vocal coaching with filippo and then has has evolved into so high school students in the chorus auditioned for an opera project i was doing then he came in and coached and we were like this would be great to add some orchestra members in and then i was like well this is phenomenal educational information for other schools for how to incorporate our opera into the school and then looked at well how can we document this and preserve this so it can be a curricular tool across the country and then wrote to dorothy byrne to see if she would help fund it so that nora can create um a keepsake that can be
005then sent as a curricular tool to other schools on how do you teach opera how do you make it accessible and how do you do that in the in the high school setting and and with a toolkit for elementary middle and high school level so her funding goes towards hiring nora whoever nora needs for the sound technicians for the finishing and she's she's part of off-the-grid productions for those of you that aren't aware and uh has gotten international acclaim for her work with documentaries so we're we're super excited for the opportunity this grant has provided us um kelly if i might some i just uh i mean this sounds like an excellent opportunity i'm just a little uh confused on how the cash is flowing through this does the grant flow through the school and
006then the school pays the director i'm a little yeah exactly so the the school would and the board first would need to accept the donation then the school would then pay nora directly through off the grid productions for the for the but for the whole process all the time she puts in the technicians she utilizes in the final product then the rights are owned by the school not by off the grid productions so then this is a documentary that we own that then we use to to help educate people on opera and how it can really shape and form students lives and there's also supplies that are being used by the school that jenny has to go out and get for the production know gowns were a big part of it are there any other
007questions all right seeing none i will take a motion to accept this donation rick move to approve the donation with gratitude from the jack and dorothy byrne foundation in the amount of fourteen thousand dollars for filming what is opera thank you is there a second john all in favor i think we have to do these separately so we'll do a quick roll call vote starting with brittany joyce yes tom camden yes ben any yes neil odell yes rick johnson yes marcella steve lassi yes john yes lisa christie s and mcconnell yes thank you again uh and we will move on to a donation from the friends of hanover norwich schools and i assume that tim will be speaking to this is that right yeah we wanted to thank the friends of the hannover nord schools
008for their continued support of the work at the richmond school so um we got some money in the fall and we got some more money uh this spring it was divided between not equally but between two grants one for our uh guided study area it was run by our 504 coordinator nat shellness and he requested alternative seating um which is basically uh i think you've seen them they're like big cushions they're about this big um and they move around and they allow students who may have some difficulty sitting still to actually sit in their chairs or at times stand and sort of activate their body without bouncing around too much and it has been a real work in progress for students to be able to focus within their study hall situation and um nat had
009done a lot of research on that and um they the friends of hanover norwood schools granted that so i think we're looking forward to how well that will work i have one in my office it works really well for many many zoom meetings to sort of keep you focused the second grant was a rather large grant which we were very very thankful for to our woodworking shop cliff harriman has taken over this year as most of you know after richie starr had been the person who had been in charge of the woodworking shop for 43 years and he has changed the direction a little bit uh in that he's trying to increase the number of students that have access to all of the ability to work with wood and in order to do that he
010needed to be able to create basically class sets of very specific tools and the friends of hanover norwich schools have granted that it's part of a larger plan that cliff has to sort of branch out from individual work which is what we had been focused on for a number of years to sort of more community-based work so this year he was able to take the classes that he had and some of the eighth graders who've been there for a while and build staircases for some people in need in the community he built ski racks for our school and the race school because we couldn't bring skis inside anymore and this is sort of the direction that it's going and um the friends of hammer noir schools have been a huge boon for us so that
011now we have we're able to reach out and get a lot of tools for all of the students individually great thank you tim are there questions okay seeing none i will take a motion ben move to approve with sincere gratitude the donation of ten thousand seven hundred and twenty eight dollars and eighty two cents from the friends of hanover norwich schools to be used for alternative seating and woodshop retooling at richmond middle school is there a second john again and i will take a roll call vote starting with brittany joyce yes tom and yes ben keaney yes neil odell yes rick johnson yes marcella de blasio john yes lisa christie yes and mcconnell yes thank you again to the friends of hanover norwich schools and our final donation for this evening again from the friends
012of hanover norwich schools um i'm not sure who's speaking to this one um again this is uh it's for eleven hundred fifty dollars um and a thousand is going towards the the opera series that jenny just discussed i don't know if jenny if you want i think you pretty much covered it in your first yeah just that this portion is covering the coachings with filippo and the other donation is covering the filming of the documentary just so you know the difference so this is more educationally based this is bringing him in to work with the kids and with the instrumentalists and then the other piece of this is 150 that was awarded to bill hammond uh for the math department and bill if you'd like to explain what your idea was to brighten the place
013up so so before i say that though i've got to tell you how grateful i am for all the work that you are doing as a school board to to keep us going as a school this is this is hard work this year it's just an unusual year and to have the support from you and from the administrators makes our teaching a lot easier so thank you uh we had before renovation a mural in the math quarter up on the third floor of a history of mathematics from 5000 bc to the present and some of that had to be removed when the renovation happened so we've been doing new murals we cut out some of the old murals to put them up there and we're doing new murals and during march intensive this year we're
014doing a few murals on mathematical ideas to help inspire students but they're going to be right up on the wall i asked the teachers what their greatest interests in mathematics what were the most inspiring ideas in mathematics they've told me and the students in march intensive are going to take some of those and make those a permanent part of the wall we have money already through march intensive to deal with some of the um some of the paints and stuff like that this extra 150 is perhaps post march intensive if we have any um paint or framing that we need to do in order to blend everything together up there so that's what the 150 dollars is for and we're really grateful to the hanover the friends of the hanover north schools for that by
015the way they were the ones who originally funded that mural that uh that 14-foot mural of the history of math 14 from 5000 bc to the present thank you i will admit when i read this i was i was curious how the math hallway art and the opera lab series was working together on this so now this makes a little a little more sense to me i'm sure we could find a way but are there questions all right i will take a motion brittany sure um i move to approve with sincere gratitude the donations from the friends of hanover norwich schools and the amount of 1150 for the hanover high school hall math hallway art and opera lab series thank you brittany and a second ben thank you many seconds uh and we will take
016a roll call starting with brittany joyce yes tom and yes ben keaney yes neil odell yes rick johnson yes marcella iblassy yes john hunt yes lisa christie and mcconnell yes so thank you again to all of our generous donors thank you yes and thank you all so much yes thank you um so that moves us into a gender review and i had emailed you guys i know we're at our 15 minute time limit here so i'm asking for your indulgence for five more minutes with your permission i would like to just give you the briefest of updates on the principal search situation at the high school and um as i had asked in my um email to all of you i would like to hear if you have any initial priorities that you would like
017considered in the initial phases of the principal search committee so um i'd ask jay to just give us a one minute update if i get the board's uh approval to add this looking for head dogs okay thank you so jay could you just give us the one minute update on where we're at sure start the stopwatch all right okay um we have had two meetings so far with our committee and we learned from our experience last time that um i think in this particular case less is more uh we have representation from a variety of constituents but the committee is about half the size of the committee that we had had uh had hired last uh last time around so we are um in the process of reviewing applications we have only 10 applicants this
018time around so we're doing the initial screening we'll be meeting tomorrow for our third session and we'll hopefully decide upon those individuals that we think we want to bring in for interview this will be an inclusive process and we hope that by the time we have finalists we'll be able to actually bring them on site which was one of our limitations last time poor jim took the the the job site on scene um and we're hoping that his successor uh has the opportunity to come and visit with us so we can see that person interact with students and and staff and community did it make it i think well under a minute well done all right um so i was just i'm hoping uh board members if you've had a chance to think a little
019bit about um any initial priorities that come to mind as we do as jay mentioned these initial screenings anything that you would like me to share with the committee as board priorities john fantastic leadership ability um and with that i do have to duck out the sign of a leader leaving early right there yes thanks trust the team thanks ben experience with high performing students as well as high expecting parents neil um not necessarily a comment on this have we already um the applicants that we have has the has the deadline come to close for accepting new applicants or when does the deadline uh close we have no deadline we uh we posted it as a until filled okay um if we uh so we had a conversation in our last meeting that that uh
020if anyone knows of anyone or is uh um wanting to be an amateur recruiter that that that's still that possibility still exists and um have we sort of in line with the work that we have been doing with diversity equity and inclusion have we tried to reach out for a more diverse population of candidates this round um i had i have advertised with the national association of black school educators and i have also ensured that through our hr department that our our posting is picked up by a really wide array of advertising sources so we we had an extended period of advertisement with ed week which which again lots of other search engines feed off of that to broadcast it so i hope we're out there it's uh it's been a tough a tough time
021in my conversations with other superintendents uh it's it's not a time where people have been seeking to um give up what what stability they have in their lives and uh we're hopeful that um that among these 10 applicants that will have someone who is is not only qualified but but uh promises to be a strong candidate if not the committee has been told that we'll once again consider whether or not we um move forward for one more year with an interim placement hoping that with uh with covid behind us that we'll we'll maybe have some some more uh interest in the position if we end up having to do that and then kelly one more but if i might um i um and i guess to the extent that we might know of any principles
022uh out there you know outside of our own system who might be interested but not necessarily looking for a new job i don't know if we proactively reach out to folks to entertain whether or not they would be candidates so we have individually different people have have been tapping into their networks um we did talk about the possibility of a future search in which we would actually hire a head hunter um but uh that's uh that's sort of the extent of our our outreach in terms of recruitment tom uh given where we are now and about to embark on an sau wide strategic plan i think it might be helpful to have someone with strategic planning experience both development and implementation and if it's okay with you chair i'd like to reserve the right to
023send by email additional thoughts if they come to mind then do and with that in mind when do you have a deadline on um when these would be helpful by um jay remind me we're not making those initial decisions tomorrow right the it'll be the meeting after that i believe no and the feedback is useful beyond the simplest the screening like right now we're just looking at sort of gross qualifications like we posted some minimum qualifications that um we're sort of reviewing the resumes with that focus right now uh so if what what the teachers have done is they said they sent out a survey soliciting um feedback around what traits they they would consider important the students are doing a similar data gathering and we certainly could do that with the board as well
024yeah we just have to make be sure that we're making that available to the public so if we did that we need to make sure that those were published i think somehow so i'll have to make sure we're on top of that um but certainly um if board members and i know we have a lot of board members who aren't here if board members would think of something afterwards that they would like attached to these minutes um on this conversation um we can certainly do that so you can send those to me and um probably copy j on those as well all right anything else yes jake i always feel awkward having these conversations with jim sitting here in the in the audience and and always uh i'm reminded that uh we owe him a
025great thanks for the work he's done during a really difficult time and um and really appreciate what you've done for us well thank you yeah i'm one of those guys giving up my security and everything i'm taking a leap of faith so thank you yes i feel like jim i should also be asking you what you think this principle really needs to happen i'm sure that conversation will happen at some point so all right thank you everybody if there is nothing else for this evening i will take a motion to adjourn yeah ben uh do we have a moment for public comment i do notice we have someone in the public uh yes i've been waiting to see if her hand was raised but i don't think oh we do have a public may address
026the board thank you man laura did you want to say anything i'm not seeing a hand go up but thank you ben for pointing that out all right and we don't need non-public so if there is nothing else i will take a motion to adjourn rick move to adjourn at 6 24. thank you and a second ben and i'll take a roll call starting with brittany joyce yes tom and yes ben keaney yes neil odell yes rick johnson yes marcella iblassy yes lisa oh christy yes thanks and mcconnell yes thank you everybody for giving me some of your thursday evening go enjoy the last rays of sunshine thanks everyone thank you thanks everyone