20210407 Norwich Regular Board Meeting

001miss this awesome desk you want oklahoma city no i'm in springfield i leave sunshine i'm selling furniture in springfield would you like a desk it's lovely it's huge all right you're good to go thanks josh and josh i'm sorry but we do have a need for a non-public later so we'll have to switch over thank you already set up you're good great all right with that i would like to call to order the regular norwich school board meeting of april 7th and our first item of business is the agenda review i think it's pretty straightforward tonight but do any board members or administrators have anything they'd like to adjust add remove okay not seeing any let's move on to the next portion of our agenda tonight which is public input i see we do have

002four attendees with us tonight so provide this opportunity for anyone to comment on any matters they do not already see on the agenda otherwise i'd ask people to wait until that agenda item they're interested in arrives i'll give you a minute to raise your zoom hand okay not seeing any we will move right into the reports this evening and the first report up is the pto report and i do see alexa as our attendee so i will give alexa the opportunity to speak and you should just need to unmute alexa if you'd introduce yourself hello can you hear me hello yes we can uh hello i am alexa manning and i am the co-chair and president of the marion cross pto um and also a parent of a sixth grader and good evening everybody uh

003let's see um we had bingo night last week no week before last i guess technically and we were super excited to be able to host bingo night this year um it was a little bit near and dear to our heart because it was the first pto event that got cancelled due to coven last year so um we were able to do an online version uh using some software developed by one of these great companies that's come in and figured out how to do things during covet and uh it was a huge success and we played six rounds of bingo and we had prizes ranging from dan and wit's gift certificates to things that were donated from the wreck department t-shirts and caps and then we had a parent donate some really cool dinosaur banks that

004she had done a photo shoot for and ended up with all of these leftover banks and uh it was it was really a great time um it went very well everybody gave us some great positive feedback we did it normally it's a straight up pto fundraising event uh this year we were more concerned on just having a great activity although we did do some fundraising and we also used the opportunity to allow the sixth graders to do some fundraising for the sixth grade celebration um you know normally they do a whole bunch of bake sales all year long and of course they've been completely unable to do that so um we worked with them and came up with this idea of doing goodie bags that people could buy that were sent home in backpacks and

005were put together with you know just packaged treats various different packaged treats and those were done as a fundraiser for the sixth graders and you were also able when you signed up for bingo to just do an additional donation if you wanted to to the sixth grade celebration and when it all was said and done we raised a net of uh 553 dollars for the sixth grade celebration crew and 396 dollars for the pto the pto got the proceeds from the selling of the bingo cards and the sixth grade celebration got the proceeds from the goody bags and the uh additional donations and the various sixth grade committees who are working on end of year things for the sixth grade um are figuring out how to divvy up that money that's not a pto thing

006that's a parent's you know sixth grade committee kind of thing so they're working on that and those pto funds will go to the spring grants um the next round of spring grants um and it was actually so much fun and we got so much great feedback that we are going to do it again so we are going to have a second round of bingo on friday night april 23rd um the cards that we bought we had to you buy them in big boxes and you know they're not physical cards but big bunches um and you can use them for 30 days so everybody who paid for cards for the last round we'll be able to play again for free and anybody who would like to join in can buy additional cards and we're gonna do

007the goodie bags again so sixth graders will get together and actually put together those goodie bags and they did actually uh drop-ins and pictures and some little art that went in with the goodie bags and they're going to do those again so we'll have another opportunity and that's on april 23rd if any of you want to play let me know we'll send you the link you can get signed up um so that really was a great event we felt really really happy about it um other fun things we have a date now for the spring bike to school day and that will be happening on may 5th we'll do a relatively speaking the same route that we did this fall although we're gonna add an extra loop at the end to give people more of

008a chance to bike together um and of course um you know things may change a little bit with all of this updated guidance um you know i certainly don't think it'll need to be more restrictive than it was this fall but maybe we can make a few changes to to bring people a little bit more together but we'll see depending on what the guidance is both you know the state guidance and of course any sau and coveted committee guidance but um there will be a bike to school day on may 5th uh we'll have another round of spirit wear coming up soon putting that together the spring pto grants will open the application for that will open this week a little bit later this week probably tomorrow actually those grants of course can be submitted

009by any members of the mcs community so not just teachers in administration but also parents or students we do ask if parents and students are doing something that they try to do it in conjunction with a teacher so that they know that it's something that the school or the teachers actually want but they're welcome to submit that um so i will have an update on that as that progresses and related to the grants um pto co-chair stephanie hamilton and i um have worked on an update to the process by which the finance committee reviews and decides on the pto grants so we had originally suggested some pretty significant updates ended up scaling those back and compromising on some of those with some smaller updates that made that were were more comfortable for the current members

010of the finance committee who most of whom have served on that committee for quite a while so in the end we have what i would say is definitely more clarity about both the process and the criteria that we use for those grants um so those updated policies were voted in by the um pto executive board so the two co-chairs the secretary and the treasurer last week and we're gonna test them out give them a run during the spring grant run grant round and we anticipate that those will work well and that is all i have unless anyone has any questions great there's a lot going on thanks very much alexa thanks for keeping up the traditions even if they're online uh it's good to hear that bike day's happening too so thank you for that

011and uh and lots of great fundraising going on too uh any questions for alexa all right well thank you again alexa and i'm sure next up on our agenda uh continuing with the reports is uh principal gang's report all right well i'll start with enrollment so we have um 293 students currently enrolled in person in remote we do have when we come back from ready for vacation i believe six of our remote students will be coming back to in person and now we're sort of on a case-by-case basis because we're reaching capacity in some of our rooms to be able to fit safely um so we've been talking with families as they've been making that decision about whether we can do that or not let's see homeschoolers remain the same we've begun to have enrollment

012for next year we have 24 students who enrolled for the pre-k um so far we have 28 kindergarteners who've enrolled and then there's just a small portion of other families who have either moved in or know they're moving in who have enrolled in other grade levels that's been helpful with planning purposes and then the bulk of my report through our pbis partnership we get access to staff student and family climate surveys so we greg facilitated giving out the survey so that we could just gather some feedback to see how we were doing this year so i've tried to make this as simple as possible excuse me to look at so the student survey is easy it's 11 questions it's only given to students in second through sixth grade um it they're just simple statements like

013i like school i feel like i do well in school the indicators are important to know this four is always so if you're a student and you're answering this question i like school if you're having four than always you've never had a day where you felt like school isn't for me the three is most of the time two is sometimes and one is never so that we thought that was helpful as a staff when we looked at it that to get an always all the time kids have to be in a really great place so students scored highest the indicators my school wants me to do well teachers treat me with respect i feel safe at my school and there's an adult at school who will help me if i need it and then the

014areas where they scored lowest which still were not nowhere near poor scores were students in my class behave so that the teacher can teach i feel like i do well in school and my school wants me to do well so this survey was great for us as a staff to look at and kind of hypothesize around why students are thinking and feeling the way they are and see what we could put in place to make some of those scores bump up a little bit we also felt good about this being in a coveted year where everything is different we were satisfied with with these scores and then we did a school climate survey for families it was broken down into five domains teaching and learning school safety interpersonal relationships institutional environment and parental involvement and

015not surprisingly where we scored the lowest this year was parental involvement um that was understandable since we don't allow anyone in the building this year um where parents scored highest was in school safety so families are feeling like their kids are safe at school which we took as a compliment in a covered year where safety is on the on the top of everyone's list but also all four of the other areas teaching and learning scored well interpersonal relationships and institutional environment and you can look at all the indicators after if you want and then school climate survey for school personnel has the same indicators as for families similar staff connectedness structure for learning school safety physical environment pure adult relations and parental involvement and where we scored the lowest from staff was physical environment and

016staff connectedness which i think staff connectedness has been really hard this year where we're separated and throughout the building and then where we scored ourselves highest was school safety instruction for learning any questions or thoughts about our survey results neil um sean i'm curious if you guys did you look at any of sort of the survey data across all three surveys and categories that would seemingly be similar or overlap like one of the questions that i one of the things that popped up was the student survey question number two or three versus the parent survey number three three number nine students treat each other well uh my school wants me to do well yeah so it's um uh i feel like i do well in school and my school wants me to do well in

017the student survey compared to question number nine in the family survey it says my student feels successful at school and it seems like you know the parents perception of how their kids feel about school may be slightly inflated versus what the kids are actually reporting out yeah we looked the first the pbis committee looked at the survey results and then put together a presentation for the staff where we discussed it but we we really stuck mainly with each of the surveys thinking about different constituents but it would be good for us to look at it in a different way and kind of make connections lisa yeah thanks i'm just thinking about the equity audit from last spring and wondering if there was any identifying information on these surveys where you could disaggregate it a little

018bit and see if like the 504 kids for instance were feeling less successful or more successful than other kids and i don't know if that's possible or if that's helpful but i find sometimes when things are so either positive or negative it helps to look at who's saying it within those populations and i just didn't know if you could or you plan to or if you would find it helpful yeah you can it does it depends on whether people chose to fill that part of the survey out but you can look at demographics you can look at race you can look at iep status you can look by grade level by gender so those are things that we looked at as a as a staff but i could bring back some of that because it

019is interesting to look at a lot of times the those populations are so small that it's hard to really get a lot of good information out of them it's almost more anecdotal but i just was wondering if it could be done and if it would be useful so yeah other questions on the survey for sean sean i've got a quick one then just uh back to the enrollment uh your mention that you've had 24 request enrollment for pre-k um so are you and greg and katie beginning the process then to figure out because we're talking about actual slots correct right so a couple of things with that we one we're looking at space there is a another room that fits the criteria for pre-k that would allow us to have 18 students so we've had

020the fire marshal come in and look at the space and now we're working with the licensing department to see if they will allow us to move from 15 to 18. so we're looking at that and we've used that document that i brought to you um for criteria of of selecting which kids get into our program so at this point anyone who has signed up or who is registered knows if they're in the program already because we gave a deadline or if they're on the wait list and they they also know what the likelihood is of them getting in if they're on the wait list and people people have been fine with that a lot of people have said are you going to have a second program [Music] but because i think they're just used to

021at the other grade levels if we have too many students we have another great another teacher but the that ranking list has worked well uh there are a couple things that we will do a little different next year and we'll get our information out much earlier in the season next year but i suspect we'll probably be full before the school year starts good well thank you for that back any other questions all right well thank you for the report sean you're welcome and let's move down our agenda this evening which brings us to the business requiring discussion and as always we have our facilities update and actually probably just carrying on with the conversation i um jamie are you talking to this licensing regulations we've got here first okay that is not my expertise there

022that would be great and sean know about the needs and what we're going to be accomplishing okay sean were you going to address this um then and yes i can okay i was looking at it to see what i'm addressing um so a couple of the things that we looked at for preschool there are some regulations that we have to have in place one is a fence uh if you noticed the fence that was used for the preschool came down we were going to try to patch it together for another year but when tim went out to do that it was pretty obvious that patching it together was less safe than just taking it down so we took that down um tony and i have been working on a plan for putting up a fence

023that would go around the whole playground by the kindergarten first grade area and then a small inner fence that would be used just for pre-k so that's in the works and i think of all that of all this that that is the only thing we have to address the rest we've addressed already do need to clean up like our outdoor space some of the outdoor play materials that we have are not uh approved for preschool licensing so some of that will just need to go and that piece that's against the bricks the uh stage area is actually against fire code so we're going to have to do something different with that piece as well but mainly we just need to put a fence up that meets these guidelines and tony and i are working on

024that okay good thank you any questions on this before we move into the rest of the facilities up okay not seeing any jamie did you want to lead off with the rest of it sure um we are still on a holding pattern uh at the state of vermont level with our request for expanded grant funds uh to continue the um hvac unit the the roof rooftop units we were hoping it's a competitive um grant process that will be opened up for some of the remaining uh crf funds um that's where we got the other monies uh to do the four units that we replaced and so um we've written another uh grant proposal to do all the rest of them um and that's in a holding pattern the state of vermont has not yet set

025free the funds to the efficiency vermont people so we'll keep it posted if it if they don't release them soon nobody is going to be able to use them this summer just because of the you know the timing of setting all of that up and getting all of the orders in um although we did amazing things in 30 days in december so we'll see what happens um we have a a request for proposals out for actually we have a few of them and one is pending because i need to read through it and that will go out hopefully tomorrow the first one that is out with regards to the norwich school district is an rfp to replace the fire alarm system bring it um to update it uh the one we have is in working

026order but it's um very old it's outdated and so we had been talking about that now for well since i got here probably and we did budget for it this year we held off on that in the fall because we didn't know what was going to go on with covet expenditures and funding but we are actively pursuing proposals now that's a sealed bid process it's on our sau 70 website and has been um advertised in the newspaper on three different or will be on three different occasions um it's already been advertised once i think maybe again today and then it will be done again on friday there'll be walkthroughs next monday with tony at the school location [Music] the other rfp that is already posted one has already been completed for technology and that was

027for heart some hardware purchases uh the one that's posted right now is for services um and that's for uh cabling services um at all three locations uh and that's been advertised as well the phone one doesn't affect you because your phone system has already been updated with a grant so that's good um what else is going on we have been discussing as always our septic system issue we just finished our pumping of the season we start we pumped the tanks from december 1 through march 31st uh the cost was approximately 14 000 um for the four months we opened up the fields uh again uh this week i think what i think uh yesterday i think tony opened up the field or he's gonna open it up today um so we'll see how it goes

028i we don't expect to have any issues uh all of the leech fields and the system work appropriately when the weather is good and the ground is not frozen around us and the frost is starting the frost has come out of the ground in most locations and areas uh that aren't um heavily wooded in some of the heavily wooded sections and locations we still have some frost remaining although the days have been beautiful so hopefully it's coming out soon we've been in contact with our engineer and engineering firm and the hydrological firm who will be hope they're looking to schedule um some uh sampling for in two weeks so i think it's the week of april 20 april 19th right that's i think the monday we come back uh so you may see them out

029and about around dresden we're going to be doing samples at dresden fields possibly at huntley meadows i'm trying to discuss things with the town at this point about ownership of the property down there um also uh we've contacted a couple of private owners to see if any of the ideas we have with regards to how to go about taking care of this issue for the future to see if they might be interested i hesitate to make that public right now because we've not heard back from them um let's see what else is going on in your school over there sean uh the fiber project right carpet in the multi oh yes carpet in the multi i'm sorry right that's right they started stripping it stripping out no they haven't started yet okay it's coming i

030know everybody's very so uh i was ho i think that yes this coming week coming up i think they're gonna try to start getting in there i know that that's on the it's on the we have picked somebody and it's on the horizon there um so a lot of a lot of things going on we're absolutely playing catch up a little bit because we held off on projects um you know last summer we couldn't get contractors in uh you know due to the situation um and so we're trying to catch up with all the projects that we had scheduled but we're moving forward busy place very much thanks for the overview jane does anyone have any questions with regard to any of the ongoing work or planning facilities related okay not seeing any we'll go

031to our other um item we have had on but this is one i do hope we will go remove soon i'm sure robin is too but the kovid 19 committee update thank you i hope that's the case thank you um well this week i've been preparing a letter to send out to families prior to break hoping that people would still continue to follow cdc guidelines and it was easy as of two days ago in vermont because they're still quarantining guidelines but as you all probably know at this point governor scott updated his guidelines yesterday to begin friday and so there's no more quarantine requirement for domestic travel which will go into place so i'm still preparing another letter and just strongly continuing to recommend that we follow more of a modified cdc version guideline because

032we're still concerned that people have not all received their second vaccinations and we're worried about the increasing numbers around our areas so hopefully we'll continue to move forward after break and we'll see a similar trend to what we saw in the past but we are concerned about that with the opening of of travel so that's really been the biggest thing recently okay thank you for the update robin any questions for robin okay thank you again not see any questions we'll move on to our next item of business which is retreat topics and planning and this is obviously something we'll talk about across all of the boards and i think we've got some new information we'd like to share based on our discussion we had at the four chairs meeting earlier this week i'll admit to

033have been the one to propose we push the retreat off to the summertime but jay is so gung-ho he's uh interested in moving that up so i'm actually going to turn it over to jay to talk about a potential plan here and then we can talk about dates and topics sure i'm going to cross that off my superintendent's report the we've been talking about the strategic plan now for two years we we definitely put it to the side and we i'm just very antsy to get going and when robin joined us the idea was that since we had her as a key member of the team to focus on curriculum development which is going to be a large part of our strategic plan um she'd be able to help us with with um facilitation of

034that process as well and of course she came in and became the uh the kobe coordinator instead of the strategic plan helper so so we are eager to be able to make that transition and feel confident that that by may which is typically when we do our board retreat that even if we do an abbreviated or maybe a um a zoom base that'd be nice if we could be in person that was discussed at the four chairs but as long as we could get um a chance for us to sit down as a board talk about who who among the board members are interested in working on various subcommittees and committing to a timeline we need to get this done and it's kind of we're excited because we have a much clearer picture now of

035what needs to be done so i think as far as giving direction to those subcommittees it'll be um an easier process it won't be as much much research and investigation as as it seemed to be back when we started one thing that remains is we still need to do that visions that vision process which we've decided will be a portrait of a graduate or portrait of a student who completes marion cross or rms um so that that still remains to be done and it interestingly given what we've been going through in terms of our uh our mutual study about um issues of equity and in fact all of our diversity equity and inclusion work that's going to change what um what would otherwise have been a very different portrait of graduate i think and help

036inform the work so um we're really looking forward to that and i really the thought of waiting to summer um while i understand and i really appreciate it um to me that puts us even further behind because then we're running up against budget season again and it essentially puts implementing a strategic plan another year beyond that out and i think if we can at least get started in may and get the committees working over the summer at least some of the the priorities that we establish in the early parts of the strategic planning process could actually be considered in the budget process so that's that's kind of the thinking there they're the four chairs are actively thinking about who should head up different committees and so um you know ready to volunteer their peers for

037for various duties i'm kidding um we we are going to be seeking uh help and and it's going to take a commitment and it's going to be great when it's done um i don't know when the last time was that we had a an sau wide plan but we're we're dying for it um our experience through kovid has has really highlighted the need um our our equity work has has pointed directly at things like documenting the curriculum as key needs and sort of essential foundational work for for for any real action with regard to equity and our teachers have noticed and trying to prepare remote lessons and trying to make sure that we're on the same page um that there's a real need for that kind of work so um it's it's really to me

038it's exciting it's not daunting it's it's going but it's going to be roll up your sleeves work and uh it's you know i'm ready robin's ready from the central office and uh we've been talking about it for so long it's time to actually do it great thank you jay i agree because uh actually i can't remember the last time the scu has i don't know if the sau has done uh sou wide plan at least it hasn't been in the last 12 to 13 years so i look forward to starting off this effort as well kelly uh yeah did i mute yeah i unmuted um i know jay at the four chairs we talked a little bit about um investigating what if any resources the vsba might have when i went onto their website they

039have a whole section on um this work and i thought if you and robin were preparing a general scope of things to present to the board at the retreat like you had thought that would be a great place to start i don't even know if we can um ask them for piecemeal bits like we had seen at the presentation they made but it seemed like a wealth of information was there just for boards to get this thing off the ground so that's one uh comment i wanted to make but the other um push i'd like to make that i brought up at the four chairs too is that if we could do it in person we could potentially do it maybe at the um the richmond i don't know how tim would feel about it

040but at the library again i think we'd have more productive involvement from my perspective than we might have it will resume if it's possible so i'm just going to put those two two things out again thanks kelly other questions or comments recommendations uh lisa hi um i love that we're doing this in may i would second if we can at all do it in person that would be great and then um having never been to a board retreat before i just have a question would the strategic plan be the only agenda item or will there be other things that we might try to accomplish i know strategic plan is number one on the list i don't know jay have you thoughts on other things like that i mean we normally plan it out in advance

041and get board member uh contributions to it obviously strategic plan would be one of them i don't j have you heard others no and and i think that's the purpose of the agenda item that we're discussing right now was the notion of uh sort of brainstorming a list of things that you might be interested in talking about and again when we do the board retreat it's it's all the boards um and uh we in the past have uh brought we in fact i think two retreats ago we brought in um our legislative delegations from from both sides of the river my first one before i was even officially employed here we brought in we actually did it at um the herbert center and um did more it was more of a team building exercise and

042then the last one that we actually held we held on a on a really warm day in the spring at um at stores pond and uh and covered a variety of issues we talked about strategic planning but we also talked about things like conflict of interest and some other things that we're pressing to the board so i think strategic planning certainly is a big action item for us but um if there's anything else that that the board believes that sort of a dedicated amount of time would be best used for we should contemplate it talk about whether we can fit it in right and it is a far reaching topic because we've got about four subcommittees we've discussed including in it that would capture i think most things that we would want to discuss but

043lisa did you have anything specific in mind you wanted to propose during this meeting no other than i i just um finished an equity committee meeting right before this and was thinking that if it's not part of the strategic planning process which i know equity will be addressed but um just how to structure how the equity work happens next year might be a good conversation to have um like how the committees could work together if there's a board committee and a school committee and it just it feels like they're if we're all in the same place it would be an excellent opportunity to gain some clarity around that so well and that was another topic of conversation during the four chairs meeting too with regard to the equity committee so i'm not sure you know

044just my opinion i'm not sure if the retreat is the place or the next sau meeting is the place to have that discussion i i would push towards the next sau committee sau meeting as that is the board that will oversee that committee work but again i'm one member so happy to hear others thoughts on that too and i'm not the chair of that committee um neil um yeah and i will um just to piggyback off on some stuff that you were just talking about um we have traditionally in the past used the retreat in part to help form what the board goals are going to be for the following year um to the extent that i think personally that the strategic plan ought to be the the the one or the top priority for

045the next year i think it helps with the with the goal setting and everything like that um the other piece that lisa brought up might be worth entertaining at um at the retreat in the sense of understanding board roles and responsibilities and how that filters then through goal setting and the strategic planning process so that you can have discussions about you know is it okay to have if you know x number of board members on a committee that you consider to be an admin committee and you know what what implications does that have as far as public meeting law and stuff like that goes um a question for those of you that were at the four chairs though is have you had any consideration we always have this weird dynamic that um if we're going

046to try to do sort of strategic level planning we're doing it at the sau understanding that we've actually got two or three other boards technically to deal with as well too and how the relationships are going to be handled amongst the different entities to make sure that we're all sort of at least heading in the right direction but i guess her statute maintaining a little bit of autonomy because i think that there might be some issues that are related to each of the particular districts that might only be for those districts jay well neil and tom i i'm wondering if um similar to the way that we've been doing policy [Music] we we have our sau level committee but then whatever's promulgated in that committee is then then distributed out to the in the individual

047boards for their consideration and approval i'm sort of envisioning the same sort of thing with strategic planning we'll all be involved in in the in the generation of the plan but then maybe it makes sense to then have each individual board either have its own time and space to work on plan parts of the plan that are unique to them but then ultimately to to adopt the plan as individual boards i think that makes sense i think having that discussion obviously to during the retreat will make sense and have some of that filter out of there as well i mean obviously i think we're going to need to do that for especially when you get to things like facilities and then aspects of the curriculum too are certainly going to need individual uh board involvement

048there too um any other questions from the board i do see a hand up or neil i'm sorry were you finished uh yeah no sorry one more thing which just to bring it up because i think it might warrant some discussion in particular based on how things end up in the legislature this year but implementation of the waiting study in vermont could have a quite a sizeable impact not just on norwich but also norwich as it participates in dresden and i think we might ought to be thinking about that understanding you know the possible outcomes there and how we might begin to start to address those things excellent idea and hopefully we'll have more information on that soon other questions uh from the board or administrators at this time um i do see a question

049in the attendees i'm going to take that but jay i'll then come back and maybe we can figure out a way to uh map out um a timeline for figuring out when we can meet um with regard to uh the retreat but let me take this uh question first from uh patrick gordon i'm gonna give you the opportunity to talk and please just uh introduce yourself and uh ask your question or provide your comment all right can you guys hear me we can all right i'm outside um i'm patrick gordon i teach special education next year i'll be teaching second grade i actually did the portrait of a graduate portrait of student work uh two years ago in my previous position and i'm really excited we're gonna do it it's like one of the best

050processes i've ever been through as an educator and thinking about why we do what we do and why you know our why is a community what we value and what we expect of the institution of school and so i'm pretty excited for it because i think it's going to be one of those things that helps drive a lot of our mission and our vision especially as teachers and just getting that kind of stuff in place is is really it's a formidable foe and i admire that we want to run towards it because i really i really love getting that why out of us so i'm excited for it so thank you for bringing that up jay great thanks very much for your time patrick and for your work on the portraits all right um back

051to the board administrators any other uh follow-up on this discussion at this point in time um i think if not jay then our next step is probably to uh solicit any more feedback between now and i guess a few weeks from now to see what we could add to an agenda and uh would it make sense from your point of view to maybe set up a doodle poll or some other way of asking members for their availability and uh i maybe later may when it's actually warm out uh would be nice to do i don't know yeah well now see i was sort of prescient when i when i organized the last one at stores pond because we want to be outside to make sure that we're safe and well ventilated but yeah later may

052could be great and i don't necessarily want to wait to have this conversation with each individual board so maybe it is the sort of thing that we could do as a poll by um if if we're mindful of open meeting law i could at least work on on trying to get a calendar together i'm ahead of the board meetings which i think is fine and then go from there and we'll need to think about time too if you want to make it a half day session all day session weekend uh whatever the will the board is that way will be important as well it doesn't have to be a single day okay i'm just taking a look at sou meetings that are coming up too so we do have a monday may 2nd meeting but

053i guess that might be a little bit late in the process was that in terms of finalizing things for agendas is that what you're thinking yeah i also think that we can we can work together with the four chairs um and the individual chairs can pull their board members to we can we can work on scheduling that way as well and of course we can rely on ryan as well okay sounds good then why don't we leave it with uh board members sending along any thoughts on additional agenda items obviously strategic plan is going to be on there and going to be number one on the list but when we get to the point where we'll need to decide on uh dates uh time frames within the days and so on uh we'll rely on

054the chairs to reach out with more information or working with jay and ryan on that scheduling process sound good did i capture that j or did i misrepresent what you were trying to say no no okay good all right so if there are no more comments on this look for more information coming and please do feel free to reach out with your thoughts and next on our agenda tonight is reviewing the school board calendar for the 2021 and 22 school year uh we have seen this once before it is posted to the public content and uh i don't know are there any updates that you wanted to provide here um i know that were there was some discussion last time in terms of secretary french looking at uh trying to get one day for the

055start but i think you said that uh there hasn't been progress made on that yet and so we've we've got our august 30th start date here as the proposed date um no it's it's interesting this is a conversation that happens in every state i think um and we're no exception and so there's there was some discussion early on that the administration was interested in sort of mandating a post-labor day start to the school year and um actually was being discussed on both sides of the river and we as a southeast vermont superintendent group have been trying to do a better job of coordinating our schedules our calendars and that's a sticking point it's it's a it's a small number of districts that seem open to the possibility and most are hesitant to do so and

056a lot of it has to do with coordinating our schedules with our regional career and technical centers uh that's one one piece and the other is that there's a i've learned just in my short time here in northern new england that um spring and summer are fleeting and it seems that people would rather start a little earlier and get out a little earlier in june than pushing um the end of school deeper into into june and that seems to be something that holds communities back as well so there's there is so far as far as i'm aware there's no um there's no mandate on the way um if that should change i think we're okay i think we can always bring the calendar back for the board to reconsider if something does change at the

057state level or even regionally if if a if a majority of of uh systems around us decide to start after labor day it's something that would be a worthwhile question for the board to consider we had at least one parent that contacted us who was concerned because we've all been so um restricted in our ability to meet um just to gather together to to visit loved ones um the thought was it'd be nice to be a prolonged summer and be able to have that labor day weekend to spend with family and that's a compelling argument um but but so far we've just the logistics of all of that and the fact that our neighbors aren't doing that um sort of argues against against that right now and as you mentioned i think it is a

058particular challenge when we try to align with the hartford career and tech center and the 13 schools that feed into that program that if we were off by as much as a week that could prove for quite a challenging way to catch up or coordinate for the rest of the year too right and our our region as far as the superintendents the southeast region actually has two career tech centers um and they're not in sync so the folks that are further further south um tend to sort of align their calendars and the folks that are further north the line line ours and we haven't found a way to bridge that yet are there any questions on the calendar as you see it in the packet lisa um i am recognizing that i am might be

059getting ready to open up a can of worms and i apologize for not bringing this up the first time the calendar was read but i am wondering and this isn't a problem so much at the lower grades but i have heard repeatedly that for jewish families with children at the high school that having school on the high holy days in september is stressful and i'm just wondering you know i don't remember having a conversation about it last year and i just i don't know what the conversations in the past have been about that but um it is a it is a critique that i've heard repeatedly over the years um and i just am wondering if there's anything we can do to address that and again i recognize it it's not as stressful for families

060who have children in the lower grades because it's easier to miss a day or school and not worry about missing out on important information that's going to come up on an exam but for the high school kids it does appear to be stressful and i'm just wondering again we have i haven't been part of a conversation about this and i'm wondering when that should take place and i recognize probably not now when we're getting ready to vote on it but it just occurred to me so thank you jay um lisa that's a a good point it has been a topic of discussion for the board in the past and i have met with at least one local rabbi and um and we have made it essentially unwritten policy perhaps but policy to make sure that

061we honor the jewish high holidays in terms of avoiding assigning work i was told by the rabbi and by some of the folks that were keenly interested in the topic that it's not so much a prohibition of going to school but it is [Music] the doing work having homework to do during those periods of time are very challenging uh just in the last 48 hours i received a request from someone from our muslim community um who is uh requesting that we make similar accommodations for ramadan and um and we probably should do that as well um what we run into and i've actually been challenged on this by some staff in the past over the christian holidays particularly christmas for right or wrong our federal government recognizes christmas as a federal holiday aside from its

062status as a religious holiday and um and so it's it's this this long-standing tradition that that happens to be the the week that we're off um and in in talking with some of our our jewish leaders that they even discussed the fact that the high holidays are are more important in in their faith than even uh hanukkah and and so yeah there's a we've i think we have more to do a lot more to learn on making sure that we're mindful of all the different religious faiths that we um serve but as far as not having school on those days we've we haven't been told that would be something that they would seek and it would get really challenging for us um because we can't simply honor i i think if we did something like

063that we couldn't just honor one faith or two or even three we'd have to honor all religious faiths and um it would be tough to draw a line like well if you only have like three students who who practice this faith but 13 who practice this faith we're going to have this day off but not that day i think we need to make sure our faculty is aware and i feel like we've done a fairly good job at least with the jewish holidays and um and and maybe it's something for the policy committee to take a look at to think about like what accommodations will make for students who do have practices that uh preclude school work on those those nights or tests and that sort of thing um thank you i i mean i

064appreciate that it's really complicated and um i guess maybe a good place just i mean it might be a retreat topic hi tom um to talk about the calendar and how to recognize religious holidays but i guess i just i think a good place to start would just be an open discussion of the fact that those of us who celebrate christian holidays we don't have to worry about it we don't have to worry about getting christmas off we don't have to worry about easter because it always falls on a sunday um and it just that seems like a good place to start in terms of talking about what other people are expected or not expected and the expectations they can have of the school calendar um that you know as someone who was raised as

065a christian i don't have to worry about like it's pretty much guaranteed that christmas will not be a school day nor will easter so thanks very much thanks lisa and that is a valuable conversation to have and one that we should have and one that i should have thought through because uh in my foggy minded reading of my own agenda here i realize now that we weren't even planning to talk about the school district calendar but rather the school board calendar were voting on the school district calendar tonight because we did see it last time so my apologies to all members administrators and people in the uh audience and that was a valuable discussion and it will help lead into 6g where we will actually vote on this year's calendar that said i'm going to

066stay on uh 5d with the review of the school board talent that was me school board calendar for 2122 which is indeed posted there and which we can also address at this time but thank you jay for the background and lisa for the question and i hope that was somewhat clarifying and helped set some future uh agenda items for us that said you will find the board calendar starting with the meeting this one just so you know has both the sau board meetings as well as the nordic board meetings do any board members or administrators have questions about the school board calendar i have one that i and it's more just if someone could jog my memory and uh it's with regard to the first uh the august meeting of the norwich board scheduled for

067august 19th thursday i think one year we must have moved it to then uh because of summer schedules and other things it just seems a bit awkward uh being where it is i'm wondering if we should consider keeping the august meeting when we normally would meet which is that first wednesday of august um obviously if we run into an issue where we're not going to be able to get quorum i think we could look at rescheduling but i think it may might make more sense to bump that one back to the normal schedule does anyone have any opinion about that or consternation with the possibility of moving it back to that time or does anyone remember if there was reason to actually have it at this time other than to avoid some earlier in the

068summer vacations okay would anyone mind if i proposed moving that to the first wednesday of august which would be let me see and i shouldn't yes jamie yeah it's really early for some of the information that we would be discussing and that happened once before and we had to have two meetings for norwich in august okay what are the other topics then that you uh that budget stuff i mean i'm not even i'm barely out of audit at that we're just starting audit of the we're just wrapping up the fiscal year that i'm closing by the first week of august i mean that's really a quick turnaround and i don't mean to be whiny cry baby but man yeah okay yep we do have draft budget guidelines there yeah uh jay i i wouldn't have

069any problem going to the wednesday of that week um the although we may have another that might be the problem we might have a conflict and the reason for pushing it deeper into august is typically we have uh unfortunately some some last minute hires often and so one of the reasons we try to push them deeper into august was to give us a little more time to figure out exactly what we had for staff needs okay we've always reserved the right to have a special meeting if we needed to but but that seemed to give us a little enough of a cushion to be able to do that i have been convinced i i will not uh i will not challenge the i uh it might make it easier just memory wise but that certainly

070uh makes sense and something i should have remembered so with that any questions on the schedule as it currently stands in your board docs packet all right not seeing any let's move down our agenda and that is the uh to review the agenda topics which uh thankfully uh jamie and jay just pointed out i probably should have taken closer look at that when reviewing the agenda itself so that is also in your agenda or your board docs and if anyone has any thoughts on items that show up there suggested agenda topics anything that needs to be added move to a different month any thoughts on that okay if anything comes up between now and the next meeting please feel free to uh get in touch with me and we can consider that then because both

071uh the board uh calendar and the uh agenda items will be uh voted on at the may meeting all right well this concludes our business requiring discussion sorry to throw a little wrench in it and confusion in the last couple of topics there but let's move on to our business requiring action uh we do have it set up as an approval of the items b through h by consent i uh before we go to that i do want to request moving h out of it because that is a gift and i'd like to be able to address the gift separately um so uh board members are amenable i'd like to just do the consent agenda b through g and um there are some new um newer members on our board but uh we have gone

072through the dfa investments before does anyone have any questions on that before we just didn't um enter it into the consent agenda it is an annual review okay so if there's no um problem with uh switching from b to h by consent to b to g by consent i'd be happy to entertain a motion for that kelly move to approve items b c d e f and ge by consent thank you do i have a second lisa and i will go around the room uh all those in favor neil oh del yes hersey yes lisa christy yes and garrett yes and camden yes and that thank you very much for that uh that brings us to the final item uh requiring action which as i alluded to earlier is the approval of a donation from

073the friends of norwich excuse me friends of hanover newark schools the one-to-one chromebook initiative and you can see more about that at that agenda item 6h is sean are you able to uh speak to this initiative the proposal and the uh the grant by the friends of hanover knowledge again so nikki oni our tech integrationist wrote this grant she had submitted a similar grant at the first round of grants from the friends of hanover norwich and they didn't have quite enough to fund it so this is we're really working hard at mary across school this year to upgrade our technology so that we have more of a one-on-one one-to-one initiative and this will buy chromebook books to help supplement in the second grade so i believe that it's going to buy us nine additional chromebooks

074it says for 11 students in the uh spreadsheet there may be 11 211. that's what i thought you meant thank you for that any questions on this uh a very generous gift and as you can see from the spreadsheet the friends are very generous across all of the district okay not seeing any i'd welcome a motion to accept this kelly um move to approve with gratitude the donation from the friends of hanover norwich schools two thousand nine hundred and sixty four dollars for one to one chromebook initiative thank you do you have a second lisa and all those in favor starting with neil who know yes and kelly hersey yes lisa chris diaz garrett palmies and camden yes thank you all and thank you to the friends of hanover norwich and with that we move

075into our communications and reports for the evening uh first up is the report of the chair and i'll just mention a few things that haven't come up already first for those obviously all of us here know but those attendees and anyone watching later just to know that we did have a special meeting earlier in the month to approve of the contract that was settled with the norwich teachers association which will cover the current year that we're in as well as the next academic year so uh thanks to the um teachers negotiators for that and the full union and uh for my colleagues on the negotiations committee here too uh jamie and neil for coming to a resolution there and to the board for approving of it so i think we uh um it was a

076good ending to a long process and i want to extend thanks to everyone for their work in that effort the only other things i was going to reference it this time and partially because i got my great vsba mailing today nice letter mr president but there was also mention there about the vsba resolutions and those are coming up soon so if folks would read up on that process either on the vsba website or in this month's edition of the school board update we should start considering those in the may meeting because we would have to decide on them by the june meeting to forward along to the vsba resolutions committee for consideration at the november conference which was my other update here which i also noticed it seems that the vspa is uh optimistic about

077holding it in person on november third and fourth and uh i'm not remembering what i read but i assume and or hope it would be at the lake morrie resort again because that's always a very convenient location for us and a nice place to be for the two days of the conference and uh for anyone who hasn't been to the in-person one i strongly recommend it because it's always filled with lots of great information and training and networking opportunities so november 3rd and 4th for that put it on your calendar now and i'm sure there'll be lots more information coming along in the coming months i do not have anything more to add at this time so with that i'm happy to turn it over to jay for the superintendent's report thanks tom uh i

078just wanted to bring the board up to speed on a couple of items uh first off i just wanted to say that uh secretary french at the agency of education has been uh really accessible to superintendents we've been we've had weekly meetings with him and he has been very careful to have sort of frank discussions with the superintendents but then always gives the caveat that unless you see it in writing it doesn't count and so he posts a lot of guidance for us and once we see it in in writing then it becomes uh essentially policy he's also been extremely flexible with us as an interstate school district so most recently he granted us a waiver for the calculation of instructional time typically in vermont we only count days but because new hampshire also allows

079the option of ours he allowed us to defer to new hampshire law with the calculation of our school year and that helps us to stay sort of in sync across both sides of the river and and it was extremely helpful we otherwise would have had a very protracted end to the school year and and the way it stands now we'll be able to have all of our students completing school given hoping that we don't have any more snow days on june 14th um so i'm very appreciative of his flexibility there um there are some things though that are particular to vermont that we we must comply with and one of those is a new requirement that we have called a recovery plan so i serve as the recovery coordinator and we'll be putting together a

080committee um to meet the requirements of this provision uh one of the first things we'll need to do is needs assessment that we'll um we'll have to put together to determine what exactly we need in terms of recovery what's going to be really nice for us is the fact that we've been able to have in-person learning and the fact that we've we've been able to keep our other students who weren't able to participate in in-person learning current through our remote option will mean that we don't have a huge recovery task i don't i can't quantify that yet because we haven't gone through the needs assessment process but my my guess is that we're going to be in in good shape and that our recovery plan won't be as as deep and as um challenging as

081it will be for districts that weren't able to provide in-person instruction for their kids so that's uh that's a real compliment to sean and and the marion cross teachers and support staff um for doing such a wonderful job this year and and uh doing and that's again why this has been such a boon for our kids um all of that said and i'm gonna give a whining warning um but um we couldn't have a better timed break uh coming up for our our april break uh again i i've told the board before at other other junctures in this whole um crazy year that we've had that uh there there are times when the stress that that people and the system are experiencing becomes palpable and this is one of those times uh i i'm keenly

082aware that our staff are again feeling that that sort of overwhelming overwhelmed sense and again it's not just the stress it's it's the fact that they're doing everything they normally would be doing and they're also carrying what we're all carrying um and that's that's just this um whether you call it pandemic fatigue whatever that is i get the sense that people are on their last nerve and having a week off is going to be a great thing for our staff interestingly i mean we're all different right and everybody has a different tolerance for stress some people actually thrive on stress and other people are really damaged by it and um that that goes for students it goes for parents to our teachers our administrators to our support staff and i'm sure even for board members

083this this uh this whole cumulative effect of coping with a pandemic has effects that we don't even know about yet but i can just tell i can feel it and i i honestly can feel it myself this has been a rough couple of weeks and we we need to help we need to come together and this is it's challenging it's challenging for our whole country but we really need to support each other we need to take this week to to regroup to rejuvenate and come back for the the long run to the finish and it is a long run when we get back april 19th we really don't have a big break until well we have a long weekend memorial day and then it's it's to the finish line so it's it's a long stretch

084and it's those long stretches that seem to um build stress so i encourage all of us to think about ways that we can um take care of ourselves and take care of each other uh to to see it through we've done such a great job to this point when when we have when we get to summer and we have a chance to take a deep breath and of course begin the planning for the next school year it'll be a lot different task than the one that we that we went through this past summer it'll be happy compared to if you think back to what we went through even to figure out how we were going to start school and the task force work and all of that that should should be greatly diminished in terms

085of the the chore that we had to start school we need to take time once we get this um to june to celebrate and uh and really just to rejuvenate so um i i again just will express my extreme gratitude i know everybody if i'm feeling the way i'm feeling i i know our teachers and our principals are feeling it twice three times as as much and and it's going to be okay it will ultimately be okay we're all going to be okay we've we've gotten this far we're going to be better than okay our kids have benefited they've been they've um they're so lucky that you did what you did to this point we just need to land it now um so so thanks again and look forward to um everybody having a chance

086to to take a deep breath and relax for a week great thanks very much jay well said and i can't express enough and say it enough but thanks to you as well and everyone in the sau offices but uh all the administrators the teachers the support staff and everyone else it's just amazing that we've gotten to the point that we have so um we are thankful and yes please do rest next week um that jamie uh business administrators report a lot of documents yes there are let me find where i was hold on i'm like multitasking here sorry okay okay yes lots of documents um end of the year projection is the very first one on audited of course it's usually and it will show it includes third quarter information but it's actually cumulative so

087it's not really technically a third quarter report uh it's cumulative from the beginning of the year through uh april 6th and that it's actually would have expenditures through this friday that was done on purpose to encompass the additional costs and encumbrances that are associated with the agreement that was reached with the teachers union okay so when you take a look at it um revenues are going to be off uh this is not a new discussion we had this discussion back in i think december um the state reimbursements that is a projection of how far off uh sometimes they surprise us and we get additional percentages of the special education reimbursements um and we won't know that until last year we found out the end of june um the uh the the 15 000 in other

088local revenue is predominantly earned interest on our accounts as you know interest rates are like non-existent at this point um so uh those are the bulk of the two uh issues in the revenue stream tuition has been posted here we have three tuition students at marion cross school there were a couple changes mid-year on that and the expenditures are i'm showing this by department so it's easier for folks when they look through either the consolidated report that's attached or the expanded report that's the line item report with every single line item showing uh if they want to take a look through that um it will line up better with this uh with this type of projection um the budgeted dollar amount is your first column that's not changed the year-to-date expenditures will line up with

089what you see on the budget report for the general fund is the 01 general fund the encumbrances some of them will line up some of them will not um i have projected what i believe we will spend through the end of the fiscal year so the encumbrances here will be higher than what your report is going to show there are some different areas where we have some larger variances and we have spoken about those prior if i i will for may probably expand this and show you uh the differences by by um it says object here but these are actually departments objects would be the 100 200 which is your salaries and benefits um i'm going to fix that column there and repost that sorry the bulk there is a large savings in salaries and

090benefits approximately and twenty three thousand dollars we knew that at the beginning of the year uh there were some changes in ftes in the manner in which we filled ftes um full-time equivalents sorry um you know for folks in the different realms um we had a lot of turnover this year and the support staff realm with uh special education aids many of those hours and and um different duties were reassigned and we hired uh teachers and or tutors into some of those roles obviously we're kind of running a dual school right with remote education available as well as in person so as folks take a look through the expanded appropriations report you're going to see you know that teachers salaries are over in regular education we have a bus monitor expenditure line that we didn't

091plan on having right in order to open the schools we have overages in the remedial tutor lines um you know we have some like our computer leasing line which is in the regular uh instructional programming is over because we had to make sure we had enough devices you know with covid we couldn't share things as easily as we had in the past um there are some other lines where you'll see some savings and the savings will hold in the technology area we did not fill we left behind some ftes there in the ed assistant salary lines in special education and you'll see a large surplus there but in the same section you're going to see speech teacher overages um as well as service lines that are over for tuition and speech therapy in the special

092education section um we on on some of the other sections we are going to experience savings in the early education um or tripoli what we call triple e lines um a lot of folks didn't send their students into the schools right they kept the students home and they homeschooled in the extended school year section the 1240s we're going to have savings there that are not going to be spent out because the extended year program wasn't held last year in its normal environment um let's see guidance is pretty much right on health is right on staff development that was uh 21 000 will be left behind definitely for the enrichment grants and that was a bargained decision between the administration the school board and the teachers union media and libraries pretty much right on school board

093services is over that's predominantly mostly all legal fees um you know for various differing reasons including negotiations grievances um you know could be a host of things there dealing with covid and what do we do you know a lot of things um school administration is pretty much right on building maintenance is trending over a little bit uh that's predominantly because we decided to pump our tanks and we hadn't um that's that 14 000 and that we hadn't been prepared to do that or hadn't budgeted ahead custodial services lines are down a little bit um you know and that's just some savings we were able to cover a lot of the covered costs for ppe in all of our realms uh with our crf money that i'm going to speak about here shortly grounds maintenance is

094pretty much right on the student transportation line here the to and from that is not going to match your budgeted line items um we had some changes there this year and we fully encumbered the line and we are just waiting on the discount that's going to be coming back to us from that contract special education transportations pretty much right on uh field trips you know we're not planning on taking them right now due to the environment uh with the pandemic site improvements building improvements we're going to spend those lines out i've projected that we'll spend them out on all the projects that we've been sitting sitting on uh debt service is right on and f r food service transfer we're going to experience uh quite a surplus there due in part to the fact that

095most of our fnr students um or a lot of them had been withdrawn for home school as some of them moved and we effective january embarked on the summer food service programming which is a part of the covid relief funds whereby everybody in the school district who would like to participate in breakfast and lunch can do so free of charge and that's being covered by the usda programming um so when we boil all that down well i'm sorry there's an extra page there when we boil all that down we have the potential revenue variance against the expenditure variance and a projected fund balance of 222 okay we'll see how good i am at projecting in july when we wrap up the books i'm going to pause there and ask if there are any questions before

096i brief you on the other funds and i will write up a narrative for the end of the year okay i haven't abandoned the narratives it uh i apologize because i was much better at doing the narratives uh before the world went upside down any questions for jamie at this point neal um jamie just briefly and maybe it's just because you haven't updated it yet the encumbered amount on the school board services is showing a larger number in this first document than it is in the more in the other detailed one correct because i i am encumbering more money than what shows in the report because i know we have legal fees still coming in okay that's the legal fees um that i yeah that i know are coming it's a projection and i might

097have projected a little bit high um but i'd rather go high than go low okay so if if and when you have time to take a look at it will say federal projects o2 fund uh that are all those are all of our grants right now we've been bestowed grant funds in the amount of 399 760 or i should say we have access to uh of that amount we have actually um spent year-to-date 271 444.73 with another encumbrance of 7039.31 that leaves a balance remaining available of twenty 121 thousand two hundred and twenty two hundred and seventy six dollars um we can only spend what we're bestowed it's not a taxable it doesn't trigger any tax uh taxable events um this does include our crf lea grant that was the big one that we got

098for the first part of the year of the hundred and ten thousand one hundred and three dollars uh it does not include or show the sr2 grant as that just barely opened and we haven't filed our application uh we were uh bestowed up to 75 507 dollars and we've met to discuss um what we'll be using some of the things we'll be using that for moving forward into the next fiscal year there is also an sr3 grant which is coming out we know our dollar amount already is 205 173 dollars i think jay alluded to that earlier i was multitasking i'm sorry that one will come with uh definitive requirements for expenditures um that's just barely been released to the aoe for them to go through and and decide um how to administer it it

099has not been opened up yet for application uh so that's your federal projects funds um let's see the other two right now that i'll talk about is the food service funds that's 04 um right now you you would look at this and go oh my god we're upside down we're losing money no actually we're not we have fully encumbered the total cost of the program for the whole fiscal year uh that's why you'll see an encumbrance in the expenditure section um bigger than what we had originally budgeted because we didn't know when we did our budget in september or august actually that we were going to embark on the summer food service program so that's why if you look at the budget balance for expenditures it's going to show that we're sixty thousand dollars over

100in our contracted services programming um it's okay we're going to have the offsetting revenue up here by the end of the fiscal year you'll see we have two revenue streams the first one of 22 970 which says food service revenue was from our sales and then if you look further down the fourth line down says covid aoe january through june that's our summer food service program uh we've been billing between nine and eleven thousand dollars a month for january and february uh so projecting forward 9 000 a month that's approximately 27 000 more and i'm thinking about five grand for june we should end the year approximately in a positive position of about nine thousand dollars which that money can be used according to the summer food service program and the aoe to uh do

101upgrades in our food service program so we'll be chatting about those shortly uh and the final one would be that i would talk to tonight for um excuse me financial reports would be the medicaid fund that's o5 medicaid fund reimbursables have been very slow this year across new hampshire and vermont both states i've been in contact with our medicare processor it's done in-house at the sau office there's been many regulation changes surrounding medicaid reimbursables again we've had students who would normally be enrolled in this program of reimbursement who were pulled out and or moved away from the district um obtaining some medical certifications has been problematic that's one of the changes that they've done during covid times you know people not being in person um so right now we rolled over from last year 57

102676 dollars because you can roll these monies um normally this money is earmarked to offset a section of the um salary and tutoring lines which it's allowed to be used for um we had money come in late last year that's why we're sitting on so much here and then right now we have only been reimbursed one thousand seven hundred and twenty dollars for the 19 uh for the 2021 year but i do know that we are in the process of billing out more but i don't have a projection right now for what that will look like the last item here tonight is hot off the press we just got it this afternoon is the norwich school district audit report from the 1920 fiscal year um and please feel free to look through it i'm not

103going to ask you if you have questions tonight it's a very large document um there are no surprises within it uh we had a we had an opportunity to look at a really early draft um back when we started it in i think it was september um and so the easiest quickest um pages to look at would be the schedules in the very back uh that really tells the tale of what we ended with for the 1920 year it will show you schedule 1 shows you the estimated and actual revenues and it will show you what the variances were the variance variances for our revenues were in were positive last year of 61 000 302 it will then on schedule 2 show you the schedules of expenditures uh this is on pages 53 54 55

10456 and it shows you similar to how we report it will show you the numbers by pretty much by the departments or the functions but they don't use the actual uh coding uh we ended as we thought we would in a positive variance we closed schools down last year uh in march so you know running remotely um while some of the lines were over most of them were under uh so it looks like we ended with a hundred and thirty nine thousand seven hundred and eighty nine dollars we had an schedule three shows you the unassigned fund balance so all totaled the 1920 budget surplus was 201 091 we rolled forward 491 294 in vermont that will show a two-year cumulative number then you'll see the unassigned fund balance that we use to reduce school

105district assessment that's the number we use in our budget as an offset and so that happens every year in vermont you do that on a new hampshire is different they do it real time in vermont you do it on on a two-year lag or a one-year lag so you know the number you you have when you start your budget um then schedule four is the combining balance sheet for the non-major funds you'll see the food service fund here you have a special gifts fund uh that's where some of your pto monies and other different um you know donations and gifts sit then the medicaid fund shows you all of where those ended for last year and then schedule five shows your change in fund balances as combined for the special revenue funds okay so take

106a look at all of that it's it's a large report um and i'm happy to speak to it uh next month i'm sorry it came in so late they were holding it hostage uh waiting for a legal document i've also shared with the school board the audit governance letter please take a look at that once we've had a chance to discuss that which i'll do next month you know we can probably make that uh make that public it's just sometimes you don't share certain sections of it because it is a governance letter that's meant uh for the school board from the auditors there were no significant findings with our audit this year that's it for me well thank you for all your good work on that or at least having all your good work verified

107by that um i do need to sign something at some point correct when is that uh coming in and when would you need me to do that are we talking about the union agreement no isn't it don't i sign off on the part of the audit here too i thought that was a required no you signed the beginning letter so the beginning though okay beginning letter and i get to sign that ending letter okay all right i'm confused again thank you okay are any questions on the audit or anything else jamie has just presented this all right well thank you for the very thorough overview and uh and please do review that and we'll have a chance to reference again at the next meeting final item here in reports is the committee reports um i

108have uh one update on the negotiations committee uh and this is with regard to the support staff so we are headed to mediation with the support and did get a date scheduled with them for april 29th so uh jamie neil and i uh working with our legal support chris leopold will meet in mediation with the support staff on that afternoon of april 29th and hope to come to resolution soon thereafter uh the only other thing i'll report in the committee reports is that i'd like to thank the board members for signing on to committees for the upcoming year and uh i'll just read them off because uh people can shout at me if i've gotten this wrong at this point in time so for the budget committee tom neal and garrett negotiations with the teachers

109and we will have to re-entrench negotiations uh in the um uh september october time frame uh tom and neil negotiations with the sports staff tom neal and lisa enrichment grants lisa and kelly vsba liaison neil pto liaison kelly and though we've turned over much of the policy work to the policy committee at the sau level kelly i've maintained the policy committee here for any time when we may need to review anything that's vermont specific did i get all of that right speak now or forever hold your peace and participate in those committee meetings in the upcoming year all right thank you oh jamie could you share that list with us that would be great because i don't write that fast yes and i've actually got a full spreadsheet that i put together a few years

110ago i'm working on with the rest of the board chairs and once that's all consolidated uh we're already working with ryan to get it on the website too so but i'll pass that along to everybody great thanks you're welcome and with that i do have need for an executive session so if someone would enter us into that the motion is in board docs lisa sorry to switch screens um motion to enter into executive session in accordance with title 1 section 313 for purposes of discussing personnel thank you do i have a second oh sorry jay i was gonna say i won't need any administrative support in executive session so if you folks want to call it a night that's uh that's well deserved okay i should take a second first too uh was that kelly

111yes and uh and let me go around the room here all in favor entering into executive session neil oh yes uh kelly percy yes garrett yes lisa christie yes and camden yes and thank you jay for that comment and we will not have need to really come back into public session here although we've got a few items we will need to obviously adjourn after the non-public jessica thank you very much for the note taking as always always very thorough and appreciate all your time here especially after hours so thanks and everyone's got the non-public link is that correct all right i will see you over there thank you very much everyone foreign okay oh and we're all back great that's fast that was that was good work everyone thank you after 13 months we're good

112all right so as i mentioned there's not much less we just have agenda topics for the next meeting we've obviously already got the outline for us there please send me anything between now and then um to uh to add to the agenda if you don't see it on the uh template and other than that our next meeting regular meeting is wednesday may 5th and i would be happy to entertain a motion to adjourn kelly a move to adjourn at 906 pm thank you second goodbye lisa and uh we'll do the roll call starting with neil all in favor dale yes garrett tom yes kelly percy yes lisa christie s and camden yes thank you all thanks jay and thank you as always josh for sticking around in the background there very much appreciated awesome thank

113you thank you good night everybody thanks everybody take care thanks josh