001there but you're officially back yes i was sworn in today so i am legal as well yay congratulations thank you it was a tough tough race okay okay you're good to go whenever you want to start okay we're going to give it a few more minutes see we have uh four attendees with us this evening um just gonna wait a couple more minutes here to see if we um get mr palm we really need music if i unmute you can hear the saxophone practice going on in the background that would be excellent um not really no it would be a high school student showing their enthusiasm for an instrument that's perfect yep that's one way to put it neil is the beginning saxophone oh yes okay i have you beat neil my son is going
002to start bagpipe lessons he dropped piano for bagpipe so the rule about bagpipe is bagpipe can only be practiced outside yes i was going to suggest that he's already just thrilled that he's going to drive the neighbors crazy so we'll see there go the property values [Laughter] all right i see garrett garrett good evening hey everyone how are you all right thanks okay if everyone if everyone's ready um it is my honor to call the march 3rd 2021 organizational and regular meeting of the norris school board to order and my first order of business is to congratulate mr neil o'dell for his his uh re-election it's nice nice to meet see you still with us neil and i also really want to um congratulate the board uh for and and the administration jamie in particular
003shawn and your staff for an outstanding budget process and in addition to the hard work and the real discipline that everyone showed in crafting the budget communicating about the budget and and showing such transparency was was uh i think key to how well received it was by norwich voters uh real tribute to um your work as a board so uh so thank you very much um our our policies um dictate that our organizational meeting is uh presided over initially by by me by the superintendent and the first order of business that we have to take care of tonight is to um accept nominations for chair and then i will gladly hand over the um conduct of this meeting to that uh that that nominee that successful nominee so at this point uh i will accept
004nominations for chair of the north school board kelly i would like to nominate tom candy for chair of norwich school board wonderful do i have a second second to buy lisa all right uh are there any other nominations for chair seeing none all those in favor of tom candy for chair actually with do a um uh roll call here so um i will go around um starting with kelly kelly yes neil o'donnell oh dale yes lisa christie christians garrett palm i do if tom's willing to do that again and mr cannon uh yes camden yes thank you all for your support tom congratulations and i gladly hand over sharing this meeting to you thank you jay um i'll move right on before making any comments because we do need to uh fill the other seats
005on the board here and the next is for the appointment of a vice chair do we have any nominations for vice chair kelly hersey nominate lisa christie for vice chair okay do we have any other nominations for vice chair okay not seeing any i will take a vote uh and we'll begin with uh kelly hersey lisa christie for vice chair percy yes neil odell yes garrett hi gary yes and lisa well i was going to nominate kelly but um yes and i'm realizing jessica's raising her hand because i probably failed to get a second on this didn't you you actually don't need a second on nominations oh well thank you for that point of order mr adele so okay jessica so i think everyone voted for lisa there too and camden yes too congratulations please
006and finally uh appointment of secretary and i uh will request nominations for secretary neil i'd like to nominate your call for secretary all right and are there any other nominations for secretary okay not seeing any and uh if you understand that we don't need seconds i will go again around the room kelly hersey yes neil bill yes lisa christie yes garrett garrett yes and camden yes congratulations garrett i think this is a repeat role for you there well done all right what is the role of the vice chair and the secretary just so we're clear is it is it more ceremonial or is it um well the vice chair fills in when the chair is out or unable to be at a meeting and then the secretary does have some signing roles of which i'm
007not always clear on what they are but jamie uh has them uh on hand i'm sure and can pipe up but jamie you out there are there specific times you can relate when the secretary needs to sign on documents yeah it's usually it will be one coming up the large bond issue so financial documents the secretary signs on behalf of the corporation um and if we have to apply any seals the company sealed to any documents or contracts the secretary signs on behalf of the corporation so i'll look up the vsa and i'll send it over to you so you have it thanks jamie great thank you okay thank you all thank you for your service and i'll make a brief comment too to echo what jay said earlier to thank everybody for all of
008their work throughout the budget process here all the administrators uh especially jamie and her team's effort in pulling together the budgets uh thanks to neil for the great presentation during the uh town meeting the other day and and finally thanks so much to uh all of the uh citizens in the town of norwich who backed the budget in um in such fashion on tuesday when they went to the booths too so thank you all for your support and looking forward to uh starting this new year and hopefully ending it in a bit of a more personal manner maybe an in-person meeting would be a great way to finish up this year but thanks to everyone there the next item on our agenda is board committees i'm not going to ask to assign all of the
009committees at this point in time but in our board docs under the public content you can see the six committees that are part of the norwich school board here and if all board members would get in touch with me between now and our next meeting to let me know which committees they would like to be assigned to i would appreciate that the committees for the public who aren't in board docs are the budget committee enrichment committee policy committee support staff negotiations teacher negotiations and a vsba liaison that's the vermont school board association liaison so board members please do reach out to me by email and we'll sort out the committee assignments between now and the april meeting finally is the board member conflict of interest document this is attached to your board docs this is
010a procedure we've followed on the board here every year you can read the document in the attachment there as can the public and this is something that we ask board members to sign off on annually normally we would do it at the meeting given that we've got a our virtual approach at this point in time i'll just ask that you either print it out sign it scan it and send it into the sau office would it be all right to sign those to ryan j for filing yeah that's fine and i think an electronic signature would be fine too so if you could do that sometime over the course of the next week or so that would be great does anyone have any questions on the member conflict of interest okay and it is a
011policy too bcb that can be found in our policies with that uh if there are no questions we'll move on to agenda review pretty straightforward agenda tonight but if anyone has anything they'd like to move around please do let me know now all right we'll stick with it as it is uh and next up is public input and this is the time in the meeting when uh we are able to take comment from the public on an item that is not currently on the agenda you have comments but they fit within one of the agenda items i asked the public to refrain from asking them until that point in time but if there are any questions on anything that public does not see on the agenda currently please do raise your zoom hand and i'll
012give it a couple minutes for the opportunity to do so okay not seeing any we'll move right into our reports and the first up is the pto report and i do see alexa online so uh alexa manning our chair of the pto i am going to give you speaking privileges you should be able to mute and uh speak just ask you to introduce yourself again to alexa uh hi tom i am alexa manning and i am the president of the mcs pto um hold on for one minute while i spike can you turn that off sorry just asking for some music to be turned off um see i never know one one month you surprised me and actually brought me into the zoom so now i always like go and check and you know make
013sure my hair doesn't look dumb or something like that it's all good you're welcome in either way so just let me know it doesn't matter but you surprised me that one time so now i always check um uh anyway um i'm alexa manning i'm the president of the mcs pto and i'm also the parent of a sixth grader at the marion cross school um let's see i thought i didn't have much but then when i wrote up notes i had more than i thought i will try to be as brief as i can back on february 12th we had a valentine's day breakfast traditionally the fourth fifth and sixth grade parents produce a valentine's potluck for the staff at mcs which is always very well received and those items go into the teacher's lounge and
014the staff can munch on them all day long and obviously there is nothing about that that was able to happen this year so what we did instead it was not a budgeted item and i cannot spend pto funds that are not budgeted without convening the entire finance committee so what we did is we asked the fourth fifth and sixth grade uh parents to consider if they wanted to donating what they might have spent on a potluck um and we organized with dan and wits to offer all the staff not just teachers but every staff member at mcs the opportunity to order a breakfast sandwich and coffee for on friday february 12th and pick it up on their way to work and um as far as i can tell that was very well received it went
015off well um without any hitches or at least none that i was aware of and we got some nice feedback from staff about enjoying that as a placeholder for the usual potluck um so we were glad we had a chance to do that and we actually received more in donations than we needed so we now have about 200 which we're going to be putting towards another teacher appreciation event of some sort either later this winter or um in the spring so that was nice and i was glad we were able to at least do something um in terms of upcoming events march 19th we will be doing bingo night and it will be online this year and i'm personally kind of excited about this because it was the very first pto event last year that
016was cancelled due to kovic so um i'm kind of excited that we're going to be able to do it this year the details are still to be determined but it's definitely going to be fun there's a lot of ptos around the country that have done online bingo nights and there's um uh companies that do that and all that kind of stuff so we're kind of psyched about it rebecca reid nicely volunteered to chair it and then she got crashed into butter out with bingo knight um because she's pretty injured she's okay but she's pretty injured and just can't type and do all those useful things but anyway that's on the 19th um oh and as part of bingo night we're going to produce goodie bags that parents can buy and we're going to do those
017as a sixth grade fundraiser the sixth graders normally run a bunch of bake sales during the year to raise the funds they need for various things and of course they cannot run bake sales this year so we've been trying to brainstorm some things that they can do to do some fundraising for their end of year activities so we're going to get them involved in selling goodie bags for bingo night which brings us to um just yesterday after about a month or so of thinking and planning and meeting with the co-chair and with the sixth grade room reps and with principal gagna we sent out an email to all the sixth grade families to kind of kick start the process about the year-end events for the sixth graders um including the sixth grade celebration and all
018the various other events that come along with the end of year um certainly as we know it's been a heck of a year um but we also do feel really strongly that whereas last year um the pandemic was still a somewhat new thing by the time graduation happened this year we've had more than a year and so we feel it's important that um we don't kind of forget about graduation and the sixth grade culminating activities and instead we try to really come up with ways to make this an important um and meaningful event for the sixth graders of course i have a personal interest because i have exactly one child and she is a sixth grader so i have personal interest in that um you know they've missed a lot and they're gonna miss more
019they're not gonna get a three-day overnight trip and they're not going to get a sixth grade dance and they're not going to get a potluck dinner and they're not going to get um all of those things so um hopefully the pto can help create a meaningful and fun experience you know the end of year celebration is not a pto event it's kind of a joint um event with mcs and the sixth grade parents but the pto this year um myself and stephanie hamilton the co-chair are going to kind of project manage things uh just to kind of keep things on track and make sure that we don't lose sight of making sure that some great things happen for the kids we did bring up some ideas of what might be able to happen for a
020sixth grade celebration outdoor ideas with social distancing on the green or with using the posts that we have been using um for pickup all year long as a way of distancing and stuff like that um at the moment principal ghania was kind enough to bring those ideas to the sau 70 cova committee and at the moment the feedback has been that unfortunately we can't plan anything that would involve families or parents at all but that you know that is we'll we'll see how things evolve between now and june um you know there's a lot of things happening nationally locally all of these kinds of things so we'll see what happens between now and then um you know and possibly we might be able to do something outside we'll see but as of now we can't
021do that um we're working on uh yearbooks normally those are kind of like a small soft cover thing that gets given out for free to each of the sixth graders we're trying to up the ante on that a little a little bit this year because that is something that we can do um we've submitted a grant request to the lions club um who and we should know within three or four weeks about that to get some additional funding so that we can do kind of a hardcover larger version of the yearbook and maybe make things a little bit more special for the sixth graders um we'll also be doing the usual slideshow um and um oh and i am working with uh school counselor katie cormier to work on getting um some kind of maybe
022sixth grade hoodies graduation hoodies or something for the sixth graders and also in conjunction with that working on getting a spirit wear a t-shirt for all of the kids in the school we did that earlier this year for all of the staff in the school and um katie had brought up that it would be nice to do that for all the kids in the school again i don't have the authority to spend pto funds on that since it's not budgeted so i think katie in talking with principal ghania i believe although i was not part of that conversation came up with the idea of um putting together a grant um request to the friends of hanover norwich schools and that was sent off yesterday and katie and i will be on a zoom meeting tomorrow
023pitching that grant request to the friends to hopefully get funding for getting spirit wear for all of the kids and then a special kind of hoodie for the sixth graders um and let's see oh and another item that was a victim of covet last year of course was the big hoot variety show talent show um we put out a request earlier this week hoping that we could get some parents who might be interested in working on putting together an online version of the big hoot again there's a lot of ptos around the country who have done those kinds of things this year i haven't yet had anybody flood my email box with interest in doing that but i remain hopeful because i think it could be really fun um and again there are some schools
024have already done it so we have some ideas of how we could do it and i think it would be really great for the kids to be able to show off their online music lessons and magic tricks they've been working on at home and all the various things that they've been doing in the year that they've kind of been stuck at home um and then the only thing i'll leave you with is that we have some open positions for next year um and not knowing who exactly is on this meeting i will mention them because you never know who you can get uh we need a treasurer for next year megan has asked to hopefully not be treasurer next year so we are looking for a treasurer they don't need to have accounting or bookkeeping
025skills they should be good with a spreadsheet um it's not very time consuming and we're looking for a treasurer and we are also looking for a co-chair vice president for the pto um that is mostly a watch and learn position for that year but then the expectation is you take over the following year so the following year it's a pretty big time commitment but the first year it is not so much um and sorry i realized that was a bit long um and i am done all right well thank you very much there's obviously a lot going on so thanks for all you're doing as a pto and for all you're doing to support the teachers and the students and to recognize all the achievements despite the challenges of the of the current situation so
026we very much appreciate all you're doing you are very welcome tom thanks thanks all right with that we will move on with our reports and turn it over to principal ghania for the principal's report thanks so i have two things for us tonight i have a regular report and then i brought back the preschool enrollment priority list and i think i'd like to start with the preschool piece first so we looked at this chesley morrison greg and i took a look at this list we took some feedback from our the last school board meeting and made some adjustments one adjustment being that we put in here that by march 15th would notify families if to let them know if they're going to be on the list or not um that seemed like a reasonable amount
027of time we'll try it this year and then if we get feedback that it should be earlier the next year will be easier to bump that up and we added to the um enrollment category so we have seven seven criteria that we'll follow when we look through kids who have registered to give priority to to those so we'll give priority first to students who are already enrolled so if they're three-year-olds and they're coming back it makes a lot of sense for them to stay in our program and have that consistency students with diagnosed developmental delays so we want to make sure that our preschool serves the kids who would benefit the most and that's a category that fits that category we we talked about free and reduced lunch we're figuring out how we can accurately
028calculate that for preschoolers it's easier to figure out free and reduced lunch for kids who are already enrolled but greg is working on that piece i thought that's an important criteria and then with siblings of marion cross school students and children of bearing cross school staff seem to make sense to come next families who prefer full-time rather than part-time and then we added in hardship families who need all-day pre-k so if you if you come to us and say you know this is this is really a gonna be a hardship to do part-time a full-day program is really what we need and can give some evidence than we would prioritize and then we said residents of norwich should be less because with our universal pre-k we can accept students who are outside norwich but we
029would give preference to those who are within the town of norwich so i'm wondering your thoughts we would kind of like a um a green light so that we can get going and let families know we have 16 children signed up already um which is really great any thoughts so sean you have 16 for 14 positions is that 16 for we can we can accept 15. we're going to keep one um open but we'll see what what kids have signed up what they need and you're going to establish this one through seven for this current year yeah all right uh does anyone have any thoughts questions recommendations thanks for that update too on the i i actually hadn't thought about having residents outside or non-norwich residents participating in the program i'm assuming that i shouldn't
030assume but do we have a tuition rate that is different than what it normally would be for the preak at the pre-k level um i think because it's a public it would be part of our public school program that that first portion that the state pays would be for anyone and then the rest would have to be at whatever the tuition rate was that that would get calculated any question i i personally don't see any issues with the current construct i don't know about other board members if there are any issues is this different than the criteria that we've used in the past sean uh we haven't had any in the past this is this i thought we'd i i thought that we did at one point establish some criteria maybe okay my bad maybe
031we did but haven't had to use it because this was a this year was unusual i don't know are of the existing ones that are already applied are they mostly all full day or is it a mix of full in half we're not sure because people don't have to indicate that so our next step tomorrow greg's going to reach out to those families and just kind of go through this criteria with them and ask where they're at so that we have a feel for people who have already enrolled and and what their needs are okay thank you lisa yeah sorry my question was sort of about um what neil just asked like are any of these half day and could share a space like i really would hate to have just one person not be
032served so that was it and then um my other question is the hardship families who need all day who who is that on for making that decision is that you and greg is there a committee like i i just kind of want to protect whoever the decision makers are because that one of all of those feels the most subjective so it would be greg and i the two of us would sit down and look at that with a family all right so if if you think it works we'll go with it garrett did you have a question i tell you raise your hand briefly yeah i don't i mean please don't take this the wrong way but um yeah i just so we haven't had any criteria before so all of a sudden now we
033may need criteria because we're in a few we have more kids maybe i just you know what do and again again don't take this the wrong way because i'm all for you know making sure that there's spots for families that are in need or special you know special needs you know kids with with needs greater than others but how how does it impact the kindergarten because isn't it going to self-select where you know what happens if you end up with 10 it was half the kindergarten that has you know needs ieps and assistance they're gonna have to bring in a bunch of additional resources in the classroom right i i just don't know it's just i mean it's a public education so how how do you do this anyway but random like out of a
034hat well that's it and again don't don't please don't take this the wrong way because it's like i understand the needs and stuff i guess i'm just trying to make sure that we don't get ourselves into a pickle here with either like i said because then all of a sudden if you have placed it either and again maybe you end up with five or six kids in the class that have real you know they need assistance and stuff well then how does that impact the other 10 kids that are there when normally that wouldn't happen because you'd have a class you you have a full class right whereas this is only 15. and maybe there's a maybe there's an answer it just seems like we've never had to have criteria before as i understand it
035and this was something having sat in one of the school board meetings a couple years ago when the whole kindergarten thing came up i'm not really sure if it was fully baked because we were not offering a hundred percent kindergarten it was kind of this a little it was like a it was a mini kindergarten right just to test it out and of course here we are now well i think it's you bring up a really great point so we right now do provide services for students who have disabilities that are outside of our preschool program so any student within the boundaries of norwich we have a special educator that works with um the preschools in the area so that's already happening what this will do is bring those students who elect to in the
036building so that we don't have to send our speech language pathologist out to an outside site so it could actually be a benefit to have students right here on site we can use our resources a little better and and i think we play with this and we see how it works out this year and we might need to make adjustments for coming years let this at least give us a star okay jamie did you want to add on to them yeah and just and i'm sure garrett realizes this um the expansion was for pre-k not kindergarten i'm sorry when i was saying kindergarten i meant everything i meant to say there was pre-k and i knew and i knew that i just don't know if everybody listening would know that so yeah clarify no problem
037thank you free kit thanks john that's a great answer um i think that that that helps okay thanks gary any other questions all right john it sounds like uh it's a good starting point there so thanks for uh putting it together and and presenting it okay and i'll go on to the my other report it's it's not that long um i wanted to share an enrollment update so this month seems to be a popular month to come back to mcs our preschool program actually will be at capacity after next monday we've had three two enroll this week two starting next three starting next week so we will be at 15 students uh which is great we have had we're up to 286 in in-person students which is up a little bit we have a couple
038registered for april and a couple other in the works that we're waiting for some paperwork some of our remote learners have come back so our in-person classes are a little bit bigger right now we have 28 total in kindergarten two remote 26 in person 38 total first grade 33 in person five remote 42 total and second grade 34 in person eight remote 36 in third grade 32 and person four remote 48 in fourth grade 45 in person three remote 43 and 5th grade 39 in person 4 remote and we have we have 40 6th graders two of which are rms students that have been with us all year 37 um in person and three remote just have to update that a little bit and our home school which have stayed exactly the same throughout the
039school year so it seems like families who chose to do homeschooling are just going to stick with that for the year but i have had some that have been contacting saying make sure we're on the list for next year we enjoyed homeschooling this year but we're happy to have our children come back to school so that's that's good news for us um some celebrations the fourth grade decided that they weren't going to let the counting on grace play go this year so they did some major adaptations and um still put on the counting on grace performance ca tv was nice enough to come and video the whole piece for us and share with families and i put a link in here so if you want to you know later after this very brief meeting tonight
040pop some popcorn and watch counting on grace by the fourth graders it's there for your enjoyment parent-teacher conferences are scheduled for this friday however we've had some have begun and we'll go into next week teachers are very accommodating about doing parent-teacher conferences in the evenings and early morning to accommodate families they're all going to be held via zoom um which is great just a little addition on that we moved to report cards being on power school so we used to have different platforms and teachers would do google docs and word documents and all sorts of things and this year shannon howe worked with us and we put all of our report cards on powerschool made them electronic so on the morning of conferences report cards will go live so many parents will be able to
041go on and access them and will continue to be able to access them for the rest of their time at sau 70 which is a great improvement i wanted to make notice that patrick gordon who's our new special educator is leading the charge with an mts s multi-tiered systems of support analysis so he has a keen interest in multi-tiered systems of support for children and he's put together a group of mcs staff contacted the agency of education and has has been working with us to do a needs assessment so we met for the first time last week we'll meet again in two weeks and we'll work with the staff to look at what what do we have in place now around multi-tiered systems of supports and what could we what can our school benefit from
042so i just wanted to give a shout out to patrick who's organizing that and taking the lead i also wanted to give a little shout out to allison linton we have decided at mcs to expand on the equity work that we've been doing by looking at our supervision and evaluation rubrics so this year we've been using the danielson charlotte danielson rubrics with staff members for supervision and evaluation and they just came out with a component where you can look at the supervision and evaluation model and tie it into equity so looking at how does the how does your instruction impact all students in your school students with disabilities students of different races and and just be more mindful about planning and preparation and execution of lessons so we're going to begin by doing some work
043with the vermont nea which does a great training around this model so we'll start in april on the in-service day do some work and then we're going to follow up a couple more times during the year and then we'll plan for next year to make this part of our focus i'm super excited about it because i think the key to great instruction is to know what great instruction looks like and to really dig into um what does it look like to plan a lesson that reaches all kids and that'll be great for us i wanted to notice that we had a spirit week just before vacation was a lot of fun the pbis committee organized it we had superhero day hat day a day where we all dressed in our mcs gear door decorating contest
044and it was just a good way to spread some cheer before we went off on vacation and i just wanted to give a thank you on behalf of the mcs staff to the school board for helping build support and promote the mcs budget nothing says thank you for your hard work more than a past school budget that supports all of our students so thank you for that and if anyone has questions this is a great time thank you sean for the report do any members have questions neil yep and you guys might be doing this already but sean to the point of the um uh nea work on equity training um as it relates to um evaluation if you wouldn't mind or if you haven't already sharing that with jay while we've got a parallel
045effort going on and i know that there's no hard connection between norwich and dresden it would be good if we could make sure that we share whatever we're learning there with the work that's going on with the evaluation committee interested yeah i attended one of the um evaluation committee meetings with dresden just to stay in the loop but we'll keep jay updated and robin as well thank you sean any other questions for sean this time okay not seeing any thank you very much sean for the report and uh and to you and the faculty and staff at marion cross too okay moving on we are now in our business requiring discussion and our monthly facilities update um i think we could focus mainly on septic jamie do you do are there other facilities things you
046wanted to cover this evening i can do a little bit of background on septic based upon some recent information um just to point out that there are additional monies i think it was 10 million i think it was 10 million dollars um that have been redirected over to the energies committees at the state level and so we are going back out after another grant to expand updating on our hvac systems at marion cross school it's an aggressive dollar amount that we're going after so hopefully i'll have good news in a month's time or at least some news is better than no news at all uh so we've been working on that tony's been over meeting with um eei on that project um i think they're probably still chasing a few ghosts in the new um
047controls that were put in at the different uh room levels sometimes that happens when you put new controls in that hook up to existing hardware in hvac systems so they've been on site over there i think that the fiber project has been rolling right along i don't know if they've made that project live yet sean have they made the fiber project live yet i don't think so i don't think they're at that point yet yeah because the weather kind of turned cold uh we're still monitoring the green um we are at the ready should anything change out there in the couple of spots that we've been watching over and sean takes his daily walk out there to check it out and we've got our kits ready to go we'll take samples if anything else occurs
048what else is going on in maintenance world a lot we're ready for spring we're definitely ready for spring and i think you'll speak to where we're at with the septic process and it's been quite busy since we went to the town of hartford and we're hoping after we go out to bid you know for two different pieces right we'll be going out to bid for our technology project but we'll also be going out to bid kind of for our uh financial portion of that project so we'll be putting out a bid spec to the different banks and taking a look at the bond banks to see um if they make sense so it will be a busy another month or so it will uh thank you for that and yeah i will provide a little
049bit of an update i was actually scanning through here because it has been an interesting last month and i realized that the meeting with the hartford select board was actually after our last board meeting even though we've seen each other quite a bit since that time and i did provide an update to the board so i did participate in the hartford select boards meeting of february 9th and uh because uh their interim town manager and the director of public works was bringing a recommendation to their select board to end uh conversations with us about the possible connection um to the hartford wastewater system the one of our three options that we've had on our list of considerations for resolving the issues it was a bit of a surprise that that was being recommended at that
050point in time because we were kind of waiting for them to finish up a study that the state was requiring and was going to give them some more insight into what options might be open to them so my purpose in attending the meeting was just to ask them to keep open the lines of communication which uh they did uh decide to do so uh we are now at the stage where um i think we need to get our small group jamie tony and i to uh connect with the new town manager because after that last meeting it was the last meeting of the interim town manager and their new town manager is in position so we would like to meet her i do need to reach out i was waiting until after the uh craziness
051of uh town meeting day season so i think hopefully now is a better time to to make that connection and and talk about the process to uh to this point in time they did um the select board that is in hartford uh make it clear that they were interested in hearing of the requests coming from the town and with that i left it at the need to connect with the town of norwich to figure out how to best go about that as it's still a bit confusing to me since the connection we're asking for is the marion cross school as we all know and the three existing businesses on route 5. the reason i say it's a bit confusing as to how it would play out is because if that connection were granted the funds
052would still come through the school district so it would be a warrant article on the school district's budget request for hopefully next year um what we would need to do with the town in my understanding was to request rights of way and and participation in a potential grant request process if we were to engage in it with the three businesses along that route apparently when uh we had uh suggested uh that we would make that next step to talk with the town because we do want to keep the lines of communication open the uh planning director uh took that uh under the understanding that we would be going to them to ask for uh the possibility to work with them and moving ahead and did some analysis that's uh going to be presented to the
053planning commission tomorrow night there's a packet that's posted to the planning commission's website now through the town of norwich's page in which he's gone through and reviewed some of what we've been asking for in terms of our requests for hartford and has made a recommendation of his own unfortunately we were not part of that process so i'm going to meet with the planning commission tomorrow night because the recommendation that he was making was that uh we weren't ready to uh reach out to hartford either i i'm not sure what that's based on so i need to dig into it a little bit more and have a discussion uh with them tomorrow evening so i will be participating in the planning commission's meeting tomorrow evening and again as we all know this is just one of
054a few different options we're looking into and now with town meeting day behind us jamie toney and i will turn to some of the other things that we're trying to consider which is looking at other potential places for a septic system hookup and and other properties that might be amenable to that including the dresden fields we also want to look into reaching back out to some of these alternative systems like the eco machines that we've presented on previously so a couple of things on our to-do list i will provide an update after our meeting with the planning commission tomorrow night and try to get some more clarity on on the process that uh came about to uh provide that recommendation and get a better understanding of why that was made and and try and keep
055those lines of communication open as well um it will probably result in a follow-up meeting with the norwich select board too so um a bit of a detailed update there apologies for the length of time but i'll have more information after meeting tomorrow night and then uh i need to finalize the time but jamie tony and i are going to connect on friday about our next steps in the process too any questions on anything i just uh briefed on or anything that jamie addressed with other facilities issues as well okay not seeing any thank you jamie for the early portion of the report and like i said uh if you'd like to participate or attend the meeting tomorrow at the planning commission that begins at uh six i'm not able to join until after seven
056o'clock so i'll be talking then if you'd like you can go to the planning commission's site and see the packet there now which has some of what i just spoke to and otherwise i'll provide a report out from that meeting and from the discussion jamie tony and i have on friday all right next on our list item 6b is a school calendar for 2020 2021 which i have referenced for this year uh jay is just going to check to see if you had any update from the states of vermont or new hampshire on our last day and then you've obviously got attached to your uh the notional proposed calendar for next year school year 20 21-22 right so the uh this is very timely i i had at our last meeting indicated that i had
057contacted the aoe and the secretary seeking credit for days that our students attended prior to the september 8th universal start across the state of vermont and in that i also asked them for permission to to follow new hampshire instructional hour guidelines they have the option in new hampshire of using either days or hours in the calculation of instructional time i just got permission today and spoke with both sean and shannon howe our data specialist about re recalculating our the remaining school calendar that we have given the days that we've had for things like um installation of our hvac system the two snow days that we had the days in november so i'm i'm not ready to give a hard end date until we've had a chance to double check the the calculation that shannon's doing
058but i can tease you and say that it will be it'll be well before the the june 23rd date that had been thrown out earlier we will know i'm hoping to be able to get a communication out to the board and our families by late in the day friday or early monday but i did share that permission from secretary french with sean and shannon so we're ready to go um the the time that new hampshire calculates they they use either 180 day 180 days of instruction or 945 hours at the elementary level so the 945 hours uh which normally wouldn't be allowed as a calculation basis in vermont um we can now use and that's what gives us the leeway to accommodate some of those other days that we had so that's my update on
059the current calendar um and i i also want to vet that i want to make sure i have a conversation with the um the norwich education association um and uh and and have a chance to at least brief you folks by email prior to um making that public so um that's that's all i have on the calendar great for uh the current year did you want to talk to next years it does it looks like it's pretty standard uh in terms of uh our start dates and vacations is there anything that's uh changed that i'm not seeing in there that we should talk to no but i i will say there are lots of discussions happening right now across the state of vermont uh i know that the secretary's interested in in looking at a
060universal uh post-labor day start which which would change things for us um we we know just from our experience since last spring that the calendars are unfortunately subject to change uh with little notice uh given the the situation where my hope is that um you know our vaccination protocols uh are able to be met and that we're able to have a as close to a normal school year next year and that the calendar is is likewise um a little firmer so people can make appropriate plans and then we know that we're going to get our days in in the allotted time so uh one one thing i will add to my previous discussion about the current calendar is all of what i said is predicated on the idea that we don't have more snow days
061if if we do get some storms that require us to have snow days of course those will need to be made up as well so so just uh yeah everybody needs to make sure they get their votes into jamie about snow days so well she's already given a thumbs down so i guess they're not gonna be any anymore this year um jay i see a couple hands but before i go to them just one thing you said with regard to the potential post labor day start is that something we'd be looking for as soon as next year and is that something i don't even know is that something that would have to be approved by the legislature is that just something the aoe can hand down yeah i'm not it's as far as i know
062right now it's it's it's a discussion i haven't seen anything firm about it i know it's something that's being talked about among our southeast regional superintendent group okay and then in that regard would we feel the need do you think to adjust any of the uh dresden side of the schedule or would we just yeah we're already off at the beginning of the year just because of the there are differing requirements in vermont new hampshire for instructional days and staff days there's also a big difference in the number of professional development days on both sides of the river so we're already not completely aligned what tends to rule the calendar development process is our affiliation with the hartford area career and technical center and right now in the southeast region there are ongoing discussions among
063the superintendents about trying to better coordinate what the folks in in the southeast corner of the state who are in our region due relative to us we have some districts for example that are off by one week on a winter break and likewise on april break and um and again our for those of us in the upper valley it's it's largely uh dependent on the hartford schedule so if for some reason they decide to align those there could be another change and if those if those things do happen of course we'll come back to the board with a revision but this is our best guess at this point okay well of course hartford would be affected by a september post labor day start date too so um i saw sean's hand up first sorry neil
064i just wanted to share one exciting thing in this in next year's calendar um greg and i have been doing a lot with data with the staff and collecting our student assessments and but not really having a whole lot of time to do a lot with it so we built in a day in september on the 24th that'll be a day to day and one on the 28th of january where we can take all our assessment data put it together and work with the staff on analyzing it and then doing something with it so that's just kind of exciting that we repurposed two of our in-service days to be able to look at our school data thanks for that update neil just a second because i don't know if it was maybe a typo in
065the calendar the header um says the first day of school is the 30th but it's showing the 24th and the 25th of august i think they're marked like they would be like a regular instruction day and so i wasn't sure if that was a mistake or not sorry i'm pulling it up as we speak looks like you're correct neil that the 24th and 25th should have underlines underneath them okay yeah because they're followed by the in-service days yeah so um we'll note that if if uh we could just email ryan let her know so she can make that adjustment on the on the master i'll send it to her now thanks sean appreciate it thanks dion thank you any other questions on uh current or next year's calendar okay not seeing any thank you jay
066let's move on to um equity update and uh jay were you gonna lead that i'll start it off i would also um invite both uh lisa and sean to chime in as they see fit um we have made a slight adjustment to what we're doing in terms of our overall professional development associated with diversity equity and inclusion um i did a survey of our staff as did our our content providers groundswell change their theirs was more about the technical aspects of the programming and it came out quite supportive of the of the work that's been done to date and i did a survey in response to some of the anecdotal uh exchanges that um indicated that there's a growing sense of stress among the staff not because of the nature of the training but because
067of the the fact that everyone is feeling pretty pretty spent with all the adjustment that they've had to do to cope with the pandemic and that the two sessions a month of additional district-wide and school-based professional development were precluding other meetings on more mundane topics and things that were germane to classroom and school-wide instruction so um after conferring with the with the equity committee with the leadership team uh we decided that what we're going to do is move to once a month district-wide diversity equity inclusion training with groundswell change and then each school will be deciding how to use this what was the second uh the second session and so um i'm pleased you heard earlier uh that shawn mentioned that they'll be using that second wednesday opportunity to ex essentially extend the um the
068dei work in sort of a pragmatic way by sort of incorporating the equity work with the work on teacher evaluation this is sort of the direction that we're headed in terms of our overall equity work um sau wide and that our next steps really are to take a look at our our overall curriculum and instruction uh through an equity lens and so um marion cross is in in essence leading the way by beginning that work now and teeing it up for us for next year so um my thanks to sean to alison litton it's my understanding that we've got a great presenter lined up and um and uh there's also a tie-in here as neil alluded to earlier the hea is working with the dresden board committee and the administrators uh on revamping the evaluation
069supervision model on the other side of the river and it's they're basing it in in the same uh the same rubric the same construct for teacher evaluation supervision that that uh sean and his staff are using the charlotte danielson model it's again it's it's an extremely widely used um conceptualization of uh teacher evaluation and supervision as as a way of enhancing practice and and sort of taking a continuous improvement approach um which which i find um really really uh ideal for our our setting and uh again it'll be really nice to have sort of a preview of that sort of work at marion cross that we can use as a reference as we do the same sort of work with uh hanover and dresden and again lisa and sean if you have anything to add
070on the whole equity work i see lisa's ready to go with her hand up um i'm i i if shawn wants to comment a little more about the nea stuff first that's fine because i was gonna broaden it up to the parent component of what's going on um so however you want to do it sean i think jay said it well i have nothing more to add okay um i thought he did too but you never know i just wanted to add to that that um one of the goals from the equity committee for this year's professional development was to sort of allow the teachers and the staff an opportunity to have discussions about terms and terminology and just get a basic kind of everyone on the same page and grounded in discussions about dei
071and how it affects their work um and so one of the things that we also want to do is to make sure that the parents of the community know what is being talked about and what's happening in the schools as well um so one thing that has happened over the course of this year as as word has spread about the dei work in the schools more community members are wanting to get involved so the equity committee has expanded um we have some various subcommittees that are working on things one subcommittee is working on is looking at policies one subcommittee is working on the teacher and professional development aspect of it and then there's another subcommittee that is parents guardian and community and that subcommittee now that we have a little extra help is going to
072be offering some parent workshops um we are speaking tomorrow with groundswell change because to us it made the most sense to have groundswell sort of do parent training that mirrors what they've been doing with the teachers and the staff so that we as a community are all on the same page and so what we're hoping is in april and may um the current proposal is two or three evening workshops via zoom we'll all be in these lovely boxes um but that's sort of the way that things will be happening during this year of covid where community members and parents and guardians will have an opportunity to listen to the work that's been happening in the school ask your own questions do a little bit of your own learning and hopefully allow our discussions to be
073richer as we look at the curriculum and the strategic planning going forward so that's the biggest thing that probably people in this community might be interested in and be looking to your ptos we've been talking to them about how to advertise this and how to make sure that parents and guardians feel included and there should be i should have dates i hope i'm knocking wood um but you just share for these trainings by the next meeting in april so i'll let everybody know but look to um principal reports and pto reports because we're going to try to get the information out in as many ways as possible that's great thank you very much for the update and thank you for all the work that you and the committee are doing as well as the all
074the faculty and staff that are taking the training dudes does anyone have any questions uh at this point in time here just a quick question so obviously yeah this is super important for our community but i guess i've been kind of hearing around just you know i mean it's it's obviously a huge undertaking um and you know as i think even it sounds like it kind of you know things have been spread out a little bit just to take some of the pressure off i just how is it and it's even impacting the policy committee because now it looks like there's some confusion about how all the policies may need to be redone so what is the plan for like is the equity committee coming up with kind of a a plan for how this
075gets rolled out without you know kind of overtaking everyone's lives again realizing that it's super important but it's also you know if it's not properly managed right it could it could i mean it has the impact of overwhelming jay and and sean and the principals and the teachers right i mean there's a lot to unpack in this subject matter that's in front of us and you know i think we i i'm not really sure who's maybe it's the leadership committee maybe it's jay kind of guiding it all i i don't really it's a little bit confusing to me how the equity committee is right yeah who's right now again i kind of asked my initial question a couple weeks ago was even how the equity can make it started right and then kind of what
076is the overall like task and who's kind of keeping it like bounded a little bit and what the goals are and what the plan is right so that's just not overwhelming and frankly negatively impacting a lot of stuff too right just because of the time that it takes to address all this i see neil has a question but jay do you want to address that first sure i again i this if you think back to the the genesis of the committee and it goes back well before the george floyd incident and all the social unrest that resulted it was really a student affinity group that ended up getting some some assistance from some of the staff and it has kind of grown organically from there it just so happens that right when we found ourselves
077reeling from everything that happened last spring and summer we already had a group that was well in well along the way of of uh doing this sort of work and so they were a natural uh asset for us to to help do what the um equity audit that we did identified as our first order of businesses which was really to to increase awareness by doing professional development for our staff so that's where things started we had to scramble because obviously such work wasn't really contemplated in the budget so we had some title two funding we were able to to deploy but also needed um to seek some philanthropic dollars which which the committee did and lisa had a big hand in that which we're grateful for uh but now we we have begun to have
078conversations at the leadership level as well as among the the four chairs about what's next because in order for this work to be sustained um it is going to have to i think have greater board involvement and direction and and obviously uh when we talk about things like strategic planning which got sort of put put aside when we reacted to covid uh we're bringing that back we're hoping to reinvigorate strategic planning at the end of this month and um and we've all acknowledged even before again before this before the equity committee formally began the work we were starting um our early sessions in strategic planning and had already identified equity as one of the major lenses or pillars if you will for our strategic planning efforts as long ago as well over a year ago
079so um so i anticipate addressing the concerns that that you've just voiced garrett um really through that process through a more sort of taking a step back regrouping and then embracing this as a board initiative um which you know which then uh ties in the community more and and puts the the force of policy behind it thanks jane uh neil uh and that was just a great segue to the point that i wanted to make is that i do think um in order to set things up structurally the right way i think now is the time that the board needs to engage on this i think that we were well on that way when we started to begin the strategic development process but then you know pandemic hit and things sort of uh fell apart
080there but i think at this stage in our work on this effort um it needs to become an official board goal um and the board then needs to put the resources behind this um and provide the the structure and the the systematic nature by which we're going to approach this i'll be bringing this um idea forward that the next sau board meeting but i just wanted to articulate it here tonight as well too since garrett brought the topic up thank you and lisa yeah just just quickly to um the the equity committee all along has had members of the leader the school leadership team on it so there have been principals and assistant principals and deans of students um actually on the committee so even though it was organically grown from like two years ago
081there has been a more formal tie in the composition of the committee to the decision makers in the school besides the teachers um so that has happened that needs to happen more we've been having conversations about having that be a little more formally structured with more regular check-ins with the actual leadership team on a regular basis just you know just to formalize the connections a little bit more as this work grows and more members of the school board are also involved in the subcommittees now like marcella has joined the policy committee um and specific to policy the equity subcommittee for policy they're not trying to make policy they just want to be around to advise people who are making policy um from an equity lens if that makes sense so that like if the school
082board for instance wanted to create some sort of overarching um policy around dei issues that subcommittee could be a resource for that work and that's sort of how i see the relationship working but it does need to be formalized and i mean i think it's i speak for most members of the equity committee that the more connections the better because this is important work and it needs to be done well so all right thank you lisa i'm i see a number of hands up in our attendees so i'm going to turn to those now i'll just ask our attendees once i've unmuted them or allowed them to talk to identify themselves by name and where they live and alison you're up first and you should be able to mute now great um hopefully i'm audible
083you are excellent um i am a member of the equity committee as well as the data subdivision of some subcommittee um everything's a subdivision these days and i think that we're finding ourselves in a perfect storm where this work was started before the world fell apart and one of the things that i think is really important to remember is that we want to make sure that the work is effective and that's one thing we've really been taking into consideration and i really appreciate neil's comment about being able to supply the art the teachers with the funds that they need in order to do this and i think this is a situation of we're kind of realizing what we need as we go along um which is beneficial in the sense that now we know um
084i think it can be hard to predict um what you might need with something like this and i really am grateful to the equity committee um and jay for thinking about okay we want to make sure that this works and that this is effective and that and that people are ready to hear it um so yeah i think that's it okay thank you and you are also allison linton marion french teacher but thank you certainly thanks for uh your comments uh next i see lynn mccormick hi uh this is lynn mccormick i live in norwich i'm a parent of three marion cross students um i i'm just wondering whether the norwich board is considering the impact of the um proposed new hampshire build the hb uh 544 i know i just saw a petition yesterday
085that i signed that i don't think has circulated all that widely in norwich um requesting that the sau 70 board opposed the bill formally um and i guess i'm i'm sort of wondering i don't know exactly what the role of the sau 70 board is or i guess specifically the norwich board um whether this is going to be anything that we're addressing in any way and also whether you see um you know if it were to pass what impact that might have at marion cross and this may be too big a question for you to answer entirely but i guess i'm just wondering when and where that conversation happens sure thanks lynn um the latter part of the question is too big to address at this point in terms of if it passed we'll just
086hope personally that i won't add too much political comment right now but um the norwich board wouldn't take a specific stand on hb 544 because it is a new hampshire proposed bill however it is my understanding it is uh going to be on the agenda for the uh is it the essay or the dresden meeting next week jay right now it's on the agenda for the dresden board okay and it's at that meeting lin that the norwich members would have the discussion with the hanover members about how to respond to the uh the bill hb 544 that's going through the new hampshire state house you welcome thanks for your question and i think i saw a hand earlier but it seems to be down now lynn yours is still up but dude is that all
087yeah oh no i do see andrew shearer now so andrew hi yes uh thank you um very similar comment to what lynn mccormick had just said um oh sorry andy share 23 hazing street norwich so essentially she answered my question or you know having having brought that up so um we will we will look to speak uh as a norwich uh family in that uh permitted tomorrow or sorry next week at the dresden meeting that's that's when you would have the opportunity yes at the next week's dresden meeting and i don't have my calendar in front of me but i think that's march 9th uh tuesday night it is on the siu 70 calendar okay great thanks so much you're welcome all right i don't see any more hands up so are there any more
088questions from board or administrators at this point in time okay not seeing anyone thanks for the input on the equity update there and that brings us to the covid update and she wasn't supposed to be working today i understand but uh i will still turn it over to assistant superintendent steiner for the this update okay well thank you we had good news on the kobud front yesterday governor scott announced that he was including school staff and the next group of individuals eligible for vaccinations and so that will begin on monday but school staff can actually register as soon as this friday and they're doing it two different ways they will be allowing clinics in the schools to vaccinate using the johnson johnson vaccine and then teachers and staff can also sign up online to receive
089the vaccine the moderna and the pfizer vaccine through pharmacies and so there will be two different ways so that was great news for us and along the same upfront the numbers of cases have been declining in vermont they continue to decline the numbers of deaths and hospitalizations also continue to decline so we've had good news this week in terms of the coven situation that is all good news and before i uh ask any uh when they ask questions there first i need to correct myself quickly because i understand that actually the dresden sau meetings andrew if you're listening to anyone else who is just listening is actually march 16th that'll teach me to guess uh when our next meetings are coming up but they're all available on the siu-70 website specifics times and the zoom
090links are available there as well but andrew my apology for quoting the wrong date there with that uh robin thank you very much for the update and yes that is a nice positive update it's good to get those on covid front and and good to hear the prioritization in the uh vaccination schedule too so that's all great any questions for uh robin this time sean not a question but i just wanted to say how much i appreciate robin's leadership with the covet committee we have weekly meetings and her calm approach has helped the marion cross staff and myself just feel good about our direction just wanted to give a shout out because it's been much appreciated well thank you thank you sean garrett i also just wanted to say how much we appreciate the teachers
091this week because driving in my warm car dropping off the kids watching mr gagne with i think he had frost on his eyebrows one morning it was literally dangerously cold out there so that was above and beyond the call of duty for all those teachers i think it was yesterday it was yesterday morning right or monday morning i don't know what it was but it was blowing about 50 miles an hour and the windshield was yeah you would not want to you were not going to survive very long thank you garrett and uh i will uh second third and fourth that uh it is uh is great uh what our community's been able to do and i'm thankful and astonished every day that i i hear uh at the national level that people are being
092um our politicians are recommending schools get back to school and we've been fortunate to be in school this entire year so i feel very lucky for that every day as i know all of our community members do uh lisa oh i just wanted to add that i when i worked the polls yesterday and there were many many norwich community members who do not have children currently in any of our schools who express their appreciation to me which i then deflected to all of you for keeping kids in school this year they've noticed even if they don't have children in the schools and they're very very impressed and appreciative so i know you all don't hear that often enough um from non-parents there are a lot of non-parents who are very grateful for what you're doing
093as well so thank you lisa and i there are no more questions here i do see a hand up on the participant side and it is on you and i will ask anya to unmute and introduce herself hi anja white i a fifth grade teacher at marion cross um i just wanted to give a teacher's perspective on the vaccination news i'm also part of the kova task force but um there there's a light that was lit at the end of the very dark end of coven 19 with the news um and i think just knowing that there are options for people um and you know of course this is to the state but um to robin and then our in our school nurse pam and sean to just organize it um there's a lot of
094hope that is uh more personal than professional but exists and just uh thanks to everyone for the all the the positive uh shout outs to uh the covid committee because it's it's been great work this year so anyways just a teacher's lens okay thanks very much onion thanks for all you're doing and jay at the risk of making this a love fest um i uh i just have to thank both alison and anya um when when we were in those early days tom that you noted when we made the decision as a community to open our schools uh in person um the the night of the big meeting where we we had the entire community and and people on both sides of the issue who were eager to voice their opinions um i busted alison
095and anya invading my office putting a big poster that said kindness and community and leaving behind a care package of refreshments to get me through the meeting and a really nice card that i still have displayed in my office and i still have that sign up and that really has been the sort of fuel behind the fire that's been maintained throughout this school year so um thanks alison and anya and all the teachers you represent all right thanks again jay i remember that well but it doesn't seem like it was just back in september um getting back to the beginning of this thank you uh robin for the the briefing there to start us off and i'm sorry you felt the need to come in on your day off but we do appreciate you being
096here and all that you're doing too so thank you yes go home with that we can move on to the business requiring action and the first item up is the expenditure approval and i'll look to uh one of my board members for a motion meal move to approve expenditures from february 12 2021 to february 26 2021 in the amount of 397 048 dollars and 13 cents thank you thank you and i see is that a second from lisa it is and i'll do a roll call vote here starting with neil o'dell yes and lisa christie s and garrett gary and kelly hersey yes and camden yes so it's unanimous jess thank you and uh next up for the approval of minutes from the february third regular norwegian school board meeting and emotion please kelly uh
097move to approve the minutes of the february 3rd 2021 meeting as presented in a second please lisa and roll call starting with neil yes and lisa christina and garrett palmius and kelly garcias and camden yes so unanimous there too and as always thank you jessica for the incredibly detailed minutes brings me right back to that evening and next up are the non-public minutes from that same night okay move to approve the non-public minutes of the february 3rd 2021 meeting as presented thank you second from lisa and we'll call starting with neil o'dell yes and lisa christie yes and garrett thomas and kelly arceus and camden yes so you hand us again thank you uh finally we have a gift that was added to our agenda very generously and um sean could you give us some
098background on this gift well i would love to be able to background but this lovely check came in the mail and i gave it to jessica and i'm not really sure um why it came to us but it was a great donation and i've sent out a message just asking if someone did apply for it to see if i get something back and when i do then i'll fill you in okay and i think jamie has the answer and i do recall we received this last year it looks like jessica does too so jamie or jessica would you like to go ahead um this is from the edna soybear foundation um that they give quite a bit of money all around for library books and media items um and this is an annual donation that
099we get we looked into it last year i think police asked and anna stormer um she lived in norwich at some point and just we've been getting it for as far jessica i think your uh connection's slowing down a little bit but i i got the gist of it that miss stoiber used to live in norwich and it has been an annual gift uh i assume from her trust for the past many years maybe i'll try to remember in the future to include a little bit more background on the generosity of this gift in the future but it is uh coming from the edna stoyber children's book fund via the vermont community foundation and it is 592 dollars for books and other media items related to the library so a very nice and generous gift
100for the school and with that i will accept the motion from our member kelly you're muted kellen i can hear you now i think you can hear me okay something's happening with this all right uh move to a proof with gratitude the donation from the edna stroyber children's book fund via the vermont community foundation the in the amount of 592 dollars for books and media items thank you dare the second from lisa and roll call neil dale yes lisa christie s garrett palmies and kelly and camden yes too so thank you again to the vermont community foundation and the edna stoyber children's book fund that will bring us into our communications and reports and first up is the report of the chair um i don't have a lot to report we've obviously had quite a
101busy month here i will just reiterate what i said at the beginning of the meeting which is a big thanks to everybody who participated in the budget process which is everybody that i see right now in this window and again special thanks to jamie and her team for the heavy lift of the development of the budget process across the uh districts but also to uh shawn and jessica and the team at marion cross for bringing together the proposal there and then jay and robin for overseeing it and board members for working to bring it together and neil for presenting it and then the town for approving it so i think i tried to catch everybody there and hopefully did but we're obviously grateful um with that i i don't have more to report than what
102i discussed earlier about next steps with the septic and outreach to both the planning commission and the select board and that will just again ask board members to reach out with desired community committee assignments in the coming weeks and i will turn it over happily to superintendent adams and thank you again sir for your efforts too sure and and i would just say that i really defused my superintendent's report across the uh equity committee report out the introduction the uh comments on the parallels between the danielson work and the discussion of the calendar change so i really have nothing else to report all right well thank you very much and for the earlier reports too and that brings us to the business administrators report jamie do you have anything you'd like to discuss um good
103evening again i'll just say i i've posted um the february monthly financials which also shows the year to date here for general fund expenditure and revenue the federal project funds is revenue and expenditures on one sheet and i was going to post the food service but we've we've not posted the claims that we um are are applying for at the state level as everybody may know or may not know um we are participating in the summer food service program which was a special thing they're doing this year due to the pandemic and i will report that last for the month of january for the free meals program we and i didn't bring the papers home with me but i think i have the numbers in my head um we served approximately 200 and i think
10412 breakfasts and we served over 2700 lunches in the month of january so we are i'm putting the claims through now to the agency of education's food service food nutrition program and this is actually a federally funded program um so i just had to get a little help because we had um under-projected what we thought our participation would be so we just had to ask them to bump bump up the allowances a little bit and they're gonna do that this afternoon so we'll be booking approximately twelve thousand dollars in receivables for that account so i will bring next month will be the quarterlies for the third quarter and we'll have a projection of year-end at that time thank you jamie for that update and again for all of your work uh through the budget season
105here do any uh board members have questions at this point okay not seeing any thanks again let's move into committee reports and obviously i don't think there's much to report on unless neil wants to chime in from the budget committee as that was pretty much devoted to the results yesterday and monday's presentation um and with that we'll obviously be tracking the rest of the session the legislature too because there are still some things that need to finalize there like the base amount but we think we're uh we hope we're in good shape with regard to our understanding of the state of things there the other committee i am on a negotiations and with regard to those we are scheduled for mediation with the teachers next week and we are still in negotiations with the support
106staff currently too and uh that is all i have to are there any other committee reports at this time not necessarily a committee report but maybe just a brief sort of vsba liaison report just letting folks know you know they're we're in the middle of the legislative session this week they had off because it is town meeting week so it's basically the sort of the mid-session pause if you will a lot of bills under consideration around education if folks aren't getting there should you should all be getting a vsba blog update on a weekly basis now of the stuff that's going on in the legislature if you're not getting that then let me know we'll make sure that we get your email added to the list but a lot of stuff going on so feel
107free to read up on that and see what it is great thank you all and thanks for your service on that board as well any other updates uh from the committee perspective okay we covered a lot tonight uh thank you very much we do have need for a brief executive session so if somebody would uh offer to enter us into that i would appreciate it and and then i do want to ask too does everybody have the link for the non-public session good good good okay kelly were you going to offer a motion sure yeah can you hear me am i good move to enter into executive session in accordance with title 1 section 313 for the purpose of discussing negotiations thank you do i have a second lisa and roll call start with neil
108o'dell yes and lisa christie yes and garrett thomas and kelly mercies and camden yes and uh josh are you okay staying here so i jump off and move over i think we can all begin moving over regardless so i'll see you in the non-public side thank you robin you okay josh i apologize problem and uh don't tell rick johnson that we're finishing around nine please i will not share anything thank you thank you all right i gotta pull back up my board doc so we are returning to uh public session and um the uh only things left to uh consider are the agenda topics for the next meeting and as i asked earlier with the committee assignments please email me if you have any topics you would like to include in our next meeting which
109is on april 7th wednesday april 7th other than that we have no more business this evening so i would happily entertain a motion to adjourn offered by meal seconded by kelly and uh i'll do a quick roll call with neil yes garrett palm yes kelly or cbs lisa christie and camden yes and thank you all for staying with us this evening thanks josh behind the scenes congratulations on passing the budget thanks to the townspeople and have a good night thanks everyone