001okay we are now recording and broadcasting live to youtube so feel free to start when you're ready thanks josh okay so i will go ahead and call to order the sau regular meeting at 601 pm and at this time i will open it up to any members of the public who would like to address the board and again please use the hand up thing on your icon and we can we can call on you okay at this time i don't see any um any hands up from the board i mean from the uh from the public so um i will move on to agenda review um would any board members like to consider adding deleting tabling any items on the agenda or reordering any items on the agenda uh lisa um yes i'd like to
002add an equity report so that julie stevenson can update the public on the recent leadership training that will hopefully be replicated throughout the staff excellent thank you lisa um and jay i think i think either you or karen have the ability to add that in and and could we add that on to board docs um probably right at the right after this we certainly can excellent thank you um kim yeah and maybe john refreshed my memory but i think we were going to decide what format our future board meetings would take um so if we should add that to the agenda if that's the correct plan then we should probably do that that's that is true we did discuss that at one of the meetings um recently that we would we would um we decided
003to table the discussion to this meeting on if we were gonna um continue with zoom style meetings so um i'm happy to add that as an agenda item if everyone else wants to have that discussion not seeing any hard no's so jay can we add that as well we can thank you any other board members okay i'm not seeing any at this time so um at this time we will move to um business requiring discussion which should be the new the new sector that we just added those two things um maybe uh jay if if we refresh should that be all set i'm adding it as quickly as i can down the category is there i'm just going to add the items now thank you again feel free to pump the brakes on me if
004uh we're going too fast and i am cognizant of time and that we do have another meeting after this so first was an equity committee update yes please and lisa i'm looking at the attendees is is julie in here i i don't see her she knows it's happening and i know she was very busy at the high school today understandably so i will text her and just let her know that she's officially on okay yeah jay um john i suggest that maybe we begin with a discussion of the format for future board meetings excellent i was just about to say that um so i know there's been some some requests some some folks have commented on the past on you know with with school opening um within person the option to go back to live
005um school board meetings i know there was um the first time we discussed this some sentiment around um you know it is that is that necessary at this time um is it um is it the right thing to do um you know i know there were some folks that had mentioned um that um it would it would add extra cleaning for the custodians i know there were a lot of things that came into it so i wanted to kind of open it up to the board and kind of see if folks feelings have changed or moved in a different direction since the last time we discussed this kim i mean my feeling hasn't changed since the last time we we spoke about it i think we just need to make the decision um i am
006personally in favor of i guess doing both i i think having zoom is a very valuable asset to get more community feedback than we typically have particularly at the time of um for those who are quite anxious and don't want to attend a lot of public format i think we need to find some way to do zoom but i'd also really encourage us to have if it's safe enough to open schools um you know i'd really like to see it have kind of resuming our as close as we can in person format i think the conversation is richer i think there's a lot of benefit to it and i also think it's the right thing to do um so i think um if there's a way i would encourage um administration to i know there's
007a lot on plate or maybe it's us um to think about how best to have maybe a in person and and still include zoom format i know that there are other communities that do that currently so that's just kind of my position is i think if it's safe enough for our students and our staff it's safe enough for us so that's where my position would be thank you kim jamie did you want to respond to that the buildings are ready to um well the library has a million books everywhere right now but other than that we can find another spot to host meetings so the buildings the floors are done and the buildings are ready to host folks thank you jamie um ben yes um i agree with kim in full i was about to
008say the same thing so thank you kim for preempting um where if we have the technology to pull it off where there is a zoom meeting where people can can watch us in a similar quality what they have now i think us as a board should be in person for the same reasons that kim mentioned thanks ben uh dan um so i'm on the other side of this one i actually feel like our meetings have been more effective on zoom uh to be honest i think there are some venues that have actually been better uh remotely and for my experience i i i find this is better i i appreciate the uh optics of um us going into the schools and having these meetings uh on the other hand i don't actually think it's a
009it's an apples to apples kind of comparison in terms of you know why the students are in the school and why we would be in the school um i i'm in a lot of zoom meetings as we all are and again they're they're just there are many venues where i'm just finding that this is a much more efficient use of time and actually the conversation is more open for some odd reason so um i'm uh i'm not in favor of bringing more people into the school um for all the reasons that we're not parents aren't supposed to come into the school during the school day now so um yeah so i just uh i don't agree thanks dan uh kim oh well i was hoping that maybe somebody else had something before i chimed in
010you know and i do i don't assume that this is going to be and necessarily an easy ask and i know we need to think about public access to the building and you know how many people is is safe and and i don't know if it necessarily needs to be on school grounds is i'm kind of thinking about how creative can we be but i think in some way um and what i'm encouraging is for us to think about how can we can we do this um safely tom yeah john i agree with uh kim's approach here too i and to dan's point i would not uh i think we'd go one or the other obviously at the zoom in addition to our being together uh if possible i i would though um want to
011hear obviously jamie's uh chimed in there i i don't want it to be an extra burden on what's already going to be a burdened uh facilities crew in terms of uh having us in the building and um so it'd be good to get some more information uh from that perspective but obviously we'd still need to have the zoom so that any attendees could uh could chime in and there would be some logistical aspects of that too with regard to us being uh we did find we had some feedback issues with zoom when we had a meeting earlier in person over at mary cross school rick i'd like to make a motion okay i'd like to move to uh resume uh in-person school uh sau school board meetings and do we have a second ben and
012now uh further discussion just yeah go ahead dan yeah i just want to bring up two other things one is that uh i'm assuming that if we were meeting that we would be the only ones meeting because we wouldn't be able i'm guessing to bring the public in so that you know for what it's worth i i mean i again i appreciate the symbolism but that i i see it as from my perspective i see it as largely symbolic since we're we're meeting but the public does not have any different kind of access so the other thing is simply a technical thing so i've been in a couple of meetings which were some people on zoom some people in the meeting and we never resolved the feedback uh issue it was um it was it
013was pretty unpleasant uh and actually pretty hard to understand so i think the technological piece of it is non-trivial so there would you'd have to somebody josh somebody would have to figure out it's not it's not as straightforward at least my several experiences is just putting some of us there some some of us may not want to go there for various reasons that uh whatever they are and when that happens it does it it's it can be pretty hard to understand so thanks um neil yeah i i am not opposed to in-person meetings but i agree with dan that the technology piece of this is important because these are public meetings and so we need to make sure that we've uh provided a way for the public to participate in these meetings and if technology
014is a barrier then um you know i think we need to go slow on that this format you know as awkward as it is though it does provide for decent audio and video and everybody can be heard and so that's that's the most important aspect of this for me uh kelly hersey um the point that that i'm hearing that i'm responding to is um dan's point there are members myself included who have um problems coming in person for the same reason that um i think a lot of members have issues having their children go to school and they have family members who are particularly susceptible if we then choose to allow some members not to come in person and some members to stay on zoom would we i i would feel that i was left
015out of that personal discussion but i in no way feel any safer with this group in a room than i would allowing parents in a room coming in as they choose because i don't think any of us are screening ourselves to come in a group of whatever we are six or twelve depending on the board so i i am i guess my vote is um i would be opposed to shifting if all of us were not comfortable shifting so that's fine and i think i think my question would just i think similar to kind of neil's point if you know is the technology possible to to be able to continue to have a great discussion that people would have the ability to attend from away whether they're board members or not i think if we
016could bridge that gap to be able to have board members some present and some not for whatever reason um and still be able to follow the rules of that that i know neil understands completely way more than i do um you know i think following the you know what we're supposed to do but also giving the community the opportunity i know we did hear from community members the last time we talked about this that they appreciated the way that they could follow along with in this setup so i again i'm probably on the fence either way um and i don't know if that helps anyone but i think you know understanding that the technology surrounding it i think is really important for me um lisa whoops i lowered my hand before i unmuted myself um
017i'm wondering if there's a way to test this um perhaps with one of the smaller public subcommittee meetings um where all the members would feel comfortable gathering in person six feet apart testing the technology see if we can fix the feedback issue see if the public feels that they have the same level of access as they do for zoom and if it works in that setting maybe reapproach this i was all set to vote yes until kelly pointed out that she would feel left out because she wouldn't be able to be there in person and i i definitely don't want to make anyone feel left out so but i'm just wondering if at least the technology piece it would be worth a trial run for one of the meetings that we don't have as many
018participants wanting to watch us so thanks lisa jay did you want to respond to that kelly i do see your hand up but i saw jay kind of popping in there okay kelly was kelly was ahead of me so feel free i just had a comment the question that relates to the technology too is i think it's much easier for the community to to understand what we're saying when they're not watching us with face masks on and similarly i'm not sure how well voices are going to carry along through the um the zoom platform for people who have hearing issues or simply need the additional visual cues so that's another reason that i wouldn't vote for doing that okay jay so i i guess um i asked josh um i'm trying to envision what this
019would look like but we either we would all be on our computers and sort of still using our um our cam our laptop cameras our video cameras or we would have to have some sort of real-time video and and if you think about our probably our most sophisticated meeting site would be the hanover high library where we have a an lcd projector and a screen and and the only microphone capability we have is that provided by cable access tv i just uh i think we need to think about how best to set up that sort of dual modality meeting josh do you have thoughts about how this could be done i certainly think it's possible um as i'm just thinking about the available technologies that are out there there's 360 cameras that we could put
020in the middle of the room that would pick up and detect a person talking and direct the camera in that direction um we could have people bring in their devices and have earpieces you couldn't have the speaker and the microphone on the device but you could have each person sitting there with a headset and with a headset on that could that could take care of the feedback issue and then that's probably your best bet for having everybody be heard because meeting rooms are notoriously difficult to microphone um and have everybody in the room be heard well um so that's even if we got that device that was the 360 camera sitting in the middle of the room um i'm concerned some members would not be picked up as well as others um by the device
021so there's audio concerns video concerns so if we are doing a hybrid hybrid model of this where we have we're still doing zoom for folks in the public and then we have our board members meeting um at the schools i think it's going to be a little bit of a challenge because we'll have to use the lcd the screen we'll have to have an audio system set up for people to hear if that's if everybody's wearing a headset and microphone that could potentially work as long as we don't have other people in the room that need to hear it so there's there's a lot to consider i think we could pull it off um i think there's tools that we don't have that we need to acquire to do it thanks josh um jay did
022you want to respond to to just just a quick follow-up josh would it make more sense to do the meetings in one place i i'm assuming the hanover high library rather than trying to set that technology up in the music room at the ray school or in the mcs library as well absolutely if we could narrow it down to one one room than any equipment we have to put in that room we can just keep it there rather than having to try to travel around to the different buildings that could be difficult great thank you uh garrett as you can see i think we're just uh you know if we're gonna vote on this tonight i think we just come down with the ground rules that you know i think it is possible to have
023all 20 of us in the room and but we face the same issues that any classroom has right so we are we've determined as a group that we're unable to teach a class at the classroom and then also have students somehow remote into the classroom so if we're going to pull this off i think to josh's point you know maybe this is the test run for something like yeah you said 360 camera but you know we call them the owls as well that's the only way this is going to work because you can't have everybody the general public coming to this just like we're not having the general public come into the classroom so it would be the 20 of us or however many are here with some sort of way to get out and
024then we have some sort of conference phone i think where we're dialed into a single conference phone again this is kind of josh's world um but you know we're not going to be all on our own computers because i've done that in conference rooms with business folks and it's a disaster so yeah it's going to be an owl type thing with a you know where we're all able to get out to the public so i think until we're ready for that we can't do it but i would be in support of you know let's go test it and at least the 20 of us could get together with the right technology so i think that's what we're voting on right let's clarify if that's what we're voting on yeah the motion was to um resume
025in-person meetings for the sau and that's just at this point just for the sau meetings i'm sure it will follow up in the next meeting and then the one tomorrow and the one thursday um but that that's the motion that's on the floor right but in person just on clarifying the the motion it's in person for the board but not in person for the public right because like they i don't think having a hundred people pile into the library i mean that's different than having 20 students going to a classroom so i want to make sure that you know i know there's been some questions about whether this is optically correct and we've been asked by the you know if we're if the students are going back why can't you go back to your board
026means well the answer is we are we will go back to our board meetings with a group similar to a class size but we need to figure out how to get ourselves projected out of the classroom and we can't do that for the classes yet right so let's get that figured out and then get together right yes okay kelly hersey um i think we've heard from josh that it's very challenging and i would like to table this motion until we have clear information from him as to how it would be done and who would accommodate and who wouldn't accommodate thanks kelly uh i believe since rick you made the motion um would you like to table it or would you like to keep it on the floor at this point so um if we vote
027and we don't vote in favor of the motion then we're going to stay in this configuration for the time being so i don't know why we just don't vote um i'm not sure what we're if we vote and everyone says no or the majority says no then we're just going to continue as we do so i think we just vote okay and we will leave it on um what's that jay point of order okay using a little robert's rules here um there's a motion on the floor right now to table and i believe you have to act on that motion anyone else more familiar with robert's rules of order feel free to correct me i believe that's correct don't you vote on the the original motion first there was also no second wait let me
028catch up here so with with kelly's motion to table it we have to vote on that one first um and then go back to the original one am i reading that correctly neil yeah kelly's motion would need a second in order to be able to entertain it if it doesn't get a second then it doesn't move forward and then we go back to the original motion that rick put on the floor that did have a second thank you do we have a motion or a second on kelly's motion to table this discussion dan i see your second and do we want to have discussion on that okay we will do a roll call we'll go around the the motion on the floor is to table this discussion until um further until the next meeting kelly
029or until um we can get some further information my motion was to table it until we got further information from josh as to what would need to be put in place and how that would appropriately work for the public and for the board excellent thank you so we'll go right around ben no i believe josh has provided us the information we need tom i'm gonna say no because i'm hopeful we'll get the i mean even if we vote uh yay then uh and we find that's not possible we won't be able to do it rick um yes table kelly hersey yes please table kelly mcconnell yes please stable garrett oops sorry too many mute buttons uh yes to table kim no similar to tom dan table lisa yes to table kneel no and hunt yes
030so i'm gonna count it up but it does pass at a one two three four five six seven eight to three so we will table that until we get further information as we move forward i don't think that counts right i believe myself kim tom and neil all said no seven to four seven to four sorry good try john the four screens in my face are clearly not helping me excellent so we will move ahead to the equity committee update i still don't see julie do you so julie probably thinks that the meeting is at seven um oh yes jim and i can um can fill you in i'm gonna go second jim thank you well i think any one of the administrators could chime in um so we had and the equity committee has
031been meeting a lot i'm not part of the equity committee but we had the administrators uh workshop last week and it was very very informative i thought it was very productive and we had really good conversations at that meeting we met with brian and theodosa cook yesterday and they have a plan in place to move this initiative forward and i'll let deb being that she's on the equity committee um talk about it and any of the other administrators that are on right now can also talk about how wonderful the conference was of the workshop was so the cooks are originally the cooks are just recently having left to the upper valley which is really interesting so they're very familiar with the school and they had been doing some partnering work with uvei among other places
032but we um they we went to school we learned quite a lot in three days it was pretty intense um and the thing about what the cooks are proposing now is that they're proposing that we um maintain the leadership work that we have been doing and that we take it a step further and i guess really extending the equity work that the committee has been doing to pd for teachers and staff i would say that we left that [Music] we left the retreat having made a commitment that we as leaders wanted to make sure that we held up issues of diversity and equity among our staff and students that we wanted to learn more about and have a greater awareness of multicultural education and um there was something else that split my mind but um
033social justice thank you and also with an emphasis on social justice because it benefits all of our students to learn how to resist bias and how to live in a more inclusive world so the um cooks have presented a multi-step multi-layered set of proposals for um hi deb hi jills uh the cooks have presented a multi-step multi-layered set of proposals to meet different participants wherever they are in the continuum of understanding um they are really good and um so dr badams is making decisions about how we're going to potentially pay for that thank you i can talk a little bit about it too john great thanks in on the uh part of the training i thought that one of the things that was sort of most uh telling or pertinent we definitely uh wide ranging
034discussed a lot of issues that are very pertinent but they pointed out too that what we were talking about are all things that are mentioned um on all the specific schools websites um about valuing diversity and creating or sort of working to create global citizens from our students and that this is definitely part of that work and then it probably needs to be something that is much more conscious and deliberate um than it has been in the past especially given sort of recent events so um i thought that that was something that was it was good to bring up is that sort of we we talk about this a lot in the address in sau 70 and it's probably time to start continuing and i think to be honest having coming from other places sau
03570 is is way further along than many other school districts in the country in terms of what they're addressing but that doesn't mean that there's not still a lot of work to be done and it would be difficult i think to have gotten this far and then sort of just stop and say well that's good enough we'll just you know we're fine and that this uh this kind of training would allow us to move forward thanks tim uh lisa did you wanna yeah yeah just um thanks guys for talking about the professional development um because obviously you all were the ones that were there i just wanted to take advantage of the fact that we have a large crowd um to remind people of two other parts of the equity committee work um one is
036there is a person who's crunching some numbers throughout the district to look at equity issues in terms of who is in what track of classes and also who lands in disciplinary procedures and some other questions that we're looking at and then the second part is the final two focus groups of the summer um regarding the equity work in the district are being held this week um and next week one on wednesday is for alumni of our district schools um and then one on monday is again for parents and we'll be looking at what's going on in the district through an equity lens and getting people's opinions in particular we reached out to um with help from the leadership at the school level to parents and students with 504s and ieps parents and students who are
037partaking of the reduced lunch and to parents and families of students of color just trying to make sure that we hit the various types of diversity issues in our school besides the more obvious ones so if anyone's interested they can go to the board website they can email me and i will send them the information about how to participate in those final two focus groups so thank you thank you lisa uh before i open it up for questions um i i did want to give julie the opportunity um i know we got her here um and we're excited about that so if julie if you'd like to add anything um we'd love to hear from you yeah so um i guess i can't keep my meeting straight i thought this was at seven but thank
038you josh for reminding me um and but what i think is clear in terms of our what we did as a group the leadership group is that any of us can talk about it even though i somehow spaced because it's something that we felt was really important i think the training was really impactful i was really impressed by our leadership group and how vulnerable people were and i think that we feel like we really just want to get out in front of these issues and we want to continue the work with our whole district and any one of us who is there can speak to this because i think we all feel the same way and we're really excited and hope we can continue the work and it's really important in my mind for us
039for our kids i mean if we're growing global citizens in this district and we want to have a better world and better citizens this is the way to do it and do it well and so you know fully supportive really excited and really glad even though it's been a crazy week and last week was crazy that people committed to the number of hours we put into getting school started and doing this training together because i think both of the issues in terms of covid and equity are actually really woven together um and and you know in the in terms of opening school there are a lot of equity issues involved and there are a lot of people that we need to make sure we make whole and so i think that the two of these
040things dovetail together and i'm really excited to be working on it and hope that you guys will be supportive our community will be supportive and will continue to do this work thank you uh jay so um i just wanted to echo a lot of what julie just said i i have to say first of all that the equity committee really started with a student-led initiative well before george floyd was murdered well before the protests that erupted all over our country and the administrative team also committed to supporting their work uh though we weren't as directly involved as most of our administrative team was during the training last week um i will say that a commitment that came out of that training where we had been sort of preoccupied probably not a strong enough word but
041worried about starting school and dealing with the pandemic it was i think unanimous among the administrative team that this this work needed to continue and that it it's not something that we wanted to sacrifice given all the the change that's coming with regard to opening schools during the pandemic so what what the commitment is is a devotion of a significant amount of our professional development time to issues of diversity equity and inclusion and essentially a pd focus and i just want to make sure the board's aware that you came up as an integral part of the community and and uh and an entity that would benefit from participating with us in in training as the year goes on and deb mentioned my role in figuring out how we're going to pay for all this they
042do have a proposal that's i'm sure something that can be further negotiated but we're looking at the possibility of of using federal funding uh that's available for professional development to help to underwrite a lot of costs and um and i agree we it was it was kind of sobering to have them show a number of our web pages where we make all these um affirmations of our commitment to diversity and inclusion um and and then uh having to answer the question well what are you doing um you say nice things on the website but what are you actually doing and so that's um you know we can list some things that have been done um but but specifically what have we done in terms of curriculum what have we done in terms of policies and
043procedures and those sorts of things and um even the the very imagery that we have on our website that that highlights diversity when you take instead a cursory look at it doesn't appear very diverse um and so um you know i i think this is something that uh will will dovetail very nicely with our strategic planning work once we get that resuscitated uh and will be a major pillar that a lot of that work will proceed on thanks jay um and and thank you um to all who spoke on that um i'm going to open it up for questions at this time but i i know i'll get out of the way really quickly but i just want to say thank you this work um is incredibly important um and the amount of time that
044you're all putting into this is is apparent given the amount of time that we're all putting into so many other things right now so thank you very much to that group that's working on it to the equity committee um i do see ben's hand up ben you're first great thanks uh jay answered my question in part but i was going to ask i think someone mentioned about rolling it out to all the schools and noting this is the sau 70 meeting you mean all teachers across all four schools and all students across our four schools or a high school middle school thing i see j answering and then secondly whether there was um any funding mechanisms such as bridgeman that could work for at least certain sectors of students to help offset uh jay uh
045yeah i i did mention when the group was talking about how we would support the work that um we have a lot of different uh kind uh philanthropic folks out there that we we turn to for things like this but but specifically uh culture and climate is something that's specifically allowable under title iv um and and we typically have to brainstorm ideas for how we're going to use those funds and and so i think this this is something that would fit very neatly there and if there are additional costs beyond what we can commit through our title funding that um that i think i agree i think whether it's bridgeman or friends of hanover norwich schools that um we have opportunities to fund this work thank you any other questions from board members i'm not
046seeing any so um again thank you um thank you all for for the presentation and for updating us um i we definitely look forward to hearing more as we move forward and and also looking at different ways that we can be involved and get the training for us too which would be fantastic um so thank you uh moving ahead to business requiring action um we have an approval of expenditures and i would look oh jamie so john we actually did that a week ago so you can skip over that we're okay sorry about that i should have had it it's all right thank you then moving ahead we will move to uh we have uh approval of minutes from our july 23rd special board meeting ben moved to approve the minutes of the july 23
0472020 sau 70 board special meeting as presented and a second kelly hersey and a roll call kim hartman yes tom cannon yes neil dale yes dan akamorias garrett palmies lisa christie yes kelly hersey i think you're muted kelly but i can see your voice i was pushing the unmute and it wasn't working her see yes sorry thank you rick johnson yes bikini yes i think we lost kelly mcconnell um so hunt yes we will move ahead to approval of minutes from the june 23rd special board meeting we have a motion ben move to approve the meeting minutes from the june 23rd 2020 meeting as presented in a second kelly hersey we'll go around kim yes tom cannon yes neil o'dell yes dan rockmore yes lisa christy yes kelly hersey mercedes rick johnson yes ben beanie
048yes garrett garrett you still there sorry yes scary yes thank you and hunt yes um and i will make note that i believe we did talk about it so many months ago that we were going to combine all these into one consent agenda and i will make sure we do that in the future we have one more an approval of policies we had a first reading last week approval of policies delegation of authority during covet 19 a motion kelly hersey are we i'd like to amend the policy are we taking any amendments or suggestions tonight i know this is the second reading um i believe we can i would look to the policy committee for a i'm on it i don't know the answer okay okay uh j i think the language in the first
049paragraph needs to be changed to to be uh agnostic to the state um so the ref makes reference to appropriate new hampshire guidelines as well as vermont okay kim more of a point of order is this draft policy available to the public and if it should be i think we need to move it to the public content it is currently not in the public comment or public content so it should be moved so kelly to answer your question yes it can be done as amended then i would like to propose an amendment um it may be a bit of a discussion i'm not sure but um paragraph d um i just want to make it very clear that this in no way pertains to our specific current superintendent um but if we're we're writing this
050up as a general um policy and it's to apply to any superintendent at this point in time we don't know how long this covet is going to be upon us i think it would make sense to amend paragraph d to read something like the superintendent agrees to close any school in the district at the point when thresholds determined in advance and known to all families attending those schools have been reached this closure may proceed without further action by the board such closure shall continue until the superintendent and the board in consultation with appropriate health and government authorities deem it in the best interests of the district and its students to open schools that's my amendment suggestion rick um is it proper for me to ask kelly where did you get that language from i wrote
051that language sorry oh you did okay it sounded very legalistic i didn't know no and and can i ask what is your concern with just leaving it up to the superintendent's discretion because don't we have other policies and the plan that are going to actually require jay to monitor our community spread and all the other pieces of data that we go to making a decision i'm just are you can i answer that yes my answer is i i am um i'm concerned that in the heat of the moment if we are open and cases show up and we haven't predetermined any specific point we've we've discussed this at the last meeting quite extensively and it actually came from your original point rick i think we it behooves us to ask our health officials who have
052been very clear about us being safe to open at what point is it not safe to remain open and that point is what i would like and we are told we're going to get clarified for us for our purposes soon and i would also like that to be clearly stated that it will be communicated to all families who have students in the district so that people know what to expect know what's coming and know that this this particular tipping point has been reached that's my concern that we know it ahead of time and that we spell it out ahead of time and that we agree that we won't revisit the issue in the heat of the moment there it is yeah so i i was receiving emails from the doctors this week as they're working
053through what they think should be the criteria i'm not part of the task force but because i had shared with them a draft dashboard so i i know they're the task force is working on those criteria is that correct jay and that at some point we'll be asked to take a look at them jay yes they do have a draft they're just waiting there's there was supposed to be guidance coming out of the state of new hampshire this past friday but it's been delayed so they're expecting it any day this week and i believe vermont is also providing some additional guidance very soon and so they're they're sort of on hold waiting for that to make sure that what they put on on you know on as a recommendation for our policy isn't it in
054conflict with what our states are requiring uh kelly did you want to respond to jay yeah i just wanted to make the reason that i think it's it's important to put this in the policy and hear from our task force is because i don't necessarily know specifically who on high is making these recommendations or what their criteria are but i've heard from our local experts and i think if we're relying on them to make the call to say that our town is safe to open i think we would be remiss if we didn't rely on them if should their recommendations be more stringent than the state that that's what this get what this addresses so uh kim i think it would be helpful that this may be taking a step back i apologize but i
055think for the public since the document was not in public content just to understand what the purpose of this document is because as rick mentioned we do have other policies that give the superintendent the authority to close schools in the event of a health crisis one that we've actually recently updated before covid so just to kind of give a sense for what the purpose of this policy is and why it's necessary um versus what we already have thank you kim so um i guess um any members of the policy committee like to chime in or i can go to the questions first um or neil i see your hand up um sure i mean i can chime in for a little bit and we'll say that the the policy that you're looking at here is
056model policy that was developed by the vermont school boards association vetted by attorneys that worked for the vermont school board's insurance trust and the primary purpose behind this was during the state of emergency which is listed in in the beginning of the policy is to delegate specific authorities to the superintendent recognizing that a large number of situations that i think that are likely to occur related to this pandemic might require some very timely efficient and quick responses and acknowledging that the board structure is not is not designed for efficiency it is designed for a thoughtful deliberation you know requires us to convene a quorum of board members we have specific timelines associated with that per statute but i do believe that there are going to be scenarios that occur uh during the state of emergency
057and the pandemic that are going to require quick responses and this is an acknowledgement by the board that we are specifically and transparently delegating the authority to the superintendent in the administration to make those decisions which i believe personally are in the best interest of the district thanks neil uh kim so an amendment to that um there's a and it makes sense that this is a vermont school board association i don't see any reference to new hampshire in it and so i would amend that particularly as most of our school districts in sau our new hampshire school district i would include that and my kind of follow-up to that is does that how does that incorporate any sort of waiver that we have as a unique interstate school district that we can kind of as
058of what i understand now we can decide to take either vermont or new hampshire state guidance in certain forms and it doesn't seem to really incorporate that waiver or that option uh jay we're operating right now under a waiver from the vermont agency of education actually from the secretary of education in consultation with i believe it was from the health department to defer to new hampshire law at the moment but what we're doing is is attempting to be in concert with both states as much as we can uh i think in this particular case the operational paragraph that i saw in this particular policy recommendation is that it's the it's a change of modality so if we go from if if the decision is to go from um in person to let's say a hybrid
059model that that it's it's it's putting it's providing me the authority to make that decision without coming back to the board for for a board vote and and how i make that decision will be will be directed by the plan itself we are attempting and we've had pretty extensive um reports from the physicians advisory group that um it's very difficult to have a single definitive threshold because so much depends on contact tracing and how how the a particular cluster of cases present or how an outbreak presents but those right now um are being those those terms even are being defined at the state level at both states levels and they're being reported out to the public health folks who are then going to be using that information to inform our local uh decision making [Music]
060flowchart for lack of a better word so i'd be happy if if if we plan to update the plan plan to update the plan we've been very i think transparent with the public that there are many dimensions of the plan that haven't been fully fleshed out yet this is one area and there's also a mandate within this suggested policy that requires me to report to the board frequently and i can only i can only promise you that that's certainly not my desire to be the lone ranger these are decisions that i'll be making in close consultation with the people who are best equipped to help us with those determinations and in complete concert with you as well just outside the formal structure of having to convene a meeting and have a formal vote thanks jay
061uh ben thanks i think i'm one of the odd one uh odd people on the board we're actually i am okay with not having a distinct threshold or tipping point whatever we want to call it coming from a public health guy jay is right that there are totally so many more definitions that we haven't even talked about what is considered something in our in our area of the country and even the best of the best docs in that field have vehement disagreements about with each other about what is in rail's support even the five percent positive rate that we talked about the last board meeting is some of the biggest names in the world say that's totally pointless and useless and these are people that i know personally and trust their opinions and they disagree
062with each other on this so i think putting a definitive very specific tipping point in documentation might even backfire because there's going to be so much disagreement with it and it could change day by day including day to day of what of how important we consider it to be and for that reason i'm actually currently leaning against this policy partially even to shield the administration of having to make that hard decision on their own where i don't think of an emergency decision to close the schools i think we can do that in a day to schedule a meeting and do it rather than something like a shooting that jay needs decision power like within two minutes to shut down the system or not i think this is a decision that can wait one or two
063days if we're starting to see stirrings of plausibility that said any other comment um from any board members and forgive me in my struggle with robert's rules at times but kelly did you make a formal uh motion i i don't believe you did i think you asked about the ability to amend it i simply requested an amendment to paragraph d and nobody so at this time if a board member would like to make a motion um if not i guess we could push it back to the um push it back to the policy committee i see kim's hand waving it's just a question i guess jay um what concerned me is um with this and i and i am really struggling for a lot of different reasons actually either we need it we already have
064a policy does it does it do more harm than good i'm not really sure um one valuable aspect i think when having and this is not a decision i want to make this is not something i train to at all to whether open up schools doing a global pandemic i don't think any of us did so to that but that aspect i think it's nice to have community feedback and we that is something that we do have at a board level um i think my question to jay would be how would you be able to get that community feedback um in a way that's manageable and that you feel is in the information that you need that is available to you when you need to make it i guess if you can just answer that
065question and make sure that the community also feels heard okay i guess i guess that's sort of the the impetus behind this sort of a resolution um there may be an occasion where i have to make a decision that doesn't turn into like essentially a public discussion or a public debate where it's it's you know i'm told that there's a case or there's a cluster of cases and that we need to make sure that um a grade level cohort is quarantined and and it's it's certainly when that when that happens uh it's not gonna be me trying to guess um i'll i i will get a call from either michael hensley or from one of the doctors or from the state they'll they'll inform me that these cases have occurred and that they recommend a
066certain course of action so if if they do that let's say they do that at eight o'clock in the morning tomorrow um i guess what i would need to do then is call in a more try to call right currently it would be to call an emergency board meeting um i can in an existing policy i could close school for health reasons i think in a day um so so i could cancel school but as far as changing the mode then based on that science we'd have to call an emergency meeting and convene as a board to um to change from uh full in person to let's say hybrid or we're going to have um the kindergarten group not come to school on a given day or for for a two-week period let's say um
067and again uncharted territory this wasn't a resolution that i particularly necessarily asked for but i do see the utility of it um if if we don't do this then my procedure would be that i would make the emergency call immediately that day if necessary using existing policy and then we would we would have to decide what our process would be from there that that i would probably request an emergency meeting of the appropriate board um to then officially move into a different mode neil um yep so i will say jay is absolutely right he did not bring this forward it was i was the one that introduced this to the board so i will take responsibility for that piece um and i think while we could sit here tonight we could probably think of all
068of the reasons or the potential scenarios by which you would want to exercise this um i think that the important thing here for me at least it's the reasons that we can't think of right now that we're going to need it for um and so i would uh i would encourage the board to um strongly entertain passage of this policy thanks neil uh lisa yeah i i'm kind of struggling like kim um the way that jay just phrased it to me all those questions are questions for educators like what form is best for serving our students in the best way to make sure that they get the best education based upon the current situation and i also don't want to leave the educators hanging high and dry feeling that they have to make this decision
069all by themselves so i and i'm not a policy person so i i i'm just i'm not really clear what we're being asked to do and why and yeah i i can i can vote either way and justify both directions and i guess i'm just wondering um what is most beneficial to both jay and the community um and i don't know how to answer that so i'm not sure this is a really good question other than to say i really don't know yeah what we're being asked to do and why ben i just want to add that someone mentioned about sending it back to the policy committee the policy committee has not met since i think roughly may or june at the request of the administration um so we at that specific group has not
070seen or talked about this at all rick i'd like to make a motion uh moved to approve policy delegation of authority during covid as presented and a second neil any further discussion kelly hersey yeah i'm just curious if there was any feedback at all on the specifics that i was requesting that something be included and i understand that the parameters change and they're changing every day but i'm troubled by the fact that we're not telling the community at least as much as the physicians have told us our community is safe to open and it's safe to open because of how many cases are in per thousand residents in the town that could be reversed and simply set out as an absolute when this is reached and all of the details would be would come into
071play as that is being discussed but once that once that threshold in the town hits we i was reading uh tim boyle's email that was um further supporting how safe the schools are and that are that vermont is one of the towns that can safely open but that's all based on numbers from the harvard study i believe it was and and i i really have a problem not being able to say if our community swells to x number of cases per thousand people in the town we wouldn't say that we're closing with all of the other details that come into play at the time but once people know that that has been reached we would close and families have that they can hang their hats on they would know that without question when that population
072density of the virus hits the town if it does we have agreed to close without the nuances that might cause us not to close and that hasn't been addressed i guess and if if no one feels the same then it can be taken off the table but i didn't want to let it die without hearing any specific response to putting that number in when it's clear from the doctors if it ever is clear um thanks kelly um neil neil uh yeah so i guess to address kelly's point um my recollection is from the past several board meets that we've had on this and and hearing from the physician advisory group that um what i heard repeatedly was it it's not as simple as taking one number or a set of numbers to determine when that
073closure point is that each case can be unique is likely to be unique and while there are certain factors that they will always look to that there is some you know situational items that need to be considered in these things to to make that determination and so while i can certainly appreciate um you know a need to want to know exactly what those trigger points are what i'm hearing from the physicians is that it's it's not necessarily uh that concrete or amenable to uh you know a set formula jay uh i know we're running over time but but uh if it if it's okay with you john i do have a draft and i think without hosting the document i would be safe in reading from this draft because as i said they're waiting just
074to have the official state uh new hampshire dhhs guidelines as well as the vermont department of health uh guidelines before they finalize this but it might um it might ease kelly's concern uh to know what this draft looks like um is that okay i could do this probably in three minutes okay yeah so this is a draft and the title of it is guidelines for going to remote in response to covet wait hey jamie's jamie's waving so i i i think we should hear what what's what's worrying her okay hi jay hi jamie i'm not sure if you introduce language from something even if it's a draft that it doesn't become a public document okay what if i summarize it i still think it becomes a public document okay so i i think if it's
075not ready for public sharing that you may want to potentially wait and could you in doing that could you potentially at the end of this meeting instead of closing it tonight could you um what do they call it my brain's dead um [Music] yep what do you call it neil when you take a meeting and you don't close it you push it off and we recess yeah recess the meeting perhaps if you think that'll be out tomorrow or thursday recess the meeting to thursday and then readdress it we could all right i could i think i'd be safe in saying that the draft document is a one-pager okay and that it addresses it defines what a cluster is defines what an outbreak is um and it it puts forth suggestions for if there are x
076number of cases in x county um that it would it should trigger the next more um restrictive approach to education and so on they actually do provide numbers but the numbers are have enough latitude that would allow for contact tracing and all those more nuanced responses to an outbreak thank you uh tom um i i as neil recalls uh the same with regard to uh what we were hearing from the medical community that was part of the task force as well as others um i certainly understand kelly's concern but based on what jay has said what our plan has been all along is that we will have some idea of the factors that are going to go into this decision process and and i personally feel that uh i have faith in jay to follow
077the guidance of the task force all of the members of the task force in making this decision so to move this along i i think we should move ahead that said based on the motion that's out there i don't think we can go forward as presented because there are pieces in here that need to reference the new hampshire guidance as well so i would include those and respectfully understand what kelly's saying but do feel that we're going to have that a better understanding of what the factors are and we've said we'll have a better understanding what the factors are as we move ahead here and get that guidance as js noted from uh state officials uh i don't mind cutting in on dan i just want to let you know that there's a large group
078of people that i guess are waiting in the dresden but the zoom link is not working it's it's not allowed josh can't open it until this meeting is closed okay i don't know if there's just emailed me okay can he can he open it and make me host and i can go over there okay i would check with him not without ending this meeting i can't start the meeting until this one finishes okay okay so we do have a motion on the floor um so if there's uh dan sorry i'm going to be really quick uh tom i i i agree with everything tom said and i just want to say one thing directly to kelly which is that while we can while the doctors have used the the the small background average as a
079as a strong reason to open um a small average would mean almost necessarily that that the actual number of cases in our region is small on the other hand you could have a higher number and try and look for a threshold but the actual whatever geographic distribution of that as tom indicated might might affect whether or not they think we're in we're in trouble you know we're for example i mean some cartoon restricted to a fraternity house okay so all these members in the fraternity house we have a low population might be a lot of people there our average goes up but it's highly concentrated and not in any way by contact tracing related to our school population for example so on the one hand the minimum the average is not a bad idea as
080a threshold on the other side there's some texture to it so um for what that's worth so and and and as i said i i like the way that tom articulated things so thank you okay so do we need a new motion with uh with the amendment to add the new hampshire side of things what's the motion seconded yes neil sorry i saw your hand pop up no i was that was just i was limited it was seconded yes yeah uh jay under public content if you refreshed um i i did add some language there saying [Music] policy 825 delegation authority during copenhagen with appropriate amendments to comply with the regulations of both new hampshire and vermont okay so at this time i will go to a vote a roll call um kim hartman yes
081tom brandon yes neil oh dale yes dan rockmore yes lisa christie yes kelly hersey percy yes rick johnson yes ben bikini no garrett palm yes kelly mcconnell i'm gonna abstain because i missed too much of this discussion guys so thank you sorry connectivity and hunt yes so it passes with one no and one abstention okay moving along if everyone's okay with that um so at this time we are at reports and communications report of the chair um i recognize we've we've been through a lot recently and and i i did put some of my thoughts together i know that during times of stress there are a lot of emotions our task force has been asked to solve unsolvable problems and predict the future when the future is uncertain we're asking families and staff members to
082choose between imperfect options for return to school some of you might remember the district hosted lynn lyons to speak about anxiety a few years ago she's created a podcast to support families through this pandemic and the latest episode really spoke to me a big takeaway was the reminder that empathy has never been more important our kids need to see us working together as a community you know each of us everyone who's involved in this is wearing several hats our administration are advocating for the needs of both students and staff we have nurses health experts school counselors attempting to balance medical and social emotional needs of our students parents you know your children best and have seen most deeply how the pandemic has impacted each child our teachers are working to balance the health and wellness
083of their own families during this time while negotiating a whole new reality to classroom instruction personally my hats i see my own children yearning for back to school so they can enjoy recess and connect with their peers i've watched my partner a teacher worry about problem solving all summer long as she considers the best way to educate and keep our collective students safe this year the teachers i see you i sincerely hope that your well-deserved time in july provided all that you needed and we are glad to have your voices at the table as we continue to work at the building level together as a community with all our various hats we need to keep empathy kindness and respect at the forefront of our work and and the last thing i would say is for
084anyone that's not familiar i would strongly recommend checking out the lynn lyons podcast now i will go to jamie with the business administrators report i don't have a report i'm sorry i can report that we've all been very busy and the sau is rolling along and we're supporting everything that's going on in the schools and we're on target for budget-wise at the sau great dr badams the superintendent's report i i just want to say that there's a lot of great work going on at the school level right now a lot of very great inclusive work uh that that is um involving every everybody in our staff and that we have different challenges at different schools um probably our most complicated uh task right now is to work through the the high school program uh they're
085just so many combinations and permutations when you start to look at the master schedule there that it's it's incredibly challenging uh one thing that i think is uh it it's a complicating factor but it's a probably a good con complicating factor is that the response to our survey um from parents so far about their intentions for schooling for their children um mean that there are about 18 students at rms who'll be looking for remote options we're under 50 so far at the high school unless that's changed jim julian deb um which had been previously at over 200 and i think um sean correct me from wrong vote in the 20s for marion cross you know so um and at the race school we're we're also looking at numbers that are small enough to accommodate a
086single section for each grade level so so things are starting to line up it's it this is like solving a very difficult rubik's cube um and uh we'll continue to work together and i john what you said is so important we uh we need everyone to understand that there's there is no intent on the part of the administration the board um to put people in in danger uh we're trying to make decisions based on the best science that's available and there there will be this especially in a community like ours that has so many people that are so knowledgeable um it's it's difficult to come to consensus we won't please everyone but again our intentions are to do the best we can for everyone to keep everyone safe and finally i'll say i i'll talk
087about this more in the dresden meeting but i had an opportunity to meet with some students actually live today properly socially distanced um and and masked uh but had the opportunity to actually hear from some of our children about their their hopes for the school year and i'll share more of that in the dresden meeting but um it sent me back to my office with a smile just just to see them and see how eager they are to work with each other and how badly they miss their teachers that came out loud and clear interestingly after i listened to an interview with some five to ten year olds on npr in the morning saying the same thing they miss their teachers they said that even more than that they missed each other um and uh
088and i think that's uh that's that's a testament to just how important the the very special relationship between teachers and students um is and and we need to keep that in mind and realize that that's we're trying to preserve and re-establish after many many months of sitting behind computer screens so that's it thank you this time i would ask if there is a motion to move into non-public tom just get my language right move to enter non-public session in accordance with rsa 91-a colon 3. a second kim can i can i have a question i'm i'm wondering if it's a good idea or not to maybe make this non-public be after dresden so i don't know if that's possible if we can recess it until after we finish dresden and reconvene i'm sorry go ahead
089i was just thinking i saw jay had his hand up too we might be able to do a quick non-public here just to discuss some issue and if it's since we don't have to come back into the public session maybe josh could jump off and open up the dresden meeting thoughts on that from those that are more computer savvy than i josh are you able to spin us off into a non-public and then you can go ahead and shut us down and we can we can open up in the uh dresden yep i can once you're on the non-public i can check that we just have one webinar account so this is our webinar account um i can switch over to that one and you'll be in the non-public and i can get the webinar
090now we don't have the chat we don't have the chat so we you can't give us the link for the non-public in a chat how are we going to do this um i've sent it out through email i just resent it the link stays the same so if you want to bookmark that okay so before we do this i think we're also waiting on a second um so i'll take a second kelly hersey and uh a roll call kim menya tom canon yes neil yes kelly hersey mercy yes dan um rockmore yes but i'm still a little bit sorry confused about where oh okay josh just sent it great never mind got it thank you i was going to address that too thank you uh kelly mcconnell if you're able mcdonnell yes thank you lisa
091sorry i'm having internet trouble um christy yes rick johnson yes garrett palm yes ben gini yes i think i got everyone accept myself hunt yes um so again board members um it should be in your email and i will see you on the other side we will not need to come back into public so thank you very much