001okay we're lied okay so recording is setup you are now live on YouTube and recording you can go ahead and start one every year whenever you're ready Thank You Josh I have not heard from anyone else that they were not able to attend so maybe give it another 30 seconds to see if Kelly McConnell who else are we looking for Garrett from another minute just in case all right well let them join in when they get here but um I think it's just because of time and we do have back-to-back meetings tonight I will call this meeting to order a special board meeting for the SAU seventy at 6:01 p.m. and at this time if any members of the public would like to address the board I'm seeing two attendees on here Catherine or Linda
002maybe if either of you are interested in addressing the board please chime in please use the raise your hand option okay no comment nope looks like we're both excellent thank you both for joining us then I will move on to agenda review does anyone have anything they'd like to add into the agenda change in the agenda at this time Jay again there's a note on the agenda itself that says that there aren't non public minutes from May 6 so we can speak and strike that excellent thank you I did notice that anything else is everyone good to that there weren't any there wasn't a non public meeting that night great anything else anyone would like to move around change or add okay then moving forward we had a request from the the equity committee to
003do a presentation to the board and Lisa were you going to do the presentation or was there someone joining us hope you're muted you sorry I was emailing Julie Stevenson because she has our slides and was gonna lead the presentation and she had somewhere to be right before this and I told her we were planning on starting at 607 and you are way ahead of the game so according so I just text her to were up but let me see do you want to kind of give just kind of an intro to it you know to maybe the public or board members that maybe aren't aware of kind of what the equity committee is and what it's doing and then we can dive deeper in when she joins us yes and let me even see
004if I know how to share something which I don't think I do so I'm not even gonna try okay I'll just start without okay this is this is hard because we're starting with a history and I don't really know the history so my apologies sorry at least I'm gonna take you off for a second would it make sense if we moved on to like the policy discussion and came back to this I apologize for speaking a turn no no you're not out of turn I think if everyone would feel more comfortable about it I guess I would throw it at Lisa if you're more comfortable with that and waiting we can definitely go through kind of the business requiring action which shouldn't take too long but yeah I am more comfortable waiting just again because
005I'm new to the committee as of like five weeks ago and we wanted to get a historical perspective which I feel she is most appropriate to give so yes Jake um Julie's trying to get in right now it's getting she's not able to get in so I told her to go in through the public link so I'm trying to guide her in can she share through the public link she wants me to email her the link but I'm not that technologically adept Josh are you able to get Julie Stephenson in yeah I'll it'll just take me a second I was under the link and even if she drove mine's not in public I can transfer over to the side of things great thank you yep Josh Malloy and air traffic control exactly um well then
006while we wait for her I can start with um who is current well I can start with who's currently on the equity committee and then we can work our way backwards if that makes sense the equity committee currently consists of three members of the Hanover high school staff one member of the staff of the race school the Marion Cross school and RMS and then for community members one from each of the four schools in the district and then myself from the board perspective and this is an expansion that happened about five weeks ago to an existing equity committee that's been around for about two years at the high school level so the equity initiative began with a bunch of teachers and administrators at the high school having an interest in this topic and they've landed
007to the point where we are now and sau committee with representatives from all of the schools both at the staff level and at the parent level and the idea is to make sure that the goal is to make sure that equity issues are embedded in everything that the district does and that the lens of equity becomes one so hi I am so sorry I don't know why it wouldn't let me in hi everyone Julie thanks for joining us hey so Julie I started at the end with new the cruisers are and that's in the grid great perfect so you start with the slides okay avid a screen share is that fine with all of you perfect all right here we go screen share okay so maybe nothing will work tonight host has disabled attendee screen
008sharing Josh you're not helping me out tonight where are you it's a disabled I can go without the slides if I can't one second dr. well I'll be broadcast engineers by the time we're done with this try and now Julie see if that works okay great I think it might work so they get to the right screen okay all right so we just are here to update you on the equity committee work and the equity committee has been working at this for a few years not as a Dresden School District committee but as a Hanover high school group and it's expanded in the last year and we just wanted to make sure you guys are aware of everything that's going on Lisa and I are not doing the lion's share of the work there are
009a lot of people who are doing a lot of work we just happen to be the face of that tonight so just so everyone is clear that there are a lot of people behind us and we agreed to do the presentation but this is not our committee necessarily it's just one that we do work on with a group of people okay so the agenda we just want to give you a quick history I'm going to go through really quickly it's I know beautiful out and you guys don't need to be here till 11:00 tonight so history goals and then if you guys have questions so mainly you saw who was on the committee but the committee didn't start this spring it didn't start in the crisis that were in now or the one we've been
010in throughout history it started and surfaced at Hanover High School in 2018 2019 there were conversations that were happening around the high school in different pockets some of it was pupil service team conversations talking about you know do we have a disproportionate number percentage of our students in tracked kloewer tracked classes based on their socioeconomic status or based on the racial status and then we have we didn't want to read all the bullet points in our slide and we'll send you our slide show but there were different things that went on at the high school that year that that surfaced the idea of this equity committee and so that was a couple years ago so actions that we took that year there's a list of actions we took but one of those was creating the
011equity committee there's also a staff small group we had a student called a students of color affinity group started their different dates on this that you'll see but different things happened at the high school and towards the end of that year the 2018-2019 school year we started to talk about a potential equity audit and when we were talking about that we thought well why are we just doing this with the high school it would make more sense to have a K through 12 effort and at some point we should talk to the leadership group and see if the other schools would like to join us in this effort and as you can imagine and I really can't remember it I talked about at least a was it the end of the 2019 school year the
012summer or the beginning of the next school year but we talked to the leadership group and as you can imagine the leadership we have at our school and all the schools that we have decided that this would be a great thing to embark on together so we expanded the equity group that was a high school group and created the dress and equity planning committee the planning committee has these goals just so everyone's clear on them to obtain district-wide leads assessment regarding equity diversity and inclusion you may have a few of students in our school have noticed that this spring we sent out an equity audit to our students to our parents to our staff we did one like that we also the groups within each school did the equity audit too we had a few
013people news will answer a different survey we decided to hold off on the elementary school students in terms of our equity audit because we feel like they needed someone to explain the audit and then some of the language mean there's a there's a an elementary school specific survey but we wanted to make sure that their teachers could explain to them a little bit so that they could answer more appropriately potentially and understand the assessment we did hear from a few people of elementary school age parents that they may not have answered the survey because they thought they were supposed to wait till their kids they answered the survey and so we might do another one in the fall just so you know and then the the next goal was to unpack the role that privilege
014particularly race and class privilege play in our community leverage that privilege to increase equity increase personal and professional confidence of staff around issues of power privilege and I dent 'ti and then the long-term goal I think that is true you know close to our hearts is we would hope that student demographics are not predictive of student experience in the district or educational outcomes so the equity committee started at Hanover high school turned into the dresden equity committee where we added members that you saw that lisa told you about him I'm not aware but from the different schools and then we lived like that for most of the year until this spring and kovat we got back the equity audit and we decided that we should add community members and parents from each school and so
015you guys saw who those members are who have expertise in the area who have personal experience in the area and who are just interested and want to help so the group expanded this spring so it's an ever-changing and expanding group just you may be curious of the action steps four to nineteen twenty one of them was the equity audit which I was just speaking of and I'm going to show you a few slides on cee the Center for educational equity because as I am suspect of any outside group or inside group usually you want to know who these people are they're doing the audit what's there what's their you know reason for doing it and helping and so I'll explain a little bit about them we have monthly small group meetings we continue to support
016the student diversity Club at the high school and those are some of the things the group has done this year um and this is just a little bit about the Center for educational equity they helped do these assessments the community resource map they there's a number of things you can read so I'll let you do that and but mainly and when you get the slide show later you can read it more just I think this is more of you know the overarching their goals to improve and sustain the systemic this is systemic capacity of public education systems to address problems caused by segregation inequality and inequities to increase equitable educational opportunities for all students regardless of race gender religion and national origin and they serve people like us the Cee Cee Cee provides technical assistance
017and training to States districts schools and community-based organizations within region 1 at the request of school boards and other responsible government agencies they do all of this work for free it's federally funded program you can look them up and read about them this is just a slide that tells you about their levels of technical assistance that they would give schools and this is to give you just a little bit more of an overview of whoops sorry about that what we have for groups within our schools right now it it's a little Hannover high school heavy but that's Lisa and I were talking about today to try to give you guys an idea we have the district equity committee that I'm just talking I was just talking about we also have an HHS staff equity group
018we have small groups that meet monthly and we have one group that has about 35 members who look at equity from a staff perspective at the high school we had a March intensive called exploring whiteness anti-racist March intensive group and they have told us a number of stories that have informed our work we have a diversity Club and we have HHS Council that was just created Subcommittee on equity and they were created as a reaction to the things that are happening now that fifth group and but the rest of it was created before that the summer and fall 2020 where we're headed um we have some data people on her committee who are gonna disaggregate the data a little bit more because when you look at the equity audit that was sent to you and
019sent to our parents and sent to our staff this week it looks like things might be doing all right right but when you when you take apart that data there's certain groups that might not be and we want to make sure that we don't see the huge picture and miss the personal stories of people that are really suffering and so that's the first thing we're gonna do we are also going to look for additional information I can tell you from the high school perspective we can look at tracking data we can look at discipline data and and you know there are you can see differences based on socioeconomic and other things but we're gonna have someone really crunch those numbers so we can know that not just feel it and then PD was clear in
020the equity audit that you want that's one place we can start and we can start before we even get the elementary school numbers in and all of that and so the equity team is working on a leadership three-day PD for our leadership team and then in our last meeting we thought well wouldn't it be great if the board did it too so we may add you in on that or we might do our own and we might create one for you if you guys are willing so that's one piece and then we're at we've asked the principals of all the schools for a monthly teacher PD and I know at the high school we're able to do that because we were doing Hart's work this year and we're gonna transfer that to some of the
021same in faculty and then the other schools are gonna carve out the time to do the one hour piece and then what's still sort of in the balance is trying to figure out what to do with the k-12 time do we want to give up some of that k12 time to look specifically at curriculum in terms of equity and I think the leadership group is still talking about what they feel like they can do there in terms of giving up time and then we started parent focus groups I don't know if any of you were in them that we started parent focus groups this week where we're gathering in additional information to supplement our data and then when we were talking about t2 PD and we realize it takes a community to change culture and
022to work on culture why not have parent PD and so we may dive into that area in terms of parent education there were some notes that went out from principals this spring that sort of said it all you know it starts at home and and you know we need parents on board to help with this but maybe some parents have are struggling with how to do that and maybe we can get some experts to help them figure out good ways to interact and help sort of in the educational process of their kids so I think that's pretty much it Lisa and I will try to answer questions people that would really be great and answering questions that you should give a pat on the back when you see them we've been at this a long
023long time Nicole right here and Devon have been amazing and then we have a great reading list we got from Chris who's RMS as their librarian and you know just a really great group of people to be spending time with this spring on zoom' so I'm gonna unshare so you guys can all look at each other and we will try our best to answer your questions yeah and I'll just start by seconding I really want to thank the high school the high school in particular but then all the schools for taking this on it's a lot it's hard to talk about and it's especially hard to talk about on zoom' you know they were very brave and they invited community members to be part of their group having never had a lot we've never had
024a live meeting so we're talking about really tough stuff on zoom' and it's been incredible and respectful and a learning experience and I I do come away with from every meeting particularly impressed with our educators they're you know they're in it so thank you thank you Lisa Thank You Julie you know I think a special thanks to the entire committee for this work and to both of you kind of pulling it together tonight we really appreciate you being here to present this time I'll put it up to questions I see Rick's hand up so I'll let you go first Rick a great presentation I'll start with a little story so I was on a Board of Trustees call this afternoon for a school that I went to and we were talking about diversity in equity
025and everyone on the call was a white male so and I know this is a tough problem to solve and dresdin but are you what is the makeup of all these different groups that are we in trying to get some diversity on the panels and how are you dealing with the class issue do we have different different people on the on these committees that are that can actually talk about the problems were facing I can start from the two perspectives that I know the diversity the district-wide diversity committee which was the thrust of most of what we presented tonight we're mostly white women with a she white men but at least two of us are non-white and two of us are at least three of us are parenting non-white students and I don't know about
026the socioeconomic part of it because we haven't asked um so I I can't speak to that but there there is a little bit of diversity in the makeup of the equity committee itself and the parent focus groups the we've only had one and it was mostly white parents but a lot of them are parenting non-white students and we had I think we had 25 participants and I think five or six of the parents were parents of color and probably ten were parents who are parenting either biracial kids or kids whose race is different than their own so that parent group was diverse or as diverse as we can sort of get randomly one thing that came from that is we are going to have special focus groups of parents that are more affinity group oriented
027so we're going to specifically have a focus group of parents of students of color we're going to specifically have a focus group of parents of color we're going to specifically have a focus group of parents of students with disabilities and sort of go that way just to create to do two things one create a safe safer space for those conversations to happen but also to take the onus off of the few people of color in all of these new rooms to educate the rest of us so yeah and then I sorry and I think Julie can speak to the rest of it and then it's interesting in terms of where the conversations started in 2018-19 was a conversation I had with someone in try in terms of trying to start to do affinity groups in
028the school the conversation I had about the struggle it seems that some of our students had whose rage race did not match that of their parents and and how we were noticing a pattern there so and then the in terms of socioeconomic which I think is is a huge piece that we need to really dive into in this area we have talked about cold has Donna Gramps which we actually found out we couldn't hey we were trying to think of ways that we could get focus groups where we would actually pay people a stipend to come and be part of it because we might have people who can't because they have two jobs going and maybe they would leave for a night if they if they add a stipend and trying to get so we're
029trying to figure that out we found out with grant money we can't with a title to grant money pay people to be part of these focus groups but we are figuring out another way potentially around that you know whether we raise the money whether we put it up ourselves whatever we need to do to make sure that we get we get a background of parents not just the ones that have someone who can stay at home with their kids while they show up at a right azu meeting or a meeting or a focus group meeting that we might have so where we are aware of that and we're we're trying to think of different ways that we can remedy that situation and I just want I assume there you know some of the funds that
030we have Jamie manages and Jay manages I don't know if those type of payments could be made but we may want to look at because you're right i I'm just afraid that these meetings are happening when someone is running to one job after getting off the previous job and they just don't have time and it just makes it more difficult for them to actually participate and give us the ground truth of what they're dealing with we thought that we thought there was an easy answer were like we'll just use this money and pay them and we're having to scramble a little bit but we'll will scramble figure it out we'll definitely figure it out yeah thank you both any other questions from board members Marcella hi Lisa Angela this is such wonderful work I just
031really want to thank you I didn't know about all of these efforts and even just being educated about the history of the process and all of the places you're drawing from has been really heartening and um I'm just excited for y'all this is a really wonderful time people are feeling motivated to to make change and it's great that this is just sort of building on what you've already done and I think that that's fantastic I also just kind of wanted to affirm something that I feel like I'm hearing a little bit and in different ways that you're talking about the audit and the data which is that you know it isn't bad if all your data is good right like that's that's wonderful and it doesn't mean there isn't work to be done so right
032like even if all the data is great and the people looking at the data don't find trends which I'm sure they will cuz that's how these things play out it doesn't mean that you know there's any reason to stop working on these really big sort of systemic issues and so I don't want you to feel like you have to prove that this is worthy work I know I feel that what you're doing is already absolutely valuable and incredibly important so thank you it's also really interested in the question you raised about curriculum and how to maybe incorporate it and I know I've been speaking with Lisa a little bit about an initiative that is happening in the Lebanon School District working with Jameson Davis and Ariel King from her schweitzer grant for an anti-racism policy
033but part of the grant is also developing a five through seven curriculum that tries to incorporate anti racism into existing models so it's all about saying what are you already doing we don't want this to be thought of as like lost time for the teachers or additional prep but like how can we make small tweaks and just sort of change the perspective to incorporate like anti racism industry move education and so I think this is really exciting that there are so many different parts of our extended Upper Valley community that can come together possibly and there can be a lot of synergy and so I think that this is just wonderful so thank you so much I'm trying to think I was taking notes and I was just so excited when we were talking but
034I think leave it there for now and follow up because this is great thank you so much and and on that point I think we keep as a committee at least for the five weeks I've been in the weekly meetings and they've been weekly not monthly I was noticing um is that we keep talking about how to make this sustainable and infused because only by infusing it will it be sustainable it has to just sort of be part of what we do and you know so that is on the minds of a lot of yeah that's definitely on the minds of the committee and that was definitely first and foremost and the people who participated in the Karen panel last week we heard that we heard that message from them loud and clear great thank
035you any other questions before we move forward I'm sure we'll we'll hear more as the process moves along and again at Marcel I wish I could have said what you said so eloquently so thank you but I think you can kind of see on all the faces that I'm looking at that there's a lot of excitement around this and great great start to it thank you and from what I hear from Lisa we will be on the agenda monthly right to do a report is that what you were telling me Lisa well I wondered if now that we're a committee of the will there will just be a chance to get like a quick update every month or and you'll probably be giving that Lisa all right is that that or whoever just wants to
036show up we'll make sure we'll make sure there's a committee update at all of the SAU meetings and if there is a month where there isn't potentially it could be done at one of the others but I would have to run that by the other chairs but yeah thank you thank you thanks guys okay moving ahead we're gonna just really quickly I don't see Justin here do you need me to stay or can I go to the other thing I needed to go to you can go to those need you to go thank you all right thank you nice to see all of you right thanks Julie okay so moving into the business requiring action we just have the to approval of minutes so if I could get a motion to approve looking for a
037hand Kelly McConnell there we go move to approve the minutes of the June 9th 2020s eu70 board meeting as presented and a second meal and any questions comments concerns great we'll do a roll call Kelly her C or C yes Rick yes Johnson Neil no yes Tom and and yes Kelly McCall McConnell yes Lisa I think I have to abstain because I wasn't there due to eighth grade bit big you do not have to know you don't have then yes as you saw the option to read the I read your good thank you to breathe great Marcella good lassie yes Kim Herminia then Unni yes and Dan Roquemore yes and hunt yes excellent and moving to approval of policies these were we discussed at the last the last board meeting and if there's anyone from
038the policy committee that wants to touch on any of these before we and I move to get these moving forward yes Kelly I'm not on the policy committee Thanks thank you to all of you who are I know you've been working your tails off so thank you I actually just had a question about the agenda it said that we're gonna approve them in August and that and my questions actually for Dresden as well are we in fact approving them tonight I see this the one has to be approved tonight but so from what I was told from the SAU offices was these were supposed to be in August because we've had the discussion but since we had the special board meeting tonight there were a few that we needed to get through because of training
039and other programming and J maybe you have some further information on that yeah I'm a little confused I think that might be an error because we actually approved we used our prerogative to approve on a single vote the the suicide prevention policy so we just need to reaffirm that in this motion this evening and the others were already you've already received a first reading so I think we're approving them tonight okay so at this point would anyone like to make a motion Ric move to approve policies jl DB b g CF g CR b b b a g b eb e g b c d and j ra and a second then great any further discussion great we'll go right around the room Kelliher see Percy yes Rick Neil yes Tom Canyon yes Kelly McConnell
040Connolly yes Lisa Christie yes thank you Marcela you bla see yes Kim been genious and Maria from hunt yes excellent thank you all weaving forward reports and communications report of the chairs just that our next meeting will be Tuesday August 18th 2020 pending the it's not necessary to add another special board meeting but again remind the public that that is a possibility and remind all board members to be on the lookout just in case and that would be the report of the chair superintendence report thanks I'll start out just by letting the board know that Ryan Schoonover is replacing Kate as my assistant and she doesn't start until July 1st but she's already had one meeting at the SAU with Kate to begin the transition I spoke with her at length this morning and she's
041already processed in with Amy Talman so she's she's ready to get going I just want everybody to be alert though that we have a transition coming up here and so July is going to be a little bit get to know you and get to know all the different systems and processes and that could be a little challenging but we're gonna do our best to make that as smooth as we can the other thing I guess I'll cheat and do half of my my kovat update right now we Jamie and I had our second meeting with our nurse nurses Michael Hensley from Hanover Public Health and and actually included our union representatives from both Norwich and Hanover to just go over some of the things that we're keeping an eye on in terms of preparing for
042the start of school and the conversations are all wonderful the nurses are really being proactive from all across all of our schools and and working very closely with dr. Chapman and working closely with Michael Hensley to sort of take the lead I'm making sure that all those things that we need to do to be ready to have a safe start are in place so we covered everything from PPE and and trying to estimate how much we're gonna need to how we're gonna make sure that we create a survey that that helps us get at the needs of our staff and our families we've already had a few families that have contacted us to let us know that they really can't have their child start up in the fall so we're working through that and we
043Jamie can chime in and correct me if I'm wrong I don't have a date Andy but I know we're shooting for around July 15th to get a survey out like I said both to our employees and as well as to our families to figure out what their child care needs are likely to be and all that number one hang-up we have right now especially thinking about a live start is the restrictions that we're gonna have on transportation that's gonna be a really big one for us to work through and it'll be subject to whatever the orders are in place at the time as far as distancing and all that we right now I think Jamie had shared with me that we could have to have as many as three different runs to get our kids
044in so we'll be we'll be having to factor all that and when we start to think about how we're actually going to do this and stay in compliance with the rules so I'll leave it there and I'll finish up when we're in with the rest of Odom earrings from the state great Thank You Jay Jamie administrators updated yeah I posted an updated end of year projection it hasn't changed much just a few thousand from the last one but it is posted there I got the SAU undone Dresden not so much sorry about that and crazy and if you have any questions just shoot me an email and then I'll shoot the answers out to everybody but it hasn't changed much since less since last we met excellent Thank You Jamie this time I will ask
045for a motion to move in to non-public Rick move in move to enter a non public session under RSA 91 - 8 : 3 - and a second been and we will go right around with Kelliher C or C yes brick Johnson yes Neil Odell yes Tom Chandan yes Kelly McConnell McConnell yes Marcella good lessee yes Kim Cartman yes then you need us Dan more yes Lisa Christie yes and hunt yes we will not need to come back into public and we will scramble to get back in time to start The Dresden meeting at 7 p.m. any questions or comments before we go yes Kelly McCallum just don't forget everybody to copy that address that Josh gave us before you leave the meeting otherwise you won't have it and then once we are done there
046we will it will be done so thank you all look forward to seeing everyone at the next meeting you