001All right, guys. Should we um come to order? Yep. >> 607. Welcome everyone. Thank you for being here on this random Monday. Um >> do we pledge? >> Sure. >> Okay. Pledge to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. >> Oh, we all got new um signs. >> We did. I was uh tired of looking at the mismatch, so we ordered new signs for every board member in the district. So, we are >> looking good. >> Snazzy. Um okay. I know um we have a visitor. So, thank you so much for for joining us. Um I think first we're going to go through approval of the minutes. >> Sure. >> Does that make sense? Is
002that okay? >> Works for me. >> All right. So, uh we have three to do. We have a bit of a backlog. So, looking at June 11. Uh anybody have any concerns or edits in that? >> Nope. >> They look good to me, too. >> Should we turn these on? >> They are on. I I went and did it. I believe you should be good. Mine was not on yours. No, that's all good. >> All right. Why don't we do them all at the same time? Um, looking at the public minutes of August 7th, anybody have any concerns with those >> August 5th? >> Yeah. The only thing that you might run into >> if you do them all together, >> okay, >> I was not at one, but I only three of us were
003in August, so we'll lead. >> Okay. >> Well, I was thinking the same thing like the June one. I wasn't here in the June one. So, >> so what if we go through Are there any changes on the August 7th? >> Nope. >> Okay. Um and then um just looking for edits on the non-public for August 7th. I thought they look good, too. All right. Can I entertain a motion to approve the minutes of um June 11th? >> So moved, Sophie. >> Thanks, Sophie. All right, I'll second. All in favor, please say I. >> I. >> Anybody opposed? >> Any abstensions? Okay, so three 02. >> Do you need to say Cameron's name for the notes or no? >> Cameron. >> Um, yeah, just Cameron and Eric. >> Yep. Sharon will >> sounds good. Uh,
004what about the public minutes of August 7th? Um, I'll move to accept those. Uh, we can do both public and non-public, right? >> Um, >> yeah, second. >> A second. Thanks, Eric. Uh, all in favor, please say I. >> I'll abstain. >> Y. Anybody opposed? Okay. So, 302 with um Sophie and >> Kathleen um abstaining. All right. Sounds great. So today um we're lucky to have someone here talking to us about um board roles and the idea was specifically sort of to talk about some of the policy work where we're getting instructions from um you know at the state level and then what really is our role in in um reviewing those and then we'll start looking at board goals um and I think we also um Cameron and I have started doing negotiations for
005the teacher contract and so we just wanted to talk about that a little bit too. That's our plan. >> Yeah. >> Okay. So, um Will, thank you for being here. >> Sure. Well, thank you for inviting me. Um people find this really hard to believe, but this is actually the most enjoyable part of my job because I actually get to meet the people who are our members as opposed to sitting in front of my computer all day long doing policy work. So, thank you uh for this opportunity. Um, as mentioned the the I think we have kind of a a shifting um uh agenda. Uh, so I'm going to address roles and responsibilities which which is necessarily going to include uh your chief responsibility which is policy work. >> Yeah. >> And um there'll be
006some other things. Before I get started, I do like to point out the two handout, the resource document I gave you because I think they're, you know, really helpful for all board members, uh, especially new ones. But, uh, the right to know law resources, they're pretty, um, uh, straightforward or self-explanatory. U, but the I guess the maybe a helpful one to look at is number two, which is just a flowchart of, uh, what kind of communications trigger the meeting responsibilities under the right to no law. So, I'm not going to go through that. that I'm just highlighting that. >> I'm also just thinking before you start like maybe we just introduce ourselves and say how long we've been here. >> Sure. Yep. >> Always helpful. >> Okay. >> You want to go? Have you had
007the orientation like before the joint board meeting and all of that? >> She just met with myself. Yeah. >> So, yeah. So, that's it. >> Oh, she'll be the one who's most surprised then I hope. >> But there will be more orientation. >> Okay. Perfect. Yep. >> Um I'm Sophie. I've been on the board for almost three years. >> Yeah. Jennifer Scrapford. This is my second term. My first term was two years and now I'm in a three-year term. >> Yeah, her caring. I've been on for three and a half years. >> Cameron or I was just elected in March. So, it's been a few months. >> So, you said two years and then you were elected for three, but you didn't say which year you were in your third. >> Uh, I'm starting my
008second year of my >> Okay, so four years now. >> Okay, great. >> Yeah. >> Um, yeah. So, a relatively inexperienced board. not not completely new, but so you you kind of know how your board works. And believe it or not, that often is the more important thing. You know, I might like highlight some guard rails in there, but um you know, the state really doesn't impose a lot of u governance on how boards self-govern uh other than the right to know law. Um, so if you hear something that sounds like it's not what your board does, feel free to ask a question or just keep doing what you're doing and pretend I didn't say what I said. >> Um, okay. So, uh, oh, the second one. That's right. The right to the, uh, other
009resource document. I think that one is, uh, useful for everyone. Um, oh, do I have the older version? I might. Um, there's a couple of pieces in there. One is important New Hampshire statutes for school boards and school districts. It's kind of if you take a peek at that, it actually um will point you in the direction of statutes that some of which are easy to find, but some you'd be hardressed to try to figure out where they hid them. Um there's probably 30 different chapters where they have education related bills. Uh so that's a kind of a helpful list. And then the um the third item in there is selected statutory duties and powers. So we're going to talk today about uh buckets of responsibilities sort of areas of responsibilities whereas that piece actually
010highlights some very individual um specific duties that boards have you know provide transportation for K through 8. We're not going to talk about transportation tonight but there are many many pieces where the board is required to do something. Um, most of those are reflected in in uh our sample policies. Um, but it's a good place to uh look if you're uh trying to find other duties you might have. Okay. So, with that said, we'll jump into uh the PowerPoint. I believe you have a three three slides per page version. Yep. >> Okay. >> This version right here. >> Um when I when I um talk about what slide I'm on, it's in the corner of the slide itself. You'll see which slide we're talking about. I'm going to jump to three core principles. Um I
011I I also want to mention that uh typically to do a full presentation of this, it's about, you know, an hour and 15 minutes and that doesn't even count uh questions. So I'm going to zip through things. Um I'm happy to take any questions you have. Those tend to be more important than my just spilling information. Um so if you want to stop me with a question, uh especially related to what I'm talking about, great. um otherwise maybe uh you know wait a little bit maybe we'll get to that. Okay. So the first uh we start with three core principles usually in this training and the first core principle is pretty easy. Um so I'm on uh what is uh slide three? Oh, let me hit the larger button. There we go. So slide three,
012there's a statute that reads, it shall be the duty of the school board to provide at district expense elementary and secondary education to all pupils who reside in the district. If you didn't have that duty, you wouldn't need to have a school board. So that is why you're here. Um what that means means it means something different to many people even among the board. You might have different ideas of you know what an education should look like or uh to what extent district expense should be prioritized over programming that you offer in the school. Uh you're going to have differences among yourselves and you're going to have different constituencies that all have different ideas about what that means. Um, but one thing that's important about this particular duty is when you as a board member,
013you're sitting there and you're trying to struggle with do I vote yes, do I vote no. Um, you know, just hearken back to, you know, if you if it's a close call, maybe you lean in the favor of what's best for the students. Uh, so we'll jump through. I'm going to try to go fast but not too fast. Okay. Core principle number two, collective authority of a school board. One thing that comes as a shock to newly elected board members, sometimes even experienced board members, but also something that the public doesn't understand and it often causes, you know, you to get communications that you really can't do anything about. only inherent authority that you have when you're elected to the board is to sit here and participate as a board member um and vote and
014deliberate in a manner that's different than if you were sitting out there. You have no other authority when the meeting's over. You don't have authority. You don't have power. You're still a board member, but you can only operate collectively uh with one little two exceptions. uh well three I guess committees um but even committee work with very uh limited exception committees don't make final decisions they make recommendations to the board to make final decisions u we'll talk about uh maybe one example later on uh having to do with manifest but the other one some districts uh you don't have a high school so probably you don't have this but high school districts quite frequently will have a student conduct committ committee and under a specific statute the student conduct committee has uh power and authority
015to make decisions on behalf of the board. Uh the uh so the other exception two other exceptions um non-meating situation uh there's two that are very common for school boards. One is collective bargaining. Uh so there's you know these uh uh functions where the collective bargaining doesn't happen in a duly called meeting but it does happen pursuant to a statute. Uh that applies not only to the bargaining itself but even to the school board. So let's say there was a uh you know you're getting close to the uh date where the um contract has to be uh uh reached. You have to have a tenative agreement. You have a bargaining session Monday night uh and Tuesday, uh your bargaining team leader sends an email to the rest of the board saying, "Hey, can everybody meet
016at uh noon to talk about where we are before we hit a impass?" You would all be able to jump on a Zoom uh team's meeting, a telephone call, uh come here. You don't need to post it. You don't need to take minutes. So, all of the meeting requirements don't apply to that. Similarly, if you have a situation where you need the board needs to consult with its attorney and the attorney is able to communicate contemporaneously, you'd be able to do that in a non-meating. Same thing. Um, so those are the two, you know, two exceptions. The third exception is when you delegate a responsibility to either one member or possibly uh two members. Uh and the most uh obvious example of that is when you elect a chairperson. So the chairperson um there's there's
017no statute in the state that requires a school board to have a chairperson, but it'd be kind of silly to try to have a meeting without somebody who had the authority to preside over the meeting. Uh the chair also has duties usually uh not uniformly, but um typically sign documents on behalf of the board. uh sometimes act as the spokesperson for you know things that the board has done or things that the board is considering. Um they you know they don't it's not I'm the chair so when I speak the board has to follow it's the chair is speaking on behalf of you know where the board might be or has been. Um so those are your three uh exceptions to uh everything has to happen at a duly called meeting uh and you can
018only do things um acting as a majority of a quorum. So you have to have a quorum for a meeting uh and then you have to have a majority make decisions on behalf of the board. I think there's only one place where you have to have a a supermajority and that is in the ceiling of your uh uh non-public minutes. Third core principle is governance not management. So understanding what the difference is between governing the school district and managing the school district. Um we highlight we put this text in red. I think do you have color? Uh okay. Um so in red it's not your job to run the schools but to see that they're run well or if you only have one school to uh see that the school is run well. So you're
019you're basically supervising the person who's managing your district and all of its employees and all of its students and all of its programs. Uh so board sets policies, visions and goals of the district and helps fulfill them through oversight of the administration. Uh primarily you accomplish this through legislation. Uh so basically that's your policy work. Uh but it's al you've got also got some uh limited executive uh functions mainly hiring a superintendent. Of course you're in a multi-dist SAU so your authority there is very limited in a single district SAU it's the the the school board itself that is doing uh the uh all of the oversight over the uh superintendent. Um you've got a couple of other executive uh functions very you know very discreet ones and then you've got a major sub uh
020authority which is the quasi judicial function. Hopefully it's not one that you're asked to uh employ frequently but it does uh underscore the need to respect some of the guard rails that are uh that differentiate uh governance from management. superintendent implements the policies uh visions and goals that the board establishes, manages all the operations of the district and its schools, but then also has this advisory capacity as well. And you can find this in in a couple of the statutes uh that that uh describe the superintendent's responsibilities and also in some of the department of education regulations um where where um you know it's the superintendent who has the obligation of making sure that the board is complying with its responsibilities. Um you know what 50 we just released today the legislative summary for the
021past legislative session. There are 52 new statutes >> uh or amendments that regulate what your district does or what you do and it's the superintendent's responsibility to u make sure that you're doing these things. Surprise surprise. Um hopefully you know our our work is helpful in that regard. But but that's where you get that information from. Um also uh con practical considerations regarding policy. So whether there's something that develops in the school that suggests that hey maybe you need a policy maybe we don't have one on that topic but it's you know it's specific to your district. Uh or you have a policy but maybe it needs to be tinkered with because it's not quite working or you have a policy that you know we haven't updated in 20 years and it doesn't quite match
022um the the you know what's actually happening in in the building. Um so it's the superintendent's job to to provide um recommendations and advice to the board and those regards and of course uh relative to uh budget especially. So just some uh you know a little few pieces on the relationship of governance and management. Uh we start with just manage uh superintendent services. I'm not going to go through those. Uh uh I I assume you all know RSA means it's basically a statute of the state stands for revised statutes annotated. If you see ED that's a department of education regulation. Sometimes you'll see um other agency regulations for New Hampshire that begin with maybe lab for labor or SAF for Department of Safety, but most of the regulations that apply to school districts are going
023to have the the prefix of ED. Uh in any event, there are multiple uh statutes and regulations that number one require you to have somebody with a uh superintendent certification to provide superintendent services. Uh and then there are various statutes and regulations which outline what those services are and then how uh the duties of the superintendent relate to the duties of the school board. probably the the best side byside version of those. Um ED302 is the substantive duties of superintendents and um 303 are the substantive duties of school boards. In the right uh roles and responsibilities resource packet, there's actually a side byside of those um two rules. So 30202 and 30301. Uh and you can see um they don't line up exactly um at least in the rules but in the side by side
024that we put in the um packet we tried to you know line them up um so that the uh the substance was related to the one uh next to it. So for instance 30202 uh A deals with uh personnel and 303 uh 01A also deals with personnel and I think we might hit on that a little bit later. Um but it's a it's a good place to just look at how some of those the real specific um duties relate to each other. So jump through that. I'm now on slide eight. Uh I start off with uh the key if not most important aspect of seeing that the district is run well is hiring and evaluating the superintendent um under the uh Department of Education regulations and the um no I'm sorry under the uh under
025the statute uh RSA 194 C it's the school board that is charged with hiring a superintendent but again in a multi-dist SAU uh you know how that works is really up to the SAU board as opposed to the individual board. So, we can't really get too far into the weeds on that. If you have any questions, great. Um, but the statute that assigns to the school board that uh authority, that responsibility is is silent as to how that works. And that that makes sense because sometimes you have a superintendent who uh maybe passes away in February. Uh so you need a superintendent right away. Sometimes you have a superintendent who gives you two years notice because they're going to retire. So how the process is going to work to replace that superintendent is going to
026look very different. It's very fact specific. Um I think SA16 probably more than any other district in the state or any other SAU in the state typically has a succession plan. not not always, but there there seems to be a an idea that hey, someday the superintendent might not be there, so we should be thinking about that. Um, most SAUs don't have that. Um, some SAUs have a real hard time keeping somebody in the seat for over a year. Um, then the uh, you know, the next part of this same idea is the oversight of the superintendent through evaluation. So there is a a Department of Education regulation that requires um that the superintendent be evaluated annually. Again, there's no prescribed tool and even more importantly in your case um in a multid-dist SAU, you
027have a voice, but it's not you that it's not you alone who determine um you know how that eval evaluation worked. Um I'm not particularly familiar with the SA U16 uh model, but you know, we suggest a process that begins at the beginning of the year in the setting of goals, not just SAU wide, but also district specific. So you and the board are deciding where your district wants to be next year and then deciding h you know what what can we do between now and then to get there and then what of what parts of that are things that the superintendent or the administrative uh administration need to uh be part of. So you're setting your goals for that future uh for the next year and then during the year whether it's uh you
028know twice uh every month um you know you're have you're just looking at where where you are in the process. Maybe you need to adjust the goals uh because some get accomplished earlier than you thought uh or maybe some are turning out to not be realistic or maybe you need just some adjustment in the way management is implementing them. But you know keep that discussion going the full year. Don't wait till the end of the year and say, "Hey, you didn't do this thing." Um, not helpful for the superintendent, not helpful for the board, but most importantly, not helpful for achieving the goals that you were uh hoping to accomplish. Um, the next slide, slide nine, uh, that also shows up in the resource package you have. It's too small for you to read. I'm
029not going to cover it here, but the um basically what it is is on the far left corner, I mean side, it's identifying, you know, the different areas of governing and managing a school district. And then the the two columns are are sort of suggesting, you know, what the function is for um each side relative to that topic. So policy and decision-making, the board develops and adopts. Uh the superintendent side implements, monitors legal requirements, and then recommends policy needs and changes. And you'll see that sort of um mix all the way through. Uh you know, instruction and curriculum board establishes criteria, approves the curriculum, and monitors how it's working, whereas the superintendent recommends, develops, oversees uh staff implementation. One thing about board policy and many of the statutes and regulations that govern school districts is
030that the board does have authority in some respects to move that you know if there's a dividing line between those can move the the line a little to the left a little to the right depending on um you know what the topic is and what the you know what the needs of the uh district are at that time. Moving on, schoolboard legislative functions. So, this is really where uh the vast majority of school board work lies. Um what is what does policy do? Uh it expresses the guidelines, philosophical statements which chart the district's course of action. It advises students, families, staff, and the larger community of requirements, expectations, opportunities, procedures, etc. So, it's a sort of one-stop shopping for many of the things that are applying to the people in the different constituencies within within
031the school community. Uh and then it also creates the framework within which you as the sup uh you as the school board are directing the superintendent to manage the district uh and and also um you know sort of uh dictate if you will how the staff discharges their assigned duties down in that bottom corner of that page the big P and the little P. So when when you hear policy, you you tend to think about, you know, I guess I got a couple of these things, you know, you think about these these static documents that have a, you know, alphabet soup code at the end. There is actually a rhyme to that and a reason. Um, but we're not here to talk about that specifically. Um, but that's just your permanent policies. Those are your
032policies that are basically written laws that apply until you as the school board change them or the legislature, you know, um, uh, you know, does something to to make them, uh, non uh, applicable anymore. Um, the little P though is the thing that you're actually doing more frequently. Almost every decision you make is a policy decision because you are deciding a course that somebody within the district is going to take. Whether that's um you know a a one-time approval of a field trip or uh you know something important happens uh you know something bad happens to the roof over the gym and you meet you you need to make a decision quickly. you're not going to adopt a policy for that, but you are going to take, you know, you're going to hear information, you're
033going to deliberate, you're going to take a vote. That is a policy decision. Um, so you've got the coded policies and you've got policy def uh decisions. Then just a little bit about the NHSBA sample manual, uh, which is sometimes, uh, confounding, well, probably more often than not confounding to people who are not familiar with it. Um so we have 12 subject areas. Uh you know we start off with general application and B for board governance and C for administration and so forth. Um but we also have three classifications. We have uh required by law, recommended and optional. uh the required by law, what that reflects is language in a statute or regulation that says the local board shall adopt a policy or the local district shall have a policy, something to that effect. So
034there is something that requires you to have a written static document on that subject area. Um some are very contentspecific. So, you know, the the the statute or the rule goes on for eight pages telling you what you need to put in your policy and you think, why don't you just say do this? Uh, then we don't have to adopt a policy that says do the exact same thing. And we had a few of those this year. Um, but some of them are also leave a lot of discretion to the local board. So, for instance, under the new Department of Education 306 rules, um just like the old rules, there is a uh provision that requires you to have a policy on homework. All it says is the board shall have a policy on homework
035that describes how homework is accessed and assessed. Not sure exactly what that means because they didn't say, but um you know, we interpreted that to mean uh you know, maybe if if you're using um uh programs that students can access at home, you're describing in your you know, policy how that happens. You know, maybe just the the name of the program or you're directing the uh administration to create written, you know, documents that that do the same thing. uh but it leaves a lot of discretion to you. So for instance, if you were a K through 12 district, you might have a policy that says we're not having any homework for you know K through third grade. Uh for uh you know 4th through 8th grade, no more than um you know what would be
036uh assumed to take reasonably take one hour or less and you know so something like that you have the ability to do that. We had one district in the state, a K through 12 district, uh, just a couple of years ago. The the the rule for homework was a little bit different, but essentially the same, left discretion to the board, and the board said, "We're not allowing homework." And a parent actually took that to the Supreme Court and lost um because basically it was within the board's discretion to decide what they wanted to do for their school community. Um recommended policies um they often um as often as not reflect legal requirements that either apply to the the district uh to various constituencies within the district. So you might have policies that apply specifically to
037your employees um but because they reflect legal dos or don'ts uh relative to those constituencies. Um, sometimes, uh, we have the policies include these legal mandates simply because how else would anybody know where to find them? If you, you know, a new school board member comes in and they're expected to know, you know, go to that little page where I showed you all, you know, had all the little statute, you're supposed to know all those. And how are you going to know all those? Because the state doesn't require board members to have any training whatsoever. some states do. Uh so the policies are there to provide whether it's the school board members, the staff, the families, the students, you know, here are the rules that govern you because the state or the federal government said
038here are the rules that govern you. So we put them in that one place. Uh and then the um some some of the recommended policies are really operational best practice ideas. Um, so if you have students who drive, you might want to have a parking policy. Uh, that kind of thing. And then for optional policies, they're either just operational um items or they, you know, we just have some where, you know, three or four districts contact me and say, "Hey, do you have a policy on this thing?" And and just say, you know, instead of, you know, getting six more calls of the same thing, I'll just put out a a sample policy. So a few years ago I had in 2 months I had three requests for a drone policy and uh so I
039got to learn a lot about drones. Um and now we have a policy not required uh but it is very regulation specific because the there are lots of rules about how you use drones. So that's that's the three classifications. But maybe the most important thing is the again the little oval at the bottom right hand corner. Our samples are just that they're they're you know sometimes the statute will say here you need to do this but they don't tell you how to do that and so our samples are trying to uh operationalize what it is you're supposed to do. Um so the legal requirements are in there but to make them workable there are other things as well. Um, so what they're in, The other thing to know about our policies is we don't have
040separate policies for uh Manchester uh and the Hill School District that has 48 kids. Um, you know, it's a we don't have that kind of you know, if you want your dues to go way up, we can hire somebody else to do that. But but um what we try to do is make sure that whatever is legally required, it's in there and it gives you a starting point. If you've got a um if you open up one of our policies and see that there's 34 uh legal references, probably a good place not to tinker with it too much without either consulting, you know, giving me a call and say, "Hey, do we really have to do this?" Um or contacting your your um private counsel, uh talking to your superintendent who, you know, they they
041go to these meetings all the time. they half the time they know way more than I do about this stuff. Um or or at least at the very least read the statutes and the legal references yourself to see which what kind of flexibility you have. Um a good example. So, um, the superintendent gave me a couple of policies that you had, uh, struggled with, I guess, or or paused a little bit, um, this past spring, um, that had to do with health education and exception from instruction and then parental objections to specific course material. So, again, you can read the statute and see, kind of hard to read, but uh, you can you can look at the statute. they're both in 186 uh colon 11. Um and see that here's what's you know the do
042and the don't but how do you make that work in in you know at the school level. Um, and I think the, you know, the the language that might have made everyone pause is the, uh, legislature passed the statute that basically said that if you're going to cover this type of course material and it used to say human sexuality, human sexual education, but then it added sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, or gender expression. So, if you're going to offer any type of uh programming that does that, then you have to give parents um notice and the opportunity to remove themselves. So, the idea, so the question is, do you need to put that in a policy? Well, you don't. But if you don't put it in the policy and your teacher doesn't see that uh
043you know you you you know that that that's one of the things they have to give notice on then they may inadvertently violate the statute because you haven't informed them that by the way you're supposed to do this. Um personally on that particular one I think if you had just put human sexuality or human sexual education you wouldn't then also need to point out those other things. But you know the legislature thought differently. So the idea there is um you know there are things in our policies that are not specifically required but in order to make them work and to keep the district compliant we put them in there. There are districts that decide not to put them in there. Um that you know but that's again that's up to um your individual board. >>
044And what's the consequence for that? >> Excuse me. >> Liability. I said, "What's the consequence for not putting in it?" Cuz I mean, in that one in part, that's the one we were all talking about obviously, right? So, so >> yeah. Well, I think I think so. Personally on that one again, um I I to me it seemed that if you had the the you know the initial language um of human sexuality, human sexual education that might imply the other things that they added, but um a good way to uh sometimes draw attention to yourself is by yourself I mean the board is to um to say no, we're not going to do what the legislature said. Um you have to do it. So in other words, a a teacher would not be able to
045address these subjects without complying with the other requirements of the statute. So the idea of putting it in the policy is to provide notice to your employees who are the ones who are required to implement this uh to your both your your teaching staff and your administrative staff. If you don't do that and somebody does teach those materials without providing the notice, that's when the liability occurs. Um, >> so what's the difference though with like if I if there's a law, right, and I have to follow the law, why would it be any different that your policy from the school I just don't really understand. Like you're saying it's a state statute, right? So somebody passed a law that said you cannot do this. Right. >> Right. So whether I write a policy saying yes
046or no, it's illegal to do that, right? >> Sure. But how does your teacher know? How does your administration know? >> How do I know about any law that I could break anywhere? Like >> because because you got this document. That's that's exactly that's exactly the point is >> so it's like a liability coverage >> for the school is what you're saying. I mean, >> here's a here's a good example. You're driving down the road, right? >> And there's no signs. So you say, "Hey, I can go 85 miles an hour." Oh, no, no, no, no. The speed limit is 35. But why didn't you know that? Because they didn't put a sign up. So it's really just a way for you to provide information to the people who have to deal with this uh
047about what their responsibilities are. Um, so if I'm if I'm, you know, a teacher and I've been in, you know, in the profession for 20 years and they passed this statute that adjusts how I can do my job, I better know about it. How am I going to know about it? Um, so it's it that's that's really why we put the things in there. But again, you know, there's uh you look at the statute, you see what the statute says, and if you want to, you know, do it differently, again, ours are samples, and it's, you know, it's up to the board to decide which way they want to go, you rely on the uh the information from your administrators, and when you really have a, you know, hot contested issue, and this one tends
048to be one, um, you know, you bring in your private legal counsel and and decide what's best for your community. um you know that you know I hate to use this whole topic as an example but you know so so as you know there's a conflict between what at least our state federal court has uh decided uh relative to transgender athletes and what the state legislature has. Um all we can do is point out that this discrepancy exists but you as the board unfortunately have to make the hard decision. Do you want to violate this statute or do you want to violate this ruling? And you know, if you're a K through five district, that might be a lot easier than if you're a high school with a transgender population. Uh you may look at,
049hey, if we do it this way, we're going to get sued and civil damages can be really high. Um but that's you know all we try to point out where some of those you know real uh difficult decisions are. Um but uh ultimately every single one of our samples is something that a board number one should be looking at where they can make adjustments to best fit their community. Uh but also um you know where maybe they should or shouldn't. Um so I does that address that? Thank you. >> Yeah, I just think it puts the board in a strange position to say you must adopt a policy because my objection was more that it looks like that is a policy that the school board is enacting, right? But it's being enacting as a matter
050of law and not a decision made by the school board. >> So some some districts have actually in that exact place pursuant to the statute, here's why, you know, here's what we're doing. you know, the the pursuant to the statute is, hey, we're doing what we're told. And the purpose is really to inform your constituents or let's say constituent groups that need to know this information that this is what is, you know, limiting or requiring them to do or not do something. Um, >> I got I got one more question then I will sure >> stop talking about this, but have you ever had a board vote down a required policy? >> Yes. And so for instance, uh, Hamstead. Um, so you probably know, I don't know if you do know, uh, that school boards
051are not allowed to make rules that prohibit adults from bringing firearms into the school. They're not allowed to do that. Hamstead said the heck with that. And so they have a policy that has two or three pages, and I'm two or three pages of here's why we're doing what we're doing. if you want to take us basically, you know, if you want to take us to court, we're willing to defend, you know, this justification. Um so yeah, I mean, but but just be mindful that um you know, if you take a position uh that is uh you know, not consistent with the legal requirement. Uh number one, uh make sure that you have enough space in your you know, meeting room for people to come. uh you you won't have the same you know when
052a high school uh tries to address two or three different topics you know my comment to them is you know make sure that the gym is available that night because when you get into the library and the 400 people want to come see it you're going to have to move a lot during co with you know different COVID um responses um you know where your meeting room just wasn't going to be big enough lucky during co you did a lot of it remotely anyway but um later in the process um you had some very contentious meetings. Um but yeah, so there there are times when school boards decide to take a position. Um you know, you've got probably four or five in the state that are all actively involved in some of the litigation that's
053pending in the federal court. I think there's five or six districts that pretty much show up in every single one of those cases. Uh but that's again that's something that your board as a whole uh has to take a position on. Um and by the you know the fact that you're asking questions about policies given the fact that that's your main function that's you know that's fine and and u because it's my job I'm happy to talk about it. Um so just I'll move on but again any questions happy to come back. Uh so next slide is slide 13. Um so you you have the the obligation to set your budget by the way. Um all right. Do you have a uh official budget committee? >> Not official. >> Okay. So your responsibility is to
054um propose the budget. And guess what that is? That is the the fiscal expression of policy. When you set uh make your proposed budget and you you vote and you approve a proposed budget, there are a lot of policy decisions in there. So, do you hire a a you know part-time Spanish teacher or do you buy instruments for the band? Though, you know, you can do one or the other this year, but you can't do both. Um, and then even when the budget passes, and obviously the it's the voters who who have final say over the approval of the budget, once that happens, they've only approved the bottom number. and what happens during the year. Uh, you know, let me just say when you think about the the act of putting together the proposed budget,
055you know, you're doing most of that work in, you know, leading up to Christmas and then finalizing everything shortly after the new year. You are making you're making estimations on things that might not aren't going to happen for 18 months. I mean, you're you're you know, the budget that you're guessing at is doesn't run out until 18 months after you're voting to approve that that uh are US SP2 or traditional >> Annual meeting. Okay. So, you have an extra month. You're a little little better off than some of the other districts who have to have all their work wrapped up by uh mid January. Uh but still, so 17 months. Um, so during the course of the year, you know, it'd be great if you know what you thought, you know, a year and a
056half ago was exactly what was going to happen, but it's not. You don't know what the cost of fuel is going to be. You don't know, you know, how much you're going to have to pay for transportation, uh, you know, bus drivers or or, uh, food service workers. Um, you know, things like that. The, uh, inflation affects things. But you also don't know how many snows storms you're going to have. So, if you budget for 15 because that was the average over the last three years, but you only end up with five, well, guess what? You have extra money. Or you end up with 25 and now you have less money. And so, you have to decide where to take that money from or if you have fewer smoke uh snowstorms, do you move that
057money somewhere else or do you just leave it in the um uh unreserved balance and and uh return it as part of the uh you know uh to the voters for the next year. But those decisions are all policy decisions again. Um but the other place that that um the the budget and fiscal uh management is useful is to point out remember I said that there by policy you can shift that those lines between the the different uh subject areas. um to you know sometimes maybe you find that uh policies are a little too restrictive and other times you might find that things need to be tweaked a little bit and maybe you need to make the policy more specific. Um and so two good examples of that are found in in fiscal policies. So
058you have a statute which uh oddly enough is called treasur's duties but it is it basically is the one that creates the manifest review. Um the treasurer shall pay I'm not quoting this verbatim. Treasurer shall pay funds that are uh approved by the board or by two board members so authorized to u make those decisions on behalf of the board. So that is actually one of those little places where a subcommittee does have decision-making authority. Um all they're really doing is making sure that the invoices that are that either were paid or are about to be paid are within the authorization that the board has given which in turn is within the authorization of the um you know the bottom line budget number. Um if you some districts find uh how do you do your
059manifest review? Is it the whole board or do you have two members do it or >> we bring it to the board meeting and depending who's here so everyone gets a chance to look at it most of the time it's the full board. >> So so there is a there this option within that statute to just say okay two board members are going to do that because we're not going to spend time at every board meeting to do that. Um, so if you find that, you know, you're wasting time at your board meeting and you're not finding any discrepancies and week after week you're just or or meeting after meeting you're just rubber stamping it, then it may be something that maybe two of your members really want to look at the details and it
060makes sense to just do it that way. That's one of those places where you get to adjust the um you know how it how it works through policy or through a policy decision or um h happens as often as not. You've got a district where they're having u financial irregularities or uh there's just a lot of problems in the business office and the board does want to provide more direct oversight. So they take it away from the the little subcommittee or the finance committee and they bring it back to the whole board meeting just so that you know you can start to to really understand where the problems are and try to find a way to fix those problems. Um same thing with line item transfers. Um so uh we have a sample policy DBJ
061but line item transfer under the budget statute which is RSA 32 um there or 3210 um when you do a budget you've got obviously your your um detailed budget which probably has you know a couple of hundred line item entries um but you also have a DRRA form. The DRRA form only has I they've changed it a little bit, but maybe 15 or so lines. And um when the voters approve the budget, they're approving those lines. And if you need to take money from one line and move it to the other one because you know the gym roof collapsed or you did have a lot of snowstorms or something or you have a special ed child move in um high needs special ed child or you have a legal issue that you know instead of
062the legal budget being 40,000 it's going to be 140,000. So you've got to take the money from somewhere and put it somewhere else. That is something that's within the board's discretion. How that works. For line money to be moved from one line to the other, the board has to approve it. Uh it can do that through tacet approval by just, you know, looking at the bot, you know, the reports as they come in and and not changing them. Uh or it can uh require preapproval for any line transfer or it can do something in between. And so we have this policy DBJ that says if the amount of the line item transfer is less than 5,000, then the the administration can make that transfer, but needs to report it to the board at the next
063meeting. And that way the board very quickly would be able to say, "No, no, we don't want the money to come from there. We want it to come from here." Or say, "Whoa, whoa, whoa. Why are we having to do this? I mean, this this should have been, you know, understood ahead of time." Um, so is it is it just because something unexpected happened or is there something that needs to be tweaked in the business office and you need to provide more oversight? Um, that $5,000 number in our sample policy, we haven't changed that in close to 20 years. So, there are some districts that have that number as high as 50,000. There's actually one district that has that number as zero, which is probably not overly helpful for your central office. Um, and then
064but but that's a place where you as the board can shift the oversight and that you know that's true with many of our sample policies, but I think that that's a good one that shows for your statutory responsibilities how the board has the ability to move, you know, move those items. >> Yeah, I think we've we've all been through the budget process a few times, I think. So, we're we're feeling okay about that, I guess. >> Oh, yeah. Yeah. No, I'm just No, I was just using that as an example of how board policy can change how that >> uh works. Um, >> so what time is it? 6:59. So the the the rest of these I'll I'll zip through pretty quickly. uh strategic planning uh really if you think about it so there is
065a a rule that requires you to develop long range plans identify measurable and attainable short-term objectives uh and that's really the same as you know setting your goals for the next year or for the next 5 years or for the next 10 years and really it's up to the board to sort of figure out number one what the goals are and then number two you know maybe the steps to get there uh obviously the board's going to change if you've got a 10-year plan um you you know, the your uh future board uh as con as constituted may um prioritize things differently. Uh communication is another big one. Um it's probably the least connected to regulations and statutes, but it's probably one of the most important um things that you as a board can do.
066And um I think the again the most important piece of this slide which is slide 15 is found in the bottom right hand corner. Um we have a sample policy eg create a comprehensive plan. Spend time be deliberate about how you are um how you want to communicate with the community and how you want the district to communicate with the community. if you wait, you know, to do it, um, you know, as issues come up, um, you may find you don't have the resources. you may find that you don't have um a a way of deciding what the voice is going to be, who's going to speak on behalf of the district. uh who's going to be responsible for communication in a crisis, but also just understanding that within your community uh you've got different
067constituencies within the school and you've got different constituencies outside of the school who are still part of the the community. And um you know how you communicate with students is different than how you communicate with parents, which is different than how you communicate with uh you maybe young people who don't have uh children in the school system, but they do all their communicating through their smartphone or online. And then you've got other parts of the community who have never owned a computer, never owned a smartphone, um but still need to receive information from you. And all of those take resources and they take you know really um you know deciding what is the best way to do that. Uh so we strongly suggest uh you know having a uh communication plan. The sample policy EG
068is just a here's a way to get started to do that. Uh it's intended to be an evolving plan. It's not one where you decide you know in 1975 here's how we're going to communicate with people and it's still in place now. Um, okay. Collective bargaining. The only thing I would say about collective bargaining, uh, is it's important to realize that this is one of the places where individual board members don't necessarily have the uh free expression rights that they would otherwise. Um, so you might have heard different places that uh as an individual board member, you don't lose your rights of free expression. generally true. Um, one of the biggest exceptions is if you are on a negotiating team and the negotiating team reaches a tenative agreement with the union, you are required as
069a member of that team to advocate for the passage of ratification of the contract and then also passage by the voters. Um, if you're not on the team, you can you can vote against it. you can tell everybody why you voted against it, but if you're on the team and you do that, if you speak against the thing or don't vote for it, then that's considered bad faith bargaining. Um, you know, you reached an agreement, but you didn't intend to follow it. U, so just a little takeaway there. Um, the other, you know, probably more obvious exception is just confidential information or information that that occurs that you obtain during the course of a non-public session. Um, so the next area, uh, just maybe I don't know how much of an issue this one is,
070but, um, as school board members, you you receive complaints or reports of things uh, that come to your attention that really aren't within your purview as a board member. Just remember that you don't have any individual authority to do anything. you can't fix a problem by yourself. Uh but they come to you because they know who you are. They they saw you on the ballot or maybe you're their neighbor or, you know, you're a parent and uh your child is in the same class as uh their child, so they come to you because they know you. Um what you want to be able to do is help them, which is partly probably why you ran for the board, uh is to be helpful to your community. Um but but because you're limited in what you
071can do, knowing how you can help them is important. So number one is you want to provide the roadmap for them to address whatever the issue is they're having. So is their child being bullied? Uh if so, you know, point them to JICK and and by the way, this little circle here, uh I don't know that you have all of these. These are our sample policies, but whatever they are in your district, you want to know what those policy codes are. Just familiarize yourself with them so that if you get that contact, you can say that, you know, that's that's outside of what the board does. Um, however, if you go look at our policy database and you want to know how to describe to somebody while you all of a sudden were accosted in
072the, you know, produce aisle at the grocery store, you want to be able to say if you, you know, just Google Stratham school board policies, get there and go to section J, you'll get JICK or just go to the central office and they'll they'll um give you that policy. But you want to be able to tell them that that's the way that they can best uh approach the problem that they're having. Um and then you know there's the other ones as well. So ACA is just general uh discrimination or harassment. Uh KB is general complaints about individual students or staff. And then you've got you know different different other anti-discrimination policies. But the second way you can help them is number one just getting enough information and only enough information to refer it to um
073and and you may have a different uh chain in your in your um SAU. So uh larger SAUs, multi-dist SAU, sometimes it's the principal who would be the main point of contact, but that's you know I'll leave that to uh you folks. Um, but in most, you know, most smaller school districts or SAUs, it would be the superintendent that you want to make sure has the information that, hey, you know, I heard from a Mrs. Smith from, you know, the third grade class, uh, who's got a com, you know, has an issue with whatever it is, the teacher or that's all they have to know so that they are aware that there's an issue. If they hear something from below, they're apprised of it. um if uh you know if they don't hear anything uh
074then maybe the next thing they hear is a very angry parent who you know got ignored by either the teacher or the principal or whomever. So you're number one finding enough information to refer it but don't go beyond that you know minimal amount of information that you need to refer it. Uh because if you're asking additional questions such as was anybody else there? Did anyone see it? Have they had problems in the past? Now you're investigating and and that uh puts you in a position of not being able to fulfill your responsibility as a hearing officer when you're in your quasi judicial capacity. Um so enough information to help them move it along and enough information to you know help them identify which policy uh or you know process that they need to be looking
075at in order to address that that complaint. I mean, one thing I can say before I came to NHSBA, I worked with school districts for 20 years. And when something gets to the attorney, it's usually, you know, way way into the process. And one of the first things attorneys do, for better or worse, is is there a way to get rid of this complaint because somebody didn't follow the procedures? And that is not really helpful to the person who contacted you in the first place to try to resolve that. So getting them into the right process can be very helpful to them. Um so how much further do you want me to go? >> Yeah, >> most of the rest is just uh >> that's a good synopsis of where we're at knowing they have
076all the resources. We got to the big one, the policy. So I think that's good. I don't know if there's any specific questions they may have before >> I mean I can I I suppose one piece would be slide 21 where you get into more about the quasi judicial body. So you've got various statutes regulations that assign to you the responsibility of uh acting as a hearing body um in those case. So for students, the most common ones, hopefully not for your school, uh expulsion, hopefully that doesn't happen too often, but manifest hardship is more and more uh common for employees, dismissal, non-renewal, labor grievances, and in both sides of those, you might have policies that that provide uh specific um review opportunities before the board. Uh but in in all of those cases, the
077you're the body that's providing due process for that situation. Um so especially when you've got two different individuals involved. So so a you know so-called victim and the other side is a perpetrator or you know something like that. due process, you know, when you think about it at its very uh basic level, what we think about is fair and impartial judge and also the ability to hear, challenge evidence and testimony. When you receive that complaint yourself and you start asking questions from one side, you're making it less likely that you can be fair and impartial because you got a very angry parent here and oh my gosh, that sounds terrible. Uh, and then also you are depriving the other person of the ability to hear what you're hearing. You're the judge, not the investigator. That's
078their job. And and um so that's why you have that sort of line. You just want enough information to pass it on and that's it. Um you're you're not required to be completely ignorant of what goes on. That's kind of impossible. If you're a good school board member, you do know what's going on. But it but it's the difference between passively hearing information, receiving information, seeing information, and then affirmatively looking for information. That's the really the big distinction. Um >> I think I've had that conversation with Chris about 47 times because you always think each incident is different, right? So a parent's talking to you, you're like, "But this is serious." >> Yep. Yep. No. And and >> it's really it's hard to talk back to a parent and hand them a policy. >> Yep.
079Yep. It it is and and um you know and and there are a lot of situations that are when they first come to you they don't look like they'll be big issues. But if you've got you know a particular let's say a staff member and the issue happens this year but then it happens twice next year and it's the same repeating issue. It is an issue, especially if you're still on the school board. And if you're the one who received two or three of those calls and you kind of engaged in that conversation, that can turn into a problem. I had a school board once that uh out of seven members, six had to recuse themselves from the hearing because they, you know, they just entertained these conversations. And that cost that district a ton
080of money because of the convoluted process we had to go through. >> Yeah. Um I I was I was shocked that all six of them actually recused themselves. You know, I gave them the standard and I thought maybe three of them would be stubborn, but no, they just quickly did it. I'm like, "Oh, you just want to get out of the nighttime hearings, that's all." But anyway, so there are some fiscal consequences to overinvolving yourself. Um but anyway, I I can stop there. >> Yeah, I think that's a great place to stop unless there's anybody's got anybody got questions. I think you did a really good job of being comprehensive of their role. So, I appreciate that. >> Uh, great. Well, thank you again. I do I do want to point out that so my
081contact information is on the end there. Um, you know, part of my service is answering general legal questions. Uh, I'm we we won't get into the middle of uh, you know, intraboard squables. Um but but if you've got questions about uh specific content of a policy, you know, why we did it this way, uh or just, you know, general legal questions uh that have to do with education, give me a shout. And and if I can answer it, I will. If I think it's something that requires private counsel, then I'll let you know that as well. >> Yeah, I appreciate it. Well, always helpful. Well, thank you for your time. >> Sure. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Yeah. >> And you said your contact info in the slide. It's on the last last slide.
082>> All right. Thank you. >> You're welcome. >> Thank you, sir. >> Appreciate that. [Applause] >> All right. So, moving ahead with the agenda. Um, looks like we're going to talk a little bit about board goals. So, taking a look at our goals for 2425. Um, we actually changed these. They had referenced COVID before we changed these. So, um, I I really liked how we designed these board goals last year. Um, I guess, you know, we've probably read them every single meeting, so we don't need to go through them. Does anybody have sort of an analysis or any conversation about how you felt we did or some that should carry through to next year maybe? >> I think my big um priority was communication >> um since I do feel like we are a liaison
083between the school as well as the community. >> Yeah. Um especially with all the changes that are happening at the state and federal level and how we're we want to make sure that the community is aware of what is happening at those levels and how we are interpreting them and helping the school implement them to make sure that everybody in the community is on the same page. I think that's >> going to be vital in these like next coming years. >> I know I think this was she did amazing and very very impressed. I mean I think all those building you know meetings that you did were so phenomenal and then I think um what we're doing though is you're right within transitioning right in terms of subjects. >> Yeah I think I could use
084help in that department. I mean this is I don't know if this is really related to the >> goals. It's more just I know Kim was interested in helping with that and you are too which is awesome >> because the legislative stuff is not my forte. So it' be really helpful to have one of you spearhead that. But I don't know between the two of you how like how because I don't think we can have three >> we can't >> people yet. So >> so we might it might be like a subcommittee with the communication um just keeping people ab breast of what's happening at the higher levels that we're trying to implement. So I hear you guys saying communication is something that should continue next year and maybe it looks like we didn't actually
085we didn't specify the building but that's how I always viewed that communication but now um >> you know maybe spoke focusing on um >> current legislation. >> Mhm. So I yeah I had communication items too kind of similar to what Kathleen was just talking about as far as the federal we were talking about doing kind of a like brief legislative thing that impacts like the budget obviously and then uh I think also in communication was about continuing the conversation about the benchmarks because I think there was like >> positive news in that direction at the end of the year and I think it was it seemed like it was a surprise to some people about the fact that there was all the data gathering and the multiple checkpoints throughout the year. So I think like
086>> just keeping that top of mind during the meetings to as part of communication I guess. >> Yeah. >> Yep. I totally agree. >> Yeah. Cameron, maybe you and I can think through um a fireside chat or two for the fall that we'd like to put together. Maybe a legislative one and >> Yeah, that would be great. >> Um and would love your help and weighing in on it if you're interested. Yeah, one thing I can offer too is so Dr. Bryant who is now our um assistant superintendent for systems and operations her one of her key components is legislation. So we are actually meeting tomorrow with the joint chairs >> as an informative meeting to talk about two legislative bills that have to be in our handbooks before the start of school. >> One
087being uh the parental bill of rights and one being also cell phone. So I put that out in my communication but we're going to dig in that tomorrow for discussion so you can hear it. The other piece that I've asked Dr. Bryant to do is to put together a top 10 legislative list for the year that we have to tackle. So, EFAS, uh, open enrollment. So, she and the team, they've done such I'm so proud of the work they've done already, but that will be really helpful for you to be able to connect with her or the team on specific legislation that we'll be talking about in September, but then it will carry us through the year. And then for the other part is a budget. You know, I heard a lot last year. We
088wish we knew more about this. So asking Molly and the team to put together basically a one to two pager fact sheet about budgeting that could be really helpful. How much do we get in grants? How much have we lost in grants over the last 5 years? Uh what does that mean when we lose grant money? So I think communicating that because it does have budget impacts will be really helpful. So be glad to partner with you on that to help your communication um be more streamlined. >> Yeah, that'd be awesome. >> Yeah, I think the message from Molly last year about hey, you really need to talk to people in copyright. I feel like I did hear that start to be understood by people and you know there's been a lot recently comparing like
089New Hampshire's budget to other like surrounding states and I feel like that's going to be a big communication piece just for people to understand like this is why it's such a big deal here. So I think a lot of people >> learned a bunch of stuff they didn't want to know >> last year >> as part of that. >> Yep. >> Yeah. So going back to the goals. >> Yeah. I I think they look I mean I was part of the team that >> made them so they look great to me >> but I they're not smart goals. I don't know. >> Right. Yeah. Measurable. >> That's I don't know. It's just like overall goals. >> Yeah. Yeah. I think like faculty recognition you know that was something like I did draft a few letters
090to different people and then I did thank you notes at the end of the year and different things like that. But you know I think that is important. I don't what's your sense Chris? I think that is important. >> Um, and definitely something, you know, we could grow in this year. >> Um, >> yeah, I think this board does a great job of communicating. There's very Yeah, very few boards that communicate as much as you do from a meeting than Sophie taking and and synthesizing it. >> Um, so the information is out there. You do a really good job with that. >> I guess I'm talking about to like recognition of our staff. Yeah, I think you've we the number of people that presented last year. I think that so I would look at that
091too. You've you've asked for that, right? And I think you're hearing multiple staff members. There was a variety that talked about different things. >> That's become kind of our expectation that we want to hear from our experts on the different subject areas. So I would remind the board that that is part of the presentation and you're getting people to come and they the feedback I get is thank you for allowing me to share. Thank you. They feel a value from this board by getting time and we did not cut anybody off. Our meetings did go long but I think that showed the value that you had and the employees that work here to share their story. >> Okay. >> The the only um recommendation I'd have is just under student wellness. We've made a lot
092of shifts because of the language DEI to equity >> about that. >> So I would say you know we had to shift because we could no longer call it DIJ chairs. We call it equity chairs just to follow the the the federal legislation. That'd be the only thing that I would make a recommendation and then it would be aligned with what we're doing in the SAU as well. >> Okay. >> Can I just want to ask do you have a plan for public comment by the way? >> Oh yeah. >> Should we like start it? >> Sure. >> Okay. >> Um just >> good call. >> We didn't want to get to the end of the night. >> I know you all are going to think for now on the student wellness piece. Do you
093think we could make it more expansive too to like some of the social emotional, the behavioral, all that stuff that we were kind of tracking from last year? >> That's what I wanted to insert some. >> I mean, it could just be more because when I think of student wellness, I think it's and it can be health, it can be lunches. I know you were hot on that when you first came on probably still. I mean, all that stuff I think could be >> we can make that more of a wholesome >> goal perhaps around student lo well wellness. >> I don't know how to word that or what that would look like, but um just a thought. >> So, just for um Cameron and Kathleen, what we did last time is we kind of
094worked up these ideas and then individually went home and sort of drafted it and then people can >> insert, you know, through like draft changes and stuff. So anyway, just so you guys know, >> so you know, if someone has an interest in student wellness, they could take that one or >> I think technology. Um I think partly that'll come up tomorrow in the meeting, right? Um when we're talking about cell phone. >> Mhm. >> Wait, tomorrow meeting? >> So tomorrow there's a joint chairs meeting where we talk about those two pieces of legislation. >> Okay. I'm not part of that. I was like, wait a second. >> You got back to back double school board days. Oh my gosh, my husband loves me. >> We got that one at noon tomorrow, right? Or whatever.
095>> Yeah. Um but I also do think that should be added too. Um looking at, you know, when we talk about fiscal stewardship, >> um is there room to continue monitoring the bud the building project and then do we want to put in something about teacher contracts and you know in terms of fiscal stewardship I guess because that's going to be a big time investment for certain members of the board. >> Right. Well, and I also feel like that's a and not to bring everything back to communication, but I feel like one of our main things is to like sell that, right? I mean, not to sell it, but >> to explain that. So, I'm thinking >> like that's going to be a big piece of this year is the teacher contract. >> Well, every
096year they show that pie chart, right? >> Right. >> Budget costs are people. >> And I'm sure that's, you know, we kept hearing, well, you can't do anything about that until a contractor know like, well, >> Yep. So >> I guess I'm wondering how you kind of feel about one at academics. >> I mean I think it's I think that one to me I feel like it just should persist. I mean yeah I don't think >> I don't think it says anything I I think it just says we always care about that. >> Yeah. >> I don't think it says not like a fire drill or anything. >> Yep. >> I don't think we even described it as a fire drill. Last time I was trying to put more like like you said smart stuff
097around it, but that's okay. >> I mean I think now I what I I mean just a sidebar comment on it because I wasn't here for the meeting where we heard the which I was really pleased about those. I think I've shared since then I was really pleased about it. >> I think now if it sounds like we've got some >> we got some learnings and we really did well and it was great. >> Is there a way now that we can kind of create some playbooks? Are there some ways that we can streamline that process? Because I think we put >> a lot of effort. I don't want to say too much effort, but we put a lot of effort into it. Are there ways now to be able to >> kind of create
098a a repeatable playbook for that going forward? >> So, I don't I don't think that needs to be added to one. I think that can just be a thing that seems like a no-brainer anyway is like let's maintain some of the great stuff that we did this year and just see if we can make it as efficient as >> possible. You guys are on that I'm assuming. Yeah, I mean really really proud of the work. I mean we were contacted by the DOE and I'll put this in our communication back about just the raise in math scores. They're like what did Stratum do? >> So the DOA contacted >> Are you serious? >> 100%. >> That's so cool. >> So they contacted us about our math, but they also contacted Lincoln Street about their science.
099So now us we want to get together and say, "Hey everybody, what did what did what did Lincoln Street do?" So two of our schools out of the six elementary schools that they highlighted from SAU 16, >> really proud of that work. Right. >> I would love to share that out. That's part of what Eric's talking about is that we are meeting we're meeting as critical friends or professional learning community as principles to say okay let's let's let's put the data and put our name to it and say what did we do really well and look at our our colleagues and say how'd you do it and so we're at a stage now we can do that in this SAU so I think it only encourages me that test score should continue to go up
100and student engagement should go up and attendance should go up so all the really good things we've been pushing for the road map is starting to be created so I think that's not a heavy lift and I think that is what we're doing organically right now. Anyways, >> Mhm. That's wonderful. >> Yay. >> Did you say there was a a technology goal? That's one of the >> Yeah, just looking at reviewing current policies about cell phones. So, we have cell phones, smartwatches, and iPads, but really we were thinking about cell phones. Um, >> we do have a policy where we ended up saying no. But I you know the other one too I was thinking about from a technology perspective that wasn't there when I think we wrote there or wasn't really on our our
101radar was like AI. >> Yeah. I don't know how much that matters for kids at the elementary level. I know you guys are hearing stuff and seeing stuff but I think that's going to be a challenge for people to have to figure out from an educational perspective. What are we going to do with that? >> Yeah. So I mean we started an AI committee last year before anybody else did it. So we actually wrote we've been writing policy. We've been writing best practices. We'll be training our staff on it uh throughout the year because it's ever changing. Um and it is in our Google suite. You know, there is AI capabilities. Um so we're on top of that. I I feel really comfortable with the work we're doing, but it now comes to training with
102our staff. Um I think students could do more training, especially at the high school level of how to use it, but how to use it effectively and sometimes not appropriately. >> They're using it though uses it. >> So yeah, it's there. I think it's like the philosophical piece that's interesting to me. It's like what are we going to do with that? Is it going to be a tool or is it going to be a like how much of our brains are we going to give away to technology? >> How much do we want to retain as brain >> get to talk about that? >> So I don't know. I I just think of that when I thought of technology. I thought that was something we I don't even think we were even thinking of last
103year. >> So I can I'll send you our document that we created. I don't know if I sent it out to the full board. Um but I we do have an AI implementation for generative AI document that we have that's that outlines all of that. Um and again the number one theme is that this does not replace thinking. Thinking is what drives our students a part of our mission. That's our vision of a student. So how does AI become a resource not overtake that? So I I'll be glad to share that with you if you want to take a look at it. >> Can you send that to everyone? >> Yeah, I can send that to all board >> because I I will say that was one of my bullet points and I was trying
104to get into that on the technology was the the AI. I think we always focus on students and one of the concerns I've heard recently is that staff at schools are using it to evaluate work and it's kind of in I'm not saying here but just out you know what I mean in public and I don't know if we have a policy that governs that but I certainly >> we don't but it's part of our document that says that you should not be re relying on um >> platforms to evaluate student work because often times it's wrong um and so that we actually have a process that goes back to having that human capacity and understanding where it's coming from and working with that student um and not first direction is calling them out through
105a through a program. >> Well, and to the point Eric made there's like recent research on that saying that high reliance on AI is actually like not helping people with cognitive abilities. So that's why I think it is going to be important for us to >> sure >> put that as a governance thing I guess. Uh, anybody have anything else that they would were thinking about adding >> stuff? >> It looks like right now I have communication, faculty recognition, academics, fiscal stewardship, which would be expanded to include teacher contract, um, student wellness including things like behavior and then technology. Is that a SMS board goal? technology looking at AI by kids and teachers. >> I mean I guess is there so you're in the policy it sounds like there's no there's no policy work on
106that right now right >> it's too I think it's yeah I think it's like a nent >> concept I mean Chris you've got something so you'll you'll share out what you guys are already thinking on it. >> Yep. >> I mean I think what this is is like maybe just stuff we would like to be we would like to have top of mind or something or just to report out on. I mean, I think that I I kind of care. I still care about the how the phones are going to be used after all this stuff. I mean, there's clearly a policy around it. Um, I don't know. It's not a I don't know. I I don't I don't need I don't I think adding AI wouldn't be bad, but I don't know if that's
107uh I don't know what it is we'd get out of it either. But it'd be interesting to >> I think we can hear about it without it being a goal. If we say it's a goal, that means it's something that maybe we're putting more interest and focus on, I guess, is all that means. Yeah. >> I don't know. >> I think for me, like this might be these five areas, six areas might be where, you know, we think about what presentations we do monthly. We think about what the budget looks like. It informs those kind of things. >> Um, >> and you know, really, are we going to >> That's all right. What are you leaving out? six because there's seven. >> Oh, I think >> Oh, no. There's six. Just kidding. >> Yeah, I
108think we can. >> Yeah, I think they're good. >> Okay. All right. Who has interest in c can we do that through a Google doc, edit each other's Google docs, or is that uh quorum issues? >> If you created a subcommittee, which we heard today, uh, right? You could have discussion if you wanted to connect on uh >> I guess what I'm saying is I write the communication one. Mhm. >> And Sophie writes the academic one. Can I edit hers and Eric edit hers and everybody? >> You can send it all out to me and then that way you don't have to worry about it if you want and I can share it out with everybody and that way it's coming from me and not from a board member. >> Okay. You share them out.
109Okay. So, I guess what I would propose is we take an initial draft of one that might interest you and then Chris will send it out to us and we can edit them. >> Yep. >> Sure. >> Okay. Anybody have one that particularly interests them? >> Um, I mean, communication definitely interests me. >> Okay, >> sounds good. Kathleen, >> um, academics. >> Okay, >> Eric, do you have one? >> I don't. >> Okay, >> Cameron, do you have one? >> Um, I guess I'd rather do technology than student wellness. Okay. >> Get the remaining ones. I >> mean, Eric, you had feedback about student wellness. Do you want to >> Yeah, I mean, I can take a stab at that. >> Yeah. I mean, we're all going to have a chance to have him on
110it anyway. I can take a whack at the first. >> I'm interested in the fiscal stewardship. >> Um, and I can take a look at this faculty um retention >> Recognition. Yeah. Okay. Great. Wait, can you go back up to that? Sure. >> What the board will create a monthly board discussion document which will facilitate what topics? >> Oh, >> that's what >> the topics. Got it. Got it. >> Yeah. >> Got it. Yeah. I mean, I don't know what needs to change from communication and that. Um, the only thing I'm thinking about is like maybe a focus on like I'm thinking about that guy that you talk to all the time now that I think we've all talked to. Um, >> Bob, >> Mr. Monaco. Yep. >> And he um is so such an
111interest. he's taken such an interest in the school board and he's >> older and I think he could reach out to, you know, what can we do to reach out to like these different age groups, >> people without kids, people with grown kids? Um, could there be handouts we give people that come to our meetings? If people come to our meetings, I don't know. >> I like what you're saying about the fireside chats. >> Yeah, fireside chats. And I think maybe someformational flyers would be helpful that we can put in town hall. >> The library. >> Yeah. >> And the library, which is just like maybe an update about the building committee, taxes, >> and other like FAQs, legislative. >> Mhm. >> And maybe that we could update that every quarter or something like that.
112>> Right. Right. I bet there's stuff that happens at the town hall like cuz people use those rooms and stuff. >> Yeah, we could find the schedule and we could just like even have an easel with like a thing that says >> Yeah. >> the school board thing and here's how to >> print out flyers and put them like right in the front table. I know. And I >> heard that people did access them that way. >> Yeah. Um >> like parks and wreck, they're doing so much uh with >> older >> Yep. >> Yeah. Seth, I talked to Seth. >> Yeah. >> Vicki about um >> Yeah. the um community dialogue for the building project that we wanted to target to the 55 plus community. >> Yeah, >> that sounds great. >> Okay. So,
113we'll do that. Um so, our next meeting is um I guess that's where we're going right now. So looking at a proposed meeting schedule um just to think about what we would want as a due date. Um [Music] these all look good to me with the exception of June 10th. I had raised this before. Um but that night my kids graduating from middle school. So I was Yeah. >> Congratulations. >> You too, right? It's yours. >> Is that? >> Yeah. >> No. So, um, anyway, I was wondering um Oh, it's actually June 11th. Um, but I'm wondering if we could do it um Oh, that's right. Because we got to do it. We do it the 4th. >> That's fine. >> Cuz right, we can't do it the 18th. >> You can. I mean, we're
114out of school. There's nothing to prohibit you from meeting on June 18th, >> but if you just want an update or if you want kids to be there because you do usually get a student council rep. Um, but again, you're it's up to you. >> That's the last day of school that day. >> Sure. >> All right. So, do we want to say maybe June 3rd? Would that be okay? >> That's the only one. Did anybody else have any things they wanted to change? >> No. And it seems like we don't really are some of these changed because it sort of fits your schedule, Chris, >> but they're not every third Wednesday or anything. >> Yeah, I just think it's how the schedule laid out. It doesn't affect me because co-op is now on Tuesday
115and joint boards are on Monday. So, um I don't have a conflict on Wednesdays anymore. >> Okay. >> I might not be able to come to the December meeting, but I'm not sure. >> Okay. So, I don't know like >> if it makes sense to change all of our schedules because of that. You know what I mean? >> Yep. >> Okay. >> So, how come the the public hearing one is like blank? Is just not known yet? I don't understand. >> So, we've been having trouble um lining that up with the town. >> Oh, yeah. So, once we get that from the town, we'll know when that public hearing is. So when you say public hearing, I mean, so isn't that that's here, right? >> It is. That's usually you have your your your moderator
116will help us out with that. So we're still Yes. So it's to be determined, >> but that's I guess I'm confused here. So that's not the district meeting that the moderator normally runs. There's a public hearing meeting. >> Yep. >> There was that. >> You have to have a public hearing on the budget. We do it sometimes before a school board meeting or sometimes we do not. We do it separately. >> I don't remember that. Did you do it last year? >> Yep. We did it before a school board meeting. >> You're required to have a public hearing on your budget to get input. >> Okay. >> Y >> was not aware. >> Uh did you hear anything about that from Dave about the >> So if he's watching, I'm going to reach out to
117him again. I've been including Jennifer on my correspondence now. Um it's just we have not connected and I really need him to to set a schedule with me. So Okay. >> Yeah. Okay. I I'll give him a call tomorrow. >> Yeah. Um yeah, and it's interesting the snow date of March 7th. So that's not the town meeting, right? Um for the school district meeting because it just be interesting to see like what would happen on a Saturday like would more people come or less people come >> but I think the town meeting is usually the week after. So correct. >> Okay. So it's March 14th. Is that just is that date arbitrary or is that as far as like there's a reason why it's on Wednesday? >> Uh you have to do it within that
118week and that is based on the DRRA of when you have to have your meeting set by. So we've just it's been in the uh middle of the week the last couple of years. That's how it has. >> Yeah, we've kind of debated it. The teachers are amazing and they'll provide child care, right? I mean you were there. You saw how packed it is. Um, >> well, I've been >> It's so hard for that, too. >> Yeah. Um, so it's just so hard to for parents to make it 6:00. >> Yeah. >> Time frame. But I don't know if Saturday is better or not better. All right. Any other changes? Proposed changes. Actually, can I propose changing this December 17th to the 10th a week prior or does that mess up the budget like schedule?
119>> It's fine with me. I don't know what it does to the budget schedule. >> Doesn't do much because we have all of January. We finalize our budget with you. That doesn't doesn't make an impact that. >> Okay. >> Cool. >> I just wanted to propose changing all the Wednesdays to like a Tuesday. Is that all right? Mhm. >> It's Wednesday. Wednesdays are hard for you. >> Well, I just have like built-in childc care gear on Tuesdays. >> Okay. >> Yeah. >> I'm just joking. >> No, I get it. >> I just might be bringing some kids with me. >> Yeah, >> it's been done. Yep. >> I was just imagining bringing all three of my little kids here. >> Complete. I was like, >> you're a toddler. >> Oh my god, your kids are
120just reading by themselves. Like that was just a shock to me. >> Oh, can I ask one more question about um was there any there was discussion about committees in May and I wasn't here in June. Was there any more discussion on that or >> the same as it was before? >> Yeah. Was there something you were I thought we had assigned it. How do people feel about that? Did we not assign them all? Um >> I think Since join, >> I am on superintendent evaluation. I took over for Jennifer cuz I thought that'd be >> nice. >> Um, a good way to kind of ease into >> everything. And then I'm secondary for budget for the not budget for building >> for um with Sophie. >> So helping Sophie with the building subcommittee. >>
121Okay. >> What are you thinking about? No, I just didn't know if there was any changes because I know like that was I think the first meeting with Kathleen and we were talking about shifting stuff around. I think I'm on the >> safety committee. >> Okay. Safety and communication >> and a communication >> and teacher negotiation. >> Oh, right. That's correct. Well, I just wanted to know like the safety I know last year it was like well that's all done so I just want to make sure I'm not missing something. >> Nope. You'll get that out. We we'll meet uh end of September uh beginning of October and that meets quarterly. >> Okay. >> Yeah. Safety is pretty chill. And I can cam I can help with that because I have Thursday topic like that.
122>> Usually I have Thursdays off from the hospital so I can help you if you can't meet a make a meeting. I'm happy. >> Oh, is that like during the day? >> It is. It's usually uh 9 to 11. >> Oh, okay. >> Yally, >> usually Thursday mornings. Yeah. >> Yeah. I'm happy to be second on that as well to >> I appreciate it. help out because I know you have to, you know, actually go in and >> I gota >> be at your job >> sometimes, >> just occasionally. Yeah, I I do intend to this year mention that a few times because we are volunteers and yet you know we do so many hours and very much appreciated and I appreciate the camaraderie between all the board members filling in for each other and
123>> um >> yeah I think if we just communicate absences we can fill in for each other and >> um I'm I fully believe we all have the right heart and we both want to be all want to be here. It's just um yeah, earning a paycheck makes it challenging sometimes. Okay. So um uh so we'll um should we make a motion? >> Mhm. >> Okay. So I'm going to move to um uh accept the Stratam School Board agenda as proposed with two changes. We're going to change the December meeting to December 10th. We're going to change the June 10th meeting to June 3. Do I have a second? >> I second. >> Thanks, Kathleen. All in favor, please say I. I. >> Anybody opposed? >> All right. 5 0. All right. Looking at those
124monthly data discussion topics. Any changes people would like to make? >> Can I ask you a question? Are you There was no packet for this meeting, was there? >> You should have got there. I like searched through it. I was like, I guess this is just the board retreat. I don't know how >> it wasn't posted, but it is u we got it via email. >> Okay. Sorry. I mean, I read it. >> Yeah. >> Sorry. >> You probably find it from uh who is this? It's always from Sharon, right? >> Yes. >> Yeah. >> I search seen me. I've been around. I wasn't just I just didn't I don't know why I didn't think there was a a thing today. Sorry about that. Um, one of the things I was going to propose, and
125you know, just bear with me because it probably shows my ignorance, but thinking about curriculum choices, obviously we've talked about testing and the choices we make there. Um, is that ever a discussion topic that we could talk about? Because when I first started with the board, we had a curriculum person that's out there, you know, every every month. How how is curriculum decided now? So if there's any curriculum that's bought by policy, it's supposed to come in front of this board. Okay, got it. >> So if that like we use ready math that had to come here and be approved by the board for us to use math >> and that's annually, >> not annually. So ready math we use if it's going to change. So anytime you're going to make a change and you're
126make a huge curriculum um and that's going to be your wholesale. Now that that wouldn't be resources. So like if there's you know some resources like next year they're looking to pilot some things for a reading program. >> Oh, okay. But we we've been talking about Ready Math. We're now able to see and support each other because we use a common right now there's only one school district that has a >> reading um curriculum that they adopted last year. It's their first year. Our goal is within by 2028 to have a recommendation for all of our schools to have the same reading um curriculum that we would use K5. >> Okay. >> So there's resources because obviously the science of reading has really showed us you the approach to reading. So we're using a lot
127of the uh best practices from the science of reading and there's some small resources to support that but all schools are not buying anything right now. >> Okay. >> As an adopted uh program >> okay >> when we do that will have to come in front of this board to adopt that. >> When you say the science of reading that's lowercase not a >> science reading is just a philosophical way that you that you teach reading um to students. >> Okay. Yeah. Um, it's just every once in a while I have somebody talk to me about like phonics based curriculum like >> and why we're not using it. Is that anything you could talk about? >> Yeah, I mean we could definitely have that as a topic. Like if there's specific I we just need
128to know what it would be in advance like if there was a question is Jill still the one doing that? >> Uh Jill will facilitate it for the whole district as the chief academic officer but really that becomes school related. Um >> so who would be presenting that? I'm just curious. >> That would be either Kate or Kate. Okay. Uh or it might be um if it's specific reading, we might bring in one of our reading interventionists to talk about it. If it's specific special education, we'd have maybe um Britney Thompson, our new director, or a case manager. Um so it it would we'd leave it up to the school to make that presentation. Jill may come in and support it and say, "Here's what we're doing through the SAU to support that." M >>
129so I think it's really specific but if you give us you know if we talk and there's ideas when I when I um set the agenda with with Jennifer we can we can invite the right people to come talk about that if there's an interest. >> Yeah I think it'd be neat to know like because there are these different like methodologies and different tools that are out there. So >> I think it'd be interesting to say you know here's here's what we looked at here's what we're doing now here's why we chose it. And I think a lot of these things take like several years to know if you actually >> if it's if it's a good program. >> Exactly. >> So I think it's not like this instant gratification where hey we bought this
130thing and things are going great. >> So I think it's also like well where are we in that road map? What feedback have we gotten? Is it working well? Are we going to pivot? Like I think just like a state of the state of the curriculum >> and what's out there because I don't think people know. I don't know. I mean I hear things um >> probably like you do. Yeah. People who >> So I mean that would be interesting and why we made those choices. Um, and then you know if the public comes for if they see this that that's a topic maybe people have questions about it can >> can share public input on it or whatever after hearing. >> Yeah. >> And is that something that's used on a like case by
131case basis because like I hear you talking about that I'm like I know they use that here like so I've I've seen it used by different >> Yeah. So I mean there's there's many like large like so use dibbles. Stills is something that we use with certain students and that's across but that's not a full whole school curriculum that we adopted >> right >> you would maybe get a full scale curriculum for that we'd use with all of our students that should come in front of this board but if you're using little touch points with it wouldn't come here that would be more specific for students or a group of students to use that so that's where you get it but there's some commonalities throughout but a full scale would have to be presented in
132front of you for adoption >> okay because I I just recently got like an explanation on that phonics based versus and So I didn't realize that it wasn't something that was deployed like >> more widely. So I don't know if that was specific to like my student or something. >> Nope. >> Okay. >> So staff growth is that um professional development. >> It's any professional learning. So that's when we had anybody that went to a national conference come back and talk about it and why that was significant. >> Because that's the only problem is we had to kick one off. >> Yeah. I think if we did you would get a bunch of of SEAL in January if we had made that a large component with the rest of our um curricular resources. So, we
133could highlight in there too as well. >> Okay, >> if that makes sense. >> A twofer or something. >> Yeah, >> I got you. >> Yeah, we could do that in April, too. That when we do that, we could do that uh the equity program in April. That seemed to be a good doveetail also just because lunch was a smaller thing, right? >> Yeah. >> So could do the training. I don't know if we want to write that in there, but equity training in April. >> Oh, okay. >> Anybody have anything else? Nope. >> Okay. So, I've got January seal curricular resources and then uh April lunch program and then uh trying to find a date for equity uh training for this board. >> Mhm. >> Okay. I can make those additions. >> Okay. Do
134we have to vote on that? >> No, that's okay because we can make the changes as needed. >> Okay. um prioritizing proposals for contract negotiations. Um >> so I would tell you to go into non-public with that where we are going to talk about compensation and that is under RSA 91A colon 3 letter A. >> Anybody want to move? >> So moved. >> God repeat that. >> All right. Roll call. >> Sorry. >> Roll call. Vote that. Oh, what do I need to do? Sorry. >> That we're going to go into >> I was like I'm here. >> All right, we're nonpublic at 7:51. >> I make a motion to come out of non-public. >> All right, it is uh >> vote yes. >> 8:34. Um All right, we have about 15 seconds of uh
135>> public comment. I guess there's no one here. Oh, yeah. Second. We'll roll call. Do you want to roll call to come out of non-public? I I >> I >> All right. And I think we can uh I'll make a motion to adjurnn. All in favor? >> I I Right.