School Board 4/6/22

001thank you hello and good evening and welcome to the april 6 um 2022 meeting of the litchfield school board i'll call the meeting to order and begin with the pledge of allegiance [Music] i pledge allegiance to the lack of the united states of america and this is one nation under god indivisible with grief and justice for over all thank you are there any um revisions to tonight's agenda but there are not okay um and a summary of non-public actions from march 16th 2022 mrs harrison made a motion to approve the non-public minutes of march 7th 2022 mrs hershberger seconded the motion carried by roll call vote mrs ames yes mrs hershberger yes mrs mcdonald yes mrs harrison yes mr cutter abstain summary of non-public actions from march 23rd 2022 mrs ames made a motion to

002accept the nomination of jacob hess as chs principal at a salary of 115 000 for the 22-23 school year mrs hershberger seconded the motion carried 4-1-0 with mr cutter opposing mr cutter made a motion to accept the nomination of laura dion as lms art teacher at a salary of 72 048 for the 22-23 year mrs harrison second in the motion carried five zero zero mrs harrison made a motion to accept the nomination of alana langley as lms spanish teacher at a salary of sixty four thousand two hundred seventy four dollars for the 22-23 year mr cutter seconded the motion carried five zero zero that brings us to presentations and recognitions i think we have two tonight both from chs um so i think first on the agenda is mr barrasso with the fbla okay well

003we'll do challenge day instead oh okay all right so mr perez with challenge day thank you uh no so i sent you um my name is mike perez and then this is nick um so nick and another student anthony holder they helped organize challenge day for their senior project this year so um it was a huge help um so just the i sent that one pager just the summary of challenge day to you but i did want to talk about from my end a little bit about challenge day before i turn it over to the students to kind of give their feedback on on the three days so i had nick and anthony help organize challenge day for their senior projects it was two days at the high school one day at the middle school

004i know i had a lot of questions why we had one day at the middle school reason why we had one day at the middle school is there was a little confusion between me and mrs late and um she school duded and reserved the gym at night but totally spaced reserving it during the day and they needed to do rehearsals on tuesday for course so luckily uh martha and jen were gracious enough to let us come down to the middle school and do challenge day for that that day down in middle school it was still high schoolers but it was just held correct yep yeah so what we did was we literally bust we bust all the kids down to the middle school that morning for the eight o'clock start and then it actually timed

005out perfectly where they all just jumped on the afternoon buses to come back to the high school when because they'd go that way anyway so it actually worked out perfectly so each day we had about 70 to 100 students and this group of students resembled the population of the school so it's you know the goal of challenge day is to really have the students be a good mix of what your daily population looks like in the building adult participation there's 15 to 20 adults including faculty staff community members administrators teachers other school board members business owners uh former we had former students come in um which was really really cool former parents uh current parents um we had i think we had at least three three current parents um come in actually four with if

006you consider tina's kind of dual rolls so um it's about six and a half hour day in the gym they're in the gym they're doing activities that promote empathy and inclusivity um and then this and there's two to um facilitators that i will say kudos to our kids at the end of the the three days um the uh the male dc he actually came to me and said if we ever do this again he wants us to request him and pam um he said that it's the best school that he's done and he's been doing this for about six years now so especially since two weeks ago he or the two weeks before he was at school in chicago downtown chicago very gang involved so he said it was a breath of fresh air coming

007into coming into litchfield so it was nice um end of the day uh because i know a lot of people ask what happens at the end of the day end of the day the two challenge day facilitators they meet with all of the adults and at the end of the day all the adults they have to they get a list of their small families and all their small families are about five to six kids and they have to they star them potential leaders students that may need to check in and then any students that need immediate attention um and then what they do is they meet the two challenge the two challenge day facilitators meet with all the adults at the end of the day with our school councils school counselors so ms nelson ms

008juris and mr parsons and then jamie faulhaver who's our mental health clinician also met at the end of the day to make sure that we were our kids were safe so potential leaders we kind of follow up with that list to try to promote them to become better leaders in the school step up to you know take on some leadership roles in the building and then any check-ins what we do is we're the check-in students and the ones that needed immediate attention we are continuingly going to check in with them we have our chat team that will at least once a month go over that list of students and make sure the school counselors have touched base with them and then each student we're starting to hand these out uh last week and this week

009uh challenge day is doing something different challenge day action cards so and you'll notice on the on the handout but um the challenge cards they had to answer some of these statements and questions so one thing i learned today is one thing i want to challenge myself to do after today is one person who stood out to me today that i can compliment is because one person i can apologize to or forgive is because and then one person i can reach out to for support is and those were the questions that they had to answer themselves um they folded those up they gave them to their adult facilitators and they were supposed to be getting them back a couple weeks after challenge day which we started last week and we're giving those back to the

010individual students this week and the adults too so they can kind of reflect a little bit on their challenge day so i'm going to turn it over to nick to start and then i'm going to introduce some of the other students that have come in to talk a little bit about their experience with challenge day so yeah so um i'd like to say the reason why me and anthony chose to do this is our senior project to start is because of kind of the the tough transition our school had to go through during covid we could definitely tell that there's a change in culture and there's a change in attitude and a togetherness in the students and we thought that was just a shame and our experience doing challenge day our freshman year when we

011brought it here was incredible and so we thought this would be perfect and bring back that culture that we lost and and it was perfect i mean after the three days i was blown away by people coming up to me and thanking me in the hallways giving me hugs personally saying this is what we needed to make to bring back what we lost and it like i said i was blown away by people i wouldn't wasn't expecting to come up to me and be completely changed by the whole process so um a little bit about what me and anthony did with our project we were mainly in charge of making lists of students who were in the days and we did this completely random and unbiased because we didn't want any certain connections between students

012who wanted this completely random so that students didn't have any like advantages over others or what whatever and mr prez obviously checked that list and um things we also helped during the three days set up stuff like transportation name tags lunches just so the days would go flow easier setting up yeah setting up taking down everything in the gym helping them helping the two facilitators they had some stuff they had to bring up um but for us i personally did the day twice i did the first day and the third day and i saw a large difference in the amount of kids who are willing to reflect on themselves and the amount of kids that were moved by challenge they actually increased by the third day so it was definitely making an impact on our

013school as we were doing the days which i thought was exactly what we needed and overall it was just something i really think we should do for future years to come i'm gonna use today [Music] so i'm ryan garrett i'm a junior that goes to campbell and i went to challenge day on the second day when we had to get bus down to the middle school and one of my biggest takeaways from challenge day was it was something none of us took seriously at first i talked to a lot of my friends i talked to a lot of people they're like oh this is dumb we don't want to do this it's there's no point in it but i'm just going to mess around somewhere like you know but once you get there they start

014making you like they get you to take it seriously just because you start connecting with these people and then you get into your little families where it's like four to five people and then no one's just sharing random stories or like making things up it's serious stories and i personally had a lot of fun doing it because there are people i never talked to i'd only seen them in the halls didn't even know their name and there's this one activity where you cross the line and it's they'll read something off so like if you've eaten an oreo you cross the line but it was obviously much serious subjects there were people i had never talked to didn't know their name and all of a sudden i felt like i knew them and that is a

015i feel like that's a big thing especially for a small school like campbell when we already pretty much know everyone there it felt like i knew i knew who was there even though i never talked to them and it felt like i knew them and i think it's something i almost want to consider doing for my senior project because i had so much fun i made sure i went up to nick i made sure i went up to anthony mr perez dc pam i went up to all of them because i just had such a great time and it was all about loving each other it was all about self love loving each other making sure you're supportive of one another but no one mentioned love for the people who set it up and i

016personally felt like that is something we needed to do and so i made sure i showed my love to everyone who set it up because i had a lot of fun i really enjoyed my time so i went i went up to everybody and i wanted to make sure i knew i knew that they knew that i enjoyed it because i it was such a great day for me everyone there was not one person i talked to i talked to so many people not one person said they didn't enjoy it everybody said they enjoyed it to the point where after the first two days some of my friends who had opted out were trying to opt in for day three like that's how much that's how much fun work that around yeah that's how much

017fun it was to the point where the friend my friends who had opted out tried to opt in for day three just because of how great it was how was the lunch it was i liked it i thought it was good i'm just curious i heard things about so you did you learn to respect other people and get to know other people's what by crossing the line the crosses they bear in real life that you had no idea what was going on yeah yeah i'm going to start to cry oh there's a lot of crying a challenge oh i know i've been to a few it was it's like you said like you don't know some of the people like it's a small school a lot of people know each other in this town it's

018not do they really know each other yeah exactly like there's still people that i never talk to don't even know their names and i see them cross the line and i i feel like i know them it's so weird but it's it's a great feeling and i'm so grateful that we got to do this especially because i'm a junior so i almost missed the cutoff i'm so grateful especially with nick i'm so grateful that they brought it here and i really i really think the school in general as the 8th graders come up and the 7th graders come up when they get to their freshman sophomore junior years i really think they're going to enjoy it awesome thank you okay your mother's a mess i don't suppose i've ever heard ryan speaking the whole time

019i've known him she loves it my name is oren baden i'm also a junior at campbell high school and looking back at challenge day i i just loved it there was not one negative thought about it one thing that really hit me hard with it is the fact that i saw so many people like who i've never seen interact walking in the halls in class just straight up not knowing each other existed i saw them hugging each other comforting each other you know showing genuine care for because they were going through the same experiences similar to what ryan said about the crossing the line event when i would cross that line i see other people cross the line i felt like i had a connection with them because like we went through that same similar

020whether it was a good thing or a bad thing like that's something we both went through and it made a personal connection so even if i still don't talk to those people now even if i see them in the hall i'm like you know i hope you're all right i hope you're still okay because even though we don't know each other i still really care about you and again there was a lot of tears um i'm not gonna i'm not afraid to i did cry a lot and i saw a lot of other people cry but it was it was like a good cry because it was good to let it out and it was good to see that it was a safe space that i could that not only me but everybody else could

021let out all this emotion i felt refreshed after the whole thing was over it was like um like it was a whole new person honestly i was exhausted i think one of the cool things that they do to break down the wall of trust is when you first when the students first walk in as a group they walk in and the whole 100 70 to 100 kids walk in on the group and they have the teachers or the adult facilitators line up in two lines almost like a big gauntlet and these teachers and they're playing they're blasting music and you guys kids are like and all the adults are like high-fiving cheering so it's like the beginning stages of them just breaking down this wall for these kids to understand it puts the adult in

022a really awkward position too because they have to kind of break down their wall as well and um understand that i know that there was a couple parents a couple adults that came to me and they're like holy moly that was unreal that like the wall that i had to bring down myself so i think it's just good for the whole community and that's why i try not to do too many teachers too one because of the sub issue but two i try not to do too many because these guys see like in girls they see the teachers on a daily basis where it's kind of cool to have community members come in local business owners come in that they don't see every day that they can truly understand okay i'm not not that they're

023being judged by their teachers but they see the teachers every day you know um so it was nice having board members uh community members business owners you know some parents former parents and things like that i think it's a good thing a good way to bring the community in yeah the more connections our students can make in in the bigger community too so i think that i i attended on the third day i think you were on my day yeah i was on the third day and um yeah it was powerful and it was draining emotion i was emotionally exhausted um afterwards but i certainly felt renewed and optimistic moving forward i don't know if you guys experienced the same thing did you notice i mean both everyone had said they've noticed a change in

024the like the following days is that positivity kept going is it or is it is everybody kind of falling off that high and now you know i think a little bit of both mixed together i feel like there's definitely that positivity is still there up and high there's definitely still moments where people are still very genuinely nice to each other obviously but it definitely wasn't at like its peak height like after the couple of days afterwards yeah i think that's probably why the action cards yeah are are kind of a good reminder like hey remember where you were two weeks ago or was it two weeks two and a half weeks um remember you know let's get back to that point and keep it going and then ms nelson and i um we're really trying

025to work on like every every month do something even if it's just small to kind of just rejuvenate that just that thought process you know just you know remember that so that's great [Music] um i'm emily i'm a junior um so yeah i was kind of the same thing about what oren and ryan said i had the same type of experience i was day two at the middle school um and it was like mr press said it was kind of weird when we walked in and all the adults were like we're like what is going on but they ran through and they're all like high fiving us um but they have this like really it's kind of it's really cool how they kind of um build that trust within all the students and like the

026wall does break down and we we all went in there like we're not going to say anything we're not going to be emotional about it but everything everybody was like it was kind of crazy how it worked but just by reiterating reiterating everything that they said because they already kind of said it but yeah same same experience one of my sons went and he that that was the one thing he said it was trust building for him and he said you know everybody has kept that trust too and so he was like his comment was you know even you know a week later he felt like that trust was still there yeah it was interesting to see some kids that they wanted nothing to do with it and then by that third day so that

027it's it happens at every so this would be my seventh or eighth time doing this whichever school i've been at and um it's interesting because by the third day the kids that signed up wanted to kind of do it and then they realized ooh ah this is not for me so those kids really figure out that they don't want to do it but then the kids that might not have signed up or didn't get a chance to do it they're the ones that are like no i want to do it so i think i had 11 on that morning come to me and be like i'm not comfortable with this all right perfect but then i had i put the announcement out and i had 15 20 kids i went in like i'm ready to

028do it yeah i could sprint like i'm gonna go do it and he comes in two seconds later he's like i don't even have a chance so that third day is always an interesting day because that third day you really get up to 100 kids that are really um really like they kind of know what's going on they've heard from their buds and so they really want to think and just understanding where people are all different walks of life and i think those are the two big big things we take from this day and i think it just it brings back because i always i always say my first year at campbell nine almost ten years ago i walked into that building and i was like this place is like no other place i've ever

029seen i mean you know i would it was just organized chaos but in a good way and it just the culture was just it was i mean and noah i mean noah was a junior when i first started you know and so and noah can attest as a as a former student that the halls were hustling and bustling and it was just a great atmosphere kids wanted to be in that building i remember being four o'clock it'd still be 40 kids in the building like go home you know and some weren't even athletes they were just hanging out they'd be in the learning commons they'd be in the main lobby and they'd be like hey what's going on they just love the place and i think these are the baby steps that i want to

030take to get back to that so wonderful thank you so much for sharing your experiences thank you thank you thank you thank you thanks thank you mr hi hi my troops are out waiting in the wings and we'll just kind of give you the high sign when we need you to change yeah dana we didn't they don't look nervous they know those faces [Music] okay so for those of you who don't know me uh my name is dana barraza i'm the business teacher at litchfield campbell's high school and i've been here nine years and uh just to tell you briefly um i retired from milford high school after 30 years well it was more than 30 years 30 years there but anyways and i came here for a couple years and now nine years later

031i'm still enjoying every second of it so um yeah uh and our business department at campbell high school uh when mr lonigan approached me to do this i said i thought about it for a couple days i said well this is what i'll say no not me i'm gonna have these guys and then talk about their experience so uh we're gonna start with uh the introductions and i have uh two slides of introductions and uh mia getbridge has taken everything we have to offer if it has to do with business as has haley anderson and bailey burke has also taken just about everything we have to offer as well and they are co-presidents of our fbla club which we'll talk about in a minute and uh cj real has taken accounting one accounting two marketing

032one and marketing two and jackson nori has taken almost everything we have to offer uh including uh school-based enterprise where we run the school store and uh three of the students here tonight were our uh managers this year and uh liv pilcher is also going to talk about uh accounting and marketing one marketing too and maybe a little bit about fbla i don't know so we're gonna start why don't we do this uh i'll just sit here once come on up i know you're first and then you can just tell him when you want to change so we did a little outline for each of the courses and the first one would be school based enterprise which we all know is school store students enrolled in school-based enterprise will have full responsibility for operating a

033school store um the class meets alternating days in the school stores open during all lunches when the class is running and then jack's going to go into a little more detail about that so i'm just going to talk about what the school store has to offer and what i've gone from the school store so from the school store you're able to engage in like positive interactions with your peers and we opened during like open house and we were there during parent-teacher conferences and we were able to like sell merchandise and like foods and snacks and whatever they needed so i just think it like brings the community closer together as well as the business side of things we learn how business runs he lets us take care of all the expenses we deal with the

034office the money i think it just teaches us life skills budgeting people skills and just he puts a different responsibility on us that we're able to learn thank you olivia hi okay so i'm gonna talk about marketing one and two so with marketing one we examine like the basic foundations and functions involved in the exchange process ultimately designed to meet customer needs and we kind of cover marketing research target market selection product design and a bunch of different things just pretty much the basic foundation of marketing and then with moving into marketing 2 we buy um sorry we don't buy we learn how to buy and um why we buy and what we buy and it's also just diving deeper into the marketing one topics and another thing to know is that completion of marketing

035one is a prerequisite for marketing too so going on to the next slide so i'm just gonna dive a little bit deeper into what we do so with marketing one we started off with a brand you project so we basically had to think about ourselves and what our personality traits are and like what makes us us and we had to make this into a logo that represented ourselves and why we would be you know why we should be bought i guess or be hired so once we learned the basics of just branding ourselves then we learned how to brand other things other products and companies and then we kind of stuck to the theme of being hireable with cover letters and resumes and mock interviews and then after that process we started diving deeper into

036the basics of marketing and we did a bunch of different projects so you can see right there those are just a few projects that we've done which includes our advertising methods um our marketing consultant projects different um hidden logos a bunch of different things like that and again we've done a bunch more this is just a little example of them and then going into marketing too i'm still in that class right now so i still have a bunch to learn but we're diving deeper into those key learning points and one of our recent projects that we did was our recent um sales pitch project that's liv right there there i am um i was acting as a sales representative for a jewelry company so i was showing how well a jewelry cleaner works and that

037went really much and also for that um specific project we had to make um business cards to kind of understand how that works so you can see bailey's and mia's right there for their other um businesses that they were showing and then one more thing that i wanted to talk about um before i wrap up the whole marketing thing is that this is what i'm actually going to school for so when i was touring a bunch of different colleges and going to a bunch of information sessions um they were talking about their marketing course and what types of things i'd be learning and within that first second year they were talking about a bunch of this stuff which is really good because i kind of already have like basic knowledge of this stuff so i

038know that when i walk into a room and learning about this i kind of have a leg up compared to the other students in the classroom so it's been really good and i'm super excited to learn more about it when i go to college so i'm gonna pass it on to cj cj's our accounting guy all right so these are the two courses we offer at a campbell high school accounting one is a introductory course that is designed to you know go into further knowledge and do accounting some of the accounting principles we go over is uh gap accounts receivable accounts payable debit credit you know we go into further understanding of our topics through projects you know in order to research each project we you know make presentations and present them from the class

039kind two is a continuation of accounting one and we go into more like gl's and different things that we use in universal accounting today uh such as successful completion of the course of accounting one is a prerequisite course next slide [Music] next slide please thank you uh these are some of the topics we go over in accounting one and two and uh we go over case studies gl's workbooks uh basic accounting principles t-accounts accounting ethics advertising within accounting stocks insurance paychecks um how your stocks doing yeah thank you yeah i didn't mean to interrupt yeah but uh mr bros actually introduced me to this like course and accounting and actually ended up getting a job in accounting last july which is amazing especially in high school you know not many kids my age get jobs

040in accounting he's an accounts receivable and payable accounts payable accounts i work for gateways in nashua it's great it's a great uh organization i work for we work with special needs kids and it's a great place to work you know just awesome and next year next year going to go to college probably going to go to newer university utah what do you [Laughter] introduce our next course um that would be personal finance in this course students learn financial literacy which is via ability and use in knowledge and skills to manage one's financial records so more just like your personal finances obviously um miss barnett is actually teaching this course this year and bailey's gonna mention that um the two of us are in it but we're in it this semester so neither of us have

041finished the course yet so this is kind of like what we got so far thank you man bailey all right so as mia said mia and i are the only two that are here tonight that have taken personal finance and we're currently still in the course so we use the base curriculum for what we're learning right now is based off the dave ramsey classroom so basically off the dave ramsey classroom what we mainly use is the five foundations of personal finance so we learn and base a lot of stuff off of those five foundations and some of the core concepts we've covered so far in this class is credit cards credit card debt um interest rates taxes and basically we learn a lot about financial planning in personal finance so that's the main concepts we've

042covered so far thanks bailey pastor one's a human all right haley anderson all right so now we have future business leaders of america also known as fbla this is the business club that we have at the school so bailey mia and myself are co-president of fbla and our 2021 and 2022 membership we had 22 students in it and all of those students attended the fall leadership conference in october and there we participated in various business related activities team building activities and the three of us as co-presidents we attended the new hampshire state presidents meeting in december where we learned a lot about how to be leaders in our chapter and we had eight members attend and compete in the state leadership conference last week in march and out of those eight members we had six

043that placed either first or second in their competition and we had one place fourth and then i'm gonna took seven place date we had all our schools that were like either thinking about or got into it um but overall we just wanted to say that um we all enjoyed and learned much from the courses we've taken through the business program at campbell and all of us have chosen to go to a university next year and all of us are business majors so obviously this program had a big impact on us we also said we feel confident and comfortable going into next year with the knowledge and lessons that we've learned throughout the last few years at campbell and i don't know where they went but they had the logos of all the schools they've been

044accepted when yeah you're less than a month okay i'm deciding between unh bryant and bentley and then i've committed to roger williams university you're going to love it and smooth university of utah and we would like to thank you all for inviting us here tonight and we really appreciate it and you can see that these two i'm very proud of all of these students not just the six that showed up but for the entire program so thank you all very much mr president i have to say as a mother of one of your students who is he is doing amazing in college my man the most amazing nation letter because it knocked my socks off it was amazing how well you knew my son and i think he took most of these classes yeah he

045took every class that i did because i was a business i have a degree in business management and i went back for my teacher's degree but i think you got you could see the love for you mr brass so much i appreciate that and i hope you guys got had fun at the fbla meeting because i got together with one of those too yes you did and i showed them how to order alley cat pizza they had the upper no one knew what was hitting them at the meeting once again thank you very much thank you that brings us to um [Music] community input so we can join you can join community input online if you are at home with the google meat link the link is meet.google.com har hyphen j-a-n-a-h-n-k um the phone number

046to join that meet is one six six two five six five five one four six the pin is nine one one nine nine two three five five pound and those the link and the phone number can be found on our agenda someone in attendance that would like to share any input okay is there anyone in the link all right so with that i will close the first session of section of public input and discuss during the meeting later on that brings us to correspondence hello i have correspondence from betty vaughn on march 17th she said that her son was a senior in 2019 and he said that kids made up places to go and she thought it was a lot of pressure for kids to put where they're going to college and it was it

047wasn't a positive experience and she also put um she mentioned that andrew is a new number member and he needs to um realize he's not chair and it was disrespectful to run the meeting when you're not the chair and we've had plenty of disruptive school board members over the years we don't need another and this one is from march 17th from susan haley talking about how great cam uh challenge day was and it had a positive intact impact on both of her sons they were able to talk about a disabled cousin and her older son brought home the letters which mean a lot to the parents with that um from challenge day and what a positive experience is what it was and she wanted to thank campbell for bringing such a great program to campbell

048and it's a reminder to show how to treat others and show empathy and kindness uh this one is from alan wagner um he had concerns over cell phone usage during school board meetings and think i wanted to know if they had anything to do with the business at hand he wanted to know if they were part of the freedom of information act and it was mentioned that mr cutter had emails concerning a local republican group and he wanted to know um concerning the outreach to the web republican group and now that mr cutter has been sworn in he wants to know if he can get it because of the freedom of information act um sonia costinos march 17th um sometimes it's not the number of voices but the impact of the decisions that matter most

049and she was not in favor of us adding colleges to the announcements and she um thinks it's hurtful to the kids that struggle um andrew maron on let's see what is that one march 17th he's new to litchfield and he thought we've done great work for the future planning of future school buildings and he appreciates all the work that we do the faculty staff and boards and students he failed he felt compelled to write to express disappointment in mr cutter's approach to working with the board he is all for encouraging self-reflection and growth within boards but to start with a negative attitude and remarks especially towards mrs flynn we're unprofessional he wants us to work collaboratively and respectively on behalf of our town and students and he appreciates the work we all do and looks

050forward to our progress did i do betty vaughn yeah i did buddy one and this one is from andrew webb andrew april weber and it is there's no date on it and she requested that this email be read in its entirety during public input which we do no longer do since since covid we are summarizing information and it's all put it on the minutes um she has in the most recent election it should be clear that the to the board that we a change was needed and that's why mr cutter was omen overwhelmingly became a resident's first choice she was just pleased that our our board voted for miss harrison for chair again and bake based on her lack of leadership the superintendent has been running our school board meetings and she applauds mr cutter

051for listening to adults the board needs to remember that the superintendent the business administrator and executive assistant are supported supporting higher personnel and they are not part of the elected board and she was shocked that mrs harrison refused to vote on the motion brought forth forward by mr cutter regarding graduation and she thought the kids did their due dil students did their due diligence and professionally presented to the board she embraced greatly appreciates everyone putting themselves out there and doing what they feel best for our community mr cutter made many suggestions during member input and i hope the board will listen closely and implement those uh to move in a positive direction a big change is needed thank you any other correspondence all right that will bring us to superintendent comments thank you so first

052up we have the school board meeting calendar so this is still a draft um remember we had preliminary conversation about it but i just want to bring it forward bear with me while i get to it the questions that are still open for us to determine are the july meeting date um remember we have a calendar that gets us through june so we're picking up in july um and we'd ask board members to take a look at their calendars and let us know what uh what would work in july so that question needs to be answered maybe not tonight but before july it does and then um you can see after that in august we've established the regular meeting schedule with the first and third wednesdays and that works all the way through with the

053only hiccup being in march because once again we're looking at a february slash march vacation week so we're bumping it out the good news is this year that bumps it to the wednesday um immediately after the election so it would be the next night from the no i'm sorry it's i take that back the election will be on the 14th um so we are able to have a meeting on a regular night uh prior to the election in case there's any last business that we need to conduct um and then you'll also notice at the bottom and you know i'm seeking input from the board the format that we've been following is to have the schools come and present every other month so basically think of it as a four meeting cycle where uh the

054three schools have a presentation tonight with chs's night you can see they had two presentations to make which is it's good because it gives the board an opportunity to hear from the schools um and then the fourth one is mary presenting on curriculum initiatives and so she tries to line up the various committees perk and so forth to make sure that the work that's done there then is able to be presented to the board and so i'm assuming that's the one that's labeled cia at the bottom of the chart but i'm assuming the board is interested in maintaining that approach so that we hear from the principals every other month in the schools and that you want to continue the practice of having students and programmatic spotlights made to the board any comments on that

055no i think it's the calendar pretty similarly mirrors what we did last year anyway um my only suggestion or comment would be i would like to discuss what the format would be for some of those community forums and if those would be planned in advance and therefore put on the calendar so people could know that um that was coming up so if we're going to do them quarterly maybe we pick you know november because there's a fifth wednesday i don't know something um but my thought would be to put those in there so people can plan to come and maybe the topics are to be announced based on what's going on at the time but i would like to have that extra opportunity to engage with the public similar to what we did with the

056forum with critical race theory just to be able to have dialogue and conversation and um so something to consider i'd support that too i i i would actually like to hear from our director of special services sometime throughout the year so maybe could she he or she you know depending on what's next um uh you know maybe take one or two of the curriculum slots you know just as a thought well the other thing too is maybe tag team on that night so um yeah have it be i think there's a couple of different ways we could do it we could actually spotlight a special program in one of the schools during their cycle or we could have it coincide with the cia presentation but i think it's a great idea we'll i'll let me

057take it back to the team talk with them about the best way to integrate i just feel like people who don't have kids in special services don't necessarily we don't understand the program and i think that that would be valuable you know one of the things we also talked about was lea and lsa i know it's to be determined but that would impact the schedule as well as meeting frequency and meeting time which would also impact the schedule i know what our last meeting was march 16th um i know it was an intention that we would table it on march 16th and bring it up at this meeting i don't know if that's still the plan or not but that's what was said and agreed upon at that last meeting do you mean the meetings

058of the board and no i mean the actual time frequency of our meetings yeah so as we go through schedule i think that's important to highlight okay yeah i think too we had we had tabled the discussion on you know increasing the outreach like the forums and the skip level meetings and all that for the retreat in may is that right um so i think maybe with this feedback we could bring it back to the team and put in special services somehow coordinate that maybe come up with a couple community forums and then a proposal again we had talked about possibly having additional meetings as new gms and lms continue to happen what that would look like i know that the facilities improvement committee is planning you know specifically meetings about community forums and meetings

059about gms but those can all be included yeah it'd be a busy year we're busy here [Music] all right so i don't think we're ready to vote on it yet but i think this is a good draft is there anybody ready to say avoid this week in july yes i am ready okay so let's just cross off the list july dates i don't know i'm not available the 23rd to the 30th so that last week okay i'm not available the 11th through the 22nd anyone else know if something in july i do not have any conflicts on a wednesday in july so yay yet yet nor do i have more yeah not wednesday though that's august um i'll be in the world not on wednesdays thus far okay so we're looking i i i mean

060if it looks like the sixth would be um the only available date at this point so i'm gonna ask that we put the sixth on as the meeting it's the week of july fourth but that is a prime vacation week i would imagine for staff staff not so much i'm not going anywhere but why can't she meet without a quorum i mean without without with a quorum but without full representation we can we could you're not going to have every board member at every meeting likely right and stuff typically vacations in july anyway so we can i mean depending on what what's on the agenda i dialed in from last year and i will be dialing in in august we're all pretty good about comment we really yeah it's not official we have four people

061here yeah yeah okay it'll happen at your next meeting do you want to pick a different date or are we solid with the six six is fine okay so we'll we'll make that blue okay okay on the calendar i'll take the special ed question back to the team and uh i do think at the retreat when planning the community forums we should just be really mindful once we know what it is we want to communicate pick those dates get them on here thank you all right great that brings us to enrollment bear with me in a second [Music] all right so get this projected for folks at home so uh basically you can see that at um at griffin we've had a little bit of an increase in the month of march we went from

062457 to 461. looks like we gained a fourth grader a third grader and two first graders um so i honestly don't know that story i'm not sure if there are no bands or what but that's our enrollment number the middle school also gained a student and it seems to be a fifth grader so it seems like the younger kiddos are moving into town at the moment um and the high school also gained one and that's a ninth grader um and so those are numbers currently but you know we it's interesting if you look we're at 12 39 um we started off with our october number at uh 38 and then we dropped a little bit but we've come back up again so it's it's relatively steady it's not a run for the hills with uh

063shortage of staff or anything and looking at um the kindergarten enrollment um on march 1st i'm sorry we should look at april 5th that would be the better number we're up to 73 students in kindergarten last year um and this year we're at 59 so we're running a little bit behind that number is that normal it varies year to year we promote it we encourage people to sign up we want them to let us know they're coming but i don't think with kindergarten registration as any such thing as normal because it really just fluctuates by the individual year but we are currently at the 59. any questions on him i'm sorry we're already 84. we're still in 84 for first grade first grade and last year we were at 77 so um so again we're

064we're over in first grade but we're way under in kindergarten okay thank you you're welcome are there any changes in town that we know of or you know one town over in terms of offerings for kindergarten that might be affecting it or what do you mean no idea um are there daycares that are offering kindergarten this year that weren't in the past or i don't know that we've heard of anything affecting it but um you know it's it's still early enough now i know too much about it but i will certainly uh when i'm down to jamming what's next i'll i'll talk right then and see if he's heard of something and anybody out there with a potential kindergartener if you're planning to come please get them signed up because we would like to know

065great and you had school board retreat yep i just wanted to give an update on retreats so since the last meeting michelle and i have been very busy planning contacting people and getting everything organized so um we have the retreat scheduled for tomorrow night and just a reminder of the board that uh that is scheduled at uh saint anselm's at the institute of politics um michelle did send the directions on how to put that in your gps so it gets you to the right spot because i you don't want to use a generic address you want to use the specific one um so starting at five o'clock we've got training for the board from uh barrett and will so they are coming from the school board association and there's a packet that they have presented

066to us and michelle are we making that electronically available it's in a separate it's in a folder in that retreat folder that says um updated in hsba it's pretty much from what i understand it's very similar to last year's packet so i don't i think the packet that i shared with you andrew is the packet for the most part there may be minor tweaks to it and the rest of the board got it last year i would just ask you to you know if in advance if you can just familiarize yourself and so where's that folder that it's stored in yeah in the school board team drive the share the shared drive there's a retreat school board retrieve folder it's in the folder for the date 47 and it's also on the um retreat agenda

067okay it's linked on the is that the training exactly okay um and you know if if you review in advance i i'm gonna i've already asked somebody i said there's no need to go through it in the same level of detail but i i envision this more conversation you know what are the questions that the board members may have for um for the association relative to how to operate or policies or budgetary you think about the things that are statutorily reserved for the board um and this will be an opportunity to ask those questions and dig in a little bit so it'll be probably less presenting and more dialogue this year because we do have so many people returning and we did it last year we also linked the scoreboard board goals document if you

068remember those goals were developed last year at the retreat the same session and so just a reminder that we do have those goals it's good to revisit them um our intent would be to because some of the goals were achieved this year so now we want to sort of all right what's next when it comes to the action plans right so um the board should probably consider sometimes thinking about those goals and helping to guide the admin team toward what the action steps are for the next year next up we have the culture and climate and communication and that is coming from uh bill preble so bill is a professor at new england college in henniker he runs the center for school climate and learning and so i reached out to bill and i said

069tell me what schools you've worked with in new hampshire on ideas relative to climate and culture um and he's actually done nationwide work so the center they just got a million dollar grant from the gates foundation and they are studying culture and climate in los angeles so they've done big they've done work in chattanooga they've done you know regional kind of stuff right i mean thinking south now west but he's also been to uh guilford wilton linebarrow um and there was one other school in new hampshire it slipped my mind and they've done that kind of work also there so i asked bill to come in and actually taken a two-step approach to this so you know um the union presidents are here so and vice president starling uh so kathy and darlene representing lssa

070patrick and then stacey was not here tonight representing lea we sat down and we said what can you bring to us and he said what are your concerns and we've had a very honest open dialogue about concerns also involved in that meeting were the principles of each building uh mike was representing the high school because with bill's retirement i wanted to make sure somebody was able to carry this forward and i'll speak for myself i left energized because i felt that having an independent third party who's an expert in the field coming in to help guide our work that needs to be done was the right way to proceed um i'll let everybody else speak for themselves if they wish but the next step for bill is to come and explain to the board who

071he is what he does and what he thinks are the next steps for us so we haven't committed to anything yet we're exploring this this is one option but we're already engaging a guiding team at the school level to help with the work that needs to be done and what i love the most about it is that it will it'll involve school-based teams so it'll be like this oversight umbrella committee um school-based teams the data that comes back is owned by the school and the action steps to be developed are developed by the school so here's what it says about adult on adult interactions or adult student interactions or student student interactions how are you going to resolve it how are you going to address it what are the things that you can go after

072to improve to improve the culture and climate in the district and again having you know somebody from outside coming in and guiding that i think is is uh the the approach that we ought to take versus us trying to figure this out um and us trying to figure out what the data means i'd rather have the center for school climate and learning guiding us so that's what we're going to be talking more about tomorrow and i want the board to come in i'm giving you this primary because i want you to come in tomorrow night ready to ask those questions ready to figure out if bill's the guy or bill's team is the team it's not just bill he can't do la and uh litfield so the point is making sure that this is the

073right the right step and that the board feels that this will address um the concerns you have and i think the honest open approach of here's what we're here's what we've heard as board members this is what we want to try to discern so that's what that is about tomorrow night okay i like that approach i just have to say that um it's one thing for the board to potentially agree on this but more i would say equal perhaps more important is for the lssa and the lea to to to be like they need to they need to think it's there a solution as well a potential solution so my personal feedback is i think it would be important to hear from you guys as well so i've invited both associations to remember let me

074just talk for a second about the retreat because i had an email from andrew um questioning two things is the retreat a public meeting and are we legally able to conduct a retreat off-site um and spend money on food those are the two questions that i was asked to look into so um so to be clear this is a public meeting the board is meeting and it is a public meeting the public is invited now here's what makes it a retreat versus a board meeting you'll notice that on this agenda there is no public comment there is no um uh action items right so you're not even asked to vote on that tomorrow this is all feedback based it's discussion based it's dialogue is it going to be recorded is not we're not planning to

075televise or record but that's what makes the retreat different from the meeting because you're not asked to vote on something you're not asked to approve something per se it's dialogue feedback discussion okay and uh [Music] it is a publicly posted meeting three times away so that comes away that's my concern a public meeting should be in litchfield not in goffstown and i know you wanted it in a place that was a school educational setting i don't know anyone that's going to go to goffstown that's going to come to our meeting maybe they do want to hear what the questions are we ask and that's just my personal opinion and i i'll be there if i can but i just think it's a big ask especially if i don't get good food you brought this to

076us from bedford what did i mean what did bedford do well so first of all uh the bedford retreats um we held them at southern new hampshire university and [Music] there's one year we couldn't be there oh i know it was the downtown campus so it was still snow but it was the downtown campus not the hooksett campus so in the malls no it's not in the mills it's actually on elm street it's kind of strange it's like upstairs above a furniture store or something but anyway um so that's where we had it and so they were out of town they were not on television because there's bedford tv that covers all the uh retreats they were not and they were publicly posted meetings and the public could come and watch the board dialogue it's

077open um and so going back to the legal question so mike confirmed it has to be a public meeting the public has to know that you are doing this the location not a matter of concern um and you need to again just post it so that people know so we followed all the normal posting rules for the public relative to this need except our policy right we have a policy that says if we have a public meeting you have to have public input that's our policy from this board and that's no longer on this agenda which means we really shouldn't have a retreat right we can add public input if you wish if that's the policy i mean that am i misinterpreting the policy which policy it is one of them [Music] it's gonna take

078a minute to find it if if that's the policy we'll add a public input piece to the agenda that's not a problem nobody's going to come because it's in goffstown in manchester what it's in manchester the address is in manchester and it's it's pinardville it's part of manchester yeah but it's pinardville saint anselm as pinardville here saying and then there's bedford here policy b-e-d-h now i think i'm looking at there's two different versions of the edh on the website just so you're aware one is under where the policy library is of 270 policies the other bedh is under the um agendas link so under under school board agendas there's another link to policy b-e-d-a link i'll have to that's right um but it does say we're going to have two public input components to our

079meeting first first observation right second observation is as a board when we last met this was a non-public that's what the board decided upon and discussed somehow some way over the last couple weeks this is now transferred into a public meeting fine that's great right a couple other questions are is on the agenda i now see cindy couture speaking to the board still um andrew can we do one question at a time it'd be easier sure so let's go back to this it was never non-public it was always a public meeting don't know i actually thought part of it was going to be because the attorneys were going to be there right we were going to check whether uh that would call come under the rule that it's a non-meeting so when you meet with

080attorneys okay right meeting okay and we were checking to see if that fell under it or not um but the rest of the agenda was public so it was the question was is that a non-meeting the answer is no it's a public meeting it's training from you're not meeting on a legal matter with an attorney which is a non-meeting you're getting training from your uh association so it is a public meeting okay that was one what was the second um talked about policies right talked about that uh i was just bringing up cindy as a part of the agenda um can i can i just verify so uh on bedh does it say meeting e-e-d-h for each meeting again this is probably the old one two 15-minute segments shall be set aside on the agenda

081entitled community forum so what would the board like to do the official meeting is the new policy yeah i the intent of that policy was an official meeting like this but this is a this is a meeting remember it's a meeting of the board in public which is not the same as a public meeting would i rather retreat a public meeting yes yes all the retreats that we've had have been open and posted [Music] so what would you how how would you direct us we can we can simply add through all the board public session on here or we can go with you know what what we're thinking which is that the reason is a retreat and not a board meeting is because it allows the board to have that dialogue um internally but it's

082your call i think there should be public input i also think if it's a public meeting we should be having it on town on camera [Music] question at a time that wasn't a question that was a statement genuinely i thought and when we met and we talked about this at the end of the last meeting that this portion was not going to be public that this was going to be um a non-public because there was things that would get into and approach personnel matters as we talked about culture and climate um and so it was going to fall under a non-public was my understanding which was why i'm supportive of having that off site because it's not going to be on camera anyway um so it's a public meeting now right so that that's i'm

083struggling with that part of it i guess is is my concern because having a non-public off-site i don't think there's any um harm to the public i don't think there's anything sneaky i don't think there's anything shady or any accusations of transparency it's just us doing our jobs it's a fact it's a public meeting that's what i'm struggling with i'm not saying i'm against it i'm i'm i'm doing this in my head right now so i'm just being honest i think if we're talking about transparency the optics are we're going to gus whatever we're going to that corner of bedford golf town or wherever and no one's gonna we're gonna have every question i asked is gonna be written down for people to read if i ask the lawyer something excuse me i didn't take

084minutes at the last retreats no but if it's a public meeting you shouldn't be yes you i was not required to oh no that's fine but it wasn't a public meeting yes it was yes it was oh my god so we did public meetings without minutes because it was a training right no action it was a board actually it was a meeting of the board in public and just keep that distinction in mind it was not a closed door meeting anybody could have walked in makes us look bad i'm not supportive of this i'm not it should be a public meeting here in town on camera i would be fine moving it into like chs the library you know um are we in a position that we are locked in at cnas at this point

085well we signed a contract with sanees because the board vote at the last meeting was four to one to have it off-site so we made that plan based on the direction the board provided right it was it was going to be non-published and i think the spirit of that is the direction of the spirit change somehow some way over the last 200. i just think we're getting conflicting messages and we're getting confused and yeah yeah well i'm getting conflicting messages we signed a contract with saines for 200 to rent the room for four hours or whatever it is um that i don't know to be honest i don't remember what the uh refund policy or cancellation policy was so that's what we have encouraged so far and back to the legal question um mike said

086it's the board's agenda and it or the board's budget and if you have a line for training which includes there's a budget line for training and you have every ability to spend that to rent a room purchase food do it is that the board would like because it's a budgeted item for training correct me if i'm wrong we last year we did three trainings and the total cost was eight hundred and fifty dollars for all three trainings correct correct but we have a budget that's higher than that correct three thousand but we kept it over three trainings we kept at a very minimal cost that is correct and we offered to pay for our food this year if we were off-site yeah um and we've already paid a deposit on the room all right awkward

087silence i mean i know i'm trying to think of a creative solution like can we get litchfield cable there by any chance do you know what i mean would that solve the do you think we do audio recording huh can we do an audio recording i mean is there the ability to we just like we tried that at one of the school tours right right yeah it was awful unusable yeah i'm just trying to be creative and and think of okay well this is the way it can be a recorded meeting the public can attend if they want to so we're not you know we'll have public input as the policy requires um but it is recorded for others to listen to and hear um at least for the parts that are public i mean

088i imagine there may be times where we do have to go into non-public as we broach personnel issues absolutely if we change the location does that require i think it does does that require a repost of the agenda current location and we cannot have it tomorrow if that happens if that would be correct okay so if we could find somebody to record it that might do we know the layout of this room is a large room is it echoey is it like this i would be could we get somebody to record it even on a camera you know what i mean like and put it on the facebook page that'd be the best i think a public meeting should be held here in town in public right that's the responsible thing to do in my

089view i can't believe i didn't know the meetings were public i swear to god i thought they were non-public because they weren't recorded and they didn't have minutes oh wake up elizabeth wake up i mean to me the 200 unfortunately is water under the bridge at this point right the board still has the opportunity to try and do the right thing in the eyes of the eyes of the town it just i it's also everything is scheduled too right i mean the speakers the michelle have worked it's ours i understand the board's direction absolutely those are valuable time is a valuable resource too a critical component is will yes and bearish absolutely we're available one day right april 7th yep so if that's the intent which is again what we were directed to do you're

090looking at sometime in may to do this because um they were basically booked the month of april right so we will not get them again we just we found it last meeting we had a sense of urgency about trying to you know get these things in you're 100 right you asked us to do the 30th or the 7th and so we couldn't do the 30th but we could do the 7th we made that work does it make it better if we find a way to record the meeting i'm fine with opening up a google meet and recording that if everybody in attendance is immutable to it it's not going to be the best quality but that's true you know we could use the same google meet link right um so you should also know that

091google has changed the terms of service recording meetings is no longer available to us that is a premium service and the cost is about ten thousand dollars so oh you know my work pays for a zoom account so i'm happy to which can record i mean if it's just a matter of having an open mind but again are we if it's not going to be audible to people then i feel like we're trying to check a box more than um i think the challenge is if we all log in to zoom in the same room we're all going to be hearing and what you don't want one of the biggest things i heard in all these elections was transparency and communication transparency transfer we're in a public meeting in manchester see you there it just

092rubs me the wrong way for transparency reasons like even but but i do think we need to be clear this was meant and is planned as an orientation and a training and so it's not meant to be my understanding was it was not meant to be a public meeting and it is now in the tradition in the traditional sense of agenda public meeting and whatnot that's not a community forum or you know where we'll be taking input from and i think before we work before we make a decision on that because i do i do have concern with miss culture being a part of the agenda still right because she is a public member although no longer in town right and if we have an on board right why is she added to this yeah

093so something happened in the last two weeks where this a went public which we understand more from a legal perspective now i appreciate but also seeing somebody who's outside of town on this agenda is concerning to me so well if we went into a non-meeting or non-public she would not be in the room that was our original scope as a as a board was this was non-public but yet she was here added to the agenda i don't feel it looks like a training thing to me i don't think we should have anyone from modest town speaking i don't i don't so is mrs still part of the agenda no you don't want the culture and you don't want bill prebble speaking either no i don't want our citizen that used to live here to give

094her two cents on this town anymore that's i just don't want it so that's my personal experience right and she was added to the agenda mike and i discussed it she reached out to me after watching the last meeting and said you know here are some she's getting i forget she's she's going for an mba in public public policy so she's been in class discussing exactly this kind of strategic planning you know and she's she reached out to me and said um i'd love to help help you out i'd love to you know if i have any historical knowledge that i can lend to the board and i saw that as an opportunity to learn from prior boards um and her experience in litchfield and that's why i sent it to mike and that's how

095she ended up on the agenda it was not when derek barker called you because he's been on both boards right he didn't he didn't so he lives in town but liz it wasn't meant to be a i'm going to ask this old school board member this former school board member how to tell us how to do our jobs that wasn't that's what it seems like to me i understand that so let's just just if i may so tina forwarded that on and asked me to reach out michelle was with me as we were doing this so it sort of broke into two things you can see this is labeled school board procedures policy and conducts conduct because cindy had thoughts relative to watching boards and multiple boards budget committee um and school board over about

09620 plus years she just said thoughts also president of the new hampshire school boards association and she had thoughts on patterns and things that she's seen that she wanted to share so that historical perspective the second thing is cindy was as i understand at the board chair when campbell got approved was she and she said i also know from experience what it takes to uh sell a school successfully and she said i also know what it means to fail at selling a school because she had me could not correct so she said i have valuable lessons that i learned in that process that i want to share with the board so i have her on this agenda based on that dialogue but also on the next agenda where we're talking about strategic and community engagement

097because cindy's done that she's done it well and she didn't i shouldn't say she didn't do it well but you know she did her best in a different climate right trying to sell a new school when there was a bond for a new school i think historically you know as you look back on it it's like there were a lot of hurdles that you had to overcome for that but she understands what it means to engage so i do think there are lessons there but again the will of the board right if you tell us that you don't want to do that that's not a problem just let us know we're trying to we're trying to create the agenda that we heard you say you wanted us to build so but if we're off base

098just tell us we can make an impediment it's not a problem in my view it's off base what it might be what's off base what's off base to have cindy come in and and speak to the sport she's no longer a resident of town well she certainly does have historic knowledge a nice person yeah she's a nice person there's no there's nothing wrong with that i think this board has enough going on that we can we should be able to figure out collectively as a group that's what why we're in these positions that we're in right i don't mind speaking to cindy and just asking her that you know declining her her proposal well you can ask the rest of the board i said my piece i am fine if she's on i'm happy but

099you know i'm happy to listen to anybody of course i will make my own decisions but i am more than happy to you know hear from somebody who's walked you know in greater shoes than me you know you know yes she was a school board member but she's done other things too and i'm happy to listen to that outside again i i hear what taurus saying i'm i'm very happy to listen but i also can see the perspective of um particularly with it not being a televised meeting that there could be optics that it is not ideal to have someone who um has done great things for our town don't get me wrong but i this i don't want to sound harsh but it polarizing is the word that comes to mind um and that

100people feel strongly either way about this particular person and again i don't know her personally and i have only good things to say about her but i that's something i would want to tell us i guess is i would want to have i would like to hear from her i think it would be great to have her come to a board meeting um i don't necessarily oppose hearing that perspective because i think there's a lot of different ways we can learn about how to push this through i just i'm not sure that i want it on a on a meeting where it's um there's any perception that it's non-public or there's perception that it's off campus or off site to hide something which it's there's not there is no intent to do that but i

101can understand the perception and the optics and so i would say while i appreciate the offer i would respectfully decline forward the retreat that would be my recommendation sounds like but again i appreciate the offer are you in agreement are you okay with that consensus a different yeah a different meeting that's fine okay all right um i will contact cindy she will be removed from the agenda so um i want to make sure i'm hearing this correctly because the pardon me the community engagement retreat is in town i think we're gonna have it here at this point um on camera it'll just be a different procedure is cindy welcome at that yes okay yeah as a speaker yes and because that's about engagement relative to you know i think it's in general but let's face

102it the largest thing we have to engage on is the school project and so that perspective is valuable i would look for her perspective along with anyone else who was so i am maybe not necessarily a solo presenter but somebody you know a few different school board members from that their journey that's perfect rich lasalle was chair was chair of the school board at that when it passed so just having the different point of views i think absolutely imperceptions for them that you know they may have perceived how it went differently and so understanding that um i think it would be good to have that section andrew what are your thoughts on the yeah i mean i'd have to agree with heidi um you know i i'm still on the fence and still debating whether

103it's appropriate to have a non-resident present to the board um i just have to give that some more thought okay well in any meeting anyone who provides public input if they don't live in town the board can take a vote on whether or not to allow that input so i guess that's we should have consensus before inviting them though well she's already committed to that right has she already committed to that date i'm sorry i'm losing track you're talking about i'm talking about the next meeting if we invite somebody from out of town to speak first of all you don't have consensus from the board that the person will be allowed to speak so a couple showed but just to be clear uh you know barrett will and bill are not residents of town they're

104presenting they're lawyers that we employ now let's not you haven't even met this oh bill i'm sorry i thought so i mean i i i just i want to be clear on what rule we're following because i also did not know that cindy was not a resident that's news to me so i don't know and i don't know what the rule is i don't know what you're asking us to do i thought we were interviewing bill to use his services you're hearing from him of what he does and what he what his work is i give you the you know the 10 cent i think we need to narrow the scope of the conversation at this point and focus on what's the plan for tomorrow and the retreat that's scheduled as planned is that what

105we're doing well we're talking what we're talking about moving people to different meetings and what's the plan for tomorrow cindy's not going tomorrow now so what is the will of the board i guess is the question do i have a motion to postpone and reschedule do we you know do we move forward with the plans that we have in place because we have these plans in place um those are kind of the only two options i see it you know with the promise that public is oh it's invited and the meeting is open i'm sure we'll be televised i'll make a motion i'll make a motion to delay the retreat until a time where the meeting room can be poked here in town and be on camera and publicized for the community to watch [Music]

106any further discussions [Music] are there things that are going to suffer because we are moving this back meaning this was a pressing item again that we discussed two weeks ago that we wanted to get get going um there are and i was looking forward to this retreat right but i was under the spirit of our last presentation or last board meeting right this was a non-public very tight scope very narrow focus and it seems to have expanded right and now it's expanded in my mind to a point where this does need to be public it does need to be televised i'm all for it i just think it needs to be here where we can congregate as a community and solicit input i'm just concerned about how far back we're going to have to push

107it i think training is important yeah let's do some training online and we got three different emails [Music] so can i just react for a second it was three weeks ago because it was the fifth week in march right you asked us to plan a retreat around training and culture and climate you've deleted cindy office agenda and now it's about training and culture and climate although i i would argue we had sydney on there to be part of that too but that's fine i don't see this as expanding beyond and and the vote was four to one to have it off-site and we talked about manchester as a location um so just to be clear i i don't see this as a left field agenda but again we're building it for the board so i'm

108listening to what taxpayers are telling me because that's who elected me where i am there's no that's i know how i feel inside i'll travel anywhere because i like to drive but people are telling me how can you have this outside why isn't this being televised what exactly how many people asked what a retreat was uh on facebook this week i had to stop looking i'm just speaking up for my cons what is it constituents or the people who voted me in but in a year when we're especially focused on transparency in building that rapport right i just think we need to be mindful of that i've said my piece i just voice what people tell me what i think given given where we are um we absolutely could have this i mean i can

109call two people and say come to campbell instead right but do we have to repost it because of the change in location and how much time do we need to be posted 24 hours so if we start at 6 45 [Laughter] uh you could except you've got the um the association is coming at five i don't know that they're available at 6 45. we told them they'd be in at five and out by six so uh they're out by seven i guess i don't even know if there's any rooms i understand i i do i understand the transparency concerns and i understand you know that some of us feel like this has changed um i don't i i mean i when i when i voted on march 23rd to to have it off site this

110is what is what i was expecting i didn't think so many people would be barraging me with questions about what a retreat is and why it's so far away that's i just want to speak up for the people that don't want to speak up and all of this happened last year and right why was it not an issue last year i mean that's people are looking for transparency now i think i've always wanted to yes i think we have everyone's position right is it fair to say we we should vote motion right yeah wait a second can you read back the motion so people know exactly what they're voting on um motion to delay the retreat until a time excuse me when it can be in town and televised for the public [Music] so i

111guess i just want to respond and say i own the fact that i was one of the four i voted for this retreat i voted for it to be off-site i we did it last year i found retreats and the training to be incredibly beneficial i found it to be more of an orientation for me as the new board member um so i am 100 in favor of having a retreat and i'm 100 in favor of conducting it off-site i thought and i will say i thought we were doing the legal prep meeting with the attorneys and having personnel discussions that approach culture and climate and it was non-public i did not and i will own that i did not understand that it was a public meeting and so that changes it a tiny bit

112for me only because not a tiny bit a lot for me because i feel like we have set the tone for public meetings to be public and televised and so i i just want to respond because i want to apologize because i didn't understand it and i understand you put a lot of time you and michelle both have put a lot of time into planning this but i i feel like with the amount of questions that are happening right now we don't have enough time to scramble to make this happen um i i think we have to put it off till may that's how i i but i apologize because i do feel bad that you spent a lot of time on it she said it better than i did i know i definitely thought

113part of it was going to be non uh right now it won't be available until the summer well we don't know that but yeah the question is to a date when it will work yep so i didn't enjoy the i went to the one in concord which was good but this is definitely more personable but i don't feel like i i believed exactly like i forgot your name for a second how do you guys there i am i've seriously i just i got that same impression maybe i remote to lunch okay so um all in favor oh sorry go ahead but no go ahead if you have something to say i want to hear it before we vote [Music] why wouldn't we have a non like why why isn't the attorneys information in non-public like

114why can't we have it in non-public because there are you know there are definitely legal questions that i think we all have just you know about how we sh you know certain however we act as as a board you know things like that so i don't know um and then i thought we wanted to i did think we wanted to talk about you know climate just really candidly and non-public and that would approach potentially the line so why can't something of this be salvaged for tomorrow i feel like we've got the you know it doesn't have to look exactly like this but but this is the posted agenda right that's the issue you can you can amend the agenda you can't change time and location because that's been posted right we just took cindy off

115and right items on the agenda that's i definitely thought some of it was going to be non-public if the board makes a motion tomorrow uh if we have the retreat tomorrow and you make a motion to go into non-public under the rsa you have the ability to do that you can always make that motion i just don't want to miss the opportunity of of speaking to the attorney to having the attorneys there to talk about i mean that's they're going to be very valuable yeah um and especially at the start of you know right after elections the start of it to you know kick get us off on the right foot um i don't know i just feel like i would like to see part of it salvaged at least um could we shorten the

116agenda and make it simply the non-public part with the attorneys tomorrow night and just stick with that and then we'll do the rest at another time uh so i know we have the room for four hours but yeah what i worry about is the the culture i think you need to hear from bill tomorrow night because again you're not voting on it i'm not even sure that i'm not sure we're even going to come forward with a board boat necessarily however uh we need to know if we're in the ballpark and if we should be plugging ahead because the steering group has been softly formed has weighed in has already begun to participate and um it's going to be made before we know it in june right after and you know if we're going to

117do this for the start of the year and we're going to make culture and climate a priority and we're going to bring in experts to do that we need time to plan and we need time to um you know it's not inexpensive we're going to have to build that into the grants so we have grant money that we intend to use but we just need time to so i'd like to carry forward with that so at least you know because frankly if if on april 20th if we were to do something to take a vote in public at a public meeting you need to know about it if we hold this thing off until may junish and we work in the next 24 hours to get that portion record you know to have the non-public

118in the beginning and then get that portion recorded right when that solver but i've also heard concerns that discussing culture and climate but also yes so that's what i really what i'm hearing is um where oh that the board is okay this is just what i'm hearing correct me if i'm wrong andrew thinks it needs to be held here in public and televised so check on andrew i'm clear thank you the rest of us are the rest of you are concerned about it being off-site if it's open to the public because no one will come and it's not televised but if it's off-site and non-public that's okay as long as we're complying with the statute we don't we can't just call a non-public to call a non-public wait no but if we have to right

119comply with the statute it's open to the public until it's not you could at the end of this agenda somebody can make a motion under rsa whatever the legal quote is there but well but then it's a through c and you pick a b or c to discuss personnel and you could absolutely do that so does that get us where i'm so confused at this point i don't feel like dr prebble fits within that you know like what he i feel like what i mean i feel like part of it we could discuss perhaps what we see as the culture issue in that non-public but i feel like what he's gonna present is can dr prebble come on the 20th and do a presentation to us on cam during a regular meeting i can't answer

120that okay i booked them for tomorrow yeah for the 20th but i can even if it's by zoom you know and he could come in or whatever google me was there cost associated with booking dr pebble's time there will be costs associated obviously but not yet so like what about sure um the attorneys the attorneys thank you the attorneys that is a service that we already pay for membership we get that so the cost if we canceled tomorrow would be the 200 loss for the room and the attorney's time potentially and the time it would take to reschedule all right and and that that's the financial cost but then i'm thinking more of the time value cost of losing right direction and momentum right right right and the year comes real quick so we have

121a motion and a second are we ready to vote yep all in favor of postponing tomorrow nights that was the motion right yeah postponing tomorrow night's retreat until a later date we can have it on-site and televised say i [Music] i'm only opposed because i think that we can work it so that it's a non-public i would be in favor of changing tomorrow's agenda to be a non-public but we could do that at the retreat tomorrow i thought that was that seems kind of fishy to me we're going back and forth between public and non-public i'm just looking at well i think the vote's been taken right right so i'm sorry but we'll do our best thank you okay thank you all right moving on any other school board comments it was actually mike oh

122that was your comments did you uh so just to update the board so i spent two days on as chairing a knee-ask accreditation team so remember that at um in litchfield campbell high school is an accredited school and i was asked to chair an elementary visit so they do a credit elementary middle and high schools they also do district-wide accreditation our team as you know has been engaged in looking at district-wide accreditation as an option for us and basically trying to line it up with the next decennial for the high school so when campbell begins the process in 2025 i'm trying to encourage our team to understand what it would look like to make a proposal to the board that we launch into district-wide accreditation and accredit gms lms at the same time we do

123chs so they sent me to unity elementary school what a neat little place unity is over south of claremont it's up on top of a hill it's a brand new building brand new open in 2014 and we spent two days on site meeting with teachers parents the community the whole in the ass visit k-8 k-8 it's a k-8 school it has 95 kids the building was built for 200 but there are only 95 attending so but it was just a good experience real good opportunity to get out see what's happening in other schools learned a couple of things along the way um shared with corey and our design team the entire place is heated by air source heat pumps didn't know that so i walked in and i'm like how's this place heated like oh

124well we have these mitsubishi multi-city units there are four of them outside and i looked at them took a picture i'm like those are the ones that we're proposing they feed a head in each room a mini split head talk to kids and staff how is it comfortable absolutely do you have any issues nope are you ever too cold no you ever too warm no they're like the class the school is great so i'm like add it to the list of a school in new hampshire on top of a mountain um that is comfortable using air source heat pumps the only difference is they are fueled by propane so they still have the propane bill that we're gonna try to get ourselves out of so um but i just wanted to share with the board

125that's been my activity for the last two days and now i'm coming back to catch up on emails so thank you school board comments i have comments can i go first because i'm yes i closed out of it but i wanted to say i believe it is national assistant principal week so we have mr perez here thank you very much and today is also paraprofessionals thank you thank you thank you i think we have some um unsung heroes and they do not get the credit and nobody in education gets the credit they deserve but i really feel like paraprofessionals especially and so i wanted to make sure i took a moment to say thank you for all of your time and dedication so go liz you're up i told you i was quick i like

126it like to address one of the emails we received on cell phone usage um as board members many of us come directly from our jobs including dr jetty and i know that during meetings we're not you know emailing our friends ask what's going on a lot of us many of us work full-time and come directly here without communicating with our families we are here between four and five hours every other week and there are times when our families reach out to us during meeting time for example i didn't take a call once in campbell high school library and my son was in a serious car accident my father is currently in a rehab facility and i will use my phone if anyone from any facility calls my phone it isn't a game i understand what

127the use of phone is and it isn't texting somebody are you watching this we need to keep in touch with every single one of us have family members at home that are missing us in some way shape or form and that's what we committed to in this position and i'm more than happy to be here but i can't cut off a lifeline to my family i can't and i won't thanks that's it i'm with you liz i feel the same way yeah sometimes my kids are at sports and i've even had to leave school board meetings to go pick them up because i'm the only driver in my family at this point in time so um you know i only use it when i need to but um i do have a couple comments the

128i guess i'll start with the fun stuff so i was at the high school for five minutes this this uh today and i saw two classes outside walking around the school mr keeps was one of them and miss cpan and i just that made me so happy to see those kids outside getting fresh air even if even though it was a little chillier than probably everybody thought but i got out and got my walk today and walking is just such a good therapy for everybody so i was thrilled to see that um the second thing is um [Music] i went to the first emergency management meeting and this is not not related to that meeting per se but um you know every time i i don't know every time i talk school board my kids

129ask me what are you gonna do about the town cell phone coverage like in the middle of albuquerque and why can't we get any why can't we get our message why can't we can we get wi-fi at the school and uh you know i it's not like from what i'm realizing it's really it's not in the purview of the emergency management department right because it's not a it's not a i don't know a crisis response for the kids to have the cell phone we need to have we need to have garbage but if anybody else in town is concerned about town cell phone coverage what i'm hearing is that um is it john brunell that we should be talking to and i'm going i don't know if that is the right avenue but i think

130we all he's the town i.t director i know somebody referred me to him but it didn't quite seem right so if there's a group of people who are interested in pursuing that cause with verizon or whoever else let's get together and try to figure this out because it's it is a problem and i think any parent who is trying to get a hold of your kids during that um drill uh well that wasn't a drill stone i know well there's also the center part of albuquerque you know so anyway that was one thing and then my last thing is that um we just spent a good amount of time talking about our retreat and i just want us to all resp as war to respect all of our administrators time because i you know i

131think we just have to do our best to try to clearly communicate as a board what we want our administrators to do without kind of backtracking and because their time is very valuable and so that is something i want all of us to think about thank you tara any other comments all right if it just if i may the cell phone thing um i think it's important that we recognize the spirit of what i think the intent of that comment is which is that we're not communicating with each other during a meeting by cell like hey heidi are you going to vote this you're going to do that that's really that really is critical that that is not what's happening my phone just rang it was our facility director now when he's calling me at

132seven o'clock at night there's a problem where there's a potential and i'm going to respond to it when my wife who i haven't seen in two days sends me a text i'm gonna respond to it just to be clear okay i will never be communicating with somebody else about meeting practices and i think if we all honor that commitment that's what really matters in this right so but i will respond to what i see on that phone all right thanks let's move on to general business we have the minutes from march 16th 2022 we'll make a motion to approve the march 16th minutes second um any questions or discussion as amended right what's that hasn't ended as amended yes yeah yes okay as amended all in favor say aye aye post i've seen five zero

133zero we have the minutes from the march 23rd meeting 2022 i'll make a motion to approve the march 23rd minutes a second [Music] okay any further discussion all in favor all right i suppose abstain five zero zero oh i forgot to read that email chs principles report so principal lonergan uh is ill and not able to be with us um i don't know like you're not prepared to go over his report or highlight anything what if we do it this way are there questions from bill's report that we can try to answer because there's just so many kid things going on like as i look through this i will tell you we have awards going out we've got acknowledgments um i mean kids going to st paul's kids you know we did the top ten

134we had national art honor society and we had the district concert we had the play i'm trying not to forget anything you know so um people received a copy of the report yeah i think some of the big things you know graduations come in we're looking with uh val being involved we're looking to do a little bit something a little bit different with senior night um we have a student uh one actually liv pilcher who was here tonight she's doing the senior class video um it's kind of cool she's she's making sure that every single senior that wants to be in the video is in the video um but we're going to show that on senior night this year do something a little bit different with that we've seen your projects we're coming back this

135will be our first year back doing the uh evening public presentation on may 12th which is awesome we haven't done that since before the pandemic so you're all invited if you guys can come we've got some kids doing some really cool projects so great yeah thank you anything else for mike all right so we'll move on to the ba's update so i'll just give a couple of updates based on the the document that i've submitted the bi-weekly uh project updates uh the middle school project we're waiting on the gmp guaranteed maximum price to come in from north branch we're expecting that no later than april 15th and that's to fall in line with the closing of the mlp is on april 20th so we're trying to to keep within that that time frame um other

136than that it's the fine-tuning of the design and going through the subcontractors with with joe campbell from north branch so that there's some decisions to be made at our next um weekly meeting which i believe we do on tuesday mornings um that will be completed a new elementary school uh there's a site walk on a potential property on march 15th we anticipate receiving the appraisal this week and then i also wanted to note that barker and associates they have completed the bond the pre-bond phase work and at a total of 117 000 i'm here asking that for board authorization to request that reimbursement from the capital improvement expendable trust so that can be reimbursed to the capital project and then kyle barker and his team are going to present at the next facilities improvement meeting

137on april 13th and the campbell high school lighting internal lighting projects they are in the process of ordering all the materials for that it's still expected to be completed by the end of the school year um and with the selectmen approving 315 000 from the impact fees we're going to be able to fully fund uh this project along with the sea grant monies that we got from the state so this particular project will have no taxes back to be fully funded that money from the selectmen will also help us to fund the project that's going to take place at the high school to get that water pressure right that'll happen over the summer other than that i don't really have anything to anything else to update on uh it's just a question on whether or

138not i can request the funds from the trustees of trust funds okay if you need a report on that all right i'll make a motion to authorize corey to request 117 000 from the capital improvement expendable trust fund to pay kyle barker and associates for pre-bond phase work how much is in that fund oh man so probably 900 000. okay so this is the entire where all the federal money went to what's that where all that federal money that we had a special election on is it that that was the state um what did they call that supplemental adequacy money yeah yeah something like that that's where that went um plus we did just in march they voted on another 125 000 to go in there so we'll be up over 900 000. uh who

139seconded that i did thank you yeah so just for everyone watching this benefit will this be money that come march of next year we'll look to the voters to replace into an account yeah in in conjunction with the town capital plan because there's 125 on that planning chair any other questions or discussion question on the middle school when are we anticipating work to begin oh we got to get the the gmp in and then he's got to start working with the subcontractors to figure out what the lead times are for all the materials that are going to be needed right now what is he looking at 43 week span of the project i think that was the most recent document that i saw so once they can start ordering we'll have a better idea of

140when they're gonna start i think the last day of school for students is when they intend to be in there doing something be it selective demo you know we can't open school in september without a kitchen so i think we would look to definitely get the kitchen done over this first summer kitchen piping work in the ceilings and that type of thing yeah there's still well so there's the ideal phasing which is the logical phasing you say here's how we would do it then there's the real phasing which is what materials available to bring in so that's the tricky point at this time we were hoping to start in april however the supply chain issues make it not practical so uh and then you say okay so what could we do that we don't have

141a supply chain issue on you could do the outside installation except you don't want to backhoe outside a classroom right so we're trying to be smart about that too so it's just presenting some extra hurdles that we didn't anticipate but the good news is again with the mlp um we can order the materials now and they're on order and so everything is plugging ahead for a june 15 ish start date so your intention is to start near or at the end of the school year yes and go throughout the summer and however long it takes to finish correct and there will be some disruption in the fall and early winter so but that is correct okay actually corey i had a question off of your question is i was wondering could you give us a

142list of the trust that we have like all the existing trusts and what the balances are yeah i can do that okay i can share that over to you i'd like to know that thank you thank you any other questions for corey just while we're on the business administrator and this is piggybacking on budget committee report all right one of the things that they were asking as well is the but is the school expense reports was the vision that they were going to be linked to your va report here where i could just send it to the budget committee or how how are we going to make that work on my monthly i do my monthly reports on the second meeting so on april 20th it will happen okay it'll just be a link yeah

143yeah i can link the annual budget thank you so you're gonna forward them to the budget community once they're in the reports or at least i have access to them somehow it's just a matter of downloading and forwarding the pdf over to the budget committee and the procedure is the board gets it first so after it's presented in a public format then it can be forwarded but it should not go to um until it's been received here because this is a report to the board right yep got it all right anything else for cory all right we'll move on to committee reports um first up we have um budget committee um so the budget committee did meet um what was it march 24th yeah thank you and i mean the key thing for the school

144board was um the draft budget committee calendar that you had circulated and just kind of taking a look at those dates how they align the budget committee is proposing a very similar structure to last year in which there's a period where the budget committee and the school board do joint sessions and budget reviews et cetera i think with the timelines or holidays fall um it's a day or two earlier this year than it was last year in terms of handover of budget to the budget committee for review so really just looking the budget committee is looking forward to support that calendar or if there are changes we need to bring that back to them [Music] no they're looking for a decision on that in may so we can finalize it all right can i piggyback

145off of that because i actually as the deputy um i had a conversation with john's son okay because i just want to get his perspective on you know as chair you know what do you want to like what's your direction you know and so um you know one thing he mentioned to me was that the budget committee i'm sure you can speak to it more better than i can probably andrew but i'm just going to convey what he said to me um they would like and i think maybe this falls to to you corey um they would like um i guess more regular reporting which i think will help with the weekly if you're going to afford those weekly what was the challenge last year how come over the summer i i kind of fell

146derelict in my duties and forwarding those reports over i had a lot going on just later okay got it okay so that's one thing and then through the budgeting process he was saying that they would they would very much like to to see the budget at different points in time and i'm not sure what that looks like practically but he was saying even just you know if you get it in um you know maybe the maybe phase one is is the template like of what what each school has spent the last three years you know whatever that template is with zeros in the the first column so that the budget committee can start looking at that like historical you know and year to date do you know what i'm saying so as i was thinking

147about that i was thinking it would be really helpful if probably the budget committee would give to us in writing what they want because i was hearing you know something from him maybe you have a different perspective but there are many people on the budget committee and if they could give us what are your expectations then we as a school board you know can decide along with corey who has to produce the stuff like okay here's what we can do here's what we can't do this is like this formatting you're asking for this and we don't have that and it will require this like i just feel like setting those expectations up front will help the process and perhaps help the relationship i thought they wanted the budget days and days before we got the

148budget that's the way i took it last year that is what i took it too but he was saying even if it was in preliminary process i can understand not putting like not giving them certain preliminary we'd have to it changes we'd have to qualify that but at least if we could give them the initial template like here's what we're looking at for previous years and here's where we are here to date that's at least a starting point initially i don't know i just thought of that so he didn't want to he didn't mention that particularly november and december like the process that's like snapchats that's what i think for the budget process but also for things like the elementary school project you know and definitely the gms project so what what are the natural

149breaks and point in time that we could help keep them informed that's all so my conversations with the budget committee have been they just want the expense reports the 60 or 70 page year-to-date expense report on the budget that's the biggest thing that's the basically just because like from the town side it's like clockwork literally every friday three o'clock yeah we get an email i mean you can attend every friday right and we're just i think the budget committee was really just looking for and even my time last year was just that consistency if it's once a month great right if it's after the second meeting and we get it on the friday or the following monday fine just send it and life is good right just so we have some way to monitor expenses

150over what was a voter approved budget was the ask okay to be determined ideally at least once a month my if that's works for the the sau great how often does the town do it weekly every friday three o'clock like clockwork they have a much smaller budget with energy departments too so it's a little bit easier they also use do they use excel no let's say it comes the report comes in excel no it comes in a pdf report that's um scanned from their ledger system all right um facilities improvement corey pretty much covered that um i would say the only thing i would add and maybe you can add to it too i thought there was a really good discussion at the end of the meeting regarding communication and just sort of strategizing what

151that's gonna look like going forward in terms of um outreach to town and so i thought there was some good discussion um and i look forward to seeing how that plays out yeah i agree with what you said emergency management tara you said you had a meeting yes i attended my first meeting um for the emergency management department um i mean i don't want to get into too much detail um but you know the meeting talked about kind of some of the physical require requirements that we that we need and are addressing like radios and the mass notification system the blue light system um a streamlined way that drills will be reported which i think is already proving to be uh very helpful um [Music] you know i mean i don't know if people realize

152but we do a lot of drills in town and and um you know it's it was for me attending for the first time i didn't really realize how many drills we do and they're not they're not all just one type it's a variety of different drills and so ten required per school year yeah one per month that the building is occupied and there'll be a lot when the weather gets i know so i i felt reassured i don't know i was like wow that's really good and there's definitely good feedback coming from each of the schools dirt for the report from those drills that um are being addressed so thank you thanks grading reporting oh no we have it we're meeting next on the third tuesday right so that'll be before the next meeting right

153joint loss oh corey just left um i think the big thing on joint loss was um they haven't met in a while and they are setting up walkthroughs with principals and i asked to be on at least one walk-through i don't care which school just to see what they look at they go through and they see if they're things like you shouldn't have a room candle wax thing or a heater under your desk like maybe there's a microwave leaning off the side of a table stuff like that um the science department which was a big problem when i first started all the chemicals and everything that was cleaned up years ago so i guess that room is all cleaned out where the um what is that called greenhouse is and let's see we have a

154greenhouse yep in the science department upstairs we do we do now and that's about it thank you inside greenhouse that's a thing it is perk i wasn't able to make the park meeting but i got an update there were two items on the agenda one was updating the sociology text and the other one was updating the business department competencies and so those were both approved by perk and she'll be bringing those to for board approval to our next meeting i'm sorry you said the business department competencies um school start time task start time actually before we go so can we talk about that task force good committee to be on there's not a lot of responsibility my sense is we should put tap the brakes on it i'm gonna explain why um so first of

155all we address school start time at lms right so we've we've made some progress on it um and you know that was driven by a variety of factors but i think we got to a good spot and i actually think things are working pretty well the buses came together the way we imagined they would and so forth so to me the big question now is really the gms and then the it's the elementary and the middle high school start times um but with so much effort on getting a building figured out i'm not ready to engage in and here's when it should start and this is what the program should look like because i think we're putting the cart before the horse now um so my suggestion is that that's a that's an important question

156but we need to dedicate our time we need one less spinning plate dedicate our time to getting the building and then we're gonna have plenty of time to engage in the programmatic review and figure out how everything comes together so that's that's my gut as to why um i haven't done a lot with it because there's just not the capacity right now to take on one more start thing and i feel like we're going to solve it in a building that it's not our intent to stay in and it's just it just feels like is that the right time to be engaging in that so when i'm open to feedback and heidi you you volunteered to be honest i think you volunteered as a parent yeah that was a long time ago but you were

157a parent but i was yes so i mean i think part of it was the conversation of what are the schools around us doing and how you know it the research into whether the high school should start later and the elementary school should start earlier but i you know um if we're not ready to have that conversation it hasn't gotten off the ground for a reason so i mean we've yet to even have a full committee yet i i understand i think you were looking for we had it almost ready to go and then the pandemic right and then that was a victim of spinning plates right and i do think you know when i think about where we've landed which is a new school on a new site um but where's the site how

158does that factor you know so there's so many questions that i just get myself caught up on right we could do preliminary i mean reviewing what other schools are doing we could start some preliminary work but i do worry about the capacity to take it on yeah i mean i trust your judgment on it i think it's an issue i think the more most pressing issue was addressed with the lms time being adjusted last year um i think that's worked out actually quite the feedback i've gotten anyway has is that it's worked out um for the better for for families um the busing fell into place with that so i mean i don't see an urgency with having that conversation unless there was some reason that for example sports teams were having to adjust because

159all the high schools that they play they're starting later or whatnot but beyond that i don't know that there's an any type of urgency to it so i don't know some of the sometimes these teams at the high school have to leave at 1 30 so they'd be missing like two and a half hours of school because they have to travel over mountains through woods it they yeah because we have a really weird division three set up it's weird but actually the pandemic helped us because we became more so we wanted to cut down on the amount of time so he was on the bus and so and we wanted to play the same schools board frequently to share the same germ pool or whatever the argument was so i think actually it's not as

160bad we're not traveling you know north and not as frequently as it's frequently doing that tournament time's a different game yeah i guess i would say i would put it out there in terms of if anyone has any anyone in the public has any feedback on the urgency of this and whether it needs to be discussed to certainly get in touch with dr jetty or myself or any you know the chair um but you know short of somebody bringing up something i'm not thinking of um you know then i think we're okay to spin the other plates for a while put a pin in it okay i think we'll leave it on the list though so we don't lose track i know it's there you want a switch there's a good one we combine it

161with your other your other committees um wellness we did have a meeting um let's say march 22nd chs we did some policy work we are looking to consolidate aspects of our current policy that are redundant but also expand to include social and emotional wellness as well as physical and nutrition or nutritional wellness um so we did policy work we broke into three three different groups and focused on each of those um so we're getting there we've looked at some other policies as well so that's been a big focus we have a draft vision we're still circulating through the schools we would like to broaden our membership um so i'll put a plug out there again um we are having another meeting on monday april 11th at gms in the library we're changing up the location

162to to make it convenient for everybody um so it's in the gms library at 3 30 on monday so we are looking for any members of the community that would like to participate are welcome to um we want staff staff have been great about coming to this um it's also for students too so it's about student and staff wellness um so we would like to invite students and actually i think lauren was going to be reaching out to the student council to try to get some students to attend as well so um it's kind of a banner meeting because this wellness committee has not met three years three times in a single year at least since i since before i joined the board so it's been at least five years so i mean we really

163are just getting this off the ground um prior to this year i think it only the committee only met once and it was right before the pandemic so um that's why we're starting with the policy initially and getting that getting it going from there um so anybody's welcome to attend monday 3 30 i know it's a tough time um but if you want to be on the list to you know get minutes or whatever just reach out to lauren crowley or me um and we'll make sure you are thank you andrew he wasn't there it was a fertilizer i was healed to miss mcdonald due to medical reasons i was not able to i love this room so much i want to be here every night of the week i was on the town capital

164improvement plan this week which was there were a lot of new members um they elected a chair and a co-chair the chair is michael croto again and the co-chair is andrew um [Music] the biggest thing i took out of it they were going to they think the impact fees need to be restructured because we're definitely leaving money on the table with new developments and i agree with that 100 and i'm sure andrew does too um they receive half of their federal funding which is tucked away in a bank um they plan on doing what this is a spreadsheet they send out sent out and they are sending it back to all the departments asking them to revisit for pricing how am i doing corey good very good they want to update all the what was

165good in 2021 is not going to be the same price in 2023. so um that was interesting and the other thing i wanted to ask because i was looking at the school part since i'm a school person they have the gms bleachers on there for 2023 gm oh chss sorry sorry they don't have bleachers there the ch chs bleachers for 2023 and i remember listening to our new principal who wants to have meetings every week and i question the safety of the bleachers if they're going to be used weekly that was just my question as a school board member is it that imperative they they pass inspection they've passed the production every year all right that's good it's the mechanism underneath the bleachers that pulls back and forth there's some work that needs to be

166done but it's not going to collapse but no i believe that i think and i mentioned this in the meeting the other night i think with the two major projects we have going on that we go back as a school district and look at that and reprioritize some of the other things that are on there because these the two things we're working on right now are such high dollar items right you know and the infamous fire truck did come up that was voted down by the public that came up and they are still questioning the selectmen are still questioning what to do about i don't they're not sure what is allowable and what is it under the arpa fund because they are very different structure than what federal state the federal government just sent them

167the money 904 thousand dollars and how much nine hundred and four thousand dollars so they have half the money sitting in their bank account but they're not sure exactly what they can do with it and they don't want to spend it until they know for sure what they they're doing is allowable so they're working on that yeah and lost revenue seems to be the route they're taking lost revenue was the the route they took to receive them yeah so so that's all i know and i told andrew i'd be more than happy to fill in if i need he needs me again thank you for watching absolutely nice to be clear on those features it's not a safety matter but i just think every once in a while we keep hearing it and to see

168it on here it's an operation matter in terms of going in and correctly and stuff has been bent but it's not a safety matter to be clear okay look you look at anything within this i mean it's now a 21 22 year old building and eventually things do need to be replaced there is no safety issue with the bleachers yes that is i just wanted to put that out there because i circled that the handholds going up and down are really really loose yeah we can tighten that down that would be great well the company that comes in and does the inspections on it they spent a lot of time you know so basically the bars will just start to warp and bend over it's 20 years of in and out right so they're just

169making those adjustments tightening that stuff up is doable i'll give you another example of baseball went through one of the plastic bleacher seats yeah it's never happened in 20 years so then i say huh 20 year old plastic yeah all right so is it getting more brittle is it going to be less likely to absorb the shock of a ball our facilities director does not believe it was a ball looking at it so i'll catch up with you alrighty then all right oh okay but still but still it's yeah good question madam shannon just before we move into new business i just want to recognize there's an email that came in to the to the um to the school board oh from the 24th about an email that should have been read under correspondence that

170was i have it right here written down to read it during um go over it during publishing thank you i responded to him as well thank you all right we are on policies we have several policies to review tonight yep so the first one is ikf that's the high school graduation policy uh we did a first read on that at the last meeting and we've highlighted in yellow the pieces that we've added in um although did the board vote on the first read no there was no vote taken so you asked me to look into uh suspensions that are appealable right that was one of the questions you asked um and the law does state that a suspension less than 10 days so remember the board has authorized me to then authorize the principles so

171because you've given those authorizations they are not appealable you've given that to us so anything less than 10 days is not appealable um and so this policy and that that is really in reference to the whole graduation participation piece and what who was the character that donna martin from 90210 did not watch that show well you missed out but that does answer your question and donna's question if she were to be yeah she would have been suspended she'd been out no graduation i don't know so i'll make a motion to approve policy ikf as a first read my second further discussion one one comment because it's a graduation policy what's our intent for the effective date of this because what we don't want to do is do a second read and all of a sudden

172a kiddo right so i just want to be clear that what's your intent i think this is for next year july 1. okay and so i think next time we should put that into motion to be effective on july 1. i don't know what you have to do i wasn't done yet to be effective july 1. okay did the second agree to that yes absolutely good that's a good day all right um any further discussion um all right all in favor say aye aye opposed abstain five zero zero no no no four zero zero i can count i'm a math tutor all right next up is policy j f abd education of homeless children and unaccompanied youth okay so um in reviewing our policies we felt that it was important to come back and just

173update these policies so we had uh foster children and homeless and unaccompanied youth lumped together in one policy um the school board association recommends it be two policies so what we're proposing to do is to rewrite the homeless children unaccompanied youth policy under the new code jfabd and then to use jfabe for the foster care policy so now instead of it all being in one spot it's separated off um so let me go to the new one which is the homeless piece bear with me a minute while i open it up this is a pretty much of rewrite just because by stripping by separating the two off we had to come at it and we also wanted to make sure that we were consistent with federal law changes that had occurred over time um and

174so this is to make sure that we are 100 in compliance with the mckinney-vento act and there were there were pieces in the form of policy that were not as clear as they should have been relative to appeals and so forth so um we want to bring this forward to you for revision update as as explained okay any questions about policy j f abd i just had a question about um is the director of special services also the homeless liaison point of contact and the foster care point of contact as well as the truman officer and whatever else yeah yeah so currently you know we have a lot of um [Music] a lot of hats for the student services director to wear yeah but these are absolutely these are extra hats you take bikini vento

175it requires specific training what's the law say how do you properly enact that i mean it's very specific very detailed and so why is it there um because like special ed law is very detail-oriented and so um somebody who understands that tends to then say okay here's what i need to do in this bucket so that's why it's lumped together okay is this one also for approval with an effective date of july or is this because it's required and there's been this update that it should be now um i i would recommend that you do it effective immediately because it's not going to change anybody's current status so it's not going to impact any current student but if we were to learn of a new case we should be following the new policy in terms

176of following through on that i'll make a motion to approve policy jfabd education of homeless children and unaccompanied youth a second first reading for a first reading second order tara anybody re-reviewed one more time at the next meeting um motion in a second any further questions or comments okay all in favor say aye aye opposed abstain i wasn't here for all right next up is policy jfabe education of children in foster care and again that was combined under the old policy and now it's its own distinct policy and you are correct that's one more hat sometimes it's a special ed intersection but not always but that is one more hat that uh we have can a student be considered homeless and in foster care the only reason i ask that is because there's something in

177this policy that mentions a shelter and to me a shelter is a homeless shelter but maybe it's maybe there are foster care shelters that's and i don't just don't know uh show me where the word shelter is if you wouldn't mind let me make sure i am following it do it control f here paragraph a fourth line down this includes children in foster family homes comma shelters comma relative foster homes group homes and residential facilities so i think the word shelter is a broader use here so it wouldn't be necessarily a homeless shelter but if for some reason the child were placed let's say the sh let's say there were no foster families available and the state how to place them somewhere they would use a shelter scenario and remember this sort of applies we

178want to think about this two different ways a litchfield youth who becomes foster and then could be placed somewhere else so they might be in a shelter in manchester for example or a youth from another town who becomes sheltered in litchfield so you have to think both sides of that yeah i asked why this is why this is new so the former this was in the former policy with homeless it was all lumped together under one policy the recommendation from the association is to strip it out and have two separate policies because they really are they're sometimes an intersection but not always i'll make a motion to approve a policy e for a first read a second any further discussion hearing none all in favor say i i host abstain five zero zero all right

179and then the next one is a new policy for litchfield and michelle's gonna have to help me a little bit with the history on this one because um we should have a policy on how a parent objects to specific course material so i don't want my child to read a particular book there should be a way that a parent can express that objection and then there should be a way that the district responds to meeting the students educational needs in an alternative way that's what this policy is uh intended to address ours was we had it but it was buried and can you just talk to where it was yeah so what happened was what happened was in policy iham there the board years ago back when you know seven or eight years ago the

180um the board couldn't really come to uh we couldn't get that policy to be right for everybody um so in instead of just making it for health education opting out of health education they lumped both of them together in one policy but it doesn't fit uh because the old policy says opting out of curriculum units whereas this is specific courses and material and material and and that so i use the example of a book i don't want my child to read whatever that piece of literature is and then how do i object to that how do i get the needs met some other way but it was in this other piece relative to health ed so it read more like i object to the teaching of a unit on drugs or alcohol or sex education

181or whatever the topic was um but that's not the only thing somebody can object to so this is a broader look at it and i think it gives parents a clearer guidance on what they uh what they were able to do okay [Music] i'll make a motion to approach policy ige for a first reading a second further discussion hearing none i'll call the vote all in favor say aye aye opposed abstain flag zero so then the last one is iham because that had to be revised now that it's moved out so this is a reapproval with the change the language for that update all right make a motion to approve policy iham on health education and exemption from instruction second further discussion for a first reading further discussion thank you for that and we are

182back on track okay coronavirus review and update so i mean what are you saying i'm sorry yeah you know march ended last week so this just shows you the update as to where we were at that point in time um honestly i am going to pull up the april numbers but so we've created the grid you can see going into it a couple of things to point out on the general is that litchfield is now operating in the moderate category the the county has gone to moderate but it's back to substantial as last week so um it seems as if the the magic number is greater than 100 over here because it went from 100.1 at moderate to 105. so i still can't find the definition of when it flips but i'm zeroing in on

183it based on that so um at gms for april uh we do have one positive staff member right now and they've been 33 since the um school year started and you can see the attendance rate uh dan both of those sevens by the way should be um medium they are not lows so dan's being overly optimistic yes um but you know again our attendance has been hovering in that seven percent range and there's just a lot of stomach bugs going around allergies allergies it's a gross time to be in a school right now it is but sorry elementary i should say but i think the key thing is um you know that there are no positive students either so we're not talking omicron wave let's just be clear about that right so then if we

184click on lms um their absences are there i'll have to calculate their percentages i'm not sure why it's not in and but they have no positive cases right now between students and staff as of today what do they consider quarantine non-positive students that they're in contact with somebody who had coveted or is that they had a runny nose and they had to go home i think they're counting that liz so okay it's so off from the other two do you know what i'm saying yeah because 17 compared to two or zero or three i'm just curious c17 lives i'm sorry on gms they have 17 non-positive students quarantining are you it says 17 pending tests column e so these must be kids that have symptoms like runny noses and coughs and whatever are you adding

185no sorry she's going back to 331 yeah sorry that was like a few weeks i just was curious why that number was so big um could because they've sent home with symptoms i think that's accurate you know if somebody is out and we've had some uh some families will you know they'll do the double negative tests with them they don't want to mask and so you know that's under the guidelines so it is resulting in some people being out some students being out and then campbell hasn't filled it in so we'll get that taken care of our we still meet with our weekly coveted calls on uh thursday so we'll get that updated just the the april isn't on the website yet so can we post the april you didn't give it to me i

186did when when i created it but that's okay i can get it in my email says you've been shared so i didn't i will i will take care of it okay thank you sorry no worries i know some parents check it regularly just to kind of give a false check on what's going on so i think it's it's still useful and then the other thing that i wanted to uh just have a discussion on so um the pre-school masking is a topic and i shared it with the board as a concern so basically after the board voted this goes all the way back to when you remove masks and it was all the rationale that dan and i heard was because the vaccine now is available to five-year old students and you know says we're

187okay doing this removal so he said to me what do i do about preschool i said well what's the pulse out there because they're not available for vaccine jet um and he said they want to stay the course i said just stay the course to stay the course should he ask the teachers the teachers or the parents i would i would say that he asked uh the teachers first however liz there were parents who weighed in and when parents started the way in excuse me went both directions with you absolutely have to keep the mask on i've got a medically fragile kid and you absolutely have to take the mass off its parent choice so he got total mixed reviews welcome to kovid total mix reviews and he said i need guidance from the board

188and so that's why we're bringing it back because as it's gone on uh it's gotten like what exactly should we be doing here and i do think i mean they've talked about trials that are ready for as young as two um but i don't know that they've put that out yet so our quick question are pre-k numbers included in the gms stats that were just presented so i'm pondering that i'm not sure i'd have to ask that question dan specifically i could text him i believe they are and his newsletter i think he breaks it down by pre and pre-k is one of the categories are you getting his newsletters gms i think my wife does oh if if it's in the newsletter then it's in the spreadsheet because he would be consistent with whichever

189direction so i think you know i i i definitely understand both sides of the argument and i think that again that's it's i don't think i have actually i've been from chs and lms but not gms um so i think where i kind of come down with preschool is [Music] well i guess it's not i was gonna say it's voluntary so that age group for you children are not required to go to preschool they are required to go to first grade forward by state law but they are not required for kindergarten correct and they are not younger they have to go to kindergarten they just don't have to go to full day kindergarten kindergarten is required now it is it is isn't it i thought that was just i thought it wasn't i think still

190really yeah i believe it is i think what they've done is they've incentivized it by adding reimbursements and all of that yeah but it's not i don't believe it's a i think compulsory yet is ages six up well regardless i mean kindergarten's not the argument but so preschool is is voluntary um however there are interventions and there are students who are required or not required but if they want that educational assistance to be there so um i'm going to say it out loud but it doesn't sound right in my head even as i'm saying it but i'm saying is this a situation where that they're separated by masks and no masks the parents that don't want masks the populations are separate or is that we can even open that door because i feel like the

191reasons for each are incredibly important seeing their faces kids being able to communicate all of that i completely understand that but i also understand we've got these kids over here that have very serious medical issues and they can't be vaccinated and masks are their only way of protection and while they can continue to wear them those kids are grabbing all over each other and they're i mean you might as well just assume that anything that goes through one kid's gonna go through the whole class um the challenge with that argument is that schools are the only place oh well right now what other place is requiring these kids to wear masks medical facilities so i took stuff to the eye doctor today every other place like dentist is still but you know but i doc

192soph was mad she had to put a mask i've worn this in two months mom um but she had to wear a mask and so is this a like a medical um we providing a medical service correct i mean is there some argument for that i don't know i mean so so we also in talking it through uh we looked at like the the public you can't require them in public schools but we're like this is a voluntary program it's not really covered under so there's so much gray on this one that we were like just keep maintain status quo maintain status so what are the risks if we just keep it consistent with the board decision of having it being parent choice there are i mean those who can wear masks still can wear

193masks right if you want to right um the risks so i think for the parent who is seeking early intervention services for their student to to receive physical therapy occupational therapy speech therapy that they're getting through the school because once they hit age three it has to be provided through the school it's no longer you know i haven't had one in your house and um so those kiddos are having to go to school for those services um and if they're around other students in the environment that i expect preschool acts that they could get sick well i'm just i'm i'm asking that question because we all know masks fall kids in this age they're burning noses they're all inside there so what protections are they're really serving yeah i think that's a good point yeah

194i mean that was a common problem with my case student right i mean even sure yes she's been she's um you know she's got her shot now but her mask's falling down all the time where's your mask i don't know no [Music] i see why it's a dilemma it's a it's a very it's a tough one um it's us to decide well is it just up to mask are there other measures we can do you know to to well that's why i was saying is there reorganizing the classroom so that one class is masked and one's not just make sure they're not i don't know they do materials they spread out social distancing is still a big factor i mean are there other measures that the teachers can take to you know are these kids

195going and having the same lunch that the rest of the kids have are they going to the scene but are they going to the gym are they interacting playground any other areas where they're they're pretty much in there yeah they're really not interacting except for services when they're pulled i think do they still do pt and ot inside there's that would be right they were going yeah that's true yeah i mean i i would i would recommend that we offer to provide kids size and 95s and you know whatever we can possibly give those kids that need that extra mass you know that the extra protection and and continue to do whatever we can to social distance as much as we can can pick them outside services on an appointment basis meaning so if rather

196than having their child attend a three-hour program on a tuesday thursday from 9 to 12 or whatever the times are can they elect to make an appointment for speech therapy or pt or oath saying they're not wearing masks they don't have to wear masks the speech therapists and the ot people that was my point earlier i mean are they interacting with others do you know what i'm saying they have a choice to wear a mask or not to them are they wearing them i don't know are there students that doesn't are there 95 masks i just don't know i've seen one yeah okay so that's the thing okay they're suffocating i mean i can't i guess ultimately where i kind of land is we i don't know that we can do the grade any different

197than we've done the other grades my view is it has to be current choice we have allowed all of the other kids and i and it wasn't just vaccine i mean vaccine was a huge part of it but numbers came way down you know that's why we postponed going you know making comparators for everybody until numbers were down to a manageable but i would like confirmation tomorrow whenever if pre-k is included in the gms number yeah thank you up in the email okay so do we eat do you need a vote so can we hold off i know we've already held off on it but i guess parents have weighed in already and it was just a mixed bag so any feedback we get's going to be mixed i think that'll be the case yeah

198i mean it's the same the same as the board when you voted that wednesday to take away masks and then you got flooded with what you just take away matt you know so you were reacting to one parent set of parents and then you got another set so i think it's gonna be the same thing whenever you make the decision but if the decision is if the overarching rule is parent choice we can work with the families who are concerned about that we can look at other other um ways to segregate the wrong term but you know provide an opportunity for students to be you know um separated in the classroom okay we can do that yeah great pretty good choice too i agree if we can get a better mask um we'll we'll buy

199a better mask yeah so yeah okay that's a consensus do you want a vote uh i don't think so i think i unless you want to vote but i feel like you've given us direction and i'll talk to dan tomorrow and we'll go from there i think to cover us it might be safe to do a vote but i'll make a motion too you can do it too i was looking to make pre-k or or or however this to um have pre-k students wear masks as parent choice can i reword it sure i think i just want to say to have pre-k be in line with the mask policy for the other grades perfect i think it would be more my which is parent choice but um i just think pre-k should match yeah no

200yeah yeah is that a motion and a second well i'll be formal about it so i i make a motion to um extend the masking policy to include pre-k as well i like that to extend that you want to make emotional okay so any further discussion all in favor say aye aye opposed abstain five zero zero perfect thank you yeah i hope michelle got that one yes sorry michelle i get everything it's choppy but all right let's us to the manifest to hit me it has three signatures on camera great questions no questions all right um public input um i'll open public input as soon as liz has a chance to read the correspondence that we skipped over that i stepped over and i'm sorry because it was on the back my printer prints on

201both sides this was from on march 24th from jim norton to all of us at the school board he's ready to thank michelle flynn for all you've done for our town he wants you to know the school board member comments made by school board member cutter were unprofessional and out of line he should be your priorities of a school board members to be an example the actions did not show he does actions of mr cutter show he doesn't have the discipline to take his position seriously i hope mrs flynn knows how respected she is in our community we are lucky to have her and i hope mr cutter learns from his mistakes that's it thank you for reading that i'm glad i found it sorry it's all right any other um public input can i

202just let let me just do a double check oh yeah we'll check the yep [Music] the mic show i thank you patrick keith lea president um glad i can be here to speak just briefly um first of all i want to thank the board everyone on the board um for desiring to to reach out to the associations and have more direct communication from my heart i appreciate that that's all we want to accomplish i think that members of the lea i want kathy and darlene are here darlene's still here so i won't speak for the lssa but um i'll speak for the lea and say that's just really what members feel like our voice hasn't been heard and then i just want to touch upon the climate and culture because we met with bill preble

203last week as as mike said before and one of the suggestions because dr jetty had mentioned that we're going to retreat the lea and the lsa's essay weren't originally invited and then bill preble suggested um to dr jetty i think you should invite them into the beginning of this process and uh and mike did agree we didn't get an invitation uh i emailed you this morning saying we still haven't received that invitation and i needed to to find out when i would be there but i was in unity yeah i found out at the beginning yes you weren't here but clear you were involved in the um the preliminary conversation and we were inviting so both associations were planning to attend the now cancelled event yes they were going to be there tomorrow yes but

204but that was from from bill preble's suggestion yes to you yes so um i guess i just you know um i just want to just my only concern is on this i think bill preble um certainly has great credentials dr jenny mentioned he's working all over the country with schools um you know i think my concern and people i've talked to uh in the lea is that um so so there's a wall right now between um and i'm going to speak uh darlene and kathy out of respect for ls to say i don't want to speak for you guys um so i'll speak for just elia employees we feel like there's a wall between us and the superintendent and our voices aren't being heard um i guess you know our fear is that uh this

205could possibly be another apparatus um that rather than really tear down this wall and have direct authentic between us and and and the district and by that i mean uh the superintendent sau in the school board um it's just this giant apparatus that will look like um collaboration and uh and and input by the staff is being had when in fact it is working and i'm not saying intentionally or unintentionally it's just in fact it's working in an opposite it's actually just building more walls so uh members of i shared with you guys um survey from the lea about a year ago um where we felt like there was only seven percent of lea members that that thought that there was direct communication um we don't feel like this is i just asked you i'm

206not saying that that this will work out or not uh but just to keep that in mind um you know the the school reopening committee in uh 2020 the fall of 2020 there was this huge uh huge committee the reopening task force where there were subcommittees and everyone came out of those subcommittees and said like you know what pat everything we talked about was not embedded in this in the district reopening plan so again there was this giant apparatus but in reality rather than open up the doors of communication and really shut them but it gave this presentation the community that look there's there's um communication uh taking place and i'm not saying it's intentional or unintentional just that's how we feel um recently the um principal search committee at the high school not one

207um uh lea member was on that there was one um so there was i think six members five were a district um an administration and one was the lea and we didn't even get to choose it was chosen by the um by the superintendent so we just feel like we want that direct communication because we're really talented teachers and we've lost so many at the high school and we're losing so many at the middle school that's our talents you know and and if we're going to have troop retention it's got it it's going to start a communication and i really appreciate all of you guys including our superintendent uh for sort of opening up trying to open up that door um and having that direct communication because it's going to benefit the students and that's

208what we're all here for and it's going to benefit the whole community so thank you thank you anything else all right with that i gotta get click back on my agenda we will um [Music] i'll take a motion to go into nonpublic according to rsa 91-8 colon 311 a through c we'll be discussing the dismissal promotion or compensation of any public employee or the disciplining of such employee or the investigation of any charges against him unless the employee affected one has a right to a meeting and two requests that the meeting be open in which case the request shall be granted b the hiring of any person as a public employee c matters which if discussed in public would likely adversely reflect the effect of adversely the reputation of any person other than a member

209of the body or agency itself unless such person requests an open meeting um liz heidi jack andrew hi i'm a yes so we will go into non-public