Okay, it's six o'clock and we have a really big agenda today so I'm going to get us moving because the weather is not well and I'm good and I want people that have to drive to be able to get home too. So with that welcome everybody it's six o'clock thank you for coming to yet another school board meeting. Welcome to our guests and so I'm going to call the meeting to order and I wanted to start by a quick reflection at last week's letter from our from Jen from our internal superintendent talked about the book that the staff have read about cultivated emotional resilience in educators and on concentrating strengths and looking for the light especially you know right now and it made me think about a book that I've been reading to the friend gate to me the book of delights and it's just short essays because it's really hard to like this time of the year as you know we're all super busy to like be able to you know read a lot at least for me right now so the essay is like great because it reminds you of little delights and today I had the opportunity to go to the Calis elementary school and be with the staff and that was my delight of the day to make me feel connected to people and it made me feel you know it reminds us of why we're here so I wanted to start the meeting with that and see if there's any public comments for tonight I see one two hands okay so let's start with let me see Erica. Hi I'm Erica Rose I'm the art teacher at both Calis and Berlin Elementary and I am strongly advocating for an increase of the art position from point eight to full time for Calis and Berlin so that we can better serve our staff and our students you will note later in your meeting tonight during the presentation from the leadership team that I have the support on this request from my building administrators Aaron and Kat but this increase is not reflected in the draft of the budget you are looking at I am asking the board to direct the leadership team that art is a priority in Washington Central this is what my position looks like four months into the school year as a result of last year's cuts my working days are typically nine to ten hours long I arrive at school around 7 30 and I often stay until about 5 30 every day Monday through Thursday so that I am prepared for my 15 classes each week my Tuesdays are split between Calis and Berlin and sometimes it is difficult to take my allotted time for lunch while all teachers have some level of planning outside of the school day I still work at home despite my long hours and occasionally come in on a weekend four days is not sufficient if I want to plan and prepare engaging lessons stay up to date on student concerns and collaborate with all stakeholders across two very different communities I don't have time this year to do many of the things that enriched my program in the past I will not be able to have an art show okay hi Eric just hold on hold on a minute we we have this policy of having a set amount of time we just have three people I'm going to just check in and see if there's any other anybody else that is going to have a comment today otherwise we would extend that because we cut you right in the middle so I apologize for that but we're going to make an exception today and just run a little longer just because we have just three people right there's no other public comment okay so go ahead Erica I'll just be a few more a little longer not much I don't have time this year to do many of the things that enriched my program in the past I won't be able to have an art show display student artwork at our local library or do other school traditions that my students look forward to I took this hit on the reduction of art position because I care very much about my program and my students but my workload is very taxing and not sustainable long term without jeopardizing the quality of my instruction thank you thank you Erica Erin thank you um I'm I've spoke with you several weeks ago about the status for I just wanted to share with you the recent update so greeting board members this evening I'm speaking on behalf of the Washington Central Educators Union to provide an update on the 2021 statewide healthcare bargaining process and its outcome as you likely know a panel of three arbitrators unanimously selected the union's last best offer which consisted of the recommendation of John Cochran the neutral fact finder and covers the years of 2023 to 2025 in their rationale the arbitrator cited the current fiscal health of the state education fund um and the massive infusion of pandemic recovery money to local school districts and the reduction in property taxes for Vermont residents the unions by adopting the recommendations of the fact finders report accepted concessions in premium cost sharing for support staff and out of pocket liabilities for teachers and other licensed professionals while we were disappointed that the Vermont School Board Association's bargainers position throughout the process we recognize those positions not necessarily reflect your views school board members we appreciate the opportunity to communicate directly with you during the bargaining process and hope to maintain a positive dialogue moving forward and during implementation of new bargaining agreement that begins in 2023 we believe your share um you share our interest in maintaining a high quality competitive and fair healthcare benefit for employees in the school district thank you very much for your consideration thank you Erin Dexter hi I'm Dexter Lafave from Middlesex and I wanted to first comment on the draft minutes for the meeting for your last meeting they didn't accurately represent the testimony that I provided in the meeting specifically I identified that the board was violating their policy of a 21 that was to allow public comment on each agenda item before it was voted on I think that it's unreasonable for the board to continue and operate in this way I think it's also a violation of state statute because you're not providing reasonable access to the public to comment on things my specific interests are the school's COVID policy I think the mask policy masks are dangerous making making mass mandatory is harming children both physically and psychologically and the same is true of the testing procedures they're both dangerous and they harm children physically and psychologically and I'd like to see more public input into development of the process thank you Dexter that's it for the community I don't see any other hands let's move into our meeting and Erin and Dexter assume that is an old hand if you don't mind lowering your hand that'll be great and then we can move everybody on their screen thank you very much for coming tonight any agenda revisions for members I would like to I know that we don't have a lot of time but I would like to add in reports a quick report in from the career center so call it forward floor it's Anna I was um yeah um what would it be possible to move the student reports closer to the beginning of the agenda tonight yes that that that that that would be okay that would be okay so we'll move it do you have sports what time is do you need to be done I don't have any major preference I just saw in the agenda it was over a hundred minutes of the board discussion so if possible before then or okay so we can you know we can we can talk Anna we were we were hoping that you guys we had this conversation at the steering committee and we we were hoping that you guys want to participate and listen in a little bit into what the the work of the board and then and then report in but I'm happy to have you report in right as we get started today and then you can decide what part of the meeting you want to do and engage with and I see that I have a hand up from Mr Scott Thompson go ahead Scott yes Laura I'm wondering if the board should consider instructing our student representatives teachers not to assign them homework on board meeting nights yeah but I'm not I'm not going to comment on that but let's move in the start our meeting and I'm gonna do 3.0 Anna and just go ahead do the report the student report let's start with on that note okay thank you so much for I really appreciate that I am living in Berlin now so I might keep my my video off just because I know the Wi-Fi is a little bit bad um I believe Maya is here tonight maybe somewhere yeah hi Maya hi I am here sorry Maya you want to start us off tonight uh yeah all right so we just wanted to start off saying that winter sports are starting starting up with basketball skiing and hockey and competition starting soon um we're not sure like how COVID will affect them yet but we're keeping our fingers crossed um along the lines of chronicles since I'm the senior editor I feel it is important to report out about that so in the next coming weeks we are hoping to publish and print a paper version of the chronicles so we haven't done that in a bunch of years and we're hoping to take a bunch of the highlights from um this fall semester so a couple of them include a student songwriter who has recorded an album um the cross-country meet and how the boys won New England's the COVID policies as well as some funny humorous sections of a comic about the toaster at school as well as a consulting-like thing from a senior uh as some of you may have heard we did have a water main break uh last week and part of this week and so we did miss one and a half days of school but hopefully it's fixed now and we won't have to miss any more school because of that um so because it's becoming the holiday soon um as part of the pep squad which is our school spirit club we are deciding to do a candy cane delivery so this is going to start on Friday into Monday and students will be able to purchase a candy cane and have it be delivered to their friend as a way to celebrate the the happy holiday season and they'll be delivered on Wednesday so it's a little bit like if any of you have seen mean girls or have heard about our Valentine's Day flower sale it's similar to that and we're really looking forward to that and also having an ugly sweater day I did not know that that was the thing okay um earlier this year we talked to you guys about mosaic which is a local group whose mission is to heal communities and end sexual violence and starting last week students at U32 have started a task force made up of many kids in all grades to help work towards sexual assault and harassment free school community and we are currently working with mosaic and they're like they're working on plans on how to end it and fix it in our school community and to just finish up tonight a lot of seniors have applied early action to college and those who applied early action and early decision have been getting their applications back and being accepted which is really really exciting thank you thank you both any questions from board members okay that was a great way to get us started anyway it's much more interesting than what we're about to do it's okay let's get into a 3.1 vote to mail annual meeting ballots to all registered voters we're gonna have to table that that one we were not able to get our Berlin town and our Middlesex town but I would love a quick update from from each town since just to go quickly so Jonas I'm gonna start with Worcester sure so I went to the last Worcester select board meeting I believe on Monday the 6th where they voted to send ballots to everyone on the registered voter list but they also added a clause at the end of their motion to say that the towns all five towns that do this should do it through jet envelope so that they can mail them all out from there instead of sending them back to the town clerks and having them mail them out right just so to save that step but there was no there seemed to be no hesitance on the part of Worcester to do that and to mail out all ballots thank you Jonas Lindy Eastmont-Pillier Eastmont-Pillier had no hesitancy about it at all and voted to do that as well we didn't talk about jet service but I'm sure they would support that thank you callus Maggie no issues with callus either thank you Jonathan Berlin we're waiting on a different do you want to share yeah sure we've uh I've contacted the town administrator and provided the letter requesting that the ballots be made be mailed to all registered voters but we haven't received confirmation yet back that that's going to occur but hopefully we'll hear back from them soon on that Chris McVeigh middle sex you're muted Chris I attended the select board meeting there were some questions about the necessity of doing the ballots and some select board members had questions which I couldn't answer but I've gotten answers and then responding and writing to the town clerk to go to the select board and just my hope that they will agree there's also some some concern about access to the Romney school and from the school prop properties in light of our easement so I think we are addressing that as well and I think that will help iron things out okay I'll report back thank you so so we're going to take action this needs to be done I was hoping that we could get it done today but we're going to take action in our January meeting hopefully okay let's move on to the annual warning draft that was in page four we have the finance committee met and we reviewed the draft and we have a gender mind sharing your screen we have an updated draft yeah mark is prepared to share his screen my sorry yeah thank you yeah that's good mark are you with us oops it is can I it can oh there you are okay can everybody see it so there were two very very small changes so if you go down a little bit mark so one of it so in article five in in article five the finance committee was proposing that we change the annual compensation for school district officers you see it there and we can have a discussion I just wanted you to be able to to read it oops right there and then the other one was just a minor change above so nothing that that drastic from from from the previous draft do you want to stop sharing the screen unless people were not able to read it so if I could have a motion to accept the draft and then we can move into discussion so moved thank you kari second okay kari moves Scott seconds a questions and you know thoughts on that we don't yeah i'm gonna join us i'm gonna let kari start so that we can talk a little bit about you know the thought behind doing this kari and then jones so i'm not sure if it was clear but the the first change was to increase the compensation for regular directors by 50 dollars and then to create a new level for the board chair and the thinking is that we should slowly but steadily start to increase the compensation for directors over time to address the equity issue that not everyone in our community can necessarily afford to serve on the on the board they may have expenses they may need to earn more for their time and we want to be respectful of that and not increase it in large quantities right away but steadily over time one suggestion was to get into a practice of increasing it by 50 dollars a year and then the board chair amount is just in recognition of the incredible amount of work that the board chair does it's it's it's it's certainly undervalued at that proposed level I would say and then I'm not sure if people understood what the second change was and that was about having a in-person location for the virtual hearing which would be either you too basically we are just trying to comply with law we we just noticed that there was no physical location so it was it was very minor but it's basically why we've been posting right now for our meetings we decided they asked me to look into what other neighboring districts did just to have a comparison so I reached out to Sonia the chair and she in berry they paid $2,500 to board members and four thousand to the chair in Montpelier they pay a thousand dollars to to the board members and and the chair made 1500 and in I didn't get the exact numbers from from from Harwood because he said the chair the the board members make a thousand but he said the the chair and the vice chair are paid by meeting so it sort of depends on so they get it they get the same stipend and then they get money for extra meetings but so it was too hard really bring that into comparison so I just shared the other two is Stephen Luke I would say if the if the desire is to increase equity then increasing the pay of everyone doesn't address equity it addresses a quality if we want to address equity then I think would take the same pool of money and distribute it based on some factor other than equal distribution so for instance income level so higher income level would get paid less lower income level would get paid more that would address equity and I don't think the proposal that's being put forward addresses equity it equally increases the amount of pay for everybody thank you Stephen others Scott I understand Stephen's point and recognize that in a kind of abstract way he's right but I would just note that it can be you know invidious as well to essentially discriminate on the basis of income where it would have to be it would come out who has who's making what money and and I think from my perspective Kari's suggestion is you know the the best compromise to that that that I can think of thank you Scott Jonas and then Chris McBae I I love the intent of this instead of slowly bringing those that compensation up to where it should be and I completely agree that we need to attract people who you know for for whom that thousand-dollar incentive is just not enough I would I would rather us put an article on the warning that says that we will that we will raise the compensation to something much higher than 1500 but do it for starting in the 2025-26 school year so that everyone who's on the board right now and everyone who might be running for a seat this year would not get that sort of just like the way that we passed the constitutional amendment a few years ago that any increase in pay will not affect current members of the Congress if we do this and put it into effect a couple years from now I would hope that that would make it clear that we are not trying to give ourselves more money but they were trying to to make being on the school board attractive to to people who for whom it might not be attractive right now so but I don't have a number and I don't want to pull it off of the top of my head and this may not be the year that we do this but I would suggest that if we're really serious about doing this let's raise it to something like three thousand dollars but do it three years from now. Chris thanks Jonas. So I would say that we make the jump right now because if we're waiting for equity or equality delay is no one's friend so I'd propose that we increase the board member amounts to 1500 and double for the chair right now as opposed to winning because if we do a fifty dollars a year that's just the the slow drip of erosion and doesn't do anything for equity or equality and I think Steve makes great point about equity versus equality but by having an equal amount that's higher allows more people to serve that might not otherwise be able to so at least it gets tries to get at the problem without requiring disclosures that others may not want. Thank you. Thank you. So are you proposing a friendly amendment Chris? I want to give I want to give everybody a chance to talk I also don't want to spend a lot of time on this because we have a really long agenda but is anybody I'm going to ask just is anybody in the board opposed to increasing the board pay? I don't see anybody. That's an old one right? Yeah. Jonathan were you trying to say something? Yeah I was I was just thinking that and maybe this is in some ways a privileged position to take which is that you know I'd like to believe that people would want to serve on the board but for you know earning money to do it but the reality is you know for many people their time is our time is always valuable but to do it could be and to be paid a fair amount of money or some money to do it would make it more appealing for some people I mean like I said I'd like to believe that people would do it without consideration of the money but perhaps that's that's someone naive position to take and also sort of a privileged position because I think some fair compensation is fair. Thank you. Thank you Jonathan. Maggie? I just wanted to speak briefly as a board member who didn't know I would be receiving an honorarium until I got the notification I needed to submit information and I've been on numerous community boards of equally important organizations in our community and never been compensated before and I think you know in terms of attracting people to participate this could create an opportunity for people who may have other commitments that would make participation difficult namely employment or being at home because their significant other is working and this would be somewhat of a burden in terms of their time to find coverage. Thank you Maggie. So let's let's vote in the proposal Chris if you are okay with that or you want to do a friendly amendment and see. I'm going to propose a friendly amendment to increase the board members' stipend and I think it needs to be said that even if it's $1,500 no one is I mean you're not doing it for the money even if it's $1,500 just let's be fair and clear to ourselves about that because I don't know I've never heard of a board member running so they could get the stipend but I think it's a recognition of the time and that we do spend and I fully agree with the board chair getting twice because of all the work the board chair has to do so I'm going to make that friendly amendment to increase the article five to directors for $1,500 a year and the board chair $3,000 a year. Kari would you accept the friendly amendment? I completely understand the thinking on that I feel it's too high though I worry that it would backfire on us and I don't want to get into bargaining Chris but no I'm not I'm not going to just up or down vote on either one okay so let's vote let's vote on the motion on the floor right now we didn't have a second for friendly amendment Kari didn't take the friendly amendment so let's vote on the warning as you saw it and Jonas is that a question or yeah just really quick if the voters turn down whatever increase we vote on now the compensation will revert to what it is now yeah yeah okay so just to be clear it would be $1,050 for the for all board members in $2,000 and $100 for the chair so all those in favor please say aye or raise your hand hi hi hi any oppose any abstain abstain okay so one of Stephen abstains so the motion carries thank you school board elections in page six everybody got that that memo if we coordinated with with with Rosie and it just you know just be aware if you're if you're running in Maggie Weiss send an email today to her principal and the town clerk to asking people to run I have a draft to be sent after the meeting for the steering committee to post something too we are going to need board members for East Montpelier for Calis and for middle sex and everybody that you know that you're running right everybody that has been appointed is there any questions from that memo Chris McBae is that a full hand or a new hand is an old hand that I've not been able to lower because I'm not getting access to whatever it is to okay I just I just did it for you thank you Maggie I just wanted to add that Scott has also posted a front porch forum and I plan to post a few testimonials there too and Carrie and Scott and I have talked about being available for folks in Calis who might be interested in hearing directly from us about the value of running and participating thank you Maggie so every every town please take note and let's move on into town meeting an annual report format so Jen do you have yeah so we have two types so yeah do you want to lead this in or do you want me to do you want to lead it oh I'm happy to lead it and with Suzanne Suzanne's help because she did some research on the question that came up with finance so yesterday at the finance committee meeting a question did come up about the format for the annual report so I have a little virtual show and tell here so in recent years we have done this kind of report so glossy we'll ensure it's all photos of our students and Scott Thompson I did check there is a place for notes in the back of this one and and in years past we had done this version that those of you who've lived in our communities are served on our boards will remember this was the town by town version not the paper is not a sturdy and a little bit of color and then black and white inside and so there have been thoughts two different schools have thought about which way to go so with the finance committee asked us to do a little bit of research Suzanne reached out to Ben Merrill yesterday who has helped us put these together Suzanne can you share the quotes that we got and then any price differences just so the board can make this decision sure great the black and white no color and no glossy is quoted at last year's quantity 5985 it is obviously the cheapest the surprise for us was that not glossy but still color was more expensive than a glossy print out not glossy but still color is 7754 and glossy is 7506 so there's only a $200 difference and actually glossy is a little bit cheaper so I think the other considerations that came up are you know is this an informative piece just in preparation for our you know for our annual votes and or do we want to consider it being a promotional material especially in the face of declining enrollment so those were the that was the in a nutshell the substance of the conversation for you by all means facilitate this part but that's the background information yeah thank you Jen so the finance committee felt that this was a board decision we had a lot of feedback from from different town people in the past couple of years and and linda this is a separate conversation about the format and what we'll share with the towns right now we just want and I'll I'll give you an update on that too but right now what we want to talk is just about the report itself if they I think if we look at it as a promotional material it makes sense and if we look at the cost I'm going to revert from what I was thinking of the finance committee of going with the simple the simple one but what is the pleasure of of the board and do you guys have any questions diane so one and Jen already talked about this I think it's the for the information to me is more critical than the format to a certain extent because we got a lot of feedback about um lack of information which I think flora you you said we're going to talk about but I wonder about the environmental impact which one has the least footprint as part of it um I think we have to be mindful of um what we're putting out there in terms of optics but also what environmentally makes a better choice thank you diane maggie and I just want to say my video is off because I have a kid watching the basketball game and the internet is really poor here so I apologize for having video on I'm sacrificing for the u32 games um so I'm just looking for clarification on what we mean by this being promotional material who's the who's the audience for promote being promoted to so mainly it's it's community members and community members sharing it with other community members it could be realtors sharing the the the report it's it's like today I I couldn't find mine I went to call us and I picked up one at the door right so they it's it's just available so that's what it would be promotional and we don't really have anything else in in in print then it just gives an insight into the schools and the reason I asked that specifically is because generationally if we're talking about attracting new families we really should be looking at a stronger internet presence because the utilization of print is just not going to be as it's not going to be as accessible if you had to drive to call us to pick up a book you know why is that not immediately and easily accessible on our website in a beautiful full page pdf easy to flip through page form it would be available online it's always available online it will be available online but is it accessible and easy you know is it accessible is it right is it I think we're talking about an advertising approach that isn't necessarily appropriate to the time okay thank you thank you Stephen and then Lindy I think any dubious marketing gain is minimal compared to the negative feedback we get from community members on the glossy platform I think if if we're interested in trying to sway community members to more community members to support the school then we want to be super sensitive to costs and super sensitive to the feedback that we get from community members so I think we should go with the lower estimate thank you Stephen Lindy I really feel it's about the content of what's in this and I know you said we're going to talk about that but that's what the complaints we had gotten the glossy it was just pictures of school you know the it didn't have data some of the recent one didn't have the data that people were used to I think and by it not being in the town reports anymore they were asking questions about why if we're going to do this we don't put that information in there so that it's informative in that sense but the complaints I agree totally with Stephen if the the glossy look of some bank has sent you something it's not what they're thinking of for their public schools and it may be wrong as far as looking at the glossy cost being cheaper than the not glossy but just pictures of kids that recess or doing math or something is not that informative of our schools and it's mailed to every family some of them have children now some of them had children before some of them will have children or never have children they want information not just how great we look or whatever so that's what's important to me is the content if we're going to do it in print thank you Lindy so Suzanne can you refresh I'm getting confused now so the 5985 was non glossy but but still color no black and white black and white okay black and white okay but the less the one that we have been printing before was the most expensive no it was the middle was the middle okay all right so and it's only $200 less than the non glossy color yeah it's 75 yeah 06 to 75 okay so what would be as far as content Diane and Lindy what Suzanne had sent an email and what we were what we were hoping is to be able to share the information with the town clerk system around so we would have it in a format that they can share it what we're not going to include is the salaries we we you know we crossed that threshold last year and we were going to post that on the on the website as we had agreed last year but other than that we are going to be able to have the information in a format that the towns can use it so that's a change from last year and then we're going to have this this report so that there's that question and coordinate with them Lindy yeah it's it's not so much the salaries that were they were in all of our town reports but numbers of classrooms student numbers those are what I think people like to see it shows over time our numbers by community the schools and I hear people complaining that we've lost our sense of community by having one board but if we have a document that includes information about each school like that like how many grades and classes are at Berlin East Montpelier Calis how many students are in the schools how many are in pre-k those kinds of change that's information people like to see and they don't know it just looking at a building so it wasn't so much down to the salaries because I know when I taught here it was like a shock what my salary's in the town report but I got used to it and I think it's more those kinds of census numbers and how many faculty members because we always had a list of faculty members it's nice to know who's working in your schools I don't have to know exactly I can look at the contract figure out how much the money they're making so those were the numbers that have been missing and if it's going in this report fine but this report needs to say more than just oh look at all the great artwork that our kids are doing or the playground and things like that thank you thank you Lindy Diane so I would I mean I'm just remembering there was some feedback after our budget forums especially when we were looking at some of the specifics so I'm going to look back on some of that feedback just to remind myself what it was but I also wonder if there isn't you know if we had a draft at the next budget forum and that we get the feedback as to what are the parts missing because I agree with Lindy it's really the picture of the the people in it it's it's not the detail about salaries but it was there was a number of questions or confusion as we presented a consolidated budget which I just think we have to be mindful of how the information feels to those who aren't inundated and immersed in them thank you we're taking note of all of this we will talk about the format of the report we have notes from all of the feedback that we got back after last year report and that's what we were using with Suzanne to try to make sure that we check that so we this is all important so with everybody just by a show hands we comfortable with going with the with the middle one so not black and white but the middle number no you want black and white so we have one okay who it who wants black and white or could we have a motion that we vote on and then we can figure out I was just trying to get a sense Steven to just be able to just put a motion for that particular one but so I didn't want to have to do too but okay go ahead make a motion I make a motion that we accept the lowest bid second second by Jonas Steven any more discussion on that all those in favor please say I erase your hand looks like everybody from my missing any oppose so I'm gonna oppose sorry and then any abstentions all right so we'll we'll do the black and white report which is the lowest number of course just to comment in terms of we talked a little bit about not putting the salaries in the report we should at least put an asterisk or something saying if you want to see the salaries they're on the website just what I have to hunt for if they know whether they can look because that is of interest to a certain segment of the population thank you thank you thank you superintendent evaluation kari yep so hopefully the memo in the packet was helpful but just to remind everybody our goal is to conduct an evaluation this year but with an eye towards future years so we can develop a system that we can use in future years and to that end the committee has learned a little bit about the vermont school board associations system that they use and we would propose using that system this year it utilizes a survey that's focused on the job description you know sort of a generic job description for superintendents and then any goals that have been established and the way it works is the survey is sent out electronically to board members to the superintendent and to the leadership team and then our thought was as a committee was that we could supplement that with climate survey data so that we're getting input from others and with specifically that it would be interesting to go an alternating basis one year survey students and families in the next year survey staff and then beyond that we're thinking even more specifically given the timeline this year and our capacity every all the challenges why don't we start the climate surveys next year specifically with the staff and if you like that idea then we would just basically focus on the evaluation instrument this year and we would have the association support in compiling the results and and and writing it all up so that's the that's the summary and happy to answer any questions and and love to hear your comments thank you kari any questions from board members i see none let's move right along a superintendent search appointment looks god has one oops sorry sorry scott i didn't see you okay go ahead thank you thanks kari for flagging me um i noticed that in the rubrics there are something like 40 separate performance points that's a lot and i think um it might be a good idea to try to uh at once you know we work through this to to have some sort of sense of priority because um particularly in times like these i i don't it's going to be really hard for any mortal human being to excel in every single one of those 40 areas um so i think it'll be necessary to just help provide some guidance as to what to focus on and and make sure that um there are no kind of um i don't know potential for gacha situations um just to just to make it you know um work well for for both the superintendent and the board thanks god i think that's a great point and um i think um you know jen would be the first to admit the job of the superintendent is incredibly challenging no one it excels at everything everyone has room for improvement and growth and that's part of the deal with the evaluation as we we agree on where those opportunities are together um but thanks thanks god i appreciate that jonas yeah i see that as more of a feature not a bug i think in the previous evaluation process we had too few performance points um and there was just not the ability to get the kind of detail and granularity we needed to get to um you know you know so that each member of the board felt that they were accurately um assessing uh the superintendent's performance based on the evidence and that you know the board members uh experience of working with the superintendent i think that certainly could be cut down um but i think going going with with more rather than fewer is a good thing we can always trim it down later um and you know i think as as as carry says you know there are always going to be areas where the superintendent did not do an excellent job i think that that's just everyone being honest uh about that and having a rubric where we can actually identify that rather than bucketing you know a lot of different points into one category where there's not room for a lot of variation um i think is a good thing thank you jonas any other questions for carry seeing none let's move into the appointing for the for the superintendent search i send an email just this afternoon because we closed at noon the applicant pool i don't know if you all had a chance to to look at that at that email and that in that little table and within that email i had to send you know a proposal for for three criteria or whatever you want to call them but to the extent possible let's look for town representation a that we have elementary middle and high school representation and an equity lens and we also received a letter from Cara this afternoon so take that into consideration that that we also have teachers so with that i thought that we would break it up and start with the students which probably would be they said is we had two students apply and i'm wondering if we could have a motion to apply in hopefully i'm not going to say this name wrong like Leonard did so Jolanda Banson who's at u32 a 10th grader and a Gwen am i saying that right one bear a second grader uh u32 could i have a motion i move to appoint Jolanda Bansa and Gwen Bear to the superintendent screening and interview committee thank you jonas a second i'll second it thank you lindy any questions or discussion see a none all those in favor please say hi hi hi hi any oppose hearing none the motion carries and then moving right along for central office we had one i'm just going to go in a little bit just to we have more applicants for parents and more applicants for faculty so i'm going to leave those towards the end so that we can get point so for central office we had one applicant and that was a michelle so could i have a motion i'll move to appoint michelle sapcha to the superintendent steering and interview screening and interview committee thank you jonas i'll second it chris second lindy can come on lindy i don't want to i don't want to confuse lisa so i let her let's say what did you already have chris what do you have yeah so jonas and then chris second it all those in favor please say hi hi hi hi any oppose hearing none we have a very cute visitor with us that is adorable now let's move into and we are the intern superintendent is part of it we had already appointed the three board members so we don't need to do that again but i'm looking for other board members too it might be worth it to just do it again to just make it all official so could i have a motion to appoint jen i'll move to appoint jen miller arsono as interim superintendent to the superintendent screening and interview committee second jonas ursula any question any comments seeing none all those in favor please say aye sorry any oppose hearing none the motion carries and then the three board members that we had appointed before were ursula maggie and myself could i have a motion to that unless the board's pleasure is different now move to appoint ursula maggie and four as board representatives on the superintendent screening and interview committee thank you chris a second to that all second thank you lindy i had really hoped to participate in this i didn't know that when uh maggie and ursula were doing that initial work that that constituted appointment to the committee neither did i and jonas if you want my slot you are welcome to it terrific thank you maggie okay that was my understanding as well i'll amend my motion to substitute jonas for maggie okay ursula you're okay staying yeah okay is the board okay with that yes okay so all those in favor with the motion with the friendly amendment jonas ursula and myself would be in the committee please say aye right and you oppose hearing none the motion carries okay i think i'm done with all the ec ones okay so for for the leadership team which is we had one applicant to start and that was gillian from from wuster from the doddy school and i also heard tonight from lisa from u32 so if she did not fill out the the application this afternoon as i talked to jen this afternoon i i think part of the reason that you're seeing that is that you know people are really burdened and there's just a lot going on but she has expressed her willing to to serve because i think it would be important to have both the elementary and high school representation so if the board is okay with that could i have a motion to appoint both gillian and lisa to to the committee i move that we point gillian and lisa to the committee second second okay chris and maggie sorry guys i'm trying to okay all those in favor please say aye hi hi hi any oppose hearing none that motion carries okay that's lisa the plant right just for just sorry yes yes yes lisa the plant i'm just assuming you're 32 sorry yes this is the plant and not not lisa stout not you lisa surprise lisa and so okay let's let's do faculty and staff trying to decide what it would be so for faculty and staff if you have your little i have so many open windows here we have a ellen dorsey we have a let's see daniel diddlemeyer from rummy elementary sixth grade teacher and please correct me if i'm wrong on this one elizabeth mark from u32 and drew jenkins from u32 and we have one more jessica heins yes jessica heins from from berlin so this one is going to be a tough one right we have a lot of great people applying so this one would be one that we could use those four things that we were talking about to see to try to do it more proportional for a yeah from i'm sorry i'll stop there people with their hands up okay let me call into maggie was first and then steven look yes could you please repeat the towns because these weren't some of these applicants didn't include it in their forms and i missed where um miss mark's works could you just repeat all the pounds again okay so jessica heins works at berlin and is also part of a leadership at the association daniel diddlemeyer works at rummy sixth grade teacher elizabeth mark it works at u32 and drew jenkins works at u32 titles what what are their roles so if jan you're going to have to help me here drew and i remember elizabeth's world language and global sit are her specialties and ellen dorsey instructional coach at the district level can you repeat that because there was static and i'm sorry i know this is a lot to ask you to do but it would be helpful yeah no it's it's okay so uh who did you miss so elizabeth teaches social studies and language at u32 and drew teaches math at u32 ellen dorsey is a coach and math specialist for basically for all our schools and uh who else did you miss jessica heins berlin daniel diddlemeyer rub me and most important you know read what they wrote in that in their little essay right and looking at you know that equity lens i'm gonna open it up now maggie now that you got that information to steven and then to the end so i'd say to discuss this in open meeting is fraught with risk and is going to restrict a frank discussion so i would advocate that this not be done in an open meeting okay just not any this other board members agree i was trying to do it all in the open right so that people but i'm okay with that too dan what was if you have a question before we well i just as a berlin resident um i want to be sure that there is that opportunity that we consider all of the towns to be represented in some facet of the process yes jonathan sorry i can't really understand what you said yeah no i would agree with what diane just said as well okay so then can we get so can we then get the um the towns uh where the parents are um are from the parent applicants because we've put gillian from wooster yeah on the on the committee gillian gillian after there's a middle set time yes but that's but she's come up yeah we will still claim her for wooster there chris so for for parents just so that you can put notes to the side and then we'll go back to this is a shani is from wooster natasha is from wooster uh lauren clements is from east montpelier kathy is from rumney and daniel lane is from east montpelier and again when when i wrote the you know consider a town representation too is just to to the extent possible right not over other uh qualities either so i i don't think if if people want to move into an executive session i'm i'm happy to do that i i also feel like we're not talking about anything personal about it's it's just we want to be as collaborative as possible in this in this process and i'm i'm almost inclined to to make a recommendation that we uh considering the letter that we got received today to that we that that we include jessica heins for example who would be berlin be a teacher and and be a counselor too right and i'm looking at jan to correct me if i'm wrong into what she does and and that would be elementary school and then to and and then you know to to pick one of the teachers or ellen one of the u32 or for ellen dorsey as a second as a second candidate and we're not doing it you know we're not like you know not appreciating one over the other right when once we get into being part of this committee everybody is equal right no there's no rationale for taking one of the two u32 folks what's the reasoning from behind that because then we would have a teacher what we would have a teacher that represents both what teacher for elementary and a teacher for high school right we have a right now we have gillian for elementary lisa would be high school too right but gillian's a principal i don't think she's i wouldn't say she is a teacher representative no no no gillian what i mean what i mean is more about if it's that the prince which type of stakeholder if it's a principal or update at which school but or can i make a motion yeah i move to appoint jessica heins and elizabeth marx to the screening in the recommittee i'll second that thank you any discussion on that can i use your hand it's up yes when we were discussing the numbers previously i had asked about whether we could have an additional educator is that still a possibility than rather than two to have three i had i had raised concern about having three board members and only two direct educators yeah so so right right now the the motion that we that we passed you you saw the table that we sent is what we all agreed where we all agreed on but as far as representation you know across yeah i don't i don't know what to tell you maggie i think this is this is what we have right now this is what we had agreed on yeah and i feel everybody's going to be well represented it chris mike bay i'm going to put it in a pitch for daniel just because he's appeared before the board on a number of different occasions and is not soft spoken and is someone who will say what's on his mind which i think would be very helpful in the screening process so i'm going to put in a a recommendation for daniel um dittle mire okay so is that a friendly amendment um yes it is i will accept it thank you so i guess the only thing is that we would have then two elementary and no high school no i thought that chris would he would be substituting jessica oh i see so i again there's no burlin representation in there at all and i'm not saying that it has to dominate but i think we should have a voice from each community at least present yeah and jessica's also part of the association so i think let's let's vote on the motion that we have on the table right now which don't ask can you repeat it again richard okay just so we're just i i put a motion on the table so that we had something to vote on something to discuss um so i will move again that we nominate uh to nominate jessica hines uh and ozibeth march and i still second it okay the both scott seconded it thank you okay all those in favor please say aye hi hi any oppose uh any any abstain abstain so two three abstain so i'm gonna do i'm gonna do hands uh again just so that i can see who were the yes votes could you just raise your hand either by hand or by one two three four five six oh jonathan you just move okay one two three four five six wait is this the yes yes the yes eight okay eight okay we're okay okay so the motion carries thank you okay let's move down to parents which is also going to be hard so for for for parents do you want me to repeat them again we have uh daniel lane from east montpellier katie because i was going katie i said it right this time katie's sitting from romney uh lauren clements from east montpellier uh natasha from wister and shanny from wister shanny did say if you read her last part of her um on her application that she would she was she was very clear that she will defer she said that she will step back and support the board's appointment parents or community members represent marginalized communities identities if you have the opportunity many thanks so so i think since we have two from from wister and i'm gonna put natasha above not above but as a recommendation over over shanny because she's willing to step to the side and then i don't know if you guys have another change yes they have a motion if somebody's brave enough i'll make that motion i'll move to nominate uh natasha eckardt banning and katie Sutton to the screening and interview committee i second that okay got it maggie you got it okay jonas and maggie that was you right yes okay thank you any discussion on that lindy i'll just take up the diane side here as i'm looking through the list do we have an east montpellier i know jessica lives there but she's representing barlin as the teacher there so i'm just asking if i've missed something i am in east montpellier too so so a board member is okay okay okay i know this is not perfect but we're doing the best we can with those outlines i think we're taking everybody into consideration and just being really open about how we're doing it so almost in favor please say for pointing natasha and kathy katie please say aye hi hi hi any opposed any abstain abstain one abstain the motion carries so we we have a committee of 13 now listen were you able to keep track of that i was but i didn't find anything in the board packet like i i was just making guesses at the names and i'm not sure i got the spelling of the names right so is there yeah i'll i'll i'll send you the packet that floor sent us with all the uh that the names in it thank you jonas thank you jonas and lindy if it gives you any comfort there's only one callus representative on this too and you know thankful for michelle choosing to to um run to participate or offered to participate there's two maggie because lisa's from callus also yeah okay okay so let's move right on because we are almost in need of a break and we haven't even finished with board operations so let's just really community forum debrief and planning for january page 21 okay so let's i wanted to open this conversation by you know first i think maggie for sending this uh a lot of the sources that that you share with those maggie we use them at depending what the forum is and how we need to inform the community but let's start first by you know by acknowledging that like you were saying there's more need for our social media presence for sure and jan sent an invitation we have created this engagement you know community engagement committee that we would like to invite you to in genju send the email already to to maggie right so yeah so this actually in some ways said said ways to the next conversation when we check in about board goals but there was that board goal related to community engagement um and the forums and public comment and so we hadn't ever really finalized or officially adopted that particular goal so i circulated it back out to the uh subcommittee who had done that that was uh steven ursula mckaylin and i included maggie because maggie has expressed a strong interest so so probably we can continue this conversation for alongside that community engagement goal conversation um they're they're very similar okay and then we we received a we received input from from the last community in engagement about not going into small groups we we had a you know so we're definitely going to rethink how we do our next community engagement right now we were scheduled to be on the fifth and on the 12th but we we're we're thinking that on the fifth the the berlin has made the request for having a potential hearing with the town of berlin we were trying to not do that now but they have a deadline of of February and we feel that the the meeting on the 12th would be sufficient instead of having two budget meetings it went next to the other that was the recommendation from the from the steering committee maggie i see your hand up yeah my read from michael dwayne's email was not that he didn't like small groups it was the small number of community participants in relation to board members in those small groups am i did i misread that and do we receive any other complaints besides michael's no no so so he wasn't complaining about small yeah he was complaining about limited involvement from community members no we also lindy i see yeah the group that lindy and when i was in i forget who the participant was um but she said you know it's intimidating to be you know the only person in these groups um you know and she wished that there had been you know a lot more sort of expository information you know given to her before we asked her to participate in a conversation sort of ironically she ended up giving us a whole lot of stuff and talked for a while which i thought was really valuable um but that would you know uh that wasn't the only comment that we got about the small groups yeah yeah absolutely but we didn't get any new emails it was just why we received at the we all heard that feedback at the at the at the meeting so we're definitely going to put some of this back on the community engagement committee lindy we've heard it at each of the community forums that people are overwhelmed by the amount of board and administrators in a room with one or two people and being put on the spot feeling so i really felt like the small groups needed to change and i was hoping that the committee is looking at that yeah definitely yeah we we heard that input that would be clear yeah is there a committee yeah and we're gonna discuss it even more in the goal but jen if you want to let's move into the goals because i think that would clarify that question maggie okay 3.8 school board goals update i'm gonna leave i'm gonna start with that one since the conversation is fresh and i'm gonna let you leave that gen okay sorry but flor before you go on can you clarify the dates you were i i got lost on the dates so January January 5th okay it's our it's we're gonna have a hearing with berlin okay about in a community forum or yeah it's a community forum but it's just about the town of berlin so it's not a community forum we're gonna have our budget forum on the 12th okay thank you thank you okay jen go ahead all right so i'm gonna start this and then ursula i might put you right on the spot because you allowed this email strand but i had just reached out again to the group that had originally drafted the community engagement goal so steven ursula macaelyn i included maggie as well because she's expressed some strong interest in this topic and just suggested that now that we've had a few community engagement forums under our ballots that we um look at re-examine the goal and see if it needs to be revised or tweaked before it gets officially adopted that's when the idea of forming a committee around community engagement came up and um and ursula if you want to expand a little bit more i think it would be great for the board to hear from you do you want me to expand on my ideas or just did we want to discuss the community community engagement goal that exists now also so i think that the idea of um let me back up i'm gonna offer i'm gonna offer you my perspective about the community forums we've heard some of the same feedback before um and it is um getting them together is it is a lot of work and so both in terms of substance and process and so i think that if there is a group that wanted to take on some more of that outreach and process piece to support public engagement i think that would enrich the the community forum hopefully we get more people there and there'd be a reciprocity there if it was valuable to the board and valuable to the community so overall i think there's a desire to think about how to how to create community engagement opportunities that are actually engaging the community and one idea would be to have a committee that's a little bit more devoted to thinking about that and doing some of the behind the scenes work does that set you up personally to talk about it i think so i think so in my emails i have suggested um either revising or adding on to the community um goal the community engagement goal to include having a committee that could look into different methods of meeting the community outreach to the community using social media um different ways to kind of advertise what we're doing and share information about what we're doing to get their involvement they may not have the time to come to the meetings um in addition to people having commented on the small group work in the meetings we've heard over a couple of meetings that people get a lot of information at those meetings right we give a there's a presentation they get a lot of information given to them and then they're put into a small group and they don't feel they have the time to process the information they've been given and then give comments that they've been able to think they haven't had enough time to think about it and so they're not getting the information ahead of time so yeah i guess i kind of feel that we could have a community engagement committee that would look into different ways to share that information before we have our meetings if we have you know and thoughtfully have forums and try to drum up thank you we're so so Maggie yes you are in that committee and i'm gonna pass this on to to the committee to work on and redefine that goal and to create a calendar into you know just really fear out what's the best way to put the information out we still have our whole finance part so i'm not trying to not say that this is not important but i i really want us to work on the budget today too and Steven as a member of that committee it would be useful in my mind if we got some specific guidance from the board i know when we had met earlier everyone had a different perspective on what we're talking about with community engagement and if it's specific to community forums then i understand that and i know how to work if it's improving community engagement then it's a real shotgun discussion and could go in any direction so i would hope that there could be some level of specificity on what specifically to address at least to prioritize what gets addressed first and then second and so on so i think what we've been hearing from community members and from board members it would be it would be helpful to have a communications calendar when things are going to be put out so to be on top of communicating so your committee will be in charge of trying to spread the word right in partnership with other organizations that are trying to help us but that would be one to me from what i was hearing from from the different reports and and then the the second one was to make what jan was sharing to make help us make our community engagement engagement meetings more engaging right so participate as march or as little it's more important that we have the information out right now in different mediums to different people and the people are getting the information that they need and they feel more included that that would be to me priority one priority two would be you know that you guys engage also in the content and help us put the forums together is that clear or more confusing steven so you want us to work on the community forums yes yeah and that's clear okay so let's move on into the other two goals just a quick report out from because they were there for you to see kari do you want to do quality and then sure yeah the ed quality committee met earlier tonight and we are going to bring a recommendation for one additional board goal this year which would be to complete our student learning outcome review for new folks you wouldn't necessarily know that we spend a good portion of 2020 and early 21 and going through each of our student learning outcomes and talking specifically about how a little bit about how the instruction is organized and delivered and what some of the outcomes are like so we want to complete that process it'll include monthly reports basically and some of the some of the data that we have so we'll be bringing that to you next month and that will take us through the end of the school year thank you kari and the finance committee also met and our long-term goal was the capital improvement plan we've been working with the spreadsheet from blackboard design that they created for different projects and more so we're trying to chris a brian is here too so he can he can speak to it but we we work in this room to making sure that we're taking care of our schools and all and as you will know the building environment is a big factor in improving educational outcomes too and be proactive not reactive and planning ahead and be improved and with our resources so if you read the you know i don't i'm not going to go into all the measurable and what we wrote there but it's basically to start with the five year and move on on to the 25 year but just make sure that we're investing in our buildings and taking care of our assets him and i'm going to move on into board meeting a location and platform on page 20s oh sorry staff appreciation first diane do you want to lead us on this but just yes just a quick update we are quickly um as you had mentioned floor got a chance to visit at um callus today i was finally going to make it to berlin but then that that didn't work out for that schedule so we also have some elves in the works to deliver some goodies to all the building so just a real great appreciation for the hard work that is happening it is a very stressful year for all and for the community and our family so just great appreciation for that and lindy i think you were going to mention something as well only if i can get unmuted it wouldn't seem to unmute um i just i wanted to say how much um even though my inbox seems to be jammed packed constantly i really enjoy getting the emails from the principals with their community letters each week because it gives us a peek inside each of the schools and um there's ice on the playground that makes things a little hazardous you know things like that it's you can picture in your head those kids running out to go to recess and up we go um or they're thankful for the little elves that are dropping things off and they're thanking people just it really gives us a little um view and right now not being able to be in the schools i'm sure the community members enjoy that as well so um it's i i just think it's really nice that we get that and we get a little taste of it i happen to get the east font pillar pto one through facebook i guess i liked it or something and um there's another taste coming from the community and the community involvement so as a board member it's pretty nice i think to see those community letters and i hope parents are reading them and seeing them thank you dindy thank you diane thank you to all the staff that is here and that includes central office staff and bus drivers and kitchen staff everybody so thank you for all you do a board meeting location and platform on page 26 there was a quick memo and as you know we have been here filled in some inquiries about you know about when we're going to move into in person and if that makes sense or not and we the steering committee with help from perry put out a memo out and our our thinking is with the covid transmission as it is currently that we revisit this uh decision in march at our reorganizational meeting and for the time being stay remote so we wanted to open up to the you know we don't want to make the decision for yourselves but dindy well i think the numbers have been you know ridiculously high 700s and things like that um so i agree with that i was wondering about the last sentence if it had anything to do with this memo about winter sports or athletic yeah well we wanted to include it because we as you guys received the letter from from jen to you right we have opened up our schools now for some of the winter sports people are coming to our schools so we want to recognize that if that you know that's happening that's what that sentence at the end is is is there for in case you guys didn't know right am i jen yes so could i i think we we should take a formal uh motion on this uh just so that people know that that's what we're going to do unless you guys think differently but kari so i'll move that we continue to meet remotely um until at least march second kari moves join us second any more discussion yeah i have a friendly amendment to be more affirmative and say that we will reconsider in march when we reorganize as opposed to so we have a definite goal of doing that when we organize as to whether or not we're going to continue to meet remotely or not so make another decision rather than just let it go by i think that's what kari was saying right yeah i'll accept that for a minute okay thank you thank you thank you kari and i assume join us you're okay with that too so all those in favor please say aye hi hi hi any oppose any abstain hearing none the motion carries okay this we already had the student reports this moving to the superintendent report i also want to acknowledge that we've been sitting for a little if people need a two-minute break this would be a good time to have it and then we would just move towards the end of the the meeting quickly so yep okay let's it's 1930 it's 734 let's come back in five minutes and then we be prepared to sit until the end thank you okay let's get stuck the superintendent report i'm assuming everybody's going to start coming back into camera as we get going do you want to move on Jen with the superintendent report please yeah sure i'm just going to share a little bit of a covid update with you maria's here as well i'll invite her to add anything that i forget or get wrong a few key things to note first of all last night we held a vaccination clinic at dodie huge thanks to maria for staffing it for nurse Jess from dodie and gillian and i and the folks from shaws were there we had about 30 kids sign up and come mostly actually i think when all was said again about half of them were first doses and about half of them were second and the folks who came expressed um deep appreciation for the opportunity to do it there it was closer for them and more convenient um i want to share with you our vaccination rates and i know one of my numbers is wrong so maria or cat correct me because i didn't have a chance to write it correctly but right now as of today um we have a vaccination rate at u32 among our students of 83 dodie we have 43 with one dose east mcphillier 74 with one dose 59 with two doses callus 73 one dose more than 27 is two doses cat or maria you want to shout out that number we are at 47 percent thing second dose 47 second dose rumney is 58 one dose 42 percent two doses from berlin is 53 one dose 37 two doses um this is important to note for a few reasons um when we hit 80 percent um then some of our practices can change and some of our buildings including what happens or doesn't happen around contact tracing and um test to stay it also means that in our elementary schools we might be able to utilize our captivating ways that are different than we're currently utilizing them for lunch um i wanted to say one other thing about that i forget and then the the other thing that i think is important to note is that um we obviously just had a break around Thanksgiving time and we're entering a break as well and we just are again urging folks to remain vigilant to um follow all the mitigation strategies um in the communities as well as maria will attest um it's not fun to call families and let them know that kids are close contacts and that that means that they might have to quarantine which is thwarting some of their plans during some of those holidays or travel so um those have been some hard phone calls to have i would say um so i would just i know we have a lot to do if there are questions or comments anything i'm happy to entertain them right now and to pass on to maria anything as well Scott and then Jonas thanks Jen um and thank you floor uh how do you um how do you manage unvaccinated employees are there special procedures for that um just curious please so um in the memorandum of understanding that you um signed or approved last time there's a um a a clause that says that if folks are unvaccinated staff members that they will undergo weekly testing twice and report the results and um and we as a labor management committee have recognized that there are things that we couldn't anticipate that will be coming up and indeed that is the case so we're going to continue in good faith to just figure out some of the nuances to make sure that as folks have questions or concerns we can answer them but right now the short answer is that we're requiring some more testing of unvaccinated folks um we're still universally masking across the board in our schools regardless of vaccination status thank you Scott Jonas and then Maggie just really quick i hope that the lmc uh will consider uh looking at what the definition of vaccinated is uh and to include a booster shot with the impending omicron wave thank you Jonas uh Maggie your hand is down now but yes i was being proactive um i this is i think a question for maria mainly um we've heard on numerous occasions now public comment where concern for um negative effects on kids from testing has been raised and i'm wondering if you could speak briefly to to any science um around harm to children by engaging in this routine testing in our schools i um i'm not aware of any research on whether or not uh testing causes children trauma if my my first instinct was to actually be a little snarky about it which was children pick their nose all day every day and i really don't feel like this specific testing modality is stressful to children um but the the truth is is that children um um what i have noticed with the children when we do test to stay in school is that they have inherited um rightfully so the anxiety of their parents and the people around them regarding being positive for coven and so they are actually um they have expressed uh gratitude for being able to feel safe in school so the the we learned a couple of things when we did test to stay we did learn we first started um by actually doing the test at the student desk and leaving the test on their desk so that we knew whose test was whose and what we found was when we left the test in front of the children this was only the first testing that we did the first classroom we did that the kids were very anxious about it they didn't like looking at it it made them uncomfortable they weren't sure when it was supposed to be you know they they just couldn't focus on anything else with the test in front of them so we started testing them and then keeping the tests behind them and doing the testing behind them so nobody could see and it was incredible how quickly it switched into children went right back into the routine of the classroom and never really thought about it again um and we were able as the people who did the testing to then put the tests on a cart walk out of the classroom after half an hour and the kids didn't notice anything else but they did feel um a little bit safer and that we were taking steps to making sure that they were safe in school I have not read anything about the modality of this simple nasal swab causing any more trauma than the collective anxiety and fear of our um general population over the last two years so I'm not really sure what I can do to reassure anybody I feel like people's opinions are pretty hard-held these days but children are incredibly resilient we have watched that over and over again throughout this pandemic and they have seemed to accept this daily testing if they've been exposed just as easily as they've accepted any other changes we've implemented throughout the school year so I have not witnessed any children being overly traumatized um by this um and in fact they kind of welcome it as an interesting breakup to their normal school day if you know what I mean thank you Maria uh Jonas uh thanks floor um I Maria I can shed some light on that um one of the current pieces of pandemic related myths and disinformation that's flying around is that nasal swab tests somehow endanger the blood brain barrier which is not true because to affect the blood brain barrier with the nasal swab you would have to drill through bone absolutely I'm thinking how you could possibly do that with a q-tip so and I want to thank Maggie for for bringing this up at this part of the meeting Maria I wonder if you could also tell us why masks are safe certainly you tell me to make just make sure that people know that masks don't cause a build-up of co2 a dangerous co2 right and all of the other sort of disinformation that's out there 100 um there is a lot of misinformation disinformation however we want to call it I will say that um as far as I'm concerned and as far as most people in the research world is concerned um the debate about masks is over and it's been over for over two years now um and the truth of the matter is if you look around the world right one of the things that the pandemic does has has sort of allowed us to look um on a greater global scale uh Asia people in Asian cities have been wearing masks for 10 to 15 years now um there has never been any sort of research that states that there is any sort of um that there is any long term uh negative effects from wearing a mask for the periods of time that you are within a group nobody is wearing a mask for 100 of their day nobody is not getting a break and none of the masks that anybody is wearing in the civilian world actually block out enough oxygen to create any sort of loss of oxygen and build up in co2 in their bodies now um having worked in hospitals for 15 years before I came into the school I can promise you that wearing an n95 for extended periods of time is a very uncomfortable and miserable experience no one in the civilian world has a hold of medical grade n95 masks and is wearing them for 12 plus hours at a time um so there is no true documentation that um there's any sort of co2 build up there's no brain damage that's occurring there's no loss of oxygen the truth is is that your oxygen level is low enough to begin with that wearing a mask would cause you harm you should not be out in public in the middle of a global pandemic regardless because your health is not um good enough to be subjected to potentially exposing yourself to this virus um the the mask debate like I said is over I refuse to have it with anybody anymore because there's just no point the research is sound um and and to at this point to say that we're going to go against the who and the cdc and the aap and everybody else as far as I'm concerned translates into a demographic that I'm that you can't have a serious scientific conversation with does that make sense um the the there isn't anything that has come forth that has shown that masks in short periods of time can be anything but beneficial in stopping viral transmission we know that we've had a much lower influenza rate over the last couple of years um and we know that we had a much lower rsv rate over the last couple of years and um I think that it's been pretty clear that we have slowed the viral transmission of COVID-19 um pretty dramatically with the use of masks in a regular um in regular usage so that's sort of my answer is that I feel like the science on that is sound and there's really very little to debate any longer I don't know if that really answers your question thank you yeah thank you Maria I don't mean to rush you that's okay I know I'm wrong thank you yeah it because we have a couple of other questions so McHelen um hi sorry I just wanted to um I have to weigh in as a family position that I completely agree that the science is very clear here that masks are helpful in preventing transmission of COVID and do not pose a threat um physiologically there was a study in JAMA pediatrics in June but it was retracted it was a terrible study and there have subsequently been studies but it's totally safe um and yeah thank you that's all thank you thank you and no risks to the nasal slums I agree with that thank you Dr Chris Maria is there yeah is there a um a study that can you lay your hands on that would just reiterate what you just said about the masks and maybe we could post that on our website because there are still folks out there who have misconceptions uh and it would be good just have a a the paper that folks turn to and say this is it just so they can educate themselves because I think you're right that the the base is hardened and folks may not want to be educated or or be open to it but it would be good I think to have it on our website some type of medical science scientific paper that you just said um I can look into trying to find something that would work what I find is the minute you present research people find an opposing fit of research and it's very very difficult to say but my research is peer reviewed and yours is a YouTube video and um that becomes a really difficult argument to have but I'm more than happy to try to find something that could be for the most part irrefutable in terms of at least being a good peer reviewed you know sound piece of science that we can put on the website I appreciate thank you very much thank you Marianne thank you Chris Anna has a question I just wanted to comment on the idea that the you know the masking and the testing is endangering the students um I as a student at U32 I get a COVID test every single Monday I wear a mask every single day at school and it's honestly you know quite relieving and protecting to be able to have that routine and to come in on a Monday and say okay have I been out in the world do I feel at all sick I can take this COVID test and not have to worry about that and if it is a positive we have a really good program to be able to you know quarantine and feel safe and be able to still do schoolwork so I find the the test itself it's very simple it's you know an inch up the nose they're very sweet about how it goes and I feel very very safe in the school taking the test and getting my results and it's very clear thank you so much Anna for sharing so clearly and okay anything else Jen or Maria for now okay so I I'm gonna I had out at 4.3 we are without a lot of time but I was just going to say for the career center it's just a little celebration or delight is the way of the day today but we went in front of the state board of education today and they approved the change of governance for the career center so it's going to be voted in March so we would need everybody's help to have this be a positive vote so I think you should celebrate too to the career center now would be its own district basically which is really exciting moving on to the finance committee Suzanne I'm gonna let you do a little bit of the of the monthly reflection just because we love we love that part and I'm gonna start just by thanking everybody including you Suzanne for all the work with what we're about to review yeah right now so take it away sure uh so the monthly reflection this month uh I wanted to talk about the allowable tuition report that Matt focuses on uh we actually had two that we had to reconcile this year because the AOE sent FY 20 this fall as well as FY 21 normally that's done every November it was delayed the monthly grant reimbursement is on the 15th and Matt's also responsible for that the special ed expenditure report for October 31st is due November 15th and Renee has a huge help for that so I want to make sure she gets a big shout out thank you the AOE teacher staff survey is an annual report due December 1st that Carla is responsible for and I also give a shout out to everyone in the report for their work on the budget it takes a lot of different puzzle pieces to put this together and everyone has a hand and at some point or other the annual audit report that rhr smithing company is included in your packet tonight and Matt helped to reconcile that report and the deadline to return open enrollment documents uh to Virginia was November 19th and Virginia has done a huge amount of work for open enrollment and I'm sure that everyone's very familiar with the efforts that HR departments put together when when you get your open enrollment packets and Virginia's been working really hard to make that a really nice smooth transition and have everybody enrolled and up and running with cards and accounts January 1st so thank you to Virginia for all her work thank you Suzanne the other two pieces are informational are there any questions on the energy project consultant net marrying or the allowable tuition for year 2021 well so seeing none let's move into the action part of the finance committee uh could I have a motion for the out-of-floor scrubber lease that chris mcvay can ride uh Scott especially designed for this purpose yes I I move that the board authorizes superintendent to sign a 36 month lease agreement for 1038 dollars and 19 cents per month plus a 150 dollar one time document fee for two trident ride on autoscrubbers and one trident walk behind autoscrubber with the option to purchase the equipment for one dollar at the end of the lease thank you Scott he could have a second I can thank you Ursula any questions any discussion hearing none all those in favor please say I hi hi any oppose any abstain hear none the motion carries the audit report on on page 32 could I have a motion potentially carry or Scott I'll move that we accept the audit report I second thank you any discussion go ahead Scott just to point out to members of the board and everybody else listening who might not have had the chance to comb through it in detail it's actually a really good audit report so we're we're in very decent shape here on the financial side which is is extremely nice Scott do you have one or two points that could illustrate that or Suzanne do you have one or two points that could illustrate that Suzanne Suzanne go go go ahead and then I have my own favorites too I was just going to direct everyone to page 148 of the packet which is 106 of the audit report and Kari and the meeting made a really good question about the summary of the it's the summary of the auditor's results and he wanted to know about the type A and type B in the middle there and I did find out that the federal award grantees are audited as either type A or type B programs since our federal grant revenues last year were between $750,000 and 25 million the school district is a type A and so that is what that's indicating is we are type A as far as our federal grantee status but I would also say about this audit report it's really impressive the amount of extra money that came through the school district and and no increased staff in the finance department that the audit report is really clean and it speaks really loudly about the procedures and policies that are in place and how well the finance department function as a team with Lori's leadership it's it's really impressive and a lot of that money that Suzanne is talking about is federal money which comes with all kinds of very strict requirements and and demands for accounting and making sure that everything is is done just so and and that happened which is which is pretty great yeah and Carrie I said hand up yep I just wanted to mention that for those who are new to looking at these reports very wise uh season board member told me to always go to the very end and so if you look at page 103 and the last few pages including 106 that Suzanne was just referring to that's where it tells us that there were no findings and that and that the reports that we're getting through the year are are accurate and so that is really important for us as a board to understand that the information we're getting is is right on so congratulations to Suzanne and the team yeah thank you Carrie yeah thank you everybody and I don't know if you noticed that first in the first page where they write to us and they mentioned that the report was the information provided by our department was neutral consistent and clear which is really great too so thank you Suzanne and and also thank you to Laurie because that was part of last years too and Matt and your team so thanks everybody let's move not move on we have a a motion on the table all those in favor let me just go back to my mute we have a motion on table to accept the report all those in favor please say aye can you oppose um floor so I think the note should say that we approved it with appreciation the sounds great thank you Diane okay and just Lisa do you have that Carrie moved and Scott second and so the motion carries I didn't hear any no it's now finally almost getting to it so the draft budget should we get started okay Jan and Suzanne you're on all right so in your packet on page 149 is a memo that Suzanne and I wrote um outlining the changes in draft two and two a and supplement that memo um and support our conversation we've created a presentation so mark if you can pull up the presentation we can get started all right so again we're presenting to you um draft two and draft two a oh mark we just lost it again okay and you can go to present and go to the next sorry I get in there uh it's just uh not quite cooperating here no worries great thank you and now you can go to the next slide thanks so again um we want to keep our mission statement uh at the front you know front and foremost in our minds as we engage in this process knowing that the budget needs to reflect our community's values our mission statement and student needs next slide please a reminder to you all and um our community members that you establish parameters for the leadership team to be considering and here they are before I want to just underscore two um we hope that you're going to see a commitment in draft two and especially two a in uh in meeting our students and staff's needs around the social emotional pillar and that you'll see an emphasis on the multi-layered system of supports knowing that in this district there are perpetual differences in performance between student groups um particularly students who qualify for free and reduced lunch and students who don't and students who are on individualized education plans and students who are not next slide please and a reminder to you all and to the community at large that we have been seeking some feedback from the community over these many months um from the staff through a survey and the leadership team's been working so the common theme across all of that is um care for our students and for our staff for our community in our buildings and then in the left hand column again all three of those groups identified these things that are bulleted as priorities again hoping that you're going to see some parallels to what we present and then two of the three groups um articulated a priority of the things on the right hand side next slide so um we want to present to you some of the the big things here so um the in in draft number two you're going to see a commitment to cybersecurity and hardening and um and this is in page 150 is that right the 151 of your board packet um you're going to see that we're allocating about 114 thousand dollars for um cybersecurity hardening uh software and equipment replacement we're allocating about 94 thousand dollars um to meet the needs in part because there was some deferred replacement of voting equipment last year and we have some needs right now um we are increasing transportation and draft two based on the transportation bid that was just awarded uh this current draft reflects the salary and benefits as they currently exist including the um horizontal movement signups that were due earlier this month we have done our best to um anticipate all of our needs for special education and reflect those in this draft we also given what we know about act 173 and special education funding we're including those updates to revenues and we are using grant funds when they are available um transportation's up about 25 thousand dollars ish and the negotiated items for salary and benefits um we yield a result result in an increase of about 849 thousand dollars next slide this is where Suzanne's going to take over for a bit uh expenditures are the amount the district plans to spend revenues or the money the district anticipates receiving to offset the expenditures and the net education spending is the amount that needs to be raised by property taxes on page 151 of your packets i also provided the net budget increase for both drafts of the budget because this is the percentage the district has previously used as net impact on taxes the dollar amount of the increase is the same for both calculations but the percentage calculation differs the percentage calculation in the net budget increase is a comparison of the increase to the prior year's expenditure budget of 34,984,949 dollars this percentage uh the percentage difference of 3.77 percent uh i just lost my place this percentage calculation um increase is three percent for budget draft number two the percentage calculation used for the increase in net education spending is a comparison of the increase to the prior year's net education spending of 27,792,291 this percentage increase is 3.77 percent for budget draft number two going forward i recommend the district utilize the percentage change in net education spending as the measurement of growth year over year this is in line with the percentage used by the tax commissioner to measure education spending growth and set the property yield for the next fiscal year if you see the tax commissioners December 1 letter in the packet page 165 you'll note that now back to page 153 in the packet there's a comparative budget summary that gives you a breakdown of the changes in the budget by category in order to get this budget below a three percent increase in net education spending expenditures must be reduced by 214,898 or the school board could authorize the use of fund balance to lower the tax impact next slide please all right so we've also presented to you draft 2a and i'm going to do a quick rundown and summary and then i'm going to invite leadership team colleagues to supplement what i've said in more details so draft 2a includes everything that was included in draft two and it increases a social studies teacher at u32 at 0.6 fte to allow more flexibility and more opportunity for students to achieve proficiency in the global citizenship standards it includes an increase in music from of 0.1 so that we can have music it would increase the callous music teacher from 0.3 to 0.4 that makes the total music position a 1.0 fte position and allows people to be in one building all day rather than having to travel midday you know that we have increased enrollment in east montpelier elementary school it's our only score right now where the enrollment numbers are increasing and to be in adherence to our class policy and to best meet our students needs we're proposing that we increase fte's by 2.0 for classroom teachers we believe that one of those positions would be a one-time expenditure so we're proposing that we offset 1.0 fte's by using fund balance for that one-year request because we are anticipating going from 10 classrooms to 12 at east montpelier we need to increase the music we're proposing increasing the music teacher at east montpelier at 0.2 we have some unmet needs just even around just generally supporting students at dodie we're a little understaffed and to ease that burden and ensure that we're supervising students and meeting their needs more generally we're increasing that we're and suggesting a part-time increase of the dodie school-wide paraeducator we have a continued need for more literacy intervention at callus and again we're anticipating using ARP ESSER funds to increase that by 0.5 and then at U32 we're we have the need for restorative in-school experience interventionist to support students academically and socially so they can more fully engage in and access their classes similar to the spark center at the middle school i'm going to stop and i'm going to invite my leadership team colleagues if there's anything that i said too quickly or details that i missed we please speak up i can't see you all so just go for it all right and i think you captured it okay thanks alisha thank you next slide so i would direct you to the net education spending down at the bottom of this chart the percentage increase is 4.38 percent for budget draft 2a on page 154 in the packet there's a comparative budget summary that gives you a breakdown of the requested new or expanded services and the proposed offsetting revenues in order to get this budget below a 3 percent increase in net education spending the expenditures must be reduced by 384 623 dollars or the school board could authorize the use of unbalance to lower the tax impact next slide please the equalized homestead tax rate is the rate a district would have if all properties were assessed at fair market value the common level of appraisal is the ratio of each town's listed values versus the state's listed value the state's listed value is comprised of actual sales generally averaged over three years the state's fair market value is the equalized education grand list the higher the cla and column two the lower the tax rate the estimated tax rates in the education tax rates seen on a property tax bill of a resident homeowner in the individual towns where they are the district's equalized pupils town clas and the state's final property yield per one dollar tax rate will all likely change before we finalize this the washington central equalized pupils are expected they were expected today i still have not seen them i'm hoping tomorrow the local cla used to calculate the estimated tax rates for each town should be known in january they generally come out around december 31st the current tax rate calculation uses the most conservative approach from the tax commissioners december 1 letter assuming the legislature will not apply any of the anticipated balance in the ed fund to reduce the tax rate the final figures will be set by the legislature during the legislative session and approved by the governor next slide please so this is the same chart only using budget draft 2a you'll note that both budget draft 2 and 2a result in across the board decreases in the estimated tax rates due to the increase in the property yield provided by the tax commissioner so i'll let you digest a little bit on this slide and find your applicable town next slide please so we also wanted to be really open and transparent about what is not included in draft 2 or 2a right now so i want to talk through these a little bit right now the equity scholar in residence program is not included in either of these drafts if you recall in recent years we had a grant that supported the equity scholar in residence at u32 last year the board authorized the use of fund balance to pay for the equity scholar in residence in full and at a at a district level so that's happening this year it's amazing it was a fund balance expenditure and it has not made it into either of the drafts yet and to be completely honest with you when we level when we presented you the level service budget i i missed that so i just want to be fully transparent about that we have a conversation in the works about down the line voting our capacity so that we're able to to be self self-sufficient and sustaining and right now that is not in the budget there is in the budget the the debt service that is finished at u32 155 000 is included in the budget toward the capital expenditures there are a few other reductions in debt service that are about 25 000 dollars and right now they are not included in draft 2 or 2a there is an additional foods food service staff member that is not included again i'm going to invite my colleagues to speak a little bit more about some of these things and we'll hear more about that and just a little bit as you heard earlier in public comment right now in the in the budget um berlin art is staffed at 0.5 fte and callous is staffed at 0.3 which is the current level right now that's currently 0.8 and there's not an increase in the draft special education at berlin we're recognizing that that things are getting tight and we're also thinking about ways that we might be able to meet needs of students across the schools maybe slightly differently than we have there's not an additional 1.0 for berlin in there for information tech and support we had talked about that possibility there's a big effort in this budget for hardening and cyber security it does not include additional network support we're still trying to ascertain what we really need this has been a hugely unusual year and with lots of things happening on both with staff members and with the cyber security breach and with software in general so it's just hard to know and then we've talked about in the long term really wanting to look at prekindergarten thinking about how we might expand pre-k cross the board we'd want to really look at being able to do that cross off five of our towns and so we can't even we really haven't even spent the time to fully cost it out that would be a big project and we haven't done that yet i'm going to pause and invite again leadership team members to speak up in more detail to some of what is not in draft two or two way jen i can speak quickly to the additional staff and food service just so the board knows this would only be necessary if the federal government or the state government decides to make universal food to all of our students and it would also be contingent upon whether or not we needed or we were actually making this revenue up so we wouldn't be wanting to do this if we weren't in going to be able to get revenue in this program to cover it and so this is why it's not something that we're requesting right now but just something to be aware of that we might need should this because we have an open position right now at u32 and helping do food service thanks steven anyone else want to share more details it's erin here i just want to reiterate regarding the art position for berlin and callus we know that last year we had some a lot of discussion around the arts and this would help us bring things back to center a bit so yes we know that it's in the category of not included but cat and i have talked a lot about what really feels like is needed for for both our schools to have a um a high quality art program we think this would be helpful thanks sarah anyone else i'd just like to echo what erin just said thank you for speaking up erin and i think as you heard in public comments earlier this evening um from erica when she spoke to this she shared that she had the support of both of the administrators of erin and i and that is the case so thank you all right next slide um also in an effort to be fully open and transparent we want to share with you that there are some non-budgetary changes that are included in in the way that we're thinking about allocating resources so there's a um the rummy pe position would decrease by 0.1 and the doli pe position would increase 2.1 it does not end the end result is that students are still getting the pe that they are currently getting what this allows is a staff member to be in a building for a full day without having to um travel in the middle of the day and it allows doli which is really um quite taxed by having such limited uh specialists and staff in the first place to have a little bit more flexibility to meet needs so yes rummy would miss that 0.1 and it would not uh have a direct impact on students in terms of any anything less than they are currently getting we also rummy art would in this proposed budget decreases from 0.5 to 0.4 East Montpelier art increases um but from 0.5 to 0.6 again that's currently a shared position it remains 1.0 it allows people to be the art teacher to be in buildings full days uh it eliminates the need to travel in the middle of the day all students have the same um art access to art classes that they currently do what this does the impact that it might have at rummy is there's a little bit of a sliver of fte at rummy for art integration and that will be a little bit trickier and the principals have already talked about that and um in terms of working together should that need arise to figure out flexibly and creatively uh how that might happen in order to continue to support art integration and then the other thing that it's important to know is that we do our best to really analyze student needs and take into account incoming um students who are in pre-k shifting to kindergarten students who are graduating from u32 and then students who are transitioning from sixth grade to seventh grade um and we try really hard not to shift positions and we generally don't unless it's making sense for um for kids but we won't know exact school assignments for quite a while um although we're anticipating the fte's and again i want to pause and invite my colleagues to to say anything else that um that i've missed or that needs to be said okay um it's i'm gonna leave my uh screen off because my internet is bad but just speaking to the pe increase at doting and decrease at rummy it's um we have it's it's the same uh faculty member who is uh affected by this so it's still a 1.0 and it just makes the job more sustainable and more attractive as a long-term option for a really gifted teacher that we happen to have right now and i think it's a good example of being able to be flexible and responsive to student needs thank you gillian next slide so um i we just wanted to recap um and share with you the school board parameters and where we think we are so we think that draft to a um does check off social and emotional pillar again we're um we're suggesting that we continue to maintain the school counselor counselor staffing as we have this year we think that we are addressing needs of the multi-layered system of support in addition to what we've increased recently around intervention we're proposing increased intervention again at callous for literacy and in the rise position at u32 we are currently under the penalty threshold based on prior years even though it's not into effect in effect but we wanted you to see what that number is so you can see that we're below it in these drafts we cannot check off the box for um ad spending increase under three percent so you see what those numbers are for draft two and draft two a that is still a work in progress and we know that us a board had expressed um this parameter and some um possibility for flexibility next slide uh we have invested in hardening for software uh draft two a uh reinvigorates or boosts uh music again we're proposing an increase in the elementary music overall of 0.3 fte and we're not quite ready to do contingency planning because there's still so much that is unknown um so that's that summary and then quickly next slide please mark again sort of where we are we highlighted in december we're on the 15th we're presenting these um these drafts to you for your feedback we're going to take your feedback and go back and work on draft three and we'll have a community budget forum again on the 12th of january and then next slide please mark again next steps we're really interested in hearing from you so that we have some guidance um and we will continue to um think about we want you to think about fund balance or not um continue to engage the public and then we'll work on draft three accordingly and as we get more information on the revenue side and some tax rate updates we will share that with you as well so mark um you can stop screen sharing thank you so much for doing that and um we would just welcome your feedback and questions and concerns lindy uh what is the current music fte at east montpelier when you're asking for point two more currently it's a point six three days a week okay diane so thanks for the detail i mean it's very helpful the detail however some of the um proposals i need some more specifics behind it so yes i know i looked at some i remember seeing the numbers and that east montpelier was the only school with an increase i'm not understanding quite the correlation between an increase of two staff members not sure what that means in terms of the specifics and then um so before i would feel comfortable saying yep move forward with two more positions i'd need to have a better understanding of the breakdown and some of this comes from last year um the transparency wasn't quite there and so in terms of understanding what are the ripples and the impacts on each of our buildings i just need some clarity and so one of the clarity issues that i'm having too is the reduction of the special educator at berlin my assumptions are that probably because they're district-wide employees that there might be a way of addressing needs and meeting needs but i i don't want to work on assumptions i need to know the specifics as to how um we know that that impact is going to be there the the other thing too is um you know i don't i'm i'm not clear how we're placing our priority in increasing music but not increasing art so i need understanding around that um and then also um i need to understand we created that pre-k role that pre-k coordinator role thank goodness we did gen because otherwise that would be an additional hat that you're wearing so absolutely don't get me wrong there however i need to understand how that role is being used completely because it was also sold to us as though it was going to work toward increasing our um connections and ability for programming for our pre-k and so just as an update around that as to um what that looks like so i i think that i think i dove in enough okay can i can i answer there some that i can answer and that my colleagues can answer too all right um so first i'm going to take them in the order i think i heard them alisha will you elaborate on the need for the 2.0 and that ripple effect sure um so as jen had shared that we created some recommendations last year and policy around class sizes based on different grade levels um and given these recommendations both before that came out and since um e me as class sizes have been very large um to the point where seven out of ten of our classrooms are larger than the recommended guidelines um and will continue to be larger than the recommended guidelines next year um in addition to that over the past several years with our growing numbers we've had to have a variety of multi age classrooms based on numbers and solely based on numbers not philosophy um and those multi age classrooms change from year to year depending on the numbers so then it really impacts our curriculum because we may have a k1 one year a one two the next year a two three and we can never really vertically align how we're teaching because we're constantly figuring out do we go with second grade curriculum this year or third grade um and that's a struggle we've had for the past several years i think but mainly because of the guidelines that have come out and just that our numbers are growing we can't fit more children into our classrooms um almost all of our classrooms have more than 20 students including our um kindergarten and first grade so and i'm sorry to break in but that would be helpful for me as a board member to see what that looks like across the board you know at every school um because what you're describing there is i know what i we were struggling with at berlin you know 10 years ago when i was there as well as that nature of it but i absolutely hear what you're saying and i'm not saying it's not warranted but i need to know what it looks like across the schools and then i guess the other thing around that too is that then having more classrooms necessitates more time for the allied arts in the master schedule right that's more classes to go to which is resulting in those increases in fte's the you raised a question about special education at berlin there's not a propose a proposal to reduce it it was a consideration to increase by another 1.0 so the stat so that i think i must i i might not have been clear when i spoke about that there's no it's not about reducing it was about additional and erin does anything you want to add to that when erin the slide might have had a little squiggle and made it look like negative oh we can clean up that slide okay yeah i mean if you want if you want me to speak to to that i can um uh the we we have a lot of ways to determine what our special education numbers look like in in our schools and oftentimes it's driven by by how many students might have on a on your caseload and um being at berlin for four years um i struggle with that not necessarily being what seems to be the deciding or best best way to measure meeting student needs um so it's kind of a bigger conversation to have as a as a district um but uh you know we have a very transient population um we have um uh our residential program in our school um uh and the needs just seem to be getting higher all of our pairs or i should say most of our pairs are one-on-ones in the primary grades with students um so we we kind of you know we we we base our our our special ed educator teachers on on how many kids they have on their caseload but then when you look at schedules and and and needs and um uh just how the day looks we find that we're kind of piece mailing things here and here and there and it's never always the best case scenario for kids it's like we want to be here and we're always like right about here and then just try to kind of figure out the rest when it comes to scheduling so um that's that's kind of the overall overall reasons for um for that uh your thank you erin your third point was yes you're right we focused more on music in this budget than art in this budget and we know we had reductions last time there's been a lot of conversation in the district and focus on music more than art recently and we are trying to stay within the parameters that we had so that's a conversation for you all to continue to um to have and you've heard now three people speak about the art at point two the increase what that might do um we just didn't present everything in in this budget because we're trying to strike a balance um based on the feedback that we've gotten in the parameters and then the early ed role that's probably um maybe at another conversation down the line around early ed in general we've been spending a lot of time paying attention to access and schedules and trying to do our best around wrapping around for community connections and maybe a future topic to be more about early ed in that position in general i'm going to say right now it's probably beyond the purview of this budget conversation thank you Jen we have other questions mikaela please go and then Maggie you're on deck um thank you so i just wanted to um to comment also about um that i would i would be all for seeing the the increase in art position included in a draft um you know based on our goals and what we've been hearing um and also the the food services i think if i understood correctly that position may not be needed next year which is why it wasn't included um that being said you know we talked about farm to table um like increasing that potentially so i wonder if maybe including a position regardless which might be warranted that could help with more of a farm to table for each of the schools um and lastly you know okay i'm totally new to this process of course and um full disclosure i was raised by two um families of educators so i am really all for funding educators um and school as much as possible so i would not be opposed personally to going above that 3 um if it meant including these really important things thank you thank you jonathan yeah i just this was just a question for erin is erin is it um do you need another full time special ed position at berlin at this time or projected going forward um projected going forward okay thank you maggie i'm wondering if you could speak to how the changing in education funding um special education funding i mean to say plays into the um planning around special education staffing and i want to um second the desire to um fund the art position for the teacher currently teaching at callus and east montpelier is that correct um to full time i and speaking as a community member who specifically chose this district because of its robust arts offering in the public school community so the question about special ed funding i'm gonna ask both susanne and karat to pipe in on this because they're sort of the funding side and there's just sort of the program programmatic shift side um and thinking side susanne do you want to discuss the funding side i can discuss the programmatic piece uh i can i think maggie's direct question was did the the change in funding impact our decision in the staffing and i would say no i don't think it did we we specifically talked about staffing and student needs um prior to even knowing what those special ed revenues would look like maggie did that answer your question or do you want more no i'm looking for more information because my understanding is we're going to like a package correct rather than per student expenditure and as a special education clinician myself as a speech language pathologist i'm i'm just wondering how this shift in like funding is affecting service delivery and how that is being reflected in our staffing looking forward because i'm i'm under the impression that you all are working hard on implementing planning to implement changes next year based on on the funding change so yeah i'd like more more information beyond what we just heard about the finance i'm happy to speak to that i think it's it's pretty broad and um at lmc we had talked about the need to bring this to the board and so that said i'm happy to present to the board to for more details around it um you are correct and that will move from a reimbursement model to more one chunk being um allotted to the district and then programmatically the shifts will change in terms of eligibility for special education but the emphasis will be placed more on tier one and tier two and moving towards an mtss system which is a hyper simplified broad explanation and i'm not sure how much time we have right now to go into it um can you at least just break down that acronym for all of us please mt yeah it's more commonly called mlss or an rti model response to intervention but the emphasis will be placed on providing intervention earlier at in the classroom level and at the second tier of support from our interventionists in order to decrease the special ad need which lines up with a lot of related to increasing pre-k and moving to an rti model it lines up with a lot of the initiatives and the priorities of the board so are the are the funding increases that are being planned berlin in particular reflective of an anticipated increased need in the early ed community for those kids who are currently um at the tier one and two tier two level and the demands of doing more push in classroom based services rather than pull out which i'm assuming is part of this model i think that erin um erin you can correct me if i'm wrong erin's request related to a special education teacher relates more to the immediate needs within berlin right now um and it's not really an extension or um of thinking about act 173 in preparing for act 173 i don't think it would look like hiring more special educators it would be about making the classroom instruction more robust as well as the intervention supports so maggie i'm going to suggest that we we dig into act 173 at a later date i think there's a lot of i think to the two main takeaways like kara was saying is that we're going to move from a reimbursement model to a census model and then that there there is a lot of professionals so it's a little bit not fair right now because there's a lot of professional development that needs to go in to accomplish the goals of act 173 we're not there yet uh none and it's not just us none of the districts over there and we don't even know if the capacity is there for the aoe to do that so just because we really need to give them some guidance for the for for the budget today i'm i'm going to say that let's pick that conversation of act 173 later this is you know it's a moving target for all of districts so let's move into the next question uh chris mcvey and then steven luke um so the uh what is the basis for thinking that the um second teacher at east montere is a one-time hire which which i interpret as being is needed for a year and then we'll go away if is that correct interpretation of that generally i'm going to speak yeah yeah it's a basic question why do you think that staff member would not be needed after a year um good question i'm glad you asked so a year ago yes a year ago we had a teacher retire from emes and that teacher's position she was a classroom teacher and she moved into a coaching position in our school she was part-time interventionist and part-time coach and given co vid and given where we were at with test results and just um bringing students back into the building after having been remote our staff agreed that that position would best be served as a third interventionist in our school for this school year and so we now have three interventionists in our building where prior to co vid we had two my hope is that in a year from now our students and will be in a better place so that we will no longer need three interventionists and that position can go back down to two interventionists and move into the classroom i don't see us needing fewer classroom teachers in a year from now but the hope is is that we will need one fewer interventionist does that make sense um and it's a better explanation than what we than what was presented so so it sounds like you're going to need the second teacher in a year but you hope that you won't need the interventionist and they correct the substitution of some kind of okay and now a question for erin erin when you said going forward for the special ed does going forward mean now and for this upcoming school year yeah i think that question was asked um i know where you said going forward which is kind of a big yeah i i just think in uh next year so next school year july july yeah that's that's yes thank you um and now i need to clarify in terms of the reductions at rumney is it accurate that the reductions will result in no less student contact time with either the te teacher or the art teacher i'm talking specifically about student contact time right heard the explanation about the art interventionist may be a problem or art integration may be a problem but in terms of current student contact time these reductions will not reduce that is that is that what i'm understanding i can speak to that jean thanks caroline sure yeah just somebody signal me if um if you end up not being able to hear me for unstable internet um so it could be less contact with the teacher but it's not because we right now have the teachers there more and so they are in contact with students for things like integrated arts and unscheduled time that they support but it's not less time in pe class that is like designed for pe or an actual general art class because all of the classes that we have and the same amount of art time can fit into a point four which is two full days does that make sense so can i can i just yep in a very direct way does it mean less opportunity for students because there's going to be less teacher time in the building um i don't know that's tricky um i guess the easiest way is just to repeat it but i don't know that i'm answering your actual question because it's all the general art classes can occur in those two days um but it's it's the you know things like integrated art um that students had access to because of having some extra unscheduled time um and so that's where alisha and i had talked and said you know if there's a specific thing that were to come up um any special circumstance or anything to continue a tradition um we would work it out so that rumney could have um some extra time to fulfill that um so it's hard to say you know right now if there's every time somebody is at school they're having contact with with kids but in terms of like general art class and the schedule that's not being affected i just feel like i'm it's hard so i think we're i'm understanding that you know the formal um whatever the schedule is from nine to nine fifty won't be affected um but the what will be affected is the fact that the art teacher is in any kid dropping into the classroom it's kind of like the office hours are no longer there for that spontaneous oh i just want to drop in to the art teacher that's what i meant by opportunity yes those those not those less formal opportunities that's right and times where you know teachers might um go and to the art teacher for some unscheduled support if they're doing a special project and that's really where um you know alicia and i would really work to design some specific time when there's like a specific need to to share it a little bit differently but in general week to week that is not being affected what most kids access for art every week is not being affected it's the things that come up that are that are extras um that happen occasionally throughout the year okay thank you Caroline very much and thanks for everyone who answered my questions thanks grace steven thank you for being patient so i have no objection to any of these positions or any of these changes if they're that important make them come in under three percent um in my mind that's what the board told you you we set the parameters operate within the parameters so if these are important find out what you're not going to spend other money on stay under three percent thank you steven i want other board members to have a chance to give their input on the budget and scott i might just mention that when the finance committee met um we if and please correct me if i say anything off um we came out in favor of two way uh because it was a thoughtful um sort of interpretation of what we were trying to do um i'm once again i'm very sympathetic to steven's point of view um the only reason why i'm i'm sort of bending on it is that we are in a really unusual situation um where there is both bad news and good news the bad news everybody knows the pandemic and all of the uproar that has accompanied that the good news is that we're having we're there's all of this money that we're flush with um for a very limited period of time so what we because the needs in the um in in our schools are so intense and um so driven by the current situation and because it seems that we can afford it we looked principally at the what's going on with the tax rate and um i think again please correct me if i if i stray from um from what we actually talked about but the um as susanne mentioned there's the equalized pupils and the common level of appraisal that we still have to find out about um as well as i guess what the legislature and and governor decide to do about the state money whether they um you know they use that for tax relief education tax relief but um if we have this you know this um instead of the biblical seven fat years the uh vermont one or maybe two at best fat years um if we can actually do the right things for our students and have taxes still go down let's do that um one side note uh on the um on the art question um although you know i guess it doesn't matter how i feel about it as an idea unto itself but um in order to avoid you know a procedural free for all where um just about anybody who has an agenda can you kind of bring it to us and uh do an end run around the the budget making system i would i would prefer to have it you know thought about