even though he's right across on the other side of the village. His internet is exceeding. Oh yeah, so we have Ryan. Much slower than mine is. I feel bad. Sorry. Wow. I will wait for him. All right, so it's 632. I'm going to call this meeting of the Ryan. We're going to call this meeting of the Montpelier-Roxbury Board of School Commission. I know you said the village. Jim has been unvoidably detained, but he will probably join us later. Oh, yes, we have Ryan. Much slower than mine is. I feel bad. Sorry. I think the first order of business is to add something to the agenda. I will wait for him. All right, so it's 632. I'm going to call this meeting of the proposed statement for the board to call this meeting of the Montpelier-Roxbury Board of School Commission. I know you said the village. Jim has been unvoidably detained, but he will probably join us later. Much slower than mine is. I feel bad. Sorry. It's amazing. I'm going to add something to the agenda. I will wait for him. All right, so it's 632. I'm going to call this meeting of the proposed statement for the board to call this meeting of the Montpelier-Roxbury Board of School Commission. I know you said the village. Jim has been unvoidably detained, but he will join us later. Much slower than mine is. I feel bad. It's amazing. Bridget A.C., Vice-Chair, I'm here, but then I'm going to take roll. Emma? Here. And your vote on the amending the agenda. Thanks. Anakit, vote on amending the agenda. I'm here. Mara? I'm here. Jill? I'm here. Andrew? I'm here. Jerry? I'm here. Ryan? I'm here. Great. So for the record, we have Emma B. Hansen, Anakit, Mara, Jill, Andrew, Jerry, and Ryan all present at the outside of the meeting along with Libby and Anna. Yeah. The next item is the consent agenda. Anyone want to pull anything out of the consent agenda? Bridget, I don't see any public here, but do you want it? Oh, right. You're right. We need to call it. There's no public here, but... Yeah. Public comment does come before the consent agenda. Thanks for the catch. I don't see any public, but if we're mistaken, looking at the chat, no? Okay. No public being present. There'll be no public comment. So we'll move on to the consent agenda. No one is asking to pull anything out. So will anyone move to approve the consent agenda, including the additions with respect to the additional hire that Anna added today? I'll make a motion to approve today's consent agenda, including the additional hiring for men to warrants. I'll second it. Great. Any, well, no discussion. It's consent agenda, so we'll just go through the roll again. Emma? Aye. Anakit? Aye. Mara? Aye. Jill? Aye. Andrew? Aye. Jerry? Aye. Ryan? Aye. Great. So the next item of business is the statement. I was actually going to move that, but since I'm acting as chair, maybe someone else could move that we adopt it. In order to discuss it, we need to have a motion to adopt it in a second, and then we can move on to discussing it. Do you want me to share my screen, Bridget, so I can share it? That'd be great. Then the public could see it. That'd be great. You see it? Yes. Does the statement have a particular title that we would need to say that we move to adopt the statement dot, dot, dot? Regina, I'll go quick. I'll make a motion that the board adopt the presented, the drafted statement. Great. Is there a second? Second. Thanks. Okay. So we can open that up for discussion now. I think it's an extremely powerful statement. I saw earlier and earlier draft of this, and I submitted comments to Jim on it, and then I saw, I think, Bridget, you rewrote most of this. Is that correct? I edited Jim's initial proposal to try to bring in our mission statement and some of the history around the students that advocated for the flag two years ago, but it was a definitely a joint effort. Yeah, I really appreciated the student component to this, and yeah, I mean, I 110% support this statement. I don't have much more to say on with regard to supporting the statement. I think it pretty much speaks for itself. Yeah, I agree. I think you guys did a fantastic job. It's great, comprehensive, and just, yeah, I appreciate the work you did on this. Thanks. So one problem I'm having, maybe someone can help me on this Zoom issue, is that when we share screens, I can't see everyone's video even in grid mode. I can't tell if people are like, what do we do? Click the little, do you see a little box with you in it? There should be a little plus icon on that box. If you click that plus icon, it will expand to put everyone in little boxes. You see it? Are you on a desktop window? No, I'm on a laptop. Okay, laptop. You don't have to spend a lot of time on this. I just wanted to be clear that I can't tell if everything, my people are trying to talk and I can't see you to recognize you. So, yeah, if you see a little plus icon anywhere, then you, that's the other thing, Bridget, if you see, like if you hover over the box where you do see any video, it should say you probably have, it says something like speaker view or gallery view.  And then if you put it in grid and expand, it depends on if the document's the main thing on your screen or not. Oh, yeah. I got it. Yep. Thank you. Sorry for the problem. I would like to just give a shout out to the superintendent's association, the school board's association and the principal's association who I thought put out a really great statement as well earlier either today or really yesterday. Yeah, that was great to see. Other comments on this statement? I appreciated that the last sentence about we recommit, you can't see it in the in the screen view. I don't know if you can scroll down. Got it. But committing to take concrete action, I really appreciate that and was hopeful maybe that we could eventually come up with a list of action items that we will be prioritizing. This is an anecdote. Yeah, I had a similar comment. First of all, I really appreciate you guys putting this together. I echo the sentiment. It's a powerful statement. I wholeheartedly support it. I replied to Jim and a couple of things I mentioned, especially about the last line. When we are saying we recommit the district to taking concrete steps, one of the things I was wondering whether we should add what we are doing right now. The F 22, the policy that we have has some language in it that stuff that we are doing to address racism and diversity. I was wondering if we should add that and then put in some few points about what additional steps we are going to take. I mean, it's a great statement on its own. I was wondering if that would warrant adding or putting that additional information in the statement. Libby, did you mention that there was something like there might not be time to do that right now? Yeah, I was worried about it for the school board. That's all. I was worried about it for this meeting. That's all. That's what I meant when I responded to you. I would like to say that I am as always very proud and impressed with this board for their immediate action on this particular topic. It's a subject. I do want to make this. It's a subject that Anna and I have talked about of where does the district stand. I come to the conundrum of statement versus action as a district. I can issue statements coming from me as this is not certainly dealing with two crises is not easy. We have two crises right now. I, and I have definitely gone back and forth a couple of times this week of what do we do? Do we make a statement or do we continue the work that we have been doing? We are taking considerable action right now, one of which I'll talk about in a minute. The one that comes to mind is when teachers are doing the work in the six days that I got for them for professional learning without students and they're designing units of study. We have an equity overlay on that. So they're considering what case studies they're using, what perspectives they're using, what authors they're using, what, you know, it's things that force teachers thinking to get out of their normal. And so there's definitely things we're doing. But I just wanted to say that I very much appreciate the board stepping up to make this statement and I'm behind it 100%. And there's no but to this and right now there's two crises that we're dealing with right now. So I appreciate that the board stepping up to do this. Yeah. So to answer the question, maybe we could come up with what we're doing. Maybe we could help you with that, Libby. And either link to it or put it as an addendum to the statement or something like that. And we could just say these are a few of the things we wouldn't have to be to spend a whole lot of time on it. I have a question for Libby and the board. So we have our diversity equity and inclusion policy, which really lays the groundwork for a lot of concrete action on this. I wonder if it would make sense to receive an update on how we're doing on those areas of the policy. Would that make sense? You mean an update now or an update at our next board meeting? I was going to say at our next board meeting because I don't want to overwhelm our superintendent. We've crossed the line of overwhelming this. Don't worry about that. I was crossed a long time ago. That was my general thought. I don't know what people think. I'm just putting that out there. Bridget, if you don't mind, I think our next meeting is the board retreat on the 12th, where we have a lot of time to digest and talk. And I think it would behoove the board to just spend some time with that policy to talk about exactly what is it that we're looking for. I also think we might benefit from the week that you're talking about the professional development week and possibly creating some sort of on Google spreadsheet or something for the staff to just quickly go in there and type a couple of things that they're personally working on in their classrooms. I know that I'm sure that the staff could populate the action list a lot faster than you could on your own. Absolutely. And our district wide equity team today started brainstorming a similar statement, but they were also grappling with the we have a lot of work to do internally as a predominantly white district. And so we don't, yes, we want to make a statement and we want to continue the work internal. So they're kind of grappling with that all day today. But I think they landed on the idea that they were going to collaboratively come out with something from the district perspective and also reconvene June 10th, which is our next equity team meeting to further discuss where are we right now and what are we doing? So it sounds like the challenge in adding more detail to this statement is timing, but it would be difficult to do it on the fly right now. And if we want to adopt something tonight, that might be difficult. Is that that seems my general thought is the type of detail that Anna kids requesting is something that I think is totally appropriate and very valuable for a board to be requesting in terms of what we want some concrete details on this. We need this spelled out. I don't know that it has to be in this statement. In fact, sometimes statements are stronger when they're shorter and straight to the point addressing an issue. But so what I would propose our next meeting, not only talking about how we're doing these things, but providing those types of details to the board. So then the board, when we're talking with community members about the work that we're doing with this, we can we can then provide additional details to our community. And there's nothing that precludes us from writing additional op-eds on these issues. And we should be continuing to follow up on these issues. But as a statement and staying current with the situation today and letting our community know that we really care about these issues and we're committing our resources and our policies in this direction, I think there is value in getting something out sooner rather than later. And I think we could also potentially even add a sentence along the lines of you can look for the actions that we're taking on these issues in and then where are the places that they could see the action? Is it on the website? Will it be forthcoming in a report from from Libby? Will it be in another statement somewhere if we could give them a little bit of a forecast for where to look for the information that we're going to tell them about, you know, what we're doing? I think that might suffice for I get it out on the fly but also acknowledge that we know you want to see what we're doing. Here's where you should look. Now is not the time to throw it in the letter. That's a great suggestion, Mara. I know Anna's ears are perking up. I can see her face and I know what she's thinking right now. That's a great suggestion. Yeah, it would be something that kind of accompanies the statement but isn't. Oh, sorry, Andrew. So I was saying, is that something that would kind of accompany the statement as it goes out? The door goes on, you know, gets sent out to the families, but not necessarily right in the text of it because then we don't have to write it tonight. I would suggest that that I think you've written a beautiful statement here and that when it goes out either through my means in terms of district wide communication that I have and social media access that we put a statement of we are ready to be as transparent as possible in the actions that the district has taken. Stay tuned for more information if that's if I'm understanding correctly. I think I am spending some time at the retreat on the 12th with Anna as our communication expert and myself for just so we're 100% clear as to the board's expectations from that policy just so just is another time to talk about it because nothing about this is easy or simple and I think more time we can talk about it. It's not, it's hard. Yeah, I think the more time we can talk about the complexities and the expectations, the better off we'll be in terms of being clear about the work and being clear about your expectations for what you'd like to be to happen. So with that understanding of how the statement would be conveyed, is there any further discussion? Also, Mara and Anna, does that sound like a good plan to you two? Yeah. I think Mara's frozen. I think she is, yeah. Or she's very still one of the two. Okay. Shall we make a motion to move forward? There's a motion on the table. So we'll just call the question. I don't want to cut off Mara. I'm just gonna write it in the chat. Let me see if I have a number. I did also just want to thank you guys for writing this. I thought it was a beautiful statement. I'm proud to be part of it. I was glad that Jim, I'm really glad that Jim prompted it. Although he's not here, he should be recognized for starting the conversation in the draft. Mara's back. I can see her blinking. Yeah, sorry. I was like, why is no one answering? Oh, I am frozen, my friend. You look very, very calm and sedate, though, while you're frozen. Yes. Well, the funny thing was, I thought everyone was, are we collectively reading the statement right now? Because everyone else looked really pretty. Zoom fund. Okay. So Mara, are you okay with moving forward? Yes. All right. Okay. We'll start, we'll take the vote. Emma? Hi. Anakit? Hi. Jill? Hi. Andrew? Hi. Ryan? Hi. Jerry? Hi. Mara? Hi. I think I got everybody. Okay. Do we need to read it into the record somehow or anything? Okay. Anna's got it. We can link it. And so, Bridge, just so I'm clear, would you like us to spread this out via our communication methods tomorrow? Yes. I would say yes. Okay. Anna, get that on our to-do list tomorrow. She's like my second brain. All right. Going back to check the agenda here. I think we're moving on to the reports. So we have two policy monitoring reports. The first one is volunteers and work-studies students. Any discussion or question on those? Libby, are you still sharing your screen? Yeah. Do you want me to stop? Yeah, I think so. Not seeing any questions about the volunteer policy or the report. The other one is about the intradistrict elementary school transfer policy. I can provide a little bit of background on this in case folks aren't familiar. When the districts merged to get there, that was the first time we needed a policy to address intradistrict transfers because it was the first time we had two schools that have the same age students in them. We looked at other policies and some really large districts, large for Vermont, like Burlington. They have complicated policies around transferring between schools. We did not opt for a complicated approach because we didn't really know what was going to happen. My recollection, those of who were here can correct me if I'm wrong, is that the main concern we had in a point at which we had no idea what would happen is if there were a request to transfer from Roxbury to Union, Roxbury could become untenable if there were even just a very small number of transfers of kids out of Roxbury. That's why the standard in the policy is pretty high. I don't think that happened. I don't think we have gotten those requests. One, Libby. We were operating at a point where we really just had no idea. We knew that the numbers in Roxbury was critical to have a critical mass there to keep the school tenable. That's where the policy came from. Any questions about that monitoring report? A motion to approve the monitoring reports? I think we can do them together. I move to approve the monitoring reports. Second. I'll second. Thanks. Emma? Hi. Anakit? Hi. Jill? Hi. Andrew? Hi. Ryan? Hi. Jerry? Hi. Mara? Hi. Thank you. Yeah, it looks like Jim may not be able to join us. Libby and I are getting the same text. Not a great day there. Okay, coming back to the agenda here. Libby, I think they were turning to you for the COVID-19 update. Do we have a copy of this for future reference? Of the COVID-19 slides? Yeah. Did I send them to you? Yeah, they're in the email, I think. You sent the link, yes. Yeah, I looked at them earlier. Yeah, I thought I did. They've changed a little bit because I've updated the survey information. Andrew, did they go to you? They might have. I might have missed them. I'm not sure. I definitely, it's easier for me when I have, so I don't just moment information at you all, when I have to organize my thinking. I found it. But I want to keep them as up to date as possible, which is why I'm not putting them in the board packet. It's fine. It's great. I have them. I just missed them. Thank you. Sorry about that, Andrew. Okay, so if you all have questions, then feel free to stop me and ask me on the way. That's absolutely fine. So this is where we are now. I don't have anybody with us right now. Our administrative team is working really hard, and I wanted to make sure they take care of themselves because we're all a little stressed and overwhelmed right now. So I did not have them come to the board meeting, but I'm happy to answer any questions I can if I don't know the answer, then I will find them out for you. So as we move, so right now we are in significant planning for the fall. The way that we've broken this up is that we're trying to plan for the six days of professional learning first to make sure that that is as targeted as we can make it for our teachers. And then we're moving into other things after that. I did a town hall meeting with about 80, 85 people a week and a half ago, two weeks ago. And I gathered some themes for that. I sent out a survey yesterday to parents and students. And so here are the themes that have been gathered so far from that information. And like I said, I was literally updating this about 10 minutes ago, or 15 minutes ago. So it's as up to date as I can. And these are themes. So keep that in mind. It does not represent everything that we've gotten so far, but they are themes. So from our teachers, I had a similar town hall meeting with our teachers a couple weeks ago. And the things that came out of that was that they really wanted to focus the learning and prioritize the learning. So we are not going for breadth, but we're going for depth. There is an eagerness to co-teach in new and different ways. And when I say co-teach, I don't mean the traditional special education co-teach necessarily. I mean multi-disciplinary co-teaching, which would be super cool, I think. There's interest in developing knowledge-based and project-based learning with multiple entry points for kids to make it as accessible for all kids as possible. Our teachers desperately want to be in person. And anxiety is running really high for some of them. So trying to figure out how to make both of those things work is a big challenge right now. There's a lot of concerns about the logistics because our profession and our expertise is kids. And we know what kids need to grow. And we know what kids need to learn. And we know what kids need to just be kids. And a lot of the information coming to us right now quite honestly contradicts all of what we know. So there's a considerable concern over the logistics and how we make this work for what we know is best for kids. I can't state that enough. And there was definitely a want and a desire for consistency in online platforms across the district so that parents, if they have kids in multiple schools, have a same platform for like an organizational bucket for things. There was a need for that. I'm going to move you all to the other side of my screen here. Okay. From the parents so far, the information from the parents honestly just proves to me what an absolutely impossible task this is. So if there's a progression scale or a of like a scale of where parents are, our parents are evenly spaced across that scale from hating every second of this to never wanting our kids to be ever in school until there's a vaccine. And there is equal representation across that line. There is no one solid group of parents that wants one thing over another. I'm just going to be honest. The survey information is incredibly clear about that. And I will be looking at that and organizing it in a way for you all as a school board for the board retreat. So you can see that as well. But so far some of the themes when we're talking about in person versus remote versus some sort of hybrid, there's no agreement. There's a lot of worry about the environment that would be too restrictive if we were in person and not what's best for kids similar to the teachers. There's a lot of there's a lot of people saying do not go remote because it didn't work for my kid. There's some that's saying it was better. So it's really all over the map. Parents want kids outside as much as possible. And I keep have the caveat in my head of we live in Vermont. So that's possible for about three months out of the year. And it's it's hard because we have standards that we have to that were by law required to teach. So it's difficult. They parents want kids to be with the teachers regardless of the learning context. And when I say that they mean the theme that I'm seeing is that they want live interaction with the teachers. It doesn't matter if you're remote or if you're in person. The live interaction is incredibly important to parents. Their parents are really worried about any type of staggered schedule because of child care needs. Our teachers are worried about that as well for their own personal world. There's we have many different needs depending on if a parent has a child at K-4 versus 5-8 versus 9-12. They a lot of stress on the learning more personalized for individual kids. And this is a definitive theme that our parents have very high expectations for our schools which I do as well. I share that and their kids. And that doesn't change regardless of the learning context that they're in. And that is a most definitive theme across the board with all parents. We want excellence. That's our goal. We need to get it regardless of the learning context. From our kids. Like I said to some who are jumping in early. This is a highlight of my day reading the student surveys today particularly from our littles. So the big things are is that our kids miss their friends big time. Like it doesn't matter if they're a six-year-old or an 18-year-old. They miss their friends. Remote learning. The kids are reporting that it's worked for a few. It's funny the kids are reporting that it's worked more than the parents are. And others are reporting that this is not worked at all for them. And they're very adamant about that. Some feel that they have adequate access to their teachers and some don't. The workload was either just right not enough for too much. It's the Goldilocks syndrome there. Most of them are saying they miss school and it's very nice that most of them say I didn't expect to miss school but I do. I miss it more than I could possibly ever have imagined. And the biggest reasons are the teachers and their friends. Many many many are saying they loved being with their family more and being with their parents more than they had before. And they didn't. This was a theme that I just added at the end is that students were a lot of students reported that they're frustrated with the wait time with email. So they'd have a trouble with their learning and they'd email a teacher and then they'd have to wait for that teacher to reply to them even if it was just for a couple hours or a day. That was really frustrating for our students. So those are the themes that we gathered so far from our survey data and our town hall data. Again I'm going to figure out how to organize this all with my friend Anna's help and we will get that information. We'll spend some time with this data at the retreat. Typically we spend time with academic data and scores. We don't have those this year so we'll spend some more time with this data at our retreat and next week two weeks you can have. So I wanted to share with you how we're making decisions going forward. We started this process about two weeks ago. We have three teams in our district so I just want to make sure everybody's clear on our definitions here. So the full league are our principals, assistant principals, central office administration and our two district wide coaches Sarah Berger and Mary Bechtel. So they're on the teacher's contract but they're part of the full league. The core team is myself Mike Berry, Mary Lundin, Bill Dice who is taking over for Mary and Grant Geisler. So it's that core team central office administration. And then the teacher implementation team are teachers that volunteered to provide feedback to these decision points. We have approximately 20 on that team that are giving me rapid feedback. So this is the process I believe I may have shared this with you before. What we're trying to do is break down all of these massive decisions we need to make into the smallest scale possible so that they are doable and we can gain some confidence in our teaching staff around them and they're going through multiple feedback rounds quickly. So they go through core team quickly, then they go through the principals in 24 hours, then they go through the teacher implementation team, then they go back to the principals, then they go back to the core team and each time we're making revisions on those. So in the first two or three weeks of this process it worked well. We would focus solely on the four on those six days in June so that we could really target those days and make them really good for our teachers and what we needed. And now it's in the background work we're starting to switch to fall 2020. But having said that, there are way more unknowns than there are unknowns right now. We have not gotten any guidance from the agency of education yet about what the rules are going to be for fall 2020. We do have the CDC guidance that came out in May but that was representing the realities of May and so we need to, we're using that as our guide right now but it could change tomorrow based on a phone call with Dan French. So we do have a process in place for this. I just want to remind everybody in the community that our goal at Montpelier Roxbury and the soapbox that I will forever stand on is that all kids will learn at high levels because of what we do every single day. The learning context does not matter for me. That we will continue to ensure that kids live at learn at high levels. That has not happened this spring and I'm the first to admit that we're in crisis mode. We're getting through that crisis mode but there's different expectations for fall 2020. So I just wanted to remind everybody about this piece and then also our theory of action. Our theory of action does not change regardless of the learning context. It doesn't change if we're remote, it doesn't change if we're hybrid, it doesn't change if we're in person and our theory of action is that all kids will learn at high levels if we have collect, we have evidence of collective responsibility and collaborative practices amongst our teachers. Our jobs are complex as educators and if we work together collaboratively it will be better. We will be able to do it. If we work as individuals we're not going to get there. We need to have the collaborative brilliance of our teachers and our administrators. That we have high quality instruction every single, it says every classroom on this. I've kind of changed my mantra in here to every child, high quality instruction for every child because right now we don't have classrooms. It may be different so we need to change that vernacular a little bit. Our third piece of our theory of action is that we need a timely system to enrich, intervene, and remediate. This becomes even more important and I'll talk about this in a second. And our last one is formalized essential learning. Prioritize that learning, focusing in on really what are the half to nose. So if you've been on the board for a while you've seen this diagram before and this is our theory of action that if we have these four things in place all kids will learn at high levels. There are many other things that go into it but these are the baselines. These are the pieces that everything else stands on as we go forward. And what we've realized through the last month the leadership team is that these don't change and that it doesn't matter what kind of crisis we're in we have to think about what these four things are and keep coming back to them. So over June 12th through June 19th when kids are on summer vacation and our teachers are there it's six days we've taken those four pillars that we stand on and thought what is it that we really need to do and really we've taken our theory of action that we've developed in the last two years and we're putting it on steroids and we're getting it really moving fast. So for formalized essential learning we're going to ensure that there's prioritized standards in each content area no more than six for the entire year. So when we're talking about our priorities it's essential to understand that we're talking about the standards that we are going to guarantee every single kid learns and understands. That's what it's not about how we're teaching it. It's not about where we're teaching it. It's not about the context in which we're teaching it. It's about standards that were required to teach by law. We're focusing in on those and naming no more than six. I saw your hand up before. I just wanted to let you know that your audio is a little funny. I think that there might be something touching the microphone of your computer. Oh thank you for letting me know that. Is that better? I'm going to keep my hands free. Is that better?  I don't know where my mic is actually in my computer. Okay so we're going to focus and prioritize those standards. We've already done a lot of that work but we're going to make sure that we have the six right ones over this time and then we're going to design units of study using backwards design. So basically starting with what we want kids to know and going backwards for the six weeks of school regardless of the learning content. This includes social-emotional learning, it includes academic learning, it includes relationship building, all of this. We're going to put teachers in their teams to decide on what that's going to look like. We have a lot of brand spanking just graduated from college new teachers coming on board and this is just going to help them move forward as well as have our teachers hit the ground running as soon as August starts. Go ahead Jill. Just for myself and anyone who might be listening could you just maybe define what universal backwards design? Yeah it's coming out of the work of Grant Wiggins and McTique and what they it's been around for a while but it's a way of designing units of study that start with the end. So you start with the end in mind. So if the end I was a second grade teacher so if the end is that kids will show basic inferential skills in chapter books, if that's that's the end in mind then I'm going to work back in a unit of study to think what are the bends in the road that I need to teach in order to get kids to that end of that unit? And so it includes what formative assessments, what learning opportunities I'm going to make for the kids, where are they going to dig deep in pieces, how are we going to use that formative assessment data to reteach when kids don't get it as well as I just lost my camera where I was going but it was the end it's the end in mind. Oh sorry we also have with that an equity overlay for that. So when we were talking about the actions that the school district is going to take I mentioned this earlier. In addition to planning our bends in the road and our formative assessments when we're thinking about the context in which we're getting kids to learn we're saying we have an equity overlay of what authors are you using, what books are you using, what case studies are you using, how are you ensuring multiple perspectives are coming into play if that's appropriate for the unit of study. All of those things particularly come into play a lot in the humanities and science in particular. So our teachers are going to be spending times and teams doing that. This is not new work at all it's just ensuring that the work is done and is done well. We're also talking about a timely system to intervene and remediate or enrich so it is a we can predict that kids will come into school next year and quite honestly any year. It doesn't matter if we have COVID happening or not that some kids will already know the grade level standard that we're working on. Some kids will need more time with the grade level standard than what we're giving them and we need to ensure that they have that time for reteach to make sure they learn it. We also know that some kids have gaps or holes what I call universal skills that they need to really hit on in order to access the grade level curriculum. And we have not done an excellent job and when I say we I mean educators at a whole not just Montpelier Roxbury and making sure that we have evidence that our system to intervene remediate enrich works. So what we are saying this year is that every school will have a master schedule allowing for the remediation of those universal skills and enrichment activities for those who have the universal skills mastered as well as reteaching or intervention opportunities for the priority standards. Every school will have that currently we don't have it but next year we will. What we know going into next year is that kids are going to move up a grade that they have to have access to those grade level standards of the next grade and we know that students will have some holes from this from this spring. So if we have a master schedule that allows for the time to hit those holes then we'll be able to move kids forward as well as keep them caught up from this spring's lack of instruction or closure period. We're also having our teachers plan their units of study so UOS stands for units of study with intervention so intervention is based on those priority standards and what we want our teachers to do is plan their units of study to build in time to reteach our grade level standards for kids who don't get them the first time or the second time that they have we have that built in so that we don't have as many kids falling in the remediation bucket as we do now. All of these things we had planned to do we were just taking them rather slowly like I said we're putting them on speed now we're putting them on we're giving them a little steroid injection in order to keep moving because we know these things are going to happen. What I'm trying to tell our leadership team and our teachers is that we have in times of a lot of questions we need to go to our highest level of clarity and this is the clarity that we need to have in order to move our kids forward. So our other two buckets collective responsibility and collaborative practices like I said before this is all very complicated work and we cannot do it by ourselves there's the one-room school house or a bunch of teachers sharing a pocket parking lot does not work we need to work in professional learning communities where we're collaborating on what what we're going to teach and how we're going to formally assess it and how we're going to look at that data and how we're going to reteach again it includes the social emotional learning needs for kids we know kids are going to be across the spectrum and their social emotional needs when they come in there are some kids like my two kids are having a dream of a time they are not traumatized at any in any way over this this crisis they're having a great time they just are right I know other kids though who are really struggling with this period of time and having a hard time and are depressed and are anxious and are anxious to come back into school we have a wide gamut of what kids are going to need and so we're going to plan for that now we have a social emotional district team who's working on those uh the intervention and the remediation piece of this and we have teachers planning of how are we going to do this in the classroom to make sure that all kids are accessing the social emotional learning needs we're really prioritizing executive skills executive functioning skills like organization and that kind of thing because if we have to remove if we have to move from in person to remote then we truly have to have kids who can work independently who know where their stuff is who all of those executive functioning skills so we're highlighting those pieces as well they're going to be planning those units of study they're going to be working in the interventions teams and then high quality instruction for every classroom this is a huge bucket and if we were in normal times this is where all of our work would be focusing next year in a wide gamut but because we have to focus in because there's so many needs right now what we have to focus in on is that we're really focusing in on how do we create high quality engaging learning opportunities that that it doesn't matter what the learning contracts context is that it can be flexible we can do it in person we could do it remotely we could do it in a hybrid so our teams are going to be working together they're going to do it in workshops together and they're also going to be in their teaching planning teams to to think about what does it look like to have very flexible experiences for kids so that's when we're working on june 12 through 19 again we're moving to our highest level of clarity good teaching is good teaching we need to be flexible and agile and we need to give kids time for learning so so time is the variable and not learning learning is the definite into our schedules um i'm going to stop for a second because i just talked a whole lot and i can talk about this forever so give you a second just to process and ask any questions you might have so liby this is gerry um for i guess for all kids um but is part of what the social emotional learning needs would that include um maybe some ways to calm their anxiety that kind of thing yes yeah we've we've spent mary bechtel who some of the board has met before and other board meetings um has worked with our social emotional district team to have prioritized standards and social emotional learning and some of those standards are how do i how do i handle different emotions and anxiety is certainly one of them okay how do i do that proactively and how do i ask for help and how do i hint yeah so we're we're focusing in on that big time okay good yeah thanks any other questions or discussions on this part i had a question about the master schedule um you said you don't have it do you have do you have time for that like at the high school for example is one building it do one building doing it better than others or provided more time than others right now yeah before we went into closure actually yeah um so msms has actually the the um the schedule with the best intervention it's called an intervention block right now um it's not daily it's moving to daily next year because we think the need's going to be greater than it has been um but that intervention block has been very targeted particularly in math at msms for the last couple years uh led a lot by Pam and Amy Kimball the math coach there um so they're just they're making it bigger at msms because we think the needs can be bigger at the high school they have what's called sole in block and they're totally right now the the guiding coalition which is the administration and the teacher leadership team are really are redesigning sole in block um so that kids are scheduled where they need to go right now it's a little bit of a free-for-all it hasn't they knew they needed to put one in the last couple years but it hasn't come to fruition because it hasn't been tightened enough so now the high school is really working on how do we how do we control it and how do we tighten it up and how do we provide the enrichment opportunities in an independent way for kids so that they can they can work on personalized projects or whatever it is that they're working on an enrichment capacity and the kids who need more reteaching or remediation get that support in a very targeted way as well at ues they used to have an intervention block they didn't they haven't for many years and we're bringing that back and right now ryan with his leadership team is working on how do you do that and because there's given takes to it if you're adding time into a class into a master schedule then you're taking time away from something else and so how do we do that and not take too much time around the incredibly important time with reading writing math science social studies art music all those kind of things so they're playing around with different ways they can do it right now but they know that they have to do it we have to have the time in our schedule for that rvs has never actually had her intervention black as far as i know i could be corrected on that but so and rvs is so small that it may look very different than what it does now so so we're still working in our elementary schools to see how we can make that happen um that's great i love you know i've worked in a few different schools and we've done intervention blocks different in different ways and i think one of the really important things to sort of key into it i'll just say it for the record is that um you know i think we tend to do remediation and intervention really well as teachers but it's the other side of the spectrum when kids have already met grade level standards in something the enrichment block doesn't really feel so enriching for them yeah what do we do with the enrichment exactly that's exactly right and one of the things that we're really focusing on now um or that we're trying to focus on now is that our highest trained professionals are working with the kids who need us most um and our and with our enrichment we're we're setting the the framework for kids particularly our older kids and we're putting our instructional assistant staff there to say help facilitate that process but really this should be an independent learning opportunity for kids who have already mastered what we need them to master um and it should be a way for them to dig in which connects back to those executive functioning skills and how exactly do you do that how do you organize your time and how do you know all of that kind of thing so it's all closely connected to each other any other questions about the teacher's days those that during that six day time period are you running into any obstacles with like contract or agreed schedules or things like that for planning for the fall for the fall for those six days now for the fall that's yet to be determined for the fall we don't know yet we'll get to that in a second hold that question Jill okay um so the other things we're talking about uh is that we are going to tell every teacher that or a teacher team that they have to have a google classroom up to date and running because we don't know if we'll have to go into remote quickly and if we have to go into remote quickly we need teachers to be prepped for that they're not going to have days to plan it um so we're asking all classrooms at google classroom we we're assuming that's the platform that most of our teachers use anyway um which is why we didn't dig into other platforms we just went with what we know and what is easy and then the other thing is we we're hoping that since families um if most teachers use that now anyway families will be more aware of that and we're also planning for the falls and family trainings around google classroom so that families will be understanding of how to do that so we just want that ease of entry in case we have to do remote um and and I just want to put out to that google classroom is an organizational tool it is a bucket to house things it is not an it's not where it's not instruction it's the organizational tool for for where we house things and then of course through 12th through the 19th we need some time to celebrate with our teachers we have a lot of amazing retirees and we need some time to show them off for each other and we also need some time to just say we made it through so we will put some time in there to celebrate with each other as well virtually of course which is not nearly as fun as in person so that's June 12th through the 19th I put all this in there because I wanted to make sure the community was aware we're putting that time to good use uh again we're going for our highest level of clarity and that's what good quality teaching and learning all the pieces we need for good quality teaching and learning to happen all right there's no questions I'll keep going um so we have some more decision points to make in that planning process this is a very small list we have right now there's more questions than answers by far um so we're not sure about building use uh right now we are not allowed to open our buildings or our fields for anybody outside of school activities and school activities should be limited are limited to the most critical need um so for critical need populations we just yesterday made the decision uh to do our extended year services for our students with special needs remotely instead of in person it's getting hard to get staffing for in-person support the cleaning responsibilities are immense and uh when we surveyed families who uh may qualify for ESY and not many of them really wanted to do in person so we've decided to do that remotely uh there is some big pieces around building use their rec really wanted to use our buildings for their summer camps and we had to tell them no which was not a popular decision but we're not allowed to yet and we simply don't have the custodial crew to have the work shifts in order to clean our buildings the way that the requirements are right now transportation is a big conundrum right now and it's one that the school I will be coming to the school board to talk more about uh the scheduling physical distancing requirements how you do that with kids in health screening requirements mass students who refuse to come to school parents who refuse to send their kids to school teachers who refuse to come to work all of these things are going to be big questions the idea of shared materials isolation rooms for kids who are sick it goes on and on it's it's really an endless list right now and we're awaiting guidance from the Department of Health and the Agency of Education we just haven't gotten that yet so hopefully that will be coming soon and we'll be able to start planning but to help all of these things uh Andrew and I are going to be we're asked to participate in the planning group with this bit which is our insurance company to determine best practices we had one workshop on that yesterday we're going to another tomorrow and then we're also part of a very small group pilot group to to name the practices that we want to have in place the Vermont Superintendent's Association has created a document to help the state make decisions we're at our third pressure point for helping the state make those decisions the first being the decision to close the second was the list of dates that we needed decisions by which were not didn't happen and the now we've created as an association not a list of decisions that we need made but the actual decisions and say this is the decisions we'd like to make respond to it that has not been answered yet by our state decision makers and then as Jim and I were talking the other day we need to have and I'm going to put it in we're going to put it on the retreat agenda mostly but a big discussion about the school board's role going forward I feel that your role going forward is absolutely imperative um particularly after the survey data that has come out because there is no agreement of what we should do next year they're they're just isn't in our community or in our teaching staff and so um so we're going to need to be one in those decisions and the school board is going to very much need to know the rationale behind every decision the administration makes and be a part of that decision so that you can help us communicate that to the community so we're going to spend some time in the retreat about just what the school board's role is in that and how you can you can help us as we move forward and and quite honestly what is an impossible task going forward the way it is in my mind right now anyway and oh so just to make sure that you all are in the know I just mentioned this that um under the guidance that we have for the AOE our schools are allowed to be used for summer first over the summer for students who are entitled to supports or who require critical supports so students with special needs again we're we're providing those ESY services remotely we do have part two started this week to provide child care for a very small population of families at UES I believe we have nine families there this or nine kids there this week and it's growing a little bit each week as we go forward but we do have child care set up it's not camp it's child care and then our schools are not allowed to be used by outside entities so we have turned down capital soccer we've turned on the recreation department except the and those those requests are coming in our community definitely sees our schools as a community asset as do I and right now we need to really focus our efforts on opening those buildings and getting them ready for the fall and the AOE has not allowed us to open our buildings to any kind of outside agency yet our graduation ceremonies are coming up I believe they're starting next week right Anna over the whole week we're going to have that soccer field the big stage and a big tents and kids are coming up we're doing eighth grade and we're doing our seniors and moving up ceremonies are being planned in more virtual formats that may come later than the end of the school year but before next school year so those are in those are in in the planning mode right now so I'm up for questions concerns or any discussion the board has about any of that that was a lot of information I just threw at you Libby I had a question about the tech issues around next year and the possibility as you were mentioning of having to transition quickly to remote and I know one there were issues around getting you know getting kids with Chromebooks and the Chromebooks kind of up and running is there a is there an easier fix to that so that we could be ready yeah yeah um so we just put a $30,000 order into a local vendor for Chromebooks so the plan already was to be one to one with kids taking taking devices home and not for nine through 12 that one to one will increase significantly next year we're using we just got some guidance on planning for that CARES money we don't know how we're how much we we don't know our allotment and we don't know how to apply for it but we just got a a planning guideline for it today so with that money we're also planning on buying more Chromebooks the problem is is that every school in the state is also every school in the nation really is also buying Chromebooks so it's taking taking a while for it to get here and they're all coming from China which is not the quickest route so we have plans to ensure that every kid has access to a device whether or not that comes to fruition depends on if we can get them here in time but yeah that one of the when we knowing what we know now will be able to to put on the laptops away for kids to access it at home or at school that was one of the big conundrums that we had in the beginning of this is that the Chromebooks were only going to work at school so that's changed at this point let me if we have some kind of hybridized approach next year where you you have some kids in class some kids participating from home have we thought I imagine might as I imagine you have but um has there been any thought about what kind of approach would take um to doing something like that in terms of technology required and things like that yeah we're starting those conversations from now I'm going to tell you honestly I hope that doesn't have to happen I'm just going to be honest about that yeah I also do because it's it adds so many complicated layers um we I can't see us doing that for our youngers quite honestly because they um because it's a different level of independence and and childcare challenges uh and if schools do that across the state our teachers don't all live in Montpelier and they don't have all the kids that who are in the same grade levels they are so it it not only provides a childcare conundrum for our parents in our community but it also provides a significant challenge for our teachers um so I really hope that doesn't happen particularly for our youngers and then you look on the other side people a lot of people said we'll just do that for our older kids well our survey day is quite clear the social interaction is is of utmost importance and we can't we can't belittle that so I have similar I have different worries about our our upperclassmen as I do for our little so um I'm going to tell you I don't know right now we we're starting to talk about that and and I really hope we don't have to do that okay so this spring formal evaluation of the students proficiencies and all the content areas was suspended in a sense if we aren't to be in person all of next fall all of next school year have teachers been talking about how the situation will be happening um kind of going between different models or that's one of the reasons why and that we're really focused on prioritizing our standards to just six because when we're talking about reporting out and evaluating students to the commute to families and things then we're just focusing on those those standards that we're guaranteeing for kids the most important ones not the nice to know ones but the most important ones this district has never really done that there's too many of them so that's one of the reasons why we're really focusing in on prioritizing those standards and yes we should we have to go remote or some sort of hybrid in the in the future then we will not be doing what we're doing now it will look it will look different it will have to look different we we have too many responsibilities to our kids okay thanks Libby you you mentioned that the CDC guidelines have come out and you your team has been keeping those in mind I guess or using them as some guidance could you comment just even in general terms about you know your reaction to those what what they might mean if that was really the standard for the fall yep I can and it's hard for me to do it between being up taking my parent hat on and my educator hat on and my safe superintendent hat on the CDC guidelines are scary and not written by educators and not written by people who know kids and and so I understand them I understand why they are written the way they are they are not different from anything else we all have heard as communities across this entire period of time um to put in their self-contradictory and impossible to execute thank you Mara Mara said it very well um to put six-year-olds in a room I challenge anybody to keep them six feet apart uh to put 16-year-olds in a room I challenge anyone to keep them six feet apart um they so we're going to have to figure out we're going to have to if those are what rule we're going to have to figure out how to do that best by age level is like is all I'm thinking about right now um we cannot put our eight-year-olds in the under and I'm using eight as an arbitrary number we can't put them in a mask all day the it's just not fair to them and it's not right and it's so we can't so how do we spread them out if we need to spread them out in a way that makes sense um we don't I as I said to the secretary of education last Thursday we don't have desks that has been eliminated from our disc we haven't bought desks in years so we did count for instance we have 420 desks in our district we have over 1200 students so how do you how do you do that our rooms are different sizes there's so many unknowns of if we take those recommendations by the word we can't do it there's no way we can do it um if we take them and say thank you for the guidance we're going to do the best we can and keep our kids as safe as possible then we can probably do an okay job um as a parent I'm just going to say as a parent I have a 12 year old and a nine year old I do not want my kids sitting in a row for four hours looking in the same direction with very anxious adults saying go wash your hands every two seconds when they sneeze I mean it's really it's really hard for me as a parent and it's for like to follow the guidelines as a superintendent and I understand what people are saying when they say we're going to traumatize kids more by following the CDC guidelines I totally get it so it's going to be really hard and I'm going to be looking to our Department of Health to say those CDC guidelines are written for the nation and there are many different parts of our nation who are struggling with this in a different way than Montpelier and Roxbury, Vermont are and so how can how can we design our system to yes keep our staff and students safe and um respond to the context in which we live as Montpelierites and Roxburyites if that's word is a piece that I keep thinking about go ahead Emma um do you have any concept of what you know like so if the Vermont Department of Health issues different guidelines as a fall and then we as a school board sort of decide what we're going to do with those guidelines is there um are there any repercussions if we aren't following them to a tee I don't know I don't know what they're going to do because they haven't the agency of we haven't heard anything from the Department of Health nothing um except for what everybody else in Vermont has heard from the Department of Health from the agency of education it is very hard to figure out if they're going to go very definitive guidelines that you have that are have tos or if they're going to go with look with generalizations that you can make decisions on localized context quite honestly both of them scare the bejesus on me and because if we can make decisions based on our localized contracts we will be compared to other school districts and because of the vast opinion of what we should be doing in the community there will be not be very many happy you know like it's just an impossible piece well we will be compared based on what others are doing however if it's a very strict and rigid understanding of the guidelines then that's may not be if it's if it's a very conservative um and I don't mean that in the political sense I mean that in the restrictive sense then that may not be what we deem is best for our kids either so it's it's really and then that puts us in liability issue if we don't follow them willingly so um we're I think it's a wait and see game right now it's a wait and see game to see what comes at us from the Department of Health and the the agency of education I participated in your um I think it was called the town hall on for parents about returning to school and um I just thought there was a lot of really creative I felt like the general um feeling from the community was compassion for the school district to have to face these you know impossible decisions and impossible guidelines and then also there was a lot of creative you know wrapping our brains collectively around what this could potentially look like um and so I get I get that vibe from the community that people are open to creative solutions yeah and that's where I think it was Jill Jill did you ask earlier about the teacher contract is that you that's where that comes into play because because we are getting a lot of and we're having a lot of um creative suggestions and um we also have a teacher's contract so so staggering schedules in school day and that um flies in the face of the 730 to 3 contracted hours that's written in our so there's a lot of negotiation that happens Andrew you better start getting nice with your negotiation skills Ryan start wearing off on him but what do you mean I'm nice because I think we're gonna I weave the partnership between myself and the teacher's union thus far has been amazing our teacher's union has been incredibly supportive and has worked hard to make this work we've collaborated really well together that only has to continue and strengthen over the next couple months and I can say I I I am um not worried because I I know the other leaders so well but we losing Laura Slesser um who is going to work for the NEA and a bigger capacity is great for the NEA but it's it's tough for Montpelier Roxbury go ahead Jill I don't even know where to begin because you did just give us so much information but um I I find the survey stuff so far really fascinating as you can tell and the the piece you said about the parents and the spectrum tells me that as a board you know I think this is such a huge social experiment we don't really know what's going to happen but as a board it seems like the two things that we could do for you our um support you know with clear and unified messages the piece that you just walked us through which as a parent I find that really um comforting and I'm excited about it because you guys have put a lot of work into that already so as a board we're going to really need to sort of carry that message and be unified and back it up with the facts because even within households parents are in different places with how this is going to go so there's no winning um and I do think that if there's a way we can kind of take some of those slings and arrows this fall that that I'm willing to do that and then the other piece is where can we help to provide flexibility for some of these pieces maybe we can't maybe it's not really something the board can control but that seems like there is going to be need there is going to need to be flexibility about space and about resources and about transportation and about use of people and if there are things that as a board we can do to either get out of the way or try to help clear the way then you know sometimes you have to spell things out for me so please do tell me if there are things as a board we can do because this is all unprecedented and whatever we can do to help keep you and and the educators focused on these really good pieces the better off the whole district will be yeah I think so so far the decisions have had to be around teaching and learning right which is our domain moving forward the logistical decisions we're gonna we're gonna need to discuss that as like as an administration straight of group and as a school board because I feel and I'm not talking at a turn with Jim not here I know Jim feels that we all need to be completely everybody needs to understand the rationale for the decisions that are going to come forward so that we can help we can all help explain why decisions are being made to the community I think there's a big misunderstanding by some people that I am making these decisions I've made the decision to close school the administrators have made it and and that's just not the case right and so moving forward as our guidelines come out whether they're broad or strict it needs to be like we need to be very clear that that whatever we do as a school board and as an administrative team and as a district that we are responding to the rules that are being put in place for us by others in government and health any more questions for Libby so many me too I'm on me too I'll just hold them for now Libby that was that was really great thank you we so appreciate the the explanation but also the underlying work which is clear you and your team and the teachers are putting so much time into this so thanks I think the last thing on the agenda is planning for the retreat that's the that part I'm a little bit at a disadvantage because I'm I assume that Jim and Libby probably had some discussion about that ahead of time yep I can talk about that so um uh so the retreat is every June 12th from 12 30 to 4 Anna and is talking to Orca to see if we can get them recorded we do have the library reserved um and so there are nine board members plus me that's 10 um so we are within our guidelines if you want to come to the library we can make sure that that we um have a safe environment uh will be separated physically distanced um and it is a very clean environment believe me so if you'd like to do that we can make that happen if you want to make if you want to do it virtually we can make that happen as well so I would just ask the two email Anna and myself so that we can prepare for either option and we know how to set up the space based on who's going to come to MHS library um we have at 130 Sue McCormick and I'm going to look up her name because I just learned it today hold on one second Keisha Keisha Ram yeah Keisha Ram Keisha Ram is it wrong I think she's correctly on that really every everywhere I've been she's wrong but Mara knows we're gonna go with that we're gonna go with that it's Keisha I'm gonna go go to see how she says okay um so we we have Sue McCormick and Keisha coming um I worked with Sue before I haven't worked with Keisha obviously Mara has um and I contacted them to potentially facilitate discussions around visioning um so there's two folds here the first part is getting doing a community outreach for the values of the community for the school system in Montpelier and Roxbury and then the secondary piece is visioning for the future of Roxbury in particular um so Jim and I both felt that we needed a big time for professional facilitator to do that I've worked with Sue McCormick in the past and so I reached out to her she's a phenomenal facilitator the kind of person where you just watch and you're like I wish I could do that um and uh she brought in Keisha to bring a different perspective to the to the room um she asked if we wanted that um from a diverse um inclusive perspective and I said that the board would be absolutely behind that so I hope you don't mind me speaking for you on your on your behalf for that um but Keisha has been working with Sue and so both um Sue and Keisha are going to come and work with the board for about an hour um around this process explain what their vision is for the process um and you all get to decide if you want to work with them or not but it's it's just kind of the opening pitch for from Sue and Keisha around what they um see the processes going forward for both of those things getting real solid values down from the community's molecular Roxbury and then the future of Roxbury Village School um so that's for about an hour of the retreat and then I believe we need to really dig into the parent teacher student survey data around this whole experience in fall 2020 so you all see all the survey data that we have and have a really good discussion about uh board's role in making future decisions around fall 2020 and then we talked about I just wrote down my notes I want to make sure that I have um just having a really clear discussion um around board's expectation with diversity equity and inclusion work of the district so those were the three big topics Rich do you want me to go into any more detail or does that sound good I mean that sounds good to me that sounds like more than four hours is there anything we want to do with that in mind is there anything that you want us as board members to do to prepare for that are there particular things we should look at I'm gonna um I'm gonna work on the agenda Friday Friday this week and probably Monday so we'll try to get that out to you as quickly as we can by hopefully Monday afternoon um so if there are things to look at beforehand then we'll let we'll let you know on that other questions or comments on the retreat schedule no but it is Keisha Ram is it okay thanks Maya have you worked with her before yeah and we're really lucky to get to do work with her okay have you worked with Sue before I have heard the name she's fantastic it sounds like it's gonna be a really productive and exciting four hours um so we'll look forward to that and that it doesn't substitute for the next board meeting is that right I believe Jim's plan is to substitute it for the next board meeting oh it is that is the plan okay yeah but I don't want to speak for him the last time we talked that was the plan I'm having that finalized maybe having that finalized by Friday or so would be good too to just know that the next meeting is the next regularly scheduled meeting is coming off the calendar if it is right yeah I can't clarify that with Jim I've taken it off my calendar already so I hope I'm right is it is it possible that we will need a negotiations executive session at some point that we might get into trouble without having that other meeting we can also always call we've done it in the past we've called emergency meetings yep I mean we can do that I just wanted to flag it as something that might happen depending on the timing of the negotiations yeah do we want to do a session tonight for updates or anything well I think we can provide a general public update right now which is that we settled with the teachers and I think it went really well and you know we we voiced our support for them and I thought it ended really well let me think some mean because of one incident but I was very nice at the last negotiation session did you say we settled we would like to give you a hard time picture that's a pretty big update yeah we settled with the teachers without going to mediation and so it's a very positive thing and they're appreciative of our support and we're appreciative of the work that they're doing and you know appreciative that the administration was able to work budget wonders to be able to support our teachers while still keeping things flexible for us heading into a difficult budget climate so good job all around everyone yeah good job to the team thank you guys and to the teachers many thanks the messages I received from the teachers immediately after that made me made me quite happy they were very happy and they also have we have I we have asked me tomorrow and we have the IA's uh messa next week that's right correct correct okay I think if there's if no one else has any questions or wants to weigh in we can move to the next Friday's meeting location is it going to be online are we when we we know I mean I'm okay either ways um I just like to I just want to know when we're talking right so let me let me try to see if I it it sounds like we have a physical location at the high school and so we're expecting that some people are likely to at least come who want to come but people who want to participate remotely can participate remotely is it going to work to do that Libby do you think I mean it's hard I'm just envisioning that if you have 10 people spread out really far apart or it wouldn't be 10 if some are remote you know six people spread out really far apart and you're trying to engage people remotely yeah we were talking about that today a little bit and uh I think we can probably we can make it work if we have Orca's mics if Orca can join us and has their mics set up in terms of the remote piece um we we're actually debating that for a little while today about if we can make it work I think we can um but the challenge is as as Brazil you've been here for a while um is that when we've had retreats in the past we haven't had Orca do it we haven't had Orca there except people could always come to the location we've never we haven't had people come but they could right whereas now they can't really come so that's that's the bigger challenge I think is how do we ensure that it's a public meeting so one one idea and I didn't come up with this I heard this on a podcast last week um from a tech exec is even for people who are in the same room and meeting there but who are meeting with people elsewhere um being in your own tile is still extremely helpful and so what we might consider doing I'm just proposing this not saying that we should do this is um if we each had our own laptop you could have zoom open so that people could see you and you know Orca could pick up the feed that way as well so it would be kind of a hybrid approach between what we're doing now but some of us being in the same room where you know we could be you might see this more of like the side of somebody's heads but we kind of do that with different monitors anyways would that be hard for people if they if you wanted to come to bring a laptop I wouldn't mind that myself I'm picturing that and I think for the next six months that's gonna kind of be how we all re-enter different people have different abilities or comfort level I think it's gonna have to be part of the learning I'm happy to do that it doesn't create like a feedback loop problem because of the that's my only concern yeah well if he if he mute the mic on our personal device and if Orca is there picking up the sound feed right that would that would result that issue there's usually a delay with Orca though so it gets pretty funky with the audio we are professionals here they can start working on I was also wondering about the potential of meeting outside instead of inside but it sounds like the Orca media piece sort of answers that question it would be more challenging for them from a technical standpoint yeah if Orca is allowed to come that's the reason why it's always at the Montpellier High School library is because Orca's that's the only place besides Rocksbury library that we can really do it and even Rocksbury library Ryan correct me if I'm wrong and Jerry but I don't think that's a live stream if we're in Rocksbury I think it's a recording you're right they they replay it later yeah recorded and then played later it's not live from the village school whereas in the library at the high school it can be a live feed so I often would be to do one camera somewhere with and just so you can if somebody's remote they can at least see the room instead of just seeing one person so they'll see a visual of a of all the different people in the room I mean it'll be far away but it's that's helpful I can bring my kids video camera I know you can be I have one you guys can borrow if you I mean just a it's just a an HD yeah that's what we have a laptop yeah but um but you can at least see the whole room so you could have one you know just the regular mic setup but have that one camera well it sounds like maybe we should engage with Orca on this after this meeting to see yeah Anna's enclosed and is like best friends working out so she's in close connection with them and figuring that out awesome thanks I also think and I don't want to put people on the spot here but I think you know it's probably helpful for people to think about whether they want to come to have a sense of whether most most of us want to come all of us want to come none of us particularly want to come and kind of give that feedback to Libby and Jim so we know we know where people's comfort level is guys might might not even be uh something we need to do when we find out who's coming and who's not or if anyone's not coming then we don't need to worry about do you want to do that now Bridget I don't really want to put people on the spot right now I think we should let people think about it and email you and Jim with kind of where they're where they're landing on it sounds good could we chat it to you now if we know go for it Mara everyone can't wait you're still trapped is the chat public for or you can privately chat is public oh I'm I think that might still be a public record though just just FYI I feel comfortable with it it might also be interesting to see what um Sue and and Keisha what how they think about facilitating us in both scenarios yeah I think they'll respond to whatever we want they're planning as of right now at least Sue is I have I haven't asked Keisha directly so I was just talking to her about her name Mara which is funny not so much feel still trapped with names um the Sue was planning on coming to Montpelier if if she if we want her to she will also do Zoom she is fine doing that um but she was she said she would come if if we want her to I think probably we can adjourn at this point um no other pressing business motion to adjourn Mara I moved to adjourn second thanks uh let's see what's the order right and you guys have moved around on me Annika you're first now hi I'm in Jill all right we'll skip Jill but I think you say Ryan Ryan hi Emma hi Mara hi Dary hi Andrew okay great all right thank you everybody thanks Libby and thanks everyone thanks Anna thank you thank you thanks for your mediation Bridget yeah good job Bridget thanks bye bye