We have vote and just a review of our ends, which Linda, thank you for including that in the packet to just get our brains working. I wanna thank everyone for rolling with the rescheduling of this meeting for the events. That's really great and I'm glad we can all be here. The first thing we will do is public comment. I'm going to read our preamble because who knows, as I'm reading, someone might have a comment. The board welcomes comments, but is not able to take any action on them other than to direct the public to the appropriate staff member or to the complaint procedure. Comments are limited to three minutes per speaker. Time may not be seated to another speaker. Comments are to be addressed to me, the board chair or the board as a whole, not to any individual on the board, on the staff or in the public. Please raise your hand and wait to speak until you are asked to by the chair. Please identify yourself with your first and last name and your town of residence. Please refrain from restating comments that have already been shared. You can express agreement with those comments. Order and decorum shall be observed by everyone. Shouting and profanity are prohibited. As the board chair, I will maintain the order and decorum of the meeting. Hi, Katya. Good. We've just read over the public comment preamble. And unfortunately, well, yeah, unfortunately. Neutrally. I don't think we have any comments, so I'm gonna go ahead and slowly say, we'll move on. Okay. The written communication to the public. Is there another packet somewhere? All right, down there. Chelsea, you and I met with Ben. What's this? Yeah. And had a great conversation with him and with each other. And we sent out the letter to the whole board. I don't know if anyone else changes. They wanna make, no, I love it. Yeah? Yeah, I thought it was great. I meant to print it for everyone. I have one copy, if anyone wants to go ahead. It's not in the packet, no. I can pull it up and read it out loud. If anyone needs me to do that, I can see what's going on. That would be really weird. I think there's a form message that needs a lot of, but it's hard to be in a position of judging something else that's where it gets any, like you did work and I'm here judging it and that feels not great, but it helps in working. Yeah. Well, I will say he seems very, very open to, I mean, he calls this a very much preliminary first draft. So he's definitely expecting feedback. And we were going to send this out in, before the next school year, right? I can't remember when we talked about sending it out. Did we have a date set or did we talk about it? I thought it wasn't yet, like we have time.  The end of this year. I couldn't remember if it was that or if it was before the next year. I don't know that we had affirmed it. I agree. It kind of reads as summarizes this year. Although it could also be spun as a, this is where the transition into the new year. The one comment I have about the letter actually is just the specific bringing up of conflicts that we've been through. I almost feel like identifying three, of course the bottom is just the one thing that comes up for me right now, but I'm not sure it's necessary to identify specific ones. I would agree with you on it. Maybe that can fix some of the ones in this. But not to move away from Megan's question, which is how do people feel about the timing of such a communication? Well, do we have to vote on it or do we just all say it's good to go? Because if it's something that can go out soon and we want it to go out soon, obviously we want to wrap up the year with it soon. But our next meeting wouldn't be until July, right? Because we're doing a July meeting, I think. We talked about it, maybe we talked about it. So I'm just saying if we have to wait until August, I didn't remember what we were doing. You're gonna need a special meeting in July, which we'll talk about. And the reason being is that when the legislature passed the laws around school safety, there are two critical policies that have to be voted in the first three tonight. The second read has to be done before August, which is what I'm gonna help with the discussion. Yeah, it may be that we go back with some comments that we can continue talking about have another what we'll call final to bring to the July special meeting. I do think we should vote on it. I would agree, because it's a board communication. Well, I think it's our voice. Our one voice. We all agree with this communication. Do you guys wanna go through it and edit, send your edits to me and then I can send them to Ben? The thing about Ben is his last day is the end of June. So that would have to be next week. I think we'll get that one. See, go in the document. How is this gonna be? We're gonna be in the meeting room. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. He'll bill for this. He talked about that a bit. Gotcha. He'll bill. In the meeting room. In terms of dissemination. So he'll bill for this. Because we want it to reach farther than parents. Yeah. So is it too? He has like a 5,000 word limit. Well, yeah. But then it probably is too much for that. I'm open to whatever. Whatever everybody wants to do. To solve the front porch forum issue, we can just introduce the letter and then link to the landing page. That was just a year or something. Good idea. Which Ben would better help us with. Yeah. I agree with what we should do. We should go back through it and. Is your mic on? That might. I don't. Who picks another? Oh. I don't have not logged into that. I'm just on the letter. Gotcha. So if we just do our edits in the next week, get them back to bed. And then we should get ownership of that document wherever it may be. Draft to. Sure. So Rachel, if you want to look through it and just figure out what you'd like to delete and send it back and we can do another draft and bring it back to here. Or anyone else who wants to look it over. It is long. It would benefit from a clear statement at the beginning. Like this is what this is about. Like RE, because some people won't digest the whole letter. The first paragraph and the last paragraph. Right. That's what people will read. Okay. So homework, action item for all of us. Go through it again. Bye next Friday. And well, send stuff to Chelsea. What is the date of the week Wednesday? Let's try by Monday to send things to Chelsea so she can give Ben a couple of days to get another. Is it on a Google blog? It's currently, it is absolutely. It'd be very easy to make a copy. Like how Ben usually works. Make a copy and then do suggested edits. Is that? I feel like that gets very messy. I feel like it should come from one person. The ideas that we have for Ben to. I mean, it's possible to set it up where one person, the owner and other people can make suggestions and then one person would be in charge of accepting or not accepting. However, you guys want to do it. You want to do it paper. No, just email the committee, just me and Chelsea. Yeah, like, you know, I don't know. You can make edits on this, I guess you can't because it's not, it's a PDF, but just whatever. Just send me however it works for you to the suggestion of what we should change. I'll send it to Ben. He'll come up with a new letter hopefully by the end of the week. And then if not, we can just do it ourselves. Are there other substantive changes that people, you know, I hear wordiness, I hear what I said, something about specific words? If someone feels that this is the wrong direction and it would take a complete rewrite or, you know, more discussion as a group about what we really want to say, please speak up now because I think what we're talking about in terms of sending thoughts to Chelsea are things like, you know, can we have it be a three-paragraph deal with this thesis statement? Or people want, yeah, yeah. But that's more like formatted and, you know, the dry stuff, does the need of it, does the direction of it work for people? Is it what we want? I think it basically just says we're gonna look at our ends over the next while and make changes so that they're more relevant. And this is your school board and this is how you get in touch with people or come to the meetings. I kind of feel like this could even start like at the third paragraph. At the fourth. Forward, not back, kind of person. So, I don't even know if we're basically just trying to communicate that we're trying to become open, that communication pathway become more engaged with our constituents in the community. And I mean, that first sentence, like first and foremost, it's elected to whoever you represent, you, like that's what we're trying to get across, I think, in this of like, we want your input, we want your engagement, we want to work for the school that you're putting you on. So, I don't know, I would just be mine. Okay, shorter. And looking forward rather than back, I like that. More thoughts that come up? Email Chelsea. Yeah. So, we can get them on Monday to, to then by end of day. So, let's say Monday at noon. Great. So, let's move on to monitoring. Third part of our agenda here, the superintendent evaluation process. I know I'm assigned to talk about this, although Chelsea has been chatting with BSBA about different formats and processes. So, I'm putting you on the spot, but. So, I had a conversation with Debbie from BSBA about, first of all, talking about doing our end straining, that's another whole subject, but she did send me information for the superintendent evaluation. And I forwarded it to you all. I don't know if you have a chance to look it over, but basically we can hire the BSBA and pay them $1,500 for them to assist us with the evaluations. There would be a committee within our committee that would oversee it, the superintendent evaluation. So, it would be like maybe three or four people from this board to oversee the process. And then as a part of it, the superintendent would do a self-evaluation. And everyone would leave the whole process with three to five annual goals. I don't know if people had a chance to look over the BSBA superintendent evaluation service that I sent out a couple of weeks ago. The same one that we did a few years ago? I think it is probably the same process. They said they've had lots of requests to do this this year. And I think it's a good place to start. I think it would be beneficial for us going through the process, at the end of the process to have our own thing going forward that's done every year that we would write into the policy. Are people in favor of, if you have the time to develop an opinion on this, being led, hiring someone to lead us in this process. The other, another option, not the only other option, is to design something ourselves with that kind of structure in mind. Or other ideas people might have. I think, taking into consideration money, and what we want to get out of it. I think that's the first thing we need to... I mean, I think the cost is relatively reasonable. 1,500 seems fairly inexpensive to me. And they're really transparent with the rubric. Yeah, I mean, it's not. Nothing hidden or like... So would this be for this coming year or to a value for this year? I think it would probably be for this past year. No? It would be for the past year looking forward to the next year making changes for the future. And that is a good process. And so there's a couple of steps that you have to take if you want to do that. When you do an evaluation, you tell people upfront what you're looking for. So it would be inappropriate to put a different evaluation down at the end of the process. Like if you tell me tomorrow we're doing a survey and then we're taking the results of it or we're following this process, that would be appropriate. You also have in my contract and I'm happy to have the contract changed just so that you know what it states in there. My contract is the policy governance and I'm happy to actually go with this process. I think it's a good one. But my contract states very clearly that my evaluation is based on the yield of the evidence. And that's the only thing that I have to evaluate. Well, but it does say that we've reviewed performance annually. Yes, but what you use for that review is the end's report, which I think is my personal itself is it doesn't provide enough feedback. This, the way that this would work out is you sit down at the process, we sit down together. We develop what the goals are collaboratively. And then those are the goals that over the course of the next year I work on the faculty and the community and everybody else and then the end of the year is when the actual evaluation is on them. Because especially if you're changing goals which this is doing, I know what the survey is that they use and it would be significantly different from how things are structured right now. How things are structured right now are specifically around the ends of whether or not I'm violating the executive limitations. The things that that survey is measuring on are good things, but it is different. And so it's appropriate to give time to actually be able to do things in a nice way. So in my mind, it would be a combination of the ends report. And that's what we do, we work together to figure out, yeah. And again, I'm happy to have the contract change to accept this because I actually like this process better. So it provides feedback. It also looks like, I mean, that was my impression. All of our policies, most of these things are covered in our policies. So in the communications to the board, one of the stipulations is we need to provide the information that the board needs to do its job. That's one of the things in our policy. So what I would like to see is to just connect these with the policies that we already have. Because I think it's gonna go, I think it'll go right along with the policies that we already have. I do too, although I think that what we're trying to do in talking to people about a different process is because what we have right now feels too restrictive and too surface level. So, and one of the reasons for that is that we are under a policy governance, governance. Which I would like to reevaluate as a group if we want to continue that way. And I think this is one of, this is an example of a place where I personally don't think that policy governance is successful for us. It's not working for us. The end. I have been here for six years when we had this conversation of whether or not I have never had a board member ask me a meaningful question of anything that's happening in and around the community or a community they've been talking about or maybe out there. And it's, those conversations need to happen in any process that's gonna allow those conversations to happen on them. Because otherwise what happens is you get set up with a single narrative echo chamber that you were hearing all the time and they're never hearing from you. And that's not a good place to be at. It doesn't stop to be at. So, again, I am all for changing. So, I'm noting that there's steps to take to do it. Just to get a follow-up. So, I kind of self-wondering if this process could be used for inter-spectrally to identify places of focus and have it not carry as like a previous, like I don't know if you're taking a course or if you're taking a pre-test for a course. Well, funny you should say that because. Go ahead. This is right on the, this is on here, paperwork. So there's, like it's on that page. I'll go back to it. I'm going, I'm going, I'm on my way. That was just laundry. So it says. When we do it once a real next year. Yeah, so this is what it says. If this is the first evaluation and the board will be conducting with the superintendent, the VSPA recommends that the process be designed to review the performance of the superintendent during the transition year. And this evaluation serve as the baseline for future evaluations and should provide the board and superintendent with the opportunity. So what it's saying is we establish the goals, you give me the year, you get baseline data, and then you use that point. Why don't you? I thought it was saying. You have it. Based upon your policies that I have followed, your baseline data is the EL reports and it's the answer points. And so one of the things I'm actually suggesting tonight because there usually isn't a lot of feedback that comes from the board on these. It's usually, yeah, we accept it or no, we don't. And again, that's not a criticism. It's just, it's where we stand. This is what I recommend is just basically a feedback protocol. When the board reads an EL report or reads an EDGE report is there's just basic protocol questions that are better asked. When you read that report, what jumps out to you is significant, what data is surprising, what areas would you like more information on and then based upon that discussion of that report, what would you like the district to focus on? And that's one way of giving feedback that we've looked and gotten now. And that's a process that we've never had. Like I said, for six years it's, you know, the board's up there, people most can feel happy about it because we've been back on it. I'm not sure what it is that people want. So that might help us in the state to learn about it. But again, I'm open. I'm very open to the process. We just want to do it right so it's just prepared. Did Debbie give you an idea of when, does it matter when our contract with them would start? Is it, you know, a beginning of a school year? Is it different? I didn't get that, and I haven't worked through this paperwork enough to be able to say, this is when we would do it, this is how it should be. What I do know is that it will take a group of people some extra meetings, an extra time, if anyone has that to give. Well, so I think our first step is voting on whether we want to engage in a contract with the BSBA to start this process even if the start is information getting. Do you have my mind? So what long as we're following the process of doing it, and so I'm quite happy to have that change, because I think it's in the process. I know the process, I've been through it once here. Again, my dissatisfaction at that point, I think the result's really good, was just that it was sprung on me at the end of the year with no notice that what the expectations were of people were measuring and being on the show. So it's appropriate to tell people or hand it's on what you want them to be working on, give them time to work on it, and that's what we're talking about. Especially if it's a departure from what we're doing. Sure, I don't think it is. I mean, I read through this before, and I'm just reviewing it again. Basically, most everything that we have in policy is on here. The specifics of the interpersonal stuff, which, who's gonna, how do they gather that information? They send a survey out to my director points. So that's the principals, that's the transportation person, it's the directors, it's that sort of thing. And that was done before, was it helpful? Yeah, we did it the first year I was on the board, like shortly after, so what's that to be? 20. 20, 20. Yeah, I don't, like I said, I don't think it's a bad process. I'm not fighting the process law, I think it's a good law, I think it's a good change. Well, so maybe it would look like. So that's the only thing that's new. So typically what they end up doing is there's three surveys, the board fills one out, my director reports fill one out, and then I fill one out. And then the VSBA will kind of consolidate that data. We'll sit down and have a discussion about it. Actually, I think I read it myself the most of anybody who come on the survey the last time who took it. We have a discussion about it, we figure out what the goals are, based upon what's there, we set those goals for next year. The piece that I haven't seen is that, once we set those goals is how they measure those. I think it's typically the only part that I was involved and the board was involved in that time, it was just the measurements based on the surveys. I haven't seen the second year. So we would set it up so that you would have goals for this next year, and then look at the end of the year, the goals that we set before September. We'll be about it. Yeah. And I can contact Pietro in terms of language change. Yeah, I can type it up and you can set it up to Pietro. So, I guess the next step would be. And that's to protect you. To take a motion about having a vote on whether we want to hire SBA to a facility. And then the next step after that is, when can we start the process? And then the next step after that would be who is on that song in the beginning. I think that should not be one thing. Yeah. Okay. But are there any ballers here? To give her the authority to contact the SBA. Yeah, okay. So I will make a motion for Chelsea to contact SBA on behalf of the school board to commence the process on facilitating an evaluation of superintendent. And at the cost of 1,500. And for the board to formulate a supplement. Do I have a second for that one on the second? Second. Sarah? Second. Sarah? Do you want to do the charge for the committee at the second point rather than adding it on? Because we need to give that committee a charge or we form the committee and then we do a motion for the charge. Well, the charge we won't know until we have more information from the process, processors. So is there any discussion before a vote on this motion? Any further discussion? Okay. All those in favor, please raise your hand. All right. Chelsea, are you raising? Yeah. Okay. Unanimous. All those opposed? No, because it's unanimous and no one's saying. Okay, great. So, is anyone interested in serving on the committee without knowing exactly what is that willing tale besides more time than you're doing now? More work than you're doing and reporting back to the larger board but working closely with the VSBA representative. Did they say like how much time it was going to take or additional time? You know, we can form that committee at this special meeting in July. Yeah. And once we have more information from. Yeah. So it would be helpful. And so no one has to further have that. Might be able to have a computer strategic planning and have that discussion. It could be. Yeah, we still need to figure out what July's going to be. I would say that would be this training for July because the end thing is different than it was. I don't know if anyone got the email I sent out at the summary of that. But. Right, and we'll get to that. We do have a VSBA ends discussion yet after the end's report. Okay. So we've moved to go into that process. We will talk about the committee at our July meeting which we will also talk about after Lane take it away from the end's report. So we've already did a major press meeting and again, this isn't meant to put folks on the spot because it's real, but I think it's a good recommendation and that's kind of what I put up here. So the change that I'm kind of recommending in the process and it does stay within the bounds of policy governance and that has to do with how the reports are generally kind of managed. Folks have known that I request the word kind of direct discussion and kind of feedback from the guys I have with efforts on behalf of the district. And so I think if the reports are properly considered we can actually get that feedback out of it. And so the questions that I would throw out for the board is kind of starting questions and then as people get a little bit more comfortable with it we can get a little bit more specific and I'd like to show you what specific people look like. But I would ask these questions, folks have had the M's report for this is actually one three now and folks have had a chance to look through it. Are there things that jump out as significant, either significant goods or what you think made the significant add? What data surprising? What areas do you think we need to collect more information on if any? And then based upon that discussion come back to this idea of what would you as the board as the representatives of the taxpayer and the community, why like the district of focus we're closing out based on the policy side. If things were a little bit more refined, we could start by changing question three. So same questions but we make question three a little bit more specific and then it's about what are the implications for teaching the right reason. Because that's the focus and that's what we should be working on in that situation. But that's my suggestion. So just to recommend some people with that. I'm always in favor of a jumping off point for discussion like these questions. Well, I've gathered, at least with this group, which I'm sad of is how awful we are in seventh grade and I think we say we're catching up with some certain way down there to begin with with eighth and ninth grade we need to river ahead or higher above the bar like we're not as often as we are with this. So they're very, very good questions. Some of the additional data that might be helpful is looking at a launch group at the open time and see if it's actually a group that's going to go over the last five years, right? And the data is in there. Well, why are our sixth graders doing fine and our seventh graders are quite not? And this is pairing them, oh, we're not in with other peers like other kids go through this, other seventh graders go through the same social emotional challenges as I want to do. So there was a plan in place to address this just prior to COVID and it involved moving, and this is good because we can have some very blunt conversations and this is going to be a very blunt conversation that I think we could be able to speak to. We tried to move the sixth grade up into the high school to create a real middle school walk, right, sixth, seventh and eighth grade together. We do sort because we had a whole bunch of financial resources to be able to actually kind of separate them from the rest of the high school. It would also allow us to provide adequate space for the preschools that we were building at the time when we brought it out to the high school and the preschool grades that hadn't existed before. The problem that happened and this goes back to why the discussions between the board and the superintendent need to be more detailed and the folks need to get out of the echo chamber is what happened in those discussions and trying to get that change to happen and why it failed was very typical of what happens in this community and in this district in particular. So I sat down with the cabinet and the first thing we said is look, you know, we gotta go and talk with the community about this is the big deal. We gotta have those conversations. We gotta get their input. But before we do that, let's pull together what it looks like because the first question that anybody is gonna ask, especially the teachers, is if you do this, are we gonna lose jobs? And so we spent two or three weeks. Every principal was doing the work and kind of examining how we could pull these grades up, how the teachers would switch around. And when we got done, we got to the conclusion no one was gonna lose a job. In fact, we were gonna actually have to add a little bit more or two more. So about four hours, and folks saw this with Brian Rainn-Milt, it was a similar pattern that happened, about four hours before the open forum, we had set it out to the community and the staff together to have the discussion.  The day came. Why did I say that? What's that based on? What's their fear? That is my point in terms of the echo changer. The damage was done the second that that act occurred. Folks came in and it took me about an hour to get folks calmed down, get them into a place where they could actually look at the data and the data was pretty clear. You would have a rise up through the high school to the student performance in fifth grade and start to drop in sixth grade and drop a little more in seventh grade, it was more on top. And so when they started to see that data, they started to look at it and kind of come out of the fuge that people had put them in. And we had the discussion and the discussion, they started to kind of change their tone, but the damage was already done because again, that one-sided narrative. And so the agreement that was made at that time with the folks that were in that meeting was, look, get the scores up at the little school first and then we'll be happy to have sixth grade. And the scores have been going down. But remember, your scores have started out as a rock bottom in the state when it started. Again, a lot of conversation, so let's have it. We've been able to do a tremendous amount of work at the elementary level. Folks have been receptive, they're not happy about the additional work that's been required, but they've been true person, they've done it and they've done a good job trying to do the work that is required to get the high school and the tech center where they need to be has been really helpful. And I'll leave it at that. So where we are, things are improving and again, the improvements have been happening during COVID, which is an impressive feat. So we've got to get folks ready for that. But they're not where we want them to be. And so a lot of the work next year and one of the things we'll talk about in the executive session is that there are certain things that all schools do. Our schools need to be doing them too. I've spent three or four years working with folks having open forums and having to do with patients and people either show up to help about the work that needs to be done. And now we're at the point where people just need to step up to the point that they're in with. They don't want to do some of the simple things like the homework policy, they don't want to change the master's visual advice or basic structures that would help all of these things. When you say today, are you referring to our staff? I'm not, again, I'm trying to be but it has been, there's been a lot of repercussions. And again, people, I get it, but we got a mission to do and we got a mission on behalf of the kids that we would follow through on this. Again, elementary school has come a tremendous way. They're actually performing quite well. They were willing to do the work. They listened, they worked with folks to be able to do that. Again, it was additional work. They were going to be convincing for it, but they did the work and the effort and stuff. I just want to push on you a little bit about when you say the work has been done and they're not happy about it, they're not happy about the extra work that it's been done. It sounds like- That's what we hear in negotiations. Okay. All right. I hear on one hand that our staff is satisfied and I hear on another hand that they are not and it's trying to get a sense of, what is that coming from? Depends on the school. The two schools that need critical work and have been for a while are RTCC and RUHS. And again, I think we go into the executive session. We're happy to be quite open about what my thoughts are. Can I ask about this? I remember the, very soon after I came to town, I think, the sixth grade middle school thing. And I think a lot of people, myself included, had a very emotional reaction to it. It's a big change. My junior high was seven to eight, so I changed from, you know, wait for a hundred years. And I remember the biggest, what I remember as the kind of primary emotional response was this is happening next year. That means my kid is already in a school year. I'm not even saying that's what the truth was, but that was the original. That's what people heard. Right, so, and that's what I heard. And all I understood it, that we're in the middle of a school year and starting that fall, suddenly my fifth grade, I didn't know fifth grade this time, but suddenly someone's fifth grader would be in middle school with like no rent. And I think, I think any big change is going to initially have a very big emotional response. And it has to, we have to allow for it. And it has to be for a while. I mean, COVID got in the way, right? And maybe given another year, people would start to really let the data sink in, maybe take over the emotion and see that maybe they don't mean to disagree, but may start to agree. I think it was just a- But at that initial, it was to the point where when people actually calm down, two of the staff members that had been part of what they were putting out on social media to get the people worked out. And again, I'm not saying that they did it to be mean or cruel. They've probably heard whatever they heard, again, it's that if. And that's why I keep saying to the board, you need to talk to me. Instead of having those face-to-face conversations, they heard something from somebody, probably one of the principals was talking about it and they heard a fragment of it. And it killed something that could have been beautiful and could have worked. And it wasn't going to be going into place next year. It could, the next year, it couldn't have. We had structures that had to be built first. It was a two- and three-year project. But we had gone through, like I said, when we're planning stuff out, especially in those times in terms of trying to fix things, the first thing that we wanna do is make sure that we've done our homework so that when people are asking questions, we can give them honest answers so hopefully they can feel these. And that's the homework that we can do. But it's a shame that it fell apart that way because we would be in a much different place now. Well, but I think that's unavoidable. I mean, I think these days, I have an emotional response to something. I can immediately pick up my phone and put out to the world, listen to my opinion and my emotional response on this thing and everybody on the BAM social media is gonna see it and have, and either agree or disagree. Oh my God, I can't believe she's having to go through that. I don't think, I think it's unavoidable. So I think, and I wasn't a part of the process then and this might be exactly what happened, but I also think with Chelsea making a suggestion about being at the Fourth of July parade, which I'm never gonna agree, but having a table and talking about it, I think, you know, I heard about it because someone hung out of a window at the hospital where I happened to be walking past and said, hey, have you heard? And I, when I went to an informational night about it, there was one, it was Elijah, it happened to be Elijah doing one person who people could ask of. And I think I'm certainly in favor of being a part of a board that, you know, is at different places and able to answer questions. And we all have. What I need from this board, I don't need, and again, this is not, it's just an observation. It's an observation from other boards that I've worked with in the past. It's an observation from Galaxy Interactions and other superintendents of board relationships is when you hear things on the street and it disturbs you.  So that at the very least, if I'm reasonable and rational and it all makes sense that you got a pretty good indication that I know what I'm talking about and things are moving forward the way that they should. And it puts you in a position so that when people say things that are not correct that might be damaging, you can say, have you talked the lane because I'm hearing something new. A simple word like that from a person that's in a leadership position can have a tremendous impact on how people interpret what's going on in the district. If folks are just receiving information and being worried about it and not having those conversations and not directing them to the people they can get the actual answers from, we're gonna end up right where we are. And I think that's part of our, is our intention with this communication going out to the community. And it's wonderful. Because I think it hasn't been, at least for me at that time, I didn't think the board or you, I didn't know you were as accessible as we and you are. Well, policy governance kind of confuses us. My relationships in the past were just that. There's always gonna be rumor in the end of what you wanna make sure is that if it's out there, it's saying the truth. In the one way that as a group, and that's what I was trying to talk about but not so eloquently last time, as a group, we work together as a team. It doesn't mean that you believe everything that I said. You check if you're unsure and I provide you with the data. That's an appropriate response. But if you're hearing rumors in the street and they're not correct, you correct them. Because that's what puts it to rest. Otherwise, they take on a life of their own. They build and they build and they build and we get to where we work, where we're at. And I agree that one of the problems is that I think policy governance has, just speak for myself, has made me feel so restricted and worried that saying really anything on my own, because of the one voice thing, or only speaking to you and through you to others, has made me think that I can't say anything. I want you to say things, but I want you to make sure that you've heard both sides before you make a judgment. That's what good leaders need to do. And so there's a lot about policy governance that I like. But like every system, they all have weaknesses. And so usually you take the best that it offers and you do what you need to to fix the other portions and bring something in that's a little bit different. And if things are gonna go forward and if folks want these two schools to be corrected, I need the backing of the board and I need your trust. And I'm not asking for you to give it to me lately. What I'm asking for you to do is when you hear things that you're concerned about is to give me a call and let me speak my case. And then make your decision, not mine. So that when you're hearing things on the street, you don't even have to respond to what I told you, but you didn't say, that's not what my understanding is. Go talk to me. Or you can say, this is what I know as long as it's not something confidential. So that people are getting that information and they're also being trained to go to the source as opposed to kind of share the information.  And I think it's very important for folks to see and to know. Because this is, sorry about that, did I cut you off? I apologize, I didn't realize. So one of the discussions, and I had this with a group in the union yesterday, was the big common thing that is set all over town all the time is how bad nutrition rate is. And so the easiest thing to do, and I had to black some of this out is there's other information here that's confidential. These are the people that are leaving this year. If we add it up, it's actually 13 teachers. When I talked with the group who was wonderful by the way yesterday in very, there's a lot of good works that we've been accomplished together I believe after the conversation. 13 teachers, I'm gonna subtract two because they're actually moving to other districts, other positions within the district. There are two that were non-renewed and then the folks yesterday said, well here's a couple that you may not have heard from yet so we're gonna have them in. So right now based upon this in terms of teachers, there's 11 teachers in the district that are moving on. If we do the math, there are, move this over, there are 147 teachers total in the district. So what is 11 divided by 147? 11 divided by 147. That is our turnover rate, 7.4%. I'm sorry that the calculator is not showing up there for teachers. I have the article from Rand Corporation and I can share that with you and I'm happy to share it with the board and anybody in the community. The average turnover rate for schools in the United States prior to COVID, not now, prior to COVID is 16%. Can we see what kind of damage misinformation that people are called on and cause to the image of the district? I have been dealing with the rumor that I am not supportive of the staff that I have been cutting support staff. Here is some data. This is when I started in 2017, 18 years, 22, 20, 23. And again, I'm not saying anybody is lying. I'm saying they are speaking from their heart on what they will be.  In 2017, 2018, when I started, there were 60 support staff in this district. There are 82 now. I have not been cutting support staff. I have been adding, I have been adding at the requests of the staff and of my principals. In terms of teachers, when I started, there were 130, there are now 147. In terms of bus drivers, we've got two more, we've got an extra tech person, we've got three more administrators. The total staffing level in 2017, 2018 was 217. It's now 262. I have supported my staff extremely well. In terms of your budget, and this is a fee in and of itself, which credit should be given to, I'm gonna toot my own horn on this, even though some people are gonna be angry because it's increased this much. These increases all went to supporting the work of changing how the schools were performing by supporting the staff. When I started the district budget with 16.6 million, this year it's 23.5. I have raised the district budget, total district budget, by 41% since I have been here, in support of the staff and in support of this district, to do the work that needs to be done. I'm at a point where I just need the final kind of holdout schools who I get are nervous and they've been able to do their thing for a long time before I came to get on board and work together and say, hey, these are things that might actually improve what we're doing, a master schedule, homework policy, not letting kids end their high school two weeks before the end of, that's been a thing here, is two weeks before school is out and kids are doing what they call their portfolio expenses, so each kid spends about 40 minutes doing their portfolio expenses and the other rest of the two weeks, it's makeup work. So yes, so these are structures that we need to change. The staff understandably have gotten used to the structures and so changing them is going to be difficult. In addition to all this, Heather this year alone has brought in over 1.2, or actually it's up to 1.4 million dollars in grants to support the works in this district. During COVID, during the time when I was by myself, managing a crisis, because I was the only central office administrator outside of the business manager and a special education person who don't do the general stuff that needs to be done in and around the district. In addition to all the other work that was going on, I brought in seven million dollars in grants in this district and all the support for the work that was done. So the reason that I'm bringing it up is we need to, if anything, we need to get back to the reality of what's happening and stop the rumor builds and stop the things that are being said or if they're being said and people believe it, come and ask, I'll give you the data and if I screwed something up, I'm gonna be the first person to believe it and then we're gonna fix it. But again, I appreciate the time that you have to save this, but I've had the tar taking out of you for three years now on things that have made it very difficult to do. I apologize, but I appreciate the time you're talking about. So I think we were talking about this. Do people have any questions about the numbers that Lane just had up there? So I had a long conversation with you and I'll probably back you, people, if you remember. Just talking about maybe expanding the ends a little bit too. And remember, we talked a little bit about, some of these ends, they end at ninth grade and we talked about and you sort of shared with me how, and it's not in here yet, but how the different departments are working on. It is, it is in some cases. Benchmarks for things beyond, so I think it's like BLA, ninth grade is the last time they're gonna have that standardized testing, right? So we've got a, ninth grade is just really the beginning of high school, so we've got to have some benchmarks beyond standardized testing to sort of make sure, and it sounds like you've been at work from our conversation, several of the different departments are all working on further benchmarks because a lot of this testing data ends pretty thoroughly on. I used to be a level grade and they moved into ninth grade. And so all the departments, they went to, so every department that was associated with a, and it's a very good question, I'm glad you asked it, because this is where people hear what's going on. Every department that fell under a foundational knowledge and worked on curriculum this year and they worked on reinterpreting the end statements, why did we do it that way? Because they're the experts and this gets them invested in the work that needs to be done to improve the schools. So like the English department and the Social Studies department, and I think I talked about this in here, they are settling in on the, there's an acronym for them, but they're basically the evidence style essay questions that the, The DDQs. The DDQs that the advanced placement uses because this is a high power essay, the students have to go to source documents, they have to prove their point, they have to go to the source documents to get the information to justify it, prove it. And so they haven't set up so that all years of students are taking English, all years that they're taking social studies, they're using the DDQs that they're developing as well as one of them, I don't remember if it was industry or social studies out in the top, also has a major kind of capstone research paper in addition to as the data that they're going to be using for the, and so that work has happened this year. And so the next step, next year in the fall five days to the front, part of it is actually to start to take a look at, okay, based upon the data that we currently have, if these are all the things that the students are supposed to learn, which ones are they not up to snuff on? Which ones are they historically underperforming in? And as part of those discussions, there's a facilitated process that I created 20 years ago that's been quite effective, identify what they are, get together with your team, your expert team at ELA, if it's ELA, and determine what new learning activities and lesson plans that you're going to put together right now at the beginning of this year that are going to address, or you believe are going to address those deficiencies. You put those into place when the time comes in the learning cycle for the year, and then you follow it up with a form of assessment to see if they had any impact that they were supposed to have. If they caused the kids to approve you where you want them to be, you move on. If they didn't, you come back together with a team and you come up with a different set of learning activities and you try to get into the final course. And if you can't find what works, then that's when you come and you talk to me and we work together to develop a professional development framework. And that way, the professional development is coming from the actual staff. They are telling us what we, and they've got objective reasons for why they chose what they need to learn about. So there's a whole process, but I can't do the process unless people are willing to get on. It seems like after yesterday's conversation, which was a good one, they were asking to work on a lot of things I've been trying to work on for a long time. And so we have a follow-up. We're going to take the half of the day on the first day back from school. It's professional development day to map out those plans and start to get into the next step. So again, it's been a process. There is a lot that's going on. Whether it'll pay off, it'll have an improvement. Well, this will be a much more robust end statement. It's not going to end in like three. And the right way to do it is I shouldn't be coming into you and presenting their work. They should be coming into you and presenting their work. That's how they should work. That's how they get invested in it and they feel that it's important. And so there is quite a well-developed plan. I just got to get people that are willing to do it. Elementary for the most part was, it's been a little bit more difficult. Now is that because you already have, there's already sort of at the elementary level a fair amount of test-based, you know, the tests are happening at the elementary level already. And so the teacher, and there are tools there for the teachers to use. But I'm wondering if you're getting pushed back at all because I know before we did look at test data, but the teachers also looked, they created some other benchmarks along the way as well. We were sort of working toward some other benchmarks because if you talk with several teachers, they'll say, yeah, the test, there's not 100% buy-in and I'm a little bit of a skeptic myself. Not everybody is a great test-taker. And so we have to have a more robust system that looks at other benchmarks that professional educators, along with curriculum experts can be looking at and saying, here are some other ways to look at fluency with reading, you know, ability to problem-solving math. And so in addition to the state testing, part of those increases in budget have brought in a human process assessment system of two or three online tools for the teachers to use or apply that should grow the data over time. At the same time, I also developed a evaluation process that is full focus, which I sent out to the board a few months back or maybe it was even a year ago, I can't keep it all straight anymore, that a lot of folks actually adhere to. And I showed you what the results of one of them look like. They were collecting the data that they thought was most important based upon the buffet of things that they choose from. Two set goals in terms of we were primarily focused on that the last year or two, in collecting their own data, responding to it in their own classrooms, talking with their peers about it, it wasn't what they wanted to be if they weren't on track to meet the rules they'd set for themselves. And it was a really, really good process. It's long and it's arduous, but it gets us where we want to go. And it gets more efficient over time. So there are tremendous systems. The fight right now is I need people on board. And that's been those different goals. Maybe some of those failures made me mine. I tried to connect with folks with the open forums and listening sessions and be there to have these discussions openly and publicly so everybody could have a go at it. But it was difficult to get folks to show. The staff to be involved in creating the... That's why they were involved in reinterpreting the Edge reports. So they didn't do it. Or they didn't want to. So now we are at the point of changing some structural things that need to change. That there's been a lot of pushback on. And the union survey, that was a lot of what it was. There's not gonna be a whole more policy over my dead body. The master schedule is never gonna work. It's like, hey, we've talked about it for a year. At Input, can you try it for a year or two with us? And we'll continue to collect input. And if we can tweak it to make it better, we will. But can we at least try it? And I think that's what the primary fight going on is right about now. Can you not mediate that? Well, that's, if you wanna have that discussion openly, let's have that discussion openly because this is gonna tell me where the board sits. Yes, I can. And that there are one of the tough parts in negotiations. And again, people were wonderful and sweet and I don't wanna damage that yesterday because it was awesome. But yes, we have obligations to the staff under the contract and we do our darnedest to the top of that. The thing that seems to get forgotten from my perspective and from what I've experienced is that they have obligations to us as well. The master schedule that they teach under is our call. It's our call. It's our call. It's our call. Whether or not there's a homework policy, that's our call. Our CBA allows us to do those things. You never wanna force things on people which is why we've been trying to invite them to the table to say give us input. But once the input is had, we've gotta make the decision is okay. Is this reasonably calculated to get us to where we wanna go or not? If it's not gonna get us to where we wanna go, especially after hearing from the educators who are smart people, they know their stuff, then we don't do it. But if what we're hearing, which is what we heard is mostly fear of being unknown, then we move forward with it and we find out whether we really should have been afraid to begin with. And so that's where we're at. So yes, I can. But if I mandate it, that's what we're gonna talk about in the executive session. We're gonna talk about what the repercussions can be. And ripping things apart and upsetting people and making it rather ugly. And so that's not the preferable way to do it but yes, we can. If we get stuck going down the path and that's the reason trust with the board is so important is the board needs to, when people come in and complain and say lane is doing this, lane is doing that, that's when you need to ask those questions of me. Decide if you trust what I've done and what I'm doing and if you do that. If you expect me to do that type of work on my own, it will fail. And I can tell you the possible pathways that will evolve from that if you want to hear it. My, I just, I hate to interrupt the fruitful discussion but I feel like we've gotten away from this end's report which we do need to vote on. So I really hate to stunt a busy discussion but I feel the need to rein us in. We're gonna come back to this discussion. We are gonna come back to this discussion this evening. Yeah. Okay. But back to things that popped out for people with this end's report that may or may not hinder us moving to a vote whether to accept it. Well, I'm, I will say that I met with Lane because I had several reservations but when I spoke with him about how things are in the works for changes, I'm gonna accept this one the way it is. It is not the best end's report. I mean, you look at kind of the data. I mean, this is, this is what we're holding to the community and saying, here, this is what we've accomplished. It's pretty small, a lot of the data ends at ninth grade but again, it's a work in progress and he's been working with the staff to begin to really make it a little bit of a needier document that's gonna really drive down into the system and hopefully create ends that work for students.  Remember five years ago, it was here, now it's here. And the size of our, I mean, there, you're not talking about a huge population size so you can have different classes with different strengths and that particular class may not have a great strength in terms of standardized testing. And I may not be understanding the... Seventh grade and fourth grade are typically weak across the nation just because of the changes in the difficulty level. So it's actually pretty impressive that our fourth grade is doing what it is because it's usually the fourth and seventh. In the assessment instruments. In the assessment instruments, if you look at what happens across, not just the state of the country, it was a horrible year. And again, my response to this is great where I would like to see some other data points that are looked at in addition to just testing. Now maybe I have to tell him that was data points. No, I want the professional educators to look at, okay, what are some other ways besides just straight testing that can show that a student is learning how to read, learning how to solve problems, engaging in the social studies and the arts, but maybe they're not the best test taker. And so they're not showing necessarily proficiency on a group or test. But that doesn't seem like something our business should play. What's not fair is to tell me you're not happy with it and not tell me what you clearly want. Definitely not. And this also ties into what we're trying to do with the evaluation process and to be more clear about goals and what we also are trying to do with re-looking at our ends. I just want to remind people that and your ends may change. This is approving or not part of Lane's evaluation, right? The way that it is now before we change this process. This, he based on these ends and it sure does sound to me like this group needs to do a lot of work on the end so that we are clear about what we want from Lane. To me, this ends report is a rational and reasonable interpretation of the ends as they are now. Do I think the ends as they are now are rational and reasonable? Not so much. That's where the work has to be, but that's what this report is answering. So that's what we need to focus on in terms of this vote. Moving forward, we have work to do to figure out what we want in these ends and telling Lane, these are your goals, this is what we want to see and we want to see more than test work. Whatever we want those goals to be, that's where, that's our job. That's where the work needs to be done. Although it needs to be kind of, I mean, I'm not a professional educator. I can't tell you what the best way to assess. So you follow, you follow in. But that's like the- You follow in, the staff comes in and you have a conversation. The evaluation tool typically for a superintendent is negotiated. We talk about what we think is important because I have information that you don't have about what may be possible or what may be not. But you can also, and this is a great way to engage the staff and the schools is to have some representatives come in as well and say, this is what we're concerned about or what we're hearing from the taxpayers that we need to do. What's the best way with all this around the table? What are the best measurements to use? And so you get everybody's input on the table. That's the best way I would argue. So that you bring in an awesome conversation. It really is. Yeah. Are you looking for a motion? I am looking for a motion to- I make a motion that we accept the ends. Second. Seconded by Sam. Further discussion? All those in favor? Raise your hand or aye. Opposed? Sentience? Unanimous. The ends report is accepted as is. All right. We are not doing great with time but this is the work that we need to do. So let's just keep diving in. The ends, in terms of looking at them again, evaluate. This is where we are also in our annual schedule. This is when we would be re-evaluating our ends. We have talked about maybe wanting to use our July training slash retreat slash meeting to have a training to update our ends. Chelsea, let us know that the recommendation from the VSBA is that we are skipping a step if we suddenly come in for a training to rewrite the ends because we don't have the information yet from the community what else they want or have we hit it all or do we need to suss out what's in here? So- Did you tell them that we did the portrait of a graduate? Yeah. And she said that's a really small snapshot because it's not the whole community having input if they want to. She said that other schools do that but they also do these sort of- Do a larger reach out. Yeah. And she, you know, I don't know. I can't remember what I wrote here a week ago but basically what she said was that I said, well, so what do people do? And she said, well, you know, if your town has like a big event that happens you set up a table and you have cards that have two questions on them and you ask people to fill them out. Are you from this town? Yes. Will you fill this out here? Put it in this box and you might get however many. 50, 120, I don't know. And then you take that information and that becomes part of what your ends focuses. That's exactly what we did. Yeah, that's what we did. For the portrait of a graduate? For the portrait of a graduate. Yeah, I'm not sure how much. You've also been at the Fourth of July. So we've currently got results from that year. So we've, okay, so maybe that's not- We get people in place. Nobody wants to deal after Fourth of July. Yeah, it might be better to go to some school events that are already happening, like not asking people to come out, specials for a community forum, but sporting events or something. Again, we're primarily getting the school community and not the broader community. Right, so are there other events that we can think of? Town meeting. Town meeting, which is interesting. We got hundreds of responses to the forum. So currently the POG is, I've left it in draft, like I've left that title on it draft, because whatever you decide as the ends, I really want those two things to align. I don't want it to be like, oh, the kids did all this work to create a collection and we're invalidating their effort. It's really important that when we say, okay, this is the POG, that it's connected to what we're assessing, how we're assessing it, and what our end statement is so that everybody feels like, oh yeah, I had a voice in that. And I'm part of this, and big picture thinking. So I'm not going to take the word draft off the POG until you feel we've collected enough data. And I'm happy to share those sheets. We still have sheets with hundreds and hundreds of like, kids should be able to swim the Nile, a mile or was it the Nile? I think they misspelled it, it doesn't matter. Kids should be able to fix a car. And just hundreds of things like, I want my students to be able to do this or know this. So maybe we should do another data dive and get more data, but not discard what we already have. No, I think it's a useful piece, I'm sure. I just think what she was saying is it's not representative of the stakeholders that are not involved in the school, basically. Did she have any suggestions on how to get that group? Well, these were her suggestions. Like if your town has a big event, go out there, walk up to people, be like, do you live in this town, will you fill this out? She also may not know the extent of how we conducted Portugal graduate. So she made me think of some more boilerplate version of it then, and what we did. I mean, I don't know if this group feels like we should just use that, then we could start there. Maybe we could use that draft of the Portugal graduate and bring that out to the community and say, here's what we're thinking. We want our graduates of our district to look like. Does this, is this what you have, what you will see as an important? I think that would be great. How do we reach that? But again, where is that forum? Because we have presented that in this forum for anybody in our community. Did it go out to them? No. Because it's a draft. It's a draft, and so I shared it with the people who worked on it. And since then, I've actually asked the artists to put a watermark over it that says draft. So we could print it up on a large scale printer and display it and ask for feedback. Can you live with this? What needs to change? What could be better? What do you like? What don't you like? Type of feedback before we say, okay, this is the document. But I was really hoping that we could have a document that we could say this is the document at the start of the school year. The final step is you email it up to the community and you vote on it. Because if you get 80% of the people coming back on, I can live with this, I think this is good. You're good to go. That was when we did that process. I read it in Swamp Scott, that was the final piece, which you got all the feedback, you adjusted it, you got it, you got it, you got it. And then everybody in the community actually got it. And how do you conduct that vote? Do you do an absentee ballot, or do you have to do our survey? It was just a survey, it went out to the entire, how do you remember how many tens of thousands of people were in the community through our armistice serve. We also allowed them to do paper ballots when they were coming in to events at the school. We left the collection open for probably about two weeks, and I think people had come in to do the work on it, so of course they were in a vote, I don't know if you can understand. I think that people are more likely to vote if they have something in front of them. I think we'd get even more participation than a postcard where people have to come up with their own idea, but if they can prove or not something that already exists, I think we'll get better. You could do the voting at the fall events at the schools. You know, they have the back of school nights and things like that, that's what we're doing. We're just not gonna get a broad collection. Could we put them at the library? Could we, that's why paper stuff, I think, would get us beyond the school community lists. At the town offices. Yes. But I think using the draft, I know you'd rather it go out final. Oh, no. I think it's something to vote on. I am totally, I was hoping to have them printed and ready to go to be displayed at graduation, but the large-scale printer that we ordered was backlogged and didn't come on time, and so anyways, that goal, I did not meet my, the timeline I had envisioned on that, so the idea of putting it out in the community really sounds good to me. The library, other places in town that would host it, I think that's a great idea. Your group, if that was working. Thank you, and many of the other people were involved, and they did, the students did a really conservative, but they were like, how can we reach the nursing home? How can we reach the library? So there was, the hardest part, I have to tell you, was reading everything that everyone wrote, right? Yes, and there was a big call for swings from the elementary grades, and so we are adding swings to Randolph Elementary School, so. I think we need to do what we have and not like, recreate wheels. We could just like, keep kicking this hand. Yeah, right. Yeah, like, yeah. Thank you, yes. Right, so this brings up what do we want to use the July time for? Is it to kind of format how we're gonna do this vote? Do we want the vote to happen before the school year starts? Yes, yes. Right, so what do we want to use July for then? The logistics of this, it would seem we may need staff assistance, I would think, right? Printing. Oh, yeah. Folding it, I mean, I'm a good folder, but. Hey, as the staff are in and out, we provide them with stipends. They come in and do a lot of kind of curriculum work and they kind of do a catch up for revisions and things like that. There's quite a few of them that are gonna be around. We're also running the summer programming for the recovery for students. So there will be staff available depending on how much time you need for them. I mean, it's reasonable to expect that they can pay for it. We can try to come up with the money and give us the hours and the people you need to work on. To July. It seems like this group needs to get to do, in July needs to do our work on what we think this should be, what we think this evaluation process should be. And then at least once we're on the same page, then we can bring in portrait of a graduate, community and make a more final version. That's just my thinking. So what I'm hearing, correct me if I'm wrong, is that we meet next month with this in front of us, with the draft in front of us, translate it into what we think the ends would be using that information. Put it out to a vote, make sure people approve of it and then we have our ends. Is that what you said? I don't think so. I think I've just translated it. I like the translation though. I don't think that's what you said. No, no, that's essentially what I'm saying. So a relatively standard meeting with like two agenda items. Yeah, I don't wanna deal with all this mechanics of the meeting. I wanna just do the work. Like I want us to come and do the work rather than us. Like we're trying to do the work right now, but we realize, wait, that's not what we're supposed to be doing right now. We're supposed to be approving these. But I want us to like have that conversation and get on the same page as to what, I don't know what, like why do we serve on this board? Why do we, you know, what changes to the school, you know, goals and how we communicate with Wayne? I don't think we haven't done that work. So like I think we need like real time to do that work. So like a retreat? Yeah. Okay. So what I propose, because I think it also can be dangerous to go into a meeting with too broad of an agenda. An agenda item, even if the agenda is one item. So I think we need a very clear jumping off point, which knowing this group will tangent into everything. And it's a public meeting, just a reminder. And, you know, maybe we schedule for half a day or three hours or four hours or more of a treat like than our regular meeting. And there's food that I will provide. Yeah, that's kind of where my head's at, but maybe other people think differently and maybe they wouldn't get staff and community involved right off, so. Okay, so in our regular rhythm of things that would be July 14th. But of course, our regular rhythm is also six to eight at night, eight. So if we want to do a longer meeting, I think we all need to take out our calendars. I think it's July 12th. Sorry. It is July 12th. Thank you, sorry. I'm out of town. I know I am. Okay. I also don't necessarily know if it needs to be four hours. Like I think we just need to have it focused on that one item in my opinion. I think we can start with two hours if we still have more work to be scheduled on the meeting. Okay. I think that sounds good because after a couple of hours you just get like. You're correct. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. It sounds like we do have a vice-chair conflict though on that particular date. So I'd like to see if we can, I know summer's rough. You know, people taking time and stuff like that. What about the following week? Is everyone about the long weekend? That would be the 19th. I'm out of town. July, out of town. Oh boy.  That it's the long weekend. I'm gone Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and I come back on Thursday. Okay. How do people feel about the 14th, which I originally said, but it's a Friday. You're out of town. You're available now. This is nearly impossible. When are you, what's up? I'm moving out. Is that the Wednesday previous? Yeah. Okay, the fifth? I could do the fifth. Oh my God. I could tell where it is on. I'm open to the fifth. I could do the fifth. Rachel, yes. Yeah. July fifth. We're talking in the evening. July fifth? I don't know. July fifth. July fifth? I'm bringing food. I'm personally donating food. Yeah, I think we all just brought something. Yeah, okay. Let's do a potluck style. Yeah. Now you guys are really putting the pressure on. Wait a minute. I'll bring the fire. Never mind. I'm not available. Whatever happened, I had to bring the food. Yeah. I got to bring the food figure. This is, you know, we can do this, but could I, I think we have a motion that we're gonna have to finish the meeting or should we? I just, the one that's on the calendar, yes, for July 12th. Well, we'll just have to warn that it's canceled the regular meeting. You know, we'll have to warn this is a special meeting. Fantastic. Whatever you want to call it. And the agenda item is ENDS discussion. ENDS discussion. Evaluation and discussion. And the second read of those two policies. Thank you. And then, is it, yeah. Everything we know. They're a wire line. Oh, and the letter, right? We need our letter. We need to agree on that. And the puns are wrapped in the letter. And getting it out. So now you're getting quite an agenda. That's fine. If it's those three things, that's fine. But no more. And we won't turn up anything else. This is what happens though. Like we'd say that we're gonna talk about one thing and then there's like a whole agenda. Yeah. Right, but. So you have to get me what we need for the agenda. And I'm gonna have to warn it soon because the way the calendar is. Yeah. Okay. All right, so. Do we need a motion here? No. No, okay. No, we'll just warn the other meeting is canceled. Okay. The regular meeting, the 12th. 6 p.m. Location. Well, where would it be? Right here. It's in the budget. Oh. It would be the next Thursday, right? Can we just do it at the media center? Yeah. I don't know. At the highest point? Probably. Yeah, we can check. It's a special meeting. We don't have to follow the. Great. So you think the media center? I'll check and see if you can. They don't usually do a clean up in that area. I know. So later in the summer. I would say either media or the elementary school library. Okay. The other thing is time. 6 p.m. 6 o'clock. 6 to 8. We can also do the text center period of power. Fishbowl? Just one of those three places. Whatever. Media center or fishbowl? Yeah. We can all fit it. Yeah, just, what do you want me to put on it? Because it's a special meeting. I'm going to have to warn this because the paper will be, I'll have to be a next Thursday's paper in order to be for July 5th. Okay. Do you see what I'm saying? Yes, absolutely. So I'm going to show agenda with public comment, because we've called the agenda. No, I won't put the whole agenda. It would be a special meeting regarding what? Ends. Ends discussion? Okay. Yeah. And then the regular agenda we'll have to put out anyway. Yeah. Okay. Got it.  There's two. One more right. Okay. Great. Quarterly facilities report. So you have a copy of that. I'm happy to answer the questions. The highlighted portions that are on there are the major items that are currently being worked on or have recently been completed. The biggest things to be aware of, and this will be in the consent agenda, are the reserve fund requests. One of the major ones is to put the generator in an RAS. It is the last school that does not have a generator. We've been working on that two-fold. One, because we've been getting a lot of outages, especially Randolph's beginning time. You saw it up here. Now it's been Randolph the last couple of years. But it's also to make sure that each of the schools is an emergency site so that if they have to evacuate folks, these are the places they can come up and they've got their heat and they've got their water and they've got what they need to be able to. In addition, one of the other reserve requests that you are gonna see is to redo the paving around this building. I have one question. Yeah, go ahead. Because we're doing that, we're picking kind of an emergency site. Does the state give us any extra money there? No, we actually end up doing more work, which is fine. There's the ramen crew as well as the emergency manager that oversees the three towns will come in and is actually already been working with our facilities crews to start the set of processes and procedures, nor the emergency equipment should be stored. If you've got to transport people, how can we share things to help them do that? So that process is gonna be another way. So good question. The Brookfield paving is around the building here. So that's about to be 72,000. The RES generator, it will be 237,000. It's a big bill. We tried to do it earlier, but during COVID we just couldn't find a unit. They weren't building units big enough to be able to supply that. And then one of the pieces that we'll talk a little bit about in the real estate section, in the executive session is the easement for RTCC, that little road that runs by the A-frame house. Been doing some talks with both the owners as well as the legal counsel who have the right to maintain it. We used to think that he had to be in agreement about certain things to be able to do work on that road. We are always allowed to bring it back up to a previous state. And so we went out and talked with them. We said, hey, we can just do this, but we know that that previous state didn't make you happy. We're willing to do extra work to make you happy and to help with the water flow and stuff. This is what it looks like. For that you're gonna have to agree to it. And he did agree. And so that way we'll be able to finally get back to that road prepared. Why are we keeping that road? It's curious. What's that? It's the primary exit that the tech center uses at the end of the day, so that we're not co-vingling the traffic that's picking up the high school students and the tech center students at the same time. There are a lot of cars and there are a lot of buses to go out on entrance. And so the tech center pretty much exits out there at the end of the day out of the oldies and the road and then the high school goes to the regular and the people that everybody's familiar with. Why does the tech center not release either early or early? A lot of it is controlled by when their buses are available, one of the reasons that they start later is because most of the schools contract out with busing companies. And so they don't have enough buses to go around so they actually do two runs. They do their first run in the morning to get all the kids to school and then the second run is bringing the kids out to the pet center. So it's kind of the time. And at the end of the day, they're taking the kids back up again? At the end of the day, they're taking the kids back up again. And then again, their timing is controlled by picking up their regular students within their district and then also their extracurriculars to come out. So it's to be a pretty tight schedule, especially in the future. Yeah, the easiest thing to do is to be happy to start from different. But that's the easement piece. There's a lot of discussion to have about that. And since that's a real estate piece, the potential real estate purchase or the solution that someone should talk about in the second session. So those are the things. Any questions on the facilities report? Yeah, real quick. Just on the generator, 236.5, did we only get a bid from Harmony? No, by law, anything that's over 40,000, we have to go out to bid. That's an understatement. Okay, thanks. We use Harmony, they tend to come in and vote in terms of when we get three bids. But we work with an extensive, we've done an exception. Yeah, no, I just... No, good. That's a good question. But yeah, anything over 40,000 has to go out to bid. We gotta get three folks to give us a poll. That's in our polls. Yeah. State law. Great, moving on to policy decisions. The second review, hopefully vote to approve EL 2.7, compensation and benefits. Any questions or comments before entertaining a motion? I'll move to approve 2.7, compensation and benefits in our pocket. Second. Sarah seconds. Further discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Opposed? Excellent, passes unanimously. We had a couple of first reviews. F3, fire and emergency preparedness drills. And F4, access control and visitor management. Lane, did you want to... Yeah, these were, so we had that, what they call the swatting incident that happened this year. That was when the folks were calling in to multiple schools and police departments that there were active shooters going off in the park. And so the legislature got very concerned about that. And so they passed a bill that required these two policies. One of them is the fire and emergency preparedness and stuff that we already do, making sure that we're doing our drills. And so we're following the protocols for that. The other one is about access and control and that's making sure that we've got restrictions on people who come in and build things during the school day and that anybody that comes in is signing in so that we're tracking who's in and who's out. So that's what this tour about. The only work you think that comes out of it that's gonna require a significant amount of work is that as part of the legislation it requires the district to have what's called the all hazards convergence. So if you're under a nuclear attack, if there's a flood, if there's what are you gonna do? We actually have one, but it's dated and it would be time to update it. So there's some significant work. So we're kind of in compliance but we really shouldn't be updating that at all. The policies and that's what we're talking about a little bit earlier. Both of these by law have to be in place by August 1st and that's the reason that we're doing this special meeting. Okay, first read, we'll see those again. Legislative update. So a lot of that was in my typo filled super attendance report, I apologize about that, that was entire money. But the biggest pieces I think are probably on folks minding the personal universal free deals. That was actually tied into the state budget. And so when the governor rejected the state budget that meant that the universal free deals government generally was involved. And so I know supposedly they started yesterday with a veto session. So I have not heard anything about what's coming out of that. And then the other piece that we are gonna talk about that's impacted us as the school safety measures and the policies. Great, thank you. The consent agenda. I believe we can do these in one, but I do need to slightly edit the arbitrage. Am I doing this right now? If we can just add that you all, where's my light? Well, yeah, optimize me to sign on behalf of the board. That's bank loan stuff. What are you signing? The, all the tax. The arbitrage because the state does not give us the tax money to run the school. And so two or three months after the school year opens, we have to borrow money. Every district in the state has to do it in such a way. And so this would be allowing, you know, and not to just sign off on engaging us in that loan. The loan is for three and a quarter percent, but we are allowed to invest the money in our work. So we can do this in one shot. I'll entertain a motion with that edit, please, so that it makes it into the minutes. So moved. Great. Second around. Sam seconds. Further discussion. Great. All those in favor. Consent agenda with edit. Pose unanimous. All right. Lane, your superintendent's report, and then you just hit on the legislative part. Did you want to talk more or take questions? We can do either or the financial reports in there. I do have a presentation on the school climate survey from the staff, but I'm going to recommend because it will probably take about an hour to go through and look at that. We can either do it or you can take one. So I'll leave that decision up to you. In terms of the financials, we are in good shape. As the grant money is drying up post COVID, our surpluses at the end of the year are going to go down. Our current surpluses at the end of this fiscal year, which the last day is June 30th, is 785,000 dollars. So we are well in the black. I have a quick question. The advisory panel for each school, populated by community members, and give the floor to speak. How was that formed? Who gets to be on those? So it depended upon the school and it might be best to have the principal talk about that. Great. We did talk about them actually posting on the new website when it comes up who the advisory councils are. In some cases, it was through a vote. If they had a lot of people that was interested, they didn't have people that were interested. It was through a lot of our mistakes. But they had a pretty good crew at the schools. And the purpose of it is just what it says. It's kind of getting people together. These are the problems we're facing in the school. This is the work that we need to do. What's the best way to do it? Get all these ideas up to you. And they form it at the beginning of the year? They form it at the beginning of the year. Yeah, that was a part of the engagement piece. That was one of the visions for this year was the engagement. Trying to get people, because that's what we kind of talked about. We've been encountering that kind of blockade and try to get some of the work done in some of the schools. And so this was a way to try to get more people talking about stuff in a different format. Hopefully, it takes a little longer. So I'd love for us to consider, we had talked about having principles come in and talk to us. So I think we can schedule it when maybe September, October, December, and have them come in and have that be one of the I think that's a great idea. Great. Cool. Next question about the climate and exit surveys. I know that from what I'm hearing, there was a climate survey that you sent out to students and families, it sounds like. And then there was a climate survey that the union sent out to staff. And the exit survey, I'm assuming is the one that's included in our packet. Will we have, will the board be pervaded information that was collected in those surveys? Yeah, I've got my climate survey that's here today. There are legal implications about the survey that the union did, which is probably better to talk about in the executive session. I'm happy to do that. What was the other question? The exit surveys. I don't know, maybe I did send them to, maybe I just sent them to Chelsea in here. The information in them is in one of the reports that we kind of looked at. That's why it was blocked out. I'm happy to give it to everyone. So, yes, good. Questions on the superintendent's report, the financials, oh, good, really good, yeah. So I'm gonna go over some action items here. Please buy Monday at noon, send Chelsea any thoughts, edits, revisions, deletions. You have for the letter to the community. I'm going to email those to her. Action, I'm going to connect with Linda about the agenda for our July 7th meeting, six to eight snacks included. So please do be thinking about the ends this entire time. I think that's it for... And Chelsea, you're going to go ahead and engage the BSBA for the evaluation process. Contact BSBA to set up the contract, timeline, process, time commitment. Great. Anything else you want to know about that? The agenda is the committee for the event. You can see. I know, it's happening, I'm sorry. Well, I want staff to be, that was sent to the entire board on June 5th. Yeah, I got both of those. I'm happy to send it again if you need anything. That was the union one? That was the one that I really am based upon. You said June 12th? That was on June 12th, and I'm happy to send it again. There's the staff on and the students on that came from the plane, right? Oh yeah. Yeah, I have the student one. We don't have that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I said that from the entire board on June 12th. Yeah, it was the union one. No, I think both of them. That was raw. Yeah, this one I saw, I think that's it. Okay, so having painted through our agenda, I will entertain a motion to enter executive session at 6.55. I make a motion to enter executive session. To discuss personnel, and real estate, and students. Any invitations? Second. I think, yeah, all of us, except. Yeah, I'm going to be leaving. And I want to tell you all, I am retiring at the end of June. And Sue is going to take my place. Welcome. Nice to meet you. Yeah, we should have another introduction. Yeah, let's do that. Who seconded it? Who seconded the motion? I did, okay. Thanks, Megan. Okay, I think we're back in our room, okay. Before. Hang on a minute. Yes, we have something for you to thank you. Oh, it's unnecessary. It was. Oh, but it was. You're an invaluable asset to this board. I know, seriously. I'll be around. Sue and I got some work to do. Sorry to cry today. Yeah, it's just begun. Very hard to wrap. Oh my goodness. Should I do this now, or? Oh yeah. Guys have had a long night. It's a good thing. What's that? It's a good thing. Oh my God. I'm going paddling. Oh my goodness. Thank you very much, you guys. Oh, it's beautiful. Thank you. Thanks. My daughter was in the Six Finger Lakes, so I hope to be able to do that. It's so beautiful. Thank you very much. That's perfect. Yeah, yeah. See, we're close to Cornell, not at Cornell. Anyway, thank you all, this y'all. Thank you for having me. We'll miss you too.


It's nearing the end of February, it's interesting that we've still got a fire season here. The days are getting shorter, the weather is starting to change but we've still got a fire season that people need to be conscious about. It's interesting with the days being shorter, we're seeing a slightly different change in the weather. I think over the weekend we've seen that slightly cooler, shorter days meant a little bit more moisture around and we certainly welcome that but we haven't seen the change in any way with the fuel conditions. That means that we've still got dry grass and bushland across Victoria and that's the key factor at the moment. This week we'll see a cooler week, a more mild week and potential of lightening early in the week which means we could have other starts of fire. But also we're going to see the potential for showers and rain and we certainly welcome the word about rain and if we get that, that will change the landscape dramatically and we can only hope that it's widespread but that may not be the case. So stay tuned to the forecast and the Bureau will do its best to make sure we get the weather that is best for us. The other thing though, it's interesting to reflect back on last week. The fire that was in, it started at Donnybrook early in the week, a hot day, not a windy day but saw a grass fire move at 3, 4, 5 kilometres an hour and in 3 hours was sitting right on the edge of the metropolitan area and caused a lot of concerns to those that lived in out of metropolitan area. The urban fringe or what we call the urban-rule interface is something we need to be very conscious of. We've done a lot of work since then in the last week about understanding better the types of communities that are on the interface. We know them well but we actually had a look at a lot more information about where the schools are, the childcare facilities and we're going to make a really focus if we have a fire in that area in any of those areas in the next two weeks that we really do tune a lot closer to the schools because I think that's where a lot of the concern was.  If it's after 3.30pm where the kids are and I think that's one of the things that we certainly focused on last week.  Think about what happens for those two or three hours after school finishes. People are on public transport. Where are they? What would they do if the fire started? What would they do if they couldn't get home because the bus didn't make it or the train didn't? So there's lots of things to think about and I think that's the action this week is to think about what it means to be a person that lives in urban areas, whether it be in Melbourne or some of our provincial cities, if a fire was near you and is close to your home that you don't normally think a fire would be.