to all my C.S. Dr. in Pina, you may refer to my department I am a medical college in the M.P. My paper is talking to a spectrometer to find out is there is no Texas engine. But we will start with the introduction. Basically, flexes that include C.F.I.P.T. and NARU are also there. The work of the course of regular Texas injuries is taught by the M.P.T. and NARU. Clinical investigation of peripheral nerve injuries to improve nerve conduction study and electron eye graft. Imaging study is limited to extruding focal mass region and external compression to the nerve. MRI can identify changes in peripheral nerve and secondary neurogenic alterations in skeletal muscle due to excellence of tissue decay. MRI is helpful in diagnosis and localizing size of injury on this flow nervous system. Contrast study is usually done in patient with tumor or mass region and gadolin is known administered in patient with traumatic break-in flexor. These are the common root of the break-in flexor injury including burp injury, auto vehicle accident, or fall or high-prone disease. Then classification of the traumatic break-in flexor fatigue. We can classify according to real classification, sedent classification, sedent classification, sedent classification, break-in flexor injury is divided from three types for neuro, pulmonary flexia, axonotomiasis and neurotomiasis. In Sunderland classification 6 degrees are there. So first we will start with neuro flexia. It includes Sunderland classification first degree injury. It includes impaired nerve conduction with intact endangolium ferric helium and endangolium layer. And usually recovery is slightly related by glidesol lipid. And usually we manage tendermitis. In axonotomiasis Sunderland classification 2nd, 3rd and 4th degree re-routed. In 2nd degree, axonal disruption with intact endangolium ferric helium and endangolium methods. In 3rd degree, axonal and endangolium disruptions with intact endangolium ferric helium and endangolium layer. And regeneration is usually handled by mild fibrosis and recovery is likely with mild endangolium. And management is subjective. In 4th degree, axonal, endangolium and perineural disruption with intact endangolium layer. Regeneration is handled by fibrosis. In 5th and 6th degree of Sunderland classification is included. In 5th degree, complete now description is there. And in 6th degree, any combination of fibrosis will be included. In usually both cases there is no chance of spontaneous recovery. And surgery is usually considered. So this image we can see various types of the injuries. Last one is neurobrexia of secondary axonal premises. Then second one is cost ganglionic Tf and third one is 3 ganglionic Tf. Then we will discuss which now are affected in which type of lesion. In supra-clavicular lesion, roots of C-hydrate even now are affected usually. And other now are phoenic now, thoracic now, transglock upper, middle and lower now are affected in supra-clavicular now are other now are affected in supra-clavicular lesion. In clavicular lesion usually division of upper, middle and lower are affected. In supra-clavicular lesion lateral and middle and posterior core of the now are usually affected. Then first we will see 3 ganglionic Tf. Foment phoenics are edema of the spinal cord, hemorrhaging now on spinalisic band and pseudo meningocene. Ideally imaging of the suspected free ganglionic injuries were performed at least 3-4 weeks after the injury as this allowed the results of the acute edema and subrachlone m-ray and formation of a pseudocrine. So this is the first case patient presented with symptom of right side partial ptosis and myosin, likely a hormonal syndrome. There was a history of the m-ray was performed and it shows a pseudo meningocene formation in C7, C8 and T1 now roots at the level of neural foramina, suggesting free ganglionic now root was an injury. Second case was a 6 year old child generated with weakness and left hands since birth with poor reflex, sensory loss, mildishness, joint muscle weakness and atrope. There was a history of assisted delivery of healthy care. M.R.1 was found a well-defined dumbbell sacred cystic lesion in left C7 to T1 now roots and left T1 to T1 T1 and T2 neural foramina which is extra direct and exchange just beyond the neural foramina. The right C8 and T1 now roots are now visualized suggestive pseudo meningocene and a free ganglionic brachial plexus into it. Then we will see those ganglionic


Income tax 2022-2023, rental property, renting part of property and change to rental use tax software examples. Let's do some wealth preservation with some tax preparation. Here we are in our example Form 1040 populated with LASERT tax software. You don't need tax software to follow along, but it's a great tool to run scenarios with. You can also get access to the Form 1040 related forms and schedules at the IRS website, irs.gov, irs.gov, starting point single filer Mr. Anderson 90210 Beverly Hills. We're just going to have the rental income flowing through at the 100,000 to start out with. That's coming from, of course, the Schedule E, which is the supplemental income and loss from rental real estate so on and so forth. Basically formatted in an income statement, structure, rental income minus rental expenses. Bottom line here, the 100,000, which in essence pulling into Schedule 1, which is pulling into Page 1, Form 1040. And we've got the standard deduction 12,950, giving us the taxable income, 87,050 tax, calculated Page Number 2, Total Tax 14774. Okay, so now we want to run a support accounting instruction by clicking the link below, giving you a free month membership to all of the content on our website, broken out by category, further broken out by course. Each course then organized in a logical, reasonable fashion, making it much more easy to find what you need than can be done on a YouTube page. We also include added resources such as Excel practice problems, PDF files and more like QuickBooks backup files when applicable. So once again, click the link below for a free month membership to our website and all the content on it. Situation where we have a more complex situation where we have a piece of rental property that let's start out with is partially for business use. I'm partially for rental and we partially use it for personal or possibly live in it for personal. Then we're going to have a situation where some of the expenses we're going to have to break out. So this is kind of more of a bookkeeping type of thing that you could think about. So if we had basically our general income statement, we might have rental income, for example. And let's say the rental income is 8000, let's say it's going to be equal to 750 times 12. Let's say it was 9000 of the rental income. Let's put that on the outside. And then we've got our expenses. So I'll say expenses, expenses, and then let's say that we have the mortgage interest. And let's first think about the total expenses and then we'll have to break them out between rental and personal. So let's say the total mortgage interest is 1800. Let's say we have a fire insurance. Let's say that's 100. Let's say we have miscellaneous repairs on the rent. Let's say we have miscellaneous repairs rental. And then let's say we have real estate taxes of 1200. Let's say that's the total. So total expenses is going to be then the five total expenses. Let's sum them up here. So let me do this again. I had mortgage interest, fire insurance, miscellaneous repairs 291, total experience summing that up. Boom. So there we have that. Let's actually pull this back into the middle and let's put an underlying here and that would give us a net income of this minus this. However, I'm using it partially for personal use. So I'd have to figure out my personal use. Now the income is just going to be from rental property. It's going to be some of these expenses that I might have to break out between business and personal. How might we do that breakout? We might do something like a ratio analysis. So we might say something like we could take the square footage or whatever would be reasonable. Square footage is common or the rooms compared to the total number of rooms. So let's say that the rental is let's say 300 square feet and the total square feet for the place is 1200 equals 300 over 1200 percent. That would be 25 percent. So here's our percent rental. So the percent rental 25 percent. So then I'm going to say, okay, we need to break out the personal versus the rental here. So let's make this one a little smaller and let's say this is rental. Let's say personal and rental. And I'll make that our header. Let's actually pull this down a bit. I'm going to select these and insert above it, right click, insert. I know I'm doing this fast, but it's not an Excel course. So I don't want to, did I spell personal right? I doubt it. Of course not. That doesn't look right.  What am I going to change it? Change it. Make it right. All right. And then we're going to say this is going to be black and white and center it. And so we'll say for the income, it's all rental because obviously we didn't get income from the personal side. I'll indent these two just so we can see it a little more clear and dent that. But then on the expenses, we're going to have a breakout. So it's going to be 25 percent rental. So I'm going to say this is going to be equal to this times the 25 percent. Boom. So the personal side of it is going to be this minus this or it's going to be this times 0.75. However, you want to calculate it fire. We're going to assume that's for the whole place. Same thing then. It's going to be this times 25 percent for the rental. The personal will be the difference then. And then the miscellaneous I said was on the rental itself. So if it's on the rental itself, I'm just going to say that's part of the rental property. I don't have to break it out because I did repairs to the rental part of the property, not on the personal. So there's no breakout necessary as there is for these expenses, which are for the full property, which we then needed to break out. And then the real estate, I'm going to say is equal to this times the 0.25 and personal is this minus this. So there's our breakout. Let's put some underlying here. So my net income on the rental is really going to be this. Mine. I need to sum up the expenses. Sum up the expenses. Boom. So my net income is going to be something like this minus that the 7 934 here as opposed as opposed to this amount. We also have to deal with the depreciation might touch on in a second. But also note that some of these items like the mortgage interest, this personal side of the mortgage interest, I might still get a benefit from because I might be able to deduct on the schedule a same with the real estate taxes. But so it would be a breakout between schedule E and a so the total. Let's put the total over here. Just so we can see, make sure that my totals match up for these two. So the total still tie out to these totals. So that looks good. All right. So let's go ahead. I'm going to enter this data then into the system. So we'll say, okay, let's imagine this was our rental income statement. Let's go to the schedule E. And I'm going to say that we had a rental income of nine, let's say 9000. So this is what we would have thus far. We don't have the depreciation on there yet, but we've got the income statement then being populated the rents minus the portion of the expenses that are allocable to the rental property to get down to the net amount, which was that 7,934. Now the amounts for mortgage interest and property taxes aren't going to help me if I'm just having the standard deduction. But if they're significant enough to push us over to itemizing, then we might have to break those out into the itemized deductions, meaning you're going to have to take that mortgage interest statement and break it out according to the ratio between those two possible deductible items. So if I said we had the schedule A then, we're going to say the mortgage interest. Let's go to the interest is, we said on the personal side, I won three mortgage interest 1350. And then the taxes, we said was 900. So taxes, we're going to say on the real estate was 900. Now that's not going to be enough to kick me over the standard deduction, which in this case is the 12,950. But that mortgage interest and the property taxes as well as possibly state taxes are usually the thing that could possibly kick people over in that if I looked at the schedule A, if these amounts were greater than the standard deduction, then we'd be able to take those amounts. So we have to think about whether or not we're going to get the benefit from the mortgage interest and the real estate taxes and properly allocate them between a schedule A and a schedule E. Now then we would also have to put on the books the depreciation of the property and we'd have to think about what the cost of the property is. If we purchased it, it would be more straightforward. If we converted it, then we got to compare our cost basis to the fair market value. We got to make sure that we're breaking out building versus the land. So let's first just put that on the books. I'm going to say that we have a depreciable item. Now I'm going to indicate to the software that the basis is $39,000 for the building and $7,000 for the land. The land is not going to be depreciated. The building will, but it's going to be broken out. 25% of that is going to be the depreciable component to it. So if I go back on over and I say, okay, what happens with the depreciation schedules? So now it's the cost. Let's go to this one is $39,000. 25% of that is going to be that $7,950 for the depreciable basis because that's the amount I'm assuming is the rental property using our percentage. And then we have the straight line method. It's a mid month convention 27.5. This is the rate from the table gets us to that $310. And then if you went to depreciation for the next year, you could see it would be $355. And that depreciation is going to continue out for the 27.5 years. The land not depreciated. So if I go back on over to the schedule E, we have now added the depreciation to our calculation. If I was to do my bookkeeping, then of course that's something that I would probably need to add to my bookkeeping that will be dependent upon the calculation from the tax software to get this number to the bottom line. And our tax system adding the depreciation deduction to our calculation. Now another scenario that is similar to this scenario is let's say that we had, I'm going to delete this column, that we had someone that converted their personal property to the rental property. And then they had a partial year of rental in the first year. So now you're going to have a similar situation with your income statement that needs to be broken out in the portion that is personal versus the business portion that's going to be broken out. So for example, if I if I have these same numbers over here, representing this is income, income, income, representing the income and expenses for the entire year, then I've got to say, okay, what? Let's say the income, let's let's say the income was actually 11 months of renting. Let's say it was 750 times 11. So that's going to be the income that we had the expenses down below. I'm going to delete these and I'm going to come up with a new ratio analysis. It's going to be that months of the year for the rental, let's say was only was 11 months rental. And then we're saying months for personal. So let's say was was one month. So 11, this is going to be months for rental versus months for personal is one. So that means it's going to be equal to so the total months of course is 12. So months in year 12. I'm going to underline this or un-underline. So the amount that's going to be allocable to the rental is going to be equal to 11 over 12 the ratio 11 over 12 91.67% because that because we converted it starting at the end of, you know, in February. So you got 11 months rental one month personal, then you've got a similar breakout. The rental income is what it is because obviously when it was personal, we wouldn't have had any rental income. And then the rental side is going to be this times this again. I'm going to select F4 so that I could copy that down. However, if I had repairs that were designed just for the rental during the rental time, I mean, I could I could assign that just to the rental side of things. The personal side is going to be this minus this copying that down. And then I could sum it up summing up. There's going to be our expenses on that scenario type of situation. So a similar a similar kind of ratio calculation is going to be necessary, you know, when that conversion happened. But this time instead of happening all every year, it would only happen in that first month. And then we've got our adjustment here for our rental income. And then our depreciation. We'd have a similar kind of thing for the depreciation, but let's put this into our system. I'm going to imagine the depreciation is the same, but now I'm not going to be breaking it out between personal and business use. We're just going to have that 11 months, which will be calculated by the system because I put it on there. It's going to use that mid month convention. So now the depreciation, I'm assuming is going to be that 39,000 again, but we're not allocating between business and personal. We're just going to say that we put it on the books, you know, in the in the first or the second month, which means it's going to use a mid month convention, straight line mid month convention in order to get this time to the 1241, which is going to pull into the schedule. So now we've got our calculation here. There's the depreciation calculation. Now remember that when the conversion happens, because we didn't purchase the property, we might have to do some kind of calculation for what for what our basis is and compare it to the fair market value. And that might look something, something like this, we'd say, well, we had the house costs before we converted it whenever we bought it 25,000. And we're going to say then we remodeled it remodeled kitchen is going to be 4,200. We'll say when we did that recreation room we added was 5,800 good times in that room. New roof improvement, 1,600 and patio and deck. We're going to say 2,400. And so that's where we're getting our adjusted basis in the building because we broke out building versus the land. The depreciable component is the 30 the 39,000. We have to do some kind of calculation like that, which can be a little bit messy on the personal side of things because the personal resonance you might not be tracking as much of the cost of things that you did because you're not getting the benefit of depreciating it at the point in time that it's happening because it's personal side of things. But then when you sell it or convert it, it becomes important because we need to compare this adjusted basis to the fair market value and basically take the lower one. Thank you.


I was going to the executive board and it's going to be there. I probably will. It's actually like I get some Mondays off for a lot of people. Mondays won't say it's a Friday, so I get that more clearly to take in those three days. So that's why it's always worked out that we meet on Tuesdays to Thursdays. That's awesome. Yeah, I'm going to go to that one. We will pretty quickly, I think. It'll still be a few minutes, but you want me to leave? You want me to stay? No, you're welcome to stay. So I'd like to call the meeting to order at 7.38. Are there any adjustments to the agenda? Yes. You go first. I just have some amendments to the minutes for March 6th, so is that where I would mention that? Or when we get to the consent agenda? Okay. Anything else? There was something, so was it? We'll see if we can change the name to wavering mentality. Just want to discuss that. We want to put that under discussion items. 5.4 White River Valley Union District. And then 5.5. Shannon? Two things I'd like to add. One is consideration of a resolution on gun violence that's being considered by a number of school boards in Vermont. And I actually I thought it might be printed out, but since we didn't get it printed out, we'll have it once if you have a device you can access that. And then also a discussion of of snow days and the significant impact they have on families in the area and are there some creative solutions we might be able to use for that. Who's the flower? Well, it won't work. All right. Anything else? Any other additions to the agenda? Okay. All right. That brings us to public comment. There is no public. All right. Consent agenda. The minutes of February 20th 2018. They're in the packet. These aren't the ones or did people have This isn't the one that I wanted to. Okay. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All in favor. Okay. Opposed? Okay. Lisa, the amendments. Yeah. Amendments to the meeting on March 6th. Pam Brown Tammy Benoit sent me notes that I reviewed and edited and then submitted and then Pam Brown for the Bethel Town Clerk had also taken notes and I found a couple of bits in her notes that would improve the notes from March 6th that I would like to add. One would be the name of somebody who seconded and the second one was a little paragraph to certain part of the presentation that I thought would be worthy. So I have those pieces highlighted in my computer bag in the other room. So I could go get them if people want to see what it is that I was actually wanting to add to the notes. But Can you email us the edited copy and we'll move this to our next meeting? Yeah. On the I guess the second full paragraph my last name spoke wrong. Was this on the March 6th? Yeah. Because Lisa Floyd and Chris Riley provided those things on pre-pro. R-E-I-L-O-Y? Yeah. I just want to make sure I'm getting it right. Oh yeah. R-E-I The E is before the I. R-E-I-L-O-Y R-E-I-L-O-Y That was everything I've ever known. This is the Irish. Okay. All right. That was it for that. Okay. Because you're going to provide us with the copy. All right. So special education budget. This got on the agenda because after after the annual meeting we ended up getting a lot of community questions and having questions ourselves about it. So I think Rodney, you suggested that it should be something that we discussed a little bit more. So I thought it was valuable for us to have Bruce here in order to explain sort of. I mean we can't really do anything about the budget but there is a lot of people who are not. I guess we just won't kind of call it wherever we can. And you know with everybody's gotten budgets and it is a big company. Well, the funding comes from the Ed fund. You know, I mean that's basically where a larger percentage of it comes from and they have some pretty strict guidelines of what they will pay for so some of you have never been in a situation where some of the special ed employees have been used to do things that aren't special ed duties and at the end of the year if that happens you get built back for the bus duty and study hall coverage and things that aren't that way. So I guess I need to know I think there was some questions from the four regarding the salary lines for that. I think they believe that the special ed director was making a couple hundred thousand dollars but really what was going on there is that there were several people that were covered under that number and I guess I need specifics on what you want to know. So the specific question that I was asked that I felt was in the case of alternative placements if a student is not yet on an IEP and goes to an alternative placement they're not reimbursed and those can sometimes be extremely costly. So we were asked what number of students are in alternative placements without a special education plan. I can't answer you. I have to do some research. So you're saying that if we send a student out that doesn't have a special IEP special education plan then the school is going to be paying for that 100% of that, correct? Well, I mean they're the district. Yeah they get money from the ed fund. How would the decision to send them out be made without an IEP? I mean there can be a variety of factors. Are there success the way that they impact other students' education? They are. Safety. You know safety issues. Is that more behavioral? Well I mean it doesn't always have to be that way but kids that are on 504 sometimes. 504 is a federal mandate for work that we have to do with kids who let's say don't meet special ed criteria but we still have to work with them. We have to provide accommodations for them and that's what the federal law says. The law is kind of an unfunded mandate. There's no budget for it but we have to do it anyway and there are strict guidelines of how we have to decide who gets that help and who doesn't.  We do have some kids that are in our own programming like this restorative class I believe that aren't necessarily covered by IEPs and they're there because they need to be there and you know we started that program because there were significant kids that were really disrupting everyone and they needed to get some to tell me at some point about that group that I meet with in Hartford with negotiations it's just a good time to do that. Negotiations are next on our agenda do you want me to pop in? So I asked Deb to come and address you on that. She would be able to be very specific with you about funding and the need for placement and probably the numbers of kids. I know you were looking to expand the restorative classroom program here in the SU if we were able to do that would we be able to bring all of those students back with them to have such severe difficulties that they can't come back from placement Brownburn? No, one size doesn't fit all I mean and we may be able to make some significant impact and probably some significant savings but there's some obstacles space making sure that we have the right people. Dr. Ketter has been very good to us he likes this SU he's been working with kids in the restorative program which is a model program it's really hard to find placements for kids that are third grade down usually they get aids and people put them with aids and that's what they do but the therapeutic value of that the proactive approach to that, the therapy part is always being handled when you do that it's just more or less somebody there to stop them from doing what they're going to do but we don't get into the aids aren't really trained to do that they may be able to stop them from kicking somebody but it's not maybe like an intervention or something like that but it costs more so Dr. Ketter's kind of their world a little bit and try to get the kids to maybe relearn some things and it's a pretty controlled environment and it's done that way deliberately to try to be able to do that we've had some luck with sending some kids back out once they've been in there for a little while in the restorative yes and in some cases it hasn't worked and we've brought them back and we've started with them we also know that one of the mistakes that we've made is that some of the staff that they go back to integrate with in those classrooms need to be trained more than they are it's not only the kids, it's the staff to understand where the triggers are and try to make sure that they know not to and that the teachers know how to not set them off I guess so I'm very proud of that program but I think it would be very helpful if we had an opportunity to maybe take it up a couple grades and maybe go up the eighth grade but maybe only up to sixth grade we originally created the program which was one through three grades we've expanded it to fourth grade because some of the kids just weren't ready to leave and but there needs to be an assessment of our space and I know that Deb asked the principals to please take a look at what they may have in the way of space as we rearrange our classes and everything and now Rundsen has his housing program but they don't have any kids in the program which it's other SSU schools that send them there it's just the way it is right now it doesn't mean they won't have one next week and they have had them in the past but right now they don't and it's a great space they're down in that basement section the old music room and it's when I was in New Hampshire I had two of these programs going on one for the little guys and and it was through third through eighth and then one for the high school kids and they were always full always full so and being in central Vermont if we expanded is there there may be revenues from other SSUs people knocking on the door asking to put kids in now but we haven't gotten to the point we want to take care of our own kids first and we haven't gotten to the point where we open the doors but they're asking because you can't find programs for this young a student and hopefully it actually gets them off there well that's the point is to just save money but it is to make things better that's to try to get them turned around and back in their classrooms as soon as possible I think I would like and I'm not going to ask you now but I think one of the things that we have been interested in is maybe not putting them back necessarily in the school that they came from these restorative kids I'm talking about that maybe a fresh start somewhere else might help them but that takes them more of an S.U. discussion about them and it's also kind of a case by case basis why do they merge so many districts is it possible to put them back in the same district let's say they came from Chelsea but you put them back in the coverage school system perhaps or if they came from Royalty and give them a fresh start in Bethel if they needed that well the parents have something to say about this they can't just unilaterally decide that's what they're going to do it would be nice if that was an option it would be really nice if that was an option but I'm thinking a little more radical than that if they're from Chelsea maybe they come back to Royalty or vice versa you know I don't know we are going to have seven special needs buses that are going to be buzzing around the S.U. as a part of our new contract they're going to be vans that should be available some part of the day and I was thinking why we were making those presentations about the forest and moving kids around to be involved in that transportation is always an issue if you don't have it you always wanted it so thank you I'm sorry I didn't ask more specific questions that's okay is that executive session personnel no as long as we don't get into a lot of detail it's fine if we talk about the individual candidates then that's a different story alright so negotiations negotiations and representation I think a couple of people have attended negotiations meetings we will need to have our own negotiations representation and Rodney and I probably can't represent us Rodney because Jamie teaches here his wife and me because it was mentioned that because of how fact finding works they look at the area contracts so because I teach in a public school one district over people there was concern expressed that it could be conflict of interest so by getting teachers a really good deal here if I did that then I would in some ways potentially if I were calculating enough impact my own contract and livelihood thereby I know so I would rather not have anyone think that about me and I think that choosing from among the four of you would be the best way to go Geo has some things to say about stuff we should think about when we do this so I'll go grab him for that I'm sure if you want to think it's probably less likely that you'll trifle for the words I don't know I just wanted to say too I read out a little bit basically you can talk about negotiation I can't talk about negotiations I can listen to it if you guys have information about what I go teachers raise as well it's okay to talk I can't the only thing I can't do is try to influence your vote I can't say do you guys think teachers need to raise that would be you know so that's why there's a discussion discussing it right but I can't discuss it I can listen but I can't I just can't engage or try to persuade anybody to vote a certain way and all of the negotiations have been happening in open meetings right speaking of which how common is it around the state that these happen during the day I would love to do this but negotiations during the day especially on short notice I can't take the whole day well you didn't see this but all the original early meetings were at night but we've gotten into mediation and getting a federal mediator to come at night from New York is just not going to work so and we had Ira Obel who was a mediator that did the first round of these in Albany so in New York as well so yeah we're down to a point where it's true you know I feel guilty in asking board members to give up work for a day they've always been pretty generous with their time but I know that they're just as busy as anybody else so for me it's just I have to reschedule all these patients and move them to do it I'm not going to ask them to do that I think normally in the normal part of negotiations there at night all of them have been but we're now into a pretty pretty specialized place where we need help well I've only been here four years and my second contract negotiations I think we settled last time before we had to go to mediation but it took a while and it took some kind of a full court press to get there and but I don't think we went to mediation for fact finding last time this is mediation, fact finding and now another mediation is what it is the federal mediator to do a new new round of that I'm very hopeful we had a very productive meeting the other night we tried to hash out some of the disagreements around the table and get pretty much on the same page but you know you're meeting a group that have other interests and value things other than us so I mean everybody wants the best for kids you know how do we get to that place so I don't know what's going to happen next I mean after this one I don't know so depending as it can be as many or as few even none from any board there's some of the boards that don't send folks and there's some board members that frankly don't show up because they've got to do but we need to have a quorum that means five different board members from different boards and we have had quorums where I think we had eight or nine there was good representation and one of the interesting things about this is that you will just finish this gets settled on Thursday and then when do negotiations begin again you're asking a question you know the answer to it well in the case of support staff yeah in the case of support staff we settled for two years so that next round probably won't begin until early winter so we have a little bit of a reprieve what's going to happen with these guys and that's one of the points of negotiations whether it's going to be a one year which means this year that we're currently in or it's going to be two year or something else so depending on the group that's negotiating negotiating for one year contracts or two year contracts if it's one year then as soon as you wrap one up you're getting ready to start with this well it could be a three year contract but at least I think they're pretty rare these days because nobody knows what health insurance is doing and all that kind of thing so we've had a real we've had a real you know that I don't see any long term contracts although I did hear one of them three or four years how often do these groups meet well that's been a point of contention too we've wanted to meet a couple times a month and wanted to meet once a month they didn't want to meet over the summer I makes it sound like I'm whining but you want to the question is how often do they meet negotiations one of the tactics of the NEA is to lengthen your process and it wears us down so it works we get wore down we're volunteers they don't get paid for their time at the table but they get paid because they make money there's a regional the VSBA is working with Joe Blanchett Joe Blanchett used to be a negotiator for the NEA since left the NEA and now he's had his own practice and he's been working with boards educating us on how to be better negotiators and we're woefully inadequate so what he's done is he has a series of regional meetings that he does around the state and superintendents and a board member go to these it's not an official position it's not a committee of the board it has no ability to make any kind of decisions so because it doesn't it doesn't have to comply with open meeting laws since we're not making any decisions there so right now it's Hartford, we meet at Hartford they send a rep I've been going for us, White River we've seen folks from Born Geese Washington Central Woodstock area Windsor comes Welts so we just sit around the table and we just say what's going on and then Joe says okay, you might think this a matter somebody else at the table might say in my experience you might try this we make no share of decisions we don't because that's illegal there's no like okay we're all going to come out and advocate for the same thing but we do share our experiences so I've been a short timer on the board would love to slough this off on somebody else, you'll learn a ton it's a great group I actually enjoy going so it's like a negotiator support group that's a good way to word it it's just one person from the SU or one person from each board I was going to the one that meets in the Roundabout Piliary where I was going down there but I couldn't keep up I just had too many meetings I couldn't go in I didn't want him to come because he had too many meetings and he needs to knock something on this plate so I think in the future if things got lighter for him this might be something he would come back to so one or two of us presumably could go well, they only want one Joe would like just one and he wants the same person coming consistently I haven't always been able to make it because sometimes there was dates so there's a and it's probably bi-monthly it's been meeting I don't think we've met now in probably three months because everybody's settled but us now so they're all getting ready for their next round of negotiations and we're still at it so it's extremely valuable so this is the kind of insight that I take back to the team and say this is what I'm hearing from other boards and where would you bring it back to the team this is where you could just share in an email what you've gotten from I just come back and say verbally what's going on I don't put together a report or anything before you came in and asked the question I don't have a long enough history back to you probably do but I don't about previous negotiations is this going the longest the farthest so last time we didn't get to mediation or fact-finding we were able to settle before there do you know the history of this well it's changed it's a pretty tough history to explain comparing apples to oranges so in Bethel they've always had they've had a history for a while of fairly contentious negotiations and it's not I think they've gone to fact-finding and mediation in recent years or anything in Royalton or Bethel Bethel Royalton was quite different we actually did a collaborative negotiations for the first I'm going to say two contracts I did with teachers John has talked to me about that we just sat around and just said what do you think and reached quick settlements the nature of the association has changed they don't play that way anymore and so we don't play that way anymore not last time we were so a couple of years ago we brought that all five towns in the old Orange Windsor had separate contracts and we brought all five into sort of one contract it's only sort of one we didn't quite verify it in that contract we got close and that took us two and a half years and really the only way now we started collaboratively but the association members in the room weren't being collaborative behind the scenes they were being coached and trained instead everybody was supposed to come in the room and just say what they thought kind of reached a nice let's do this process what was going on and at that point it was kind of interesting Bruce Don Shaw and I unrehearsed walk out on the like the next to the last meeting that was the last meeting scheduled and we because I knew if I said this is pointless that they would have said we'll keep talking and this still would have gotten nowhere we need to let them know so we got up and left and they called us back up basically and said let's meet again and then they basically gave us what our last offer was they said fine we agree with it so it's getting more contentious and so the last time around we didn't even go in this is the first time we went in and hired a lawyer we don't even negotiate for us because it's reached the point where that seems to be the best well and you can make the point that it costs a lot for a lawyer but there's also a lot at stake you know the health insurance and all the other things that go into a contract is big money she is quite helpful she coaches us a lot it's the last meeting I said in on the one that we were talking to Dina you're not just negotiating with the teachers that you know anymore it's SUY it's not just SUY it's NEA, it's statewide there's a statewide strategy boards can still have a white strategy it's against the law NEA has no there's no qualm about developing and they are currently developing their new statewide strategy and they're getting ready to vote again so it's a when I started I think Vermont was 28th and pay 29th and pay in the US I think we're up in 20 and rising like a meteor because the NEA in the state NEA in the state is really good they're very good they're not into union the whole stuff that happened in West Virginia teachers no pay raise in 3 or 4 years just asking for a 5% starting salaries are coming in I think at the high 20s I mean they're it's ridiculous they needed to go on strike and I'm not into union there's a point where we need to enough's enough our pay scales the way we do the grid system it just goes out of sight and we're going to get if we keep on our course so we need to put the brakes somewhere so that's in a nutshell so if you guys want to send somebody I'm happy what I told Joe is I'd like to bring a new person down, introduce them to the group and then I'm done and then they can go so like I said it's fun Joe's entertaining he's got all kinds of knowledge he's actually fun to listen to so it's not like it's a drawn on session so the meetings usually last? 2 hours, very strict started at 6, we have a little sandwich goes to 8, done does not go beyond 8 o'clock ever and how is this covered, how is this time paid for? he VSBA? no, VSBA doesn't actually pay him I'm not quite sure certain of how he gets paid he doesn't get paid by the VSBA I want to say he probably somehow gets paid by Fiat but I don't don't quote me on that but not paid by? not paid by us we hired him as a district to help us with negotiations because that's the kind of stuff he would do for us if he wanted to hire he would definitely be hired so if you don't pay somebody let me know when's the next meeting? in location always in Hartford, always at the superintendent's office in Hartford in White River Junction next to the school there so anybody interested in either having an appointed person and that person can't make it to one can we have a backup? is that acceptable? they just want to see the same things each time they, yeah Joe doesn't like backups he's never sent a backup so what date do you give it? I can't find the date for the next one so you'll send an email when I find out I'll let you do it Shannon anyone else? Lisa were you interested? don't vote on this do not vote on this this is not an official board position it's just one of you just so it says I'll go but don't vote on it and in fact when we communicate this group communicates to each other we use our personal emails this is completely legal we're not a decision making body we can't make a decision as long as we keep those emails in our circle we don't have a quorum of any board or body so you just need to do it like a nod ahead and ask somebody else if any of you want to join in with us on Thursday yeah well no I understand you got to work if we have not noticed let's hope this is over there's a lot of there's all kinds of just sitting around just sitting around waiting and the mediator jumps around all over the place I got some hope that we'll bust through that would be optimistic so you wish in then with the nod of the heads here I'll get a hold if you wanted to find out thanks guys I'm here for three years too there's continuity we're going to be going into the next negotiations or I'll be around we're going to do the next three we're not going to so should we hold off on selecting negotiators in good faith that things are going to be settled Thursday or should we select a couple just to ward off I don't know I don't have any idea what's going to happen is anybody interested in negotiating Thursday what's the time it starts at 9 o'clock and it'll probably end at 5 I'm not sure if we're really close it could go a little longer than that or maybe if we don't get anywhere it could be a lot shorter I'm slaughtering ducks on Thursday alright maybe we should hold off and wait for the next round just spend your morning doing that and then you come in with it covered come like that that'll set the mood that's not a mood for the day alright is that all for negotiations I'm grateful that G.O. did that yeah alright so we have this document next on the agenda it's our Steve Dale agreement so it basically says that he will help to make our transition as smooth as possible and give us feedback on perhaps what the next steps should be and then also um so those are the sorts of things that will help for example um seeing the potential for some restructuring of the full board those sorts of things he can look at the big picture and then say perhaps you guys should be looking in this direction to sort of help us protect our interest and this would be an opportunity for us to meet with him outside of our regularly appointed board meetings or he could come to our board meetings um either way so this is just here for us to look at um I think it's a pretty good idea absolutely and I think it's reasonable um in terms of price this is part of the $10,000 that you've got in the budget this is out that money's not available until July 1st okay this money's not available until July 1st and that is no this money would come out of your budgets but the money I'm talking about will be available to the whole SU so we have to look at it as all the board members wouldn't the other board need to approve money this year we can well you know basically I've been asked by them is the money coming to pay committees I said well the new board doesn't have any money that was a couple of the world's board members asked me that and I said no we've set aside some money we're going to split it it's the same kind of business right if money is being paid to Steve prior to the 1st of July it's coming out of current budgets so is it up to you should probably ask them since it's going to come out of their budget but there are board budget lines that would cover this correct okay so what exactly do we need to make sure that we're not missing any deadlines that we're attending to all the details that we need to attempt to I just think it's pretty important and what will happen to the board funds in those budgets at the end of the year the surplus right or deficits we're going to inherit that from July 1st something you'll have to repay or enjoy by surplus I think this is a really nice way personally for us to be proactive and to be on top of who we are as board members and how we function as a team and making sure that we're aware of all the moving parts as opposed to having a lot of oopsies that happen along the way and then trying to recover and I think with Steve on board we can be asking those questions and he might even preempt it or prompt us with suggestions that we wouldn't have even thought about but having had that information will be more informed and more together I guess I'd just like to hear more specifically what those types of things really that's about $2,000 well that's a trouble we don't know he has to tell us right but like well just learning about the negotiations support group and then going to those negotiations you know to listen to the negotiations that are happening he would explain all that those are things that we could ask him about systems about different processes that happen as school board members am I right? he was the executive director of the school board association so he trained boards basically is what he did and he was out with boards and trying to look at the work that you guys have to do and make it efficient I'd like him to work with us all on policy governance I'm not sure whether all the boards will be receptive to that some of them micromanage a little more than others but I'd like to try for that he's got a wealth of experience in working with boards I can say that I think the fact that we were able to pull this merger off has a lot to do with him I would imagine if we've got four opportunities for meetings with him the first one would be us asking him questions and planning out what we could cover in the next three meetings I think Lisa's intent was to try to get make sure we don't drop anything that we do the things we need to do between now and the end of the year great contracts yeah he helped us set up policies and things like that right I hope we get a better scope and with the policy so that everybody's working on the same thing my sense was that there are certain legal things that have to happen in terms of wrapping up the old boards and launching us as cleanly as possible and that's what I really wanted his advice for because he's seen this process play out in other places and knows the things that have to be done and have to be tended to I think that Bruce has a good grasp on that as well but also with so many districts going through the same process I think that it seems like it can be an overwhelming task and so so that's why I just thought that this was a reasonable step well I've been on a number of boards and I'm actually on one right now that's having some major issues and I just feel like it is so good to be working together and understanding policy governance just how we're going to work together and making sure we are aware of all the moving parts because when you get into a train wreck it's just hard to manage it after that and it takes a lot of extra time so this will be a time saver and a money saver I think it's an insurance policy so I'm bored so I'm going to stop talking we need to vote on this we we could vote on it and then we could decide to get the blessing from the current board if you get time Bruce we have some questions so we'd like to ask them yeah it's a contract so you probably it's illegal documents but it's between us and Steve you just don't know where your resources are coming from but you're telling us that I believe they are okay yeah I believe they are I don't know where what I'm going to get into but it sounds like we would have to at least let the old board know what we're wanting to do well I know that Dave knows what we want to do I've been communicating with him throughout and I believe that Christine and also because I asked I mean I don't the boards haven't voted I don't mean to represent that in any way I think that all three of us we had a meeting Eunice was there at the office and Steve Dale came down so they wanted to get us together as chairs so we could look at the scope of what each board should be doing so that we're not stepping on each other's toes duplicating work etc so this was one of the things that we thought was a reasonable idea at that point there wasn't a contract but they agreed with the idea that bringing somebody on board to make it so that it's smooth and so that balls don't get dropped there have been some times when things have not gone as smoothly as possible and I've received a message in the middle of the day I'm floundering to catch up for the rest of the day and to the degree possible I'd like for that to not happen because what starts to scare me is what have I missed that I don't even know is an issue or what are we missing that we don't even know is an issue and I just think the scope of all of the transitions in the whole district so all 11 communities makes it daunting for our SU and so that's my fear is that we miss something that I don't even have on my radar right now to me this isn't coming out of I mean it's a royalty budget and a Bethel budget right now so it's spending money that you know technically we don't have yet but it's difficult because which board are we going to ask for permission well I think we need to bring it up at the end when we're all together because it does involve shutting them down it doesn't really matter what it comes from though it's all going to end up that's my final point it's all going to end up in our maps July 1st but I just think we should do it with the whole board because it does involve them because it's going to be part of their process of closing out their boards make sure there's an agenda item for them I know I think ideally we wanted to let him know but we can just say we're going to bring it up until next April 9th without him if the other boards already said they're for it we don't really need them until June if the board leadership has no we need them we need them prior to June because he's looking out for our interests and trying to help us navigate so the whole issue about the supervisory union full board wasn't an issue even on my radar until he brought it up at that meeting of the three of us and said to Christine and Dave if you guys have been looking out for them in this way at which point you know I wrote a letter and went to that meeting that night and said this is something that we should be thinking about before the board is reorganized because otherwise these very small towns will have three representatives and we as the largest school district system in the district will be on equal footing what's the incentive to reorganize for them at that point so it needs to be handled ahead of time that was something that wasn't on my radar until we had that conversation I'll make a motion that we accept this contract or enter this agreement if you fail if you just voice us in July I'll second the note any discussion after okay all in favor aye opposed okay I guess I'm not supposed to vote alright so we should still bring it to the attention of the two other boards thank you April to be fair they brought that very large field trip to the attention of the boards tonight and it's already gone out for the parents alright we'll just ask forgiveness and not permission okay up next white river valley union district I'd say river valley school district change to from the white river union district to the white river valley school district we're the right river valley school let's just be the right river valley school district so it's not for people right and so can we go to the state board and ask for that change so let's white river valley so it would be WRVSD instead of WRUD I like that better feels like we're talking about WRR feels like we're stuck in a run feels like life right so it would add consistency yeah so where do we go for that where are we going to so I'd make a motion or I'd see a motion that we motion to rename our district white river valley school district all in favor are you opposed okay so in your email if you have a device there is it's going to take quite a bit of resolution because it's created for the Essex school district so I would propose because it's starting to get late that I go ahead and edit it and table it for next meeting but I will send it out and attach it to the agenda so everyone can review it before the meeting it's also being reviewed by the software okay so you're going to edit it so that it would reflect our districts oh is it possible so prior to and present it at the next board okay so that would be for April April 1 alright resolution so we've had a number of snow days in south boroughton this year and one of the things that's been brought to my attention and I have a nine year old so I've started to get this too is that number one there's no age limit on leaving your children home in the state of Vermont I'm meaning there's no minimum there's no minimum in the state of Vermont so my concern is sort of twofold one we have a number of families in the district might be one of them where both parents work and when you have so many snow days we're putting parents in the position that you know what and the flu has been particularly gruesome this year so we have a number of parents who one parent has taken off work and another and traded back and forth but you're running out of days and you're running into being in trouble at work so there's the potential that a number of students are being left at home by themselves unsupervised in that seven, eight, nine age category that's sort of concerning also we also know that there are a number of students where the only hot meal they get is when they come to school and so one of the solutions that I've seen that I would like to just think about if it's possible doing here in the winter school system they have a drop-in center so they open the gymnasium for the day and we could do this on one campus or both campuses and they have a few staff people not necessarily everyday school staff but they have people who come in who promise to be there regardless of where so if you call a snow day maybe they can walk, maybe they have a super duper four-wheel drive but they're going to be there all day supervising so that students sort of, you know, we run pre-k so pre-k through six or pre-k through middle school, I don't know what the upper limit is but you could drop them in there would be the opportunity to get lunch, show movies, you just keep them do activities all day we have to pay some staff for minimally but it would be a safe place where you could drop your kids off I think it would be a huge relief to a lot of families in the area and if we had the staffing we could even think about opening it up to the surrounding towns and it makes us more of a more attractive community-centered family-centered, kid-friendly you know, safety-oriented community so it's an idea that has worked in other places and I just would really like to explore it here and where did you say it's actually working? in Windsor do we need to vote on whether we think it's a good idea to explore it? well why don't we ask the administration to give us some kind of cost estimate for what it would be it's okay administration to look into this and flesh it out for us would that be the right I might want to wait to have them do it over the summer or something like that because right now we're kind of out of this land and even if it didn't happen this year it is an idea that I would like to see implemented as moving forward because it is it's a real burden on a lot of families I wouldn't have to know it's a real burden on his family because I see the texts from his wife trying to find the childcare I would imagine it could be a stipend in position as well so because it is in addition to your regular teaching duties so if there were a stipend that were offered and teachers are getting salaries so they're not necessarily losing it and I don't know that it has to be teachers or teaching staff just even um retired community members as long as they're background check it would be an extra day it would be an extra day for teachers because they make out snow days already right and they still have to make the day of the year safety concerns when you start telling people they have to travel in a two feet of snow they don't have to be set up with all those I guess it would be volunteers it would be people who are saying I am going to be there the adults are saying I'm making that commitment just like many of us have jobs where we have a commitment if it's snowing, like you said if I didn't want to drive in snow I'd live in Florida I have a job where I go every time it snows and I get that and that's something that I'm okay with but it's my kids that I'm worried about right so that's why I think we should explore offering a stipend pay something per hour per DM rate for most teachers for summer work time so if you offered your per DM summer rate to people who are willing to do that because I think it should be staff that's already been vetted by the school that's had a criminal records check with high finger friends that we can ensure is like a safe person to have there so the staffing ratio has to be maintained for something like that in terms of number of people to the number of kids I think that should be part of the exploration and I think if winter's already doing this we've got a monitor to look at and I'm also thinking the parents if they can would be particularly interested because they don't get paid on snow days and so they're waiting for that pay in June because they only get paid the hours they work we're taking their vacation days yeah so that's the challenge so we all agree that should be explored okay what are they just is it loud maybe it's just reason okay we're just going to say that they're not arguing alright great so principle search are we were not able to make an elementary higher so we know that I'm not sure I suspect we're going to reopen that because we interviewed our top candidates so I would imagine that we're going to start looking again so did you guys interview that third person after the interview there were two other candidates we interviewed five right on the day that we were doing the meeting the top two candidates there was one that came through by email for us to look at was the resume like a late entry but there was also one that you were interviewing at the school on the same day right so for various reasons we had the two that we thought were best qualified um right um so I and we've reopened the high school search just did you hear back from like the person you declined um just the money or was it I think there were some other factors that play in that are out of our control um so those are both reopened searches that's too bad I was sad me too it's not what I wanted to hear um all right and so we are now scheduled to have an executive session around public comment first public comment public comment all right and now I let me see if Bruce is available um because I did he ask you up next meeting day April 9th what time should we set our meeting for um so the attempt of moving it to 7 the agenda looked brief um that was guidance from Bruce because the I don't know how the Royalton board members have been expressing that they feel but a couple of the Bethel board members really said they wanted to be able to attend our meetings so I attempted to move our meeting to 7 so that hopefully their very short attendance would be over and then we could have our meeting I think that's good I was confused as and maybe this is just why we had the updates from the committees during that meeting and then we just get into the weeds with so many people so if that hadn't happened and that had happened in here then we would have I also think that if there's going to be um updates or presentations that are going to be longer than 5 minutes or so that they should be added to the agenda because we can't adequately plan um and I wonder if those that presented really realized that there's time constraints right probably not right I mean they're out of here when they're out of here both presentations but it's a matter of you know we we have sort of marathon meetings planned okay yep


And Blake is kind enough to join us now. Hello Blake. Hello. So you're in the chair. You got Sean out of there. I'm in the chair Yeah, I'm gone You guys are welcome Blake laughs with you. Yeah, exactly Blake. What was the you know, you talked about And we even talked about us a little bit at Adam Harrington's charity event the other night but you talked a little bit about how It was it was an obvious decision for you to want to come back here feeling like there was unfinished business and Up and down really appreciating the organization. What is it about the experience that made it clear? No, this is where I want to be I think as a player you look like top-to-bottom of an organization, you know, and You know, you've been in situations, especially if you've played for, you know, 12 years now where You know top-to-bottom it's not a completely put-together organization and and that's that's fine It happens all the time, but when I got here the one thing I did notice was, you know from it felt like from a to z They've thought of everything. Yeah, and like I said, that's that's rare So when you have all of this combined together, it was sort of a no-brainer for me like it was We obviously were able to see it talk about it so often But how quickly you acclimated here yourself to this team to the roster to the needs exactly how you were able to fit in Do you start to think now about the concept of a full-off season or true preseason? Just how much of a difference that will make for you and Someone's really enjoying their promo video, but go ahead Sarah Just just what that will be like to have that much more of a runway of time with this group Yeah, I think you know just continuity And and like you said a healthy offseason. There's sort of the first time I've really Even though it was like a two-month offseason or whatever it was. It felt like two months you know just being able to come in and Have that continuity be able to build upon the things I built last year during the season It's important for me So, you know, it's been great just because I was able to work on different parts of my game and sort of focus Focus in more on my game now specifically with this team because it always kind of changes and coming here I had this sort of Play a little bit different role Normal, so I'm excited for all of that to sort of come together What was the thing if there's something Blake that stood out most to you about playing with? Kevin and playing with James. What would be the things that that stood out most about that experience? And what it's like being on the floor with those guys I think I mean everybody sees sort of the obvious right like how well they score the ball the way they score the ball James's handle Katie being able to shoot over anybody But I think the thing that goes a little bit on note I think it goes unnoticed is their their basketball IQ and how much you're talking the game with them How much they're they're thinking through so a lot of it for me was sort of getting on the same page as to how they think You know me because there's just different ways to play basketball There's different ways to accomplish something But if you're on the same page with somebody and somebody who's that the guys that are that dynamic and that good at scoring I think you just sort of you just try to watch them You try to see what they're doing and you try to fill in those gaps like I said How much does that make a difference? I think we saw that even with your group last year and then you think about the way this roster has been filled out But does that get overlooked basketball IQ is a collective of a group because in many ways You know you look a lot of the individuals on this team and just the feel for the game the feel you all had for each other There was a chemistry It seemed like with the group with the rotation especially with players in and out and injury and dealing with that How you're able to overcome that based on your smarts or feel for the game? Yeah, I think I think for the most part most of the guys on the team last year and I feel like it's probably gonna be this way again, too I Think everybody sort of thinks the same way. I mean we're all sort of like in a certain age range You know some guys a little older But you know, I've known these guys for so long and I think that that that shouldn't go unnoticed That that you know when you get sort of some like-minded players together. It's a little bit easier Guys that are familiar with being around each other, you know, play pick up with him in the summer Workouts in the summer you team USA whatever whatever it's been We've sort of been around each other a little bit and obviously some guys more than others But I think I think it does help Blake. We appreciate the time man We appreciate you kicking Sean out of the chair as well getting that done for us. You're welcome any time you need that And we good luck with the season. We look forward to watching. Thank you guys


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A flow training group Western Pacific and Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force leadership had a meeting where they discussed future training plans across the fleets. Reporting from Fleet Activities Yacowska, I'm Petty Officer Cody Sol.


Oh, boy. Canada. What doesn't it derive from a Ganyeth Gahore? It's village. As Indigenous people, we are used to our stories getting a little twisted. So listen up as we set the record straight. I'm Ganyeth Dio. Please join me as we hear from dozens of Indigenous people. Together we will decolonize our words and our minds on the Telling Our Twisted Histories podcast. You can find episodes on the CBC Listen app or wherever you get your podcasts. From The Conversation, this is Don't Call Me Resilient. I'm Vanita Srivastava. We don't have to accept the technology that we're given. We can reinvent it. We can rethink it. We need to challenge the defaults. It feels like technology like facial recognition and artificial intelligence are an inevitable part of our lives. We ask Google Nest or Alexa to find and play a song. We use our faces to unlock our phones and we share news articles on social media. I'll be honest, I feel like this technology has its upsides. Like when it can track and predict climate change or identify the rioters who storm the U.S. Capitol. But there are also a lot of downsides. Once analysts gain access to our private data, they can use that information to influence and alter our behavior and choices. And like most else, if you're marginalized in some way, the consequences are worse. Experts have been warning about the dangers of data collection for a while now, especially for Black, Indigenous and racialized people.  So what can we do to resist this creeping culture of surveillance? Our guests today are experts in discrimination and technology. Yuan Stevens is the policy lead on technology, cybersecurity and democracy at the Ryerson Leadership Lab and a research fellow at the Center for Media, Technology and Democracy at McGill's School of Public Policy. Her work examines the impacts of technology on vulnerable populations in Canada, the U.S. and Germany. Wendy Hee Kyung Chun is the Canada 150 research chair in new media at Simon Fraser University and she leads the Digital Democracies Institute there. She's the author of several books, including Discriminating Data, which is out this fall. I've been thinking nonstop about surveillance and facial recognition for the last little while, as you can imagine. I'm not living under a rock. I know that there are significant dangers around personal data collection and yet I'm one of those complacent people, you know, I've got two kids, I've got a full-time job, I'm really busy. And I actually love social media. I put pics of my kids on there last night. So what are some of the risks of sharing my life online? Yuan, what do you think? So I think there is a lot at stake when it comes to the amount of data we're giving companies and how they can treat us and what they can do with that data once they have it. So what I do in my work is I basically look at the development of technology and I think about the ways it can be abused. One of the worst possible outcomes is that we end up in a place where companies work with governments to have this data and to access this data but to also categorize us and control us. So one of my own personal interests is how people were treated by the Stasi and by their peers in the German Democratic Republic. And I think about how different they think about their data than we do in North America because they have a history behind them of the state snooping into their lives. There's this ethnographic study by a researcher named Ulrika Neumdorf and she was able to discover that the impacts of this surveillance included things like significant impacts on their well-being, mistrust and significant trauma. If you think about what it feels like for someone to know something about you that you didn't want them to know, that is huge. You know what I'm hearing you saying is that this has implications for our health, our lives, our well-being in society. I sort of understand it on a large scale that, okay, it can result in all of these things that are troubling. But on a personal level, what are the dangers there for somebody who's like, well, I'm a law abiding citizen, so what's the problem? So I think that one thing we can do is maybe switch it a little and not say I'm a law abiding citizen, what's the problem. But ask what are the conditions under which you're a law abiding citizen. So what's really fascinating now is the example you started with. You took pictures of your kids, you put them online, what's wrong with this? What's interesting now is that publicity and surveillance are so intertwined now that it's hard to understand their difference. So in other words, when you take that picture and you put it up and you create a public persona and you engage with people, it's not simply you putting it up, but the ways in which by you doing this, what else is happening? I'm just going to use an example as old, old school in the 90s when I was an activist on campus. We knew that there were Canadian agents somewhere in our midst. We just knew that they were collecting files on us. In my head, I imagine those files to be, you know, like Manila folder files with black and white photos. So information, it just was sort of more localized. And I think now like I don't know what it's like to be an activist today. And I'm wondering about the, especially for racialized people, queer people, immigrants, refugees, how they might be extra targeted by this kind of information and surveillance. What's at stake for these communities? Yeah, I think it's a really good question of who stands to be, I think, the most targeted and harmed by the use of surveilling technology. So whether you're queer or a religious minority or person of color, or if you are protected under discrimination law, what that means is that you deserve treatment that ensures that your rights are protected in the same way that you would be if you were a dominant group. It's absolutely true that certain groups are going to be more targeted than others. So if you look at predictive policing technologies, there's certain logics inscribed in the use of those and design of those technologies that can further perpetuate realities or sort of statistical findings that existed before. So for example, if you decide to deploy police to a certain neighborhood because there are more instances of crime there, in fact, what you could be doing is finding crime more often there, primarily because you're actually sending police there more than if you were to send them to another neighborhood, for example. You're just looking more basically. Exactly. That's one of the instances in ways in which people of color, for example, and racialized people can be further subject to surveillance and further found guilty of crimes even because what you have is feedback loops. So feedback loops are a really important concept when you're looking at surveillance studies in the context of technologies. Every time I think predictive policing, I'm thinking about this dystopian movie Minority Report. So a classic example of this is the Chicago heat list, which is now no longer being used. And there they came up with, allegedly, they said, what we're doing is just coming up with a list of people most likely to be murdered or to murder somebody. And then we're going to go visit them and say, look, you better change your ways or else something bad is going to happen. Oh my God, that dystopian movie is actually real. It is real. Absolutely. And the way that they determined the people most likely to be murdered was by going to past arrest history. So if you had a co-arrest with somebody who became a homicide victim, that would be a strong indicator that you then would be involved in a homicide. Now, what's really strange about this is that, first of all, they didn't take time into consideration.  And since some of these people had clean records, when the police came and visited, the neighbors were like, this guy's a snitch. So crazy thing as well is that the data that went into these predictive policing models and the whole setup of the model itself came from studying mainly African-American neighborhoods in the west side of Chicago. So race and background is already there. So race didn't need to be an overt factor because it was an implicit factor. So if you think of how these programs work, they're trained using certain data and the way that they're validated is correct to say, okay, yes, it's made a proper prediction is by hiding some of that past data and then saying, okay, let's use this model. Does it predict the past correctly? So these don't actually predict the future. They're tested on the ability to break the past. So if the past is racist, these programs will only be considered to be correct, only validated as accurate if they make racist predictions. So you're caught in a system in which learning means repeating the past, which means you lose the future. So the reason why we don't want these automated systems is because all it does is automate past mistakes. So some artists did this great mockup of a machine learning program to find the white collar criminal. And it was like the fancy side of New York, blah, blah, blah. So I mean, I think that the question is, how are we understanding exactly what Yuan was talking about, which are the communities that are most police so we have the most data about. And so if the police really want to say, look, we want to be effective and we want to use our resources, then go for this empty swath of people in the suburban homes doing all sorts of stuff that are never pulled over or looked into. Not that I'm advocating that. I want to talk a little bit about Clearview because some of this became known when the story of Clearview broke in the mainstream media, that all of our data is scraped and then put into this database that is now being used for facial recognition and this database being sold to police or to law enforcement or to companies. Can you explain a little bit about that case and why it's so important in Canada, the Clearview case? Yeah, absolutely. What happened was this company, a startup that's still getting funding, tried to provide and is trying to provide its services to the general public and to the police and to governments and all kinds of entities. Clearview is a facial recognition technology company, but it's also a data scraping company. So what it does is it scrapes data from all kinds of sources, social media, websites in general, collects those, has used deep learning and machine learning technologies to analyze whose faces is whose and categorize those and then what it does is it sells the service of matching faces. Why this matters is not only is the company selling essentially face matching capabilities that it's offering, but it's scraped significant amounts of data contrary to law that would otherwise prevent the scraping of data. Now, data scraping in itself is not to be seen as criminal. I think it can be used for legitimate reasons, for example, by academic researchers, but none of this was done without our consent. We had no notice. We had no knowledge of this. You mean like Canadians, when you say we, we're talking about residents of Canada. Yeah, I think when it comes to both racism and surveillance, we do have Canadian exceptionalism and Clearview AI and it's used by the RCMP is another example to show that surveilling and the surveillance of us in Canada absolutely exists and is occurring. The reason why it matters too is because what happened was the RCMP was using Clearview AI services and conducted hundreds of searches, though it only admitted to some of those to the office of the Privacy Commissioner. And it's always about the child predators. You know, it always starts with that. And that's something that Bruce Schneier has referred to as the four horsemen of the info apocalypse, which is this idea that there is certain aberrant behavior that you want to address. And then you say, you know, I'm going to use this technology only in those situations, which could be true. All of us can get behind the idea that children should be protected. And that's, of course, I believe that too. But then what you see happening is surveillance creep and the ability to use that same technology in other situations.  People who are concerned about how technology can be used and abused are always thinking in a sort of minority report sense. And perhaps for the good reason, we're trying to see what is the absolute worst that could happen with this. And it's because we're trying to protect all people because you know that in order to protect all people, you can't allow certain people to be treated a certain way necessarily unless there's, depending on how much trust there is in the institution. Okay. Are you basically saying my photos in my phone are also something to be worried about? Absolutely. It just gets worse and worse. We have to talk for a minute now or more than a minute, facial recognition. I know that you both look at this in your work. Can we talk a little bit about what the technology is and also how it's being used right now? Wendy? Sure. So facial recognition technology is a form of pattern recognition. And so it's the idea that somehow, and these are done through machine learning programs mainly, and they don't focus on features that make sense to us.  I'm going to match this eye to that eye, but rather through various algorithms.  It's very problematic. It doesn't really work well. It's also very bad because the early programs were trained on publicly available faces. So you're thinking Hollywood. Now think of what a hotbed of diversity Hollywood is. Other ones are like undergraduates who will do anything for, you know, as far as I can tell, $5 or some school credit, right? So the libraries were mainly white. And so these technologies work very well with light-skinned faces and really poorly with dark-skinned faces. It's getting better, but that's not the point. The point isn't that we need to be perfect for all skin tones. But the reason why this matters so much is that think of how a self-driving cars operate, right? If they can't recognize dark people as people, then there's clear danger that's involved in this. But also because it's not refined on dark-skinned faces, and this is something that people at Georgetown have been working on a lot, is that it will miss, recognize dark faces as criminal, right? Because it doesn't have that distinction. So there was this famous example given by the ACLU where they looked at the U.S. Congress and said, you know, who amongst these are criminals? And it was disproportionately people of color that were marked as quote-unquote criminals. So basically these technologies are built on historical information, which includes historical discrimination, historical racism. And so this idea that science is neutral and technology is neutral is completely wrong. Basically the discrimination is built into the technology. Yeah, to that point, worked by Kate Robertson and Cynthia Koo at Citizen Lab has shown that we absolutely do have a bias to believe that mathematical processes are neutral. And so we'll trust technology and we'll want to sort of listen to it, so to speak, when it has a certain output. And it's because we think that this is statistics, this is maths. I don't understand how it works. It must be fine. And that's really problematic when you consider the fact that not only police but judges could also rely on essentially recommendation systems. It's probably okay that we can be recommended some TV shows and Netflix before certain recommendations be made regarding the most fundamental of our rights. That is a totally different story. I mean, so should we just completely be not using this technology at all? I absolutely think there should be certain no-go zones when it comes to the collection and particularly the processing of our data for certain outcomes. So for example, in the general data protection regulation, which is one of the most advanced and progressive data protection regulations in Europe, what is not allowed is the processing of information for automated decision-making for the purposes of profiling. On its face, what that suggests to me is that you shouldn't be allowed to, for example, collect information about faces in the public setting, perhaps are very certain circumstances, but the presumption should be that you don't collect faces and biometric information in the setting and therefore to render someone potentially criminal. And biometric information is also a really sensitive data type that I think absolutely deserves special protection. Right now in Canada, there isn't special affordances given to the protection of that kind of data. What we have is this kind of free-for-all in a way where all data is the same, but in fact different kinds of data have different levels of sensitivity and there should be enforceable regulation, I think, in Canada, saying that spelling out the kinds of data that should not be treated in certain ways and right now that doesn't exist. And Wendy, what were you going to say? I saw you were like... I completely agree with everything that Yuan has said. I want to just talk about the predictive part of this because what I would argue is that the problem is using these programs for prediction. The famous example is Amazon's hiring algorithm, which was trained on all of the hires it made. And what ended up happening is if you had women anywhere on your CV, you lost a point. How is that even possible?  Yeah, so because they went by who they hired, who they didn't hire, they didn't hire women. So clearly being a woman is bad. You're not going to be a good employee. And so they ditched the program, but rather than ditching it, what if we said, thank you so much for meticulously documenting your discrimination. And we use these not for prediction, but actually as evidence of historical trends. The example I always give is global climate change models. So global climate change models gives you the most probable future given past and present behavior. But then we don't say, oh, this is great. It's going to go up two degrees. Let's make it go faster or we're offered the most probable future so we won't make that future happen. So what if we took a lot of these things which are allegedly predictive and said, okay, the heatless shows Chicago police are discriminatory. So let's make sure that the kinds of things that would be automated under this don't happen. So I think that's one thing. Take these and look at them as historical probes rather than as predictive. To offer one example of people who are doing this at USC and the Gina Davis Institute, they're using these kind of pattern recognition technologies to go through the past archive of Hollywood films and to see what kind of gender representation is there and think through what kinds of representation there have been within mainstream media. Yeah, and maybe on a more hopeful note as well, I'm aware of efforts by the Algorithmic Justice League, which looks at how people can flag issues with algorithms with respect to how they're biased. And the hope is that you can improve systems because you say this is something that should be fixed. And there are risks inherent with opening up your systems for criticism by the public. But I think it's really one important step forward to allowing people who are affected by these technologies to impact their design. That would actually give rise potentially to what was Sasha Kostanichuk called design justice. And I won't go into that depth here, but it's really the idea that there's meaningful participation of community groups in the design of technology. So just talking about the participation of groups in the creation of technology. I don't know what it's like for a protester right now on the street, but I do know that summer of 2020, we had uprisings in the United States, but also in Hong Kong and Beirut. And I know that facial recognition is not just used in North America. It's a global issue that we're talking about this idea of surveillance. And I know that both of you have talked about some of the ways that the protesters have resisted the surveillance. What caught your attention, Wendy, with some of these protests? Well, what's important is that they're very aware of how the technology works. Because again, what we started with is the ways in which publicity and surveillance are now intertwined. So it's hard to think through publicity without thinking through surveillance at the same time. And what I would argue that the protesters show us and that we need to start thinking about are public rights. Because I really think the work that is being done around privacy is important, but it's completely inadequate. And there's a thought that once you're in public, you lose all rights. You're simply exposed. You're a public figure. But increasingly, we're all public figures. And what we need to be able to do is to be in public, vulnerable and yet not attacked. And what I find really important is the ways in which people offer each other shade, either through making sure pictures are taken in a certain way or people registering that they're at a certain place in order to provide a larger or different sense of location for these technologies. And these are inadequate in terms of long term solutions. But what they bring out is if you think again of how all these recommendation engines work or how everything works, we're fundamentally intertwined with each other. Everything you get is based on what somebody else has done, which means we're fundamentally connected. So what if we took this position of being connected as a place from which to act and to act collectively and to say we need to be able to loiter in public? Because everybody should have the right to loiter. Everyone should have the right to be in public. And if we switch it this way, I think that this opens up an entirely different conversation. And more importantly, it moves privacy away from corporations get to know everything about you, but not share it to other users and think about it in a far more expansive way. You said provide shade. Is that what you said provide shade for others, for each other? Yes, literally a metaphor. And this comes from a lot of the work that Kara Keeling has done. And so she's in African-American studies and in film studies. And we have been trying to think together through this question of exposure, shade and protection. And it comes from work that she's done in analyzing slavery and in how enslaved women took care of each other and their bodies, not because they owned them, but because they didn't. Because they were outside of certain notions of privacy. So privacy, especially within the U.S., is very white. It's like the first case on New York State around privacy was the protection of Abigail Robinson, I believe, who is a white woman whose photograph was used to sell flour against her will. But while this case was going on, Nancy Green, who was anti-mima, had no rights to her image. She was completely viewed in public. And so I think if we move away from certain notions of privacy, which have never been adequate, instead think through publicity as an enabling position that isn't based on notions of certain really problematic notions of property. I think this can open things up in really productive ways. I like that the right to loiter, the right to be public, the right to be in the public. And that comes from work done by wonderful Indian feminists who wrote a book, Why Loiter, which is all about the feminists and women need and Muslim men need the right to loiter in public. I never really thought about it in that way, like the idea of loitering being a right to take up space, really. But you're saying we all should have it. I absolutely agree with Wendy that we have a system in Canada that is actually very similar to the U.S. where we prioritize privacy. In fact, it isn't just privacy that is at stake, but it's the right to control our information. The German Constitutional Court calls this informational self-determination. And that phrase to me really encompasses and cuts across a lot of these issues we're talking about today, because we're talking about privacy, we're talking about algorithmic decision-making recommendation systems. But privacy alone isn't enough to protect our rights. Right now, we have changes to Canada's privacy laws, and that doesn't go far enough. And in fact, what we need is a comprehensive approach that protects our right to informational self-determination and views us not as consumers, but views us as humans, whose human rights are at the core the most important thing to protect. And that matters because if you're out in public and if the police are using what's called an MC catcher, so something that can ping cell towers to tell where you are. Yes, it's your privacy at stake, but yes, it's also your freedom to protest. At the root of it is the right to have your information treated in the way that you want to be treated. Before we wrap up, do you have a couple of top things that you want to leave listeners with, whether things that you think individuals should be paying attention to or things that we should look at from a policy level or just observations that you think we should be making? We don't have to accept the technology that we're given. We can reinvent it, we can rethink it, we need to challenge the defaults. And secondly, technology isn't the solution to our social problems. We often frame this way because there's this belief that somehow we humans are inadequate and we can build this thing that can take care of these problems for us. It will never be, but it can be part of the solution, but only if we look at the technology closely and we realize that the technology itself is built in with these assumptions, but it's also built on studying certain populations and that maybe one way therefore to change these technologies is to revisit the populations that were so key to the building of certain presumptions. Like go back to that residential study of segregation in the United States, realize there was something more and so much more that was happening and so therefore start with everybody we touch whenever we use these technologies as a way to open up different worlds. And to add to that, I really want to encourage any listeners who care about these topics to take up space too. And this extends what you were saying, Wendy, about the right to loiter and the right in some ways to take up that space. I really want to encourage people who deploy technology, whether you're policy makers or the police to really consider what is in the public interest and part of the consideration of what's in the public interest is consideration of how your technology will impact those equality-seeking groups. So it's two-fold. It's really take up more space if you are going to be a person who's impacted by this and also keep in mind the public interest and those equality-seeking groups when you are using this technology to the detriment of those people. Lovely to speak with you both so much. Thank you very much for taking the time today to be with me. Thank you for inviting us, and it's been a wonderful conversation. Yeah, thank you so much. I'm really honored to be part of this. That's it for this episode of Don't Call Me Resilient. Thanks for listening. I'd love to know, are you as freaked out as I am after that conversation? Talk to me. I'm on Twitter at writevenita. That's at w-r-i-t-e-v-i-n-i-t-a. And don't forget to tag our producers at ConversationCA. Just use the hashtag Don't Call Me Resilient. If you'd like to read more about the creeping dangers of surveillance, go to theconversation.com slash ca. It's also where you'll find our show notes with links to stories and research connected to our conversation with Yuan Stevens and Wendy Hee Kyung Chun. Finally, if you like what you heard today, please help spread the love, tell a friend about us, or leave us a review on whatever podcast app you're listening to us on. Don't Call Me Resilient is a production of The Conversation Canada. It was made possible by a grant for journalism innovation from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada. The series is produced and hosted by me, beneath us through Vastava. Our producer is Susanna Ferrera. Our associate producer is Ibrahim Dyer. Reza Dyer is our incredibly patient sound producer, and our fabulous consulting producer is Jennifer Morose. Lisa Verano leads audience development for The Conversation Canada, and Scott White is our CEO. And if you're wondering who wrote and performed the music we use on the pod, that's the amazing Zaki Ibrahim. The track is called Something in the Water. Thanks for listening everyone, and hope you join us again. Until then, I'm Vanita, and please, don't call me resilient.