And first of all, the first thing I wanted to say is we have to make a break 10 minutes before the next hour because we have some technical issues and so we have to start and we have to stop this session 10 minutes before the hour. So, but I'm very delighted to introduce to you the next speaker, Robin Maude. Robin is a senior lecturer and director of student research at the Graduate School of Nursing, Midwifery and Health at the Victoria University of Wellington, and she's a practice in LMC-Midwife, and she's a member of the Midwifery and Normal Birth Research Group and her interests are focused on activities that promote and protect normal birth through developing an awareness of knowledge translation and quality improvement and the effects on clinical material practice. And the focus of Robin's research was translating evidence into practice around the fundamental literary skills of intermittent escalation of the fetal heart rate for lower risk women. And she's continued, she continues to be interested in the use of water immersion for labor and birth from our master's research and is currently planning research in this area. So, Robin, welcome. She's speaking today from Hawaii and I'm very much looking forward to hear your presentation. Over to you. Oh, thank you, Michaela. And I hope you can hear me. Lovely to be involved. And yes, I did tick the other box and it because I'm sitting in a hotel room and Waikiki Beach at the moment. It's nine o'clock at night and I'm hungry. So I'm looking forward to doing this and then going to dinner. So, welcome everyone and lovely to see you on board here. So today I'm going to talk about intelligent structured intermittent escalation or I call it Isaiah. It's about fetal heart rate monitoring for low risk women and it was the subject of my PhD studies that I finished in 2012. And so today I really want to just introduce you to the model and talk a little bit about how it works. So here I am from New Zealand sitting all the way up here in Hawaii and it feels really weird to be talking to you all around the world and it's lovely to see so many people on board and all the countries that you come from. I was really excited to see that there are a couple of midwives from Switzerland on board at the moment. I've just recently had the Isaiah framework translated into German and published in the Swiss Federation of Midwives Journal. So lovely to see the Swiss midwives on board tonight. Here's a little map of Wellington for people who may not have been there. It's a particularly good looking picture on a sunny day. So I hope that anyone who's interested comes on down to Wellington in New Zealand at some stage if possible. We look forward to seeing you and welcoming you. So just quickly a little bit about my research project. It was a mixed method non-experimental pre and post intervention study done in three phases. And so for this particular piece of work, what I was interested in is why we are not using intermittent oscultation when the evidence for its use is very strong. And indeed all of the guidelines that you see around the world generally say that for low risk women it is recommended that intermittent oscultation should be offered. And so one of the conundrums for me was if we have this evidence, why are we not using it in practice? And so I set about to investigate why this was happening. I'm just going to move on to the next one here. So some of the assumptions I started with when I went into my research was that there are unanticipated effects associated with using CDG monitoring for low risk women. And the literature tells us that the rates of interventions and particularly things like epidural and augmentation and caesarean sections are higher when women who are low risk are essentially well and healthy and have uncomplicated pregnancies. When they are subjected to unnecessary interventions like CDG monitoring, it increases their risks without any significant benefits for the baby. And so although intermittent oscultation has been used for many, many years, with the introduction of CDG monitoring back in the late 60s, early 70s, this resulted in a really huge decrease in the use of intermittent oscultation for fetal heart monitoring. And it's a factor that affects whether or not intermittent oscultation is actually used in practice in many health settings. And as a result of this, we know that practitioners are becoming de-schooled in the skill of oscultation and palpation as well because they go together. So the knowledge that midwives were becoming more and more drawn into the cascade of intervention increased the urgency for me to undertake this research into fetal heart monitoring using intermittent oscultation. And it's my belief that the choice of monitoring modality is a decision that needs to be made in partnership with women, with well-informed women. And there's growing evidence that the form of fetal monitoring is an intervention that has possible consequences as I've mentioned. I thought it was very interesting to see the foreword in the fetal monitoring book by Gibbon, Aril Kumar in 2008, where they say that excessive technology should not be applied to those women who are manifestly at low risk. It may confer no benefit, can generate both medical and non medical anxiety, and through subtle effects may cause significant harm. And so I agree with that. And I agree that we need to have a look at the evidence, but also to find some ways to reestablish the basic fundamental school of intermittent oscultation for women during labor. So those are some of my assumptions. And one of the things that I did early back in about 2007 was to go out onto these midwifery lists here that I've got that I've got on my PowerPoint. These are email discussion lists that are made up of midwives all around the world, just like we are today. And it's a fabulous way of being able to have discussions with people about practice issues. So I went out to these two lists in 2007 and asked them questions about intermittent oscultation. And some of the questions I asked were, you know, what do you do? What does your practice look like? How did you learn how to do that? Some specifics around how often would you listen to the baby's heartbeat during labor? And what is the normal practice in your area? And what are the things that are important about developing some notion about how we should do intermittent oscultation during labor? Some of the midwives came, well, I had a lot of midwives. I had midwives from 31 different countries around the world who gave me an enormous amount of response that really helped me to develop this ISIA project. Some of the things that were influencing their decision making were the evidence and the guidelines that exist around fetal surveillance. One of the issues that affected whether they would use intermittent oscultation was often the staffing levels within the maternity units. And this is one of the impacts that comes up, or one of the barriers to use that comes up repeatedly. And these are particularly in countries where the guidelines still say that you should be listening every 15 minutes. Many midwives came back on this list and said that they use electronic fetal monitoring, or the CTG, as a defensive practice. In other words, we put it on so that it has a printout of the fetal heart rate that provides evidence that I have been doing some fetal heart rate monitoring in the event of an adverse outcome. Others said that the use of fetal movement monitoring in a package of overall monitoring of fetal wellbeing is a very useful thing. So that led me to do some investigation into the role of fetal movement monitoring. Some people are concerned that listening to the baby's heartbeat with intermittent oscultation means that you are unable to determine variability. And of course, variability is a term that's associated with fetal heart rate monitoring. And I think with electronic fetal heart rate monitoring, and I think that we can touch on that a little bit later. And strongly it came out from midwives that coming from a position of using and understanding normal physiology gives us a lot of confidence to be able to monitor fetal wellbeing during labor without necessarily attaching the woman to a CTG machine. I'm just going to move on to the Isaiah framework. And the words that I used were very specific. And just looking at these definitions here. Intelligent was rational, logical, able, structured as an ordered or prearranged approach. And for me, the Isaiah framework enabled midwives to become more skilled and competent with this sort of logical and ordered approach to fetal assessment during labor. And going back, of course, to that fetal monitoring book by given Errol Coomer and they do state that this form of fetal monitoring is almost equivalent to using a CTG machine. So it's about having an organised and logical approach to what we're doing with our IA that gives us robust data to make some good decisions about the fetal monitoring that we are doing. So this Isaiah framework has been designed to be able to use as an admission assessment and also for ongoing fetal heart monitoring. So I'm going to move first of all to the admission assessment. Now I know that that's a little hard for you to see on there and I apologise for that. But I want to talk about each little section on its own and this work has been published and I'll show you where the publication is available in an open access journal in my final slide. So the admission assessment part of the Isaiah framework simply gives us a structured approach to how we will do an assessment when we first see that woman. And so that might be that we see her in a maternity unit for the first time. It might be that we are going to see her at a home or in a birthing unit. And in New Zealand the context for us is that at least 85% of all the women giving birth here have their own midwife, their own continuity of care midwife. So we know these women very well and that's a really huge advantage for women and midwives in New Zealand. But this framework I believe can be used if you're seeing the woman for the first time in labour in the hospital and they have never met her before and don't know anything about her history. So what this framework gives us is a flowchart or an algorithm to help us decide what kind of fetal monitoring is the best to use for any woman, low risk women. So you can see in the central component there is a risk assessment, abdominal palpation, assessment of fetal movements, uterine activity and assessing the fetal heart rate. So I'm going to have a look at these sections in a minute. And this is the second component of the Isaiah framework and this is the framework that guides us when we're doing, when we've finished our admission assessment and we've made a decision about which is the best form of fetal heart monitoring for this woman. And this is how we will then continue to do Isaiah throughout her labour. And I'll talk a bit about that as well. So coming on to the admission assessment or first contact in active labour, there are a couple of decision points that need to be made. And the first one is around reviewing the history, looking at the woman's care plan and to consider any social factors that might put the fetus at risk. And this supports the work that we're doing, anti-natal anyway. So the risk assessment begins by reviewing all of these pieces of work. It's supported by the, sorry, let me start again. The woman and the midwife share the information about how she's coping with labour and what supports she might need moving forward, as well as reviewing those care plans and also from the physical assessment that you're going to be doing. It's important to consider any social factors such as smoking, obesity, socioeconomic deprivation and high parity because these things will possibly contribute to an increased risk. Now sometimes it's added to the admission that many health care providers in maternity still consider that an admission CDG should be put on. And indeed many doctors and midwives are still using this technology despite the evidence strongly discouraging its use. Our research suggests that intelligent auscultation such as ISIA can be regarded equivalent to an admission CDG in low risk women and should be considered rather than the application of a CDG. So the ISIA framework provides an alternative means of assessing fetal wellbeing on admission or at first contact in labour and it supports the clinical decision making of the maternity provider in any model of care or any maternity setting. So the second decision point comes at the end of having done that full assessment that includes the palpation, the fetal movement, the uterine activity and listening to the fetal heart rate. And once you can see that all of those parameters are in the normal range, it is safe to say that this woman is suitable for intermittent auscultation moving forward. Looking at that admission assessment and by the way that woman here, this midwife, she was a third year student midwife who was out in practice with me as a lead maternity carer and she is getting married on the 5th of May in Hawaii, which is why I'm here. I've come over for her wedding. This was a student midwife who worked with me in practice and we've had a very close contact ever since. So it's really exciting to be coming over here to her wedding. So the admission assessment draws on the basic skills of auscultation and palpation as a means by which the midwife gains information about the well-being of the woman and her baby. So the essential midwifery skills of touching, feeling, sensing, hearing, seeing and knowing are employed. Reviewing the care plan, reviewing the history and the examination are supported by abdominal palpation that determines fetal lie, presentation and position, but it also helps the midwife identify the best place on the abdomen to put the device on for listening to the fetal heart. And it also helps us to determine the descent of the presenting part, and we can feel fetal movements. Measuring the fundal height to give us a clinical assessment also of the growth and light core volume. And this will indicate to us that the baby is well grown and likely to be healthy. And we can also palpate uterine activity at this point. So if there's optimal fetal position, optimal fetal growth and optimal light core volume, those things are all in line for the woman to be suitable for intermittent auscultation. Admission assessment, again fetal movements. So fetal movements during pregnancy we know indicate that well-being, fetal well-being because they are evidence of the integrity of both the central nervous system and the musculoskeletal system in the fetus. And we know that when we're looking after women antinatally during their pregnancies, we ask them to tell us about their baby's usual pattern of movement. And we know that we advise women if their fetal movements are reduced then they should be seen by their caregiver and assessed. Contrary to the understanding of some women and maternity care providers, the frequency of fetal movements does not diminish in the third trimester. And that's a myth that still is existing out there in the world and probably needs to be put to bed. Fetal movements should be assessed by subjective maternal perception and women are encouraged to be aware of their fetal movement pattern. This gives them some credibility about knowledge about their babies and themselves. So it's with that understanding in mind it seems appropriate for us to include a question of usual fetal movement patterns during the admission assessment. It should be reviewed, it should be seen as additional information. So determining the baby's movement patterns on admission, we ask the woman to tell us about her the usual pattern in recent time. So leading up to this assessment, what have the usual patterns been like? And we'll record those in the notes. But we'll also ask her to tell us each time she feels a baby's movement. Listening to the baby's heart rate during the time that it is moving is also the best time to determine any increases above the fetal heart rate average rate that we've already determined and I'll come to that in a minute. In the literature this is called the oscultated acceleration. I'm calling it increases above the fetal heart rate baseline or average base average. So you ask about the normal patterns, power paedophetal movement with the woman and listen to the fetal heart rate during a movement. And remember this is the most important thing. Fetal movement is a confirmation of fetal well-being. So the admission assessment, uterine activity, this is this is basic midwifery. We know how to do this. Uterine power patient by gentle touch throughout a series of contractions will determine the duration, frequency and strength of contraction. We can also assess if there's any uterine irritability or any tenderness and to determine what the resting time is like between contraction. Power patient of contractions enables the midwife to accurately time when to listen to the fetal heart. Fetal heart should be listened to at the end of the contraction. Assessing the fetal heart rate. Oscultation of the fetal heart rate will enable an average rate and rhythm to be determined along with the presence of fetal heart rate increases and the absence of fetal heart rate decreases. Oscultation according to Goodwin who wrote a wonderful piece of work back in 2000 she said, Oscultation requires extremely focused listening and counting of each fetal heartbeat as it's heard. Using the index finger to tap the beat being heard may increase accuracy of the oscultation findings when the rate is rhythm, when the rate is rapid. The tapped beat may be counted by the second observer so that the person oscultating can be fully focused on hearing the rapid heart sound. And so that's what I tried to demonstrate in this picture. That the midwife is listening to the heart rate, she's also tapping out the beat of the baby's heart on the woman's leg there. And then another photo that I haven't put on here, she's also palpating the woman's radial pulse at the same time and is able to differentiate between the mother's pulse and the baby's heart boot. And that's a really important thing that we need to be doing when we're doing oscultation or in fact any fetal heart rate monitoring is to be differentiating between the maternal and the fetal heart rate. So the average fetal heart rate is determined by counting the fetal heart rate beats for 60 seconds between contractions or fetal movements over a period of about 10 minutes so that we can obtain an average rate. A watch with a second hand or a stopwatch function on a mobile phone can be used to count the fetal heart rate for the recommended period. The average fetal heart rate is expressed as a single number in beats per minute. That is 130 beats per minute if that's what you count. And this is the same as recording a maternal pulse. The notion here is that an oscultated fetal heart rate should not be written as a range of numbers which I have seen frequently in medical records when I review them. Quite often you'll see a fetal heart 136 to 148 which is trying to demonstrate a range and I believe that midwives are probably thinking that they're demonstrating fetal heart rate variability and that brings us back to that question of listening for variability that is not what we're doing in intermittent oscultation. So we're writing as a single number. We're listening and counting for a minute and writing as a single number. In terms of the fetal heart rate rhythm it's not very well defined in the literature or nor is it significant known. However it is possible to hear when the fetal heart beats are regular or irregular. If the fetal heart beat is irregular further assessment is required to determine what that dysrhythmia is about. So an irregular fetal heart beat is very often benign and requires no intervention. Normally would frequently revert to normal after the birth. But it may be an indication for you wanting to put the CTG machine on. Fetal heart increases is when the fetal heart rate is at least about 15 beats higher than that average rate that you've already determined. It may be heard with or without a fetal movement. So fetal heart increases are considered a good sign of fetal health and that means the fetus is responding to stimuli and displaying integrity of the mechanisms controlling the heart. An abrupt or gradual decrease in the fetal heart may be detected by listening to the fetal heart rate immediately after the end of a contraction and that's considered to be an abnormal finding. The complete clinical situation of the woman and the fetus should be reviewed in the presence of any fetal heart rate decreases after a contraction and measures taken to detect or correct any causes. So the normal fetal heart is seen there on the right hand side and the abnormal is seen below that. Just moving on now. I know this is also very hard to see and I apologize. This is just an example of the documentation we use once we get through all of those assessments and the key thing for me is that it's really important to make a statement like I've written here at the bottom that you've gone through this assessment and that you've made a clear statement that the woman's well and healthy and everything you've found about her so far as within the normal and that therefore she is suitable for intermittent auscultation moving forward. So the documentation I feel is incredibly important. One of the things I do is do review medical records when there's been an adverse outcome and I think it's probably the truth true for everywhere around the world that communication and documentation are two of the most important things in how we deliver our care and I really think that we need to be clear about our documentation and how well we do it which is why I've included this because I think it's important for educators to be telling and telling this message to all of our midwife colleagues. So in terms of intermittent auscultation as I move into doing that in ongoing we I refer you back to that original framework which was about doing an ongoing risk assessment. So when we're looking after women throughout Labor we're constantly assessing as we go along is there anything that's arising that might make it more prudent for me to move from intermittent auscultation to using a CTG machine and so some of the constant things that come up will come up for us that make it necessary for us to change our outlines in our fetal heart rate, fetal heart surveillance guidelines and they might include things like the use of oxytocin or if the auscultation becomes abnormal or having an epidural for analgesia or any sort of abnormal bleeding or maternal temperature blood-stained like war and those things are all within the guidelines but they're also within the framework that I put up frequently. So continuous assessments throughout Labor is very very important. It's also recommended that the fetal heart rate be assessed before and after any labor enhancing procedures such as artificial rupture of the membrane or admission of administration of medications or analgesia or even after spontaneous rupture of membrane, vaginal examinations or any abnormal uterine activity pattern or any untoward event that might happen during labor such as a sudden hypertension or such. So the ongoing assessment is very important. Looking at the ISR protocol and I struggle with this one because I know that there's a difference in the frequency in particular in different fetal monitoring guidelines throughout the world. There's a number in I mean in the UK it's recommended that every 15 minutes in the US they're a little bit easier. They say 15 to 30. The RANSCOG guidelines says 15 to 30. The reality is that there's never been any robust research especially randomized controlled trials that have actually tested these frequencies and so they really are based on opinion, expert opinion. What we do know is that these frequencies were used in a lot of the randomized controlled trials that were done in the 80s and 90s and so they again as I say they were based on expert opinion and they've been the only protocols for frequency that have actually been subjected to any kind of rigorous testing. There's never been a trial to see whether 15 minutes is better than 30 minutes and so maybe that's something that we will look at in the future. For me I guess the bottom line was that we needed to pick a number that fitted well with practice and thinking back to that discussion I had with the midwires on the email list. People were saying and certainly midwires in my studies said that they were very concerned about disrupting the normal patterns of labor and so rather than being bound by a strict rule that you did it every 15 minutes or every 15 to 30 minutes they would take, they did what they called opportunistic monitoring and so they would take the opportunity to have a listen to the fetal heart when the woman herself made some sort of change so it might be that she was deeply concentrating on her contractions and then stopped to say something or like you know wow that was really big one or something and so the midwife would take the opportunity to say I'll have a listen to the fetal heart now but one of the things I saw in my study was because I did a retrospective medical record review so I could actually see how often the midwives were documenting how the frequency of listening was that it ranged from 15 minutes to 30 minutes with probably the biggest number of doing it around 20 minutes so it seems that in practice we are doing it within this 15 to 30 minute time frame and so as I say until such time we've had some robust research comparing those frequencies that's what I stuck with for my frame work and that can certainly be up to debate the literature is relatively is a guidelines and literature are relatively clear about listening immediately after a contraction although I do know that Rand's cogs say start before the contraction has ended and go for a little bit of time afterwards it's interesting to have a look at some of our historical textbooks I was looking at the Maggie Miles 1953 book that said that the fetal heart rate should never be auscultated during a contraction since oxygen to the fetus would be reduced at this time and so this would not be a true reading of the fetal heart rate so the rationale for auscultation of the fetal heart after contraction is two-fold firstly the decelerations that return to the average fetal heart rate before the contraction is unlikely to be harmful to the fetus in addition it's irritating to the woman to have the fetal stethoscope or docla used during a contraction thickening of the myometrium during a contraction always also reduces the ability to hear the fetal heart rate clearly most of the harmful fetal heart rate decelerations are late atypical variable or prolonged decelerations and these can be identified by auscultation immediately after a contraction so as in the admission assessment component the presence of fetal movement is documented throughout labor and these are an ongoing indicator of fetal well-being and so we've touched on before we've touched on the maternal pulse and you can see in this picture how the midwife is auscultating and feeling the radial pulse and also tapping the beat so another person can count as well and that is not a hard thing to do which is which is good to know so one of the things that we need to consider is what happens if we've got concerns or have an abnormal fetal heart rate and during our auscultation and what should we do with it so normal fetal heart rate findings include a rise above the of the average above 160 beats per minute or a decrease in the average below 110 or gradual or abrupt decelerations or an absence of any increases and some of the things that we consider that may cause these are some of the things that are raised on the slide and one of the one of the most significant things we can do is change maternal position because we know that that will considerably help if there's any umbilical cord compression or cord occlusion so if there is any abnormal fetal heart rate findings it's really pertinent to go through some of these some of these questions here to see if there's a cause for any one of them looking now at the management if there's a non reassuring audible fetal heart rate during auscultation one of the things that's very important is continuous care or one to one one to one care and continuous support and labor but because we know that when women become anxious it's um it can it can actually lead to fetal distress and when we talk about the fear cascade theory we know that increased catamacolamines constrict blood vessels and decreases uterine blood flow and reduces placental perfusion which in turn decreases fetal oxygenation and as a consequence it can increase fetal distress so staying with the woman is probably one of the key things and certainly when you're doing auscultation during labor you need to have one to one care to be able to meet those requirements for frequency but because that's what we think is an important thing to do so consideration must be given to other management options where there's an abnormal fetal heart and those will include as I say repositioning the woman and considering some of these other options and checking maternal pulse and blood pressure very important but doing a vaginal exam examination to rule out any cord and continue to auscultate and do it more frequently consider consider using a CTG or doing fetal blood sampling and obviously doing some consultation and Robin just a quick just a second and as we have to stop actually 10 minutes or so could you maybe get your conclusions and yeah super because we have to also have the audience asking questions thank you I'm ready to stop and I'm just going to with pass that documentation because that that's again just what I was talking about before and here's my conclusion which is the use of our desire for fetal heart rate monitoring of low risk women on admission and inactive labor is supported by the midwives scope of practice and midwifery model of care that includes partnership continuity of care and informed choice and consent ethics and research and the knowledge that intermittent auscultation of the fetal heart is a monitoring modality for low risk women as well supported and should be reassuring for midwives in practice and the final slide is just to show the reference for the journal article that was published in 2014 that contains that framework and I'm currently working on another one that I hope to publish in the next month or two that will explain the use and implementation of the ISR framework and so that's my final slide listening and if there's any questions we can do a couple now thank you Robin that was really good very interesting um there was already a common question from the audience earlier on the fetal movement and on fetal movement guidelines and they said they changed drastically from 10 movements and 24 hours to expecting 10 movements in two hours is that can you comment on that do you do you know anything about that that were like the Randolph guidelines and how does it it's interesting it is interesting about the fetal movement counting um I mean they one of one of my students Billy Bradford is also published in 2014 in BMC pregnancy and childbirth on fetal movements and in her literature review she could see very clearly that the the jury's been out for a very long time about counting fetal movements and moving strongly towards an understanding of women's perception of their fetal movements is being way more important than asking them to count a number and so there is quite a good body of literature that talks about women's perceptions of fetal movements and it seems to fit quite nicely I think with the the green top guideline from the UK from RCOG and so for me I think that the question was around counting and and I've moved away from the notion of counting and then and moving way into the realms of listening to what women say is their baby's normal pattern and I'm much more concerned if they tell me that there's a change in the baby's pattern rather than if the baby has kicked a certain number of kicks I hope that helps Is there anything any other questions before we wrap up? I can see another question here there were there was a new policy on fetal monitoring released just recently I think that's New South Wales and Australia and how they are different from the last guidelines I'm not sure probably if you if you are aware of them Is that Leanne Gill's question? Yes and was that a new policy on fetal or the latest RANDCOG guidelines? Yeah yeah I know the I know the latest RANDCOG guidelines for fetal monitoring and some of us in New Zealand did have the opportunity to give some important on to those there are there are there are some issues around those guidelines in terms of you know being relevant to the model of care and so one of the things I'd be really happy to see is if we could do some more research using Isaiah as the as the intervention and move to have a little bit more freedom in how we talk about intermittent ascultation in our fetal monitoring guidelines mean they have the protocol in the RANDCOG guidelines but as I said earlier on and there's very little evidence for the use of that protocol and what I what I believe about Isaiah is that if we use it logically and in a structured process we're probably getting more information than what you would get if you're simply doing a protocol that says you listen every 15 to 30 minutes because I think it would be really important for us to consider the physiology that's happening here as well yeah I agree with you Leanne it is and it's particularly hard when you don't have the ability to give one to one but again you know we start from the position that this is normal it's normal for a woman to have continuous care we know that continuous care has been researched at length and we know that the findings support that there's a reduction in intervention if women have one to one care so I guess we've got to get a little bit more political about that and go out there and talk to the people who make the decisions about funding and models of care and try and convince them that this model of care that I'm talking about will help us to reduce interventions that actually increase morbidity and don't necessarily improve so it's a bit of a um a bit of a political one there I think I think I have we have to stop here now um there was another question but I guess maybe you can write directly to Robin a private message yes I can who was that from Shailia pan a bit on determining variability by escalation alone so maybe if you could just um continue in a private chat because we want to wrap up so I will um first of all thank you Robin that was really good and I think we had some good comments um in in the chat and um yeah I hope to hear more about your research and read about your publication so I will turn off the record


Welcome to Montpelier Civic Forum where we discuss the issues that are coming up before us on town meeting day and there's none more important than the schools and Presented the city budget and a good show and this is gonna be an equally good show because I have the president of the school board Jim Murphy with me. Now the school board is formally called what? It's called the board of school commissioners and our school. How many school commissioners do we have we have nine? We have seven three. I actually have with the new merger. We've got an interesting set up We have seven to represent Montpelier and two who represent Roxbury and to represent the the weight of the the votes in terms of proportionality by population each Montpelier Commissioner has two votes and each Roxbury member has one vote. That sounds like the Constitution. Yeah So it's it's it's 14 votes to two but seven members to two Do we still have a student who student or two? We have two students and actually who are our two students? I'm a I'm a partner and and hope Petro and they're fantastic they Present most meetings and they give the board updates on what's happening in the schools and from the students perspective and actually the new superintendent has done a great job of making sure that they're Meaningfully integrated and that we get feedback from them and they get the opportunity to tell us about what's going on Now since the last election we've had a new superintendent. Yes, would you discuss our new superintendent a little bit please? Yeah, our new superintendent comes to us from Franklin Northwest where she was curriculum director. This is her first superintendency She brings a lot of energy a lot of great ideas. She's got a very strong educational foundation She's got good management skills We're very excited about her and she's really doing I think a great job of looking Systematically at our schools. Are we getting the best? Do we have the right systems in place? Are we getting the best out of our investments? You know, where can we find? Where can we find efficiencies? She's already actually found quite a bit of efficiencies if you see our Our reserve fund has actually increased greatly because she's managed to find a lot of money that that You know was that we could achieve savings on And she's doing a great job. I think of looking To kind of really harness the great creativity and I think the the amazing assets we have from a personnel perspective And make sure that we're doing the best to integrate, you know the highest quality instructional Systems on that and really giving us something to build on towards towards excellence and towards the The district's goals. What do we do with the reserve fund? I know in the past we've used it when the when the ballot issue went down We supplemented with the reserve fund in order to keep the tax increase lower. What else do you do with the reserve fund? Yeah, the reserve fund It's there's a requirement actually of our policy that we keep two or two point five percent of our total budget in reserve and It's basically a rainy day fund. You know if we need to make some sort of an unanticipated investment An anticipated expense and then just made it higher It's there and it also gives some ability to You know do some things during the school year that maybe weren't budgeted While we're just talking general board before we get into the budget I know that the community is concerned about safety at our schools Yes, would you just discuss measures that the board has been discussing about increasing Protection of our kids are just basic safety at our schools. I know that must be a topic that's on it Is a topic is actually a topic We just had at our last board meeting and we've actually made a fair amount of changes probably most of which are not super noticeable You know sense Libby has come on For one we finally established a safety committee You know a group that works with the administration to make sure that we're in compliance and doing everything we need to do We've we've definitely done a good job of making sure that the entrances and egresses at our school are Safe that you buzz your way in you buy it both but you buzz your way in and also just you know for instance, there were little things like there were some Rooms particularly at the high school where there were furniture and other items blocking exits so making sure that that You know the entrances are secure and the exits are accessible so if people need to get out quickly That can be done Communication between the schools until this year if the if the school communication system went down Other than cell phones, which we have Roxbury Roxbury doesn't even have cell phone service There wasn't necessarily a way to communicate between buildings and now we have a backup system where all four schools can talk to each other Through that backup system if need be We have a security officer that we work with the police station As well as the cop in the school that is the cop in the school You know who who helps over C safety So a lot of a lot of measures like that You know Ensuring that our teachers are well trained to Yeah, so they know what to do in in various situations Think and things like now we now have bleed kits and defibrillators and all the schools Which we didn't before and as tough as is to talk about you know a bleed kit in a What is a bleed kit a bleed kit is is basically a kit that allows Quick application of a tourniquet to stop bleeding and there's staff that's trained to use and the staff that's trying to use those So if you have a situation like you know some of the magic tragic situations We've had one of the things I've actually found is that a lot of the deaths were caused by bleeding and you know People were not able to quickly stop bleeding and move to the next you know the next victim A bleed kit allows you to do that So, you know things like that is tougher to think about you know Those have been put in place just in the last six to nine months Has the board had any discussion whatsoever of arming teachers as others other boards across the country are starting to discuss I Think that's a non-starter with our board. I think you know teachers are not cops The data shows that that you know to be able to You know the type of training it takes to to be able to effectively come into a situation and and Handle it professionally handle it professionally without causing more harm is something that you know that Military and police know how to do and it takes it takes a lot of training. It's not putting you know, it's not a Half-day and and putting a gun in a teacher's drawer and frankly the more guns you have around the more Gun violence and you know the more accidents you have So I think that's a complete non-starter at our school one one conversation that I would like the board to have is how much we involve our students in training and at what level I mean, I do have a concern about You know particularly at kindergarten first grade second grade Yeah Do we do we need to impose worries on kids that that may be hard for them to process? Roxbury, yes, what's the status of the merger right now?  I think by and large it's playing out. It's playing out. Well, you know, it's You know, we still don't have full integration from You know Roxbury into our schools. We still have you know some students who have been grandfathered in So how many are there in terms of being grandfathered in? Roughly Handful it's I would I'd be guessing.  Okay, so it's a significant. It's a significant number That's grandfathered in means that they're going to other high schools other than Montpelier. Exactly They're going they're continuing at the high school. They were at this is the first year where you know, the middle school students Are coming in so we've got a middle school class coming in We also and one of the reasons that another reason the reserve fund went up is that we had actually budgeted for Considerably more tuition expense than has anticipated. We've had a few students who've gone To have who have chosen to go to Montpelier High School We also have some some Roxbury students who Ended up not being tuitioned for various reasons such as they had actually moved out of Roxbury There were a few students who were in in to two household families Yeah, one one parent was in Roxbury. One parent was in say, you know Northfield Yeah, Northfield or Berlin and they were able to establish residence with with the second parent for for their High school education now in 2018 and 19 you had 31 students in Roxbury. Yep in that school Yeah, of which about four were in second grade. Yes. Is that sustainable? Yeah, right now the the finances work and as part of the merger we've committed to You know to keep that school open for the next four years I think that's that school is an important anchor in that community And I know it's very important to the members of Roxbury to have a vibrant school in that community I think we're probably gonna have to have discussions over time about what that school After four years will that school close or is that up to discussion? There's certainly no plans to close that school after four years, but I think if if we want that school to be viable Long-term and possibly it might possibly be viable its current form But I think that's a discussion. We need to start having relatively soon about you know What we want that school to look like it's because there are ways to keep it viable long-term We might have to think about what what the model is for that though because because small schools are Difficult to keep open although right now financially it does work What is the length of the bus trip for school kids coming in to the middle school from it's about half an hour So it's a half an hour. Yeah, maybe a little longer Does the half an hour bus trip affect the number of snow days? It it does not for the entire district My understanding is that for the snow days we've had this year, you know, we've had an incredibly snowy winter That Roxbury was not the cause of an actual snow day it I think it was the cause of perhaps one or two Slow to slow starts delayed starts You know Libby the superintendent she checks with both road crews in both towns You know starting the night before you know picking up again at you know like four in the morning You know, I think that those towns have different expectations I mean Roxbury their their rural they understand that You know, they can't get everything cleared and sometimes they're you know, they deal with it But this year the the snow days have been the result of just genuine water snow. Yeah Let's go into a budget summary. Let's go into the budget. I Know we do this every year you guys who are following this show year by year by year know that I always say It's impossible to exactly predict what the budget will be now because the legislature has to establish what why is it impossible to Estimate the budget you've been with the budget process for years Yeah, I mean the the budget is is a marriage between You know a state allocation of funds and then local funds Getting the exact numbers both on what the state yield is what the state will give us And then also what's called the common level of appraisal, which is an adjustment to How often we appraise? Yeah, basically to the appraisal rates. They'll go into a town and say well This is really reflect what the property values are and then they'll do a percentage adjustment You know those two numbers As well as the number of what's called equalized pupils, which is roughly equivalent to the number of pupils we have but It goes through a formula that's weighted so it's not exact Those numbers all have to be approved by the legislature that oftentimes happens. In fact a few of those numbers that definitely happens after After the actual budgets are voted on so the numbers we go into are essentially the agency of education's best guess at what those numbers will be they tend not to vary hugely between what AOE gives us during the budget process and what the legislature ends up Approving they can vary some and actually, you know, I think the last two years We've we've been lucky the the numbers have actually been adjusted and finalized in our favor This year will we'll see That doesn't sound promising. Well, we just you just don't know I don't want to make any promises But the last two years have been have been When Ann appeared talking about this and Watson appeared talking about the city budget She said that they lucked out this year in terms of health contributions and that helped to keep The city budget at a more manageable rate. How did you guys do? a Little mixed, you know the the percentage increase from our our provider has gone up You know, it goes up as it typically does well above inflationary rates. So I think 11.8 percent How did that compare with last year? Last year was similar last year was another, you know, so we budgeted in we budgeted in a sense towards that High figure. Yeah We have we you know last year we we readjusted the way that we provide healthcare right now we for For expenses for kind of out-of-pocket expenses, we've got a health reimbursement account that that Basically makes up what two years ago Teachers used to get without an employees to get without having to make that contribution. So that's kind of a vaguely a slush fund The the way that that some employees have have set up that fund has has created some savings there So we've had some some small savings From our health reimbursement account matched with another relatively steep increase if you're looking at the budget summary on the screen, which I assume you are 2.7% increase this year. Yes, and in FY 19. It was 8% Yeah, why what's the difference? For one, yeah, we sides roughly five and a half percent. Yes, you know, I think the last couple years You know given the fact that we've had growing enrollment and We had a few years of cuts Yeah, I think we made some some increases that kind of backfilled in some some places where there were were cutbacks I also think it was intentionally Conservative as as I said, you know, we've got a new administration You know the superintendent really wants to see what we have now See what we have that's working What's not working and then kind of Do a system overlay and and see where strategically the investments make the most sense so You know, she hasn't had time to fully do that so You know a lot of the the budget I think reflects I Don't want to say status quo because I think there are some some things in there where where there have been some steps forward But this was not a year to really come in and make investments. Where are we in the teachers contract? We're in negotiations again. Okay, so possibly next year might reflect a new teachers contract Yes, or will reflect a new teachers contract. Yeah, there will be a new teacher contract for next year And then we'll be in negotiations again for a two-year budget and also, you know Next year is when the the state will start taking over the health care. So that will that will change things as well How do you think it will change things? Are they projecting that it will change things? Will the larger grouping result possibly in a reduction of cost to the districts, I think there's I think that's the hole That's the hope whether that that happens or not is a question It will certainly I think simplify the negotiations You know because health care obviously plays a substantial role in terms of You know overall compensation so it will the negotiations around compensation will will not include those So so we'll see I mean that the hope is that it continues the same level of quality coverage that our employees get now plus Yeah, plus savings and just having it be a larger pool In terms of our enrollment This is now on the screen as our enrollment projection and you'll see that in 2017-18 we were in a thousand fifty-three and then we went up to a thousand seventy-two and it's projected next year That will actually pick up sixty some odd new students and bring it up to a thousand one hundred and sixty-three What does that mean in the increase in education spending does does that mean When we increase education spending four percent last year you said that we're backfilling to get six point five percent What are we spending that on what's the additional four percent? Is it additional staff? Yeah, so it's just you know increases in Expenditure I mean we have added We've have added staff most of it is additions of staff and then You know increases in Teacher pay etc Yeah, some of it goes to you know to facilities administration etc but Yeah, for the last few years we've definitely added some some positions and now we're putting in a human resources Coordinate and that's in the superintendent's office. Yes, and that boosted spending in the superintendent's office by 25% What is the human resources coordinator going to do that? We haven't done before because we've always had human resources to coordinate Uh Basically, we are just barely keeping head above water in terms of human resources and with a yeah with a organization That's 25 or 24 million dollars has over 200 employees. There's a lot of human resources issues Right now we're doing it very ad hoc Yeah, I think there's worries about whether we're actually doing everything we need to do so it's it's not a particularly Dazzling addition, but it's it's very necessary and it's been talked about for a while as we need someone who Who can have? You know who can make sure that you know people who have complaints are getting their complaints properly filed that? you know all the forms that need to get done or getting done that you know That that health claims etc. Are getting processed so there's there's a lot of work to do and right now it's It's being shared. It's being shared and it's and it's additional for staff that are already Taxed they're already taxed and it's it's not being very well well coordinated and Yeah, the word I heard is is that you know, we're kind of one or two complicated human resource problems away from a complete Disaster in terms of just not being able to get stuff done now I'm not gonna slow that the presentation down explaining what the complete disaster is I'll wait for it to happen and then we'll discuss it next. I just could be you know a complicated health care issue or What about? Now when I get into jargon like this, please help us all the social emotional learning coordinator at Union Elementary School What is the social emotional learning coordinator doing? Is it behavioral? It's behavioral It's it's allowing. Are we restructuring again? How we deal with behavior at Union Elementary? I think we're just adding resources there to make sure that that kids who have Difficult behavioral challenges that require That require a level of Training that that is pretty specialized That they're getting the attention they need so both you know, they're able to to function and get the resources they need and also They they're not becoming distractions for You know for other kids learning experiences and for you know for teachers without opening up a contentious issue Yes, will that person also be at Roxbury occasionally to help those elementary school kids? I don't think the plan right now I Think they may be doing some coordination at Roxbury, but I think the plan is largely to have it be Special needs any changes in special needs this year in the way that we address special needs the way we do assessments or Those type of things has that come before the board? Somewhat nothing. There's nothing huge in the budget. As you know, the state has passed Act 173 You assume I know that yes Which is changing the way that? We fund special education. How does it change it? It basically gives districts a lot more flexibility to kind of meet various needs at various levels and takes away some of the kind of boxes that That educators used to be in where you know if the kid has x y and z issue that they can't get help from from special educators And now it's doing doing things where there's there's kind of more intervention along the way the idea is to Integrate coordination between general and special education and make sure that you know kids Kids get more intervention at more points that avoids larger problems because right now You know we allow problems to build up and if you know basically if you're not it's like preventive bait Yeah, if you if you know until you know problems become huge They sometimes don't get the attention they need and this allows problems to be or issues to be Addressed in more creative ways and more flexible ways earlier, which you know benefits kids Is the state's share? Ratio still the same will that be the same in the future as to what percent of special needs the state will share? I believe I believe the the funding numbers do not change much I think the way that they can be allocated and used those change there's for a long time There's been a gap in achievement testing for various kinds of kids And I'm not I'm not picking on the special needs kids But there's a lot of different subsections that aren't doing as well. Yep as the modal Montpelier students What I know the board is talking about that every year any new initiatives on that or any feelings that the board has Yeah, it's it's a it's a huge priority for the board. It's a huge priority for the administration, I mean we have made some investments over the last couple years in terms of Literacy and math intervention is to you have to help kids that That that that do have challenges and that are You know not Not keeping up with with their classmates and our struggling in ways It's a high priority of mine, and I think it's a high priority of the board And I think it's one of the things we're going to ask of the administration now that they've had some time to To look at what they've got that we really put in place a Vision and a plan for closing that gap because we've talked about it for a while And I'd really like to see next year's budget and you know the budget after that Be based on a plan to get us to the point where we're really making progress on the achievement gap because I Think it's gotten more lip service than progress over the last several years, and I would like to reverse that Can I flip to the other side of the bell curve? Yes, what about special and gifted kids and Advanced placement and beyond advanced placement What is going on in our district in that anything different? Are we adding advanced placement? Are we holding on to our advance? We are we're holding on to our advance placement I think it's very valued by By the board, I think it's very by the district We haven't had as robust a discussion about that as we have about equity because like frankly It's not it's not squeaking. It's not squeaking as much and you know we Yeah, and and I think in some ways the the move towards personalized learning Well, it's it's given kids more More flexible pathways to do creative things on their own You know for instance to to do an internship at a business or are you talking about Matt McClain's community? Yeah Exactly those types of those type of things I think have benefited all students So, you know, we've we've done some moves in that direction that I think have opened Hopened options and given you know gifted kids the ability to go out and Spread their wings spread their wings and work with gifted people in the community who can who can really teach them things that they're not Learning the classroom and then get you know get guidance So, you know, I think those have been steps in the right direction, but I think we need to continue to you know offer Offer the the classes we do and look for ways to expand them. What about career people who are going into vocational tech? We've traditionally had very low enrollments in Votec But we have a number of kids who don't go to college. Yeah, don't go to the military and 12th grade is the terminal for them. It's a district looking at career Education in any way, they're definitely looking at it. I mean, I know that we are You know part of the You know the effort to you know To send kids to vocational tech in in Barry and Continue to support that I I agree. It's it's something that you know, it's a priority of the district and And you know the administration definitely is looking at it and there are pathways, but I think it's something that we could Could look at more Maximizing every kid's potentially exactly In terms of there's additional and money in for food service. What's going on with our food service? I We want to continue to prove both two things and continue to provide quality and nutritious food to the students We also wanted to improve The the the the quality of Compensation and benefits that we give to a food service employees They were not paid very well and did not have great benefits and we've done some things to To make that better and fair. Are we making the connection between our food service and recycling? I Know that we recycle and compost So it is going on it is going on How how much education is going around it? I'm not sure but it's it's it's part of the way that the cafeteria is We're working on building our capacity in world language and equity. Yes Would you explain what world language and equity actually mean? Yeah, equity. I think is in this context in this context You know equity, you know the biggest investment right now. I think is the social emotional behavior You know the way that we're using some of our federal grants You know the administration I think is is looking at making sure that we use them in ways that that maximized those grants and Benefit all kids and especially kids who you know without achievement gap in mind and Yeah, and then we've you know the intent is obviously to to build on that You know in terms of of world language We have commissioned a study and a couple of schools in Chittano County have gone down this road of doing to You know, there's that a big community discussion a big community desire to have some sort of World language, which don't we already have world languages in the middle school in the high school We do have world languages in the middle of the high school, but the research shows that the 12 year old brain Doesn't absorb it as well or in the same way as the five or six year old brain could we also then Be talking about bringing dance into the schools. Could we be talking about you know the things that parents are subsidizing right now? Yeah for their younger children Including language. Yes, is that a move to move from the parents subsidizing it to the taxpayer subsidizing it? Well, I'm not Piano lessons is a perfect example. Yeah, I mean there's there's not I Think there's a bit of apples and oranges there I mean, I think one of the reasons there's a desire for world languages as we have an increasingly connected and You know smaller world in terms of cultures coming together Being monolingual is But again, we already offered six years of language instruction, don't we we offer six years of language instruction But how effective is that? I mean I took my six years of Spanish and I'm well if you had taken it more seriously Jim Things would be different. Yeah, but you get in yeah in places where people there are very Yeah, the data suggests the earlier you introduce two things the earlier you introduce a second language Both the more effective it is it at that That child becoming truly fluent and or bilingual and the other thing is that the brain actually develops in a way That makes it easier to add a third and a fourth and a fifth language To that child, which is why in European countries you have these kids who can speak seven or eight languages You know switching back and forth Teachers at the middle school foreign language teachers at the middle school in high school to absorb The many more students who would be in that flow it would mean a change and in the program that we're actually contemplating would be a Immersion program it would be one of the classes would start from kindergarten At a hundred percent whatever the language is Spanish or French And then there'd be a slow introduction of English Then by the time they got to middle school They'd be integrated into the other classes Okay Community connections. Yes and recreation. Yes Community connections remains in the budget the yeah the funding for after school What does community connections do I know what it does you know? Yeah, but a lot of people don't know what it does So we're actually having a conversation about what we're going to do for our after school Provider next year community connections has been our provider. They've done they've done a great job You know their their funding structure has changed so we are actually going through a process right now of Submitting proposals for an after-school provider for next year which may be community connections either in its current or other form And maybe another provider and maybe a combination of things could it be recreation department? It could be the recreation department like the recreation department very well may be one of the the interest of providers I mean it seems there's there should be a synergy in fact recreation as a part of the schools for Yeah, a few years back Yeah, and the goals for that are to you know continue the excellent programming we have to really offer quality Both quality care for kids who need it because there are families who need after-school care options but also to offer Programs to to kids to to get them out to get them quality experience of adults Might that be parents helping to subsidize the cost? I mean your parents do subsidize the cost right now. I mean particularly at the elementary level So, you know there may be in fact there probably will be some sort of cost share with parents Let's talk about the bond last year That we had a substantial bond and I know you're proud of the the progress that's been made and the dinosaur like Equipment on Main Street are on the Union Elementary School's playground. That's frozen in the winter What's the progress? Are we going to have that ready for the next school year you think? Yes, the The playground is on schedule to be completed by the beginning of Next year Right now. They're doing a lot of their renovations. Obviously they've been slow a little by the snow, but I don't think I Don't think slowed in a way that it didn't plan for and then we're going to begin work on the improvements at the What about the vestibule at Union? I think that's almost done. That is almost done Would you explain that project and what it entailed? Yeah, that's basically and you know, there's some other internal projects at UES that will be done. The vestibule is kind of a It's an enclosed Glass entrance coming off with pre-k especially You know with the current situation there wasn't kind of a safe place for kids to to wait and be able to see their parents without Standing outside which in cold weather Can be a challenge and also when you've got three or four years old you want them Contained. How's our kindergarten coming along in terms of enrollment? You know enrollment's been relatively steady I know you've got the slides that you know several years out. It looks like there will be an enrollment drop You know the further out you got an enrollment projections the you know the less dependable it is that's right based on But it's just with this still within a range of 20 30 40 on either side. Yes But that's a success right now the integration of that of the kindergarten It's been going on for a while. You mean preschool Yes, you know the preschool has been a success in terms of The roof on what is it? The high school the high school right now. How's that going? It's it's going well. I think it's Largely done or partially done, but that's moving that's moving forward. Well now We've also got bathrooms a major project in bathrooms. Yes now This leads me to another slide where we're talking about the capital plan. That's it's a separate vote Yeah, would you explain why it's a separate vote and what the thinking was behind the capital plan? So the capital plan has been something we've talked about for a little while It got started last year, although it was actually included in the general budget the capital plan is to have a separate plan that would allow the district to basically keep up with maintenance and The unfortunately, you know, we do have aging buildings. They do require Maintenance upkeep unfortunately the way it had been done and this is It was basically we kind of get to crisis mode Pass a big bond to do a bunch of projects Pay that bond down get to crisis mode again You know have a big bond to deal with a bunch of projects and delayed maintenance The idea of the capital plan is that you know, we'll set aside You know kind of a growing amount each year that kind of keeps up with inflation Have a set schedule of plan maintenance and make sure that we're keeping on top of our building So that way we we make investments slowly over time keep up with things rather than having these these larger But less frequent bonds to deal with maintenance. So as the bonds expire We don't have to pay that debt interest and it can go elsewhere into instructional need exactly I mean the idea of the capital plan is to avoid having to have large bonds for the period Basically the purpose of building maintenance And that's a separate vote here. That's a separate vote There's one major increase in this for busing Main Street middle school kids Would you explain that as to I mean a lot of us who are watching this had kids who walked a main street Middle school and had no problems whatsoever Walking to Main Street middle school or finding their way with their parents driving them Why are these kids different? Yeah, this is actually something we've heard from residents For a while about particularly residents who live outside of the center of the city Yeah, and we looked at it. We had we had a committee study it. We did a survey of Whether there's there's interest or demand for this we found pretty high demand from What is pretty high demand? We got 220 responses from middle school Students 60% said they definitely would use it another 11% said they would likely use it And that's only you know, we've got 360 students so Yeah, there's still a hundred and twenty some you know hundred and some unanswered for So how would this? You want to bus these kids from around the town to the high school or to the middle school? I'm sorry. It's a high school next if you were to get a petition from parents Would you add buses to take kids to the high school next? Yeah, the high school is different They there's there's a few issues with the middle school that I think differentiated for the high school one I think there's safety issues that don't necessarily apply at the high school level, especially with fifth grade You especially in a winter like we've had I just and you know, this is I think there's a lot of people There are there are roads and areas in Montpelier. I can think of You know town Hill Road Berlin Street Elm Street, you know Terra Street where when you've got you know, big snow banks sidewalks Covered over but hasn't that been forever in this town? It does. I'm trying to say there are people who went to these schools who are voters and That the same kind of weather conditions were around in the 70s 80s 90s and 2000s. What makes this so special? Well, for one that doesn't mean it was it was safe then for two. There's a lot of parents who have been you know bearing that burden Which is which is difficult when it's you know, that's time when when parents have to get to work You know particularly for single-parent families that don't have other options. I've actually talked to you I've actually talked to parents who switched jobs Who live in places because they they needed to get their kids safely to school? I think it's I think it's a basic And I think it goes to equity that You know especially you know some of those are some of the more affordable areas in town too Getting providing an option to get kids safely to school Is it's not a sexy thing But I think if very few kids availed themselves if fewer than a hundred kids availed themselves of that Then the cost per goes dramatically. Yeah If fewer than a hundred kids were to avail themselves of that would the district consider Abandoning this effort. I think we would definitely consider other approaches if this approach doesn't seem to work But I think that yeah, but the things we want to achieve which is getting kids to school safely one Equity to providing opportunities for you know families that are out the you know This is a very walkable district if you're in town It's not walkable, and we talked you know we've talked about it as being a walkable district, and I think that's a Misnomer there are places where it's it's not a practically walkable district So a lot making it easier for families to know their kids are going to school safely without having to This is duplicative of the Green Mountain transit of the circulator which goes out on Elm Street Which goes up towards Murray Hill? We've we've you know, we've talked to GMT They are not able to provide right now to provide the coverage that Yeah, I think you know it's a continued discussion. We have like having integrated city transportation Makes a lot of sense There's not an obvious solution that will work, you know next year or maybe the year after but you know again You know getting kids to school safely Reducing you know our hope is that more kids will take this and our output actually is that not just more Middle Main Street middle school kids will take it but more UES kids will take it because what we find right now is that you have a families that You know as soon as that older brother sister Goes from UES to MSMS their younger brother sister is not going to wait for the bus if mom or dad is already driving You know the older brother or sister into town So we're hoping it actually increases the UES Transportation to and starts alleviating some of the traffic congestion in front of particularly the Main Street middle school As well as in front of Union in the morning if we can if we can school street if we can decrease Yeah, if we get more UES ridership as kind of a co-benefit Yes, we'd like to discreet decrease traffic in front of both those schools one final question on the budget. Yes What didn't make the cut? Was the final cut from the budget that didn't make the final version Yeah, honestly we there was Nothing from the first to last present presentation that was taken out. It was I think it was a very You know The administration really did a good job of talking to well two things a very good job of talking to us beforehand about what their needs were and Whether there'd be support for that so there wasn't anything put in that hadn't already been You know floated to the board So there was no kind of wait a second. We don't take this out and secondly, you know the You know it was a 2.7 percent overall increase You know the the tax increase because Yeah, it'll be a two points if if numbers hold would be a 2.7 percent tax increase Which is a little higher than we've had in the last few years, but that's But you know as you said, we've actually had larger budget increases, but lower tax increases right now Part of the merger that we're talking about part of the mathematics. You do not want to go through exactly I mean, it's it's actually largely You know the merger helped with that last year. It's helping a little this year, but it's largely the numbers Are we going to see a massive inflation when that merger? Discounts or the the merger incentive disappears. Yeah, we have a very forward-looking and cautious business manager who's fantastic at his job who Who is planning expenses to make sure that that does not happen? He has forecasted out and he knows exactly how much good more and he's he's Ordering things in a way that that will Keep things pretty level two things on the final one You can find this budget presentation that you've seen on the screen in its full version 36 pages of PDF. Where? It is on the the school's website MPRS VT.org The school board page. Yeah, I believe that the meeting of the 2nd of January 2nd Yes, January 2nd. It was presented. It was also presented while January 2nd Is the latest version of the one that you've looked at 2nd if you have questions if who are watching this What's next? Yeah, so let me go and steal the superintendent Grant Geisler the business manager and I are going to be doing a Final presentation which will probably in relatively short order On the budget the night of March 4th, which is right before town meeting Where it will be at the high school and it will be broadcast and it will be broadcast Yes live. Yes, so Pretty much that that wraps it up anything else you need you know, I appreciate the opportunity to come on and talk about the budget And I urge voters to go out and and vote early voting is available now So you can vote anytime between now and tell meeting deck one more I'd like to interject and that's that in this issue of the bridge Jim pens any op-ed in defense of his budget. Yes, if you would take a read on that, that's informative as well Again, thank you for watching. I do want to say that even though there are no contested races and It's seemingly a boring election get out and vote. It's important to establish that habit It's also important for your neighbors to get out and vote. I mean, that's the lifeblood of our democracy Thank you so very much. If you would watch the other presentations, they're well worth watching. Thank you much


We're learning what's going to be happening in the future versus right now and then we're able to teach our instructors who then teach everyone else how to fight those type of battles. I'm Staff Sergeant Joseph Smith and I'm a sensor operator here at the ONCE of Neath OSS and we fly with the 162nd Attack Squadron. What I do as a sensor operator is I'll control the payloads. You have to be able to distinguish what's going to be the proper camera to effectively scan an area and then how to properly scan an area is what it comes down to. So I have about a thousand combat hours before I got selected for this and I went in with 76 instructor hours so I just made the cutoff in order to get to the course. The advanced instructor course we work hand in hand with the weapons school so you'll go down to Nellis and it's about six months long so we'll be trained to train instructors and that's how we'll disseminate information that way and it's more effectively. We're selected to go to that course because we're good at our field so we're not only there to learn we're also there to develop tactics, technique and procedures so working with new aircrafts and how we integrate them in order to effectively be countries that we're peers with. It's an extremely challenging course so I ended up total flying over 50 stories while I was there and you have three academic blocks that are a week long each and then you also have academics at our squadron which was the 26 there that were MQ9 specifics. What got me through is like the roots of the program and what the program stands for like we are going to be instructing instructors so you kind of have to realize that it's kind of corny to think about it but when you're like super tired and you're driving back and you sit in your car and you're like I'll have like three or four more hours of mission prep to do like the purpose of that is to just be better than countries that we're going to be into fighting so that's what really drove me through and it's like it's again a corny way to think about it but that's what really drove me to push through it. It really hits when you realize how many people are relying on you now.


Hi, my name is Chris Jacobs. I'm the creator of Vallejo Historic Home Support. Today we're going to talk about some backup power sources that you can use. For example, if PG&E shuts your power off, as they did during the wildfire season of 2018, and they almost certainly will continue to do probably every single year. Some people I know have solar, and solar is pretty expensive. We may all have solar at some point, and pieces of what's on this table are involved with solar. The very first thing we're going to talk about is a small little power station. So this is, it's about 100 watts. It's about $100. And it's really only good for charging your cell phone. And actually, my cell phone was dying when I got here, so I plugged it in. I'm charging my phone right now. I was at one battery bar when I came. I'm now at 13%, and that was maybe 25 minutes ago. I turned it on and started charging. This particular one, and there'll be a link for this one. I actually chose it when I bought it because it has a flashlight. And I just thought, you know what, these days, no one has a flashlight. We all have cell phones. We use our cell phones for flashlights. And this is to charge your cell phone if your cell phone's dead. So maybe you want the flashlight. That's the unique feature. It comes with AC. It comes with DC. On the back, it has quick charge ports. You can charge your phone here from this. And it's really just meant there's not a lot of power in this. And we're going to get to that. You can charge your cell phone maybe six times, and this would die. You probably charge your computer if it was all the way down. You could probably charge it one and a half times, something like that. It says 155 watt hours. But I got to guess that the amperage is really low on that. Because it's really what it is. It's a lithium-ion battery that you'd have in your cell phone, only a little bit bigger as a backup power source. Okay, the next thing we're going to do is check out the next video. We're going to talk about power inverters. Power inverters are ways to pull power off a battery and turn it into AC, specifically how to turn your car into a generator for your house.


process. So what are the challenges you identified in your profile? So basically I came in fall 2022. So this was just after like everything opened up in US. So since I had nine years of work experience, my biggest challenge was to explaining the visa officer that what I was doing in the past nine years and how I had a change of mind of pursuing a master's. Now typically visa interviews are less than one minute so you don't get a lot of chance to talk. I prepared very well what I want to say and you need to prepare your stuff very well because you might have a lot of things to say what you need to structure it properly and you need to know that there are a few things that you should not say and there are a few things which you want to highlight. So you have to drive that conversation that is quite crucial I think and I prepared myself in order to what I have to say.


It doesn't happen often, but there have been times when Steph has missed the first five shots in a game. What makes him the greatest shooter of all time is that he then shot the sixth shot with the same confidence and optimism as if he had made his first five shots. He never lets a previous miss affect his next shot. He misses the shot, next play. He misses another, next play. He wipes the slate clean after every shot and always believes his next shot is going in. When it comes to the unseen hours and next play mentality, Steph and Curry sets an unparalleled standard. That, my friends, is exactly why he is the greatest shooter to ever play the game.