in a March meeting or a reorganization right now, so I open the meeting that's super attended, and I'm gonna jump all the way, we're gonna, usually we have an order of recognizing guests, but I'm gonna jump right away to the chair, because I'd like to not be running, I wanna run the meeting as short as possible. So I'm gonna go right away to the board reorganization 2.1, which is elected chairperson, so I would accept nominations for chair for the U32 school board. I would nominate Adrian. I'll second. Are there any other nominations? Seeing none. All those in favor of electing Adrian Medina as chair for the U32 board for the ensuing year, signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Any? Did you get sworn in? No. You can't vote. So we gotta make sure. Jonathan can't vote. He can't vote right now, he's not sworn in. I'm assuming he's got the word. Yes. Conversations are. Thank you very much. Congratulations, ma'am. Thank you. You're taking over the meeting. I'm gonna go back up to welcoming our guests, and then we'll come to this. So welcome to our guests. And are there any agenda revisions? There was an adjusted amendment, adjusted agenda that came maybe yesterday that added a gun resolution discussion if you didn't see that. Public comments. Thanks, sir. I don't have a position on the agenda. Feels like we're working on like a reality TV show and title camp wars or something. Well, I see it really just for a status update. We did file an appeal with the superintendent concerning the suspension that was done without the notification or the hearing with the parent and the child. So we did get a response from Bill saying that he was gonna look into it, but that's about it. I guess Bill told Carol he's gonna look at it tomorrow. Yeah, I want to apologize next year. I said to Carol because I walked in there. Yeah, and then we haven't heard anything on any other issues that were left hanging last month and from December's meeting. I think it was still no estimation received on our end. It's basically what I was saying. I just cares if there's any update from the board. We, there were only two days of school and then we went on vacation. I don't know if you know that. You were here the 21st. I don't know what that is. We were here the 21st, so. Does that mean something? Well, it means I wasn't, I wasn't around. No, there is no further update we have. So we should just keep doing the same thing come back every month and stand up there and public comment and. Yeah, unless, you know, we'll, Bill, we'll get back to you. Okay, just thought of doing the right thing. Thank you. And Dexter, I think the legal letter that we got from a lawyer, I sort of got the feeling last time that we're gonna stand by that. That our lawyer looked into all that. She gave us an opinion and it just having sort of heard what people said, that's all a lawyer. And so we're gonna stand by that piece of that. And then the due process piece you and Bill are gonna work out. Is that right? That's correct. Right? Right. The opinion of your lawyer. Well, there was facts that weren't given to the lawyer. That was the point of your base philosophy. Yeah. And we specifically stated that was not. I can look at that review, but. They're not in the minutes either, that the information didn't make the minutes. Yeah, the details didn't make the minutes. So we won't get it by the end of the minutes. I'll talk to you, but I'm pretty sure that our legal. Yeah, I'm pretty sure that had her looked into all the pieces. You have a bill that's pretty hefty. Did you get the letter from the lawyer? No. So that's what Christa thinks she may have. Yeah, Christa said that she thought she had mailed that to you. I'll do a return receipt. I'll make sure it's a certified letter and resend it. That would be great to do that. Any other comments? Yeah. I have a comment. I sent you all an email with a letter. Will you introduce yourself, please? I'm Pam DeAndrea, and this is what I think about. I had a student here a couple of years ago, and I still live in the district, and I had a daughter that's coming up. I'm sorry, I don't have a motor copy here, but this is a timeline that I would share. I forgot the email. Yeah. My purpose today is to try and get your feedback from the email that I sent, number one, and be happy to answer any questions regarding Skyra's journey, who used to be known as Jack. And also, I had a meeting with Lieutenant Governor David Zuckerman, and he suggested that I come to this forum to talk to you about my child, and what has happened to him through his education in this district, and how we might be able to think outside the box, not just for my child, but for others. And I was happy to see in the last minutes that they were here. Can I interrupt you for a minute? This is totally your choice as a parent. You can talk about your child as much as you would like in open session. The board cannot respond in open session because of student privacy issues. This is not just about my child. I just want to precaution you, as I would any parent, that there are student privacy issues. You have choices to make that you can make. This board has to follow the federal guidelines. And so I just wanted to advise both you and the board about protecting student rights. Yep, and I appreciate that. And I guess if we could talk in the context of all students, but also recognizing that this happened to one kid and that we don't want it to happen to any kid coming through here. I also want to tell you that it's not another agenda. So the protocol is that you can give us comments. We may respond briefly. But then we will either take it into consideration. We'll put it on a further agenda. We'll give you the information that you need. But when we do public comments, it's not a give and take, a back and forth. So we sort of hear what you have to say. We take it in. We can say, yes, we can do that, or no, we can't. And here's the reason. But it's not going to be a discussion back and forth tonight. OK. So I'll just see where this can go. And if it can go on a future agenda, that would be great. But I don't. My kid is 14. I've been paying taxes in this district since 1999. And I don't want to be shut down on this issue. I asked to come here when he was in seventh grade for help. And I think Scott tried to talk to folks. And I wasn't even allowed to come here. So I'm really glad that I'm able to be here and talk in public comment. So this is not just about my kid. And I really need to preface that. This is about kids with emotional disturbance, ADHD, ADD, autism. This is about kids that don't fit into the mold that need a different kind of educational model that was not being served. And my kid went through high anxiety and could not ever come back here. So I'm not just talking about my kid. I'm talking about kids with all different kinds of things that may not, because of adverse effect law in the state of Vermont, meet special education criteria. And it's a public comment that as the board for this district that I would really like you to read my letter, understand that I'm not trying to blame anybody or put this on anybody. And the teachers tried. But it's a fundamental system problem and that this needs to be addressed and fixed. And financially, I can't afford what I'm paying to have my kid go to school. I can't afford it, what I've been doing. My choice was not to bring him on this campus. That wasn't a choice. I didn't have that choice because of the condition of him. And I'm very open to talk about it to anybody. If you can't respond, you can't respond. I understand that. But anybody in my shoes would have done the same thing. They would have taken their kid out of here and they would have put him somewhere else. And I asked for alternative placement. I was denied through this administration. And I am asking the board to please, please just look at this case and please talk to me for future cases coming up for other kids. I have a little seven-year-old. She's perfectly neurotypical. She'll dance through here when she gets here. And you'll all love her so much. But I'm heartbroken that every kid is not served in this district. And I need the board to pay attention to that. I think everybody has, I shouldn't say. I assume people got your email. I assume most people have read your letter and thought about it. From our perspective as a board, I hear you. I understand your frustration. I understand your concern about your child. We care very much about all the children. And we want to do what's best for them. We, as a board, are tied by state law, federal law, and special ed law. And in this case, the special ed procedure went to mediation with the Agency of Education. I can't caution you on what you're saying right now in open session because you're talking to me. OK. Mr. Dete, Mr. Dete, I'm sorry. I just have to protect you a little more. OK. And we, as a board, aren't involved in that process. It's a special ed process. And the board is not a piece of that. When there are problems with the special ed law and special ed procedures, there's a specific procedure to follow. The board is not part of that procedure. And so we don't have the power or the statute or anything to interfere with the process of special ed. Is that OK? Yeah. Yeah. Yes. I think in general. In general. But yes, in general. But in terms of special ed, my child never even qualified for special ed while he was here. So it wasn't a special ed thing.  And you do. I am hoping. Now, this is where I've become a little frustrated with the whole system. Where is the oversight of staff? Is that at the board? Is that to stop at the administration? And who oversees this side of the table? And who oversees the teachers themselves? Because it's not at the agency of education. They're not doing it either. So where do I have to go into? Administration evaluates teachers. Yep. Superintendents evaluate the principal. And the principal evaluates the other administrators in our building. And the board, actually, it's the supervisory union board that hires and fires the superintendent and does his evaluation. It's not just U32. It's Washington Central. It's all the schools in Washington Central. So is this not part of the Washington Central supervisory board or not? There are six individual boards for each school in U32. Three members from each of those boards form the Washington Central Supervisory Union Board. So I'm just going to get back to David Zuckerman, his early tonic government. And I've been having financial problems trying to keep my kid in school. He suggests let's use the common sense thing with the school board, which is if it costs $18,000 per kid to go here per year, can we plead to the board of it costs so much less for a kid to go somewhere else? Where is that? Why can't we have that conversation when things like this come up? Because we just want to keep the kids so if it's not working for that kid, why can't we have that conversation? And why can't the board be part of that solution? Because that came right from our lieutenant governor that didn't come from me to come to you. So I guess what you're saying is you want school choice. And in this supervisory union, we don't have school choice. School choice for children that can't come here, they can't, they just can't. That I'm not asking for school choice. Oh, I want to go for there, I want to go there. No, school choice for kids that are like freaking out in their beds and suicidal, not school choice for. And U32, because of school, not because of anything. U32 gets to make that. According to Special Ed, U32 makes the decision of where students are placed. Right. And if U32 is not making that decision per my child's needs, then who oversees that? That's my question. And that's where I'm not getting anywhere. And if you want to ask for it. So can I answer? So if students needs are not being met, there are three steps in the escalation. The first one, before our student, and before our student special education, there's an EST process. And that EST process is there to see if a student needs extra support and either emotionally, behaviorally, or academically. If needs are not met through the EST process, then if it's a medical situation, it would go to a 504. If learning is not happening, and then we need to go through the three gates, three to six gates, and then special education need to be met. A value plan, those are all done with a parent and determined by a team. And the team has the statutory authority setting the goals and the supports that need to be there, not how they're provided. The school district then has the legal authority to provide the supports in a way that's best fits the needs for that student. But it's not with the IEP level. The IEP level focuses on where the students should be obtaining and, in general, what the support should be. So this goes back to my, I don't need to interrupt you, but I'm very well aware that I've been doing this for eight years. I know all the steps. I've been through all the steps. The point at which we went to mediation and we went to due process because I wasn't being recognized in that team decision. My kid wasn't being recognized in that team decision. And that's why I'm here at public comment for complaint to the board, because that didn't happen for my kid. I did EST. I did 504. I had him tested three times. He was found ineligible. The last time he was tested, you'll see on my timeline, he was found eligible if the school he is in now, if the supports there were removed. Now Montpelier District says he's eligible. It's a catch-22 bill, and I understand the process. But that team thing is so subjective on Kelly that I was not even part of that conversation. It was like, no, Pam. We can't put him somewhere else. And they said, I can't get him out of bed. How am I going to get him here? And that did not stop. And I had another, once I got the IEP eligibility, I went to Steven. I had a wonderful meeting with him and Kelly. I still couldn't get him here physically. But the decision was still, we're not going to put him anywhere else. And I can't understand that, because then it's on me, the parent, to pay for it. And I'm paying my taxes here. It's not like I want a boarding school level education for my kid here and for you to pay for it. I just want him to get out of bed and go to school. That's all I asked for. This is eight years of work. I did that process. I did it at Calis. And kindergarten teacher wouldn't even give him an ST at first. So I've done it all, Bill. And I understand how you're telling me the process. But what I'm trying to tell all of you, the process doesn't work for kids like this. It doesn't. It doesn't work. And we were at town meeting yesterday having lunch. He was in his old school of Calis Elementary because my daughter goes there. And he's flipping out, because he's remembering all these memories of how his needs were not met there either.  People just voted the budget, or they didn't. So let's not talk today. But that's what I'm trying to get across. And not just for my child, but for others. The process, if it's a team process decision, the team must include the parents. Scott? Not about the specific case. But for those of us who were here at the last meeting we had, I remember we were talking about, and this wasn't Pam who said this, but somebody else, I had a conversation with, that year 32 was the sort of place where the kind of gray area students could fall through cracks. Whereas compared to Montpelier, where it was airtight, I believe was the word that was used. I don't know if anybody remembers this. This kind of dovetails, it seems to me, with that. This is just from what I'm picking up. And the individual case is an individual case, and I know it has its channels that it has to go through. For us, I think maybe it's an example of something perhaps more systemic that we should at least pay attention to. And consult, obviously, with our administrators and special educators, the people who run it. But just try to get a handle on if there are cracks that students kind of in the gray area are falling into, how do we seal that? How do we try to close them and work it so that things like this don't happen? I suggest that we go through our agenda and then go into executive session so we can hear all the facts in this case. I think that would be important to do. Because I think we aren't able to say what I think needs to be said in order to get all the information out. But we've got students here, so I really want to go through the agenda and then do that at the end. And then I might want to warn you that that might need to be a two-step process. But we don't have Kelly Bush here, especially at direct decor that has all the details on it. I have so many, so what? Do we want to wait and get Kelly here? I think whatever we do should be really, really solid. You're going to have to go through a hearing call that you do with student issues at some point. I mean, I can advise you and update you from the overall point in order to take a decision after that. Why don't we just do information gathering in executive session? OK, who's that? I just feel like we can't really get to the heart of this if we can't do that. People OK with that? OK. Thank you. So I'm going to move down to elect a vice chair. Are there any nominations for vice chair of the U32 School Board? Nominate the clerk. Second. Any other nominations? Is that OK with you? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? A clerk. Any nominations? Man, none go on. We can order for the U32 School Board. Who's the clerk now? The clerk? Carl is the clerk. Who's sitting right there when we go and make the call? What usually happens is when we go into executive session, Lisa has to leave. And so the clerk, there are no notes taken during executive session, but they have to record what time you go in, who moves to go in and come out.  And I'm also happy. I don't want to be clerked. But I can do that. Nobody can do that. If I'm here for it, I take that. Yeah. I don't know if you want to keep doing it, or if someone else wants to try it. Yeah. I don't need a call. Second? Second. Any other nominations? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Thank you, Carl. Establish time and day of our regular monthly meeting. We have established the first Wednesday of the month as a regular meeting. And then the third Wednesday of the month when we need two meetings a month. Romney last year decided to do the third Wednesday of the month. I would like to ask Romney to change theirs, because we have traditionally done that for years and years. And it causes Bill a problem, because he can't be in two places at once. But the first Wednesday of the month works for people. And the problem is then when we have the carousel meetings, those are the fourth Wednesday of the month. So it's kind of the Wednesdays are there. And we only need double meetings, usually November, December, and sometimes January, but not always. And the rest of the months we've been pretty good with one meeting a month. So does that work for people? Yes. The first and third networks for you guys? I get complex. And it doesn't make sense to do, like, the first and the second Wednesday of the month. The other Wednesday is Doty. If you were trying to do it, and we had it all programmed, then it got changed. So last year at this time. So it's really going to be trying to create that out. It may be something that we have to bring everyone together and all the chairs together and say, let's figure this out, folks. OK. So someone want to make a motion for the first and third Wednesdays of the month? Someone here in a second? So may I interject? Yeah. You might want to change that, that your regularly scheduled business meeting will be on the first Wednesday. And then if a second meeting is needed, the third. Got that, Lisa? So the regularly scheduled business meeting is the first Wednesday of the month. If we need two business meetings, two meetings, that'll be the third Wednesday of the month. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? That carries. Established a newspaper location for official postings. The newspaper is the Times Argus. And the official postings are the town clerk's offices? The elementary schools, the elementary schools, and U32? No, but not the town clerk's office. We send it to them. But you can have more than what you have for official. I would suggest you keep it in a long stick. So U32 and the elementary schools. So the U32 agenda is posted in all the elementary schools? Yeah. Motion for that? So move. Cari, in a second? Second. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Motion carries. Representative and an alternate, sorry, to the Washington Central Supervisory and the Executive Committee. Cari, do you want to continue to do that? Yeah, I'm willing to. And I'm willing to be the alternate that is something I can do unless someone else is dying to do that. I think that motion. Carl, in a second? I'll second. Not? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Lisa, you getting all this? Yes. OK. Three voting members to the Supervisory Union Board. So Cari and I would be two. And who would stop? I'm the other one. You're the other one. And that just comes when the Supervisory Union has a vote. There are only three of us that are allowed to vote according to the bylaws right now. Yeah. I'm not going to get Carl as the third. OK, so Cari, Adrian, Carl. Second for that? Second. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Executive Committee member and alternate must be voting members. I didn't see that. OK. We also have Washington Central Committees. There's negotiations. There's policy. There's transportation. There's labor management. Is there labor management? No. That needs to be crossed off. Chris and I talked about that. The second panel said, I apologize for not touching it. Yeah. And you'll see school quality was put on there. One of the things that I've had a chance to work with the Executive Committee on this yet. But that's something that U32 has hosted. But I think it really should go to the SU4. Yeah. Sure. That's fine. That's fine. That's been our goal. I know it's been your goal. And so you may need to advocate for that. You don't know that other school. Well, we have representatives from some of the schools. Most of them. Most of them at all. We do. We've worked on that. And school start time. So negotiations, is that something that's going to be active this year? It will be this fall. In the fall. Policy means once a month on Monday. The next meeting is the next Monday, which will be post-mortem. It will be OK that. So is it usually like the second or third Monday? Usually the second Monday from 4.30 to 5.30. 4.30 to 5.30. Transportation, is that something that's going to be active this year? No, it will be in the second or third year of the contract. So do we need to actually appoint somebody or not? You should appoint somebody in case we have some transportation issues. I don't know if there was start time or not. And school quality tends to meet on a Monday. But we just changed it. Oh, to Thursdays. You're right. Second Thursday. And in school start time, do you have a set time that you're meeting? We don't. So you have our meetings all mapped out. OK. And we actually started doing that already, right? Yeah. Yeah. OK. So negotiations has been, Carl, done a great job. Are you willing to continue? I'm willing to continue unless somebody's really interested in the process and wants to learn it. And Scott's doing the start time at this point, so. Yeah, but it's a great process. I love it. And were you the alternate for that? I may have been. I'm happy to continue to be. Yeah. So I'm going to do this all at once. Can you do that, Lisa? Yeah. So I'm going to put Carl and Scott as an alternate, even though it doesn't. Oh, it does say alternate for each one. OK. Policy committee, are you willing to continue? That's something you can get to? Yes. And an alternate? I could be the alternate for that if you just let me know. So Jonathan and Adrienne, transportation. I'll do that. Thank you, Eric. Are you sure? Oh, it's a heavy one. Get your name right on there. I don't know, do we need an alternate for that one? I'm happy to vote. OK, Scott. School quality card, we continue. And I'm happy to continue on that. Do we want to? I mean, it's different now. It's going to be a Washington school. I think you're fine just saying the two. That's fine. OK. Then let's, does somebody else want to do school? School start. I'm sorry. Do school quality. All of these are full WCSU committees. So school quality used to be a U32 committee. Right. And that's why we're going to have two of us. I just talked to Cary about it. He's, well, I'm full with it. We'll see you for the rest of the week. If we can get the rest of that SU to be. It really should do with all the monitoring work. And the little stuff we talked about is SU. It doesn't make sense. It's a really good industry. And we have had members from other boards for quite a while now. This might be a way to get more. And then school start time, sorry, is Karen and Scott. Is that an alternate or is that both of them together, like on the school? They're both on that. They were on that. Did you get all of the pizza? Yeah. So is there a motion for the Washington Central Committee meetings? As stated here. Cary, and a second? Second. Scott, any discussion over that? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Just sorry. Sorry. As usual, my big here is they're just grinding away much too slowly. But George, is there anything that you want to do in my opinion? I was kind of thinking about school quality. That was my interest. Kind of interested in the true officer position, too. I mean, we could put you on the school quality committee. Why don't you be the alternate and come tomorrow? Are you free tomorrow? Because I can't come tomorrow. Yeah, then you can check it out. So we're going to meet in 430 at the Central.  And then I can come. No. There you are. I'll come anyway. No call yet. Yeah. We'll orient you. No call yet? My call's coming at a different time if your guy's call's come. They're easy. Easy. Easy. I get your call, too, though. You do. A representative to the Central Vermont Career Center Regional Advisory Board. So this is problematic. They meet on Tuesdays at 430. No. 4 o'clock at 4. 430 is more doable. Tuesdays at 4 o'clock. Tuesdays at 4. And what, the first Tuesday or something? Every other month. First Tuesday every other month. Every other month. And Karen can't really do it. George can't really do it. I can't do Tuesdays because I have staff meeting. I can't. There's a few supertenants. There's standing positions like I'm on it and I can't make it in. It's one of the things that a couple of the supertenants have been trying to work with John Pandell for. Yeah, there was a feeling of email about changing it and a lot of it. And we chimed in. And we were like, well, I didn't even see that one. It was at the, it was probably like August or something like that. It was 430 or 5. It would give us some time to get there. Yeah, I could get there. We're going there. Yeah, yeah. Do you guys want to stay on it? I would be willing to do it again and even be the primary. Yeah. OK. And even be the primary just because it looks like my schedule is going to shift to where my Tuesday schedule will be more flexible. So if it didn't get changed, I might be able to make it. So I'd be willing to do that. OK. And then George, you could be the alternate, although it doesn't seem like it ever works. Not at that time, not at 4 o'clock. Is there somebody that could, as an alternate, make it at 4 that is interested? I can't do 4. That 4 is terrible. OK. So we'll leave it at that and suggest that you really push them. Because Emily Goya was able to get there and she got a lot of good information. She felt like it was very worthwhile and had her input into those meetings. 2.10 is to appoint a truant officer. And usually that's someone from the school. Eric Bennett. And she would give it to him again. Police. So they're vener. Is there a motion to that? George. Sorry, George. And even less hair. So Carl made a motion to second. Second. Scott, any discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Matt McCarries. U32 boards, committee, sorry. We have finance and we have facilities and capital budget, which I thought we actually put into one. You did, sorry. It's one. So finance slash facilities, capital budget. That has been Kari and Scott and Karen. Then we meet maybe three times a year. So somewhere along October, right? Or November? Or should we start in October? October, November, December, maybe. Is that something you'd be interested in? Yeah. It's morning. It's morning. It's a Tuesday morning usually. What's that? As soon as I can get here, no more. 8.30 has been our time to start. That doesn't work. That's what time we're getting on the bus. You did one Friday evening. Friday is a better. Doesn't hurt to bother me too much as long as it's morning. So do the three of you want to continue? I would like to, if I may. Karen? Yeah, all right. George says nine. Five would work. I don't know. We can have four, though, right? Because then we have a quorum. Then you have a quorum at the board. Well, your warning subcommittees anyway, so it doesn't. Yeah, let's go for four then. This is a really important question. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So Karen, George, Scott, and Cardi, right. And out of four, hopefully we'll get three. Cardi, are you good with nine? Yeah, OK. 8.30 and 9.00 are equally awful. Basically, you're going to work late. Whatever. A motion for those four? Carvel, and a second? Second. Scott, all those in favor say aye. Aye. I'll be right this one down. OK, I think we've got them all. So was finance and facilities and capital budget are they the same? Yes, it's now one committee. I should have caught that one. No, I had a conversation of how this happened. OK. And I'm the one to blame. It's all right. OK, everybody set? Everybody happy? Do you guys want to do your report first? Sure. OK, we're going to step down to reports to the board student. 5.2. OK, so this is very, like in the preliminary stages, but Judy, you know about this, the restorative panel thing. So basically, we're trying to get together this restorative panel of students. And the idea is that we don't know the logistics of it yet, really, but that there'd be some sort of, like, more restorative practice when it comes to punishments for students, I guess, which I think is a really interesting idea. We're still definitely trying to work it out. But we just wanted to let you know that that's something that's happening, and that students especially are interested in sort of like how and why kids who break the school policies are punished and like how to be more effective in that punishment, I guess. So that's just something that we're trying to get going. Who's we? So actually, there are only like two students on it right now, right? And they went to Vegas that last meeting. OK, so there's three of us. But it's sort of Jody and Scott Harris are in charge of it. So we're trying to get that going. Who else besides you? Two others. Wait, Nora, right? This sophomore, Nora, Dylan, me, and then another junior, Gus Hines. So we're trying to get that going. And trying to get more students on it because I think it's a pretty good idea. Oh, yeah? Yeah. Great. And then other news. So we just came back from a break. The Nordic ski teams just finished states where they run us up, where both teams are just the end. Yeah, both teams were running up. So that's good. Bass, Skitball, both teams are in playoffs right now. But the game has been postponed because of the snow. And yeah, the teams are out, according to policies like that. Oh, next week is Teen Health Week, which has been organized by Megan Fowley. You tell them which one. And that's going to focus. There's a couple different themes. I think there's a day focusing on environmental health, physical health, mental health, and substance abuse. And there's going to be different presenters. I know that some of the anatomy and physiology classes, the students will be presenting about different things that they've studied. I think mostly focused on toxicology. So they'll be contributing to the substance abuse discussions. And that's a new thing this year. We haven't had a Teen Health Week before. So that'll be you talk about that. And Shannon, who's Megan? Megan Fowley is the health teacher. Thank you, sorry. Don't have kids here anymore. And then next week on Wednesday, there is a national walkout planned. And I know that the U32 social justice group is planning and hoping to get students involved with that. So that's definitely something that's on our radar. May I just ask, are you aware of this resolution that's on our agenda for today? I heard about it, but I'm not sure. Yeah, can you tell us more about it? Why don't we do that right after you guys do the report? That's our report. Not much has happened since we just got back from work. But I would like to note today marks 100 days until graduation. That sounds like a really good book topic. This is totally off the subject. Do you know what you're doing next year? I am still hearing back from colleges. I've heard back from a couple, but it's a tense time for the senior class. I know. So we'll snag you at April, and maybe I'll know more. Yeah, hopefully. We've got our fingers crossed for you. Do you have a sense of how students are feeling about the planned walkout? Students, I think a lot of students are planning. It's mixed. There is a lot of students who are planning to participate and are excited about it. There are a few students, I would say, that are not really into it. And then I talked to a couple of teachers about it, too. They're mixed about it, because they want to support their students in this. But they also can't support their students in credit class. So it really is mixed across the board, I would say. It's also interesting, because last week at Student Council, our faculty advisor brought up the point that some kids might take it the wrong way, because it's the thing about gun laws.  And they're trying to take our guns away. But our teacher brought up that there should be an option for kids who don't want to participate. So I think it's definitely mixed. Some kids are pretty not having it. But most of them, I think, are in support of it, and probably will practice it. And so it's a social justice group that's organizing. Yeah, but it's a nationwide thing. Right, no, I get that. But our social justice group is taking it on here to organize it. Because there must be some sort of statement or something that you're walking out for. Yeah, there's a big, long statement. But basically, it's about we deserve to feel safe at school. This is us sort of doing what we can to voice how we feel about what's happening. And I don't think it references any specific pushes for different gun laws or things like that. I know a lot of students are participating in it just to stand in solidarity with the students in Parkland. It was a really good piece on BPR today. About that. About that, yeah. Really good piece. I suggest people take a listen tonight and go home. So why don't we move into where is it on here? 4.3 is the resolution in support of taking action for better regulatory, something, that word as well, access to firearms. We received an email right before vacation from an East Montpelier resident who said that Montpelier was taking up a resolution. And would we be willing to do that? And then, Cari today gave us a copy of the resolution of the East Montpelier board. I have copies for everybody. They're similar, but they aren't exactly the same. And I figured this would be a starting point for a discussion. And the idea is that we send something to the legislature or to the governor, saying if we want to, that this is what we support or this is what we're saying. And it's discussion. And then we can decide we want to do something or we don't want to do something. We can use similar language. We can write our own language. But these are starting points for where we are. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. And typically, resolutions are non-binding anyway. So they're essentially symbolic statements or less. What would it mean to be binding in this case? Well, I mean, a binding would be like a contract to parties agreeing to the terms of a contract. They would be bound by the terms of, so this is resolutions at the state house. Today is, you know, Blue Spruce Day and they pass a resolution and they make a statement. That's great. But not in any way to try to throw me water on this at all because I think it's a great idea. I just think it's important to set it in for what it's worth. We're expressing our opinion. That's how I advise the East Montpelier Board. A little bit from afar last Saturday was because some task people want to speak to it and they should be able to speak to it. But a resolution is that the opinion or the statement's from the board. It's not from the community. It's not from the house. It's really just from the board. You're taking it, but you might even take it as high as you're taking a position as a board. But at least a statement or anything. And so one of the big differences is the East Montpelier Board added a sense that said we do not support arming our teachers with guns as a measure to increase safety in our schools. It's that fourth little paragraph now. And that is not in the Montpelier one. So I'll kick it off. I don't recall us doing a lot of things like this, resolutions or advocating for legislation, specific legislation. And personally, I think we should be very conservative about that because it's not necessarily what we do. But to me, this is a kind of a no-brainer because of the safety issue. And I also think that we should recognize that we're in a unique moment right now where there actually is, appear to be some momentum and if we can help take advantage of this opportunity that we should. The day that I heard about Montpelier's passage of the resolution, I emailed Adrienne and told her I'd be happy to, I'd be in favor of doing it, jumping on board and joining that push. I mean, essentially, this reflects my own personal sense of things. My one question is whether there might be some possibility in elementary schools, it doesn't make sense to work with students or to coordinate with students on a statement of this type. It doesn't make as much sense. But in high school, I think there's a level of sophistication and awareness that if there's some way to have a student voice that's connected, yeah. It's too simple. Or yeah, if, I don't know what the appropriate vehicle would be, whether it's a joint resolution or something that is done kind of in concert, but for the students to be able to be somehow involved in an action of this sort, I would find that a good thing. Council meets tomorrow morning. I don't even know anymore. I hope so. It's supposed to be there. Can I offer something, Scott? Yeah. To that discussion, I think that one of the things that I've been trying to be very careful of is that administration does not necessarily hold a view on all of this, or that we do want safe schools, but in terms of legislation and all of that, we're supporting our students in the walkout and being active in their local and global communities, being engaged citizens, all of these things that are in our very own vision statement, our transferable skills. And I don't want to impose my view on what the kids are putting together. And so I think that they're moving forward pretty well and trying to figure out what they want to say and what the social justice group wants and all of that. And so this is just my recommendation. Is that the boards come up with its own statement and let the students continue to do what they're doing, as opposed to trying to... Trying to meld them together? As opposed to trying to meld them together. And the risk of sounding a little bit rude in this is that not imposing the adults' view for us. Sure. No, that is definitely... Is that let them craft and do their own message and that we can craft and do our message as well, but not try... I think that anything we try to do as adults right now that looks like it may be superseding what the students are trying to do or that they might be joining with us, dilutes their message a little bit. And so I'm kind of letting them do their thing and allowing their voice to be their voice. And then I can... Whatever my voice is, I'm going to keep it separate from them. Yeah. I think that's an excellent point. And in fact, what... I mean, perhaps we might want to include some language on our recognizing the student activism that's going into this issue, recognizing and honoring that effort. And then letting them do their thing. Yeah. This is what the VVR piece was about. It was about not taking the voice from the solidarity that these students have grown organically. And they came out and said, they don't want to be gathered in a room and spoken to. They want to do it on their own and have that voice. And I mean, that's what I'm saying. Just when you go home tonight, listen to that. It was a really good piece. Yeah. I think that says it better than I just did. You said it pretty well, too. It's new territory. So how are people feeling? Do we want to... I would use the same one... We're just using this... The East Montpelier one, the Montpelier one. I like the East Montpelier one because I absolutely see no reason that we would have or encourage our teachers to do it. I see that more as a risk, as a threat, as I'm an armed teacher and I'm very well versed in it.  And then I have brought the weapon into the school. So people okay with East Montpeliers? Maybe just some... What Kari would refer to as wordsmithing. Sorry about that. Do you have quick suggestions? I don't want a wordsmithing. Three minutes of wordsmithing. Is it possible for us to move to something else that may not necessarily require 100% attention on my problem? Yes, absolutely. We're going to vote on it in the action agenda so we can wait. Do you guys want to comment at all before we move on? I think that there would definitely be a lot of student interest in writing something like this, but I think my only thing is that, sort of like what Steven said about representing the school, is that we live in a really unique community where people are pretty divided on this issue. And I think that there are a lot of kids in our school who might have a problem with this. So like I think it's great if like a group of students wants to write something like this, but I think that it really doesn't reflect the voice of all the students because I think some people would have a major problem with it. I personally agree with everything on here, but I'm not the whole student body. This is what I mean by sophisticated. Yeah, very nice to see. Yeah, so yeah, I think this one should be the board one and then the students will. Great. Great, so I'm going to let you know this. And I'm going to go back to the agenda, to the consent agenda. You guys are welcome to stay, or if you need to go, you can go. Okay, we really appreciate your input. Thank you very much. Emotion to approve the minutes of February 14th and February 21st. Sorry, and a second. Any comments or changes? Just a couple of things. Go ahead. On 1.3, this is probably where it's at. Is this February 21st or February 14th? Sorry, it's the paragraph. Was it Kayla Woodman? No, it was, it was right here. So February 14th, Lisa. Yeah, on 1.3456 of 1.3, instead of, he also took grievance. Maybe he also took issue with the suspensions. And then in paragraph 2.2, paragraph 1, 2, 3, 4. In addition to spelling Adrienne's name with an E instead of an A. Instead of an A, yeah. Sorry. It wasn't you, it was somebody else. I just, like, I think it would be good to insert a sentence, maybe as a second or last sentence of that paragraph and say either the board or just Scott Thompson. I don't know if others joined in this. Thank the legislators for their letter to the agency and state board of education supporting the WCSU board's apostrophe. Act 46 proposal. Did you get that? So to the agency of that and the board of it, so there's two different things. There was a single letter, but went to both. To the state board and the agency. The agency of that or the employers, the employee, the people that work for the state, the state board is appointed. You got it? Yes. Thank you. So the board or Scott? Does the board thank them? No, you did. I guess I said it. I don't know if anybody sort of joined the chorus, but I don't remember. But you can put it me. I don't think anybody will get angry at me for it. Anything else? If you go to February 21, 5.3, Carl's last name is just spelled wrong. It's a Y on there. 5.3. Yeah. It says with the Y. And that was all I had. Anything else? It looks like on the 21st that I'm not present. Oh, there I am down the floor. They're mine. Oh. I wasn't here, but here. You took the Y out of my name in 5.3. Mm-hmm. It then lists who I nominated. Matthew DeGroote, School Tops. Oh, yeah. Good catch. That should be Scott Tops. That should be Scott Tops. Pretty sure it's Scott. Thank you. That's your new nickname. It's a good nickname. It's Scott Scooby Tops. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? That motion carries. Discussion. Supervisor Union board goals. We looked at those the last, it was the 21st after the full board meeting and just wanted to either solidify that we agree with them or suggest changes or consolidation or focus on them. And they are on page 9 of our packet. And we had some discussion about the engaging the community and what that would look like. Anybody had any more thoughts? Board governance, engaging the community's implementation plan. People good with those? The only thing I would get is by what's the second bullet, which is really the first step in that part.  Well, I think Stephen looks vision was to get some training. That's part of it. There's also some auditing of what a communication system looks like. Clarity, more clarity about roles. We talked about that at this meeting a little bit. What does it look like? What are we trying to do? The other activity that's not on here is the school start time. That's kind of a given. Right. It should be recognized as a good role. It's something that there were. And a certain amount of engagement. Yeah. And will you just remind us one that night is of that? March 26th. March 26th. And it's here? Yes, from 6 to 8 p.m. And there we will have another one. On the 11th. On the 11th of April. I'll bring birthday cake. Such a birthday? Yeah. And yeah, so we have a whole timeline in our minutes. We'll do our first forum. And then take what we gathered from that. And have it at the second forum. And then take that from that. Develop a survey that we can send out. Through as many channels as possible. We can get community engagement that way. And then bring the survey, close the survey, and then present the forum to the community. What we gathered and think is feasible. So are people okay with these goals? Yes. So we can put it back to the intent. Oh yeah. I mean, I think you're going to have some kind of process to maybe win this down. It's a lot. But it's certainly a good starting point. And then looking at our goals. And I realize I've been a little remiss looking at ours and thinking about them. And they are on page 13. Can we do our goals? See, we did this at the retreat last year. We updated everybody's. It was. And you and I talked over our vacation via email. And I thought that thinking about the supervisory union goals was good to look at the U32 goals at the same time. And to say how, because one of the things that's a reference in our alternative governance proposal is more, is a better alignment of the board between the boards. And that that's a real opportunity. And that work. And so in that work, one of the things I'm going to facilitate is a way of saying, and this is something that we've got to think about the executive committee level is to say, how do we align this better? How do we do this? We're going to do what's called for and some of the four goals. A lot of what. Read this draft that I recommended to the executive committee was off of, frankly, an audit of the alternative plan. The efficiency study, some other work and pieces we need to do. So I do a San Adrian last week. I thought it would be good to right now to have a little discussion about kind of a progress bar and check in where that you could use their two-world course that you established last night. I mean, if you look at the U32 school board goals, and I read through it, none of it doesn't apply or couldn't apply to the entire WCSU. They're very broad, and they really are. So if we needed something that's more narrow, it would be just a subset of these. It would be more tactical. What we need to do to achieve these, not necessarily changing them. The big categories align really well. The first one is governance. The second one is form of engagement. And the third and fourth are about the plan. Right. That's sort of one, two, three. Yeah. So, and then looking at the specifics of what we said we'd do, I feel really good about parts of it. A lot of things. Well, that's what I was just writing myself about, to look at our goal board calendar and see where we are, because I have not done that for the last couple of months. Honestly, we're going to probably update this in a couple of months. We are, yeah. And that's what I was trying to think. I think it's usually May. It's usually a retreat. We have a discussion, and then June, you bring back a rough draft, and usually August. It's kind of fun. So I'm going to go back and look at our board calendar and see if there are things we need to kind of put in in the next couple of meetings to get to some of these bullets that we maybe haven't done. Just wrote myself a note to do that. And you're right, though, they certainly align very well, considering we didn't know what those were. We did our goals. And we just did the resolution. Do you have some words, something you want to share? Yeah, John's been helping me. Thank you, John. Go ahead, you can share. Oh, OK. I'm going to read the whole thing, or just the parts that are changed. Just the parts that are changed. OK. First paragraph. The board of directors of U-32 Middle and High School finds that it is our paramount responsibility to ensure a safe learning environment, et cetera, down to paragraph five. We, the board of U-32 Middle and High School, resolve that and then delete must, sorry, and just leave it as a subjunctive. And at the same time, after Governor Scott in the last line, delete must again. And then add below what is at present the last paragraph on what you have. Add a new paragraph. We recognize and honor the activism of our students, the healthy diversity of opinion among them, and the civility of their debates. Read that again. We recognize and honor the activism of our students, the healthy diversity of opinion among them, and the civility of their debates. Is that it? Yeah. Oh, you'll take it. Oh, yeah. You don't need to. I don't love it. Because before you take that, in your action or, actually, I would ask in your action that you direct, you don't have to direct me, but I would be willing to do it before the board to direct me on how to communicate this into the room. Or you can have a new discussion of this item, and I'll assume that, say, the police just referred to the discussion as a board. How do you want that done? Let's talk about it right now. I mean, I've got just the initial thoughts, which would be our respective representatives, senators, and then committee chairs that are hearing these bills. And even, I mean, the governor, perhaps, too, but I mean, I think the letter ought to go certainly to the people that are active in the actual class. My letter would be somewhat factual to say that if I were to be the one drafting it, who I'm been asked by the board following the resolution to make sure that this resolution is communicated to you, the other, obviously, personalized to each person, say, please, communicate this to you, and if it's to one of the committees to the committee members. I would like it to go to Governor Scott, too. I think it's important for him to hear also. But I'm more than willing to do that one. Did that give you enough information? So I just want to repeat what I heard to make sure I've got clarity. I heard the governor. I heard our elected senators and representatives that represent the communities of U32. I didn't hear it that way, but that's why I'm interpreting it. I heard the chairs of probably the Judiciary Committees. I'm kind of looking at Jonathan, because you live a little bit in this world. But I think that's where these billboards are up in, do you see, when I heard the House and Senate Judiciary committees are the ones leading this discussion? Yeah, I think so. There may be some, like, House and Senate Ed. There may be some other committees that may have to do. Yeah, I think so. House and Senate Ed, that's great. OK, thank you. Can I add those? I hope you're getting this from what we said. I think that's great. I think that's great, too. Thank you. Why don't we take a motion? We'll just do this right now. It's 6.4. So is there a motion to adopt this resolution as written and present it to the people that we just talked about? Carl, and a second? A second. Scott, any more discussion about that? All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Opposed? That motion carries. Thank you very much. I didn't ask you, would you like any other statement? I just heard the officials, and that's fine with me. The other reason I ask is that sometimes some boards want this because I'm in the media. I'm not pushing you, and I'm not petitioning you there. Obviously, this is an open meeting, and Dave does watch the videos. And you may say, that's fine to let it go that way. I'm not trying to push you in one way or another. We're not doing it to grandstand. Right. I think that's fine. Just genuinely. Yeah, thank you very much. OK. OK, where are we here? Reports to the board. Central My Career Center. Would it be appropriate, though, to distribute it to all the administration staff, teachers at U32, that we could, that this is what their board thinks? It's in your minutes as well. Yeah. OK. But if I were to teach you what our redirection is? No. Really? Good question. Sorry, I don't need to worry about it. I won't tell you because I do have these conversations. The association is to read our minutes. OK. Do let the teachers know when there's something in there that speaks to me. Like an English letter. OK. Can I just ask something about the Career Center? I've been hearing these reports all these years. But this actually came up in the town meeting yesterday. Parrot was very concerned that the Career Center does not meet the needs of his child and potentially many other children because he's using his not-a-true-vote-act program. The parent uses it for the kid does. The parent. OK. As opposed to what exists in Randolph, does it have true-vote-act? I have no idea. But when I questioned him about it, he said that the Career Center is really designed for kids that are on track to go to college. And that does it. His kid does not fit that old. And it does not work for him. He praised whatever program, I'm not sure if it's branching out or some alternative pathway to the child's disability feels strongly that you three should have a true-vote-act option. Great as that. So is that an accurate representation of the Career Center? So I would say that the two Career Centers that you just mentioned are different in some ways. But that they both represent a model of vocational tech that is singing throughout our country. So I would say that our central Vermont Career Center is a voc tech program. I would say that Randolph is a voc tech program. I would say that they don't look the same in some of the ways that they approach the way that they work with both the kids, the community, and businesses. And the time frame. And the time frame. I would say that the time frame is probably one of the bigger issues that we deal with. So it starts earlier in Randolph? So it continues at Randolph. Randolph, it's only one at CBCC currently. Kids can only go for one year. They can go for multiple years, but not within the same career, the same tech path. So you could attend. Yeah, you could attend in your junior year. You can actually attend in your sophomore year. There's a pre-tech program. And then there, and we have a few students to attend that. Then there's a junior year is when a lot of our kids go. If they choose to go back their senior year, that they can't do the same program that they just did. And there's not really an extension two-year program for most. The only true two-year program at the CBCC is the Cosmetology program. And we see a couple of students go into that. But many of the programs are not one. A few of our students co-op out for their senior year. If they have excelled and gotten a placement. And there's, I mean, the different, I can say this, I've been part of three, or actually in my professional work, I've been part of three different vocational centers. And all of them are very different. They're all, exactly what Stephen said, they all meet a vocational model, but there's not the same model. And so what might be one student needs at one place may not at another. It's one of, it's just one of the pieces of the system. Tell them to read the January newsletter where there are options on how they might attend other tech centers. Student report we did administration. So I want to first start off by thanking all of you. I sent an email last night, but also today to the Washington Central community so you can clear two email. I want to thank your leadership and work on the budget. And well, thank you for everything. Thank you so much for sending me this morning again. First changing email back and forth, but we had tremendous support across Washington Central in all five towns. It just continues to amaze me the amount of support that we have in our communities. Your leadership on that. Besides that, I love my two colleagues because there hasn't been a lot in three days of school. Yeah. Felt like more than that. So I was asked to, or we had a program of studies. I have a copy of it for each of you to see. I just wanted to point out a couple of things that you will see over the next few years as we change our program of studies. And that's if you look when you, lots of stuff in it, but when you look at specific courses now within the program of studies at the very end of the write up on the course, and it doesn't matter which one you pick, you will see SLOs and there's a little dash and it tells you, and it's very succinct in the way that it's written, but it has transferable skills that are led by TS or it has an L for literacy, the math content practices MCP. We've thrown those in there to start getting a better idea of which SLOs are met by which courses. Now some courses may touch on more than those, but those are the dominant ones, the bigger ones. And so now as students start to choose their courses, they can start to look at where might I need additional work on a particular learning outcome because they may not be proficient in it yet. And so they can start to see, oh, I'm trying to think of one of the science standards. If we're around sustainability, that's the one. If sustainability is an area that in their freshman year or their sophomore year that they didn't necessarily meet that proficiency, they would be looking at courses in science that would have that particular SLO and I can tell you that that would be like horticulture or forest ecology where that topic is hit as a major subject matter. And it would give the kids another opportunity to meet that standard, that's the route that they choose to go. And so that's something that's new to the program of studies and when you look at those, we think that the shorthand that's in there is a little bit tough to read so we've got to get a better guide to, that was just our quick and dirty this year, getting it in there so everybody could see it, but we know that this is going to be revised again to really try to show the whole totality of proficiency based systems. You have to remember our program of studies is still living in two worlds for one more year. So it's living in the credit world and it's living in the proficiency world. And so we've got one more year and then we're gonna revamp it a little bit more and then really try to outline the pathways that you can take much better so that kids can see that through path on their proficiency system. The SLOs are listed on pages one and two. They don't have the number. I was just gonna say that. We realized that when we went into the stage so you just have to count down. Yeah, that was one of the first catches where like we numbered them but we didn't have them numbered. Yeah, growing pains. Cool. So the class of 2019 is the last class to graduate. Class of 2019 will be the last class to graduate under the credit based system. And if you look through it and you have questions, can we keep it? You can keep a copy if you'd like but it's not and we put it in the pile for kids or parents or anybody else to have it. And it is available electronically on the website if you want to see it there as well. Thank you for that. Nothing else? Finance committee. There's a report in here. Budget passed. Their work's done. My question is why are there 783 or whatever it is people that always vote the budget down? Is it unprincipled? Is it that they don't want to pay taxes? Is it that they don't have kids in the school? I mean that's a huge, that's a lot. Look, he like gave me the answers. It is a lot. I would have liked those. If you look at the U32, it was 1100 something to 700. So we don't know. So can I actually, except for one year, that margin's almost been the same plus or minus 50 votes. Yeah, no, I know that. So where the margin's been about the same, I think until this is a good, it's a really good question for the communications piece. Scott and Karen and I, we had a conversation for the school start time about ways communication can be gathered. And that's one of those. To answer that question, it's not going to be done in a board meeting. It's going to be done on some focused forums and some ways of bringing people together. And who or how safe do people feel in our communities to say they voted no? I don't know the answer to that. I don't want to presume I know it, but there needs to be safe ways for that information to be gathered in your general meeting. It's not a safe way for people to do that. And there should be ways to do that. And I look forward to continuing our discussion from yesterday because I think there are some possibilities. But that will. Yeah, yeah, it just, you know, that's a lot of people. But that never really has a change. But that doesn't make it okay. We don't understand it. Right. Right. That's what you're going for. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. How do we address that? Is it strictly a money issue? What is it going to be? It's not necessarily a vote against U32. Right? It could be a vote against taxes. It could be a vote against, you know, if the kid lives off the street and keeps scaring my cows. I mean, you don't know that. Yeah. Okay. The school start time committee. Subcommittee. You gave us a little bit. Do you have more? I don't know. But no. What we decided was that really all the issues that come up about reasons not to change school start time, which, of course, our goal is really just making it by 30 minutes. But it's also to question in the forum with more public input concerns and how those could be addressed, whether it's needing an older sibling to take care of younger kids or transportation issues, co-mainling of students if the transportation was changed. So kind of go over all of that. But also the first forum, just sort of on the science, the brain science and why later start times for older kids is important. So really the best thing I think we did was come up with a timeline on how we can do this and come back with a full report. Thanks. Questions? Public forum on rush 26. And then, of course, the second. As soon as we have that one, publicizing the second one. So we have Q-Flyer. They can be posted everywhere. Yeah. They're going to be here? Yes. Right here. Okay. Thank you. That's a lot of work you guys are doing. Policy committee. Scheduled to meet next week, but it sounds as though you guys can meet without me, but I won't be there. So the next one is scheduled for next Monday. The last time it was, or the previous meeting was canceled. Yeah. So it has a couple of topics on that. One thing that I'm looking for and part of it is the men's doctoral program. I think that all the districts should come together and talk about how we make judgment about research being conducted within our own schools. I'm not saying we shouldn't or we should, but I think we should have a process. And there are Q-School districts in Vermont that do. When an educational institution approaches, I get them a lot, actually. It's from one of our teachers asking Stephen and I, and I said, I think we take care of this now, but I think about, I won't do my doctoral research in our schools, but I think there's sometimes that institutions push teachers to do that when they're working in their master's or their doctorate. And there's pros and cons and those should be looked at. We don't need a full-fledged IRB. Their institutions will take care of that to make sure it's safe. But there are pros and cons to be weighed on that. And I think there should be a group doing that. And that's one of the things that the policy committee tasked me with bringing sample policy. And just let me know if you can't get there for some reason, whenever it is. Action agenda. No leave of requests. Sorry, leave of absence requests. No year-end reservations. No year-end retirements since last Wednesday. One brought me anything in the last day. Yeah. Happy to hear it. Right. And we did vote on the resolution. So we are down to the board orders. Is there a motion to approve the board orders? So moved. And a second. A second. Do they have four signatures at least? Are there questions on the board orders? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? Do you need to know the amount, Lisa? Do I usually? I can't remember. You do sometimes. Okay. 141,986 dollars and 72 cents. And then it goes to Steven. Future agenda items. Board communication. Steven, you were going to give me some information about the implementation plan so I could write a board newsletter for April. Do you love that? Yes. When I get an email from Jody, I'm going to send you Steven. Where is that? You've got a couple weeks, Steven. There's a lot of short distance between the two of them. Yeah. Well, it's the board column, I thought. Yeah. He's going to... I can change it a little bit and give him my own name. From Porch Forum. I think it's my turn to write that. Unless someone else wants to take a stab at it. Where do we stab him? The flyer out there. What? The flyer out there. Yeah. Our flyer needs to go. Yeah. And we're... I plan to do that next week and the week after, from this year, it doesn't mean he can't come. So, can you write a front porch forum thing? Sure. Attaches that to it and then send it to us? Is it specifically about that? Yeah. Yeah, that would be perfect. To my page. We need to add our articles. Corinne knows that. You know, I just emailed Kristen. Okay. And those videos are going to get out there. Yes. So those take office. Okay. And maybe a thank you for supporting the budget and I mentioned that. The resolution, yeah. Okay. Great. Do you want to write all that or do you want me to write that part? I'll write it and then I'll float it by you. Okay. That sounds great. Thank you very much. You were off the hook for a while. Okay. So, are we all set on everything else? So, a motion to go into executive session for a student matter. Can I just have one thing? Yes. Under the board communication. Someone had asked me about the contract with the dam folks. And that wasn't very elegantly set. No. We all know what you were talking about. Yeah. It was clear that way but it didn't sound right. So I just had a question. Someone asked me about that. I said I would ask about that. Yes. Have we sorted all that out? I can tell you what I've said. Yeah. You kind of had it in your e-mail signing going for that. Here's what I said. I was asked on the floor yesterday and I said I don't have a comprehensive understanding but I do know that the Robby Porter asked for a renewal. He was looking for a 20-year deal. And because of the term of that we wanted to do a full review and really understand our options. So the plan was to put together our request for proposals to understand, you know, do we do hydra? Do we do solar? Do we do what's the best for that? We had to be doing our outside. And given all of the other things that we had doing last year we were not able to get our request for proposals out to meet Robby's timeline. And I think that's unfortunate. You could get a partner for five years but that's what it was. He went and secured another contract. So the plan still is to do our request for proposals. Yeah, I'll say I was pretty direct with Robby. He wanted a direct renewal and I said I wasn't willing to superintendent to recommend that and especially for a 20-year term. And I said I'd be glad to go out today. And there were no options like temporary one-year renewal to five-time or anything like that offered, right? I would say I was willing to talk about a five-year. He wasn't. Okay. Okay. I mean, I would actually tell you that but we've been advised to be through the Vermont, through the energy, school energy folks, which I should remember the name because part of them are superintendents who are the ones that sponsored, that they suggest not going out for more than five years on an energy deal because of the fluctuating utility rates that you could actually hamstring the school district by a quarter of it unless you're going to own, you know, you're a foot-drawn soul or you're a foot-drawn panel. But, you know, you're going to lease them, you're going to have them on your site. But if you're going to do a net metering, long-term it's not that I could teach this place for any other relation because of the change in utility rates. And options. Absolutely. One of the five years, one of the five years that seems problematic. Does that help? Yeah, yeah. I know that before Matt Colba moved back into Massachusetts, we were right on that RFP timeline getting something out this spring. Steve and I had a couple of conversations trying to get it out. There's a couple different things. We're looking for many different options for one alternative energy. I would also let you know, I think Steve has let you know this, we've reduced our energy quite a bit just by doing energy conservation within the buildings, but changing the LED lights and things like that. That's good. Thanks. Is that good? Yeah, yeah. That's great. Thank you. Thank you. So, I'll entertain a motion to go into executive session. All right. Karen, second? Second. Second Carl. And we need to give these guys a chance to move out. And Shannon, thank you very much.


Sitten pohjoitamme se, että sillä on tyyppiä, mitä pitää, että kuten sillä on, on kyse takaisin, että ennenpäin on paremmin kokemuksia. En ole vielä ennenpäin kursallit ja kursalliskuus, mutta hän on vain kokemuksia, että on jäämää koko alueellista, tai yksi koko alueella, tai koko kokemuksia, ja kokemuksia ja kokemuksia. Our example now comes from the Talouselma 500 magazine that I covered in a previous video. So this is a Finnish business magazine that follows the 500 largest Finnish companies and in one particular year in 2005 there were big headlines in Finnish newspapers because on this list there are return assets of women-led companies as 4.7% points higher than in men-led companies. So our question now is we have an observation of return on assets difference of 4.7% points and is it a big deal? So does it matter? So what does the data tell us and what kind of inferences can we make from this sample? So 4.7% points is a pretty big difference. So what does it mean? What the data are and what the data tell us directly is that in one point of time in one sample that the firms led by women are more profitable. So that's what the data tells us and now the question is can we generalize? So can we say something beyond that particular sample? Can we say that this generalizes to other years or is it just one year? If it's just one year women-led companies happen to be more profitable but it wouldn't generalize to other years then it's not a big deal. If it generalizes to other years then it's probably a big deal. The second question is does it generalize to other firms? So is it just these 500 companies in which the women-led companies are more profitable? Or does it generalize to the 1,000 largest companies or all companies in Finland or all companies in all countries? So how do we generalize? How widely can we generalize? The first question that we need to ask when we start discussing generalizability of a sample statistic. So this is a sample statistic. It's something calculated, a number from a sample. Does it generalize to the population? We have to ask could this be by chance only? So is it plausible that because of sampling variation we just happened to have the companies that were led by women happened to have a better year than companies that were led by men? Could it be just random occurrence or is it evidence of a systematic difference? And we have to ask two important questions to answer that. Whether it can be by chance only. The one is 4.7% points a large difference. Large differences rarely occur by chance only. Small differences occur by chance only frequently. When we calculate something from a sample, the sample estimate is hardly ever exactly the population value. It's somewhere close. So is it far enough to say that it's improbable that this kind of result could occur by chance only? Or is it close enough to the population value that it actually makes no difference? Then we have to look at, is it a large effect? The mean return on assets is about 10 in this sample. And 4.7% point difference would mean that if the men led companies are let's say 8% ROA, then women led companies are 13% ROA. So they are more than 50% more profitable than men led companies. That's a big thing. So that's a big difference. The second important question relates to sample size. So we know that the full sample is 500 companies, but that's not the full story. We also have to consider how many women there are. If there are just five women, or if there are 250 women, then those two conditions would lead to very different conclusions. It happens to be that there were 22 women in the sample. So that's a fairly small number of observations. Now the question of statistical inference. We want to see if there is actually, if this return on assets of 4.7% point, is it large enough that we can conclude that there probably is a difference, a systematic difference, and this is not due to sampling fluctuations only. We have to ask the question what would be the probability of getting this kind of difference by chance only? And you watched the video by John Rouser. So what would John Rouser do in this scenario? We have 500 companies. We want to know whether the difference between the women led companies and the men led companies could occur by chance only. What we do is one strategy of answering that question is to do a permutation analysis or permutation test, which is a fairly intuitive way of understanding statistical testing. And what we do is that we take the list of companies and so we have the largest companies. I got the data from a database. This may not be the exact same 500 companies, but it doesn't matter for the example. We choose 22 companies at random and we compare the remaining 478 and we calculate the difference. So we have 22 companies again, a mean of 22 companies compared to a mean of 478 companies. We repeat 10,000 times and we see what's the difference. What is the probability of getting at least 4.7 percent point difference in these comparisons? So let's take a look at the results. So I did the analysis. Here are the first 200 comparisons. We can see that quite often when we take randomly 22 companies and compare against the 478 remaining companies, the difference is very close to zero. So here is very close to zero, no difference. Sometimes we get a negative difference here. So the difference actually are, there is no systematic difference. There cannot be because I chose companies randomly and two random samples are always comparable. So, but we get these differences larger than 4.7. We get nine out of 200 comparisons using this permutation testing strategy. So the probability of getting 4.7 percent point difference larger in this test is 0.045 for the first 200 observations. Is that enough evidence to conclude that the 4.7 percent point difference is unlikely to be by chance only? Let's take a look at the bigger picture. So we have the distribution of the estimates. We have 10,000 repeated samples and sometimes we get a large negative estimate.  Typically we get an estimate where there is no difference because there should not be any, because we are taking a random sample from population comparing us. Another sample there should be because randomization there shouldn't be any difference. The probability for getting 4.7 percent points or higher difference is 0.0347 out of 10,000 replications. This probability is called the p-value. So it is the probability of observing an effect equally large or greater under there being no effect. We can also, we don't have to do the permutation testing. We don't have to do the random sampling because this shape here looks familiar. So that's the normal distribution. So we see that the difference is normally distributed and many things are many in statistics that follow normal distribution. So we can just, instead of approximating this difference by taking random samples, we only need to find out what is the right normal distribution. So where do we draw the distribution and then compare against that normal distribution? So here's the normal distribution overlaid against that observed distribution of estimates. Here we have the mean of the normal distribution. That's 0. So that's our base case of no difference. And then normal distribution also we need to know the dispersion, the standard deviation. And this standard deviation is estimated using the standard error. So we have the standard error which the statistical software will print out for us. And we draw a normal distribution mean at 0, which is the null hypothesis value of no difference. And then we have this person here, which is quantified by the standard error. Then we compare. What is the size of this area here? So how probable it is to get an estimate of 4.7% points or higher, given the null hypothesis of no effect. 0.04, that is less than 0.05, which is the normal criterion for statistical significance. So could it be by chance only? He is less than 0.05. If this was a research paper, we would conclude that there is a statistically significant difference and we would write a paper and we would get it hopefully published somewhere because we have a statistically significant result. Of course we have to think that in this particular scenario, there are probably reporters who want to say something positive about women. So they could do multiple comparisons. They could do comparisons of growth, profitability, other important statistics. And if they happen to find one statistic that makes women look better, then they write a newspaper article about it. So the p-values work well when you do multiple comparisons, when you do just one comparison. But because of the nature of the test, we will get eventually large effects by chance only. So if we repeat this study, for example, every year we check profitability and we check liquidity, we check growth and we do that over 10 years. So we have 30 comparisons. One of those comparisons will almost certainly give us p is less than 0.05 by chance only. So p is less than 0.05 is not very strong evidence. It is some evidence if it is just one comparison. But if we do multiple comparisons, we can do this kind of data mining and always get something that is less p is less than 0.05. If we would have less than 0.01, then I would buy the claim that there is actually an effect in the populace.