Time may not be ceded to another speaker. Comments are to be addressed to me, the board chair, or the board as a whole, not to any individual on the board, on the staff, or in the public. Please raise your hand and we'll just speak until you are asked to by myself. Please identify yourself with your first and last name and your count of residence. Please refrain from restating comments that have already been shared. You can certainly express agreement with those comments. Order and decorum shall be observed by everyone. Shouting and profanity are prohibited. As the board chair, I will maintain the order and the form of the meeting. And with that, I opened up public comment. Yes. Hi, my name is Hailey Larry. I live in East Buckfield, Vermont. I have a document that I'd like everyone on the board to look at if you could pass around. It's longer than three minutes. So I have a summary of what this document is. So good evening. Again, my name is Hailey. I am a social-emotional team member at Randolph Elementary and have been for the past four and a half years. My job consists of supporting students grades K through 6 throughout the day, giving positive breaks to students as well as supporting staff in the building with what they need. At Randolph Elementary, I have been able to build meaningful and trustful relationships with our students, families, and staff.  The purpose of rule 4,500 in the state of Vermont is to, quote, create and maintain a positive and safe learning environment in schools, promote positive behavioral interventions and supports in schools, and to ensure that students are not subjected to inappropriate use of restraint or seclusion, end quote. When walking into that meeting, it was the pure opposite of problem-solving and strategizing 4,500 procedures. Without explanation, Lane Millington just played a video of an intervention that happened among me and a co-worker and an escalated student outside at recess on September 26, 2023. As the video plays with no sound, he is falsely narrating the situation. He is also falsely stating how the student is feeling, whom he can't even name nor has ever met. He asks for no context about the situation. He just assumes the worst. He goes on and continuously shames my co-worker and me during this meeting that last two hours. I asked Superintendent Millington to come observe my position for one day, but he stated that it was not his role. As a superintendent, it is his role to oversee and collaborate with his staff on policies, implementations, and outcomes. It is his job as the district leader to oversee day-to-day operations out of school. And since this is a developing policy that he is implementing into our building, it is his job to be present and see what my job entails to make sure these policies make sense and are safe for staff and all students so that they can receive a right to their education. As someone who is from this community and has been with these students as well as supported these students and families for years, I am disappointed with how my co-worker and I were treated by him. It was wrong. Lastly, another role he has as superintendent is to ensure a positive and effective work environment which on that day he failed to provide. Furthermore, mine and my colleague's experience in the 3.45 p.m. 4500 meeting yesterday proved his inability to foster a positive and effective work environment under the treatment of staff policy. I will be making a formal complaint. I appreciate audible and physical support for comments, but let's try to keep them, let's try not to do them because if we did them after every comment, which every comment deserves, we'd be here for quite some time. Anyone else? Yes. Thank you. Hi. My name is Nora Skolnick. I am a resident of Braintree and I am a teacher at RES. I am also the vice president of our association. I'm not sure where I'm supposed to stand for it. Okay, thank you. First of all, I would like to express our concern for two of our professional staff who have had their professionalism questions and don't feel at this point supported. And that also describes a lot of how the majority of our staff at RES is feeling at this moment. I wanna thank Superintendent Millington for the meeting yesterday and for some of the clarifications that he was able to give us on the policies that we have in order to deal with some very disruptive and difficult student behaviors. At the same time, this is a beginning. It is a first step and we have a long way to go. We have some asks that we would like the board to consider and we felt the need to come tonight, not only in support of our colleagues, but to work as a community to deal with the situation and to have the board here firsthand what that situation is, since we are the ones that are experiencing this on a daily basis. Our first ask is that we continue to do the work on the action plan, which was a draft and that as a draft, it needs a lot of revision and a lot of work. I think our superintendent would be in agreement on this. Our second ask is that we have comprehensive training for all staff and that training happened during the school day or on paid time and that that training be live and in person. As educators, we know the value of having in person training for something, not watching a video, not having it remote, where we can ask questions, have clarifications and practice some of the techniques that need to be worked on. We also are asking that we have re-entry plans for all students who have been physically aggressive with another staff member or with another student before that child is re-entered into the classroom. At that re-entry meeting or to create that re-entry plan, we need to have all stakeholders involved. That includes parents, that includes teachers, special educators, interventionists and our social and emotional learning team. We are also asking that we have alternative placement options for students that are in district. We have a person in our school who was hired to do this exact position, but we have not yet been able to have that. So we would like to have that as this is not appropriate for all students in our school. Thank you very much. Thank you.  Lindsay. Yes, thank you. This is Lindsay Hopped. I am calling in from re-entry. I'm calling to just, I have seen that there is conversation around the renewal of the current superintendents contract and I appreciate that there's a large portion of that that is personnel and not something that can be shared. I'd just like to take the time to remind the board to please review the petition that was signed by over 400 district members requesting that we consider non-renewal at this time. I'm aware that the board has spent an extensive amount of time creating new evaluation techniques and I applaud that. I think they will be wonderful moving forward with whomever our superintendent is. But I fear that we are going to move forward with three years of rehabbing a superintendent as opposed to three years of starting to rehab our district and somebody who grew up here and has always been proud of our community. I'd like to get back to that point and I think there's a lot of people who are struggling to feel the heart of our community. And I think some of that comes from leadership or lack thereof. And so hearing what I just heard from a staff member kind of just reinforces more of that. And so I'm just really hoping the board will remember that any one of you holds the right to make a motion to not move forward with further contract renewal and instead start thinking about what we can really do to move our district in a positive place. I appreciate all of you. I appreciate all the time you school board members put in, I know none of us on this phone can imagine the extra hours you put in but please hear those of us that asked you to be there and recognize we really need a change. And we need help. Thank you. Thank you, Lindsay. My name is Catha Ruiz. I am a resident of Randolph Center and I am a special educator at RES. As Nora stated, there was someone who was hired to do the alternative placement and that's me. Hi. When I was hired, I was told that there was a high need in the community and that the wait list and alternative programs are extremely high and that in-house we can create a program that serves the needs for the kiddos that don't really function well in mainstream schooling. When I joined RES, that was not the case. I have had the honor and privilege of working behind the SEL team, including Mike Haley and Sonia, Deb and Natalie. And they are the most professional, amazing superheroes that we have in this community. Without them, RES would fall apart. They are the glue that keeps our community together. They check on staff, they check on students, they create that safe place that school should be for students, especially the students who we have who are lower income and have trauma. Because of the lack of guidance and leadership that we've had in the building, not due to our principal, our principal, Melinda Robinson, has been incredible in helping us and guiding us. We have had situations that make me very uncomfortable working there every day for the safety of the staff and the students. We had an incident the other day due to the guidance from Superintendent Lane in Millington. We were told that we could not go hands-on and that we cannot use seclusion unless it is a imminent threat. The other day, we had a kindergartner walk outside the building towards the Main Street. Now, in normal safe cases, any child, any parent would stop that child and take them away from that Main Street. However, because of that, we had three staff members including myself, the kindergarten teacher, and Mike, stand in the Main Street blocking traffic and hoping that the kindergartner would not cross. That is a situation that no student and no staff should have to be privy to. We were lucky and fortunate enough that the student had decided to take a seat and slowly move back towards the building. But that was the best case scenario. These are things that are happening in our school and we want things to change to feel safe for the staff and for the students. And we ask the board to please hear us. Thank you. Thank you. Yep, someone's pointing me over here. Yes, sorry. So, my name is Lisa Wright. I'm co-president for the support staff. And I'm here to speak on behalf of the Paras. My job as a building para, I go in, I sub, I do anything else that needs to be done. I've even helped Mike and Hayley and whatever else. I have watched and I have witnessed students screaming at the paras, at the teachers. I have watched and I have witnessed where they have picked up a desk, they have thrown it. They destroy the classrooms. Then the teacher has to remove the classroom while the student is still inside being disruptive and throwing things. The paras are the first people that these students go after. I have had, whereas the staff in the office, we've had many paras that have come, they've been crying, they want to quit. And without the help of the office and their supporters, they're still there. But I'm afraid that if you guys don't do something, you will not have any paras. They are the front people. They're the ones that are with these students, 26 hours a day, they need the help. Not yesterday, they need it today. And so, yes. My name is Sean McEnlity, I'm a teacher at RES. I'm a community member of Randolph and I am a future parent of an RES student. My son is almost three. He's gonna start pre-K in our building next year. In my 12 years of working in elementary schools, I've taught in four school districts in three different states. And in my mind, RES stands out in the support that is in place for the students that need it the most. It didn't take me very much time at all when I started teaching here last year to be impressed by Mike and Hailey.  And they bring that to our building every single day. There are no easy jobs in a school and they have willingly accepted the toughest ones.  They are some of the most loved staff members in our building and that is no coincidence. I hope that they both know that all of the teachers and staff in our school support them, but it breaks my heart to know that their professionalism and their commitment to doing what is best for kids could ever be questions. I've worked with a lot of educators and I can say without a doubt that these people set a high bar of excellence. Before I started teaching, I would not have believed the impact that an individual could have on a larger group, but anyone who spent any amount of time in a school can tell you that's true. And the kids that this team works with on a daily basis and the way that they interact with them play a huge role in shaping the culture and the climate and the mood of the entire school. If you know someone that spends time in the school, then you know someone that's been impacted by the work that they do. I wanna applaud the SEL team for their tremendous commitment to maintaining the dignity of all students, especially when they're at their lowest and that is no easy feat. You would only need to follow them around for a day to see this, to see what they do, to see the challenges they face and the unbelievable grace that they managed to maintain while doing it. If my son was in school today and for whatever reason was struggling, I would not hesitate to trust that either one of them would interact with him in a way that keeps him safe and has his best interest at heart. It feels like the school is at a tipping point and this team and the kids that they serve are at the center of it. It feels like there's a tremendous opportunity here to meaningfully rethink the way that these kids move throughout our system and I hope that we do not fail them. I hope that we decide that they are worth it. This is really hard work and we're lucky to have these amazing educators. Let's listen to them, let's lift them up and let's not get in their way. Thank you. Yes. Yes, my name's Gabrielle Pazzani. I'm a kindergarten teacher at Randolph Elementary. I'm also a parent of a child in Mr. McEnolty's class. I just want to talk about, there's a lot of emphasis from the higher administration on data and achievement scores and helping kids be successful in the classroom. I would like to highlight that that data exists because of the SEL team. They are an integral part of allowing us teachers to continue teaching the content when a child in our classroom is spiraling to a point where we either need to clear the classroom or take different measures. They come in, they deescalate, I can continue, I can engage with my kids, the kids in the classroom are not scared, the child who has had the issue can exit, get back into a place where they're ready to reenter and be successful as well. They are absolutely an integral part of the data that us teachers can produce with our classrooms. Hi, my name is Cecilia Smith. I'm a nearly lifelong resident of Randolph and I also teach at Randolph Elementary School, actually in the classroom I had as a kid. So this place is really special to me and I just wanted to talk a little bit about how lucky I feel to get to work with Mike and Haley and the whole SEL team. Mike and Haley are both highly skilled first responders in our school and they don't only support children across the day and in moments of crisis. These two professionals also help staff members in navigating the emotional terrain of the children we all work with. We have really hard jobs and Haley and Mike are crucial to what we all do. Haley and Mike are integral to the staff's ability to respond compassionately to children in moments of crisis. Both of these professionals have been an invaluable resource to me and many, many others, including people in this room in their professional learning at our school. Haley and Mike, when possible, make themselves available to support teachers when we are struggling with challenging behaviors in our classrooms. Their support of and compassion for both staff and students are a big part of why I choose to work at Randolph Elementary School. There are myriad ways that they help and support our school community. These two professionals are the backbone of Randolph Elementary School. Mike and Haley have our trust as staff. They have our respect. And I would hope that they have the same trust and respect from our district's administration. I'm scared to see you there standing. I'm gonna go here in the orange back. My name is Julie Bristol and I'm a special educator at Randolph Elementary. I am very new to Randolph Elementary School this year. I have lived in Randolph for two years and part of the reason I took a job there was to become a bigger part of the community. I wanted to be able to teach and help children in this community. I think one thing that has struck me and it feels really difficult is the climate in the school. It's extremely challenging. Staff are having such a difficult time coping with all of the behaviors and feeling that they are not having the support they need from district administration. I've had several teachers who have come to me and said, I don't know what to do anymore. And I've been in their classrooms and the behaviors are astounding. Teachers who are in tears almost every day, I had to go in and didn't have to. I was in a class the other day. The teacher was expressing what a difficult time she was having. I said, take five minutes and I will stay in here. There are teachers who every day are saying they don't know how they can keep coming in. They're not sure if they can come back next year. I don't know if people understand what a phenomenal group of people you have at Randolph Elementary School who are pushing themselves day after day to give the very best of themselves to try to support each other. I feel so fortunate to have the team that I have in the kindergarten wing and the other teachers. And I can't even begin to talk about Mike and Hailey and Deb and Natalie and Sonya and the people who are every day in the thick of it with behaviors. I myself have to help with behaviors in my role which takes away from my time that I should be doing paperwork because there are children breaking down all the time every single day. What I would like to see is that there is respect and that there is a sense that the people who work in this school are valued for the work they do. And even if there is the perception that there is a problem with the way that something is being done, what I would prefer to see is that there is kindness and that there is the assumption that best intentions were in the minds of those who are doing the work. I saw some things yesterday that disturbed me greatly in terms of how situations were handled. I would like to see things change dramatically for the better. I have a parent of children at RES and I'm just gonna say that if it wasn't for Mike and Hailey my kids would not be there and they would not be flourishing. For anyone that knows me, I am a resident of Randolph and I'm a foster parent who was adopted. Three of my kids that are RES. I have an older son that was adopted that I actually pulled from the high school which is a different story. My three littles at RES come from a background of trauma. They also are typical young children and they have their slew of issues but each and every day they go to school and you know who they're excited to see besides their main teachers, it's Mike and Hailey. They come home and they talk, Mr. Mike, Ms. Hailey. And they're not only there for my kids but they're there for me and I will say that I had a very negative experience with one of my children in a preschool at Braintree and getting to know RES, I had mixed emotions and I really didn't wanna send my kids to school at all. Coming from a trauma background, fostering them and adopting them and know what they came from to send them off to a building when they've already gone through such trauma was extremely difficult for me. And so my wife ultimately chose to send them and put them in the hands of these educators and I will tell you it's been amazing. Now my kids are only in preschool and kindergarten so they have a long way to go but I will tell you that each and every day it is their main teachers, their paras and most of all Mike and Hailey that help them get through the day and help me know that they are safe and that they're loved and cared about and that I'm cared about and my opinion matters and I will also say that two out of my three at RES have had to go in quiet spaces and to be restrained for various reasons that I will say are no one's business but I'm okay with that because I know at the end of the day they're doing it to keep my kids safe and if tomorrow my kids had to be restrained by Mr. Mike or Hailey, I would tell them to do it because I know that they're doing it out of caring and love. And I will also say the story that someone shared of the child running into the street I would be appalled if I found out that my kid did that and they were not allowed to put their hands on my child to just protect my child. So this is very concerning to me and I will just say again I would give anything to Mr. Mike and Ms. Hailey for everything they do for my children and for the children at RES. Thank you. No hands up online? Okay, yep. Hi, my name is Emily McCall. I have been a lifelong resident of Brookfield and then brain trade most recently. I have a very unique relationship with Hailey. I've known Hailey for over 16 years. We went to high school together. My sister was in her class, birthday party, sporting events. We basically grew up together. My oldest son, Nicholas, had a very horrific childhood that was, it was very dramatic for him. Hailey was his saving grace. We've known Hailey in her professional roles since my son was seven years old. He is now 12 and a seventh grader at Randall. Hailey was the first one-on-one that was able to connect with my son and let him know that he was safe. To this day, they've got a bond like this. The things that I would like to highlight are Hailey's professional experiences. She started with my son at the Beckley Day program. I'm not sure if you guys know what that is, but it's a trauma-informed therapeutic school based out of Washington County Mental Health. The reason that my son had to go there was because he was expelled from kindergarten. Because his IEP, that was done by Ms. Susan, Ms. Lancy many moons ago, did not get pulled over. It was not honored, which we all know is illegal. He was expelled. He went to Beckley Day program and thank God every day, we met Hailey there. She was able to get Nick to the point where he did not need to be restrained. She helped him learn coping skills so that he could regulate himself. I don't know what we would do if we didn't have Hailey in our lives. She followed Nick from Beckley Day program when he was in first grade to Brookfield Elementary where he finished second and third grade. Then she helped him transition to Braintree Elementary when we bought her home. She has been with my son ever a step of the way and I trust her implicitly. I know that her background working at trauma-informed schools, they are taught the safe ways to restrain, the safe ways to de-escalate situations. You're way over. Sorry, I was just thinking about it. Oh, that's okay. Anyway, I can't say enough good things about Hailey and I just wanted to let you know we're here, we support you and thank you for everything you've done. I'm just too sorry. I'll be better. Thank you. Time to go. Do it, yeah.  So my name is Sonia Katnott and I'm the school counselor at the elementary school. I'm a resident of Waterbury. So first of all, I wanna say I'm glad that there's a draft of an action plan. I think that that's a really good step going forward and it's an important one that we need throughout our school. So it did state in the opening paragraph, quote, it was created through the input of those who work closely with our most challenging students, end quote. And I just wanna point out that not one member of our social-emotional learning team was part of that, collaborated with that, just part of that process. I also take offense that Mr. Millington has said that Mike and Hailey dysregulate kids and they were treated very unfairly and not collaboratively at a recent meeting that they were at that we had talked about. In my 19th year of working at RES, Mike and Hailey are the most skillful, empathetic team members who create incredible relationships with our students and we are so lucky to have them. I can't imagine working with better colleagues. Thank you. Okay, back there. Hi, I'm Jenny. I'm a teacher here at TCC, but I'm talking as parent to this. I'd like to say my experience from the other side as a child who has been, I don't know, bully's not quite the word, but has had attacks on him and the fact that people, I'm hearing that people are not allowed to restrain children in safe, healthy ways really, really makes me nervous. My son has come home a couple times saying that he's been punched in the stomach. This does not leave bruises, this does not leave bleeding. There's no evidence, but to know that a personnel cannot come and restrain him is very, very, very concerning. Just the other side of somebody who is dealing with, I don't know what's it called, but attack is just really concerning. And then also the other thing is, I have another daughter who experiences that. There are times when kids are dysregulated and the teacher needs to be involved with them and these good children are getting ignored because all of the effort is on these other children who need extra help. And also, Mr. Mike's awesome. My son talks a lot of all the time. Very positive male role model. Thank you. I'm gonna go over here and then I'll be back here. My name is Molly Mullen. I am a forever resident of Randall. Wasn't gonna speak, but I am so moved by everybody. I am a staff member, but most importantly, a parent of two children at the elementary school. And I'd love to piggyback on what Jenny said about 90% of the students in the school who don't have trauma or behavioral issues and how concerned I am as a parent, knowing what I know working at the school, that those kids are severely losing out on an education. Our teachers and the SEL team do a fantastic job of trying to keep classrooms normal and regulated, but it's the kids who have problems that get all the help which in turn pushes the rest of our kids to the side. We need people like our SEL team to keep our classrooms together so that my two children can have the best education they can get. I trust Mr. Sean, my son's teacher and the SEL team to put my kids who don't have behavioral issues, their needs first, and they do a great job, but there's only so much they can do before they get pushed to the wayside. And my son's needs are just as important as those kids. And I will say if the community knew half of what goes on, they would be appalled at what their kids have to deal with on a daily basis, how many times their kids' classrooms get cleared, how many times things get thrown at them. And I think it would be really important that the community be privy to that knowledge when it happens, because you would really see the hard work and dedication our SEL team puts out to try to stop those before it even happens. And I fear that if we lose our SEL team, it's just gonna get worse. Thank you. Thank you. Hi, I'm Megan Westbrook. I am a long-time resident of Randolph, and I'm a parent of three kids at R.E.S., kindergarten, second grade, fourth grade. I'm also currently working in the school as a long-term sub with Special Ed. So I have both perspectives, and I just wanna kind of piggyback on both with Jenny and Molly have said, I think especially what Molly just ended with, which is that if parents in the community, and I'm like looking at the board thinking, have any of you actually worked in the school? Have you subbed? Have you spent any time in any of the classrooms?  I knew what I was going into working there as like I've lived in Randolph for a long time. I know the community really well, and I have little kids, but honestly, it's eye-opening. There's so much going on in the school, it's volatile at times, it can feel unsafe for staff and students, and this team is amazing. They're so impressive, all of them, and obviously, you guys, like SEL seems amazing, but everyone, parents, like the ladies who work in the front office, like every single teacher is there, and they're working their butts off every single day, and honestly, I don't even know if they do it, I don't know when they come back, like Friday morning after everything that they've done, but I really encourage you, get in the classroom and see what's happening. Our kids, all needs should be met. All kids' needs should be met. I have a kindergartner who was in the kindergarten class that Katya was just talking about, where there was a student who ran from the building. The amount of staff needed to corral that one kindergartner, imagine the time that was taken up, just that one situation, while my kindergartner was in a class, without the teacher, like there was learning lost in that time. So I just wanna say, get in the classroom, sub for a day, just even one day, choose a class and sub, and just see it from your own perspective seriously. Thank you. I think I had someone online. We have someone online. Felicia. Sorry, I have one muting. We can hear you. Okay. We could. Hold on. There you go. She's still here, right there. I'm trying to play a recording. Hold on. Felicia, I'm gonna see if there are other comments in the room, but I'm not disregarding you. Are there other? Sure. I just say that I sense the recording to the board. If they could play it, it probably the audio would be better, please. Logically, I'm not sure how we would do that. You might be able to get it on your phone. That's a good idea. I wonder about this, though. I mean, you're present, but so playing a recording, wow, I'm looking for guidance from board members. I just wanna make sure we're doing the right thing in terms of what we allow for public comment. Great. Thank you for your input. Rachel, did you have something? No. Okay, so are there more comments in the room? Okay, yes. So Felicia, we're gonna just hold on this for a moment. Oh, you may have disappeared. My name's Mike Dooley, I'm a resident of Randolph. I've worked at RES for the last three, two years plus this year. I really only wanna say two things. One is, we have made repeated requests to the special education director who is responsible for training for physical interventions to revisit how the district does that. In the three years that I've received the trainings, not a single training has not involved watching a video. When I trained handle with care for Claire Martin Center, it was a two day training. That's the minimum that someone would need. When I brought to the attention of the special education director that we are no longer certified, I was told CPI does not require yearly recertifications. The truth is, if you call CPI, which I've done, CPI is the one we use at Randolph. Crisis prevention, intervention, I believe. They were quick to tell me that the instructors are every two years and that the district should be providing every six month training and that if the district provides every six month training, we do not have to have a recertification. I've only ever had a video. I have never actually been allowed to practice the CPI moves with a human being. The second thing I wanna say is that the only question Superintendent Millington has ever asked me in the time that I've worked and I racked my brain trying to think of any question besides potentially how are you when he's greeted me is if I would like to watch the tape, the video of our intervention that my colleague alluded brought up in front of my entire faculty body. I am going to look in my email since we do have an agreement from last year with our council looking at you because I'm sure you're gonna remember that we do, we can read email, public comment that we've received. I don't see a reason why you can't play that. It may be the person just was uncomfortable saying it out loud, but we wanted to do a recording. All right, let me see. Just as long as it doesn't go over three minutes because we gave you a release. I'll get my timer. All right, I'll get my timer. We'll do it in three minutes, everyone. I'm probably over doing better since something else started coming in. Good evening board and guests. My name is Felicia Allard. I'm here before you tonight as the former director of the Randolph Technical Career Center and as a parent with two children in this district, one at the elementary school and one at the high school. I'm here because I agree with concerns about the top leadership of this district. Due to my separation agreement, I am unable to speak publicly to my employment history at RTCC, but I would like the board to consider an exit interview with me and this is my formal request for one. I wanna point out that the separation agreement seemed to be the way that problems are solved in this district versus dialogue and collaboration. I am not the first one to be coerced into a separation agreement. And when disagreement occurs again, unchecked, I will not be the last. What I am most concerned about here is that up until recently, we have only heard from a select few voices. I'm pleased the board is reviewing policy to obtain more oversight. However, notoriously missing are the voices of the majority of parents, students, staff, and administrators who have left the district under Lane's leadership. I can tell you that in my 27 years in education, my time in this district was the most challenging of my career. It'd be easy to assume that this is because of the pandemic, but it is not. It is because of the mismanagement of this district, specifically lack of instructional leadership from the top, supervision of district level employees, and accountability for adults to behave in the ways in which we expect our kids to. Now as a mom, I've looked into school choice to allow my child to be in an environment that focuses on learning. It's not normal for kids to pee on the floor. It's not normal for sinks to be ripped off the walls. It is not normal to have the amount of bullying and harassment that exists in these schools. It is not normal for these problems to have grown to the levels that they have. I would make the case that our district leadership intentionally creates divisiveness to keep eyes off the real problem. The amount of upper level disrespect for staff and students is astonishing. No wonder our students are angry, our staff are burnt out, and we've had 100% administrator turnover. I would ask the board to consider what has happened in the last six months. I've been contacted by two separate groups to complete a survey and a petition. This community wants to be heard. This staff, these students, and our community have realized that Lane Millington's leadership is toxic for this district and it is holding our kids back. The root of the problem is at the supervisory level, specifically Lane Millington and Heather Lawler. I would ask that this board not renew their contracts. Thank you. Thank you. It is 6.50 and we have a full agenda, so I'm going to call public comment closed now. A reminder from the preamble I read that the board cannot respond to any, but I will say thank you for being here and we invite you to all of our meetings and to contact us by email. Our board emails are available on the website. So thank you. I'm going to the next agenda item. And you're also welcome to stay. Yes, the sign-in book for anyone who's not staying. Please make sure you sign in. We need public record of attendance. Thank you. It looks like it's over here near this other screen. Do you need it? At this point, if I needed to add something to the agenda, I needed to attend before public comment. It's usually the first act, but since you haven't conducted any real business yet, you probably won't. Okay, because we needed to get a request onto the agenda. That's not there now. So we have the opportunity to write, or did it make it into the packets? This is just where it is. Did the new request that I needed to add to the agenda, did it make it into the, it's going to be there? The main packet. I emailed it. Yes. I think I emailed it to everyone and did not. Okay, so. I'm just going to RTC. I have no request to help. There's a facilities request. Do we have, we don't have it printed? No. Okay, so my apologies. No, thank you, thank you. It's not a critical one. So we had to wait a moment. Could we, only because I'm not sure everyone's had a chance. Yeah, no, it came in late from the facilities so it's probably fine. Okay. If we need to call a special meeting, if it comes from a redemption concert, we'll do that. So we're going to move on to discussing the annual report to voters. This is something that goes in the town annual report and we put it together every year. And in the previous years, we have had help from them. Yes, right, I know we did last year. I don't know if, yep. I was just going to say, I'd like to make, I don't know if I need to make a motion, but I'd like to see if we can move the, or if it's okay if we move the RUHS presentation up just because we do have our staff here and to honor their time and the great idea. I, do I need a motion, I do. I'll make a motion. Great. Make a motion to move back. Up on the agenda, please. I second that. Seconded by Chelsea. All those in favor? Aye. Aye, opposed? Thank you very much. Thank you, Katya. That's very thoughtful of you. So at this moment, I would love to invite the presentation to begin. Join us, please.  Do you guys want chairs at the table? No. You want to stand? I mean, I think we can stand. Okay. We're a small group, but. I'll use my computer too if you need. We'll be right up there. Thank you. Present. I was looking for a presentation in our colors. It's a little splashy, but. It's cool. It is showing up, right? Yep. But it's on like eight slides, and I'm like slide number one. We'll be quick. This is just an overview. Thank you. Thank you. Some of the things that we've been up to this school year. So thank you for giving us this opportunity to present to all of you. I really appreciate being able to talk about the work that we're doing. We still have areas to improve and we are looking at data all the time and talking to our students and our staff and learning the ways in which we can continue to grow. Can I touch this to move forward or do we? You can try. I don't think it'll work. I can try. It's not gonna work. Okay. So we just wanted to do a quick overview of some of the areas that we're really focused on this school year, and then we'll go a little bit deeper as we move into the presentation. So we're gonna talk about increased time on learning, data-driven decision-making, ensuring that we know all students well, the celebrations that we have planned to acknowledge growth and success, and also some of our work addressing student behavior. So increased time on learning, as some of you, well, probably all the board members but people in the audience are aware that this year we switched to a waterfall schedule and what this allowed us to do are primarily the reason for looking at changing the schedule was increasing instructional time on learning. Through the small adjustments in our schedule, we added 47 hours of instructional time this school year, which is a significant amount of time on learning that we've added. And that's not including the instructional time that happens during callbacks, advisories, or after-school programming, and I'll touch on those all as well. So how it currently looks is we have two blocks static in the morning of our seven blocks throughout the day. Then the remaining five blocks rotate. So all classes meet four times. And why that's important is when we talk about time on learning, best practices also increasing the frequency of learning. So you're not having this big chunk of time and if we have a Friday off for some reason that student might be almost five days away, then you're kind of spending the entire class period relearning what you've missed because of a time gap and loss. So that frequency of learning is important in addition to the actual time on learning. Feedback we've gotten from students is that it is a little bit challenging when you have a waterfall schedule where every single day after your second block, your schedule's a little bit different. So it flows through. But what we've heard from students is that they actually, everything's really positive. They like the variety in their day. Teachers have given us positive feedback. At first there was a little hesitation about how this might look. Teacher feedback has been positive in that they find that students are more engaged when they're in class and they're not falling into poor routines of, oh, every last block, the last 10 minutes of class, the pool's almost out. That's spread across all five days. So that kind of helps establish good routines before lunch, after lunch, those kind of times or sometimes we historically have seen legs in learning. Teacher feedback has been students are more engaged throughout the entire time. Plus it's a little less than an hour long block. So they're not trying to stretch out some of this learning into an hour and a half. Extension class, they're also something new this year. And so we're working to support students in ELA and math particularly. We have 32 students in ELA, about 60 in math. Hold my reading glass down here. And these are blocked out as a class that meets four times a week. And these are skills based. They're not a homework help or a catch up from other classes kind of help. These are classes that are populated based on start testing or teacher recommendations. And students can test out of these if they can show that they're meeting proficiency in these areas where they have some weaknesses. Call back time. So this isn't new, I wanted to mention this because I think it's an important part of our school culture and how we do things. So the most recent student engagement survey which just came out about a week ago, 85% of students self-report that I use my callback well. And so what we use this for is enrichment. So AP classes often need that time for providing additional instruction, the science lab to provide that time remediation happens in that time for some students. This is an extension time, but this is a time where students who need the extra support are given an hour a week to work with individual teachers. Again, this isn't calculated into that 47 hours extra throughout the year. This is time that learning is happening but we don't count it in because there's that variability. After school programming is another time where thankfully because of the late buses happening five times a week, we're providing more increased time on learning. And again, this isn't counted towards that additional 47 hours either, but it is happening. So if you look across the school, we're adding more and more opportunities for learning and time on learning. Actually, as I was walking down the hall today, a couple of students were sitting in the hallway and just seeing how much they love this opportunity to be able to stay after school to the biggest draws are theater program and their dance programs. And so we have a number of students participating though that there's 18 students in the dance class and I'm not sure how many in the theater, but it's comparable. So we have a lot of students participating in that which also gives them time to take some of those core academic classes that they might have to choose between theater or algebra or right. So like it gives them more time on learning because we have this additional learning opportunities after school. Again, that's not calculated into it. We're starting our homework club potentially next week as still more time on learning which is how we get things done. So here's a little bit about our data decision data-driven decision-making. So STAR tests are given on a regular basis. Those are tests that scale with the V-CAP or V-CAP testing. They changed the names like three times while they were implementing the new test last year. Formerly, we had given SBAC tests and so STAR is a pretty reasonable predictor of how students will do on those tests. So students who are functioning below proficiency or showing that they're partially proficient in ELA or math with a teacher recommendation are scheduled into an extension class so that they can work on some skill development. At the middle level, we had seven students already who've tested out of that class so they're graded classes and they get tested a little bit more frequently. So there's flexibility so that if there is just an area that they're struggling to learn, they get really targeted intervention with their classroom teacher and then they have an opportunity to go into an elective or something of their choice once they show that they've developed the skills we're hoping to see them develop. The goal is to have students working on grade level. We know at the middle and high school level that the stronger their skills are in math and literacy earlier, the more deeply they can go into science content and social studies content and really immerse themselves in learning and get the most out of their educational experience with us. So it's very important that they have the basic skills developed that they need to fully engage. We have grade level team meetings scheduled into the school day. So our grade teams meet twice a week, one time a week for planning and like how they're going to integrate and how they're going to support students across their grade team and then another time to discuss student needs. So that is a time when they can review data when they can discuss what they're seeing and when they can make decisions based on performance and based on the actual human children in their classroom about how they're going to proceed. There are deeper learning opportunities offered to support skill development in the content and in core classes that we're proud of and we have worked with the community a few years ago. Some of you will remember, we worked with a gentleman named Winston Goodrich and we did a lot of polling and we got information about what the community wanted and we learned that people felt really passionately about math for everyday life or the kind of math that kids need in order to function in our world as well as an on your own curriculum that used to be here, I think 15 years ago it was a graduation requirement and people really wanted that back. Right now it's an elective but with our ninth grade class as they move up through, it'll be a graduation requirement for their graduation year. That's your life school course. Yeah. So they're working on cooking nutritious food and how to get insurance and all of those things that feel so important. The development of Specialized Plum was, so this is something that we're primarily focusing on with our STEM students, students interested in that field, especially since we have such a great resource with the Innovation Center back here. Obviously so much invested, thank you for that. But so we're trying to focus on STEM first and what a Specialized Plum will look like is the student identifies a number of courses within the STEM area where it's not going to be prescribed because we want to have some choice and variability and some opportunities for flexible pathways within that. Within this menu of options, you say if you pick X amount of core courses within the STEM, you could start working towards a specialized supplement in STEM. In addition to those courses, we would look at some higher level learnings and independent learning opportunities, these other things that say, so now that you have this core content, what are you going to do with it? And so hopefully look at some career planning, some job shadows, maybe some informational interviews, potentially an internship. And so you have that career education, an exploration part of that, as well as the higher education planning, like so now this is the career I want, what are some of these options on this menu that you want to do to look at post-secondary education? So when we look at the specialized diploma, it's not just saying, okay, you've taken these five courses, check the box. Like so this is STEM, what can you do with it in our community, what are pathways within that field? So we're excited about that. We think it helps promote engagement, it helps maybe encourage some of those students who are seniors who have enough credits to graduate. But did you know if you took these other two classes, or if you took this other class here, it helps promote students taking more classes than the other ones might not have. And also looking at different opportunities within the field. In addition to STEM, if STEM is something that looks like it's going well, we would then look at humanities, fine performing arts, the global studies foreign language, business entrepreneurship, and then potentially like a self-designed. That's way in advance, I only got two ahead of myself. Focusing on STEM, because that's really what our resources are. Here we have such great resources and a couple of really good instructors down in the IC as well as a lot of our classroom teachers. I didn't mention this in the after-school program piece, because Nassra, Abdel Fattah and Tomzani who are great educators in the IC, they're offering an after-school programming piece. Thursdays and Fridays for students in grades five through eight. Again, this happens after-school. And if you're around, and you're all invited to come into classrooms, come in and see what's happened in the IC after-school. It's just a hub of activity and students and they're making things on 3D printers and laser engraving. It's just a great way for some of these younger students to help them make that successful transition into the middle grades in high school. That place is hopping. I wanted to mention that because we feel that will then help encourage students to explore fields instead. Yeah, one of the things that I found really exciting about that, and I'm not sure if you can see by this picture is we are gradually increasing the number of girls and young women accessing our STEM programming. If you talk to some of our seventh grade girls, they are pretty excited about the STEM programming happening here. And I also am really heartened on Thursday and Friday afternoons to go down there and see the level of joy in the space. I've worked at the school for 23 years. And I have to say that for as long as I've worked here, there's been like fear of the high school, fear of the middle high school. And so to have elementary school age students coming here after school and doing things that they feel passionately about and joyful about that are academically driven is pretty exciting. Also last week we presented in Chelsea, they do this high school fair because they have choice. So Chelsea Tumbridge do a fair and everybody sets up. And we brought some of our students and I was so proud of them talking about the learning opportunities that they have here. And also there's an outrageous amount of swag or merch that schools hand out trying to attract students. And all of ours was made by kids. We have some extra notebooks that have been laser printed that if you'd like I can bring some in so we have some leftovers. But it was pretty remarkable that everything that we were given out was made by our students and designed by our students in the Innovation Center. So another thing that we're working on is advisory programming. If you've had students who've gone through our system and if you've had multiple students who've gone through our system, you may know that our advisory program can be a really important part of a student's day or it can not. And sometimes it depends on just the advisor that you have and we've identified that as an area that creates some inequity because it's so person dependent or for example, you might have a strong advisor who goes out on family leave and then your student has a sub and things sort of fall apart. So we have invested in the Wayfinder SEL curriculum and that has an opportunity for students to engage with career planning, goal setting. There are lessons that are related to SEL self regulation, all of those sorts of things that help us to know what to expect in advisory and give the same tools to every advisor. So every advisory will always be a little bit different just based on the people in the room, kids included. But the things that we can make more consistent help us to make a strong program. Twice a year we give this student engagement survey that we started giving last spring and it asks questions ranging from, do you think about what you're learning in school when you're at home? Do you have conversation with your family about what you're learning about? Do you feel like your workload is manageable? What would you like to see different or what would you like to see improved at your school? And do you have one trusted known adult at school because we know that that's so important. We've taken that data, we're just beginning to unpack it and gone to the grade teams and said, these are the kids on your teams who said they don't have an adult who wants to put in some extra effort to make sure they have an adult. And so we'll give the survey again at the end of the year. We'll also talk to grade teams about, because we can disaggregate the data by grade level. So see if students aren't feeling engaged or aren't feeling passionately about what they're learning or aren't feeling like it's rigorous enough. We can have conversations about how to tweak our work in order to better serve them. This ties together pretty closely with some of the safety programming that we've been doing. Act 29 says we're gonna come in and out through one door. We'll do multi-option safety drills and lots of different things to keep students safe. One really important part of keeping students safe is knowing them incredibly well. So there are reports about school safety that talk about both hardening and softening schools. The softer side is knowing your kids and knowing who's in your building at any given time. And I think our staff does a pretty remarkable job of knowing our students. So we're working really hard on those drills and the education related to keeping our schools safe. Celebrations. So our school year started rather than giant assembly we did by grade levels this year. And so we could target in and focus and have more of a conversation with students by the grade level assemblies. And we thought that was kind of a nice way to start things off and be able to form more of a relationship with students and have them introduce to us and have that be an assembly that was maybe more meaningful to each individual student that was in there by having it smaller. Other celebrations at the core of who we are are student conferences, right? So while that isn't something that is maybe acknowledged as a whole school celebration for that individual student to be able to say this is something I'm very proud of because at the end we want students to be engaged with their learning because they're proud of the content that they're producing. And so student conferences are a really important part of how we celebrate students during our school. We're also planning to bring back end of quarter assemblies for the whole school and then using the Herald and social media to acknowledge academic achievements by our students. Sharing out to the greater community that great academics do happen here and these are the students that we're celebrating. So we think that that's an important piece that we want to bring back. And a big celebration that we're hoping that will happen in January towards the end of the semester is a celebration of opening up the new gym once we have the new mascot mural up on the wall. If you've all seen it, it's already beautiful, shiny floor, bright lights. It's gorgeous down there. It's been, it was a long wait but it's been worth the wait. It's a great space down there. So that's our next big celebration that we'll be having is the celebration of our gym which will be open to the entire community. Yeah, we've heard from a student today who was upset because the floor has gotten a little bit dirty. Ninth grade boy, deeply concerned because it's not as shiny as it was five days ago. So we're also, we know that there are areas of improvement. I mean, we're presenting the highlights real but I wanna be really realistic about the fact that we still have work that we're doing all the time from the data collection that we're doing caring from students to measuring academicians are they can rise to that occasion and we provide supports to address that. We are working to support challenging behavior with empathy, care and education both proactively through the social emotional learning curriculum and advisory but then also reteaching social emotional lessons when a student does what's not expected. So we have a social emotional coordinator who has been teaching lessons. I would say the most used lessons so far this school year are on intent versus impact. So maybe you didn't intend for that to really hurt somebody or for what you said to be upsetting. But if it is, then we need to think about how we move forward. We also are having weekly attendance team meetings. One week we review the data. One of the things we know is that if students aren't here then we can't teach them. So we look at the amount of school missed and plan proactive steps and then next week we pull together different members of the attendance team. It's more of a supportive meeting. How are we going to reach out to that family? Are we going to use our home school coordinator and have him reach out? Are we going to work with other resources here within our school to get those students to attend? More frequently attendance has been a real challenge as we return from the pandemic and there are some really notable successes but there are also students who we don't see as often as we'd like to. So that's an ongoing concern. I think that's our last slide. What about, what about, we mentioned that back at a time period, yeah. I do want to mention, I forgot to thank Bob and watch for all the work they did on that gymnasium. It was just a tremendous amount of hours and effort that they put into that. Yeah, I think you just joined, you didn't have a problem. Yeah, what's the point there? All right, so any questions for us? I have a question. In terms of, because you're collecting data around the academics, I'm wondering, are you looking as we look at engagement and we look at attendance and wanting to engage kids in the school, are you tracking like how many kids are involved in theater stuff, how many kids are doing sports teams and just kind of, and checking, because I know sometimes it's the same kids doing everything to sort of look, are we seeing like the whole community of students getting involved and engaging? I think that having the after school bus or the late bus has increased that cross section of the student population that we're seeing after school. Our athletics and activities director, Nick Bent, one of his goals is eventually to be at 80% or better of students involved in co-curricular activities or after school activities. I believe the most recent number showed a 10% increase. We've been upward, we've been growing in our after school programming or our programming that connects our students to school outside of the school day since the end of the pandemic. I don't know if you've noticed on this media center board, but we have a manga and anime after school club. A couple of weeks ago, they made mochi, they're gonna make mooncakes, they're reading together. We have theater, we have a variety of clubs that meet after school, a cooking club. So we work really hard to help students who are inspired to develop a club or have a little friend group that they want to develop a club to connect them with an adult and make sure that we can make that club happen because we know that the more positive connections are with school, the more successful a student is as a student. Yes, a couple of questions. The student engagement survey, that's so great. I just have a couple of questions about it. Obviously it's not anonymous because you know which kids are saying they don't have an adult. So what percentage of response are you getting? Right now, we are up around 80%. Literally after school today, after things quieted down, I went through and we noted who has responded, who hasn't yet, who's at the tech center. So we cross-referenced the survey with our full student roster and so we'll start really trying to make that 100% because we can't say that all of our students have an adult in the school if we don't get the data from all of our students. So we're working on making that something that's universal. My only other question is that you have so many teams and so many team meetings. Do you, that happens during the school day? Yes. All of those? How do you do, that's a lot. So Cara Merrill is a scheduling guru. I don't understand how her mind works but I'm grateful that it does function the way that it does. So once our schedule is built, Cara looks for how to make sure there's common planning time in the day for staff members on a grade team and she identifies where that spot is and that's where the team meeting happens. I think it's the breakfast burritos that she gets by the time. I know, I've been there. It's gotta be. Yes. About the after school programming. Are there enough adults to help with that? Like who are the adults that help with the clubs? So there's different programming. So we have, yes, so far they're all staffed. I would love to be able to offer more but we do have teachers who tutor after school and so that's really targeted in their content area. We're starting the homework club which will be Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays and that's more sort of general support and a place where students can either be scheduled if teachers see a need or they can drop in. So maybe you have basketball practice at 5.30 but you're gonna be here from 2.30 until 5.30 waiting. You can have a snack and be with a trusted adult who's been vetted by our school system to get your homework done and just have a level of support and redirection around that work. So we do struggle a little bit to find people who want to extend their day but we've been able to. But we've been able to so. What about your summer programming? Our summer programming we want to do more of it. We only had probably at the middle high school level 15 or 20, not a ton. It was 22, 22, okay. So not a lot but we would like to increase the level of summer programming and increase access. So summer programming is like making up classes that you maybe didn't do so well in or is it like summer camp for two? It's a combination. So this year Deb Larry ran a journalism program. So there were some students who needed to spend more time writing and reading and that provided an opportunity for them but it also provided an opportunity for students who wanted to continue to engage with school. Summer vacation doesn't look the same for all kids and sometimes they need a place to be with a trusted adult. We feed them, we care a lot about them so. We'd like to make more intensive summer programming where it really could be remediation, skill development, some of those things but also extension because there's a lot of learning lost over the summer. And we know some kids go home and read books all summer and then they come back to school and they've got a stronger reading level than they had when they left. And some leave school and they don't read a thing all summer, they just hang out. And so you know we work with everybody. And then my final thing, I know I was a little bit critical of the student-led conferences the other day and I do think the value that you spoke to about the student owning their experience and being proud of this and struggling with that and presenting it is a good process and it is a good thing for, it's good. I think what I was trying to say is that I wish there was also a place where you could talk to each teacher about how your student's doing and sort of hear it presented either with your student or without just so you got a feel for how they're doing in math, science, social studies, English, like all of the things instead of just the student presenting it. Something for us to work on. I'm sure that you're not alone in that desire. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Anybody else? Yeah, on the attendance, what is the current policy that you guys are holding? I mean, we just talked, I guess the RTCC just transitioned and cut from 20 absences to 10 and put together an engagement plan with parents and folks. I think what's really hard is that we have students who really grapple with anxiety, grapple with a number of my mental health challenges. The issues related to attendance can be from physical illness to worry about a parent and being or a younger sibling. It's just every single story is unique, it seems like. So at seven absences, we send a letter. At 10, we send another letter. Then we send another letter at 15. And all the while at each of these steps, we're also communicating with the family beyond just mailing a form letter and trying to figure out how we get the student to engage in school a little bit more. The current fill-in state's attorney for Orange County. The rule has always been that we file a truancy after David at 20 days absent. And he's really saying when attendance becomes problematic, he'd like to hear about it. And that's not so that we're holding a student accountable in a punitive way. It's because there are additional resources through the Orange County Restorative Justice Network, through, you know, DCF has a bad name, but they have additional resources too. And so it's good to think about how we can wrap around a student and try to get them to engage with school more. So is 20 the threshold for not passing? 20 is technically the threshold for not passing, but if we can get them to re-engage in school and they're meeting proficiency, then they can still pass. But we need to see them. We need to see the work that they're doing, and we need to get them fully re-engaged.  I'm wondering if you can sort of changing your policy on that because it seems like seven assences and just a letter, it seems like it's a bit lenient without actual direct conversation with the parent or guardian. Yeah, so we do have direct conversations with the parent and guardian. The letter goes home because that's an expectation, but we also are in good communication with the family. And we often know what the circumstances are and so we can talk about that. We think about who is the best fit to reach out to the family in some circumstances. It's Kara, our director of student services in some circumstances, it's Colin Andresic. It depends on who we know has a trusting relationship with the family. In some situations it's the advisor. We just know that those twice a year meetings and also follow up in between is something that has meant a lot to the family. And so we discuss who's the best person to try to take the first shot at getting them back in. So I'm trying to describe in really general terms a really personalized process. So my last question, as you've heard, we just heard from the elementary school, a lot of staff just feeling overwhelmed and a lot of very unruly behavior. It's hard to deal with. Middle school and high school staff facing similar challenges or is it a little less volatile at this level? So at the end of last school year, we had a leadership team meeting and we really talked about behavior because last year we saw a lot of volatile behaviors. And the metaphor that I like to use because I taught English for a long time is if those of you who took PE in a public school remember when they would get the parachute out, I don't know if any of you remember that. So when you play with the parachute, if anybody drops their piece of the parachute, it's not any fun anymore. And so we've really talked a lot about collective care and how we care for each other through holding students accountable. Because what gets really hard is if one person drops their section of parachute, kids do what works for them and they know where they can sort of have more flexibility. And so this year, I think we're doing better, although our discipline data, because we pull the data and put it in a spreadsheet monthly and we have had a lot more pink slips at the beginning of the school year, just documentation of behavior. But the reason for that is because we want to be having conversations with students talking about how we need to reset behavior, talking about how we need to know where the boundaries are and when you cross the line, we need to be in communication with family and communication with the student and supporting teachers in holding that line, holding up their piece of the parachute. It's been really challenging, but we're starting to see the number of sort of trivial things drop off. And I'm saying trivial, I don't really mean trivial, but Katie Vincent Roller reported last week because Jason and I have really focused on being in the hallway and making sure students have passes and that they're going to a specific place and they're not just hanging out in the hallway. So that can be intimidating for younger kids if there's a group of older kids sort of roaming the halls and also they're not in the classroom learning if they're just roaming the halls. So Katie Vincent Roller came to me at the end of the day and she said, the cutest moment of my day happened when an eighth grader came scurrying in the classroom and closed the door and she said, what was happening? And she was like, his flight's coming down the hallway and I don't have a pass. So it was just a very innocent moment but they knew that I would ask them, do you have a pass? So we're working really hard to hold students accountable and we have had a lot of parent meetings because we're also trying to really partner with families. We know that's what's best for kids. So how can we work with a family, be in good communication and support their student and making good choices here at school? And Ms. Floyd brought behavior matrix this year to the first leadership meeting and what we asked is that teachers make that first phone call home. Like I said, oh, yes, this is a little level but I'm just calling home to let you know that's what we saw today. It's not something we would expect. So rather than wait until we have this big culminating, oh, your kid has four disciplinary referrals based on this one behavior, introduce the parents right away to what we're seeing and hopefully bring them into that conversation so we don't get to four or five, six DRs, disciplinary referrals, like let's have this conversation with the parent right away about what we're seeing and what we expect so they can then have that conversation at home with their child as well. So we're working in partnership with them. I think that's helpful and just engaging and having those communications as frequently as possible. Better to have a low level one than have this high level, oh, you know, why are you calling me? Because my kid's not on the attention because they have all these things. Why didn't anyone let me know? We're asking teachers to do that and they're SAL coordinator. Then once it reaches the next level then he'll make the phone call and then we will. So we have a stepped process. And we've been working really hard in terms of reading about how we combat burnout and how we support people and care for people. And so we've been working hard to cultivate adult community and when we have meetings bring as much positivity and joy into those meetings as we can. So it's hard work. We have students with a lot of need and a lot that they're working on and we're still into it. So, great. Thank you both very much. This is personally, and I think I speak for some of you that it's just really nice to have a conversation. We really appreciate the opportunity to have a conversation. And the work that goes into a presentation and you've been just putting it on the screen is enough but then having you guys here to answer our questions and just engage with us is really cool. Any time, it's fun to talk about for me anyway. Wayne said eight to 12 minutes and I was like, I'm bored of my friends by talking about school. Thank you so much. Thank you, thank you. Love the thriller video too. Oh my gosh, Lauren Clayhouse and those kids are amazing. That was awesome, that was totally awesome. There's a display in the hallway for how to make your own zombie clothes if you need that. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you and thank you for suggesting that we move that up. I'm gonna try to fly through what we can like I'm gonna try to start going like this. So, let's back up to the annual report to voters. I think we need to figure out what we wanna do to start getting it together. It is somewhat linked with the draft letter that the ownership linkage committee put together. I mean, it's very, very draft. It's a first draft, it's in your packets. We kind of, the minutes are in there too, just saying we discussed it, but we got together, we kind of bled out everything we thought we might wanna put into the letter. Obviously that won't be in the annual report but I think the annual report can kind of be everything we were trying to put into all of these letters that we wanna then get out to the community. This isn't going fast yet, people, help. Well, I guess the first question is, are people interested in engaging someone to help us put together what will be in the annual report to voters? Someone outside of this group of people. Well, you've hardly written that ourselves. No. Ben has helped us. Last time, Ian, Anne, and Ben. Chelsea and I met with Ben. Yeah, two years we've been doing it, right? Yeah, and we just sort of highlighted the things we wanted him to, and then he put the letter together. He wrote the letter, it was like, wow. So it's sort of like having an AI, right? You know, a piece and it was really great. We tweaked a few things and then we brought it to the board to approve. Yes, so I guess my question would be are we interested in that? It does have budgetary impact because he's now contracted rather than being on staff, so that is something we have to take into consideration, but we can certainly take a vote. We're interested in doing it that way and then if you wanna go for the trifecta third year of working with him. I am happy to do that. If we're contracting with him, I don't wanna have to write the letter myself. Do you wanna make a motion? So I will, yeah, enter in a motion to engage, right? Yeah, he reached out, he was emailing or something. He did, yeah. Yeah, yeah. We'll review this. Don't forget to give us the stuff she just gave us. Thank you. So I second that motion. Who made the motion? Oh, I thought you, oh, I'm making, I thought that was your informal motion. I make a motion to engage Ben, do you want me to last name you? Meryl. Meryl. And Anne Kaplan and Chelsea Sprague to make a letter that goes out for the annual budget. Annual report, reporters. Nice long motion. Do I have a second? Second. Great, thank you, Katya seconds. Thank you. Yeah. All those in favor? I say I am, raise your hands. Thank you, those opposed? Abstentions. Awesome. Ben did reach out to, I think the three of us, but I'll write him back and say that you guys will be contacting him, yeah? Anne, is there an E on the end of your name? Cause I do have different evidence. Great. Complaint procedure, there were last minute, so in the packet is the brochure of the complaint procedure and then there were some last minute flurries of, we should be looking at something else. But we do need to adopt one officially. So. I can just remind the board, we worked on it last fall and then the board had, before we wanted to officially have it in our board binder, cause it's in your binder, I met with Sean at PHRO's office to just go over it and make sure everything was straight and we made a couple little things and then, and then we printed it and put it in the binder, but we forgot to officially adopt it. So. If that's the one we're adopting, then this brochure needs to be changed. Yeah, the brochure needs to be changed because step 10 is where I think we ran into something, the board will make a decision to resolve the complaint. We wanted that fleshed out more in terms of what the decision is that we would be making about, was the superintendent's decision reasonable rather than agreeing with one party or the other. Right. So, in terms of adopting one, it should be the one that is in our binder, it's a separate printed thank you pile board procedure for hearing complaints. And again, I think the thing that we most concentrated on last year in amending was this step seven. Yeah, we just wanted to clarify it to make sure that people understood more clearly what the process was so that, because they were sort of thinking they were gonna get to rehash all the facts of the, and so that's why we went through it to just sort of make sure the steps were clear and people understood what we would be doing in that process. And for ourselves just to remember that if we are, you know, in some things we need to sort of remind the administration not to share too much with us because if it is a controversial thing and we're gonna then need to hear a complaint, we wanna make sure that we're not having, or getting a colored view of things. So, while this wasn't in the packet that went out originally this should be familiar to everyone and new members could spend in your finders. So, I think we can go ahead and move to adopt this although it wasn't what went out several days ago unless anyone has more edits they want to make or questions or concerns. Yes. I, so I'm literally in the conversation we're talking about the complaint procedure. Correct. Yep. I think it's fine, I'll do. Great. So then the next step would be getting rid of all the printed brochures that look like this and making them look more like, well not format-wise but to read this way. And all of the schools, so request the virgin burn. Yeah. Exactly. And then maybe we want, we wanna create a new brochure. I don't know, in the past I don't know who did these score the districts? We have a graphic first. Do we have a graphic first? We don't have a graphic first. Visual work, kind of TCC. A group that would want to do. No, it's not, now it's digital media and they do mostly video. So this is not, it's on the website. No, it needs to be posted on the website too. Because the one on the website right now is littered with typos. Yeah. So we need to have that up. Let's get that down right away. What is that Sam? This is littered with typos? No, not the one that's on the current website. Thank you. Which, which number? Is that the 27? The 27? If this doesn't list the number, so he will know. But it's the complaint procedure. Gotcha. All right, we'll get that updated, thank you. Yeah, I think probably going through all of them on the website, there's a couple with some typos, either a word missing or a misspelling or a letter backwards, whatever. But we should just go through all of them and just make sure that they're as clean as can be. Yeah. So do we need to move? Yes, I will enter in a motion to adopt. Well, I hacked the last one, so I don't know. Well, I'll move to, versus adopting it, so I'll just move to adopt the Orange Southwest School District Board procedure for hearing complaints. I second. Moved by Megan, seconded by Sarah. All those in favor, please? Say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? And abstentions. Awesome, passes unanimously. Let's see if we can do that as well with the board rules of procedure. And did such a great job last year in getting this to legal counsel and that's actually where it came up about emails coming with public comment and us being able to bring them to the meeting. But we never actually officially adopted them as a whole kitten taboo. So did anyone see anything that they have questions about? Concerns about all these rules of procedure? They think it's missing, and if not, we can have a new date on the bottom if we adopt them rather than 2020. Yes, no? So wait, I'm just, why does it say that it was adopted in October 2022? That's what I was wondering, too. Just this page, you'll notice has the email communications on it. That's what we went to legal counsel about October of 2022, but the entire thing itself was not adopted. That's what I mean, kitten caboodle. We didn't, as rules of procedure of this board, the entire, okay. We didn't adopt the whole schmabang. Then I use a technical term. Okay, so I'll move to adopt the entire kitten caboodle. Perfect. Of the OSSD board rules of procedure. Those also should go on the website. I'll second that motion. Seconded by Sam, moved by Megan. All those in favor? Aye. Do I have a concern? I just wanted to share that in E number one, you have no flexibility to move your meeting at all according to your own policy. So if you're, if there's no flexibility at all, it's like it will be on this day at this time. And I just thought you might want to consider providing yourself with some flexibility, but other than that, no other.  Like, we'd have to change this. Well, the option of remote is. Rules of procedure. If we decide we're not gonna meet on the second Wednesday of every month, we're gonna meet on the third Thursday or something like that. We have to go and re-adopt this too. Exactly. And that usually would have, we changed from Monday to Wednesdays or whatever it was in March. That's, yeah. Right. It's usually with the re-organizing. So we can just change it at the re-organizing. But if we change it at the re-organizing, we also still have to go back to this procedure and edit this. Re-adopt. Re-adopt. But according to the VSBA, it seems like an extra step. Well, the VSBA wants you to re-look at this and just re-familiarize yourself because you'll have new board members, you'll be. So this should be reviewed anyway. So this should be reviewed annually anyway. So it's not final. That would be fine. Right. So we just review it in March when the re-organization. Sure, that gets put on the annual agenda. Yeah. Yeah, we should add that. Board rules and procedure are added to the annual agenda for you in March. We'll be adopting that tonight. But I'm not a person on that committee. So March, so this is good until March. So an emotion has been made by Megan to adopt. Sam. Do I have a second? Did you second? Or was that the last one? That was this one. Oh, seconded by Sam. Right, because we got to the voting and then there was talking. So again, may I have a show of those in favor? Please. Aye. Opposed? Abstentions. Fabulous. Oh, and here we are at the annual agenda. So we've just named something that needs to be added. Are there other things people spotted that need to be amended, updated? And if not, I think we can vote to accept it with one more amendment. Yeah, but if there are others, I want to take it personal. The annual agenda? Yes, and that went out as well in very tiny font. So the evaluation committee, when we met the last time we decided we were going to look at the goals three times a year, just to see how the progress is going in the fall and in the winter and then in the spring. So I don't know if we need to add that to the annual agenda. I'm thinking we should, so we don't lose it. To review the eval goals. Yeah. Okay. So I would say the first meeting would be, I don't know, what do you guys think? The survey goes out, it was false. And so we're going to review the goals for this year after June, like after the school year, right? So we'll do that in July. So we'll review them and hopefully have them set by September meeting. So I would say maybe November, February or November, March and May. They have a schedule set for when they do the track progress and the start of 360, which is where the data would come from. I can get the feedback of when that is because it fits in its specific places in the instruction that they specifically want to look at. I can pull that easy enough and get it to you. That's all right. Get the dates when those are looked at. Yeah, there's a window that they do them. Okay, so then those would coincide with our fall, our spring, our, okay. And we can add those in. So it actually sounds like maybe we should go through one more round and we'll make a couple more edits to the annual agenda.  Sounds great. Awesome. Okay. It's really close to 24. Yes, we'll have the annual agenda done at the end of the annual. Okay, so other subcommittee updates, eBell committee about the summary of, take this one and it'll pass half this way and half this way at the end of the meeting, if you could just hand them back to me, according to the BSEA, that's the best way to maintain confidentiality. And then we met a couple times to go over finalizing the goals. The first meeting we had was with Sandra from the VSBA and basically we came up with the goals that are written in here. So like on page two, you'll see blue, like those are the goals going forward. There was like nine of them. So from that list, I compiled the list and we as a group decided that the two goals and the two points of evaluation to focus on for this next year would be foundational knowledge and monitoring and improved community relations. And so I took Lane's evaluations he did of Patty Sprague who's a principal at Brookfield, is that true? Rantry. Rantry. And basically applied it to his evaluation and tried to make it instead of being just these ideas of goals which is what I found the VSBA process left us with, having ones that were more concrete. Like this is what the test scores are today. This is what they are at the end of the year. This is how much they've improved or how much they haven't improved. And so I asked, you know, is the goal specific, measurable, realistic, results focused like every goal ever in this world should be, right? So if you look on page two of this paper, goal number one is improved foundational knowledge for the ends and reading, writing. Page two of what? I'm sorry. Of the, this? Oh, have I not handed it out yet? No. No. One, two, three, four. I was looking at the first hand out. Yeah, that is. You'll be very confused about that. Thank you. So I, you know, I took word for word kind of the evaluation process that Lane went through with his administrator and just said, how can I apply this to, you know, what we're looking for or an evaluation going forward? So I think it's important to note that some of these goals, as long as progress is being made, may take longer than one year. And I wrote that in on the front page. And I thought that was kind of a reasonable thing to add in because not everything can be fixed in a year, right? So what I would like to look at, and we don't have this information yet, Lane was going to pull it together. We just met like Monday. So it was kind of last minute with everything else going on to get the test scores compared or for 2022, 23 to fill them in for the ELA math and science. And so then at the end of the year, we can look and see what the scores are based from the AOE, right? Yeah, you're going to see them tonight. Oh, perfect. At least not here. And then I can have like a solid document. But then things like social studies, life skills and the arts, there's not solid test score results. So what we're going to use for information is how many students have completed the required national standards. And you have that data. So the social studies standards. Yeah, when they created the standards based report cards, the teachers track that as they go. So they'll be able to know if the students are on track to actually meet which required of them to pass those courses or not. Yeah, and that's for social studies. And then life skills and the arts, is there a similar standard? The arts, yes. They actually have been working on kind of creating an updated version of it. The life skills, the standard could be as basic as, you know, because we want all students to have this foundational knowledge. You know, all students before they graduate will successfully complete the life skills course as a requirement of graduation. And that's three different semesters or three classes? So right now without budget intervention, it is the on your own course that is in place now. We had talked about a while back the idea that there really should be three separate semesters at least, one that really is tailored towards the younger students at the middle school, one that's tailored for like ninth grade, and then one that's tailored for 11th and 12th because their life skill needs are different in terms of what they're encountering at those stages in their lives. And so those would require budgetary action or us, you know, agreeing to shift resources to be able to provide the extra staff for those two. But that would be the ideal end goal as to how those three. And some of that information I'll come from, Lisa and the high school implementing the strategic plan that they did with, what's the name? Yeah. Winton. Winton. Winston. Winston. Winston. Winston. It was Winton, it was Winton. So that's where we're at for goal number one. And then, so each of these lists, what the outcomes are that we're trying to achieve and what data will be collected. So I don't know if anyone has any questions about that. Next page, action steps that we came up with as a group. And then for goal number two, improved community relations with less division we thought was a big, a big one to focus on for this next year. So that goal is specific. Trying to develop strategies to promote positive community engagement by a variety of members from the administrative leadership team in our blue and the blue written goals on the summary of the survey. Delegating tasks is one way for Lane to like kind of spread out how to try to get a more positive relationship with the community throughout the administrators. So they're out there promoting that. Another item on the list was identifying our human resources situation and our public relations situation. And looking at that and seeing if hiring that human resources person might be beneficial or contracting with public relations, a public relations person or firm, I guess every other high school in the state does that. So it might be worthwhile. I think some of that work has already started. And then what the positive outcomes were that we decided we wanted to have and we want positive feedback about school activities and the direction of the curriculum from stakeholders. So that's everybody out in the community. Less staff turnover and more student retention and which data would be collected surveys about how healthy human resources and public relations are in the OSSD. And the action steps would be to actually put the survey out whether that would be contracted with an outside entity like a public relations firm or I don't know who else. I don't think the BSBA does such a thing. Maybe they do, but we could look into other options if the public relations thing is really expensive. So having objective and perceptive staff surveys from all of the staff and then also objective and subjective school community surveys put out and we want all of these to be completed by June 1st of 2024. Is that doable? June 1st, 2024. Should be. I got the contract for RPR companies sitting right in my email. And so then that would give us good information for reviewing this because it's not actually an evaluation. We're looking at it, setting goals now. We're looking at last year setting goals now. So it will be a real evaluation in July. Sorry, that's confusing. Does anyone have any question? I just want to acknowledge this is a lot of work. It is a ton of work. It is a ton of work. Yeah, this together. She did a really good job. Okay, it's a lot of work. And I think that anything that is going to change in this district is a lot of work and it needs people who are willing to do the work and put the time in because it takes a lot of time. But I'm happy that we came up with it and I was good to work with our group and to come up with this. And I feel like it's a good document going forward. So what is the next step? I mean... So the next step, so I emailed the group in Lane specifically asking for the test scores for the foundational knowledge, which he said he's going to present tonight. And then to put those numbers in here and then we're going to meet, I mean, it's already November, so we'll meet in probably in February and go over this and see where we're at whenever the foundation, what is that called? What's the foundation knowledge or the... No, the where you get your data from. The assessment. So we've got Track My Progress for the lower grades and Star 360 for the upper. So after you figure out when you get the information from Track My Progress, we'll probably meet in February and then again at the end of the year, like June. Just as the committee or now this starts coming to the full... Well, I was thinking just the committee because it is like its own good thing. But if anybody would like to be a part of it and I think we would welcome more people who want to have these regular meetings and track this information. Well, if it does go to the committee, then you would come and report to the larger board, right? So yeah, but that makes sense that it would... Right, and so it would be on the annual agenda for after we have these meetings and we gather this data so we can report back about where it's at three times a year. So one more to add to the annual agenda. Cool. Yeah. That sounds great. Does anyone have any questions for Chelsea or other members? And if you take it home and you want to read it over and you do come up with questions, I think we're happy to answer them, take them back to our meeting. If something's not making sense or looks like it and it might not be useful information. I would just add we're still gonna do what we've been doing. So we're still gonna get an ends report on each one of our policies because they are basically sort of how we monitor and make sure that things are in place that we need to have in place in order for the district to run well. But we've pulled these two goals out in particular but we're still gonna have our ends report where we look at everything, not just foundational knowledge. We're gonna look at a full ends report. So that's- Right, which is why there's not specific like approved community relations. You could put the policies under their treatment of staff, treatment of staff, treatment of students, whatever. Like you could put them, and then it just becomes so cumbersome. It's like we are already looking at that in the policies. So we might as well switch over and talk about it a little bit differently, I don't know. So it's not to replace, I think I can restate what you're saying. It's not to replace anything, it's in addition to. Recognize that those goals, like if it's a goal on math or the way that we're writing the goals on science and ELA, that would replace potentially the interpretation in the intercorp, right? It would be replaced with what the goals are from here. Does that make sense? Because isn't that the purpose of the interpretation is to say how we've met that standard or how we've met that end? And that we're defining how we're meeting those goals around those areas in this report. It seems like that would be the piece that goes into it. Yeah, well you're working with us to create the goals, which would be your interpretation for where you're going in the piece. Yeah, so it's not actually generating too much more work. It's basically making sure that what we agree to here becomes the interpretation and the standard. Right, right, okay, that makes sense. And we're in dialogue about it. We're not just sort of. Yeah, just a half a week, so I'm not sure. So I don't know if everybody wants to keep, I mean it's not a great time to read through this right now, but if everybody wants to keep these or if you want to just get them back to me, I'm happy to collect them. Or if you want to guide people and see what the results of the survey were. I know I did email it to everybody before I knew that I wasn't supposed to, but there's a little bit, the goals are a little bit different because we had met with the BSVA after I had sent that out and come up with more specific sort of goals. Why have you not, um, send that out to the board? Um, I guess, because in here, it lists some of the responses that were written. This is personnel. It's personnel. Yeah, yeah, it's like, the responses that people wrote in the summary of it, and, right, it's kind of personal. It wouldn't be so freedom of information as to consider it. Would it be such a boring event then? I don't think a person from the general public can come and look at somebody's personnel file. No, but that's why we're in a logisterry amongst the board because our emails are considered public or heard. Right, right. And just to keep it private. Yeah. Because it really belongs in the personnel file. So whatever anyone wants to. But that's the report and the evaluation committee. Thank you. Thank you. So, this one, we should all be careful to. Yeah. Hand back to you. The other we can keep. Yeah, okay. Yeah, great. So, let's just do that one more. Oh, wait, here's one more. Thank you. Next up, the ends committee. Ladies. I don't have anything to update you with. Great. I mean, I do, but I'm not prepared. Okay. Next time. Okay. Facilities committee, which is now two members strong. We have a quorum. We'll give you something next time. In case everybody didn't see the email, Sarah is now a member of the facilities subcommittee. Do we have to vote? We don't have to vote you on, do we? We do need to vote. Yeah, that should. Right. So moved. Okay. A second. Great. So moved by Katya, seconded by Chelsea. All those in favor of Sarah joining the facilities subcommittee? Aye. Visually and audibly. Thank you. Opposed? Does anyone else want to join the ends committee? Oh, we're adding people to committee. Is it just you? No, it's me and Hannah and Megan. Me too. No, Anne. We're very exclusive. Anne, you want to join that one? Yeah, I made her move in. So that also, yes. So Sarah has moved that Anne is now a member and Sam has seconded your role tonight. Clearly. All those in favor? Anne joining the ends committee? Aye. Audibly and visually. Please thank you. Opposed? Extension. Great. Thank you, Anne. Uh, but the facilities subcommittee. Can I just jump on? Because I don't think we touched on this in the last time, losing time here. The letter that we drafted, if people can read that through and send us back some feedback so that we can get that out, I think, because we wanted to get that out by December? Yes. So it's in here, second page. So it's a very rough draft. It's fine. Do we also, so we're going to let you know also. It seems better than very rough. Yeah. Oh. See, see, see, good to go. So if there's any feedback on that letter, just let us know. And we can edit it and then present it in December for approval to female to. To be blasted out like the last one, yeah. And that committee is Katya, myself, and Megan, right? So email any one of us with edits. And we'll make sure they'll put in there. Great. Thank you, Katya, for bringing us back in. Let's see. So, Lane, you had suggested that we put this once we're in the facilities committee topic about if we want to really kind of commit to reconstruction being on the table, right? Yeah, I think if it makes sense how serious the board is. And one of the rationales is it'll change the calculus that we use into determining projects, right? If I've got a $300,000 project that we need to do that isn't quite a matter of safety at this point in time. You know, if the board says, yeah, you know what, given budgetary constraints and everything else like that, we're not really that interested in rebuilding, then I would move forward with trying to get that work done with the funds that we have. But if the board came and said, hey, we don't know if we'll be able to pull it up. We're really serious about examining, you know, rebuilding this building that I might hold off on a project like that. Because I wouldn't want to put $300,000 into a building that's just going to potentially be torn down, you know, two years in the future, you know, if it could be deferred. So I think part of the discussion, at least for me and especially for Bob and Wes, who I think are actually listening in, is just so that we can get a better of idea of what we should be working on and things that we might be able to defer or not, if that makes sense. What's your timeline on that? Which piece? When do you need to know about how serious we are about building versus? I would say sooner than better, you've got an old building that needs lots. One of the big things that we had talked about way in the past that I think is not at a safety issue yet, but it is getting there is our science labs in high school. And that's a major reconstruction of basically an entire way. So I think to move forward, I think we owe it to the taxpayers to get a number. So I think in order to move forward, we would need to hire someone to draw up plans on what we were looking at, right? So we could kind of get some numbers going on to even see if this is something that community would be interested in doing. And if it's not something they're interested in doing, then we need to look at other options. Exactly. So I think as a board, we should get the ball rolling on hiring someone to. I can have that on your plate next board meeting, because we've already been working with somebody to try to outline the study. OK, that would be great. Yeah, I mean, if anyone else wants to work with that or anything. Oh, yeah, I feel like we've talked about it. Yeah, we earmarked some funds to begin the process a little bit. But I think to put real numbers to paper, we have to go to another step. It's expensive. Yes. It's, you know, you're looking probably 150,000 to have that study done. With that coming out of our reserve. Yeah. And potentially just a rough ballpark estimate of rebuilding this place. Talk about that, too. 100 million to 150. We need to start somewhere, though. And unfortunately, I think that expense is going to need to happen in order to. People like to see a plan in place. But it sounds like there's at least interest to make sure that we're willing potentially to spend a fair chunk of money to get that study done so that people have some info. Or we can talk about this. Yeah, this is why we created this committee. I mean, if I may propose that this committee, which is now so robust with two people, then you guys have the opportunity to meet with Bob and Wes and a more concrete conversation. Because I think that in terms of being interested in knowing really what it would take, we're already beyond that. OK. Right? Yeah, we want to know. That's why we have this committee. So we will report the study and back to you at a later date the next meeting. Cool. Bob, are you on board with meeting with Sam and I and Wes and Bob? Yes, I had to get my microphone back on. I'm sorry, take me a moment. Would you ask that question again? I want to make sure I understood it. We would like to have a meeting to discuss future plans for hiring an engineer. Yeah, Wes and I both would be very much receptive to that participation. We have that money, as Mr. Milliken already said, or we have that number, as Mr. Milliken already said. We are prepared to meet tomorrow on this. But I'm telling you right now that we need to press a trigger. If we want the study, let's do it. If not, tell us so we can drive forward on another project, just like Mr. Milliken just tried to communicate. OK. Yeah, we're going to go forward. I'm not sure if we can meet tomorrow, but Sam and I will. I understand. But I'm just pushing you because I want an answer. We'll call you, Bob. Yeah, I hear you. I hear you. Thank you, Bob. Thank you, Bob and Wes. Yeah, I've been on here all this time just to listen for this topic to come up. I'm going to break off, and I think Wes will too. We'll see you guys tomorrow, OK? All right, so thank you. Have a good night. Yep, good night. Awesome. All right. Just in terms of training, there is a, I'm moving on here. There's a budget webinar coming up about Act 127. When we get to the part where we're talking about the conference that Sam and Heather, Lane, and I attended, Sam and I actually attended the budget breakout workshop twice. Scared you, didn't it? Just to understand. It was just about understanding it. But if I could please give the assignment to everyone to register if you are able to. No, register whether you can attend at noon or not, because once you're registered, you will get the 14th. November 14th. The link, thank you. At noon, I believe. And that's it. And do the same thing next Tuesday. And I'm willing to bet we will still have questions after that, and I almost think we should engage Chelsea at BSBA to help us fully understand implications, because there are some timeline things that make it really complicated. When we go to pass the budget, we're not going to really know what the tax implications are for taxpayers. So that's going to be a really fun PR campaign for the board to have to do to try to get the community on board with whatever budget we put together. So in my experience, just talking to her quickly, she's not only I appreciated how she explained over and over and over again what 127 does and means, but also talked about how we might present the unknown. But so please let's start with just go on to the BSBA website, register for the November 14th so that we can talk about it. Some people will have a better grasp on it than others. And it's a live webinar. So we can ask questions or something like that. But please register. Easy breezy. I already did. Oh, wait. It's a live thing we're interacting. So it's not just like we can watch it whenever we want. You will be able to watch it after it happens. But yes, it's a live webinar on the 14th at noon that you register for. They always record from. So I could watch it after. Yeah, but that's why you definitely want to register. So you'll only give you the available recording if you register. Is that correct? Well, you'll get it. I mean, they'll put it in their webinar archives eventually. But to get it kind of right after the webinar. Yeah, right. OK, we're moving on to EL reports, 2.1 and 2.2. This is a second read. Let's start with 2.1 treatment of students, parents, guardians, and community. Lane, you want to talk more about it then? Yeah, it's pretty self-explanatory. But if there's questions, I'm happy to. Hey, take me a minute to orient myself to the provision. Yeah, it's on the back. That's a 2.1. Does anyone have points of discussion? So 2.2, I'm going to highly recommend to the board that this is held in deferrence given the discussion and this that was brought up tonight. And as my right as an employee within the district, I am going to ask the board to get an independent person to come in and investigate every statement that was made in here, because there were other people at the meeting. I am going to ask the board to also investigate the videos and also investigate the reports that were written that describe what was seen in the videos for veracity. I am in a position of public trust. That trust has been challenged, which folks have a right to do. And so the public also has a right to know if that challenge was faithful or not. This was the document that either Haley and or Mike had put together. I did not distribute it to the board. That's my answer that you get. And I will put the request in writing. OK, great. Thank you. You're welcome. So then Chelsea. I have a question about that. Who would we get to look at that outside of person? You'd need somebody trained my recommendation. And again, I don't want to have there be a conflict of interest, so I'm going to give you very limited info. I would reach out to the PH or take his advice. Yeah. And in fact, if I could get a motion to. Connect with the PH. Thank you. Yes, for Chelsea and I to connect with PH or regard. Are we going back to that? Can I just have a summary again of what we're asking, we're looking to investigate, just so the question is clear. Yeah, there's a lot in there that I think needs to be investigated. So just the document. No, the document, the videos, as well as the reports that went along with the videos. So we're investigating these things or we're having someone investigate these things. And what is the question, whether you are in compliance with the policy? I, again, so the logic here being I'm in a position of public trust. That public trust was just challenged. The public has a right to know whether I did violate public trust or whether I did not. What is the standard for public trust, though? What's that? What's the standard for public trust? I guess, like, I just, I did not, I did not opt. I'm being told that I did not operate probably within probably half a dozen of the board's policies based upon what's written here, including EL 2.2, which we're considering right now. So what Lane is suggesting is that we do not, we defer voting to accept EL 2.2 this evening, until we have a chance to. EL 2.2 is retrospective, correct? Like, we're looking, we're looking back at the last school year, correct? So his interpretation would not be invalid based on this new information. Okay, so I don't know that we do need to defer voting on what is retrospective. But this incident would be included in the following year's interpretation, right? That is true. And we can choose to monitor any policy at any time. So given circumstances, yeah, and we can also choose not to monitor this one right now. Except that we have a schedule that says we will do it on this day. Well, we did do the first read when we said we would. So if we want to defer, yeah, we could accept it. Or we accept it because it is retrospective. And then if we want to re monitor this policy, right? Ask for another, yeah. I would think that we would accept it for the past and then we would wait until the study is done and then re request to have it on the agenda again to look at it again. I agree. Does that seem like a process that would be reasonable? Just to keep the policy is on schedule. Yeah. Well, when we review them, we don't have to accept them. True. Or he might be out of compliance. Which is also saying we don't accept them. He's presenting them to us to say I'm in compliance because of these things. And we say, well, we disagree that you're in compliance, then that's also just not acceptable. We have evidence to the contrary. Right. Right. OK. So what do we want to do as a board for policy 2.2? Well, if we accept his interpretation. Right. So if actually in this instance, I would like to separate them and ask if there's a motion to accept 2.1. Wait. We also custom made a motion for you to connect to Pietro. Yes. I seconded. And then we changed the subject. So we need to go back to that. Thank you. So there's a motion on the table. Can I please allow Chelsea and I to connect with Pietro about this? About an independent investigation. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Abstentions. Great. OK. Chelsea will connect. Great. OK. So now you need a motion to accept policy. 2.1. 2.1. So I'll move. That's treatment of students, parents, guardians, and community. I second. All those in favor? Aye. Automatically and visibly. Aye. Thank you. Opposed? Abstentions. Great. Passes unanimously. I will entertain a motion to accept 2.2 if there is one. Help me. I don't know. Or we could also entertain a motion to kick the can down the road or not approve. Or you can entertain a motion to approve and then you have the days declining in. Right? Right. So still. OK. But I'm not hearing the motion. All those in favor? Aye. All those opposed? Aye. Right. So if someone wants to move to accept it, that this would be the moment. So the question, and the question is, do we agree with his interpretation? Is it a reasonable interpretation? Is there a rationale? And is there evidence? Are we comfortable with the evidence showing? Remember, this is a look back. And this is a look back. Yeah. Well, I think given the current situation, but the current situation is not addressing this interpretation because it's a look back from. So the reasons that we wouldn't accept it is if anyone feels that Lane has not either interpreted reasonably or provided enough evidence. Yes, it's still retrospective, but these would be the reasons that one may not would vote not to accept it or vote against accepting it. It's specified that this is a look back. It doesn't say it directly on this. So I'm just wondering, like, how would someone know that we're approving something that is a look back if they needed to look back or wanted to know? There's a definition of executive limitations somewhere in the policy pieces, I believe. So you're always looking at the past year. OK. Rachel's argument was a good one, the logical. Right. And it's dated the 11th. And the new information that you were presented with is dated the 23rd. I think with the confusion, I make a movement to. It was the 11th. Yeah, the 11th. Thank you. Thank you. Yes, I'm with you, but same difference. Yes. So I think with the confusion, we should relook at how it is we are reading the policy for current and the past year. So with the confusion of that, I move to table policy 2.2. And it will be on next month's meeting to review. OK. Any more on the second thought? I second that. More discussion? Yep. I think Rachel's got some discussing in her. I don't really. I just feel like it's been presented. And we either, it's been read, this is the second reading. So either we agree with what he's presented or we don't. And I will probably vote against your motion, which is fine. Because I feel like we kind of have to make a decision on what's in front of us. Because this was presented originally in the October meeting. Correct. And there were no changes made since that date. So no new information pertaining to the date for it was originally presented to us. Does that make sense? Oh, yes. I'm making sense. Also, I was not present at the October meeting. That is what you're going to do. But it was just the first reading. So we didn't vote on it. OK. So as long as you got those materials, you had a first reading. Basically from when the last time we accepted it to October 5th, when it's dated for our first read, is when we're thinking, did we receive the information in this report? Is there a way we can put, when we look at the dates on the actual paper, so we can say, OK. So if situations like this come up, we're not like. But what if something came up on October 1st? And it didn't come to the board's attention. So you wrote this on October 5th. And it doesn't come to the board's attention until December 5th. And he's like, actually, you know what? You've already accepted my interpretation for that date. So now you can't even consider whatever came before October 5th. Do you know what I mean? Well, and remember that you're accepting his interpretation of the policy. So are we feeling like what he's saying when our policy says that with respect to the treatment of paid and volunteer staff, the superintendent shall not operate without written personnel rules that clarify rules for staff, provide for effective handling of grievances, and protect against wrongful conditions. So he's saying, his interpretation is all district employees will be provided with clear job responsibilities, procedures for registering complaints, as well as access to district's human resources protocols. The district will develop procedures and protocols to address unique situations when they occur, so that occurrences are managed in a consistent and fair manner. So that's how he's interpreting this policy. He gives us a rationale. And then he says, here's your evidence. I have an up-to-date teacher contract. He's got the master agreements, which remember those all handle, that's all through the union. It's all negotiated. There's a process for that. And so this is, and the OSUD boards, conflict resolution complaint policy. So that's what he's using for evidence, as well as, does he say anything else? So that's what he's giving us for the evidence to say that he's in compliance with this interpretation. So we have to decide, do we agree with his interpretation? Is it reasonable? And is this evidence supporting that interpretation? If we don't agree with his interpretation, then we have to change our policy to be more specific. Right. That's where we've struggled with, and that's why I keep on saying, we need... That's why we do this. Yeah, and we need to sort of push for the information that we're getting so that we understand and feel comfortable with the interpretation that he's giving us, or we're changing our policies. And that's why we have the first read than giving us another month. Or at that first read, because we've had it since Kyle sent it out, for then to say, not enough for me. This is what I want to see for the second read in order to accept it. So regardless of dates, I think you're right, we can't put dates. But this all has to do with before the first read, and that first read was our opportunity to say, we need more, or we need different. We have to vote on the motion. Yes. So the motion is to push it off for a month. To, yes. So we can vote that down, or we can... Right. It's clear that we're looking at the past, and we need to go forward from that date. But there is a motion and a seconded. So all those in favor of... Tabling them. Tabling till next meeting, 2.2. All those in favor? Audibly, visibly. All right. Opposed? Thank you. Opposed? The motion... Right. Or nay, right. So the motion does not pass. I think just because we say that we accept it, if we do accept it, just because we say we accept it for the period that he interpreted for, doesn't mean that he can't be out of compliance with it now. We could ask him tomorrow to monitor again. So we could actually ask next month that we revisit this police omitted based on the timeframe. From the start of the school. I think with an investigation ongoing, I would... I mean, I'm not sure you would do that, but you're saying we don't have to wait a whole year. We could at any time ask for an EL report out of the timeframe that it would normally come up if there's concern or if there's something that we want to look at. In addition to those that are on the annual agenda that we commit to monitoring. Okay. So then now, I will... So I think that we don't have any evidence of not good treatment of staff prior to that period. There's no formal complaints. There's no any of that. So, you know, to be fair to the process and to what we're looking at, like, even if we've heard scuttle about treatment of staff because there's no solid evidence or information about it. And we just have to... We have to sort of... Do we know that's for sure? Well, I think we need to rein ourselves in here because what we are voting to accept is Lane's interpretation. Lane's evidence of that interpretation. Is that interpretation reasonable? Has he prevented... Prevented. Presented evidence of that interpretation. Is he in compliance? We are not here to vote on whether we think he treats the staff nicely. But it's not... I think we just need to rein in what we're doing with this. Chelsea, what I'm hearing from you is that you may be prepared to make a motion right now to accept this EL 2.2. And that doesn't mean that we can't do the independent investigation and it doesn't mean that we can ask for a different interpretation because we have different kinds of evidence. But I just think this is very tricky. It's very hard and this has been kind of emotionally charged meeting where at least public comment was. And I think it's important, at least for myself, this is dry what we're talking about right now, accepting this interpretation. This is not emotional. This is was he reasonable? Did he provide evidence to that? Do we accept it? And if someone doesn't, that's okay. Okay. But that's... Yeah. I won't say it three more times. Yes. Thanks for bringing it back down. So do I have a motion of any type right now pertaining to EL 2.2? I move we accept policy 2.2 as written with the... Okay. Moved by Rachel. Do I have a second? I'll second. Seconded by Ann. Supposed to offer more discussion. Is there more discussion? Okay. All those in favor of the motion on the table to accept EL 2.2 as written, please visually and audibly say I and raise your hand, please. I'm sorry. Thank you. Those opposed? Abstentions. I did not see some hands there, so... But I did see 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. So the motion does pass. I have another one. Thank you. I have a motion to... Yeah. Okay. We have a first read now of policy C9, Wellness and Comprehensive Health. Mrs. Heaven, you're up. Yeah. Great. Hi, everybody. I attended a session at the School Board Association conference that we attended that really helped to guide this. This is a required policy that will replace our existing C9. The most significant change is the inclusion of the goals for comprehensive health education, which is required by the states, but not required by the federal government. And this is a required policy by the federal government, all sections except for comprehensive health education. And so it's very similar to our existing C9. The changes that are included are really mostly about the health education, but also a little bit more strictness around healthy snack rules and regulations. There is still room in here to have celebratory food, as long as it's not charged for. But the language sort of says we'll do our best to align it with healthy choices. Other than that, it's very similar to the existing C9. That's it. Oh, you guessed. Okay. I had none. Your turn. Respond to the size. All the fun out of life. No more cupcakes. It doesn't actually say that I adopted the, I had choices that I chose the most lenient language. And so that's if you guys want to look at the one about that. It's at the end of nutrition guidelines. Roman numeral four. We had two choices of language and one was that we will prohibit any foods that do not align with the snack rules and or this one, which I selected, which is to the best of our ability. We will do our best. That celebratory foods are in line. So there's still a little room in there for a cupcake. I don't want to take it. Preferably whole weight. Does anybody have any questions for another? This is the first read. So yep. Yep. Okay. We're at budget parameters presentation. You tell me. I'll try to keep, hopefully I can keep my brain functional because some of the stuff's a little compromised. Kind of the objectives of the discussion that we're about to have is it's mostly about understanding the current financial landscape that we're dealing with. And a lot of it has to do with the act one 73, which was the results of the weighting study, right? You know, the state recognizing that certain categories of student actually require a little bit more funding to be able to get an equitable education compared to the general population. The other thing that we want to touch on a little bit is the budget impact of our contractual and mandatory obligations. There's some weird caps that have come in under the new financial laws that I'll touch on. And one of the problems that we may be encountering is that just the increase in the budget that we have to do to meet what's mandatory kind of puts us over one of them. And so we want to talk a little bit about that. So there may not be a whole heck of a lot above and beyond just, you know, paying the increases for contracts and health insurance and what not to be able to do. So a couple of parts and pieces. The data is still flowing in from the AOE and I think kind of Sam touched on it a little bit. We've got some formulas and things that we need to do to be able to calculate people's tax rates and, you know, be able to estimate what the potential impact is going to be on homeowners. And we may not have those formulas. I believe they said until July. Yet we have to somehow plan a budget without that critical information to communicate to voters. And so that's one of the biggest pieces out there. The data we get comes in sporadically. They're supposed to have it all in our hands by early to mid December under the law. They typically do not. So we might be scrambling around again just before the December board meeting when we talk about budget again and still not have everything we need to make things make sense. So Act 27, we talked a little bit about this. It adds weighting for certain categories of students. You know, some examples of that where small schools, English language learners are low income and it's recognizing the fact that certain students again may require a little bit more funding to get the same and equal educational opportunities that other students get within the district. And so they're trying to find a way to manage that. The other piece that's on the horizon here, which is going to be coming to a close actually in September coming up is that we have benefited greatly from the COVID area grant funding that has been coming in known as ASR, right? Elementary Secondary Schools Relief Fund. We benefited with the work that we did to a tune of somewhere over $7 million. Right now we have about $1.5 to $1.8 million of staff that are being funded by those grants that will dry up. And we have no real way of absorbing them into the regular budget unless it's through attrition. We have people move on. We have somebody who's in a grant position that is well suited for that position and wants it and can move into it. And so, you know, we have this issue that we're dealing with that there may be quite a few riffs. And that would be keeping the staff member employed, but it wouldn't be keeping the position that they are filling under the end. And we had a lot of switches like that last year. You know, the union came in kind of questioning, even though they saw, I showed them all the staff that had left and their rationale why and let them pick and prod with it last year.  It's like, no, they shouldn't because they didn't leave the district. They're in a grant funded positio