to order at 6.35 p.m. for its order of business public comment very no second or a bit is consent agenda I have a motion to make a motion to approve the consent agenda second discussion I need a little help on evidence of district goals in the superintendent's report do we discuss it after we approve it so you make an amendment to approve the consent agenda except for that which you want to pull out and discuss separately looking at the timeline okay then I would amend was arguing a motion I'd like to I moved to amend the motion to remove the superintendent's report from the consent agenda and then approve the rest all those in favor opposed I think we then have to vote on the underlying motion all those in favor of approving the consent agenda minus the items you really just said before there was a motion that you wanted to pull something out then the motion to just be nice that would be so efficient can we discuss it for a moment yes I just I would just love to to hear I breeze through this I will admit I may have missed the context for this the evidence of district goals being stated here I don't understand the context for it I did read it so remember someone like Barry shared the CIP yeah the district goal is the district CIP is split into those four categories okay so in each superintendent's report I'm asking principals curriculum directors but director to put the work that's happening within those four goals as you'll see the presentation one of the board's responsibilities towards EQ SMS is to hold us accountable and monitor our progress towards those so this is one place where I'm giving you evidence that yeah so as part of your regular report you will provide evidence that we're moving forward on those four goals and this is just a standing portion of this report okay it will change it will change every report but yes but it'll always be those four categories and it'll always be on the report and the other pieces report are just by programmer whatever you call those department or yeah it's more it's more information by different departments that the board would probably find interesting sure that we're doing our due diligence in certain areas so if I see something like under literacy math evidence of district goals UES RBS math and arts work that's the curriculum alignment work or the beginning of that process anyway so are you taking what's above that's above this so are you taking that and then sticking it in here not really right so that just happens to be in both sections it just happens to be in both sections okay okay all right I got it thank you so much yeah for horse or just go sideways this is sort of you you do when you do your work for the period it's actually you do a weekly report to the district to kind of district employees is that who that's to okay that does it the intended audience is not beyond that although I'm sure it's fine if it goes there but it's it's really addressed to employees is that the idea okay yeah yeah yeah exactly okay I love that too that's really wonderful because you've got you're sending it to my MPS VT or address I think instead of my the one I actually use okay but it's okay and then the and then this you write to us which I see some commonalities which is great and can I wanted to say that because I noticed these photos in the one to staff and I love that and I even mentioned to Jim that it's really nice to see you right there literally on the floor with the kids like that's a strong symbolic photo and I think it's really really great so thank you so we need a motion to approve the second second so it's okay I think I want to mix the agenda just a bit Jim hotness here as the representative of the Transportation Committee he was originally scheduled at 7 30 he conveniently has his daughter is playing soccer or a soccer game and so he has to get moved up a little earlier so he can give this over with and get it not not having to be a patient and hungry so I'm just give a quick bit of context and I'll turn it over to Jim but as you recall back in the fall we pointed a Transportation Committee to kind of set values and look at some of the issues around getting our kids to school safely and reliably and also looking at some broader goals about reducing greenhouse gas emissions etc. Jim was a citizen member appointed committee Lisa and I were the board members on the committee the committee still exists and we also had other citizen members and Watson former board member Ken Jones Heather boys and Carol check and GMT visitors once thanks for coming my pleasure so just the so the committee was tax tax for coming up with this policy and we went back little and and looked at the what's happening historically and I got involved actually when I found out that this is four years ago now my daughter was going to be the first fifth grade class to be at the middle school and you know at the time and for we figured back to the 80s at some point K through five had been bused anybody that lived without you know outside of a mile of town had an option of taking a bus to school when we found out our kids were moving we also moving to middle school we also found out that there was no busing and frankly because I have no older children I had no idea there was no busing at past that point I asked some other parents about it they didn't know I asked parents of all the kids and they said oh that's the way it's always been you know so we started to ask the question of the administration and the school board of the why you know the why's and the why was that's the way it's always been basically yeah or budget was the issue so we've talked about it for a number of years and the committee looked back at that you know that history and tried to say okay if a student lives outside of a certain radius you know and it's not practical to walk to school all year round in Vermont or ride your bike all year round from a mile and a half two miles away from school what can we do to provide that that equitable transportation to reduce those single car trips into this into school and to make sure that all the kids have a way a safe way to get to school because we know that the bus routes actually are providing a really great service to the kids that don't have a way to school safely I mean they're crossing River Street 302 they're coming down Town Hill with no sidewalks they're coming down Northfield Street which is is you know problem they're coming all the way out from past the State House way up Terrace Street and so kids coming from very long distances in the winter and not always real safe areas and over the years there we've also reduced the number of crossing cards at some of the major intersections in town so as we were thinking about working on this policy we came up with the idea that or came up the thoughts that we really want to promote safe pedestrian bike and public transportation options we want to have the ability for kids to walk to school kids to ride their bikes my daughter does ride her bike when the weather allows and when her schedule allows but because we do live a considerable distance and our kids that live further from us realize that there is a need for other ways for the kids to get to school get to school working we thought that there's an opportunity to work in coordination with the city Green Mountain Transit right now it's not a reliable option because of the timing with all the schools so there's no way for the Green Mountain Transit buses to get the kids to school on time at the middle school or the high school and we found that there's if you've spent any time like I do every day and Jim does in front of the middle school or in front of the high schools look different with the big parking lot but the middle school especially the you know it's a main thoroughfare into town from anybody that lives out in Montpelier out town Hill and it's also where every child gets dropped off or walking across in the road there injecting the all the additional car traffic into that way then to that area with the with now the bus from coming out from Longsbury is is a big chaotic you know to quote one of Montpelier policemen it is chaotic so with the goal of trying to reduce the amount of trips into town alleviate that congestion provide additional open up additional parking for the bus and the people who sometimes do have to bring the kids to school the the idea being that we don't that we don't have to have every single parent bringing their child into school so I think the pot so the policy is with for the policy recommendation is with the policy committee now and with the with the idea that taking account the kids that were at one point on buses on those three buses continue to have some weight to get to school especially with the opportunity now with the new the new school district and you super again with a man yeah we just felt like there was also it's sort of an equity issue with making it challenging for some families to have to work around that schedule of getting their kid to school on time in addition to getting to work or whatever yeah I think that's right I think that you know what the committee tried to do and pass over the policy committee and ultimately you know the board just the reiteration of some of the you know the values you should have around transportation which is equity safe and reliable trips to and from school for for all students I think you have a special consideration for you know families where especially on this and the outer edges that's tough you know some single parent families and parents parents have to go to work early you know we do have challenging winners is not just not just cold to go a distance but you know as snow piles up roads that aren't frankly terribly safe in July become much less safe as the you want the areas get narrower etc to those considerations and also greenhouse gas emissions we want to be a district that I think is as carbon neutral as possible and you know reducing reducing individual car trips yeah so really I think you have given some thought to you know the values that should guide the transportation policy that I'm not sure the board thought deeply about without being descriptive and I don't know if you want to give some context of what you've been thinking but I did meet with Green Mountain Transit over the summer and it's not my understanding was it's not an all-out not possible like it's not out of the blue because they're changing their routes and I don't know enough to really speak adequately about it but that was not out of the domain of possibility but Pam and I Pam and I had been talking about it and think that we really have got some good feedback this year and that we'd like to join any kind of group to try to problem-solve this together with some parents and I have some volunteers who I've spoken to already I kind of just an open question I think the spirit you know all these values are huge and one of them that I heard you a little too or talk about was the value of kids biking and walking and I'm wondering if you think or maybe haven't thought about this too much but is the district doing everything it can to support those two modes of transportation you know obviously that's not enough and there's some kids just out of the question and it at some point we pick pick some lines or pick some arbitrary spots and just say this is what we can afford but it makes sense to me that we make an investment of some sort whether it's just your effort or through infrastructure or whatever it is in but in walking and biking somehow we really you know we know that's good for kids not just physically but mentally we know that it's cheap it's good for the environment you know all these things and so are we do could we create a plan that enhances our busing plan with our walking and biking plan and could we be making all of the investments we need to I know for instance the middle school it's really hard to find a bike rack sometimes if you're biking it's like oh man there's not enough bike racks tied up to a tree tied up somewhere else find somewhere tied to another bike and so I don't know whether there's a lot more we can do maybe we could be working with the and I'm not this is not a substitute it's just it's just an enhancement is could we be working with the same on saying you know this particular sidewalk is is really a problem or the fact there is no sidewalk here is really a problem for encouraging children to walk or bike so I just wonder whether we should we should do that too as a serious planning around this around the school is can our kids get their bike can they get there by walking and what are the problems and ask the kids why you know where's the worst spots on your route for walking or biking where does it feel dangerous where do you have to cross something that you know because I know the city's up for making things more pedestrian friendly making things more bike friendly and I don't think that's a big ask if we go back to them so I'm wondering whether you guys talked much about that what we did talk about is you know at the crossing guards where yes there's been a reduction crossing guards in some areas and that maybe because there just weren't a lot of kids walking anymore and some of them some of spots at the bottom of at the at the Granistry Bridge crossing 302 Berlin Street for years I mean everybody knew him it's the guy I waved he waved at every single car that went by he was there for many years but is is no longer there is there still crossing guard by the library so there's some places there aren't crossing guards I mean obviously the crossing guard at the middle school is invaluable and he is amazing by the way that guy should get a triple raise unbelievable how what a good job he does of controlling that full of traffic I mean he's got a ton of responsibilities there was a substitute there the other day during his job and it was not it nearly as well-handled so he does a great job but you know that I don't know that there's crossing guards in all places and we did discuss that a little bit but any opportunity to you know to provide that's safer travel be great you know the city is working obviously on the bike the bike path plan we don't have a good network of you know we don't have a network of bike paths right we have one bike path that goes one direction essentially we do have a lot of good sidewalks you know if we but they don't all connect outside of the the core downtown area yeah I mean I think a lot of the thought of the committee was you know it'd be great to encourage the district to think creatively about better transportation generally not just adding more buses but you know things you talked about making because I think you know frankly a lot of the car trips in middle school and Union are not people who necessarily live places where you can't walk or bike and it's if you could make it easier to walk or bike you'd reduce some of those trips there is you know one idea that someone who committee floated was why don't we have some sort of you know fee or reward for people to carpool to high school so we're reducing the number of single car trips to the high school or you know some sort of you know reward basis for people who bike or walk to the high school you know because high schoolers are in the age where they can fly a bike from further distances so I think thinking creatively about well acknowledging the fact that it's difficult for some people to walk or bike making it easier for all people to walk and bike who want to especially you know the radius where walking and biking is pretty easy and then you know I think you can do something so I mean I'd love to see as many people walking and biking as often as possible but I also don't want to I think it's difficult to say that's the answer I mean we talk about about the middle school being a walking school which is kind of a joke really but it's that is sort of what we've always said because we don't want to put the infrastructure into for other things and we don't have parking we don't have bus drop off really even we don't even have car we don't even have car drop off really I mean it's pretty pretty sketchy so it's really a walking school or nothing and yet we've crammed in tons of vehicle trips into that block so you know if we can't be a walking school can we you know I mean I don't know I'm not saying I don't support more busing what I'm saying is you know maybe we need a satellite drop-off spot somewhere where kids arrive at that spot that's a more of a can handle the traffic and then they can walk over from a block away or two blocks away or three blocks away rather than from two miles away and so it seems to me that we do want to be creative and not just add buses at this point and I think we may still have to add buses but it's it's that kind of thing that I'd like to encourage we did talk about the the combination of of the GMT and also the existing school buses you know the kids certainly could middle schoolers could obviously walk from the elementary to the middle school the problem is you know when you start to talk about that you talk about the timing of when school starts sure so we have the opportunity a lot of those buses aren't full and and I think from personal experience and to me have this personal experience from his end of town of following driving behind the elementary school bus to school I mean I drive behind it and stop when it when it stops the bus goes to the elementary school I go to the middle school you know it doesn't it that doesn't make sense no anyway at all you know it for anybody so you know maybe aligning you know we didn't have as a as a you know as a committee the you know I don't think the scope to say we need to realign school I mean the school starts but you know we have existing buses you know utilizing them better to make sure that can you know they can in eighth grade or ride a bus with a kindergarten I know that's a you know that's a lot of places right you know I don't know I heard I heard a lot of pushback on that that you can't do that but there's there's obviously a lot of creative ways to get kids to school if if either the times of the buses work at times of the GMT buses work and then when the weather is good I mean we did have to reign in the idea that everybody can ride their bike like said my daughter does a lot and some of those kids but I mean there are six months out of the year where the snow is piled high and the roads are not safe and clean for the kids to ride to school so I mean think we were looking at that okay what what about for everybody and the kids who just don't ride bikes my next-door neighbor doesn't ride a bike to school even when my daughter asked her to she's done it twice she just she's a 13-year-old girl that won't ride her bike to school it just happens you know there are those some of those kids that won't she would walk but it's a law walk and it's a 45-minute hour walk what would be the what is the rough cost estimate for basically duplicating the elementary school busing at the middle school busing at $60,000 we run three for the elementary school yep just wanted to framework what we're talking about it's in the budget production what's what are we doing on occupancy on those buses or capacity on those buses do we know are we mostly full on them I don't know we don't have a transportation coordinator that's one of the challenges we're having now with adding buses to the rock story sure they're not our buses as contracted so I don't know yeah and I'm not sure that's been asked before and I haven't heard there's anecdotal information just whether you have to add three more you can add two more or what you would do or one more I'm with Stacy the bus company the person who runs it and we discussed it a little bit and while they're not at occupancy they can't take the entire middle school section of kids into the union buses and she was talking about starting in times and and all that kind of thing which is a bigger can of worms and it would eliminate other things that we can do we did that so I would think that we take this this year to study it with school people and you know Pam who knows the kids and families best in that area and the needs of the middle school yeah and I also I'm not sure that the busies of the middle school are going to be the same as the elementary school just you know for one because you know the kids are only going to have one more kids who are able to you know walk who won't want to be on the bus and who won't want to be on the bus and also you know that's when more kids have active school activities and other things so I'm not sure that even though the sizes are simple I'm not sure kind of leads to sort of what the policy committee was trying to figure out where to go next with this without really first and foremost respecting the work that's already been done and being very careful you know it's when we talk about studying it for a year it can send the message that thank you very much and we're just going to we're going to study for a while and I think that nobody wants to send that message so what we were trying to do was think about maybe possible next steps and you know we didn't take a formal action on this but we had an idea that maybe the way to approach this would be to you know create or maintain a transportation well first of all to adopt an interim transportation policy just to get us through this year and this coming year probably and to have some sort of a something probably what our status quo in policy but to note in that policy that we are that it is a interim policy or that it is a you know that we're going to continue to work right in that policy so we don't lose track of that and then the other piece of it was to basically charge have the board charge the administration to do what you're suggesting Libby and in fact to create some sort of like an ad hoc working group or ad hoc committee that would study it and would work on it including looking at the money issues which are and the infrastructure issues and and potentially the school schedule issues whatever you know impacts there would be on various options and to choose you know an option that makes the most sense based on the values that we've all articulated but also the realities of our of all those things the and that you know hopefully that committee would would be made up of community members and board members and some sort of advisory role to you so that it would be it would be informed by those ongoing kind of balanced values discussions and then and then coming back with a vision basically and something that we would think of as kind of like the next generation of busing vision like the next decade kind of that's what we've had for the last decade and that it's time with this new district coming together that we're we do do overthrow this thing or overhaul this and really think about from scratch and budget has to be on the table for that we can't just say well it's expensive and we it needs to be budget neutral I think that that was a piece of it is with budget recommendations whether it's it's a value a high enough value to be proposing something new in the budget or not we don't have that formed into a into a policy but that concept wanted to kind of test that with the board and see folks thought that that was an appropriate way and it sounds like Libby's already on it and and did you have an idea of like would that mean that sometime in the spring the committee would present the vision and then perhaps start implementation for next school year Libby I'd let you move a little faster I don't I don't have it worked out I mean I think really that's Libby I really defer to you in terms of trying to identify kind of a good workable process that kind of you know that's that's it really and as fast as you think could be done but if we're really talking about a big vision here for that's going to incorporate these values for the next you know decade or whatever then we should do it right also but I think this respect that we think to some extent this is an administrative role it's really one of those things that's going to require a lot of nuts and bolts to get it to work and a budget proposal rather than the community or the board saying you know here's where we should draw the lines on where the buses are and I'd be interested in hearing your feedback your reaction to that idea yeah I'm comfortable I'm certainly comfortable with the idea I understand it's not going to happen for the school year since that ship has obviously sailed you know it's been something I've been talking to within the community and the school board about for four years now so so I would just ask you please to be very respectful the fact that you know as you push this off it just means every single day of longer that we do this that you know I've said this before I take if I have to drive my daughter everyday to school and back I take 360 720 trips a year it's 180 school days you know here and back here and back so I take you know a round trip 360 trips a year and I have the flexibility in my work schedule so for me I can do that I know there are a lot of people that it's a bit of a burden for and we're also you know that's a lot of cars we're putting in downtown core of a town that wants to be net zero you know so every time we push this out another year another year say it's too expensive and not find innovative ways to solve the problem I think that's a disservice to the community as a whole so and even if there's interim solutions and maybe we don't bite off the whole thing at once and just completely solve this this problem but you know if the kids can start riding the buses if you know I pose a question like kids have home room for the first 15 or 20 minutes of the school day in the middle school what happens if they're late by 10 minutes every day you know I don't know when I was in school home wouldn't matter it was where kids just showed up because they had to show up someplace and they had to make that same statement okay I think that we weren't just sitting in the kids lunches wasting time I hear what you're saying I mean I have a fifth grader who's now going to middle school and there is no way with my present employment and I'm not just saying this because my bosses are sitting right next to me that I could get my child to school without the bus and there's just no way I could do it with my husband as well so I understand that concern very very well so we'll get on it so tell us what you envision in terms of timeline I can't my brain and calendars and budgets don't work sometimes we're very much looking towards this presentation as a kickoff Pam and I have been talking about it we have an email with Jim that said we have a time do we can make a time we made a time yeah we made a time for three of us to sit Pam Jim and I just sit down and really get things going I have one parent who said tell me where to be and I will be there to me to talk about this and I know Pam has a couple other suggestions as well so we'll get this kicked off and you'll see in the pressures from the budget discussion piece busing is on there at the high end because it's Grant who's writing that document but it is on there that we're considering so we thought that we could do something with budgetary implications in this budget round if we choose to do so we might not have the full answer full pledge but we could certainly put something together for the community and take it to the voters and see if they favorite that okay hey Elston thank you so much for your time thank you appreciate it was interesting project work on for sure and I'd like you to be involved too thanks thanks Jim board presentation well we're under board governance switch back to the learning focus totally up to you let's hear from the new board members because they're here although it might be good for both of you to stay through the meeting until you make sense but why don't we just back up the board governance piece and give both of you a chance to introduce yourselves are you done yet yeah so I thought what we have is as you know Peter Sterling resigned and under the process board appoints someone and then the city council has to ratify that and they're going to do that to 26 but we got two applicants who very thankfully have thrown their hat into the ring Andrew Stein and Tanya McGrath and Andrew Stein both were put into the board expressing interest so we're going to make a choice later in executive session but I don't want to carve out two to three minutes for you to introduce yourself kind of reiterate what you said in your letter but introduce yourself and then we'll also give a minute or two for the board to ask any questions if they want to so Andrew why don't you introduce yourself for the camera as well Andrew Stein resident of Montpelier of course so I've spoken with each of you via the phone or in person and thank you so much for your time and sharing your insights I don't have much to add from our discussions previously or from my letter of interest I really care about the well-being of Montpelier students teachers administrators who foster the learning environment our schools I have a lot of experience in government and communications that I think would lend a valuable perspective to this board and I think would help this board during this transition process as you begin as a new school district with new leadership and I'm a very hard worker an eager learner and a caring community member and it would be an honor to serve this city in this capacity if you have any questions for me I'm happy to answer them I'm going to ask just a general question so this is for a temporary appointment would you see yourself running in the spring for a full term anyway? Yeah so full disclosure when Peter Sterling was thinking about leaving his position he was talking to different people about filling this post and I was one of the folks who he approached about the position and we talked for several weeks about it and he didn't want to leave until he was certain that somebody was applying who would be interested not only in filling the temporary vacancy but had an interest in carrying on and so that would be my aim of course it's up to the voters of my appeal year and that would be out of my control but I would in the short time try to prove my value as much as possible to them Any other questions for Andrew? Great well thank you and again feel free to stick around because it will be educational Alright thank you Great thanks Tanya? And again please introduce yourself for the name wise Hi I'm Tanya McGrath I have two daughters one at the Main Street Middle School and one at Union and I don't have a lot of experience in governmental stuff but I do have a daughter who has been on a 504 and I feel like that's kind of an important perspective to bring to the board and yeah I don't really didn't really come with a prepared statement but I run a little cleaning business and I feel like a maintenance oriented perspective I could bring that sort of thing but I don't have more to say I would definitely be learning on the fly but I think I'm a quick learner and I'm interested so I figured I'd try Excellent thank you I asked you the same question when you consider running for the full board again in March instead of just the temporary appointment I think so but one of the reasons I was so interested in the temporary appointment was to sort of see what it entails and if that's something I want to do I am interested in getting involved in the school governance but I'm not exactly sure the extent of what it entails so tentatively yes I want to pull something out you wrote a short letter of interest which was very helpful and one of the things you brought out which you didn't mention just now but I want to give you a chance to talk about it if you choose changing your progressive education and blue collar background and if you don't mind just talking a little bit about what that means in terms of bringing that to the school board well attending Goddard Goddard is a very progressive institution and I feel like the traditional education over the years has been moving more towards that things like mindfulness in the classroom more play based learning that sort of thing and I have put a lot of personal research into just what's good for kids development in that field I feel like it's a really positive move for traditional education to be moving more towards progressive sort of things I threw in the blue collar thing mostly just because I feel like that's a perspective that's important since so many of the kids who go to school come from blue collar families and that's a perspective that sometimes gets overlooked in governance Any other questions? Thanks Tonya and again please feel free to stick around if we're not going until the end but we're going to be talking about the budget They both know the process we go through Do they both kind of have a sense of the process we go through? I think I explained it earlier in the beginning we'll make a choice but just to reiterate we'll make a choice in executive session we will pass that name along to the city council it's not unclear as to what the city council needs to do we need to consult with them but having them vote on it is as much consultation as they can possibly have so we've asked Bill Frazier to T of vote on the consent agenda on the 26th we're assuming the city council will pass it but assuming they do whatever we choose will that will officially be the appointment which is October 3rd you'll be a board member you'll have to be sworn in and you'll get to China's appeal Jim just to be clear the board can discuss the appointment in executive session but the action has to be taken but we'll confer and then come back Yes as I said thank you for being efficient I'll do whatever you want so this is going to be relatively short and sweet as always I live and breathe this stuff so if I start using jargon and acronyms especially please call me out this is a presentation that I actually created last year and just updated it for this year so Essa is the new education law, the new no child left behind now called Essa, every student succeed act a little funny timbit is when Congress originally wanted to call this law or put this law in action it was ASSA just something to put out there every time you see that term and EQS which is the educational quality standards it's kind of the laws that Vermont has adopted you do have a role in this that's what it is, when Essa first came out it was definitely advertised to give states more control and leniency that is yet to be seen I don't know how much it actually has achieved that fact, then the EQS they were adopted in April 2005, there are roles were held accountable to them by a process that is still being they want to call the A, we want to call it a pilot right now it's still being practiced and it's called the internal field review I will in a wait and see mode for the internal field review because the person who has been in charge of that process was the secretary which had been following Ed news was just asked to leave the AOE with the new secretary so she was literally the brain child behind that so it will be interesting to see what happens with this process so here's your board, we're going to go through some of these things relatively quick, board roles in EQS and Essa you have a role in adopting certain policies most of which we have, if not all of which the approval of continuous improvement plans and monitoring the effectiveness which we were talking about earlier with the superintendent's report that's one way I'm giving you evidence of that budgeting resources so we can accomplish our goals just an awareness that these are our policies and the numbers ask you why do we have to do certain things you have an understanding behind it and holding me accountable to all the requirements because that's my job to make sure that EQS is valid and Essa is valid so the required policies under EQS we have proficiency based graduation policy we have a class-wise policy and then under Essa is the title one parental and family engagement so if you've been on the board for a while some of those were new, I know we had to adopt them in my previous district because of these law changes, but we're right on track with that so good job Continuous improvement plans we talked about that a bit with Mike Berry a couple meetings ago they have to be annual throughout the entire year we're working on those the A&E has just mentioned that we're moving into phase two without much definition of what that means for us so this is most definitely a learning year for us as to how that improvement plan carries out and for the A&E as to how they ensure that improvement plan is carried out it's a complete learning year you do have to approve the CIPs it's in the board we can't submit it without your approval so we will be bringing those to you probably in March I would imagine or April-ish and then we have to submit it the A&E that approves it it has to do all the requirements of EQS and Essa so we're walking the fine line between those two merged together and then they get split apart and merged together again just a little history just in case anybody wants to geek out on this kind of stuff this is a school improvement plan and what's happened in Vermont it's getting more and more accountable to the state than it has been in the past and here's another just historical perspective from what were the standardized tests that Vermont has required of us and why they were required across multiple years so just now we're at under Essa the SBAC will continue to meet that requirement in Essa which there is a requirement that says we do some sort of national standardized tests Vermont chose as we said before I believe to move the SBAC from grade 11 to grade 9 there is a science as SBAC like I'm not sure exactly what they're calling it just yet that will be in grades 5, 8 and 11 they also added on an annual physical fitness exam for grades 4, 7 and 9 last year was the first year that they did that what's interesting about that piece is that that is not a requirement in Essa under the federal law there was the standardized testing and in addition one other more standardized test that was up to states to decide it was Vermont's decision to go with a physical fitness exam that was their decision totally so that you won't see across multiple states necessarily I'm not really sure why they chose that over social studies or that over something else but that's what they chose for school accountability again a historical perspective now under every child succeeds act it is required of states to name publicly the lowest 5% of performing title 1A schools and targeteds and we'll receive targeteds support our state agency the AOE argued against that a lot they really went to back for schools to say that's not what we believe for education that's the public the sharing people that's not how we support institutions but they lost they lost with that so that was a biggie that Vermont argued against so the state does have to name the lowest 5% performing schools I'm not worried that we're going to be in that 5% and if we do become in the 5% you should probably fire me so then we have to report this annual snapshot that the agency is going to deliver to us and last board packet you had a memo from the agency of education about that annual snapshot so you do have some information about that again that's new so we're all learning about what that's going to look like and then the ed quality review which is the IFR that I discussed earlier Montpelier Roxbury is up in 2020 for that IFR I actually kind of wanted it this year because they take a real broad view look at our system and you get good information off of it so I actually wanted it to go this year but we're not slated until 2020-2021 which puts it in question based on Amy Fowler leading so I'm just not sure if that's actually going to happen but when it does you all will probably be approached to give some information around that according to the new state accountability system this is the kind of fun stuff here this is what the state of Vermont proposed to the feds to qualify under ESSA so this was part of the state so we will be accountable in five areas academic proficiency, personalization safe, healthy schools, high quality staffing and investment priorities and when they come to do that internal field review these are the five areas we get feedback in so it's all connected to this so in academic achievement the indicators that the state has chosen is that 20% is in ELA 20% is in mathematics 5% in science, 5% in physical education or fitness when you have a certain when you hit a threshold of ELL learners in your district then that counts towards 10% of your scores I'm not sure if we hit that or not and graduation rate is 20% in addition to college and career readiness indicators and they're defining that in multiple ways these are some of them so it's the percentage of kids and their scores how they're scoring taking things like the ACT, SAT, AP classes CLEP I believe is a military type examination I'm not positive on that one but nobody really uses it much anymore so everyone was kind of like when that came out like we didn't really know dual enrollment that kind of thing so that's 10% of our score in proficiency, personalization you guys know all high school students participating they're judging it as all high school students participating at least one flexible pathway that we have lots of flexible pathway offerings and that we have personalized learning plans I'm going to be like our high school student doing a very good job with this piece right here and they have for years does that only apply to high schools then? Middle schools too because it starts in 7th grade but the most pressure will be put on high schools Safe and Healthy Schools so they're going to look at our disciplinary data and this is also the school climate survey and I know some of us have had a conversation around the school climate survey in regards to the contractual language and my personal evaluation so that's falling in Safe and Healthy Schools and they have developed the climate survey we just started to get information it's going to come out in April they think of this year High quality staffing they're defining as the amount of licensed teachers we have educational staff stability so they're looking at teacher turnover principal turnover, superintendency turnover and then staff satisfaction surveys I haven't heard any information about what that is yet that's probably still being developed up there but it's interesting because the caveat is in professional learning opportunities so are they satisfied with what we're offering them as learners it's interesting and then investment priorities staffing ratios which our governor likes to talk about a lot our per student expenditure and what's our return on investment so how are we doing in regards to the amount of money that we're spending towards education here in Montville, Roxbury so those are the big five this is really interesting and I'm not going to go into much detail about this these have actually changed and I haven't upped it because I didn't have the exact thing this symbol has changed because of the violence that schools are experiencing right now they didn't feel like a symbol that has a violent background to it would be appropriate so it's interesting that will look different but this is one of the ways that we're going to see where we fall and what's interesting about it we referenced it a little bit with the aspect presentation last year is over here this is talking to our growth our year to year change right so we want to see our scores do that this is talking about where our actual current performance is the number of schools you see all these like one school six schools nine schools that was for if they were going to hold schools accountable according to the new as a plan last school year based on two years ago now as back results that's where the state of Vermont would land so that's all the schools in Vermont this is where this priority one right here this is where the 5% is and if you fall in this 5% you get lots of money thrown at you from the AOE in support it's called targeted support everyone else will not be eligible for that that money so anywhere else it doesn't matter where else you fall you'll just be given support which means the AOE will take a look at our continuous improvement plan and give us a thumbs up or thumbs down if I were to bet based on what I was seeing from our aspect scores from the trends of what Mike showed you a couple weeks ago I would have a hunch that we are off target or near target for the year-to-year change we're down here and we're probably near target for our current performance we're probably down to the lower end here so I would bet that we fall kind of here right now but that's my hunch I couldn't find so I got this document from my old job I couldn't find this document for Montpelier or for Roxbury so it was literally just a document that was sent to us last year so we couldn't and Mike and I searched through lots of binders we couldn't find it so we're not sure where we would fall but just based on what we know about this chart we would fall around here so we want to get over here that way so we'll see continuous improvement plan we talked a bunch about this when we had to change ours so like I said right now we're moving into phase 2 and the AOE is hopefully going to give us some understanding of what that means to them so we know what it means to us we have some ideas but we don't want to do things that's not going to apply with the AOE so we're waiting to hear information about that based on a plan-do-study act kind of idea which is not a bad idea it's just really hard to put all of our investments into that framework it'll be interesting we'll let you know when we know and how are we responding to all this so all our policies have been adopted I'm working on the procedures now as I work on those procedures they're also updated on the school board website so you can see those we are working with school leaders a lot about needs assessments we're putting in data days which are going to be three times a year for the central office team to sit down with building leadership teams and say this is what you show us evidence of how you're working towards our goal for each school so we know exactly what our needs are for this in addition to that Friday is our first what I'm calling round Robin Day so it's myself Mike Barry and Mary Lundin going to every single school and doing walkthroughs and classrooms with principals and talking about what are the themes of instruction we're seeing across our district so we have a better idea of where we need to focus our professional learning that's really exciting that all feeds into this needs assessment process we're participating in a lot of state trainings and we're going to bring the commitment plan to you guys for evidence and for review and for comments so just know that any questions about EQS and ESSA any questions? thank you quick and relatively painless is that presentation part of the minutes? it is not I didn't think to include it in the packet so I apologize for that I will share with all of you so conversely my presentation would be long and very painful so you know I apologize I apologize for not getting a piece of paper to you in advance but you should have a piece of paper that says apply to any budget discussion in front of you that I just kind of wanted to go over some of the landscape with you some of the known landscape I mean we haven't really started any kind of deliberation so there may be other things that pop up as the administration is looking at budget as we go along but I started off with some statewide issues some of them may be old news to you some of them may not you may remember that in FY 19 at the very end the state decided to use a bunch of one time money to balance the budget and reduce tax rates which is great for us for FY 19 unfortunately bad for us in FY 20 because that's one time money that isn't available again in FY 20 so the estimate was that tax rates would go up by two cents even if budgets were level dynamic might be changing as we speak though but that's one statewide pressure statewide pupil counts will likely go down for us I'm thinking we should be stable or fairly stable if you've been here for a few years you know that we've had big increases in equalized pupils that largely related to preschool private preschool being able to count those kids those kids I think pretty much all been counted that big ramp up of kids I think is pretty much all counted so I don't think we can expect a big increase but it should be fairly stable and since tax rates are based on spending for pupil that's very important thing common level of appraisal I put that in here just the fact that if the CLA drops tax rates rise that's a typical phenomenon that we've seen year after year unless you go through a reappraisal health rates that's something that just popped up last week in 19 we know that the tax rates or the health rates went up 10% in FY 20 the number that V. High sent forward is proposing 11.8% increase in health rates for the gold CDHP which pretty much every one of our employees has the gold CDHP so that is a fairly strong pressure statewide health clawbacks whenever we went to these high deductible plans the premiums were cheaper you know the state kind of for two years was pulling money back from us this year in FY 19 is the last year that happens so this is a good thing that $65,000 that we will lose in FY 19 we don't lose again in FY 20 act 46 you know that we had an 8 cent tax incentive in our first year of merger which is awesome we have a 6 cent tax incentive in year 2 which is awesome but unfortunately most people are going to see that as a 2 cent increase not a 6 cent incentive since we are going from 8 to 6 so that's a bit of a challenge Act 173 for those of you who don't know about it it talks a lot about special education not only about how funding will flow to us but also about how we will be able to deliver special ed services Act 173 is not going to impact the special ed funding formula until FY 21 so it's not something we have to struggle with in FY 20 but just to let you know that's coming and in FY 20 what we will likely be doing is trying to figure out you know how to build the capacity to adapt to kind of a new special ed facing in FY 21 the last one under statewide issues probably doesn't mean a lot to you it's rocking my world a uniform chart of accounts and a new HR finance system is going to be in place for July 1st of next year that is a lot of work for our office to try to make that happen I only bring it up not to get your pity but to explain to you although that's good if you have any what it might mean is because we have to go to a different chart of accounts we may have to bucket expenses in different places and as Steve knows last year we did a pretty good job trying to map what the increases and decreases are from year to year and we got pretty good into those details that may be a little more tricky this year because some of that might be because something that we counted as a professional service now has a supply for example software some of that we may have counted as a professional service now we have to cover it as a supply which is a whole different kind of area of the budget so it might be a little trickier whenever I'm showing you changes from year to year some of it may be because this new requirement popped up some of it may be because I had to move the P from this shell to this shell we'll try to go through that as seriously as we can you don't want to give us both portions do you so we can, you know, so we can compare but going forward after this it'll be fine because they'll never change it again we're good from there on out so then the next thing is the pressures which Libby pokes some fun at me for kind of maximizing the pressures but salaries is on here it's on here because over half of our budget salaries so even a modest increase in salaries is going to create a fairly significant cost increase just know that that's the fact staffing I'm hoping that there won't be huge staffing applications related to enrollment projections you know we look at that look at class size averages sometimes we have to add a bunch of classroom teachers hopefully that's not the case I think we're pretty stable we'll have to see as that plays out we are considering some other positions which you can see on here human resources coordinator we have three different people that actually four if you count me that do pieces of HR we don't have one person that kind of acts as the one stop shop for that and that is getting more and more difficult especially with HRAs and things like that a district-wide instructional coach we're looking at now with with Mike Berry coming on board he's looking at some of our processes and some ways that we can improve student achievement and what that might look like consolidated federal grants how we use those might change a little bit I'm hoping it doesn't create a big increase in overall staffing costs what it might mean is that I may not be allowed to use consolidated federal grants for someone who is a coach but I may be able to use it for somebody so we may be shifting how we use the money but the hope is that it nets itself out hopefully the bond you know that in FY20 that's the first year that we have to pay principal which is a pretty big jump vehicles I think I'm going to cut that in half right now because I don't think we will look at doing another special ed van we are looking at purchasing an additional van for CBL because they rely on community connections and that may not be able to be an option in the future so we may look at getting a second van for that I'm taking off this special ed van because if you buy a special ed van with special ed money you can only use it for special ed if I buy a CBL van I don't get reimbursement for it but I can use it for whatever we want which might include special ed requirements so I think we can get by with one more van I don't think we need to busing you just had a discussion about that yes I did kind of go on a high end and say 250 I was thinking maybe it might be as many as 4 4 buses times 60 or so 1000 but it may not really be that high depending on what the solution is and in Libby will tell you we've had some issues with adding the Roxbury busing some of the issues that have popped up and somebody will ask a question so who do I need to talk to about this issue me maybe I don't know we don't have someone who handles busing because it's never been that big of a thing it was only union so it was really school based so now that there's a bigger transportation monster to deal with we need to sort through rules and responsibilities and see if anybody has the capacity right now to take on that kind of work so that's something else to just think about as we trouble solve that or problem solve that foreign languages on here for maybe a study committee and it's a study committee to look at something that is kind of exciting the possibility of an immersion program so that would be really cool yay I told you that would be awesome I took that long to get it yeah data management we have various data management tools but we really don't have something to be able to keep good track for assessments and be able to document assessments and monitor those across time so we're looking at trying to find a good assessment tracking system to purchase elementary equity is something we talked about during the merger study it's something that we're going to continue to look at now that we're operating to K-4 schools pre K-4 schools there may be some other areas of inequities that we might need budget for to try to fix as we go along 504 requirements is really on here for me more than you it's just that if you have students that aren't on an IEP then you can't use special ed funding for it so we try to put a little bit of a set aside in general funds to deal with 504 type of requirements which might be adaptive equipment and things like that it may also mean an outside placement that's not for a special ed eligible student so I know that we have over executed this line and I just need to put a little more into there at least for the next few years so that we're not overextending ourselves the backside of this page talks about opportunities yes the list is a little shorter but there is a list maybe I saw facilities projects we talked last year during the budget process that we had increased some one time costs in facilities because we knew we were going to lose two cents worth of incentive we knew we were going to have to pay for the bond so we had one time facility project money in there that we think we can back off a little bit with a new facilities director I need to work with him to figure out what needs to back off but I do think we have extra money there that we can reduce high school tuition the kids that are grandparented in Roxbury that have choice we have one less year of those kids to have choice which means one less year of tuition so we know that is going to go down health reimbursement arrangements in FY19 we budgeted 100% utilization partially because of the clawback that we knew but also because we really didn't have data to know where we were going to end up I do know that in half the year we spent over half of the HRA money that we had in the bucket but you know a lot of that is people who spent that full amount so I assume that percentage is going to drop off in the second half of the year I think we can probably scale back from 100% utilization but I don't want to get too carried away because we really still don't even have a year's worth of data so we might be able to back that off some fund balance you saw the draft fourth quarter report last month that we do have a surplus from last year so we do have some fund balance we do want to kind of hold some of that because with a $4.9 million bond there's things that are going to come up we want to make sure that we don't short change anything to do with bond projects so we might want to have some of that in case we need it for furnishings and equipment and things that we didn't count on or change orders things like that but we do have some money that we might end up considering taking some fund balance and using it as a revenue source in the FY20 budget so for every dollar we put in as a fund balance revenue that's like taking a dollar of expense off so the good thing is it has that action the bad news is this could end up becoming one of those one time things where if you put $400,000 fund balance in a revenue for FY20 and in FY21 you don't have $400,000 that's like increasing your budget by $400,000 so there's probably a it's a lever that you can kind of adjust if we are close to where we want to be we can maybe throw a little bit of fund balance revenue into the budget to offset expenses so I think that's kind of it as far as those pieces there's one other aside I wanted to point out and that is that typically in the budget we show prior year actuals compared to a budget and then the new proposed budget we weren't able to do that last year because of the merger just so you know I still won't be able to do that because I still don't own the Roxbury data for last year so I still don't really have actuals to be able to show you for FY18 because that wasn't under our system I have on pillier FY18 actuals but not Roxbury so we still are probably going to be dealing with presenting a budget that shows from one budget year to the next budget year and then next year we'll have actuals in FY19 to be able to show you some actuals compared to budgets just wanted to set that expectation um we do have on here kind of a proposed guidance that if basically for you to tell us if this is what you think is reasonable for us to consider all requirements that would improve student learning based on the continuous improvement plan and those that would improve efficiency and effectiveness of the district to prioritize those requirements with the goal to limit the increase in education spending to 4% in order to keep tax rates at a reasonable level in the past we've talked about spending for pupil but then we don't know what the pupil count is until late in the game so it's very hard to figure that out if we left it at just education spending we can kind of try to work within those bounds I think 4% hopefully is something that would be viewed as reasonable without really constraining us too much as far as looking at all the real requirements and bring forward for the sake of kids can I miss anything? awesome any thoughts? questions I know it's tough because of the district changes so maybe this number doesn't exist but can you give me a sense of how the district increase, what the increases in education spending have been year over year for the last couple years because it's not a number we usually talk about at this point I could, I don't have it off the top of my head I think it went up a little more than usual last year because of the incentive for the merger but I think the year before that we were trying to keep it at about a 3% increase in pupil spending I'm thinking it was around there it may have been a little more than that I'd have to go back and look but we can certainly cover that as part of the budget presentation and the historical look of where we've been increasing with the caveat that that's where Montpelier has been and now where Montpelier rocks so this is the first year that we really have seen any kind of change in spending for pupil for the new district Steve I'm learning to trust your guidance your proposed guidance because you do a great job so you find that balance between recognizing that we want to always be improving and investing and we also want to be projecting 2, 3, 4 years out in terms of what impacts that's going to have on tax rates because that's a quagmire but it's quite it's quite bold to put out to limit to 4% this early and it's always something we always have a good fight about on the board and I hate to not have a fight so what I'm trying to determine is what 4% is based on I'm just always used to about 3% and I knew you were going to say I was just trying to think about what might be realistic knowing that because the CLA is going to drop the actual tax rate it's going to go up even more so we know that it's the second year of a merger and we are trying to kind of hold true to what we showed as part of the merger presentation and my concern was 3% might constrain administrators a little bit too much to come up with some good ideas that might really turn a corner on achievement somehow so I didn't want to say 3% but I just couldn't bring myself to say 5% so I called it 6% would have been hard too you need a little help about okay, no I get that I mean when we look through your numbers and your discussion about what's going good and bad right now it's not looking very balanced and so I know we're going to have some pressures on the upside just to hold even but I also know that you're really good at being careful with numbers so that you don't promise things that can't be delivered and so I just, you know this isn't a majority but I don't see a lot of ambition in this does that sound bad in the sense that you're not saying well we need to add 7 positions or something like that and it's very very early no one's holding anyone to anything at this point but I guess at this point I'm just trying to understand that 4% and at what point and to what extent does the board actually give this guidance and what if you decide on that and I don't remember last year we did it I think it was the first meeting in October well yeah but we weren't necessarily we were trying to work or dance around this idea and I think in last year to kind of go back in time a little bit last year when there was as part of the guidance as part of the policy you had to give me a number and this year I don't think with that constraint that's why or as if this is a goal the goal is to limit to 4% if somebody comes in with a great idea that we think is going to close the achievement gap in one year well I'm going to come to you with a 5% then if that's what it takes but I would like to try to I mean this is more of a challenge to us as a leadership team to just try to make sure that we're really focused on prioritizing because if it gets much more than 4% on what happens with equalized pupils and dollar yield 4% increase in education spending could still be an 8, 9, 10% increase in the tax rate which I don't want to get to that point and we're in negotiations this year true so we haven't adopted the budget policy but it's going to be agenda for tonight and it doesn't call on the board to have a specific number and I just want to throw out a different way to think about the guidance the board's consideration which is that the administration has been looking at this issue is coming to us and saying this is where we are now that perhaps it's not an opportunity for us to endorse it but an opportunity for us to object to it or not and if we don't and that might be a more respectful way to look at the administration's role that they're telling us where they are and they're giving us a head up of what path they're going down if the board wanted to step in at that point and say wait a minute we're not happy with that or we have real concerns we could or we can just respect the role that they're going down and let the path proceed and that might be more consistent with the policy and the role for us to specifically give them The hard part is at what point in the timeline do we object because this is something that in the past I'm going back a few years now the administration has felt caught in a bad situation around proceeding down a planning path building a consensus within the administration or within the district and then having the board come in at the 11th hour and say we shouldn't in a contraction year for instance we're going to need to eliminate half a position in the board you're not eliminating that position or the other way around like I really want to do foreign language immersion the administration is like we're not there and so 4% is not enough and so the objection can't come too late or the guidance can't come late in the process it's not enough that the administration can do its work I'm just trying to figure out a way to not be that monkey wrench I actually like the way this is presented and I have some reservations about putting it in a random number I like the fact that I have a sense of what you're considering I think given where you are with reassessing the district and looking for efficiencies and looking for whether the current structure is working well I actually think there is some ambition here the idea of taking a chipping away at the foreign language block that we always talk about and make no progress on is big the idea of starting to look at transportation is big the human resource coordinator well perhaps not sexy but it has some real administrative advantages that can pay off down the road and I like the fact that at least compared to other years I have a better sense of what you're thinking about I mean I'm and I think this is kind of consistent with where the budget policy is going I'm okay with getting guidance about what the ticket items are you thinking about investing in whether we agree with those and then just a general sense of whether they're going to present numbers that are going to be eye-popping or not rather than saying 5% and 6% 3% 4% I think if we have a direction an idea of the direction you're going an idea of the priorities that you want to fund how that fits in with a broader vision and whether there's going to be some price tags in there that are going to be difficult I think at this point the budget that's kind of what I'm looking for Grant just to clarify when I'm reading this I'm reading this as recommendations coming from you with your knowledge of what's happening in the district this doesn't include what principals are expecting to hopefully implement next year this isn't principal's budget this is really just kind of the big picture this is what's happening in the district this is big picture we haven't talked about with our leadership team we're not showing you anything we haven't showed that okay there is still time to have shifts and changes and still very early because there could be something that bubbles up instead of gets pushed down whenever I send these budget worksheets I send them to the buildings they work with their teams so there could be something that we didn't anticipate but as Libby mentioned this is something we already talked about as a leadership team so everybody already had kind of an idea that they had an opportunity to raise their hands and say you completely missed this huge thing so I'm hoping that there isn't that big unknown in here but there might be several small unknowns and with the budget timeline that I believe we shared with you a while back that Grant put together a long time ago there are several opportunities for our leadership team to be working on more specifics of the budget that we will be doing in Jim and my relationship is such that I tell him pretty much everything that's going on so if he feels that's a time that needs to be brought to the board level at a different than this timeline then I know he will speak up so and I'm comfortable without you making a motion to give me guidance as long as I'm not getting stuff thrown at me right now I think we're able to start doing our work okay are we okay you had something to say too well I'm I was going to say this is great what Jim said, what you provided is great and I was actually just going to follow up on the point about where is this in terms of ambition there were a couple different reactions to that and my additional reaction is that I think that there's a lot of great stuff here and obviously a lot of serious things being considered I would be shocked if this were the year that the administration came to us with the ambitious programmatic budget anyway and that's just that if this isn't the year for it and so I've heard so much I'm comfortable with this being a stable like we're building on what we've got and the new team is assessing things and we'll be in a better position next year if there's big changes I think but I'm experiencing, I'm realizing I'm having some emotional experience because this is a very collaborative process and I'm not used to that I think it's very interesting that we don't feel the need to really carefully define everything at this early stage and that we don't, I think the board's feeling a lot of trust honestly in both of you and the team and I think that you know I think this may go a lot smoother than my past experiences have been and so I think it might just be that that's where we leave it is that it's it sounds like Libby really, and Grant really want to lead a collaborative process here and I'm sure you'll tell us when we overstep and that's appropriate and so you know let's watch it play out and learn something this year Thank you so much for sharing that Thank you Grant So the next piece of budget is between outreach expectations for the board Tina, not shockingly let's go talk to the senior senator if anybody wants to join her I think she'd definitely be welcome to welcome to that suggestion I'm I'm good reaching out to Phalms if I've already probably made them to get something together to be around in my case maybe put it meaningfully other groups people want to reach out to I'm assuming you guys want to do some outreach to Roxbury that would be good if you have visual PTO senior in selects I don't think you ever can reach out it's different in Roxbury I'm happy to do some road to be popular or alive MBA, all that kind of stuff I can try to work some of the business people over they traditionally have the response we don't want to hear about no it's supposed to be like whatever we're busy, we don't want to hear about the school we're already not like that they would be interested we haven't really done that we did that with the Roxbury committee the merger project we did reach out to them and that was very useful but no we haven't done that much but I'm happy to just at least touch base as people what they want to know what they desire to I'm glad to have that we're at our I've gone to the senior center as well sometimes and I'm happy to do that again and I can have the phones I know sometimes members we've tried to just have this someone will be at the coffee shop for a couple of hours I think it is it's like one or two people will show up is usually what it is it's like where Tina will hold court and people come and if you got somebody who's especially interested that person needs to have answers because they're going to tell 400 of the people what they're worried about Sarah is there a good place to tap into the community of people with children, young children not yet in the school system? I wonder through the private through all the private child care places there could be something going through or just maybe just a note going out to all of them are posted with their handed to every one of them saying there's going to be parents of young children meeting about what's going on with the school right now that would be a bit of a project but there's a lot of small private providers through the hospital or the doctor's offices it's not going to get everybody but that's a good place to connect I'll try to I'll try to figure out some ways to do that down street health down street health might be a good place to congregate for that community I'm not going to look into that I'm going to set this up as a platform to get a review what's our timeline for that what would you like for overview that's meaningful when we pull the leadership team together to really start talking about staffing and personnel and stuff like that the grant has that scheduled for October 17 so mid-october would be good so we've got an October 15th meeting so mid-october 15th October 17th is in Roxbury okay in the past I've gone to the parents' groups and it's always a timing issue but the boosters at the high school mainstream middle school and the youth parents group is there a roster? is that something you'd be able to contact is anyone else interested in doing parents' groups? I wouldn't mind I'll help so what's the upcoming fundraiser on Columbus Day weekend has a board done anything that's such an interesting project the fall festival is that what it's called? whatever's happening yeah we can have a little talk to school board members wow that's brilliant I'm sorry at this early what is it we're communicating we're asking we're not communicating we know how this works open-ended questions sometimes we get blank stares the good thing is we can give a quick overview of what we've got this we'll spend a few minutes saying here are the things we're really worried about the Clawbacks and Act 173 is going to have an impact this year we're thinking about transportation issues we're thinking about transportation issues we're continuing about getting something to start on foreign language human resources coordinator and just kind of give the light of the land we also just said this is a year where we are merging two districts and examining examining systems and how things are coming together and what the efficiencies are and how we can use what we have to do a change talking about this with somebody and we weren't trying to just give them a list of new things I think it would have to be that it's like we're going to monitor the merger first year make sure we're successful evaluate how that's working on the budget the bond is getting going we need to be cautious about bond expenses and just be aware that we're going to find things along the way and then always just keep holding health care and staff costs basically level means they go up and they don't go up a little bit between these two it looks like what a half a million bucks or something and to do nothing it's a half a million dollars more and then probably that we're going to continue to work on equity which is sort of our long standing thing so everything is put through that lens those aren't like creating your list of of new things so I just would be careful at this early stage to get people to jazzed up about anything like busing is a great example we're definitely looking at doing some new things with busing that's about all we know at this point we'd love to hear your thoughts and for them to say oh you're putting a quarter million in for busing so we just have to be cautious of how much we know about the public document it's just that it's definitely kind of throw everything out there and make sure everything's on the table but it doesn't mean all these things will have impacts Jim do we need to have anything summarize in terms of feedback to present by the 14th are we going to have time with that 17th meeting just to kind of share or do you want to have things kind of compliant I think we can do it if you want to be more organized than that that certainly wouldn't be discouraged but I want to make this easy and I think that people have come back with a pretty good sense of what they've heard my experience in the boards in the past have been fairly generic in terms of the feedback we get so I could be wrong this time around but my guess is it would probably be the usual stuff better food better busing but the Roxbury piece is so important this time that we just continue to have our ear to the ground on that like how we doing how we doing perfect granted we can check it out in thirds do whatever so so policy reading so we've got budgeting board superintendent relationship board expectations and superintendent expectations so budgeting ride discussion budget policy just one type though that I wanted to point out budget presentations on that the sixth bullet I think is supposed to be a configuration of the fifth bullet oh yes the language quite a lot I think I'm hitting my face but it's actually a lot cruising around I had an opportunity to end it but I decided that I will digressing over here first question I have the opening paragraph the final statement the budget will be presented by the board for approval by the voters at the annual meeting of the district do we mean warned there the budget will be warned for vote are we talking about presentation as in us standing up presenting I think we're talking about the voting day the budget it's in paragraph after the bullets I felt like that was a little unclear we talked so much about presentations later and is this just talking about us putting forward a budget to be voted on I think that is what it's talking about and you're right and for Montpelier in particular it's new wording because we didn't really call it a meeting before in Montpelier it's a town meeting day but it was an election it's still a little Australian ballot if people will realize that that really means that you show up to vote as you always have showing up to a meeting but we're still presenting it to the voters what if we said the budget will be presented by the board for approval by the voters on town meeting day that would clarify for me what we're actually talking about is a physical presentation of us scratch out at the annual meeting of the district and related in our schedule December and January December the first budget presentation is it the first draft budget presentation or is it the first presentation of the budget because in January we have the second budget presentation is that the second draft or is that just us presenting the budget for the second time it's interesting presenting the same to us superintendent and business manager present initial budget that's it because it will be revised in there I knew that's what it was but the way it was worded it made me think this is presentation number two of the same thing rather than a revised updated draft okay those are the only things I thought were a little bit confusing further comments on I would just just for clarification you asked for verbal clarification would it make any editing clarifications do you think it needs editing clarifications after having to explain to you or not because it's the first presentation by I'm the only one that read it that way that it might just be a sequence of one or two presentations like I said we can add the word draft in there the first draft budget budget draft presentation although being realistically it's implied because in January after this to the board adopts the budget so clearly the budget prior to that is not an adopted budget which would imply it was a draft budget but it could also be that the idea is that you're reading it three times it's got to be close to final format somehow and you're just offering multiple opportunities for everyone to hear the presentation and ask questions but that's not what we're trying to achieve it's kind of like the way we used to interpret the policy change policy it's like no you can keep revising as you go I think it should be clear either draft or initial I think would be said or something like that or in draft we're still in revision period right until that final presentation initial revised or draft draft might be easiest I don't think you should say first draft because that's not true you're working internally long before then yeah but is it the first draft it's the first presentation it's the first presentation of the draft how about that presentation of proposed budget I'm not sure that gets you there well you have to change second yeah then you have to do something about revision or revised or something in the second one what if you don't revise it once it's clear we're in a revision period that's all that really matters but Jim it's right that technically it could come back without a revision it's possible it's fine yeah what do you think Grant have a proposed budget in December it's fine I don't want to be there let's go alright we have been presenting them as first draft, second draft as we go along that's the one that we're familiar with they're good with it it's more clear to what others disagree on adding draft not proposed that works for me too can I make one other quick change of recommendation on the budget presentation format the third bullet indicates anticipated amounts and sources of revenues from sources other than local taxation the education spending grant that includes language and state to me it just indicates anticipated amounts and sources of revenues that works other comments questions concerns ready to turn to board superintendent relationships is this originally adopted next time I think so my adoption one over there is called me as board superintendent relationship comments, questions, suggestions, concerns so on in 1.4 just because of the editing process we don't have two sentences that say almost the same thing I notice the same thing I wanted you to ask the person for somehow take what we love best for each sentence I think if we switch the if we transition the respective roles of the board and superintendent into that following statement it cuts the length almost in half because I think that's the only thing that's really different between the two so the proposal is to take the phrase define the respective roles of the board and superintendent out of the persons otherwise acts the persons and insert that phrase maybe as the second second clause sort of getting rid of the first part of the first sentence moving define to after objectives of the district it's a four directed limit yeah yeah that makes sense Jim when I was reviewing this today 1.6 process for the board evaluating the superintendent annually we at this point in time have a standing superintendent evaluation committee that isn't mentioned at all in this process I think I don't have a recommendation on exactly what language to include but I do think we need to have something that does reference the work of the superintendent evaluation committee will be used in our deliberations and the evaluation so the board will conduct a formal evaluation of the superintendent each year based upon the work of the superintendent evaluation committee and a schedule adopted by the board is going to work but I think just to have that reference would be good enough so the recommendation of the committee it might fit better in the second sentence just before we the language in the other committee we say do we want to be consistent and say the board will create and charge a standing superintendent evaluation committee so I didn't say anything about it from the budget policy but committees is something that did get added and modified in the expectation policy that's coming up next I feel like we're jumping between discussions now but the way I had drafted that change of the committee information and the expectation policy is that would be kind of the one shop location for these are our standing committees I had thought that it might make sense to tweak the budget policy a little bit that would be assuming that we adopted the language that was in the expectations policy but I think the expectations policy would be these are the standing committees these are the structures for ad hoc committees so we wouldn't have to have language scattered around other policies for the committees but I'm just kind of jumping between discussions that I had I had thought about in the budget policy but I didn't think it was too relevant so it's based upon the recommendation of the suggestions and just thought up on that we want to put in there specifically that the board shall form this committee that's actually in the next it's a command we'll have that in the language for my read of Robert Trolls and some of the policy examples if you have standing committees it's something that doesn't get played around with much essentially in a board's bylaws this is where you declare that these are the standing committees for other other questions or comments Melissa does this interest in this budget no major substantial change we're ready to move on to the board's question under B1 we had clerk treasurer in the Montpelier school system but in the merge system clerk treasurer so we do have elected officers we do have elected officials so we elect a clerk we elect a treasurer we don't as a board but the district so Shelly Quinn, Tammy Legacy are our clerk and treasurer so it's not a board appointment it's elected by the voters but I'm not I'm a little bit unsure whether that makes sense for us to define here what those roles are because I had actually asked Grant before the meeting started this evening I'm a little bit unclear how Shelly as a district treasurer right now really differs from a board appointed treasurer in the past would have signed off on board orders and warrants etc so I'm I'm a little unclear myself really what the difference is between a board appointed versus a selected official and they're not like this section is called board officers but they're not board officers they're their own thing they're not on the board so one of the I would be inclined to not have them here because they're the chair of state law and whatever their responsibilities are we can't trump it we can't trump it and they're not really part of the board yep so what do you want me to do I would I would just call you back to the board yeah I would did we appoint a parliamentarian we did yeah I was appointed a parliamentarian and I did get studious in the Robert's rules ever since so there were it's here it's very dry reading for you a bit surprised but it was funny because I section B3 there the responsibilities of the other board officers we really fleshed out it's amazing how much we've changed this policy and all the revisions we've added a lot after the retreat we really added a lot in terms of the role of the board chair and we realized that we neglected to include information regarding the other officers so I didn't have I pulled the language that's in here now was essentially verbatim from what had been included in the Malkilier policy in the past which was fairly generic and dry and I know whenever Michelle talked to me about the parliamentarian office it was essentially the general occasional questions come up about the Robert's rules and motions and addendums etc and occasionally the parliamentarian would fill in that information and when I was going trying to get more information for the actual duties and responsibilities of different positions I couldn't find anything about parliamentarians and it turns out according to Robert's rules the parliamentarian isn't normally a member of the board it's an outside council who's essentially hired by the board to serve as professional support so it's usually not a board appointed position that's why there's not a lot of information about responsibilities because it's typically a appointed professional who can fill in detailed information regarding questions and gets paid to read Robert's rules all those things they probably don't talk about his high school career day right so the vice chair I think was fairly straightforward in terms of just filling in behind the chair but we don't there is in that section B1 and then also the Clark recorder section we haven't defined I don't think who our secretary or recorder is I think it's been kind of by default Heather's position but we haven't actually declared who our secretary is who's responsible for making sure Ministers are taken care of I think it's fine that we have the superintendent's assistant do that but it does make sense for us to declare who that is at some point so I would recommend that we probably either elect from the board a secretary whose responsibility is to ensure that the superintendent's assistant is taking minutes or that they're posted etc but it does make sense for us to have somebody designated as secretary or reporter from the board should we be careful about that in terms of our ability to supervise that position it seems that we would actually appoint the superintendent to do that using her staff basically so in other words we turn it back as an administrative function choosing an individual which I think it's fine as long as it's declared at some point that this is who is taking responsibility for that task under the parliamentarian on four I guess it's not clear to me that the legally the parliamentarian can act in the chair's place I don't have to check but my recollection was it for the vice chair that that's in a statute do you know which statute because I perform all duties legally assigned to the office I feel like I've seen that somewhere that it's the job of the vice chair to assume that he's assigned to the chair of the chair I'm not sure I feel like if both the chair and the vice chair were unable to act the board might have to postpone the meeting or appoint the board and in turn present it or something yeah like I said when I was sent to you guys drafts on this I was something that I dedicated I honestly don't know what law this is referring to that the parliamentarian when our board of treasurer are more clear but what duties are legally assigned to that office do we need some administrative advice on this like consult somehow with someone I wonder if we could also which is if there are legally assigned duties of the vice chair have legally assigned duties of the vice chair and there's a catch all like other offices shall assume the duties appointed to them by the board there's not a law to define what the duties are if we wanted to be clear about why we have a parliamentarian we could have language that just said something like it provided the guidance on procedural matters right because there are other offices that Robert's rules recommend like sergeant of arms some boards have like librarians like curators right I guess that it is kind of up for us to decide like which offices we want to include now obviously you have to have chair and vice chair but yeah the parliamentarian in my mind feels like we should have a better description of what is that person supposed to be doing rather than just filling a title so Brian you're not sure that parliamentarian is required under statute no and clerk treasurer is not necessarily required under statute well the district is but that's not what we're talking about that would be bored I don't think well so all boards have chair vice chair and at least the secretary has made out those terms recorder, clerk but it seems like those three offices are essentially required under statute for the board or for the district for the board for the board for any committee basically for the board yes any governing board seems like we need to do some research to figure out what's required yeah nowhere to easily find the document that we adopted at the convening of the district when we had that first meeting of the district at which then the board was formed it's in the minutes so we declared that we were going to operate by roberts rules that night we had elected district clerk district treasurer I don't think I remember we appointed board chair vice chair we went through appointments of offices that night I don't remember reading where do we keep the district book district minutes book does that school district that would be tammy legacy is district clerk is that go on to our website just to confuse everyone that that's the district and not the board I mean I think that that's once a year right or something that the district means essentially but there's official things that have been decided and somewhere that should be accessible Libby can I ask do you have any recommendations on best resources to go to for answering these questions regarding the offices what's required it would be the place I go to particularly Susan I can't remember Susan's last name off my head he's talking about you have a you have a minute I'm going to run and third more on expectations because it sounds like this could be more work before we leave though are you guys comfortable with the language regarding committees I did and I did get some clarification from Libby the wellness policy does not include a board appointed wellness committee there's some administrative role there but the board does not have a wellness committee as well contract negotiation committee is that a standing committee or is that just called into place during budget during contract negotiations it's a standing committee because I don't think it's listed here I'm not sure we've ever decided one way or the other I mean it's a cycle that keeps going so it seems to make sense it's never been charged and since I've been on the board there's never been charged I think the budget committee is referred to as the finance committee in a couple of different places it could be budgeted it's called budgeted and finance we just finalized the policy we did and I think we called it the finance committee in the policy we agreed on we called it the finance committee finance committee let's just make it the same do we have food negotiations in here I have a list I have it as a hawk okay you can have yours where there are no negotiations that's right that's management those comfortable with it any other comments thanks for the work on that yeah thanks for having me okay last but not least any other interpretations easy language change 2.5 bullet number 5 instead of provide any significant other information the board requires including anticipated etc etc could we restate that into something like providing information the board requires for any significant circumstance including anticipated and actual coverage etc etc you know I just found to provide any significant other information kind of clunky could you put other just in front of significant provide any other significant information yeah I'm gonna do it we need to change 2.1 bullet for public communities in the public about the district's vision that's right so is that a mission vision thing yeah I think it was two meetings ago we approved the job description for the superintendent do you see these as two separate freestanding documents or should we look to align the two because the job description has a lot of overlap with that with this but it does not align entirely is that something that we need to add to that you know I'm fine with that I think they should certainly not contradict each other yeah the superintendent evaluation committee is the one that created the job description so it would be the one that makes sure that it aligns at least I think that's fine I think it should definitely align I don't think it has to be verbatim okay and I think a job description could be more descriptive or more expansive in some ways I think it certainly has to align with the spirit and certainly not contradict so should we put this up for adoption would that work ahead or no I'm going to make sure that happens first let's make sure it happens first I don't see anything in here that does not make the intent but I want to make I want us to have a meeting and make sure and make sure it meets the spirit of the job description and the spirit of this okay anything more on the superintendent expectations great I think we've got two that should be ready for an option one where you can define some things out and then also just a job description I think that's it need a motion for executive session need a motion for executive session and there's actually two things in the executive session two things in the executive session need to invite granted do we want to formally I don't think so I think you can go on do we've ever done that in the past no we don't that doesn't have to be part of the motion so we have purposes contract negotiations correct well that's not an appointment it's an appointment of a public official and this bullet is contract negotiations it's documents because it's different bullet one of the it's different provisions for executive session one is to discuss or consider records or documents that are not public documents is it different reason okay and I don't know which one do you want which one do you want it's it's documents accepted then we also need I move that the board enter executive session for two purposes to discuss documents discuss and consider documents that are not public documents under the access to public records act and consider the appointment of a public officer second all those in favor