To call it order, the Montpelier Roxbury Board of Directors meeting for October 18th, starting at 6.34. So first order of business is public comment. Just to remind folks that that public comment is for us to hear from the public. We listen only, we don't respond in real time, but it's a very valuable part of our process in terms of getting community input, learning about the concerns of community members and what we do here. We take very seriously and as part of our input process, we also acknowledge that it can be sometimes difficult and nerve wracking to talk before the board, especially depending on the sensitivity of the circumstance. We really appreciate public comment and our silence is not representative of a lack of response at all. I said, do we have any public comment? Anyone in the room? Anyone online? Looks like we don't have anyone online. So moving to the consent agenda. Also, I want to add to the agenda a potential letter of support for a community development grant for Roxbury that I believe Rhett and Kristen have put together. And Libby I think is sending a separate one on behalf of the administration. The purpose is to help with downtown revitalization in Roxbury. And it could go to a variety of potential investments to continue to allow Roxbury to be a vibrant downtown center and hopefully become even more vibrant. So add that, we can put that in board business. And then do the RFPs ever go around? I talked with Andrew. The facilities group has gotten them. And I think we forgot to include them in the entire packet. So what do we do about that? Do you want to maybe give your recommendation and then give people a time to review? And then we can do like a five minute meeting if we need to approve it. I would say let's talk about it and then see where we're at. It was pretty clear to Andrew and I. Okay. I just want to make sure, in case the board does not have a comfort level, we can talk about that. Okay. Do you have a motion to approve the consent agenda? Do you have a second? Any discussion? One question. The notes are coming up slowly. Oh, the draft agenda for the November 1st meeting, I saw that we had the budget and initial budget, not presentation of the budget, but things like factors to consider. Do we think this would be a good time to open up public comment after a presentation or is that, are we not ready for that? Possibly. Okay. Possibly something to think about. The purpose of that is to explain to the board and the community how what we know now around the waiting study is drastically influencing our budget. So it's really to put in, so the board's aware of the enormous pressures that are on our budget this year, which could generate great public comment afterwards to talk about goals and priorities. Right. Yeah, so I could see that being appropriate. Okay. Great. Thanks. I had two really quick questions. One is the finance committee meeting in this room right before him. We usually meet in 126. Okay. Cool. Right over there. And then I saw that y'all are holding a session with students on the 23rd, 24th. So I can't make it. Well, can we give them an opportunity to share some of what they're hearing from their peers in the meeting on the? Yeah. What are the goals and priorities? Yeah. Fantastic. Thank you. Any more discussion on the consent agenda? All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Aye. Thanks, Kristen. Thanks, Kristen. We're out of town, Kristen. And we have student presentation. I think this is your first student presentation. So take it away. We have an update about the listening session we're having at the high school on the 23rd during song block here. And we're just going to invite students to come and talk about what their interests are for how we can use the budget next year. And I think we would find it really helpful if there were some members of the board present to like guide us and use the board language and all that stuff. But yeah. And that's it. We are more fun stuff as we have fall harvest celebration tomorrow. It's just this big day where our school gets together as a community and we all eat lunch and dress up and watch students perform. And this year we're focusing on the taking care of our community aspect. So each teacher advisory is going to go out and do some community service to help Montpelier with the aftermath of the flood. And we're just really excited. And we want to share that with everyone. Hold on. Back up a second. Usually I have a conference during this day. So I've never actually gone. The conference is next week so I can go tomorrow. But I have to dress up. Explain this part of it. Do you have a TA? I don't. Okay. Well what happens is each TA like picks a theme and we decorate our tables that we lunch at with the themes and we dress up. So a few years ago my TA did sleepover. So we dressed up in pajamas to school and we brought like a popcorn machine. And it was just fun. Is it a surprise? Yeah. Because then there's a competition. As soon as you say that I say central office needs to join next year. All right. Good. Done. Tomorrow I'll be dressing up as a superintendent. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. And I will be out of town next week. But I definitely encourage any board members to come to that. And if you. It's tomorrow. No, the 24th. The listening session. The listening session. Sorry. I thought you meant the fall harvest. No. The listening session. Jason, by the way, just texted me and said, you need to wear an owl costume. Wow. He's falling. He's falling. Do you have an owl costume? We do have an owl costume. We have an owl costume. Anyway. Go for it. Yeah. I think Emma, you're going to. The only thing is if there are more than two. You have to be in listen only mode. Or we have a meeting. I was going to say the same thing. Yeah. I think that's general rule of practice. We have an owl costume. Anyway, go ahead. Go for it. Yeah. I think that's general rule of practice for that anyway. Like any information that's given is not like decision making information. Yeah, exactly. But sometimes it's easy if they ask questions to start. Yeah. Having to start to look like a meeting. But yes, I will be there for sure. And I think a couple other people expressed an interest. Not sure if it will work with their schedules. Yeah. And you might want to kind of let people know at the beginning because they might be tempted to ask questions or get your input on things. OK. I'll make sure we're in violation of public meeting law that day. Yes. I'll be in charge. She should make sure every day. She's just not responsible for it. I'm not going to be in charge every day. Usually you're in charge. I know. Are you guys finished? Yes. OK. We'll be longer next time. Yeah. No. Brief is never not appreciated. Totally over quantity. Yes. We're kind of flying through. Famous last words. Board business. Same thing. It's like we share a brain sometime, which is really scary. OK. So we received three responses to our RFP for the facilities. They were all excellent. And so we were in a really good position with the RFPs we received. There was a scoring rubric on our RFP that we put out that Andrew and I went through after having three interviews and checking with references of the three companies. Well, more companies than that because of partnerships. And in the end, we would recommend to the board that we invite the firm Truex Collins and Engineering Ventures to join us or help lead this facility's work. What I did was I copied their. This was one of the main sellers for Truex Collins. They've developed this whole child framework which they which runs all their all their work is run through this and their core values of their work very much mirror Montpelier Roxbury's core values for what we want for students. So this was a big driver. They have a significant amount of educational work across the world and in Vermont. They have a very successful track record with community engagement. If you're aware of the Winooski School District, Winooski just went through a major bond and renovation of their building and the community engagement process there. It could be a challenging one because you want to get so many diverse perspectives and languages and things like that. And I talked to the superintendent who worked with Truex in that process and he said they were magnificent through that. So they value the equitable discussion and have learned ways to increase engagement across multiple identities and diversity. So that was a and they spoke to that specifically in their interview to us. They have excellent references and they have an amazing reputation amongst district leaders across Vermont. They are not new to this scene in any way shape or form.  They're partnering with engineering ventures. So if I remind you our RFP is a visioning for the future of innovative design for school potentials as well as flood mitigation potentials and that piece which is more of an engineering feat and engineering ventures is actually doing a lot of the work here in Montpelier. They also have done a lot of work with us in general. Andrew knows them well and is quite comfortable with their skill level. We already have a high level of collaboration with engineering ventures and they also have displayed success and flood mitigation techniques that they've put in play with Waterbury being their example. So they after Irene they were the engineering firm that worked on Waterbury's center building. Maybe I'm going to get that building wrong but in the latest flood in July while much of Waterbury had flooding damage the work that engineering ventures did not. It came through pretty clearly. So there's some successful mitigation efforts that we see very near to us. They have the ability with Truex to think very big around schools and facilities and potentials for the future and at the same time have this expertise from the engineering ventures firm around the smaller pieces of mitigation which was attractive to Andrew and I and on our Rubik they scored a perfect score. The other companies had excellent RFPs and have excellent chops and some that I was really intrigued by called Jim today just to run some by him today. Some that I want to hook our students up with to work with and in the end Truex responded to our RFP and all of the components of the RFP with the most experience and detail and success. So we would recommend to the board that we go with Truex Collins and I'm happy to take any questions about it as well. They do have their RFP right here. Yeah, let me just add kind of one more thing that that you know, Libby and I had discussed with the thing is important is apparently Truex Collins they did the Winnowski renovation which also involved a very detailed community process and all reports are that they did an excellent job of creating that process during that process making sure it was really informative and people felt heard and involved and you know obviously Winnowski and well there are somewhat different communities but you know I think that skill is something we want as well. So one of the things in our RFP and one of the questions that all three people asked or firms asked in our interview was how big do you want to go? You know how high in the sky and if this is going to be we're spending a lot of money on this report and study and I think one of the things that the board is interested in and should be interested in is if we're going to truly think towards the future are our facilities enough? Can we renovate what we have to build what we need if they're not and are there other possibilities for potential new builds way down the road or whatever but we want to be able to use this report for years to come we don't want to report for just what we have right now or what our needs are right now and Truex can really think towards that through different design for school. Will they also look at the possibility of combining with U32 or doing something with them?  It's outside of the scope of what we ask them to do mainly because they haven't been hired by Washington Central or you know they are a different district and we are not in charge of that decision that's a collaborative decision to be made together. I think one thing they can do is they can look at some very basic data to talk about what's the reality of that situation and put that inside the report because there are some who believe that merger is really an easy decision to make and maybe don't know all the numbers of the data you know simple enrollment projections and simple what can each school building in both districts hold in terms of students can make that very easy choice look much more complex so they can do that level of work for us and you know get in the report so we have it from an outside perspective we have those numbers as they are now today but their role is not to speak to Washington Central and dig into more definitive merger ideas. I think since that idea has been thrown around a bit it will come out would be a good idea to do what we can with it and get some sense of whether it's in or out of options.  They're superintendent and board chair who also said kind of hold on. Hold on. Yeah and Washington Central is going through their own facilities process and I think they're going to figure some things out too so I don't think this report is going to be a deep dive on it but I think it will give us some insight into that. You know when we talk to Washington Central in the spring when they've gone through their process I think we'll both be better informed. About needs and desires. About needs and desires and what makes sense. And what might be cool is does the Washington Central community's vision for future education for students mirror Montpelier Roxbury's but you know because both of us are going through a study together so that's going to be great. Yeah. Did all three of the RFPs come in with the same roughly bids as far as price goes and how much was this one. Truex was the cheapest. Okay. Actually so Truex came in and I'm going to give you the exact price 62 is 62,000 is in my head right now but I don't want to quote something wrong when it's right here in front of me. And the other one came in at 74 and one came in at around 7072 I think. Yeah, 62,5. Okay. Thanks. And not to put the facilities coming out of the spot but you did I think have opportunity to maybe peek at these where the board members did not just any thoughts on your end. I didn't have a ton of time to like read them thoroughly so I don't know that I'm the right person to and I wasn't able to attend any of the actual interviews which we were also invited to do. I'm not sure if Kristen ended up attending either. It was a pretty quick turnaround. That was understandable. The timeline was fast. What we did both do I think was ask for a couple of questions to be included and the question that I asked to be included was around the community engagement piece and so I don't know, I don't have any feedback on how the three firms answered that but as you remember in was it two board meetings ago when we talked about it the RFP. Anyway, when we talked about the RFP I brought up sort of my hesitation around the Roxbury issue and we worked through that and changed some of the language but that was sort of where I was coming from is like how are they going to hold those conversations in the community so I don't know if you can let us know how they answered that question. Aren't we answered it was interesting because two of the three respondents are Montpelier rights live here in Montpelier and have participated in the criminal community sessions that the city has run as facilitators so they're very close to that and are very close one in particular who has probably more knowledge because they have children in our school system more knowledge of our district than another who lives in Montpelier but doesn't have kids in the system so they know us from periphery more than anything else and Andrew and I spoke about that Truex Collins do not live in our district one of their members lives in Washington District as a matter of fact but not ours so Andrew and I spoke about that around what there's so many positives I could name with that closeness to our community and there's also some negatives I can imagine too around group thinking having easy access to social media and being influenced in ways positively or negatively or influenced in directions that way and they all have different skill sets in this one of the groups has a significantly successful track record in lobbying for educational causes to the legislature and spoke about that significantly in their interview and with lobbying efforts you have lots of community work that goes with it so there's definitely a skill there another had more had less of the really formal community engagement experience and Truex has both of those pieces so David Epstein lead here is working with the legislative committee on school construction aid he's the lead on that so they've tapped him to do that which states a lot about his experience also has tons of experience in community engagement around these types of projects like that has been his career and then he hands it off to his partner to do more of the business piece of it I didn't hear that kind of intentionality with some of the other groups okay I don't know if Kristen wants to weigh in anymore I was looking at the time with Epstein with everything else going on there could be right now I'm not on opportunity to really dig deep into the RRP so we're kind of a bit confused and I think I would say I do appreciate your comment just about being out there with a blank slate you know the opportunity for bias I don't appreciate that that's productive you know I would be interested to take a look at the specifically the community engagement he's been seeking a complex community with lots of different communities but not community to reach and that would require a number of strategies so it would be interesting to take a look back but yeah I didn't participate in any of the interviews or if they can yeah just so you know your connections a little staticky kind of drama videos it's like you're coming at us from underwater yeah just click on show captions and just see if at least maybe the transcript comes through so that we can follow I mean just as a troubleshooting a banner yeah I think it's Chris's connection sorry about that just testing is this any better so much better okay great I'm going to take my earphones out essentially in a nutshell what I said is I was in Emma's camp I didn't have the opportunity to dig into the RFPs or attend any of the interviews I do appreciate the perspective around just you know kind of fresh faces and perspectives and eliminating any opportunity for bias I can definitely see some benefit you know to that and it would be I would be interested to see just Truex's report for Wynusky and to take a look at like what some of their outreach strategies look like I could see Wynusky being a complex community to do outreach in and just to think about how that would extend to our two communities and specifically our desire to see you know we're always trying to engage folks that are harder to engage or you know historically participate you know less frequently in our process so I have nothing to add in terms of interviews and RFP details but those are just two cents thank you helpful Mia just a process question we should vote in order to approve the hire is that right we have to vote yeah okay I wasn't just I wasn't sure if it was just something Libby and Andrew could decide no not with this there's action needed yeah okay yeah I guess the question is are we you know I think only a couple of us have really had you know the time to review it it sounds like even of those who've had access to review it I think even of those who had access to review it there has maybe not been a universal deep dive and the rest of us have not seen it so are we comfortable doing it totally out of the recommendation I mean I am I also had the benefit of another conversation with Libby was able to kind of talk it through you know if we punt and take time to review it we'll probably not want to wait two weeks to give an answer we'll probably want to do like a 10 minute meeting or something just to give a year and a does that make sense Libby it does I can say that our decision was drastically influenced by our interviews yes not to say that the report that all of them put out are is bad or anything like that but we were able to dig a little bit deeper into their process that you won't you don't get by reading their proposals I mean just a question about process so does it because we've discussed it in a public meeting it can be just like we don't need to then come back together and have a public meeting with the full proposal full ROPD yeah you can make a vote too well it seems to me we have committees for a reason right so I mean if they recommended I think I trust people on the committee to think a good recommendation well right I think that what we're saying it wasn't the facilities and energy committee that's making the recommendation it's Libby and Andrew so which we can still say the same thing about we have Libby and Andrew for a reason and maybe we can trust what they're telling us when are they planning to start when are we hoping that they'll start the work is it like right away yeah yeah so our RFP contract the dates that was listed in the RFP is anticipation of commencement the 19th and we had a conversation with Truex around the schedule and the schedule is tight right this is a tight schedule so that if it needs to influence not this year's budget obviously but next year's it can so it's a relatively tight timeline for the work to happen so I would encourage the board to take a vote tonight and were you and Andrew the only two people interviewing or were you okay and then using the rubric like can you reveal a little bit like was Truex just above and beyond yeah sure according to the rubric so it was out of 100 points and there were 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 pieces to be scored on GBA received 75 points Truex received 100 and Leonine and their partner received 52.5 Andrew included a .5 there and that was on me so I mean to me based on that it being such a big spread between the three I would feel like we could probably vote tonight and they were the least expensive too yeah I'm comfortable I mean a 100 a couple questions first question is did the RFP originate with the board or originate with the superintendent its office so I made the recommendation of the board that we start this process in response to attending the Montpelier city conversations where the school and the district were being brought into that conversation and we're a separate entity of the city so knowing that piece I propose that it would behoove the board to move into an outside consultant to study facilities based on the traumatic events of the summer and then the board approved the RFP two meetings ago to put it out there and the second question is would the cost be FY24 the year we're in or next year the year we're in right now out of fund balance other questions I'll entertain a motion to approve the recommendation to go with Truex I'll move that we approve the recommendation from the administration to hire Truex for this process second discussion I just want to thank expert for taking the time to explain that I feel completely confident of your choice and I love that they started with a whole child framework I think that's fantastic and I'm also really glad that you had options for the people we were talking to with different skill sets and it was interesting to go through to do the interview process really talented people out there all is it ever any opposed great excited to get this moving thank you for all the hard work board go now board indicators what letter of support for the Roxbury oh yeah thank you for reminding me that we added that Rhett or Kristen Joanna did you circulate a copy or no yes you did it's in our email I've not checked email since mid-afternoon there's been some women Roxbury to improve the state of the village and there's been some progress the new park has been well attended it's very small it's very sweet it has a nice ping pong table and the materials are just out there in little bins for people to use as they wish which is remarkable I don't know that anything has appeared as of yet and there are a lot of folks banding together there are people purchasing property in tandem in partnerships to try to protect the property and the revitalization it is the Roxbury Village revitalization plan that's looking for municipal planning grant funds we wrote a letter of support we described the nature of the relationship with the village the town is 40.6 square miles it's pretty large it may be the largest geographic town in the state it's close it's mountainous and there's not much of a focal point except for the little village and so that's the experience of the kids that go there it's going to enhance the sense of community in the village and we try to describe some of our thoughts about that and how important it would be improvements to the area improvements to the sidewalks improvements to drainage you know Roxbury floods too it's the highest point railroad but it still floods in the state so it's actually a river the dog flows north and the third branch flows south they're right across the road from each other but they're still flooding there so it's in need of attention and we wanted to express our appreciation for the effort on behalf of the board and we hope that you all agree do we need action to send it or do we just need to plus it any questions about the letter Emma is there anyone like has there been any vocal opposition to this type of like seeking this type of funding in the community not that I'm aware of I know that there are there are folks there is a a a faction of the community that sort of wants to leave things as they are essentially but I don't know that they're vocally in opposition to the revitalization effort I don't know if they can those two sort of viewpoints are in conflict or not I know that people are very protective of their private property but I don't know that is in opposition to revitalizing the village and the infrastructure of the little village thanks for putting this together yeah, no thank you in a short time frame too I can't tell from reading the letter of support for the email and I'm just reading them both now if the grant is for our VS or if it's for something else in Rocksbury it's for the Rocksbury Village revitalization plan which is a sort of a committee does the revitalization plan include doing things to RVS Rocksbury Village school no, more around the school got it, okay I'm not sure if the town hall I'm not sure if the town hall is entirely in the ownership of the I don't know it is entirely of the ownership of the board but that's as merged you know a set of priorities as you could have because our town meetings are happening yes they are that's the meeting just really quickly so I live in that my grants and so I either write letters of support or ask for letters of support all the time the only thing I've ever seen come of a letter of support is goodwill and so like I can't see if there's is there any potential downside to providing a letter of support and if not then yeah it's a no brainer yeah I think it's a no brainer now it's a yeah it's a great way to help the town to move the village yes I just want to be clear I wasn't saying I would expect any of the grant money to go toward RVS I just was trying to get some clarity because RVS is mentioned a lot in the letter just wanted to see there was a template that provided instruction for binding the interests of the entity which would be RVS and the school board and the district connected and why it would make sense for us to write this letter of support I'm with you now yeah just to add the letter was requested by a member of the planning commission put a lot of work into revising our town plan and within that town plan I think that was 2020 when it got approved and within the town plan one of the big goals was to gain access to more federal and state funding specifically about the revitalization of the downtown village area so it's sort of an extension of this big process that the town completed in the last few years and yeah the planning commission is the group that's really taking the lead on it but the money would come through the town yeah move to approve this letter of support for the Rocksbury Village revitalization plan great any discussion I don't think we need a motion but since we have one we might as well hi thanks again great work and hopefully it comes through can I just thank you to Libby for also issuing a letter on behalf of the district I know the planning commission is going to be happy to get both of these letters so thank you I already have mine great board indicators I don't know me if you want to start this conversation hi I had an idea for how we could hold it yes which is that we now we've shared with the board an updated version of the indicators of success and measures of progress of those indicators of success Libby do you have it in word version or is it only PDF in Google okay great great the reason I was asking is because we might have some editing in real time happening during the board meeting it would be good if we could all see it to be able to wrap our heads around any language changes but before we get there just to give everyone a little bit of bridge from last meeting to this meeting what we said in the last meeting is we had heard feedback from board members Libby Jim and I sat down and processed that feedback and in that meeting Libby said I'm having sort of like a light bulb moment here which is that essentially each of our indicators we could name a measure of progress for each of our indicators that's essentially what we're all looking at here in the course of doing that you'll see in the second priority the one around safety belonging and wellness we did do a little bit of revising of the indicators of success there used to be five of them and we found there was some repetition in the different bullet points there and so we've condensed them into the 3D and while I think what we started out doing was are there measures of progress that sort of match each of these indicators of success as we what we've landed on I think at least in the first two priorities is more of a do we have measures of progress listed here that will give us the if we measure use them as the measurement tool that we intend them to be will we be learning these priorities around our indicators of success so I wanted to kind of tie it all up with that because while we started out I think thinking oh maybe we could like line up a measure of progress for every indicator of success I think what we actually ended with was something a little bit more holistic that addresses the full priority and each of the indicators of success within the priority by having multiple measures of progress hopefully that just that preamble made enough sense to everyone sitting here on the tables here and so my suggestion would be that we take each priority one by one and ask that question of ourselves as they're written right now will they serve as the tool we intend them to be and then if the answer is yes great we'll move on to the next one if the answer is no then what are the ways what's the additional language or change language that would help us get to that making them that tool that we need them to be how does that sound I think good sounds good I was really pleasantly surprised when I opened this up and saw I followed that logic I was like oh it's like there's one for each and so I don't think we need to hash out language but I don't think the left column are indicators but again I don't think it's necessary to parse out like the specific terminology I just really like the structure yeah so I just wanted to start out by saying that because I think last time I voiced like there were like one or two measures in some cases and I thought we needed more I agreed with the statement that you can't have too many right and so I like this is a nice balance so can I give a little like background to the feedback so I sent some feedback via email prior to the meeting and I just you know I haven't had a lot of time for board work as I think a lot of us struggle to find the time to like really do deep dives on these materials and so I've been feeling a little like frustrated by my lack of time to attend to you know whether I feel settled in this language or not and I ended up spending some time today with a friend of mine who's a data analyst by profession and I gave her some of my thoughts and then she gave me some feedback on you know my thoughts relating to the language and so I do have some suggestions about how to move forward and we can go sort of step by step but one of the things first is that there's sort of some industry standard language and Scott just touched on the big one is indicators and indicators in the industry of sort of social science research isn't the way that we're using it here or like the things that are in the bullet points aren't necessarily indicators so my first suggested change would be maybe to call you know we have the vision statement that we have written so that's the vision statement and then the things in bold in the green are the goals and then the things below in the bullet points to the left would be called objectives and then the expected measures of progress are more aligned with industry standard of what indicators are so that would be one suggest the first suggestion I have can you say that again I didn't follow so we have a vision statement it's not it's not on this document but it's on the other document that's listed in our agenda so the vision it would be like a vision and then goals objectives indicators objectives measures of progress is that what you meant no so like so the vision would be listed and then close the academic achievement gap the three things listed in green and bold close the academic achievement gap sense of belonging safety and wellness and community engagement and accountability would be the goals and then what we now currently have labeled as district indicators would be labeled as objectives and then the things to the right that we now have labeled as expected measures of progress I think it's okay to leave it worded that way or we could call them indicators we could call them indicators indicators slash measures of progress if we want but that would make more sense to people who are in the know with this type of thing sure yeah right now glad to have one on the board so so I'm clear which like measures of progress and indicators basically in terms of the terminology it's just a terminology change we call this the green objective all and this objective okay and we would call this indicators and we would get rid of the measures of progress entirely and get rid of yes yes or if you want to put it in parentheses like indicators, parentheses, measures of progress if people you know I think that might make sense to more people who are not data analysts well I'm not a data analyst and that I couldn't articulate what it was about it but that sure and then Emma did you want to move on to some of the feedback you have for the first goal yeah and I'm happy like I don't have to be we can we can take turns one two three before me if anyone else has other anything else to say did other folks have more overall feedback but yeah that's a good idea any other overall feedback before we jump into any specific goal to see Jill and then Scott my overall feedback is I think we've come a long way and I really like this a lot and it makes sense to me and that subtle change of the names also makes sense to me as far as like these are the these are the indicators right like if I have a fever an indicator would be that I took my temperature and it was 99 so like I think we've come a really long way and I really appreciate it and this I really like the sort of the layout and the structure good so our audience is the community ourselves and so I think as much as we can spell things out so instead of MTSS write out multi-tier thank you very much SCL is another one Cognia is a thing so I don't think that you write that but in any case wherever possible I think it makes sense to spell things out let me put an asterisk and I'll put like a a jargon jargon glossary at the end because then it gets really long so I'll just put an asterisk next to each jargon and put it down below first time you use something spell it out and then every time after it gets pretty long overall I think we're ready for you okay so my first recommendation well first I had a question about Cognia if you could explain what Cognia is and does that include VT cap it's the same thing looking at the VT cap thing and couldn't find Cognia on there Cognia is the company who does it now so it's the same thing it's just being called two different things nothing's stuck yet so it could be called something different next time I don't know but it's the replacement of us back could it be valuable to put Cognia in parentheses VT cap or Cognia slash VT cap just because I think that's what most community members are seeing like when it doesn't matter to me yeah it's just when it changes I was there for kneecap to S back yeah that would be fine with me yep local assessments yep so Cognia or whatever it is current state assessment okay great and so the other thing the language that I had emailed ahead of the meeting was about wanting to be sure that we're clear on not just disaggregating data when possible but that we're actually hoping to see a 5% growth in literacy and a 10% growth in math demographics right making sure the language is clear about that right and not just that we see what the data is but that the overall measure of achievement is that it's 5% as a whole but that we would want to see 5% growth in different demographic areas and so the language that I sent that I suggested was using state and local assessments we see 5% growth across all demographics in literacy each year through spring 2026 and same for the the math language there's probably a lot of different ways to slice it yes so like this was a conversation that we got into a few meetings ago where it's like how much time do we spend being sure that we're not like pigeonholing into being able to speak for like every single demographic and a lot of them we can't speak for because of FERPA like a standard set of demographics that are you know reference like I mean there are one demographic group I know this is crazy but could be like people who don't tie their shoes right so that's a demographic group coming from the data analyst so like what's the core group just right so I'm open to suggestion I actually was noticing I was thinking the same thing Jake noticing that in the A23 policy for engagement and vision there actually is I know that we use it over and over again in policy but there is sort of like a standard demographic breakdown of based on race, ethnicity, disability gender identities, sexual orientation and socioeconomic status so we could use that if it's better for you yeah if those are like the six core groups that data is collected for there's a couple challenges in there with FERPA with the N size being too small and gender identity we don't have formalized data on that particularly tied to test scores nor should we I also think a part of it is like just what is the reasonable interpretation most people would reasonably interpret that we need to report data out on people who don't tie their shoelaces you know what I'm saying yeah I do know what you're saying so maybe like it's the five groups just mentioned and then we add to the extent that we're allowed to look at their data individually or publicly display data you can't display any data that could be identifiable so the N size is 11 right I can see that being like a helpful footnote in that area as thinking about audience as a caregiver or lay person when they see when possible while I think we all at this point are aware of the N less than 11 limitation when possible to a caregiver maybe like you know when we've got time for it so you know maybe that's something that we want to just either kind of succinctly you know make clear in that statement or a footnote again I know we don't want this to be like an overly complex document but just being clear about that knowing that we're not going to be the only intended users for this I appreciate that you were saying Jay in that you know the public looks at this they're not going to really know unless we describe exactly what we're talking about so I think it's just good to be really transparent and clear about it yeah I had a question just clarification around the like when the N is lower than 11 so just because we can't report out doesn't mean we shouldn't be tracking that as a dictionary we just can't report it publicly so the board can see those data we just can't report them out in public we are the public the problem is when the board meets as a body everything we do is unless we have a reason to go to an executive session and looking at that data is not a reason to go to an executive session I also as a board member wouldn't want to see that level of possibly identifiable information if it's not allowed to be reported publicly I wouldn't feel comfortable seeing it no again I guess I didn't ask the question correctly to me the important thing is as a district we're still collecting that information and so if I know that there's a demographic group I don't need to know what the demographic group is so I don't need to know what the like I won't have the information that would indicate who those people were but rather we're being told we're doing great except there's a demographic group in which we our literacy scores are dropping right so that's the piece that's important not that they're not knowing the specific groups but knowing that there is a group that's lagging is important information I think in the way you just said that statement that is a very viable and feasible statement to make okay I think it might leave the board feeling unsatisfied unless you also showed us unless you also showed us disaggregated data and then there was a certain demographic you didn't show us it was obvious it might end up being like I also think like the methodology and the way that it's reported out especially the disaggregated stuff is going to come down the road and we don't really need to define that tonight right so like I mentioned at the last meeting that like most of these groups are probably over 11 and some of them were not collecting right so it's like as if you're reporting by district but if you're looking at like third grade then maybe you can't report out totally so I think usually we can sort of find some valuable information that can be reported publicly as long as we bring that that end size up past 11 and it's also important I think just to say that at the end size is below 11 and we're not reporting on it doesn't automatically mean that the scores are low as well right right right it's not it's not an automatic exactly so I see Julie over here I just wanted to bring this back to right now what we are sort of working on is these two pieces of updated language that Emma has proposed with maybe an friendly amendment opposed by Jake that we replace all demographics with listing out at least the five that are sort of like the germane ones to testing I just wanted to make sure that I think that's where we're at right now Jill what's your So if we do go with Emma's edit we wouldn't need this a disaggregated but I was going to say in light of our end size conversation that could be just say as allowable instead of when possible and maybe that would eliminate the feeling of it being a wishy washy thing but like as allowable disaggregated by but if we're not going to use that then that's a good the other thing is to put the like this disaggregated bullet is listed what is it only listed the two times I guess so it is and then but it's wrapped into another one yeah I feel like we could just pull that out as like an asterisk at the end of the document if we're putting other things as asterisk is at the end of the document that could be something that we're also putting down we're stating the beginning yeah yeah I think the disclosure limits are actually sort of not here they're neither here nor there for this document like the fact that we can't disclose information for groups less than 11 you know that's does that belong in a goals document no it no I think the reason that we're talking about that though is because board members are then thinking like okay this is a goal or a measure of progress we're setting for ourselves how are we going to know whether or not we're meeting it so we're already thinking a couple steps ahead to like when the administration comes to us and brings us data we're going to want to know if we're hitting this measure of progress so I think I don't think we're talking about putting that language in the goal but it more just like thinking a couple steps ahead you're saying you don't think that the bullet that the language under bullet point a disaggregated when possible by identity and socio-economic status needs to be in this document that we're saying yeah yeah so not just the end size but that it's just an expectation that we will disaggregate when shared with the board it's been a topic of conversation that has come up enough from public comment and board members that it's something that we're interested in sort of like our equity goals and policy for the district that I think it actually does make sense to keep that language in even if it's sort of superfluous just because it will sort of touch on issues that have come up in the past yeah I just like the idea of having a little blurb right in between somewhere there I don't know above the boxes that just speaks to this and says you know we're trying to you know our general intention which is to be as equitable as possible and and I don't know it's we spent a lot of time on this I think that the administration is equally focused on closing gaps where they exist and I think if we put it right at the top it doesn't have to go into each little section maybe that makes sense to me because the way that Emma has worded the two measures of progress I think puts that into the measure of progress itself and then what we're saying is we will be able to adequately use them as measures of progress when we have data that is presented in a desegregated way when allowable but could put that in as like either in the glossary bottom or right at the top meaning it doesn't need to be a sub bullet in the measure of progress itself how much of the language from the other version the vision approaches values that those top parts the mission and vision approach are those going to be merged with the work that the administrative team put together in this document that we're working on or there's a lot of what I heard Rhett saying is at the top of that vision approach and values draft right right so the sections on vision and mission and approach could go above the table on this document I was just wondering if any of the documents were going to be combined because I know that Libby you all pulled out the pieces at the bottom to work on so I'm just wondering if they're getting merged again what I would recommend is to hand that to my trustee Anna to make pretty and then have a link to it perhaps on that doc which have them both up on the school or on the district website fantastic okay how do folks feel about these two updated language for these two measures of progress the ones that speak to growth within academic the goal of closing the academic gap have you you haven't changed it in real time on the document right would you like I still have only a PDF if you go through the link that's on the agenda on the agenda and then you'll that's what I need to do I was just waiting for some clarity as to which what wording I was blaming you for that not you sorry I'm still catching up but yes I feel good about it hear me let me just share it with you real quick I have thoughts about the fourth one and so for at that point I'm happy to or finish the third or continue the first two I'm with you now thank you email so we would do that that we see 5% growth across all I got it if we want the language I'm suggested across all demographic areas thank you I just wrote across all demographics sorry I mean I agree with what Jake said about it are we going to take that into account and list it there or put it in parenthesis be somewhere okay just so people know what we're looking at or do we change the word all like just say across demographics demographics of interest or something I'd say I just take out the all yep does that feel better Jake or do you want to list them out I think somebody would want to know which demographics we're talking about mm-hmm and there's only five that we are really able to track and collecting data on so maybe we would somewhere say what the five are gender, race, socioeconomic status disability and what's the fifth one ethnicity thank you I would challenge gender simply because we have the way the state reports gender is a yes or no or a dichotomy a two choice binary that's what I was looking for and that is not how our student population or what our community values however it's what we're forced into from the state so I would not want to inflict anything on our students who do not fall into one of those two categories mm-hmm so I would just challenge that or have the board think closely around that data yeah I wonder if we keep it in and then when we're reporting out we explain the limitations of reporting out, reporting that data out if I'm non-binary I feel uncomfortable just seeing it I would argue too the value of that breakdown doesn't seem like it would be nearly as helpful as the ones that come to mind socioeconomic status you know they're sort of the big top three and if students are on an IEP those are the sort of measures that I think actually provide value I don't see how gender actually is a valuable metric so I don't think we need to that might be the case now but I can remember when I was in school there were big concerns about like are we ignoring girls in classrooms or are we over as ascribing aggression to boys and males of lower socioeconomic status are like the worst off absolutely I'm just saying for the purposes of our goal setting if that's not a measure or an indicator that we need to see but that's fine that was one of the reasons why I was interested in gender because that was sort of the big one of the things that Libby has said and you did just say recently that it might not be true anymore because we don't have updated data but in the past it was pretty reliably boys who qualified for free and reduced lunch that were like predictably falling low on state assessments so I feel like there would be a way for us to be delicate around the reporting of that and when we present the data explaining its limitations so I guess I would sort of advocate for it to be included I would also be interested to hear what our students have to say if you have any input demographic here but I think seeing it only as the binary of female and male is just such an incomplete and potentially harmful way of looking at it I don't want to say it would make the data unusable but I think even when looking at the limitations of that it's definitely possible it could have value but I think it would be very reduced I also feel like I don't know the binary doesn't seem because I feel like what comes with being outside of the binary also comes with mental health and also personal kind of term oils that people have to deal with which might also explain certain test scores like if you are concerned about your existence you might not have time to focus and put all your effort into school so I think having more options can also help like it can help with analyzing the data as well I really wish there was a way for us to see the data not in a binary way because I think that would be really useful but this way like Alara said and just because I mean we have a pretty diverse student population I think it just wouldn't be very accurate so Jake I'm sorry to say this for this very reason I think we should not be listing out those sorry the demographic groups at this point we could have the same conversation about race it's a social construct it's not a biological construct which also has challenges with how the student requires us to coordinate I can remember Sagey saying I don't know what to choose so I think it's problematic to have them listed I think as long as we acknowledge that there are important I don't know what the way to do it is but there are multiple groups of which we are interested and then worry about what those are I don't agree with that I think you could say something like all demographic groups and subgroups and then we could footnote things if we wanted to you know I think all of these variables here gender disability race they're all either binary or categorical things which are not perfect as a board you would be interested if you found out that girls were getting better 10% each year in literacy where boys were flatlining we are interested in that kind of thing even the gender is imperfect variable I think it's okay to be high level here but then when it gets down to analyzing data we're going to have to acknowledge that these things aren't perfect the groups of interest might change the demographic group might be Roxbury students versus the Montpelier students and so I think it's important to give the board the leeway to decide what groups and what groupings into the future I'm really interested in the shoelace group I don't have that kind of guy I also think like when we just wait panoramic and collect it one of my questions is we're moving from listing these things here and then talking about them differently when we look at the data and now we're moving towards not listing them here but then asking about them when we're looking at the data and I'm wondering how we ask about what happens when I ask a question about a group for which there isn't an N public answer what Libby do you just have to say that I can't answer our N size is too small for me to answer so how do we discuss are there ways to say are there can we ask if there are patterns that are concerning to you yes or no and sort of are we do you have a plan for addressing them yes or no stuff like that like absolutely I'll just reiterate that it might be unsatisfactory to the board and the community but absolutely you can answer those questions and I think we now have gotten the language of these two measures of progress in a pretty good spot so I'm going to move on good job facility I think we should figure out the rest of it we should resist going into specific methodology and reporting out like in the end like you know we'll get there we don't have to define that tonight okay great I'm sorry but so thinking about all the conversations we had over the last several months about reading in the district right I'm wondering how did the 5% get selected and where does that put us in terms of people feeling that the reading is behind or inadequate so our since our we've sent this out to you all I don't feel like I'm breaking any of the violations by stating it publicly our VCAP literacy scores across the district we're at 70% this year which is quite high across the state we're way above the state's average so in 2020 if we're talking about percentages of growth each year and we're talking about 2026 that's 85% is that unrealistic no? I don't think so in I think I stated in other meetings the 85% came from RTI research which says that our first instruction and really second instruction in terms of tier one and tier two should reach 85% of our students becoming proficient and it's the tier three the remediation that should get the next group so the leadership team chose 85% specifically now our math scores were not as high in the VCAP still higher than the state assessment but not as high and we have a lot more room to grow in the math scores lots of more challenges with the math state testing last year than the literacy state testing so they're how reliable those numbers are still however we're much closer to the state's average a little bit higher than that and so the leadership team saw opportunity for more potential growth in math than in literacy is that your question Emma are you putting us along? kind of the letter of support that we voted on tonight for Roxbury we can do something similar changes and I do feel like this could be something that we could write a letter to lobby VCAP don't know who that person is to send a letter to we could draft a letter to say please it's harmful for you to think of gender as binary and we would like you to include this type of scale when asking about gender probably a much larger topic however it's not VCAP that does that it's the state reporting in general how we have to report our students to the state for census data so it's much bigger than that it's the federal government we have to go all the way up it's not a state decision but we could just to feel like we're not doing nothing on that if it's something that is rubbing everyone the wrong way maybe we can just write a letter to somebody maybe we'll get a letter back did Joe we have got a letter sort of grammatical thing can we change it too we see 5% growth in literacy each year across all demographics rather than the way it is now yes each year so you got it man alright so then Emma you have a suggestion for the fourth measure I have a comment that's related to Emma's suggestion Emma I like that except wait I've got to get back to the document so one thing I don't know the right answer here but whenever so I I'm a quantitative scientist not a qualitative but self reporting is like the tool of last resort and so are there measures that don't involve self reporting to collect these data would be my first question and then the second is the objective is it speaks to our graduates so it doesn't make sense to me that we'd be collecting data from 8 through 12 we'd want to be collecting data from our near graduates and newly graduates right if that's if we're trying to collect information about our objective of our graduates envisioning limited list paths it just doesn't make sense that we'd be asking 8th graders I don't know the answer to your first question but my opinion on the second one is that it would I think it does make sense because it helps give us a sense of like how are we doing with someone who we still have a lot of time with before they graduate that's my short way of responding to that second point but I don't know the answer to your first question I also think that it has come up in discussions in the last however long I've been in these discussions that it's notoriously difficult to get responses from graduates or from people that are no longer part of the it's going to self select for specific people to answer with specific experiences it's just hard to get that information absolutely and that's why I see where Emma was going I think you said 11th and 12th graders as they're leaving like an exit interview like how do you feel you're graduating do you envision a limitless path I think we could leave the one that's already there and add the one that Emma is suggesting because it gives us then the data that we can work with while we still have students for several more years and it gives us more targeted data to tell us how we're doing on that particular piece as a quantitative person self reporting confidence is unclear to me like what does that mean you know to all of them self report confidence or you know are you saying that most of them do or what is it so I would say that the quantitative measure would be academics which we have that would be the only quantitative measure I can think of off the top of my head in terms of that and I don't know if that necessarily paints an entire picture it trains one picture but I don't know if it paints all the pictures that we're interested in which is why we talked about doing something around this piece I think that students rating their own levels of confidence in their abilities to take on the world if you will in whichever choice they desire I think that actually has I'm incredibly interested in that if our school system and our community like we all did that together for our graduates and I don't know I personally think we have a lot we get a lot of value on that and I agree with what Mia said I think we probably had this conversation because I agree with what you said around we've got a lot of time with an 8th grader you know and if we're just asking 12th graders it's kind of like whoops not so much you know and there's another piece later on I believe around typically 12th graders didn't we put something around 12th graders for their plans for the future it isn't an old version several meetings ago sorry, sorry, sorry that was something we considered so I should know this answer because I think I was a part of the small group that originally came up with the language here but if our goal is what you were saying Mia then I think it should be our students envision a limitless path not our graduates because if we're interested in our 8th graders and whether or not we can impact them over the course of the next four years then yeah so I would say then our goal, our objective is our students envision a limitless path not just graduates I had never really thought about it the way that Mia presented it which I like the idea of seeing like I think it's possible that in three years you would see the 8th graders respond to the survey and then they would be in the next year they would be 9th graders and the next year they would be 10th graders and that you would see them getting closer to imagining their future and I think that could be interesting data to have the friend that I consulted said the same thing about self reporting data and that it tends to lean towards a rosier view of things so it's not considered a very reliable measure but I still think like Libby said there's four measures here listed there's four indicators what's that and maybe a fifth and even in one and two we're saying state and local assessments and local assessments I don't know how many you're planning to use but there are a few so there are multiple ways to measure listed in these four so I think just in the spirit of moving forward I feel comfortable 8 through 12 and I also feel comfortable keeping the language our graduates because like like Libby said maybe they can't picture it as a third grader I think that's not developmentally appropriate or they do marine biologist and a professional basketball player was not picking but that we moved them through the process and the school system and eventually it clicks so so are you arguing against your suggested change nope I'm still going to argue for the suggested change I'm just I did suggest grade 11 and 12 and now I'm saying I'm open to 8 through 12 because I think that it does make sense I think I maybe would be interested to see how they I think that could help us you know to see how they improve over time in being able to envision their limitless path but I'm not changing the another thing I know that the community values is student voice and I don't know how to get student voice in a way that matters without them self-reporting right it's it's tricky I I am very committed to keeping this indicator how I I totally understand about self-reporting this was one sort of more from one of the ones I had brought from the Career Center because that's and because I think one of the reasons it's also really important is it's not just about closing the academic achievement gap it also impacts belonging I mean there's so many reasons why and I just think it would be so it has been done right because we had data on that at the Career Center I'm sure there's ways to do it I know it sounds like a lot of work but I can't imagine we would put so much effort and energy into pre-K through 12 and then just be like okay hope hope it worked and not at least try to ask like exit interviews when people leave jobs is really informative and the YRBS the Youth Risk Behavior Survey is a statewide survey about like risky behavior and it is also self-reporting and I'm sure there's some mushiness but overall it provides a huge amount of really important data so I I still feel like we need to try to capture this somehow for a lot of reasons and I think it would be a shame if we don't I know it sounds I'm happy to hear that you're interested too because I don't have the survey ready but I love that there's interest in that and I think I like the 8 through 12 too and I did want to add while I'm rambling I did like your addition about establishing a baseline there's a few of these that we don't have a place to start from so how can we have indicators of growth and a baseline so I like that too yeah and it might so like the suggested language came from a feeling that you cannot draw a correlation between a student saying yes I feel confident in my academic and social emotional success today this year and then the bullet point to the left a limitless future I can envision a limitless path to my future and chosen pursuits of learning that benefits myself and my community there's just not a direct correlation there in my opinion so that's where the suggested language came from it's about trying to make sure that what we're getting in the survey responses is actually tied to what we want to know about right and I think that we accomplish that if we add what you've suggested but not replace what was there because I think it's good to know it I think it's good to know both things and we could maybe finesse the language of number four to mirror the language that I've been recommending for the other ones when we're talking about self-reporting surveys so anyway the suggested addition now is to establish a baseline and see a pattern of growth across demographics in maybe that's just students in 11th and 12th graders reporting high levels of confidence in their postgraduate goals and readiness in a survey supported by research that part is very important like how are we developing these questions why are we measuring that are they coming from panorama let me the survey company I don't know if they have the exact survey questions in there if they are the exact survey questions that we want to know when they are from Harvard the reason I asked is because a couple of years ago when the equity committee was drafting the climate survey that we sent to staff and teachers from scratch we actually used panorama sample survey as one of our jumping off points so I feel pretty good about it and designed to measure a variety of factors that influence students' relationship with their post-graduation goals so the reason why I worded it that way is because you could read bullet point number four as just a survey with even one question that says are you confident or rate your confidence in your academic and social emotional success on a scale of 1 through 10 so I just want to be careful with the wording and I don't think anyone would go and do that probably but I just want to make sure that we are putting in wording that explains that gets us closer to what we actually want to see so if we are going to keep bullet point number four I would just want to finesse it with some of that same language the same language being supported by research and design to measure a variety of factors that stuff yeah okay I think because we have self-reporting in here in a couple of places also shows up in safety so for that person belonging maybe it's another thing that we add to the bottom we are going to go from asterisks to double asterisks to footnote number one to I don't know we'll need a little crosses we'll need a little carrot we'll get that I think that will be that's a good explainer for methodology and the other thing is that unless Libby has some suggestions or already there's some research out there either in our district or in Vermont or nationwide data that we can say you know right now the projected baseline would be maybe 50% of kids report this then we probably shouldn't put a specific percentage point in there but also just to stay students in grades 8 through 12 self-report confidence feels like well what is the measure there is it five students is it ten percent of our students but we also have that we will use this school year to establish a baseline yeah so I guess it's just yeah and see a pattern of growth that's what I would I would recommend okay instead of having it in parentheses after I would recommend putting this part in the front of bullet point number four if we're gonna keep that one we don't usually take during the but yeah no sorry I know it's not a huge deal with one here but I want to want to be fair to our protocol I'm okay yeah I think we can yeah you could probably connect with one of us after yeah send us an email and so this suggested language you have here I'm established a baseline and see a pattern of growth across demographics when serving students and staff using so that is to replace the first one that's in here under we're moving to safety belonging and wellness uh-huh let me just get yeah sorry okay well I have I have one other suggestion I just want to like see time to other people if you have anything that you want to say before I delve into my suggestions I just feel like I'm talking a lot you can't ever give yourself a hard time but not being prepared or dedicated to only two more green paragraphs okay the floor is yours okay so first I'm not I don't love the goal the language of the goal every person will have a sense of belonging safety and wellness feels a little too broad I would recommend saying maybe and I know where this is sort of moving backwards and I apologize for that but Montpelier Roxbury's public schools will prioritize the belonging safety and wellness of our students and staff every person maybe if you want to I just think every person is too broad what does that mean so I'm not recommending to what do you I'm sorry I'm not following the point you're making I think that I think the I thought that every person will have a sense of belonging safety and wellness was meant to be really what our goal is which is maybe really really really difficult to achieve but certainly the aspiration that we're shooting for I know that it's like very very every member of our every person in our school community yeah I like that but I mean prioritize safety belonging wellness because we prioritizing it isn't the end goal we want okay we want the impact I mean could it be like every person in our district community I mean I kind of think there's an assumption that we're not talking about people like Halifax Nova Scotia but yeah and you know a sense of to me I'm hoping that even folks who don't have a direct connection with the school district will feel connect you know like that they do have a sense of belonging with the school district and so that every person to me goes outside of just people that have kids in the schools or people that have had kids in the school in the past to the folks that you know maybe they'll never have kids in the schools but they still feel like the schools are a welcoming place for them yeah I think you can even go to you know I feel fine with the change as it's been made just adding in our school community mm-hmm that feels better okay um it given given are you done with that now it's my turn okay great given given that and the objectives so all certainly the first two objectives are the entire community but the only indicator that refers to staff is the first indicator and I think maybe one of your suggested changes gets to that but but I could I put a chronically absent yes staff members absolutely yeah I kind of think my union would have some challenges to that however well certain intriguing so maybe not the the chronically absent one but certainly the third one could pertain to to staff as well as students I guess not the MTSS yeah so I don't know how to address that but I do think it's important to that were where our indicators include measures of staff and students yeah and administrators I think Emma's suggestion final suggestion in her emails speaks to that what you just said Scott so I just dropped it into the document regular reporting on our SEL systems and initiatives for both staff and students which I think what you mean there is MTS would be just one of the things but not all of what would be reported on is that right am I reading that right Emma sorry you're switching to the you're we're now talking about the MTSS one we're taking on number three number three so I actually am not sure that MTSS I so I recommended where is it I think I think we can just take out that language that's in black because I just picture more of an overview of social emotional learning systems and initiatives in the district for both students and staff and if that includes MTSS that can be included in that report right that's what I was asking yeah so I think we can just take I think we can strike the black give me an example of an SEL system that is not part of our MTSS model restorative practices totally part of our MTSS model and hazeman harassment and bullying policy and procedure that's a policy and procedure so it's not a system right so that would be just a procedure but like restorative practices is is most definitely a tier one two and three strategy in terms of working through challenges we have together so everything we do works through our MTSS model my other intriguing piece of this would be how do we show SEL systems for staff well what would that what would an example that be I don't know like you did a lot of work I was thinking that you did a lot of work with Joel van lint lint in professional development and I would figure that some of that would touch on some well-being for staff but I'm not sure it did particularly coming out of coat it was very targeted towards coming out of COVID I wouldn't call that a system either I'm open to changing the language from system I'm open to changing I just want to make sure that I'd be clear about yeah what I'd be reporting on because I'm not right now as or as that's written I'm not the only thing I could think of is talk space which will most likely not be part of our budget in the future mm-hmm because the state is kind of taking that over so that's the only kind of or use of like the employee health like I don't I don't know what that yeah be yeah truly raises to the level mattering I'm totally open to changing the language based on what you think makes sense based on what you just said Libby it seems like staff benefit from the MTSS system when it comes to SEL you know like staff certainly benefit from a growth of restorative practices in the classroom and in the school so it's almost as if if you are reporting on MTSS we're hearing see I was I was really picturing like I mean whatever I've been a teacher Jake's been a teacher you've been a teacher like what where is my sense of as a teacher where is their sense of belonging safety and wellness where is that being addressed how are we addressing and making sure yeah that's and so I just I just would say that I would want another so in the other ones in the other goal that we will just worked on there was four different measures that sort of touched on it and I don't see why we wouldn't have the administrators report out on what they do to ensure that their staff like in a more qualitative way what initiatives they have in place to ensure that their staff has a sense of belonging safety and wellness and I don't know what those things are to be able to say them to you but I would imagine because I know a lot of teachers feel a really strong sense of belonging safety and wellness as employees of this district and I think it would be interesting to like report out on that so the wording seems to be the issue and not calling it SEL not sure how we collect data other than a survey qualitative reporting from like we've always had from like Nick Connor from Julie from Katie and they come in and they say here are some of the things that we've done as a community to bring the community together of our staff you know we've done the staff appreciation breakfast or I mean you can fill in the blanks on the types of things that you guys do as a district to ensure that people feel connected does this feel like something that so if we have the one that's the self reporting from students and staff we have number one set we have the chronically absent I'm curious from other members of the board if there's something else like Emma's saying here's another thing that as a board member I would like to see to help make sure where these measures of these indicators are being used to measure progress on our objectives is that is this resonating with other board members I don't want to lose the MTSS SEL piece so whether it's adding another one or what but I don't think we want to lose that was that's like a key foundation too that the environment system resources and opportunities foster that success and our presence so I don't want to lose number three and I was picturing stone of our work yeah I was picturing MTSS being in this so like you I just don't know if maybe I just have a problem with the terminology that I'm using but multi-tiered systems of support you know like when I think about what Jess and Nick do I don't necessarily connect them to MTSS oh my gosh Jess runs our S or like Jess is the yeah that then that's a that's a misconnect right Jess runs the SEL MTSS model so is the SEL MTSS separate from like academic MTSS it's the same model it's just looking at different skills and development okay but it's the exact same model and the board's put a lot of budgetary pieces into our MTSS model in terms of human capacity building particularly last school year yeah in order to make that model work and we're having as we talked about it just today we're having a significant level of success there so that model like when we talk about our four pillars that is our MTSS model and it's both academics and SEL they're not while they're two separate things in them but they're it's the same theory behind the systems of support so I if we just added MTSS back into the language that Emma suggested because I think one of the things that Emma's language gets at is the by adding in this initiatives is more of that like community building stuff that happens I don't want to just say like on the margins because it's definitely more important than that but is you know things like and I know that the the caregivers alliance does this in the middle school but it's the only thing that's coming to me right now but like popcorn Fridays would be I think an example of something that's not in the MTSS system but is an initiative and there's other things like that so anyway I think what I think what I'm reading in what you're saying here Emma is that in addition to the like hardcore stuff that we do around social emotional learning there are other sort of like warm fuzzies that would be good to know and what and what impacts those warm fuzzies are having yeah I saw it as I'm getting real technical here I saw it as a way of broadening the report out and not limiting it to MTSS that there could be other things like I think if you ask and and not that they need to know but like if you ask Alara and Miriam or my kids or whatever like what is it that gives you a sense of belonging in school I don't think anybody's going to say the multi-tiered system of support but probably the answers that they would give might be embedded in the multi-tiered system of support maybe like harvest harvest day harvest festival is a great example of where but I don't know maybe harvest festival is part of MTSS I don't know and so that's what I'm sort of looking for is is their way to sort of broaden it to these more qualitative examples of how we bring our community together and how we infuse belonging and safety and community you know for the students I feel like I belong here is my extracurricular activities like the people I meet through that and like especially with theater because it's sixth through twelfth grade I have someone I can talk to in every single grade I have someone in the hall I can say hi to all the time and they're just like we're just like this that's what we are so I don't know how like extracurriculars and stuff fits into that but I also think that's such a big part of why people come to school is so that they can be eligible to play their sport or go to rehearsal afterwards yeah I think that's a great idea I'm looking at it more quantitatively because like for me to be even broader about it the thing that makes me feel like I belong here is the connections that I have here so that's with my teachers with my ta with my friends with my teammates but that's not as measurable I mean you can ask me how many meaningful connections I have I probably can't give you a number how many friends you have Miriam although although the TA model is a place where MTS MTSS work happens you just might not know that it's called that yeah so there are like there are those things which are yeah they're they're secretly part of MTSS we don't know that but they are um well I know that now because I'm out with yeah sl but um it was great she's lovely but yeah I think it's just good to look at it not just as numbers because the the things that can be measured might not be to me what is most important in my school experience or might not seem to me like what's most important yeah I think the biggest challenge that I or the biggest hurdle I'm trying to get over in my head is the staff piece it's not the students piece it's the staff piece does does the does the board want us to report out on the number of staff breakfasts we have in the dodgeball tournament that we might do or you know like is that is that stuff the board really wants to spend time talking about I think that's what I'm trying it's a genuine question I think that has an answer to a response to the question then our goal should not be every person in our school community has a sense of belonging safety and wellness right if that if we're really saying every person and three of the four indicators don't include all of the people that's the question I have is how do we how do we make our expected indicators inclusive of all of the people mentioned in school I feel them tell to remind us all that we are the ones who wrote all these yeah not Libby and I feel like this is turning into like asking Libby how to like answer these magical questions that we've created I I don't have a problem with some of the indicators being specific to students I think we would lose a lot of valuable information and I think the single biggest indicator I think that would at least give us a baseline and again it doesn't mean we can't change our indicators going forward would be this first indicator for both staff and students I do think we get regular updates on on a lot of other I love that we hear about the professional development things like that so I wouldn't want to not hear that but I don't think we have to spell that out here I do think that you folks have raised that I think I think the objective is captured the environment system resources and opportunities foster student and staff wellness and success are present and thriving in our schools like so I'm thinking of theater I'm thinking of track I'm thinking of those things in that we and I don't know that it would be that valuable for like we do get a report out separately about like participation in those things so maybe we don't need it to be an indicator here either but I just I just want to I just want to caution us that like if we don't think that there's a way to measure what we've asked and our objective then we need to change our objective right yes yeah and I think it's yeah I mean our primary focus is the schools the students and the kids so I think it's okay to be heavy on indicators and focus on students and the kids and they also have less to say whether they're here than a lot of the adults I mean I think they're you know I mean I think I think we want to measure that but I think if we get us you know if you get a sense that we have a lot of a lot of teachers and staff exiting and other things then yeah those are those are indicators that they're not feeling great could be could be I also think it's fair to think that a lot of the initiatives that are for students are also for our staff yes like the harvest celebration I imagine I haven't attended it but I imagine that teachers also think it's pretty cool and it also so anyway I I think we might be in danger of overthinking this a little bit tonight at 8 27 and the way that we've got it worded here where we get regular reporting on social emotional learning multi-tiered systems of support and the initiatives for our full school community inclusive of staff and students that shows the impact that any of our any of these things have is essentially the board just saying like tell us what you're doing and if it's working yeah yeah and I am interested in staff wellness like I think that they are our number one human you know resource and I think that they predict a lot of feelings of safety and belonging in students too because a lot of what kids talk about is having that trusted adult in the building and the teacher that so like the retention and happiness and wellness and belonging of those people is very important and my prediction would be that we already are doing a lot of that stuff so it's just a matter I don't I don't think we need to get in the weeds of like I know you're you love to dot your eyes and cross your teeth but I feel like it can be like a once a year qualitative sort of like here are some of those things that we're doing and here's why we think that they're effective and to Jill's point if if our objective if we are not going to measure an or not going to look at an indicator that actually measures our objective then we should change our objective and be be clear that students are our priority so we don't care not so I don't really care but families are in here and there's no measure in any of our indicators of family and so that family was taken out okay so again like we I think we just need to be clear this is our objective and then this is how we're going to measure whether or not we're meeting it and right now I don't feel like our indicators are lined up with well with our objectives as written yeah no I think that's I think that's definitely fair I disagree I mean I just added families back in because we accidentally took it out and so right now three of the four the way they've written do speak to staff because on the fourth one we're asking this the administration to report back to us on what they did to bring the community together they would not discount staff out of that and they would probably not discount families out of that so right now two of the four include families and three of the four include our staff and all of the four include our students so I think we're actually in pretty darn good shape yeah and I mean I think it's I think these are all related I think with you know I think if you're measuring most groups the kind of most of your community I think if you got like a belonging environment or you kind of don't um and I don't think we want to be exclusive of anyone uh but I also think that if if we're hammering it in all of these four categories it's probably in part because we have happy staff who are also feeling that they belong here and we've got a good environment because you know the staff and the teachers are so integral to how the students are reacting how the students are doing and if if they're feeling miserable the students are probably not going to be doing great also remind the board that by contract you send a climate survey every year yeah so that would get us the data for number one exactly so that would like that so what about families phant we're developing a pan the panoramas they're sorry for families now we're just waiting we're in discussion about what time is the best time to send it home we have so so we would need to establish a baseline for students and families because we haven't done that so far but we actually have a pretty good baseline from the last couple of years on staff and so we have a way to collect data on that first one but I thought what I was hearing you say before is that right now there's not really a good way to to report on staff for the third one I'm just not not completely positive as to what I would report out on I can make some we can try it we can try it we can flush it out later there's kind of a mathy thing happening with a lot of these where it's unclear to me are we saying all students staff and families which would be 100 percent in my head or are we saying that we need it we have a baseline that we establish that we want to be improving because those are I think it's the latter the first one says see a pattern of growth we haven't defined what that pattern of growth is is it two percent is it five percent right but I'm looking at the objectives it says all students staff and families right so that's 100 percent so then our goal our indicator would be some survey where we get answers back that says 100 percent right but right but right now we might be at 50 so then we need to figure out how how much growth do we want over what period of time but I'm just I'm just guessing at 50 the other the other piece that I think you're getting at Jake is what we talked about in a previous board meeting is that when you're talking about a survey that goes to families for instance that a good response rate is 30 percent of that population okay well right so you're not going to get information I don't think we'd ever get information from every person in our MRPS community then we would stick in the words of survey respondents but we could get rid of the word all in the first bullet um if we're if we're unless we're really going for that I mean I think we leave it as an objective and it is certainly aspirational and then it's our measure of progress where we get the actual numbers the numbers we just don't know right now because we haven't done a baseline we'd haven't gotten a baseline for students and families we did agree some point along this process that it was okay for that language to be aspirational okay and that it was more about the indicators like for the next this is just this is being written for just this year next school year and the school year following the right hand so it's only for three school years including the one that we're almost halfway through um well one quarter of the way through getting ahead of myself except when you're in a board meeting point being like the indicators could change again like later we could even revise them next year if we get some a data point back that shows us that we have to okay I mean that so that's helpful background um because then I can shift out of my like overly statistical brain and and see where you guys are going right stay there so that's helpful the next one too yeah um I don't need to spend a lot of time on this but originally when I had recommended that the language that is now bullet point number three it was meant to replace two and three because I was feeling like attendance data we couldn't really directly correlate it to the objectives that are listed to the left and that we track it and we're doing such good work there already it's not something that we would really be adding um and it can be reported out under bullet point number three um but that it doesn't necessarily have to be listed so attendance is a part of mtss it could be yeah um but that is a goal that the leadership team as a whole feels very strongly about that I can say confidently okay I'm happy to attendance yeah the goal chronically absolute gaps I feel good about that goal too I just don't know if I feel that it is correlated to the bullet points but I'm okay just letting it stay with Nick Connor about five minutes yeah are there other we're still on safety belonging and wellness stay with me for a minute here people any other thoughts comments suggested changes for safety belonging and wellness okay I'm gonna propose that we pause the process here because we don't accept it because we don't have second language yet I don't think on community engagement is that right yes we don't have that yet so rather than move into that one tonight I propose we pause here and move on to uh policy monitoring yes I think that's a fantastic proposal meatloaf who said it well two out of three in bed two out of three in bed and we're not done we're really making reference good progress um so policy monitoring we have three policy monitoring reports for approval um a 23 community engagement and vision c6 participation of home study students and d1 proficiency based graduate requirements um do I have a motion to approve those three policy monitoring I move to approve those three policy monitoring reports do I have a second second um and I have a question I was just gonna ask any discussion or question um in the process the of doing the monitoring reports the so I'm looking at the first one the bold paragraph at the top Libby it says mrps school board will work um that is not from our policy but your but you're working okay okay it's just meant to be yep interpretation piece fantastic so I know we talked about this a little bit the last board meeting I I interpret it differently if you go to our policy um let's see where was I looking it's linked in the agenda yeah I've got like 17 windows you have it open um so it's so we say the board will develop a articulated vision which we're in the process of doing it will adopt goals to move the district forward towards implementation of that vision and so I I see our policy including not just the engagement of the board but the engagement of the district and it looks like your policy monitoring was solely focused on the engagement of the board I can see what you're saying I think from um to clarify why I went there is talking about the accountability measures is the board keeping the the district accountable towards different things if I'm reading this right now right so that's why I believe I put it that way um because if you're ensuring an organizational structure which allows for attainment of your vision of excellence then you're ensuring that of us right of the administration in the district so then if you go down to your evidence it's all board right and so yeah so so I I love the evidence of the board and I I think it would be nice to also see evidence of the rest of the district in our monitoring of the policy good feedback yeah no I have a good feedback about um so this is a fairly recent policy and I was on the committee when we were writing it and definitely the intent as we were writing it was to ensure that this was more of a holistic engagement policy and not just how does the board engage the community so I know that Amanda Garces wrote the section receiving community input you'll see that a lot of the paragraphs start with the board will the board will um but the that fourth paragraph there um says the mrps school district will use multiple methods to solicit feedback from parents and other community members and will take into account language accessibility is different ways of engaging in person online input provide opportunities for community input and engage with a diverse and neurodiverse population and also just like the vision the statement of intent at the top the first paragraph so I would um like to if if you're willing Libby I mean I see that you report nearing compliance anyway so maybe it's a moot point a little bit but um but I wonder if you might be willing to to withdraw it for tonight and put in a a section under evidence um and also maybe relook at your interpretation so that it could include you know you say that you interpret this to mean that the board intentionally seeks out so maybe if we could say the district and board intentionally seeks out and then include a bullet point about what the district does to engage community and then it also made me think like well if if the intent of the policy committee was different from how you're reading it um that maybe we need to look at rewriting it no I'd say just what you said it's the first time it's monitored this is actually my feedback and to take it to consideration I would say the next time it's monitored you know um because it is a very different policy than what we had previously so um I I can certainly rewrite it if the board wishes me to do that or I could take that feedback and take it into consideration for next time it gets monitored since it gets monitored every every year yeah Jill yeah I think when you look at the policy and then if you look at the BSBA one as well I mean I I've always understood that district and board are interchangeable we are the MRPS school district and so I I don't have that level of concern um I think like I said they're used interchangeably in the policy and in the BSBA policy um and I I think we need to be careful about district versus administration versus board if it's the district overall I think we can I mean if it's just the matter of the semantics and changing district that's pretty straightforward but I do think a lot of like legislation and policies say district and that's on us like the board is the MRPS district when it comes to but I think when you I think when you say I think if you specifically say the board there's kind of an implication that you're really calling out the board specifically whereas as opposed to something district-wide I mean like if we say like the district should have good communication I think it's it's very clear that you know that Libby should have communication the teacher should have communication I think you say the board shall that it seems a little more that you're talking about the board even though I do think that feedback is really good I think I think I missed that piece of that paragraph when I was monitoring it right so I think that's really good feedback and I Jill I you're 100 correct right and the way that my monitoring report is written I totally understand what I'm about to say and that that can be done differently and should be the next time so the question would be is the board does the board want me to re monitor if that's a word this policy or do you want me to take that feedback for when it's when it comes up again which it will next fall I vote you just take that feedback for next time I vote to re monitor just to make it part of public record because we never know when Libby is going to leave us to go work for FEMA or how about never yes never you might win the lottery and go on like a year-long cruise and so does does the next superintendent look at this monitoring report as a jumping off point for their interpretation and so I would rather have like the record be more reflective of this can we have a conversation so can we approve it with the idea that you will amend amend we've done that before yep yeah that's yeah okay I have a question before we stop um how far is the monitoring of this policy from the title one policy title one like the e1 title one parenting family engagement policy that is so extensively about title one schools and all of the engagement at different levels that um we looked at when I was on the policy committee are they would the would you would you would you think of your evidence for either of these two policies is overlapping or would that change the way you thought about I don't want to the title one parent involvement that one is not monitored until April on the schedule and I don't want to give you a definitive answer wreck because I don't have that policy memorized right being that it's a new policy yeah so I it went from this to yeah yeah yeah I remember that conversation I just I don't want to give you a wrong answer just because I don't know that one exceptionally well at the top of my head it seemed like they overlap in a sense quite a bit in that probably evidence for one overlap well the discussion about both those policies in the policy committee overlapped in that neither policy really gets to the like spirit of the type of public comment that we've received around you know the district which is inclusive of the board not necessarily being uh engaging the community in the way that the community wants to be engaged and so like in our conversations in the policy committee that pot the title one policy is so linked to law around title one yeah that we didn't feel confident like putting what we would want to put in there about the way that laymen would think about parent engagement because it really is linked to parent engagement around title one and it only requires us to engage those parents and those families and same with this like this is sort of written about the visioning process and the goals when really we wanted to be more holistic about engaging the community on all sorts of levels and just knocking that out of the park so right now where we've landed is that we could approve it with the request slash directive to have it amended so amended or i move to do what you just said i think i made the motion didn't i as except that as a friendly amendment then i'll i'll second i think i got the second on that right okay i think we're very good i think we're procedurally close locked in that's right i had just a couple of questions with the on the homeschooled students one yeah how does it work for say like it says that they that's homeschooled students have access to like education within our schools is how i was reading that like does a student show up in the classroom and say i'm here for the literacy lesson and then you well we know right so they don't just show up no i know i know um yeah so they're coming my parent context the principal or character of a context the principal we know what they're signed up for and they come and then they leave same thing with sports right like they can yeah cool and then my other questions were on the graduation the proficiency based graduation policy which was it looks like in the policy we keep referring to proficiency based graduation requirements that are described in the policy but i don't see them in the policy so is it this might just be a like feedback for the policy committee it's not so much on the monitoring report and i know this is an old one so it just it looks it i i couldn't tell where proficiency based graduation requirements were laid out in the policy but we keep referring to them as in the policy i think what it's referring to is the first sentence on the second paragraph the montpellier rocksbury school district will use proficiency based credits for the purpose of demonstrating that a student has met graduation requirements like that paragraph describes the meaning behind proficiency like how we're using proficiency based and so that's how i would interpret that okay because it's it's the board's prerogative to approve our our proficient like it's the board's written in the qs the board is responsible for proficiency based ensuring proficiency based grading right right okay so that's how i would i would say the second paragraph is is what they're referring to okay then our handbooks and things and curricular website make it more targeted and specific right where where someone could go and say what are the standards for graduation they can find that on i i did that deep down you can like you can get there yeah but okay okay yeah i'm not sure we'd have that little detail on the policy gotta know no i don't think i that's not what i was looking at but it i'm just saying it it was confusing to read the policy was a little confusing to read where it kept like self referencing itself and i couldn't tell what we were referencing yeah but that is helpful thank you lily other other questions comments notifications all those in favor i be opposed uh motion to adjourn second second all those in favor i thank you all good progress yes thanks for hanging in there staring at the screen