Call the meeting to order 602 this evening. Thanks, everyone for coming to the very full house, which is very nice to see. We have a full agenda for tonight. And are there any agenda revisions? Any other proposals? I don't, does anybody have anything they wanted to say on the board work plan? Or is that something that we can- I was hoping we could scrap it until next time. That's too much on here. Let's scrap it. Does that feel okay? I'm fine with that. Yeah, okay, so we'll move that, table that. Any other proposed amendments? We should talk about Alyssa's conflict of interest. Yeah, we are. Do we add that already? Board communication. Wouldn't it fit in there? I think, like I said, I'd like to just add a separate issue as well, just to have a discussion about that. Any other changes, any proposed changes? We might want to offer, I know Elliot has come to move up building use for middle sex community access. He wants to talk to us about it, so I didn't know if he needs to leave or something. We can move that up ahead. Are there any other folks who are here for the building use and building access? I just wanted to clarify, there are actually two pieces to that agenda item.  And I think Stanley Kelley was going to address that. Other members of her committee are here. And the second piece is from the bandstand committee, and I was going to address that. So we'll do those both together one after the other. Okay. Okay. Okay. Nope, nope, I think we're going to do the conflict of interest issue first. So we received a, let me back up. Any public comments or correspondence with those changes to the agenda? I received, we all received a message from Sorsha Anderson about providing feedback in response to Allison's request. And I asked, I always asked, do you want to go in the minutes, and she said yes. So I can send that to, now my understanding is it's no longer that, if I send, do I send those to you, Kristie, or do I send them to Kristie? You can send to me and I'll send to Kristie. You can go either way. Okay. We all get taken care of. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. I'll send those. And we also got an email from Sharon Curse as well. Did you get that? I did get that. Yep. I have not asked, what I tend to do is just say do you want to go in the minutes and then people say yes. Okay. But I'm happy to walk with you. Okay. So we also are going to just kind of contact from Sharon Curse as well, which we'll talk about later if she wants to in the minutes. I'm sorry to propose that we start with the conflict of interest issue. And as my understanding is based on the survey that Alison Moon, good afternoon, welcome. Thank you. Thanks for coming, Mary. That Alison Cornwall had sent out and I was just following a question as to whether it was conflict of interest. And our conflict of interest policy is at a D3. And I invite others if you would like to come and speak to us. No pressure if you don't want to, that's fine too. But we welcome here from you about your concerns so that we can address them and not run afoul with them again. Okay. So I, I just like clear that idea. Yeah, absolutely. Okay. So on I think November 1st I was asked by Alison to send out a survey to the Bumni staff.  Another reason is because we do have an account there. So they always send them to me. Going through on the previous day, October 31st, she had also sent a front porch form out to the community regarding just feedback about I think it was like the math, the literacy going on. And it had included about how wanting to hear back from, hoping to hear very much from teachers, staff, and community members on the issue. So when I received the email from her asking, hey, can you please forward on under that context, I replied like, oh, yeah, you know, just to be helpful and all that. Um, pretty quickly after I kind of heard, I heard a lot about like, oh, did you see the survey? This is about the survey. It made me like, huh, I've never heard had so much kind of like, what do I want to call? Not direct feedback, but just kind of like you can add up. So I decided to just to kind of like see if there was, you know, if I did something that was supposed to do, it came to my attention that it wasn't like, um, unofficial, like from the full board. Apparently when you had put into the survey, it has said that not everybody agrees with this, but nowhere in her email or in the, and it was a forwarded email. So it's done to somebody else. Even in the another chunk, it didn't say anything that not everybody agrees with this. Because of that, I decided to look a little further into it and I came across the policy B3. Specifically, a board member will not intentionally give the false impression that he or she has the authority to make decisions or take action on behalf of the board for the school administration. Because she's on the board and she has said once you click into the survey, not everybody agrees. And to clarify, I had sent up the email to the Birmingham staff without taking the survey because honestly as an admin, I don't feel my opinion has any weight. I'm not a teacher there. So, um, yeah, um, and to kind of like back that up, seeing other, um, from Fort Schwarm's post, I have seen her, specifically, um, having clarifying statements like, Hi, I'm Allison. I'm speaking as an individual or as a parent or a middle-set. That she typically has clarifying statements like that so you know that she's not on the board. Because it was not clear that she was not asking to send this as a parent or a middle-set community member. I had assumed she was speaking for the court and it does not seem that that was so. So I had, um, definitely felt put into a position. Um, in my feeling and kind of understanding, it seemed that it kind of kicked up some dirt and that definitely was not my intention. And because, um, it wasn't clear. I wanted to be helpful. I wanted to do the best and I didn't appreciate the situation. I wanted to bring it to the board as a, hey, you know, this was not, and I don't think that this was okay. Thanks. Um, any, does it have any questions? Allison, do you want to respond in any way? No, I am sure. I mean, I think it was a great description. As it happens, when I get the link, probably because it's my account, I see the description. And I didn't actually, I specifically didn't put that this is from Allison because I had talked to some other board members, but not everybody was in favor. And I had sent it to the board and said, you guys have any changes? And I had made some changes based on those requests. But even with that, I still didn't get everybody on the same page exactly. And so I thought saying it's just for me felt not right. But, um, but no, I totally didn't mean to put you in a position and I see how I should have been much more clear about what was being sent out. But it definitely wasn't my intention. And like I said, I actually could, could see when I had the link, like it would show up that this is not coming from the whole board. So my apologies if I caused trouble. The real question for me is what do we do with the responses that is there any. So I've got a few things for you that just concerned about what you just said, Allison. Okay. I wonder about open meeting law for the board. If there was discussion happening over email. It was one way. Yeah, yeah. And I would want to partner with you for those surveys and event. I've talked to Chris when we talk about it. I think there was some information that wasn't accurate on the beginning of it. Okay. Of the work that we were doing. So and how the work, how curriculum work is done in Washington Central. So I think that that would be good to talk about and I know we plan to talk about that. Okay. So that would be a follow-up discussion after we're done. Yeah. Just to talk about surveys. Okay. And did you also have a problem then with the communication that the board sent out as a group? Yes, I did. Okay. As your superintendent. Okay. I'm here to partner with you on that and I didn't know anything about it. Okay. So I think that's the communication that we had agreed upon to try to describe this meeting previously. And that we all did agree upon and send out together. So it sounds like there's a problem with that communication potentially. And then I just used much of that to put into the survey as a descriptor. So that it sounds like both of those things perhaps. Is that what I'm hearing? Yes. Okay. Okay. So just to wrap up this conflict of interest issue. You know, the policy is what the policy is. You know, I don't think we go beyond where we are now. And just sense that we just be a little bit more careful in our communication. So we don't put a staff member in an uncomfortable position. And just leaving it at that, I guess. You know, I don't think there's any other thing to do at this point. We have responded to your concerns, Alison. Absolutely. Yeah. I want to apologize on behalf of the board for putting you in that position. I think this speaks to a larger issue that the board needs to address on the way in which we communicate with staff. And our role in essentially usurping other or undermining the leaders within the building. And I was not in favor of the way in which this was handled. In fact, I actually didn't even realize that it was done because I think if we're going to send out any type of communication, you know, first needs to be a board action that we discuss and approve on. And I realize that this then went out not necessarily as a board, but with at least to give an intent or impression that communication from the board. This is one of, I think, a larger issue that we as a board need to address with the way in which we really engage beyond our role as a board beyond sort of the governance, the policy, and oversight, and much more in the means of operations. So if it's not now, I think it's an issue that we need to address at a future meeting. We can bring that up. We can take that up at the end of today. And I think we should take it up at the end of today, this meeting, just because I think there are varying views on that and that, you know, individual board members can find out what's going on in the community and solicit information. It should be certainly above board as I think this was the survey was out there as a public document. And, you know, I think we shouldn't be stymied in sources of information that come to us. And we certainly not usurping or, I don't think usurping or trying to undermine anyone that think you're referring to the administration. So we should have a discussion about that at the end today. I just have a question. Sure. Under board communication, is that part of it? Because at one point, Woden was going to call and do some research on how other school boards in Vermont handle it. And I've been kind of anxious to see so that it could guide us in what we do. It feels to me like that part wasn't done. And then we're sort of just pushing it aside and everybody's doing it their way. Is it still coming? What I was interested in was looking at staff board communication, how we can increase that. What I proposed is this proposal for increased data, which I sent around to all the board members. I don't know. Do you get this from the school board? No. You don't. Okay. I'm sorry about that. So that, I'm happy to, I think it might be quite appropriate for us to talk about that under the rubric of data gathering. My interest is really data gathering, but I'm happy to follow up on how other boards communicate. I'd like some direction exactly on what you're looking for. That's what I thought you were, maybe I misunderstood the data all along. It's an evolving thing. Let's talk about what we want to do. So just to catch up with Bill and comment on the survey itself in the inaccuracies in it. So can you tell us where you think was in it? Can I say something to start out? Correct information going on.  So I should catch up on those things. But first I want to say thank you for asking for community. I see Beth Holtzman's here and Beth, maybe you can help Chris and I remember because we were the only two in the room that were there when we were trying to do this work three years ago. And having community come out and give input into what we wanted our students to know and be able to do. So this is incredible. So I want to actually say thank you. This is great. This is exactly what we want. It's community input into what we want our kids to know and be able to do. I think that there are pieces within there and I want to bring up the survey itself and maybe in the announcement. I think one of the things that the survey tries to say is that we're using work from a retreat that happened this summer with boards as our school, as our work plan. So there's a couple of things that I want to put on the table that are contextual. So I feel like Chris, I need to step back. This is going to be like 10 minutes of pieces. Can we step further back what the survey was for? Alison? Sure. So I sent out the survey. I put it on Front Porch Forum Facebook and wanted to circulate it within the Romney community as well. And the idea was to try to get people to help us see what their goals are for our children because I think we're in the process of trying to define goals for our students. And also, since we're talking about how to get there, I think it's really important that we also talk about what, how people would get there. So at our retreat, like Nate Levinson said, it's some really exciting and wonderful ideas for some things that he would do to, like, he defined a goal and how he was going to try to meet that. And so the survey was eliciting opinions on these things. And I think that our community includes our staff. And so I wanted to make sure to get their opinions, especially since, I mean, if anybody's opinion, like our teachers are super important to know what their feelings are on these things. So that was it. So I asked for those things and I actually mostly got responses from staff. Only a few parents responded. And I didn't want to be in the weeds with like a, you know, how would you get there? But I don't think that we as a board can make any sort of decisions on what our goals are unless we have a feeling for what that, like, what kinds of things would these be. And our people talking about we actually would need a whole separate building with four new staff members, or are we talking about something that several people brought up? We actually think that adding in extra physical exercise has been shown, you know, data shows this. And so those are very different. One costs a lot of money and one doesn't. And so how can we possibly decide?  Well, if we need to make changes to our language program, nobody would definitely want to know about that. So if something that people are continually bringing to us is a way to get from, we have to define point B, and then our way to get from point A to point B, if it for instance meant that we now did not have language at Rummy, I think some people would definitely want to know about that. So I just want to make sure that our community has a chance to hear some of these things. They can add their opinions. We're all on the same page. Nobody's surprised. And I promise it came from only a place of knowledge and good intention. So I want you to know from Allison, for me, that's the way I see it. But I see that if we had partnered together, we could have cleared up some of the pieces in the introduction that would help everybody give more contextual pieces of where we're trying to go. Okay. Okay. I'm sorry I don't have enough of these. You've all seen this, but I think it's really important that we go back here. I'm going to go back all the way to 2012 when I was hired. One of the things that was hired, and I still take this and I get this direction from the executive committee, was that we want a clearly defined curriculum process. I have a few more here, but I'm sorry I don't have more. I brought some from my car thinking there would be more here. I just keep them around. And this is a different one. I've got plenty more. If anyone wants them, I know all the staff have them because we give them to you guys all the time. So in 2012, when I started as superintendent, one of the things that was asked of me, and I take this as one of the initial community pieces, was that the curriculum system in Washington Central needed to be improved. It was a recognition that the documented curriculum and the actuated curriculum, I'm sorry to get educational. So if I use a word that does too much educational ease, and maybe, Diana, you can help me my traffic cop on this because you know them, but may say, hey, that doesn't sound, or any other staff member, stop me. But the curriculum that's worked, that's happening in the classroom, and what's on documents is very different. And what was documented, what there wasn't a lot of, literacy was the main area, wasn't there. It wasn't there. So develop a process. And the other thing that was expressed to me is do create a process that is collaborative in developing it. And one of the things that I hope was one of the reasons, and I know two of the folks that were on my hiring community are here in the room tonight, was my belief that curriculum, the experts in curriculum are the teachers. It's not the administrators, it's not the curriculum directors, definitely not the superintendent. So you have to use their expertise in building curriculum. So we built a process right away that brought together a curriculum committee that oversees, it's made up entirely of teachers, except for Jen Miller, and a principal representative from the elementary school, and a system principal from U32, it could be a principal. But it is made up of representation all over the district. They oversee the curriculum processes for Washington Central. And look at that. There were curriculum committees that were built by content areas, and then that has been expanded into the transferable skills as well, and is morphed into the student learning outcomes. Those committees meet primarily now, because we tried to do it during the school year, but we had feedback from the parents, please don't take our teachers out of the classroom. The theory bearing it, it's right, we know it from... I'll keep the research aside, but I would love to have this discussion. You and I have talked about this. But the grounded research is the teacher's the most important factor in the student's learning. Highly qualified teacher is the most important. That is like, you can go to any meta-analysis of education, it's there. That's the number one factor. So we're bringing those teachers together, so we have moved that to what we call curriculum camp that happens at the end of the school year, where all teachers are invited. Those who want to come, we pay them to come to work on curriculum. And you may say, I want to make sure I'm clear when I use the word curriculum, that it's not curriculum in the Latin sense means the path to learning. I don't have exactly right, but that's kind of what I keep in my memory. But curriculum in education can either mean that, so just what's the path. But when we talk about curriculum in Washington Central, we talk about curriculum, assessment, and instruction are all the curriculum. So we have teachers look at building, we looked at work that had been done by Wiggins and McTide and they're working called Schooling by Design. It's our framework for building it. There are 10 key components in building a curriculum, assessment, instruction, and curriculum. We have templates that these are built by curriculum committees. I'm going pretty fast forward. If someone thinks I skipped something that's a teacher in the room, please just tell me. Those folks come together and look at that around 2014 in comes the legislation requiring us to shift to proficiencies. So we changed our language. Beth, I'm just going to say, you are helpful in saying, hey, some of this language is working. Remember back to the non-negotiable discussion. And so we call them their performance indicators now. So we have performance indicators of where students should be. We're trying to build a system that that's all built by teachers, informed by research. So we look at national standards, we look at international standards, and teachers look at that research. And in some of our content areas, that has in some of our schools has actually been audited by outside experts to say, have you deviated too far from the common core in math and common core in literacy? Which is adopted by the state of Vermont as some of the foundational pieces that we get measured against them. So those committees, they design the performance indicators, which then roll up into standards, which roll up into the student learning outcomes. One of the things that was a concern starting about 2014 is, what does the community want the students to know and be able to do? That's a question for two years at board meetings. And boards, and the Romney board as well, ask for community to help respond to that. Different communities responded at different levels. And different, you know, different levels of feedback from the number of community members and staff that gave pieces into that. In May 2016, what was found is what we had different student learning outcomes across the buildings. And we agreed upon at the SU that we should have one common set of mission for Washington Central and student learning outcomes. So on May 2016, all the boards in Washington Central individually agreed to adopt the same student learning outcomes. If you open up, I need to have yours, Brian, first, but if you'll see them on the posters that are out in the hall, you'll see them in teachers' classrooms. If you open to the page four in here, you'll see the set of student learning outcomes on the side. You'll see them in the big group posters. You'll see them on a curriculum website. If I had more time, Chris, and I suggest that we have Jen come and give a lot more detail to the board about this to understand, because what I just did probably compacted what could be a long, a longer presentation to understand how do the teachers have input. There's also feedback mechanisms through surveys that are collected on the staff of what's working. There are teacher reps from each building for those curriculum areas as well as the curriculum council. And the theory being I'm not going to say it's working perfectly is that there's feedback going both ways on that. So that is kind of how we build curriculum. The plan for Washington Central, after that student learning outcomes, the Executive Committee of Washington Central tasks the leadership team to come up with a five-year plan to implement the student learning outcomes. On September of that following year we presented that to the Supervisory Union Board and in October, I believe I'd have to go back and check the minutes to be 100% sure. It was adopted by the Supervisory Union Board that our plan is the implementation plan that we ended out to. The work that grounded that is the work that we have we use John Haddy and Robert Marzano. They're two of the leading experts in education that do what's called meta-analysis. We can go find research on education that can say many different things. So you have to look at where are the intersections and when you look at research and what are the things what is the context in which the research is done what's the method or methodologies and what are the limitations of the research. Before you can say I'm going to use it or not in your local context. And we really have looked at we have really used a lot of John Haddy and Robert Marzano's work we use it in the way we operate in the district and our district work we want it just for the benefit of everyone can you just briefly say what it is that you're using in their work? No, not meta, but Haddy and Marzano. So here's Marzano school districts that work. He has looked at all the individual researches of effective school districts and how they've impacted student learning. He's gone through and looked at the distribution of scores and he is one of the leaders that started around 2003-2004 out of the McCrell Institute in Colorado. McCrell is the mid-continental educational research lab there are 13 of them in the nation they do most of the primary research in the United States. He has done another he's done a whole series, he has this whole series what works. He has that, he has what works in schools, what works in leadership what works in teaching, what works in literacy, what works in technology, what works in classroom behavior and it's gone and looked at all the research and said what does it say if we try to pull it all together and what are the core underlying pinnings. So for I don't get too much on a tangent. Is that enough? Do you think I did enough there? Yeah, so we're looking at someone that pulls together all this because there's so much research going on in education, you have to look at someone who does that. John Haddy does the same thing when I talk about Haddy because he's very popular right now he started in 2010 replicating some of what Marzano did but on an international scale. He's actually looked at a hundred and hold on I'm going to point out the I put up the webpage so I had this in front. He's looked at 252 influences that relate to student achievement and have effect on it. The number one effect is the collective efficacies that teachers feel for moving students and proving student learning. At a high level of feeling that we can help students learn there will be a high effect size for student outcomes. There are other things there as well and we have used a lot of this work in putting together the plan the implementation plan and that's guided a lot of those pieces. Nate Levinson came and talked to us about one small piece which is called in Vermont as Vermont usually does so I want to make sure I use both. In Vermont it's called MTSS or Multi-Tiered Systems of Supports but in the nation it's called Response to Intervention and Instruction. On Hattie's research it's the fifth most effective system for improving student outcomes. We don't necessarily look at it in rank order because Hattie has had some counter research to his work and his mathematical standards so some said hey if you look at it in I don't know if you've seen this Katie from Carlton University but you can go look it up I actually had to write a paper about this that his statistical methods there's some questions about it but at least the relative if it's in the top 20 versus the middle third or the lower third you probably want to look at it and that's kind of the way I look at it is I don't say hey is one two and one four and we're going to go with the second rank versus the fourth rank but the context matters it's back to that research the context matters and how you do this work so we had fast forward to where we are with the Nate Levenson and for many of you on this board and this is where I feel as a superintendent I haven't done the justice to come back to us and so I'm really thankful for this discussion because we've been talking about other things where I think this is probably one of the most important discussions we could have about what do we want for our children and how do we help our children get there so it's what Nate Levenson was talking to us about was a response to intervention or MTSS system and so that's one if we looked at the plan and if we look through this plan and I'm glad to get you more you will see parts that look like this that look like an implementation plan checklist or timeline and you will see MTS on both the instructional system and the MTSS system there are three big parts of our implementation plan and those are right in the line with Hattie and Marzano's work once clear learning targets do the kids know what they're going to learn I see that every day we worked really hard on that our first year of this implementation plan the second piece is a clear and balanced assessment system all our local assessments Faunas and Penel or Star 360s those have been selected by our content committees our curriculum committees as to what we want for assessments we actually piloted different math assessments and found they weren't the ones we wanted they weren't giving us enough information so we moved to Star 360 that came out of the math steering committee the Faunas and Penel DRA2 and Star 360 reading those have come from those committees and then the third place is a high I've got to read it to get it right I'm sorry but it's just lost a high quality instruction and intervention system one of the other things that Hattie is saying and is in his top ten is that there is that there are intervention systems that help students so when they don't learn or they're struggling to learn how do we help and give them more support in doing that I think that those are all important contextual pieces for how the curriculum system works and it's constantly under revision it's not like there's a set that we try to keep the standards and the student learning outcomes the same but the performance indicators will change because we'll learn and adapt and grow and that's happened over years in education what we expect of a graduate in high school right now is much if I go back to 1985 when I graduated high school the literacy expectation was about a sixth grade reading level today the math level was not even algebra one today so our rigor is increasing over the years and that's natural we see that in the national science standards they're bringing in engineering concepts that weren't even there before so those are pieces of how we do that work so I think that those are so when I thought back to the survey I think it's really it's excellent to ask folks what do we want our kids to know and know and be able to do and how do we want to teach that because that's important to ask that question and to use research to support how we do that but to me ultimately it's an education to give to the teachers and they're working across the SU because we all flow we're all one system doesn't mean the instruction and how we do the instruction if we pick away the one thing I go back to my science teaching days if I want to teach something about ecology and for some reason I want to use the river and sorry Dan I'm looking at you and you want to go use the forest out back and we're going for the same PIs that's local context but we need to understand that the kids understand the water cycle or no resource allocation we can get to that and that's really important and frankly I think not just for the building we should be doing that for kids and groups of kids and what helps engage them in the work what are they excited about and how do we use that to get to the same PIs so I think then when we think about that so I just wanted to kind of settle that because it was too focused on Nate Levinson and not the work that we're doing as a whole and what is the impact where are the inputs throughout the system for designing a curriculum in our instructional systems so how do you improve this array in terms of accuracy I would want to say something about how I would want to make sure we have those context before we say I wouldn't want to have things in there about Nate Levinson not because Lates doesn't anything bad or good I think it's just too fine a pinpoint on everything that we're trying to do with our instructional system and I think that we'd want to be able to look at I think we want to be able to look at the data a little bit more I think taking the survey without having the contextual to respond to it you all have the context of the SU presentation and Amy's presentation and I saw that that was added to the survey to some of the emails that went out but I don't think that that captured what Amy said I think it just gave the slides and I know it's hard to do that but I think it's important to have those types of conversations and go back to that we want in the big picture I actually would say leave the research to the education experts say what you value how do you value kids learn how do you value for what they will learn and get that on the table and ask and say come back to us and show us that you've built an instructional system that does that I'd be less worried about the research leave that to the education experts your staff and I'm not putting me in with that I'm saying the teachers that you've got committees that are working on it they're highly competent I have a question at our meeting in August we asked about if somebody creates a document and it's emailed and people edit and send it back to that person that that was not a violation of open meeting laws is that correct? in my interpretation it is but you may find other interpretations out there that may disagree with me in my interpretation I would say that's fine yes I've seen other places that aren't that's why I'm saying that okay I thought at the August meeting you had said that was allowed yeah from my interpretation I'm telling you I've seen others that have said no oh you're saying it is allowed not a violation in my interpretation I'm going to tell you that I've seen others that would say it is okay and is it different if instead of giving like edits to that document it was more like do you agree with sending it out does that change your opinion on if it's a violation of open meeting laws I think what the spirit of this the it was mainly the senate that was ruling on this because this was a couple years ago and they tried to do it again this past year was to allow more electronic resources for public boards to do work I think the spirit of it was not to allow people to have access for conversation or back and forth and so I'm not going to say yes or no to an individual instant I'm not going to say the spirit of doing work outside of a place where the public can watch you do your work public boards are required to do their work and open so if you that's why I said what I responded earlier I mean it may or may not be I don't know because I haven't seen the work it's that spirit of the public can engage in what not do the work with you but watch you do the work I've read in the senate work and have been trained in from public response different boards do that different ways but the bottom line is that the public can observe you do your work you could do it more open if you want there's nothing stopping you from that but the bottom line is that they can observe you do your work that to me is kind of the premise of open meeting law I just want to say Bill I really appreciate what you just said in terms of providing context in terms of blow it open in terms of thinking about what going back to those fundamental goals because I think that that's absolutely where we need to go and I'm thrilled actually that everybody's here at the last meeting we had really identified this is a meeting where we wanted to hear from people about what your goals are I forgot once there's one other thing I forgot to say and I don't say that I hate quoting statute because people think I'm trying to be harsh and I just want to inform okay in 2011 with the passive act 153 required that curriculum be developed at the school district supervisory union level I don't think that inhibits the conversation but it's a piece in the conversation and I think it's important just to recognize that and to know that and that was a lot of the work that was done from 2012 2016 to get to that common place was like how do we lay all this foundational work to get so that we can have the curriculum committees because this was a concern that was expressed to us by teachers can this be torn apart because if we're going to go do all this work we want to know that it's pretty stable I hear that still I heard that today I was with 12 teachers today all day do this torn apart by who by anybody I mean they're not asking a general they're not asking a who Chris they want to know how if I'm going to put a lot of effort into creating something we'll stay for a while because the last thing teachers want to do is go do something that's either looks perfunctory or I'm going to put a lot of effort and then someone's going to tear it apart so they'll say I was working with a group of teachers that were working on coaching today for across the SU and I asked them for some pieces and I said guys from my point of view all I can do is a superintendent I'm giving you the authority the responsibility and the accountability to do it go figure it out make sure it's along with good best practices we were talking about coaching and we were with an expert today doing that and say what does that look like and please give me back a document of what you think as teachers job coaching should look like tell me what that looks like you know and they want to know that they weren't and they said so Bill if we do this who has the ability to change this and morph this and I think it's a really fair question if I'm going to do a lot of hard work you know who's going to stand behind and so that's all I just give that for that's a concern that's always in education I think every educator has that concern and rightly so because our history in education is that isn't the case that things do get get changed and we are going to evolve that's part of the nature of our business so in terms of talking about surveys and having information for people to understand some of us can understand things that are more complex level not everyone can so in order for the community as well as teachers as well as administrators to have a true understanding I think that you may want to have a very concrete structure that you can express to all because I watched some of the Nate Levenson conference that you all had in August and watched all of it and I've read some of the literature that came and I have to say that what I did watch from the conference left me feeling very concerned because the mood and the way that things were being talked about felt very much like this is how we're going to go forward and I'm paraphrasing but there was talk about how well teachers will resist this because people get comfortable and you know you just push through and they're going to talk about the whole child and of course we want that but and so I think for people who have heard those things seen those things there's a sense perhaps that things have already been decided so I think that people are going into planning and changing curriculum changing the way that teaching happens changing the way that additional instruction happens changing the way that support staff are implemented in schools I think there needs to be a real clear understanding that it really is a collaborative process and that it really is about listening to the teachers obviously because they are the first line in teaching children but there is also the community in terms of the parents whose children are coming to the school and the others in the union and it just I think I think everyone needs to be coming from a very open and honest place and I think if there are certain things that you feel are going to implement regardless that needs to be clear and because everybody needs to be able to do the work and know what the parameters are and I don't feel that that's always clear and I think sometimes when you sit in conferences and you're hearing different things and you can think oh this is great this is great let's move forward with that and the supervisory union as a whole is an entity but each school within the union is its own living breathing entity with its own personality with its own sets of challenges and I personally feel that you just can't use a one size fits all certainly improvements can be made and do I want children to be a little bit numeric? Absolutely but I don't want that at the cost to them in terms of social and emotional development and I know there's a lot of talk around that too and how important that is or I think it's hugely important from what I'm saying and children will better access centres of learning within themselves barring learning difficulties they will access those better if the social and emotional aspects of who they are or taken care of so again I just feel that there needs to really be absolute transparency and honesty about the processes and if there is already a sense that X, Y or Z is going to happen regardless of what anyone else thinks because some things feel very much like they've been decided and maybe that's not the case so that there's just so much unknown and there's so much and it just feels like we're in a swamp so much of the time for a long time so and I I sometimes feel out of place talking because I'm not a middle sex resident but I do work here and I am so connected to this community here and I feel really emotional because I work with these children every day and I know when I see them and I know the teachers are so dedicated and I want the best for them so I don't feel like someone coming from the outside they can have great ideas for us in terms of improvement as perhaps a solution but not necessarily the solution so I just feel that we all have a stake in it I don't live here but I feel that I'm as invested as anybody who does so if we could sort of move forward being really really honest and really really clear so that when people answer these when they talk about what they really want they're not pouring their hearts and souls into this only for something to have already been decided and this is really just sort of window dressing to make you feel like you have a stake I think we're in the same place because I would say to you Julie that that's why I don't want the Nate Levinson piece on this is the wrong label the leadership team in Washington Central hasn't even unpacked his work so we're still trying to talk about how does what we've learned from him impact the implementation point so that was a common learning time for the board members and how that was designed so when I was at that retreat we then went around and multiple people from multiple schools described how they had over the past many months or even small number of years been implementing those strategies so am I not understanding something? you're using the whole of what he described for the pieces people talked about the pieces that weren't similar that are being done in the schools so he came with a whole package of what he's putting together he has put together in his work and what the district management group puts together for the work that they've done with multiple schools around New England and the nation and many in Vermont this is back to what I said before the key is not Nate's work what he was describing was response to intervention on multi tiered systems of supports and that's what we've been working on on multi tiered systems of supports you could say tier two interventions which he was talking about interventions for struggling learner you bet you we've been putting those in place we've been doing those things so to say we haven't done everything that he's saying we should do and we haven't decided if we should do everything he's saying we should do educational this is part of the education community I like your word Julie so I'm going to take it swamp is that there's many different pieces that you'll see people come back to with research but which piece are you using and how is your context of your community influence what you do and that's really really important I agree with everything you said totally and it's just we need to we haven't gotten down to that work yet so I just want to stress the importance of clarity of communication because what you just said Bill is really alleviating a lot of my anxiety over what I've heard this board is supporting so Dan would you say would you be clear on what it is I would be very clear I am not on middle sex porch farm because I don't live here but earlier this year at the beginning of the year a letter that was put on porch farm was passed around to the staff that said after this Nate Levinson workshop the feeling from the board was that we need to have highly qualified teachers teaching kids so that kids are spending most of their time with highly qualified teachers we don't need a pair of educators we need to increase class sizes and that was the direction that we were going which completely contradicts how Romney school teaches children and so nothing has come out since then and there's this misconception Bill what you just were saying that we do follow MTSS we do believe in a multi tiered system of support for students there's a saying in my classroom in this classroom in the school you get what you need that we're here to support what students need to get them to succeed and so there's a miscommunication right and so I have to say this for the board I want to say this for the board remember how we just talked about open meeting law so they can't have discussions unless it's an open meeting right so I think I want to say for the board for them Ruben Bennett and the East Montpelier board said we want to ask all the board about some of the things from Nate Levenson so they asked they sent an email out saying hey can you guys discuss these other pieces the only place the board could do that is here so I want to give them some I think some just I'm sorry I'm losing my words but give them some space they've got to have those discussions and this is where they can have them and it's hard it's hard for me as a superintendent so I can't imagine for and it's been 15-20 years since I've been a teacher in the classroom but to hear that type of conversation when you know it's going to impact your work right so they have to have those and not only have the conversation but let other people know that it's happening or at least put out what the actual conversation is instead of maybe what interpreted conversation was and I'm guessing if the board minutes were passed around the teachers necessarily would read the minutes word for word you think like a summary to the staff would be appropriate that would be brilliant that would be brilliant well I guess are you actually going to change the subject though you're going to change the subject can I just respond really quickly but if it's the same as changing the subject you can respond I know I think I know what letter you're talking about because I'm pretty sure that I wrote it and so I've been trying to after every meeting send out a summary because I think a summary would be brilliant also and we couldn't agree on how to do that so I say I'm I was as a person who was watching the video who would get nothing more than any person watching the video could have gotten this information let me try to describe for you what happened I'm not going to go through we spent $12,000 on a boiler or whatever and so and I thought I was pretty clear in that letter in fact I walked through the halls and people wouldn't look at me in the eye because they thought that I was saying that paraeducators should all be fired I was repeating what you would have gotten from watching an orca video and yet somehow I'm not sure how I read it over and over and boy I thought it was clear we had a retreat this was what was presented we're going to be talking about it in the future and so I'm really sorry that you got that impression I will read it again but boy I've read that thing 20 times because I felt like I had done something terrible when people seemed very angry and I really didn't boy I sure didn't get that from any of my summaries but maybe if we can make a summary together like I totally agree that that would be the best thing we could possibly do it just seems almost impossible to get anybody to agree on what to say sometimes so which is frustrating I thought it from the video I didn't even see for you though so I have no idea about that but I watched the video of the retreat in August so it's our inner romance so everything that Bill described around have curriculum and instruction and assessment and developed sounds very familiar to me in terms of what I've seen so far and what I experience in my own work as a teacher but what feels to have not been said is that at the last board meeting that I was at there was this proposal of a guarantee and that what I believe I heard Bill say is that East Montpelier has adopted the guarantee and I am asking the other boards are you in do you agree to adopt the guarantee and so my concern is that the guarantee is not in line with necessarily all of these other components because the guarantee will change the way that instruction happens and it will change the options that exist at our school and so that I feel like in terms of transparency is the lack of transparency that what we're really talking about is is the board adopting a guarantee and what are the terms of that and secondly when I watched the Levenson video what I observed is that elements of Levenson's work have already been applied and that seems to have been set forth at least six months ago in the schedule that was proposed and implemented and changed and so that leads me to believe that there is a path to shifting our system to the guarantee and I don't feel that that's been expressed and I actually feel like that's was completely not expressed in what you described in terms of what's changing or not changing at our school and the way that you described the curriculum and assessment and instruction plan is what I would expect at any school that's doing best practice and that's what I would expect to see but it does not align with the question of the guarantee which I think is why everyone is here tonight is that there's been an awareness that this is on the horizon and it's not being talked about so that's why I'm here to find out are you actually going to discuss this question and what are the terms of it and will you be honest as to what the outcome is that you are actually striving for not literacy and numeracy but how will you measure it and if that measurement is solely aspect scores then I think our community will have a lot of questions that's why I'm here I'm not sure if that's why a lot of other people are here I wanted to say that I'm looking at the I'm sorry I wanted to say that I have really appreciated the times when you stepped out and put on this other hat and said I was at the meeting but I'm not representing the board I don't know if that's an okay thing for you to do but as a community member I have loved Allison's summaries I think they've been very clear I thought yours was very clear that you were saying this is what was said I never thought that you thought that Paris should be replaced you know get rid of Paris which is on I understood very clearly though that that was said at the meeting so like Diana it feels to me like what's not the reason I'm here is I want to know how far down this road we have gone and how far down this road you intend to go if it's a piece of it great but if it's like Julie said if it's the if you're looking at it the Nate Levison his best practices are the way to go he says replace paraeducators which would in some cases double the class size the class ratio he does use national data which I think is ridiculous to compare schools to national data staffing data I went back and checked the report the staffing recommendations at the end are based on national national staffing issues that's ridiculous we don't have the option of doing things we don't have that option we have a really wide geographic area and really small schools and I'm here also because of the concern that if we're using only standardized test scores as a measurement I have great concerns about that I've stopped responding to you I'm more than welcome to but I just think I want to let people hear because I can explain a lot of these pieces but it's up to you you know anyone from Worcester we don't want to hear from they will have to hear all voices you may change your mind you know what it's just one and many I don't speak for the Romney board obviously but for those of you that don't know me I'm Matthew Dugart I'm on the Worcester board and I serve as the chair of the WCSU board and I also served on a small group of three of us who worked with Bill to identify possible topics for our retreat and ultimately to select made and ask him to come and work with us the purpose of that retreat really was I guess there were two one was to kind of give all the board members across the SU and all the schools more time during the day to interact with each other than we typically get in an entire year because our meetings are so focused on you know sort of transactional business especially over the last two or three years so much of our time has been eaten up by talking about Act 46 and debating that and trying to figure out what we're going to do about it so that was the first thing was just to kind of create a space where we could kind of talk to each other and have something in common to talk about and then the second thing was really the last significant amount of time just talking about education and educational outcomes so there were some things that Nate said that I found compelling there were some things that I had questions about but I'm not an educator I'm not a teacher, I don't and I'm not responsible for teaching classes or for you know overseeing teachers or developing curriculum or something like that. The board has an entirely different role so I would never I didn't come out of that conference thinking like Nate Levinson, that's where we're going I don't really think that any board member came out of that or any staff person came out of that conference I'm feeling that way so I'm really glad to be here and hearing that there's this perception of that or worried that we're just adopting the Nate Levinson plan or something forward but what I will say I'm interested in is a conversation about as boards and as representatives of the communities that have established these schools for the purpose of educating their young people what do we want to what do we demand of the schools in terms of what happens for kids while they're here educational outcomes in other words those done a great job of describing all the tremendous amount of work that's gone into creating our student learning outcomes and creating our implementation plan which I think are great as many people have said there are many good things that are already in place and happening but one thing the boards never had done is sort of say what's acceptable in terms of how many kids are achieving those outcomes and to what degree we've never ever said anything like that and so as a result every time we get a student unmonitoring report about the student learning outcomes the administration, the leadership team has had to assume that what we mean is that 100% of the kids have to be achieving 100% of the outcomes and so they have to tell us every time they give us a report that they're not meeting those outcomes so that's the conversation really is that's how the idea of a guarantee came up to be guaranteed that kids have to be literate or to be newer by a certain age or is it 80% of kids we're not thrilled honestly with the percentages that we're seeing in my senses that it's not just based on aspect scores but there are both state level and local assessments as well as board cards looking at those in the aggregate we think there's probably space for improvement and so we're interested in as boards this is my interest I should say my interest is in the conversation about what are we going to hold ourselves accountable to as boards what do we want to tell the leadership team and the school system that we're going to hold them accountable to in terms of outcomes and then how that gets done is really up to the people that are doing the work I don't know if that's helpful at all I think that's wonderful can you turn it into a question especially for those educators who are here first of all how are we doing second of all what's the gap if we're not doing as well as we want to what's that gap look like and third of all how would we think about getting there and how would we measure it is that inaccurate more or less I feel like our student outcome numbers have been flat for many many years I'm really interested in whether it's possible to change that if it's possible to move the needle both overall and then especially again in the numbers that we see for kids that are at risk or not at risk so those are the questions I think having guarantees can be fine in some realms but I think that when you talk about education and when you talk about communities of children who have vastly different needs and challenges to start setting guarantees in place then create some enormous amount of pressure if those suddenly are not being met and so do we then have practices that are just unattainable do we then have teachers burning out do we have this sense of panic because oh my goodness let's look at the results here we're not meeting that, we're not meeting district goals we're not meeting national goals yes we want to improve certainly we all want the children to be doing the very best they can do but sometimes I think we can sort of hobble ourselves by saying well let's put a guarantee in place and we can say let's do X1Z to meet that but if we're not that's another set of problems right there and then it has to be talked about again it has to be reworked so I personally would feel very hesitant to start throwing out guarantees I think we can guarantee that we will work really hard to do far better and we can set some systems in place to try and achieve better outcomes but I would personally hate to see but we guarantee that by this time we will have this in place with this group of children I just don't see that it's necessarily feasible yeah so I'm, oh sorry I'm just remembering back to when we had the conversation with the student guarantee and our principal said at least three times that she was hoping we would stop the conversation until we included staff and that it would be really important to get staff input and I feel like we maybe let the conversation go on too long instead of stopping when she said that and making a plan for how to get that input because certainly the intention was not to have anybody feel disrupted or unsure or unsafe it was really about if the board had a focus and a way to look at things we could then base decisions on you know where it fell and I don't actually see student guarantee on the most recent agenda okay so I think rather than kind of explain and go through what each of our opinions was on it maybe we could have a plan of how to communicate that piece with staff or get input on that piece with staff that we do as a whole board together that is not in a survey but after a discussion or whatever we decide is the best avenue but it seems like there's I can think it should be worth a meeting just to talk about the guarantee and invite staff in a situation so that we're exploring and as a board member dedicated to that alone to get input on the different perspectives I would say I was intrigued by the idea of a guarantee just because of the importance that we've been told for literacy and numeracy at early ages as foundational points for later and a guarantee but we debated the word guarantee we're going to say guarantee folks think that you are going to do it as opposed to we'll try really hard to get to these goals but getting behind a guarantee would be a dramatic step because it really is saying this is what we intend for our students to be able is to have these skills and we never got there but it was the extremes of the debate of saying that they would think about that or they're saying because it would overwhelm the other aspects of education and if you're making this guarantee then you have to reallocate the resources that are not damaging much I don't think toward it you know I think we should have a full discussion and at a time when most staff would be able to come to I'm thinking like right after school and just so we can also flesh out what that means, what does the word guarantee mean and what standards are we looking at to measure it and so a couple things I want to say one things that we've had in all our assessment conversations is that you have to triangulate the data there's three pieces of data that we're really looking for you can call it different things but we want and we want to see that there's calibration between them and not there isn't one assessment that can measure everything if you think there is that we know that's not true okay it's not true so if you don't look about multiple assessments with multiple assessment methodologies and as I see the teachers that are in this room I know you guys are doing that you know I just think of when I walk through the room and I don't even have to talk to the kids I can walk the walls and look at the walls and see all the different things that are going on that's why we look at report card our local assessments that have been agreed upon by teachers and this SBAC scores Katie's a hundred percent right you shouldn't just use SBAC scores the problem is is we have to create a lot of assessments and that takes a lot of time for teachers and then you need to know that they're valid and reliable the closer you get to the relationship between the teacher and the student the less valid and reliable it needs to be because they know the context of each other that's really powerful to say I can't say that enough you don't need to go take the technical validity that you do and administer it the way it is so and teachers making a thousand decisions a day so that report card data we're just this is the first year we've been able to really look at that and say what's that telling us and I think that that gives real big power to the board to the guarantee point I want to say I have biases from my own experience everybody does and my bias is being told several times in high school several times in college that you shouldn't be allowed to graduate or be here because you don't have the literacy skills and I'm lucky that I had parents that were willing to fill it in on the back side and I come from probably one of the most privileged aspects I'm a male I'm white middle class I had all those resources what I worry about are for kids that don't have the resources who was an educator that went into my high school because everything was tracked and they were going to put me down in lower tracks and she said I don't care if he fails you put him in the higher track we'll take care of him you put him in the highest track classes I worry about the kids that don't have that support and so when I think about it we can use guarantee or I know that language isn't popular but we have to be able to say kids in our society the most foundational skill is literacy skills and I'm a math science teacher and it struggled without having those literacy competencies that I still struggle with today not as much but if I hadn't had someone that was saying I'm willing to give you all the interventions we're going to figure out how to do it and luckily today in education we moved a lot from the 70s and 80s we're in a lot better place than we were but I worry about the kids that when we are seeing a three grade level gap right now in our 6th graders entering U32 for students at our risk in literacy we're having to not let them have choices at U32 in their classes so we can work on that that concerns me because I want the well-rounded kid I want the well-rounded child but if the gap was smaller and we were able to attack it then when it was not as big a gap as three grade levels at the beginning of 7th grade we can give the kid a lot more choices in their education so that's why it's important to me just to provide a little bit more context to I think all of this discussion is that we haven't had it too extensively really here on this table but it's been something that's been talked about at the full board at different boards at a supervised union board committee that I'm involved with the school quality committee and something I'm really passionate around is the idea of the achievement gap and the there's sort of this there's this understanding across not in middle sex but across the supervisory union and Bill was touching upon that of this pretty significant gap that exists between kids who are on free and reduced lunch or on say an IEP and those are ESD they're all we make I'm sorry I'm interrupting but just we make a category call student it's the best name to call it now and I just learned this two weeks ago is students have been historically disadvantaged and those are kids that are in poverty that have some sort of plan for learning or racially in a minority so what trajectory are we setting up for those kids long-term in their life where essentially their ability to achieve to access advanced education whether it's a traditional college degree or some type of advanced education to better their life to potentially break the cycle of poverty they might be living in or something along those lines but also kids that as Bill referred to or like himself that historically haven't necessarily thought to have had the potential to do what they can do but with the right amount of support that's possible and often times tradition that's been because you have a strong family supporting you but not every kid has that so that I think that's sort of been I think just a thread that has been discussed and I think is in some ways informing some of these conversations and I think the different boards are having around what it is that we want to achieve and expect of our students to be able to accomplish I absolutely appreciate what you're saying and you know my husband has a learner who's Philly and is a manager and he struggles with this every day and my daughter is in reading group because she's behind in the literacy so I obviously wonder is that why but at the same time her happiness because she knows she's lower than the other kids in her class come from her specialist come from being in art and she has noticed I don't get to do that as much her confidence is so much down in the past like few months that I I just I totally understand that but please don't lose sight of the whole child because that's so important for me can you I was just trying to get clarification what you're saying it sounded like you were saying in elementary school focusing on math and literacy and then get people to a similar level in seventh grade and then at seventh grade you can look at the child I'm not even saying that I'm saying that because of the gaps we have currently Kyle we are taking away opportunities for kids at middle school where we actually are closing the gap at U32 the good news is we're able to close this taking us three or four years from seventh grade to tenth grade to close the gap we're doing it but it's highly resource intensive and takes away opportunities just as we were talking about for a child to try something they'll lose an elective course because we have to do it on a course-wide basis so we have to put you in a math strategies or reading strategies course so you've lost the opportunity for an elective that you might want to go try something now we're trying to take more of our electives good example is engineering we no longer have an engineering elective why it's embedded in the core curriculum at U32 so it's really trying to say when kids, when we start to notice that kids are having to struggle with their learning how do we attack that right away when I'm going to use my hands because I'm looking for a piece of paper I could draw on if this is the learning sort of directory and this is directly Bill Kimball's on right now and down in second grade it's right here and it's not much of a gap to change but as I get to seventh grade it's that three grade level I was just talking about if I attack it early and it may take more constant work for Bill it may be more time on literacy throughout my elementary and probably high school career I can still be close I can still achieve the proficiency standards we've set but I may not take as much I might not have to take away as much from other areas to do that and what we're finding what our data is showing us is we aren't getting folks we aren't getting students to proficiency especially when that gap gets greater than about a grade and a half level now we are seeing schools in our system and grade levels in our system in that elementary school East Montpelier for the past two years has given this data with their system where they are actually the learning rates of the students that are historically disadvantaged and we know are not performing at grade level they're closing that gap between grades three and six faster than the learning rate of the students of the students that aren't in those interventions their interventions are working on how they're tackling it and they're tackling it at a lower rate at a lower age any other comments? I just want to say that I've been reading a lot about this specifically focusing on the achievement gap and it's interesting because now I think there's a little reframing of that to talk about the opportunity gap which makes sense right it's not so much that we complain that these kids are not achieving it so they haven't had these opportunities but I also one thing that's really come out a lot is that there's a whole lot of literature around student engagement and especially how important it is for kids who are who are students who struggle or are perhaps from historically disadvantaged groups and so I really hope that that hasn't been part of our conversation so far and I hope that that can really inform our conversation and you know I can I'm there was a big report that came out recently I think it's called the Opportunity Gap I know Katie, Barbara are you back there I know you kind of specialize in some of this there's so much happening in this conversation that it's been there's a lot on my mind I was just lately thinking about what Bill was saying with integration you know really thinking about how how a lot of what people are saying is really in common and to me drilling back and thinking about at the beginning of the conversation when we were talking about Marzano and looking at like the number one thing he was saying was having a safe and collaborative culture right and how important that is and like the fact that it felt like some of this has been talked about maybe before some of the staff had heard about it I just wonder about that part of it and if that's how that can be improved and then doing a lot of reading about collective efficacy and thinking about how a part of that is really teachers feeling like they're helping shape the direction and fostering a really rich and dynamic space for all students to be successful and if like they're not feeling collective efficacy or a collaborative culture that they've been part of that decision making so I'm kind of swirling around that I'm a little bit away from the engagement presently in my mind but but yeah I mean the engagement stuff is really just like strong relationships with your teachers you know between students and teachers I mean it's about behavioral and emotional engagement with the different types and so I guess that's a force for the trees thing right like whatever we're talking about with literacy and math has to have a high level of engagement and we know that comes from a lot of places like doing things not just for the teacher it's not just like it's not like disposable work it's work that has a wider audience it's work that's you know presented to people that are either you know that know about that topic or that can give feedback about that topic it's about creativity I mean it's about so many things and so I guess I'm just thinking about all of that there's a ton of data about engagement and impact on student learning and achievement I mean there's just so much of it so if you know it's there's so much commonality in what we're all talking about and it's unclear to me like what does the guarantee mean are we only talking about improving aspect scores in math and science like is that what we're talking about and is that does that have to be just couched in math and science or can these be expansive integrated explorations that can bring a lot of the new data about personalized learning and what we know has been successful across the state in tons of schools we see project abuse learning and we see service learning happening and we see personalized learning plans where kids get to really learn about their own identity and they get to think about their own goals and validating lived experiences outside of the walls of school and ubiquitous learning so I'm just thinking about all those intersections and wondering how how we can pull them together so not exactly sure I'll keep listening so can I give you your engagement piece yeah I'd love to so today, literally today Jim Knight probably the best person in the nation around job coaching we've sent five or eight teachers weeks long in students with them Ellen Dorsey if you want something because her doctor at work is someone on math engagement Katie that she's doing at UBM right now she the research really looks and Katie was just talking about this it's called authentic it's used compliance we don't like that word but compliance engagement and non-engagement so Ellen has some different words which I've forgotten already but this is what Jim said we did a quick survey around a table of 12, 15 people from Washington Central today and said what do we think it is in the school system and the majority of what we have is compliance engagement we don't have authentic engagement and back to exactly what you were saying Katie about project based personalization as a young kid for me if you had asked me to read something I was saying no way but if you had put something that was in front of me that had to do at the point I was building go carts when I was 10 to 12 years old I probably would have devoured it especially if we know like a Brigham Stratton operation manual has about a grade level reading of about 12 or early college because I was so interested in it and that's true for any kid it's the purpose and so back to the integrated you're right I totally agree with what Katie is saying it's that personalizing part and I know Amy agrees that because Amy's done a lot in project based learning those are the things that we need to get to because that we need to be in that area okay just two things real quick first thing I want to say is that this is why we had the retreat was to have it so that we would be having this conversation I literally could dance if I was a different person I'd be dancing right now just listening to this we haven't been having it the second thing is just I really want to stress that the conversation is not just about what do we want to be as a school system or the school system accountable to but what do we want to we as board members want to hold ourselves accountable to and what I mean by that is we want to make sure that we understand and we are getting you the resources that you need to help kids help kids learn and I think that we we don't necessarily put ourselves in that position always to if someone comes to us and says well what we really need is a job coach or we need a specialist here or we need this or that you know we don't always have the context for understanding the request we haven't always set up the parameters of saying well this is what we're going to achieve and so that we feel the pressure when someone comes and says well if you want us to achieve that this is what we need and they say well we got to go sell into the community we got to go tell the legislature and that they need to you know if they're looking at a policy change they have to think about this and it's more effective in our role as well and maybe a better service I think to educators I was just giving this presentation about service learning and its impacts on personal growth and there was about a table full of ten people and four of them said that they do service learning only with their gifted population and I thought okay and so then I went into some reading about that what we end up doing in this country a lot is taking our historically marginalized groups and doing very shallow education with them right like rote facts memorize this this is a new program you're going to achieve and we maybe achieve some rote very limited successes in a one to three year window but the current research like out of Stanford about deeper learning it's really about you know this authentic engagement and this authentic audience and this relevant purpose and for real deeper learning but what I don't want to see happen with this guarantee is a commitment to some real shallow memorization work and that we may we'll see a bump for a year or two in something that's maybe you know some algorithmic math successes on the SBAC or ability to spit out a summary say on the SBAC you know that's not deeper learning that's not going to help prepare our kids for you know the future economy and these skills and these real transferable skills so I'm just I'm wondering about that tension between the guarantee and making sure that if that ever comes to fruition that that's really about deeper learning and not just going ahead and continuing the same hierarchies of power and oppression that happen to these historically marginalized groups all the time I just also want to say in terms of engagement and how well children can or cannot regardless of what their learning abilities are I've had children speak to me about feeling overwhelmed in the classrooms because they feel like they're too big and I know that some of these are practical issues of space and teaching staff and what have you but I had a child say specifically it's too much hurry it's too many people and it's too loud and that child's having a hard time really being able to engage because it just feels like it's too much and I had two children last year that I worked with who had felt the same thing in the classroom that they were in there in classrooms this year that aren't quite as large and not quite as chaotic in terms of all the need in the classroom and they were doing so much better and feeling more able to engage and be present so there's lots and lots of considerations to be made when we talk about how we can best serve the children in terms of their learning in terms of outcomes in terms of their ability to engage with the work and with the classroom as a whole. I want to get this on kind of in this discussion so it can be in the minutes but now we've had multiple people talk about depth of learning whole child being able to learn from other things besides math and literacy not just measuring S-back scores and talking about kids feeling uncomfortable and so I want to point out that this is my fault. I put in there literacy and math but the other parts of Amy's presentation that she gave now and that she's given previously is describing how our staff members and how our principal have been working hard and effectively to try to help the social emotional dynamics in our school and with all of our kids so our busing is doing better we used to have all these bus incidents and my own kids were constantly involved in like get the call from Rummy again what has he done now but it was both ways and that has gone down I have a child that needs some extra attention in the social emotional world and the staff has been unbelievable and trying to help him learn by dealing with that part of it and so I'm not giving you guys good data but I really want you to know that our staff is really addressing that to the best of my understanding really effectively like Julie trying to help these kids find a space that is going to work with them so I hope to make sure that that's out there I guess we will be in touch and about further conversation hopefully lead to action as opposed to just discussion and the all I think will be board staff, community, administration all in the same time you know it will be a guarantee discussion but just what what we're talking about here and it will as it did tonight branch off into a lot of different areas which have been great I think the guarantee is kind of the proposal but I would also really encourage people to come with alternate proposals because I have kind of a sense of the literature but it would help a lot to have a concrete vision of okay here we've got a guarantee here we've got a menu of three or four choices rather than talking about the guarantee and you know it's kind of like that act of 46 and you do have that that's one to get that information I don't think I've seen the survey right so I don't know what I can do with it that's a good point so you got survey responses so yes and I didn't know after the potential reach of policy I didn't know what to do I didn't feel comfortable then forwarding that information but I had the survey results and there's lots of really considerate responses about these issues that I think people would like to hear so I'm not sure what can I do with those I was going to forward them to the board and hope that we could talk about them tonight we don't really have time for so I've I mean for me as a board member I don't want to look at it as a data point until I'm sure that at least people in the community had equal access to filling it out so what you said was it was on front porch forum and Facebook and it's been a few years since we had this discussion but we did a lot in terms of gathering information about like how many families had access to email and internet and those types of things so I I think that we need to discuss if we're going to look at the survey and use it as a data point and if we are then we need to distribute it the way that we agreed was it two years ago two and a half years ago that we would distribute information which was I feel like it was to use email for everybody who had email and for people in the school who we knew didn't have email we would mail them a hard copy so personally I'm not comfortable looking at the community results until we do access to at least that that we agreed to it's not it's it wasn't a procedure or policy it was just what we all agreed was best practice in terms of the staff I mean we can discuss my I guess my preference would be we all agree on a survey and we send one out together but that's just I didn't even get it on either yeah I am behind on a couple but I think I've never seen it so it sounds like maybe we do the survey I didn't get it so Chris can I make a suggestion sure Allison watch you and I've worked together well before one of the two of us work on it I think there's some context that we can I think that like I said the intent is really good what we're trying to do here but I think if we can tweak some of the introduction and then get it out and get that out to folks and let them have it out and have it back by December and have all that for the board with that work were we going to schedule a different meeting though to have it after school and then thinking early December actually before the holiday but thanksgiving so do you want to work with them just tweaking what you already have Allison that's great and I just want to make sure I can forward it I mean it's really even public information I don't know if I share it publicly but there were some just lovely ideas that people had I mean very much in the same vein as I don't think you throw them out but I'm saying we're going to make a version 2 for the community and there's some resources we can give them because I think tonight we went a lot deeper and for those who saw the survey and what you heard tonight I had some app information from those of you that did that hey I hear a different context now than what I did in the survey and I think context is so important when you ask people information to give you back feedback whether it's in a thin format like it is here in a survey or thick as we've been doing tonight where there's a conversation going on so that we really have that set because I would love to have more feedback of like what does the community think about this you know and that's what you when you reference goals to me as your superintendent the goals you did that in your student learning outcomes and in the mission you wrote and so then we start to talk about you know what are action steps and what are indicators or some goals underneath that I just want to make sure we don't lose it no I don't think we should lose it I agree with you well but just to get that public participation and input for people to spend time doing that we have to feel like it actually matters and I've heard an amazing amount of wonderful ideas from everyone on this side of the room but you seven are the ones who actually have the power to make changes in this building and there have been a number of huge changes made to this building like with the scheduling this year that I think we're done without community input and without teacher input and that's very troubling to me and I just think you need to think about that are you actually going to act on what the community wants on community members saying we want allied arts we want whole child at Romney or is at the end of the day the supervisor union going to make the decision because statutorily they're tasked with that so here's my hard direct question I've asked the board Kyle when you have limited resources and time is there a priority list or isn't there and I really want the answer either way I'm not saying I want that I'm conditioned I have my own opinion on that but I think the board should make that decision that's part of that guarantee discussion you know for children and a lot of that goes into a conversation with the parents we'll ask the board do you support that? you know what that is we'll have that discussion at this meeting and I think the answer is yes but what does that mean too I mean because it's a broad question I mean who's going to say no you know right who's going to say no to that but what was and I wasn't at the last meeting but I did watch it on video I don't remember it coming up what is the intention with the survey and what we'll do with the information is it to help us with deciding about a student guarantee is it to help with what? I'm reasonably new to this which is why I'm sure I make lots of mistakes but I think every meeting we've had we've talked about like goals and priorities and how would we make a priority list to delegate resources and what is it that I feel like these are these soft questions that we don't ever really I'm not quite sure how to explain it it's always there but nothing ever really comes of it and so then we had this meeting at the WCSU where it seemed like we were really going to try to work on those questions and then my understanding was we were going to follow them up here and so I felt really under the gun like this is happening so fast how are we possibly going to get our community involved in this with that kind of speed and so all of it we were all the goal what I sent out was to try and just get people's opinion exactly what has happened here tonight that's all I wanted I wanted people who can't come don't come won't come don't feel comfortable coming whatever I wanted them to be able to you know put out their opinion so we can start to feel oh wow you know everybody's actually interested lots of people are interested in this or no you know people are really interested in focusing on the academics or you know they have ideas that we should be doing whatever and so does that answer your question I don't know so is it for us to then make our own goals and priorities is it for the board to do board work it is to inform the board so that we can do board work and I think it's to get community input get information community and staff input into the curriculum issues so that we can start and I don't feel like we can prioritize if we don't know what are some of the things that are happening and being proposed and what are people thinking about like how can so like prioritizing our work plan so our work plan I feel like that's something different that to me is Bill knows that X is going to happen in December and Y is going to happen in February and so we need to like plan what we're going to do at each of our meetings to try to make our meetings more efficient schedule that's a schedule like a calendar this is a priority so funding we now have something that we have agreed upon we have decided we're going to focus on this so if we have to decide on funds for A, B or C well this is what we decided our goals and priorities are so this is how we would deal with that does that am I like misinterpreting what we've been kind of softly talking about so I would suggest to Allison and Bill who are going to work on this that's what needs to be said in the survey so that when people are filling it out they know that that's their chance to give input on to the work for the board and prioritizing funding and a lot of what was said those are pretty big things that you know if I'm somebody who's super busy I'm going to take the time to do that survey because that's my opportunity versus not knowing what the intention is or how the data can be used we have traditionally had differences in opinion and I feel like often times I differ from what Brian and Caroline are saying would you guys feel better about one of you making the survey I'm totally happy I mean if you want to do that great otherwise I'm happy to put in the time and then of course see what you guys think about it before but what's going to be the most comfortable for you so it sounds like you've already done a lot of the work and I think between two of us Allison we can I think what Caroline and I'm answering for so I'm sorry I shouldn't be jumping in you had a direct question but Caroline asking the question you just did that's the best part of a well written survey is what's the intent to use for it and what's the information you're trying to gather so I think having that upfront and then really it's more of a link more to the work we're trying to do that's up on the Washington Central website that's what I'd want to point out okay I'm sorry I just wanted to as I communicated to you in my emails that I thought the intent was good I was concerned on the process yeah but yeah I mean if you want different content or something so I'm happy to pass it over I'd have to see it I have no idea but I think you and Bill working together okay so just so I'm super clear are you going to agree on this content and then send it out or are you going to agree on this content and bring it back to the board can we do that by email because we can't otherwise we have to wait until the next meeting yeah that's what I'm wondering I wonder if you can just empower the two of us to shift it's really it's not shifting the questions it's just shifting the preamble before the survey I think really and then giving people some resources to look at they'd like to because it's because it's hard with a it's hard with any electronic survey sometimes you can't preview the questions before you take them and you need to know a few things so you have to put that in the beginning and here are some resources you might want to avail yourselves of of what we're talking about I just wanted to make one clarifying statement that the survey was literally completely open-ended it was just what are your ideas for best practices and what are your goals for students it was there were no there was no like choose A or B or C or D or I strongly agree it was literally two open-ended questions so which is probably why it got like long paragraphs so I just wanted to I just wanted to let people develop some survey that's statistically accurate it was two completely open-ended questions that was the whole survey and that's what it would be I had my plan on changing it I'm just more I agree with you that the preamble could be clarified and you probably would get different results based on the preamble I would totally agree with that but I just wanted to make sure that people didn't think there were some people on 40 questions survey I just wanted to say Allison whether you made mistakes in the way that you did it and I didn't get I really appreciate that you took the time and that you reached out to find out what we were thinking because we've been feeling like we're not necessarily being paired or consulted about things that are really, really important so hopefully I'll get the next one Well it's very sweet of you, I definitely am not alone I think everybody here really wants to know what the staff have to say I'm sure of it actually so Well we talked a lot before about the communication between board and the community and staff and central office and administration and somehow it just feels like it just keeps falling by the wayside and I really, really, really wish and hope that we would start to communicate because if we're communicating effectively and appropriately with each other we can then start to build on these other things that are so essential for the children's education well being if we're not communicating we can't do that as effectively I appreciate that the reaching out happened maybe next time I'll get the surfing I'm sorry So do we need a break? First of all are we empowering them? Are we empowering them to set it out? I think come to us first so we know what this is being sent out and then just so you for information I just want to be clear Second, you've had some folks waiting to talk to you about the building and I know you want to give a break but I think we should I would recommend to you Chris about the building use Has everybody had to say? They're all talking about it Okay, so next up is the building use we're going to take up building use next and I think we'll pull on the building access first Sally, you want to just introduce yourself? Yes, my name is Sally Cavanaugh and I'm on the Spaces and Spaces and Events Committee that came out of What's Next Middle Sex and there are a number of us here on this committee and we wanted to come to the board because we were more excited there were several exciting ideas that came out of that day's work having to do with Spaces in our town to feel more connected and have access to for a variety of different reasons and some of the really exciting ideas right at the top revolved around Romney so what would Romney be, what could Romney be to the community after school hours in terms of either adult education or cultural heritage presentations or a speaker series or ideas like recreation, indoor volleyball has come up musical presentations, these types of things so we wanted to bring this to you, we're having our first meeting on Tuesday night, what we'd like to do is form some kind of a survey I guess so some kind of survey to check out what people in the community would like to see for uses of the Romney facility we've also checked out the procedures for the policy that governs the use of the facility as of 2014 it seems like it's a good mix and a good fit but we kind of wanted to check out, you take your temperature we're going to be talking about it at our meeting on Tuesday night about how do we do some outreach and what would be some good uses that we could consider for this building in the future and then Elliot's going to talk a little bit more about one point of that under his other cap, which is the Bansden Community Cap that he's also on this committee selfish I wanted to give you the broader context and see if you have any input for us to consider I have a question, so you looked at the current facility use policy or whatever it's called and what you want to do fits within that it seems to, the only thing that we came up with that was a question for us was if your members of this community using the facility for some of the uses that I just outlined there's the insurance piece of that which I don't know how that would apply to members of the town I don't know how that would work and we don't know, but that would be something we'd probably need some more advice on are there areas that we can't use and then Amy what burden does this put on me like that which is how logistically really what how that's going to happen to you so we just wanted to put it out there to you that we'd like to have your input as we start to talk and work things out and before we go out with some questions that might be something that you feel is a little bit you know not something that you think is a good idea so I think we should make the school as accessible as possible to a middle class community and anyone who wants to come in and use it I think what I can foresee is being issues that we have to grapple with is what spaces would that be would it be limited in spaces we would have to get teacher input as to if classrooms were going to be used what would need to be done in order to ensure that it's secured and issues like that I think we'd also I must say if it was a staffing like a sort of staffing issue that we would have to work and I would hope we would want to work around that because ultimately the taxpayers fund this entire building to quite a bit and rehab did over the past couple of years and I think during the rehab there was a push of building more as community center we had the vote and we have town meeting here now and so the school is a social center for the town and middle side I think a lot of people meet here because their kids come here and their parents run into each other and it really is the glue pot I think that creates a lot of context so maybe encouraging us to open up the discussion across town ways we can talk about as much as you might think of would be a great use for money to ask people to be creative as much as possible and again with the limitations that we have and just work around those it brings some feedback obviously to you it's fun to let you know that we're going to be starting and it's Tuesday night and then I'll just turn it over to unless anybody else from the committee has anything else to add I'll just turn it over to Elliot who's got a specific piece for us of course, may I just add one thing it might be helpful for the board to review the policy and procedures again just because I could see there's sometimes impromptu use of the building and I would really like it to be spelled out where the priority needs to be for instance, if a practice needs to be moved into the gym and we had thought that it was open for gym volleyball or something like that who gets priority the students or the community group is it first come, first serve as far as scheduling it's basically the principal's discussion and I just want that a little bit clearer in the policy so that it's clear to everybody how that's going to work some of our other policies at our other schools lay it out that student use is first it's just listed right on it helps with the administrator saying okay, I have got a conflict here who do I serve first I think the group fairness is students first I think that would and if there's going to be a question about it I don't think there's any question about that it's usually not the student piece it usually comes between and I'm just going to be very directed concrete instance at other schools because the fields are owned by Romney town out there but we've had at some schools Onion River scheduled to have the field and this community group in town wants to have the field and Onion River in the time to sign up started six months prior and they signed up the day of six months who do you how do you walk that I think it's back to that being clear about what the expectations are and I think you said this already Chris it's just we want to ensure we put a lot of money into this building so it's staffing the use of it to make sure we get it locked up and it's kept clean and that's just something we've learned by not doing that and other buildings that it's not because anyone's trying to be misdevious things just happen it's just the way it is that actually is a really good point too just to think not that anything's being planned now but the schedule of who has the building is that Alyssa we've already been working on gathering that information for your group so that you have some idea of when it's typically being used and how frequently I'm Elliott Berg from the Bandstand committee Mary Nealon is here from the committee John Puglia was here one of the other ideas that came up at the what's next middle sex gathering was the possibility of enhancing the gym here so that it is easily convertible into a performance space and I'm here in particular to ask the board for your support for a partnership with the Bandstand committee to do an initial acoustical study and I'll give you the background on that first of all let me say the Bandstand is entering its 14th season this next year I'm hoping all of you or most of you have gone to concerts there and a perennial issue and when it rains where do we go and for the first ten years we had the benefit of coming here to the Runley school and using the gyms but the problem was that the acoustics and the lighting of the gyms are they're problematic to say the least and about four years ago we decided not to do it anymore because it just it didn't work as a performance space but there is a way of enhancing the gym so that you could do that Mary and Ron Sweet from the Bandstand committee and I had a meeting with Don Hirsch from Middlesex here at the gym and if you don't know him he's sort of a community resource in this he's a theater designer he did the Paramount Theater in Rutland the Barry Opera House took an hour of his time we did this walkthrough of the gym and he said that what we needed were acoustical improvements stage lighting and ideally a foldable stage or in sections that could be stored where the chairs are right now and we talked about that in some detail and he sketched out what kind of lighting would be needed and he costed that out for us he he got us some prices on staging it's the acoustical piece that we have an initial step to do because you have to have an acoustical engineer come in and study the space you need to figure out how many panels, how many curtains how they're designed and then we can get a cost for them and so we tried to envision a situation where we would have win-win-win outcome for the town it's a win because we have town meetings like town meeting and other get-togethers when we did the what's next middle sex meeting the other week it was really hard to hear people speaking here even the person up front couldn't hear her it would be a win for the school because of plays and concerts that would would honor the work that the kids are doing and it would be a win for the community in terms of bandstand concerts so here's sort of the lineup on this we need to have we would need to have an acoustical engineer come in and study the space and Don Hirsch estimates that the cost of that would be somewhere in the five to six thousand dollar range now I know that may sound like a lot for a study but the person has to come in and figure out what kind of paneling what kinds of curtains what the design would be at that point we can get a hard cost on acoustical improvements we know what the staging costs we know what the lighting costs plus installation the overall package and this estimate we have right now is around fifty thousand dollars and the bandstand committee has gone to the community before outside of tax dollars to build a bandstand fourteen years ago we built the bandstand with no money from the town, the money from the school community labor and community donations and so we're looking to partner with the school board to make the gym the kind of space where all of these uses this is part of sort of the what's next middle sex impetus in the direction of fuller use of the Romney building to make it the kind of space that we can all use I wonder if you have any questions about this do you have an engineer in mind do you have an estimate on that it would be five to six thousand we can try to get in touch with our acoustical engineers in White River and Boston is my understanding and he's waiting to hear back from them so I had hoped we had hoped to have a number for you tonight whether it was four or five or fifty five hundred or whatever the bandstand would be willing to split that cost with you if it were five thousand dollars for example we would put twenty five hundred dollars down and just see there's no commitment beyond the study but without the study we can't figure out what the overall cost and design would be so it's very different than the discussion we all had earlier I understand this is a very concrete this is a very easy one that has a question I'm sorry Beth I wonder Elliot if you could add in the acoustical study addressing the sort of daily use here at Romney because that space can be really challenging when it's full of kids for lunch and when they're having physical education it can be really challenging I think for some kids to be in that space so if that was included to understand how to make that better for the kids in terms of echo and that kind of thing I'm sure the engineer would take that into effect I mean we would be laying out all of the uses that the gym would be made of and when we did our budget for the new improvements of the school the gym came up as one of the improvements and it was tabled and I was just wondering if we were going to readdress that to have a space for the community a nice gym, great acoustics staging more space for storage and tables if that's something we will ever readdress Lauren that's what I was thinking too because I was like I was right there thinking about your use of it as our physical education teacher and the storage we have I mean I would want I'm not trying to I think we should do the acoustical study but I think we should engage our architects black river design because they're the ones who can plan out multiple uses of spaces and is this actually able to have all that equipment great to use all that space but to be able to say is this actually going to work or are we looking for an addition or something different to be able to do all this and I don't know I mean I just that's why we hire these guys to do the work they do for us it's my understanding in terms of the acoustics that we're talking about we're probably talking about acoustic paneling around the top of the walls and you can't put paneling down below because of basketball and other sports but there are curtain systems acoustic curtain systems that you can use there stage lighting would be fixed up above that actually all that doesn't really concern me it's the risers and portable stage right now we're keeping our stage out in containers because we'd like to have it inside so it's when I think about the space that's behind the screen slash curtain area that has chairs and tables in there for when Lauren's teaching it's pretty full in there so there's not more room and so it's we have to think about we need architect slash space designer to think about how do we do all that and I wouldn't want to get too far down the road without asking that question I think there are doable and just to do a quick estimate what would that cost us to be able to provide all that I think we're looking at a much more significant project because we've already talked about sort of as a five year plan of building improvement the gym being one of the big ticket items that we want to take care of within that five year window and I believe that alone we're talking 50 to 75 just a floor just a floor, I mean painting is 25, 30,000 but what I'm also thinking I felt like there might if we're looking at a larger project does the design of the gym does that whatever that might look like will that impact the acoustical study will it change and so depending to Bill's point this might we may want to think a bigger picture with this as well because if there are further improvements that need to be made to the gym will that need to be taken into account prior to doing the acoustical study so you're getting the most accurate one I don't know exactly how that would work what would be improved I think one of the questions we have is what is the potential impact of Act 46 on this kind of vision for the gym are we looking at a situation in which the middle of next year whatever funds might be available now to put toward this project would end up being pooled among the five district towns and I don't know the answer to that I'm pretty confident the answer is yes that if there was a merger part of the merger is all debt and all assets go merged into the single entity and then any decision like that would not be by this board it would be by the entities board and so the answer is I think yes that we wouldn't be sitting here making a decision on that and we wouldn't be using or at least we wouldn't be the ones using the funds that may be available now because they get all merged into a single part do you disagree with that Bill no I think you're you're in the right area but I don't say that precludes it either I wouldn't say it does I wouldn't say either way it's a different decision making and I think you covered that very well and I think there's I don't know the answer is what I usually say to people I don't know we're not there my question about Act 46 was if we merged we don't own the building right I thought we had to sell the building and that's the point that's an asset that we actually wouldn't even own it so we wouldn't even be able to get permission I mean we'd have to go to a different entity to get permission it depends we talked a little bit about this during the what's next middle sex and my suggestion was that building access be written into the articles of agreement so that local there's local control over that not the board control Adrian took the tact of saying I think there'd be good faith on all parts because everyone else would want to have access to their building as well and I agree with that to the extent that I'd rather see it in writing the lawyer in writing the lawyer in writing so that is the lawyer in me and merged districts have done that I mean they've done improvements to single buildings with town work well they would have to because that serves the community I mean that I don't see that but we should keep in mind the context we're bringing the second largest bond debt into the merger if it happens so that merge board where we have either one out of seven seats or maybe two out of ten depending on how it goes the likelihood that that merge board would want to do improvements to this building when you've got other towns like callous and Worcester which have zero debt and their taxes go way up when the merger happens I think we're going to be first in line so I do think that's part of the consideration if we were going to make an improvement to this building I'd do it well we have a school board I'm just wondering if it's possible to get a sense of the board's view on the acoustical study taking into account what Brian was talking about in terms of multiple uses of the gym maybe working with Black River design in terms of what changes might be made to the gym so that we can get this started if we don't do the acoustical study we're sort of stuck I also would be supportive of it but a couple with working with Black River so that you take the proper steps because of other improvements that may be made to this space no I actually would not envision any adding up like enlarging it anyway because it's kind of like to do what I heard if you're going to bring in other equipment like staging and some sort of risers for people for seeing you're going to need to store that stuff somewhere and right now our only option is either adding more containers or putting it outside so I think we're going to have that issue I don't think it's insurmountable but I think from the way I see this building this building is still very tight on space it is if I could just clarify at least the Don Hirsch's recommendation in terms of seating and viewing was initially the bandstand committee had come in and talked about risers in the back and people can sort of look over in a sloped way to the performance area and Don said a much easier approach would be to get foldable staging so that people are sitting on a flat floor that the performers are raised oh yeah I agree that will fold pretty pretty small so we have a set of this at U32 that we use foldable staging and foldable stage for graduation we've actually purchased our own right now and we did it last year and it pulled I haven't been down to the space for a little while so I'm not going to say my memory is the best but knowing what's in that cubby area for lack of better words a cubby area I don't see that going in there plus what's in there when you have all the tables and chairs we're looking at a 20 by 24 that's about the same so it's not that it's undoable you've got to figure this stuff out and so I just want to be clear with the board that I think it's worth the acoustical investment but there's other investments you're going to need to have before you say yes or no because you're going to want consultation from your architect which is going to be a cost and you're going to want to look at there's possible other areas that you may need to use for storage if we're not changing the layout of the building I'm not saying that is I just want to alert you to the decisions you're going to need to make I think it's I mean I'm not I think this could be great I just think we need to look at it in the context of what are the other needs to within the facility and what are our costs right now we have I think it's like 140,000 right now in our capital improvement fund and we're about to look for 65 60 to 65 of it to go I just I think we should we should incorporate this into a larger conversation just to be thoughtful about it and I think timing-wise as we talk about our budget it's fine but I would just recommend that I had one other question Amy did we approve last year to heat more in space there was an issue with having heat back there was not one of the issues that was one of the questions was that not done I have a space here it's just in the office the two offices don't have heat better back it's part of the boiler project oh heating the it's all one we can get back into it when we get to the building pieces but there's I mean there were things we had to do because we got poor bids last time so that's why we put everything off a year but it's in a current plan it was in the original RFP and then remember we got very poor we got very high expensive bids because we went out so late and people were already booked for the summer so we're looking to go I mean RFP is hopefully going out in the next couple weeks to at least by December 1st for next summer to do the boiler work which some stuff we took off because we needed controllers I might as well give you the building report right now we needed to change some of our controllers around here I know that the heat for Lawrence office was in there as an option to be done and it was based on pricing and the money we had and since we didn't do a lot the only thing we've done is done some pump work around here that wasn't that came back from Thomas Mechanical to re-install some pumps that were done in the original we really haven't done much piping we've done more controls work Garland do you have a sense on where you stand? No I guess I want Lawrence to have heat first but otherwise I think that's part of the boiler bit yeah it's just it's easy to say that we're done we're going to be taking apart some walls to get there to get our heat like a more just of the concept of extending the learning spaces by both of these opportunities to partner with you I just want to bring in that these aren't like siloed separate things right like there's a lot of opportunity for students at Rumney to partner about film series and hosting or having a dialogue about shared reading or more slam poetry on the stage led by students intergenerational learning audience, authentic audiences and then the increased belonging for community members and students here from those experiences so I encourage us not to think about these as separate things but really as just extending the learning space Thank you for understanding that I guess I do want to say that I fully support putting the language in terms of the merger about the building use I fully support that but I really don't want to feel like we are going to be pushed to spend money now because of the shift so I just wanted to say that so is there a sense that we would be willing to partner on the acoustic gole aspect it's not an action item tonight I think we will take a shortfall anyway I don't know that we need to because it's $2,500 so I don't know that it has to come to the board we could go find that in the budget if you wanted to allocate general funds because I can't spend beyond the budget without the authority of the reserve funds I can't spend beyond the budgeted amount or I would need authorization from the board to use the reserve funds to do that but if we gave the sense that we wanted to partner on a 50-50 basis and I would say up to $3,000 6 is I don't have a hard number for you I'm not worried about that I'm not worried about that you would be able to handle that I'd have to go back and look at the budget and if we had an assurance that you understand that I'm saying if we can find it we'll come back to you Will this engage Black River? No it will not this is just the acoustical study Is there a sense as to whether or not Black River needs to come first or Well here's the thing that I know I've worked with John enough with different projects because he's servicing everywhere in the district except for East Montpelier right now that it's better to have the architect in on the initial than coming out later because sometimes things have to be redone I don't think that it means that John has to get going first before the acoustical but I think whoever comes in for the acoustical engineer has to it's John Hemmelgarten John Rae Hales John Hemmelgarten does our work but John Rae Hales who you know in middle sex who are one of the partners they're both partners at Black River Design that they're in at the beginning of it it's always better I've learned the hard way and it usually costs us more Should we also allocate funds for that for one of the jobs? What are we doing exactly I'm sorry Are we voting on something right now to allocate funds for something Giving a sense of the board of sharing on a 50-50 basis up to $3,000 of as-our-share to have the acoustical study done in the gym to and that would give a sense on what further modifications we need what equipment would be needed to make further modifications and get a better picture of the global cost at least as envisioned by the bandstand committee for that space and then that would just give us more information And you would like the acoustical engineer to touch base with Yeah I need to talk See I'm sitting here tonight without having known this so I could have had an answer for you tonight I need to talk to John and say John you've done these types of things before do you think this is something that can go ahead do you need to be in on the beginning of it because he knows all the from all the surveys and community forms we had about what we want to do the building we have all that information about what we wanted to do to the gym that didn't get done so he may say Bill have the acoustical engineer go do it it's not a big deal but he may say I got caught in one the other day at U32 he's like hey you should have called me a little earlier we're going to redo some work that's a couple hours worth of work and so we have an open we have them as an honest consultant for the SU that we have an open so I don't need you to allocate funds I just don't know how much it's going to be and that's kind of how work starts with the architect you try to figure out what the total cost is going to be so when we get a hard number on the study should we just send it to you Chris one of the two of us one of the two of you we'll take it from there I have enough authorization get to the boards comfortable because then you can do it within the budget I guess I have a few questions about this so I'm like so thinking this is such a wonderful idea but I also we've been talking about a priority list and I guess I feel a little uncomfortable committing to anything without making our priority list because what if even $3,000 was needed to be able to meet our priority less for our student achievement goals so I guess my first question is Lauren do you think that the acoustics in the gym are inhibiting you from being able to deal with physical education teaching for our children and Amy do you think that the acoustics in the gym are causing any troubles for any other kind of instruction at the school right now I feel that the point about some sensory stuff is valid as far as that space being hard for some kids yeah I agree there's probably some students that it's pretty hard it even travels down the hall my classroom it's horrendous alright then I can be in support of that if that would help our kids right now do a better dog learning I mean the cost is going to be on the other side is putting it up and all that I just don't want to like I feel like if I can't get behind it I don't want to say oh yeah go ahead and spend $3,000 on the study so I just want to think about that with it how many kids can't eat lunch in the cafeteria I don't think it's a large number but I know for my child I don't know when she first came because she couldn't eat because it was too loud so I think this issue would remedy that I don't know it might be good to find that out because it almost sounds like the curtains or the thing, the curtain system that may help with that as opposed to the panels up above so it's not being oversold beyond what it really can do and I don't know the answer to that I'm assuming but the study might come back with all of that I agree but I think the acoustical engineer needs to be talking to people in the school here about how the gym is used and what the issues are and maybe come when the kids are eating well you would have to go through Amy on that they would have to go through Amy just for that in terms of access to the school if kids were here okay thank you very much you want to take a short break, five minute break are we not ending at 8.30 we could be I also put eight but we said we would always end at 8.30 that was our goal Monday the 12th okay we should do morning and at this point it has to be the 19th oh that's so late it can't be then alright 14th or 16th in the morning oh 15th is a good day actually 15th I could be flexible I cannot I have an 8 to 10 and then a 10 to 12 14 or 16 in the morning 14 could happen what's morning what's morning what's morning what's morning 8 8.05 do you want to do it at 8.30 no that works I can Amy knows they had the leadership team I was running in at 5 minutes after 8.40 what did I say unless you wanted to do it up here I was just as close to go to your office I'm coming down to so it doesn't matter okay Chris we decided to go right straight to 6.0 alright adjourn that's 8.0 okay so we're back on the agenda thanks for your time address the budget next I need to approve the minutes as well I'm sorry do you mind if we just do some real quick house cleaning of like what we're going to address tonight that's a great idea so let me ask Bill what do we need to address tonight we need budget peace yeah I want to inform you on the roof because that's been an ongoing issue the rest could wait what reports do we need from your perspective I think well you have Amy's report in here I think the Executive Committee a quick one on the Executive Committee budget and we'd like you to get to 5.1 because right now we're dealing with dual policies and I don't think you have to do the appoint the two members Chris and you and I were going back on this this week the 46 we didn't really talk about that at the Articles Committee this time after we had done two meetings ago but the sense was having them in place giving the timing the tight timing of I would like his input on that what I'd like Matthew's input on that if he thinks it's tight timing for a study committee to get up and going for 7.06 yeah yeah I just would like I'm giving you a simple question do you think it's a tight timeline that we need to get people appointed to that now or we haven't talked about it for two weeks but assuming the board the state board a 7.06 like committee Artic Act 49 subsection D that's not a 7.06 but it's like yeah I don't know I mean I guess I asked Florida to share this information she hasn't had a chance to do it yet with the committee Bill was able to send those questions to AOE and their response made it clear that that their position is not what we've been operating under their position is that the only thing that's possible is amendments to the default articles not writing entirely new articles so we have to deal with that revelation on their part for our next meeting and talk about what it means and I know they're going to be talking about it some more but from Don I was that's going to get passed along and did get passed along to the state board's attorney on the 14th on the 14th of November so we'll hear more but I don't think it's as open as we thought it was I agree with Matthew that's why I wanted I mean it seemed very like explicit like you know there's because there are things that are built into the their default articles that they say that are essential to the success of the goals they are charged with carrying out under Act 49 whatever so if that's the case there are many articles that we could not amend and it changes the work of the committee substantially so I mean did her response describe how they get away from the statutory language that talks about a 706B light committee which is a very clear language they did not address that particular so I was trying not to get any huge piece but I wanted Matthew's piece on whether we thought because I don't think it's as fast forward as we thought it was Chris based on the relevant pieces but I'm not trying to stop not if you're amending, not if it's an amendment but that statutory language about drafting is 90 days I mean that's a fast forward right that's 90 days from and it may not take that long to appoint members I think Caroline has got a good 90 days Chris Caroline wouldn't take us this long to appoint two memb