Anyway, good morning. I am so happy to be here. I am from Dublin So it's a great privilege and honor to get to speak to Euro Python in my own home city So thank you very much for having me So just to sort of get things straight at the start. What is this talk about?  So only a couple of weeks back and This company is allowed to operate 30 autonomous cars in San Francisco And it's a lot it has a license to pick up passengers at night and drive them around with no driver in the car And of the 30 cars that they're allowed to run About 20 of these cars basically decided to pull in and sort of clog up This junction in San Francisco bringing traffic to a grinding halt now There are no lives lost here, which is great, but then cars are not supposed to kill the cars are supposed to avoid killing people What what will happen if we?  And I will tell you that story shortly It's super weird to wake up in the morning and find the Guardian and with an op-ed that says you're a modern-day hero I'm not I'm just doing the thing that I think is the right thing to do and that I hope that all of you would do as well after you've listened to this talk So here is my back story In 2017 I was working at Google and Google at that point Had taken this secret contract with the US Department of Defense to work on a thing called project Maven This is the logo for a project Maven and there's a little motto here It says aficionostrum est a duvare and that means our job is to help Now I don't know who made up this logo or what they were thinking but either You know option one they thought this was a cool logo and they'd never heard of I'm from the government and I'm here to help or else they did know about that and it's extremely subversive But either way it's pretty funny So 2017 they kicked this project off and basically the idea is normal military government procurement processes are slow and cumbersome and what if they could get some of that you know Private software industry kind of special sauce and use it to supercharge their military systems so that they could have you know Warfare at the speed of thought and all this kind of stuff So basically their problem was they had all this video surveillance stuff This is called wide area motion imagery and it's the the video that you get when you fly a drone over somewhere And you you record that video so it's from high above and You know got relatively little detail But there is enough detail there to pick out people moving around vehicles moving that sort of thing and You know they they fly these drones over certain areas pretty much continuously And so they end up with this huge huge amount of video and they literally cannot hire enough people to actually do all the analysis on this so Basically their idea here is automate that okay, so that's fine. You want to do some machine learning. What's the problem? Well, the problem is kind of this right and You know At the end of that process at the start of the process is machine learning. Yeah, sure at the end of the process is people getting blown up So this is a very very blunt quote and apologies for any offense caused But I think that Jamie Sawinski of Missila here is is correct There's a thing called the military kill chain and it starts off Identify your target dispatch forces to your target Attack and then destroy that's the kill chain and that is the end that's You know Maven was not a weapon, but it's very much feeding information into the weapon systems So I was not the only person at Google that was concerned about this project I knew about this a few weeks before it went public When it did go public Every art department for all of the tech kind of publications went went on a bit of a field day and produced all these kinds of images What I had been asked to do in particular I wasn't asked to work on the core Maven project But what I was asked to do was to help Google set up new air-gapped data centers Phase one of Maven was 18 months long and what they were going to do was basically hand software to the DoD So handing trained models and they also had some you know pretty fancy plans for nice UX's that would give you like a timeline of people's activities and like a little connected social graph of You know who in which houses visits who and which other buildings All this kind of stuff But what they were asking me to do was help them to run that software in-house in phase two in these air-gapped data centers That would have been sort of supervised in operation by the US military So I ended up leaving Google and I started speaking out publicly about this issue and I joined the campaign to stop killer robots I still volunteer with them regularly doing advocacy type work so Ethics 101 I am not going to talk about ethics 101 because this is a tech conference and Vicki said don't talk about ethics Laura talk about the tech so For me my ethical stance against killer robots is actually very grounded in What I see as fundamental and probably insoluble problems with the technology So that's mainly what we're going to talk about if you do want ethics actually the good place is pretty good I did a whole masters degree in ethics and I learned maybe nearly as much from the good place anyway So it is what it is So text off so here is a sort of a I Guess very high-level schematic of your autonomous weapon so first off Autonomous weapon is a weapon that it's not It's not just any degree of autonomy and you can have an autonomous drone that flies autonomously that takes certain degree decisions around Routing all this kind of stuff, but when we talk about an autonomous weapon we talk about autonomy in the critical functions and That's targeting and the decision to attack a particular target. So target identification and target selection An autonomous drone that can autonomously fly somewhere, but a human is making the decision to attack We don't consider that an autonomous weapon even though it has some autonomous capabilities We're all about the lethal stuff here that those critical functions of choosing the target So how targeting works is kind of key to this whole argument so The autonomous weapons that we're seeing emerge or that have existed for some time in sort of proto-autonomous form They tend to use sensors to sense the environment and then they make some decisions internally So the sensors that they use tend to be radar and LiDAR Infrared mobile phone signals a huge amount of Targeting that's done on individuals is actually done at mobile phones as opposed to that You're not looking at the identity of the person. You're looking at what phone are they carrying and we're assuming that that tracks Radiation so enemy radar Sound and so for example, that's detecting the origin of someone shooting at you Other signals, so it's a thing called IFF beacons. That's identification of friend or foe And it basically tells you is this aircraft or ship or whatever friendly or enemy You could get data from other devices so you could have like peer-to-peer networks of these things sharing information and cameras for vision That's probably not an exclusive list, but I think that covers kind of most of the bases so The first example of autonomous weapons that people tend to talk about are guided missiles and sensor fused weapons So what these do is they use radar infrared or some other means to track a target But the target is first selected by a human being so I would say okay that ship over there We're gonna attack that and your guided missile will lock on to it So the decision is made by a human being and it's pretty close in time to to when when the actual strike happens So typically, you know when you target it and you fire and the attack starts right away And the targets are typically military targets So tanks ships that sort of thing. These are not typically things that you would use to attack what we call dual use targets, so that's people Buildings that are not exclusively military bases that sort of thing So that's not typically what you're doing with your guided missiles. They're they tend to be pretty pretty military focused and They use the sensor data only to control the very end stage of the attack usually So they pretty much fly towards the thing you pointed them at and then they use their the radar their infrared to Basically stay locked on just in the final phase so they don't sort of veer off So a lot of people say oh well autonomous weapons systems They will make they will make warfare more precise and they will help commanders to you know carry out their intentions more precisely and Every time I've looked at it The Americans are the ones that say this a lot in the international debates Every time I look at it what they're talking about tends to be stuff like this And which as I say are not really autonomous weapons and in the sort of the fully autonomous sense of the word So here's the second thing that some people talk about when they say autonomous weapons are great So you've got missile defense shields or counter rocket rocket and mortar C-Rams and These are interesting as well because They're typically guarding a human occupied position. So you use them on a base or on a ship or somewhere where people are They don't move around by themselves They can be mounted on a vehicle which can be moved and what they do is they they typically have more than one mode they may have like a sort of a manually Operated mode where they they're watching for potential attacks and they require a human being to sort of push a button and say Yep, that's an attack far back Or if you're expecting a big a big swarm of incoming missiles or these days groans or whatever You can put them into a fully autonomous mode and they will attack whatever they see incoming But that's not typically how they're operated most of the time And they work based on radar mostly and thermal imaging and the targets are generally military in nature So these are designed purely to attack missiles and mortars and things like that coming in however even with these systems which are Co-located with humans don't move around and are pretty much targeted at military things like missiles You have there have been accidents that have occurred Particularly around aircrafts serve in a couple of cases of missile defense installations attacking aircraft both military and civilian So even this is not foolproof Then the another thing that's coming out is smart tanks and armored personnel carriers or APCs So those tip again are often manned vehicles, but they can be completely autonomous and completely remotely operated And these increasingly have the ability to detect Threats which can be incoming fire But here's the thing I went to an arms fair last September and I went and I talked to a bunch of these tank manufacturers And what they do now is They let you install your own software plug-in that defines what a threat is So you write a little plug-in that could be anything like you could decide that all human beings are threats or dogs are threats or any time you You know detect the word hospital on a building. It's a threat. You can do whatever you want crazy things so that's a really interesting development here, and I think that may be the way that Manufacturers are gonna go with this They're gonna build these very flexible systems and let each military sort of define what it is. They're gonna do with them, right? But here is the thing that really really really tends to have people worried These are loitering munitions So loitering munitions sort of a cross between a missile and a drone So what they're designed to do is basically fly around for a lengthy period of time multiple hours And sort of fly around in an area And what they do is they look for potential targets and Then they can attack so you can define obviously it's software So you can have any sorts of behavior you want you can you could you can You can build loitering munitions that will always ask for human validation before an attack and Your targets and your targeting criteria can vary really widely and this is of course one of the challenges in the debate about Autonomous weapons because an autonomous weapon can be such a broad class of things right and the shape and the scope of autonomy can vary a lot But the key thing I think about the loitering munition is there's much less human sort of Awareness and much less human control here because this thing is moving around, you know You deploy this to sort of patrol an area which is going to be multiple square miles potentially You don't know where and when that's going to attack It's extremely difficult as a military commander to say I'm going to deploy this weapon in this area And it's going to attack this sort of class of object you can't predict what it's going to do exactly and Unless you have a really really good awareness of what's in that area There's a huge potential for things to go wrong here, and I'll explain why in a bit So here's a concrete example of a Loitering munition. This is a thing called the Harpier the Harrop and it's made by an Israeli arms company called IAI What is designed to do is it flies around it looks for military radar signals in a particular area And it can attack them autonomously or semi autonomously with human supervision The idea here is basically find your enemies anti-aircraft installations and attack them and take them out This is exclusively attacking military targets, not dual use this the scope for accident here There is some risk But the sensor processing is really straightforward. There's a little bit less that can go wrong here So it's not the riskiest of autonomous weapons This thing came out about two years ago three years ago This is the STM Kar-Gutu and this is made by the Turkish weapons company STM. It's the state weapons company So they boast about the awesome mission vision software that they have here including facial recognition The implied use case here is to be a hunter killer robot that hunts and kills human beings and In fact two years ago in Libya. It is claimed that these these Weapons were actually used just for that. They were basically pointed at a group of people who were presumed to be fighters and Essentially kill them all right So there's a huge ethical debate Around targeted killing and around whether or not that's an okay way of waging war and an okay way of carrying out counterterrorism activities in particular and We could easily talk for more than 45 minutes just about that But if we bypass all that entirely There's a big technical concern here Because when you're talking about machine vision in this context You are talking about uncooperative facial recognition in video and That is not really reliable The US Institute National Institute for Standards and Technologies They have a long-running series of evaluations. They do on many different kinds facial recognition tools and In their last assessment of facial recognition in or uncooperative facial recognition in video Their conclusion is essentially it is not good enough for anything important without human supervision So building this sort of thing into a killer drone is Maybe a bit concerning So this guy here is a thing called the Orlan 10 slash leader system so the Orlan 10 is the drone and the leader is a base station that sort of you know feeds them Does control stuff and feed some information? What Orlan 10 does is it flies around and it senses mobile phone signals So there is a system called Skynet that I don't know if some of you have heard of And it's not that Skynet. No, we're not we're not back to the terminators Skynet is a real computer system that was used by the US to attempt to Distinguish terrorists in Pakistan This was in the late 90s and early 2010s. I believe They They basically sucked up all of the coal metadata and SMS metadata from that from Pakistani phone networks And they used it to try and build a machine learning model of that would determine who is the terrorist and who is not Here's the thing they trained that model on five people Five they had five examples. That's crazy This all came out by the way in this note and leaks there's quite a lot written about it and it seems to be pretty reliable So this is the sort of the the statistical basis That people are being targeted over You know suck in all the phone network data You know build a gerryed up machine learning model based on five examples Fly this sort of thing around and kill people Okay, so I want to talk very briefly about I think old international humanitarian law or IHL So this is also known as sort of the law of war And basically the idea here is that there's two sort of legal regimes that can apply and Then at any one time Now sitting here in Ireland. We are not in a state of war, you know normal national laws and normal sort of Human rights law applies to us and we can't be summarily killed unless Maybe we're menacing somebody in some very physical way very immediate way. We have policing in a state of war a different set of laws apply and What they do is they provide certain specific protections to civilians and also to combatants So there's rules around things like how you take care of prisoners of war that kind of stuff So it's based on just war theory which kind of has this this this two-way split Just add Bellum is basically how you make the decision about whether or not it's okay to go to war Is this a just war? am I defending myself or is am I Do I have another good reason to go to war and then just in bellow is all about the conduct of warfare Now the two big ideas in just in bellow the conduct of war is that when you're making an attack You have to you have to apply a principle called distinction and what that says is I have to attack military targets The aim is to weaken military force That's the only valid aim You and that doesn't say that doesn't mean that you can't make attacks where you might do damage to civilians or civilian stuff you can But you can't aim to do that so Military targets are basically military objects your tanks your your warships your bases and Combatants who are taking direct part in the conflict.  Well, I really really need to attack this thing. There are some civilians nearby is that okay So yes, if you don't intend To kill the civilians, but you foresee that you will you're actually allowed to do that. That's okay But you have to balance What you intend to gain from this militarily with the amount of civilian harm that you foresee so if you foresee that you would Kill a thousand civilians to take out a very minor military objective. That's probably not proportional Now there's even more complication around this so again since Napoleonic times You have to think about this as well in terms of not only one specific attack or engagement We also kind of think about this in terms of like weapon development is it possible for a particular weapon to be used in In compliance with these rules So a lot of the objections to say landmines come about because Landmines can't do distinction right landmine just goes off no matter who steps on it could be a kid could be a soldier could be anyone right then rules of engagement are another thing as well militaries have these things called rules of engagement that are basically sort of playbooks for how they do war stuff and depending on What their current playbook says soldiers and commanders will react in different ways to different situations So think about this. You are a military force and you are holding a city And you have checkpoints around the place to monitor what people are doing and where they're going and make sure that the bad guys Aren't moving around your city Somebody drives up to your checkpoint and doesn't stop What you do then depends on what rules of engagement apply So distinction and proportionality they sound kind of simple, but there actually there's a huge amount of context and nuance here and That's really relevant when we think about whether or not an autonomous weapon is going to be able to be used in compliance with these laws and I don't say whether or not the weapon will comply with the laws because a Weapon is is a machine and laws don't apply to machines laws apply to people so But you know, are they going to be able to be used in compliance? so Whether or not they can be used in compliance to me really comes down to can they be predicted I Think the answer is not in all cases and You know, this is risk. So, you know risk is always a continuum so to me The more at your target and a lot of people agree with this is not just me the more you're targeting dual use objects in particular people and Buildings where where there may be civilians present and vehicles where there may be civilians present The more you're targeting dual use objects And the further away you are From that human decision to to dispatch a weapon or to make an attack The more risk you have of something happening that the commander did not intend and I spent a lot of time in my career building systems that Do little autonomous things, you know, I build software that runs software and runs distributed systems and runs Hardware and this is something that I have seen to be true You know, you you you build a piece of software and you game it out and you try and figure out what I should do in all cases and It works for a while and then something happens that some Quirk of the environment or things that it interacts with that you didn't intend And bam something happens You know A software system going down is one thing, but an attack happening is another, you know downtime is bad death is is infinitely worse So this is really what it comes down to to me the way that Autonomous weapons are developing Away from the the likes of the CRAMs and the guided missiles Where there is still that very direct human control albeit with Some smart software stuff Moving towards weapons that move around That that are more likely to attack humans and other dual use things are far more risky And they're risky in a way that I don't think Military is necessarily appreciate because they haven't used these kinds of software before And where they have I mean they often have had accidents But there's this this notion and it's I mean we we live in an age of artificial intelligence and machine learning hype And it's it's justifiable in some ways because yes, it's gotten amazing and there are so many low stakes and you know low risk tasks where machine learning is a great answer But there are there are areas where it's not So when we think about it AI is sort of I mean this is All of these definitions are fuzzy, but broadly speaking AI is around decision-making and reasoning Optimization playing games finding routes These are are great applications because you can you can fully game out a game You can simulate it repeatedly and train your system Um, so you can do these large searches of potential solution spaces and you you end up with things that seem magical But these things don't apply to the real world because I cannot simulate the real world repeatedly in perfect detail So this I I I think that the the myth of the AI super strategist weapon is is just wrong, right? But then we have machine learning, which is the automated analysis of data based on statistical analysis of data sets So machine vision categorization identification Um, this is you know the cargo and the sky net that we talked about earlier And here's how they would fit into into weapons, right? So an autonomous weapon roughly has this kind of logical structure. You got some sensor data coming in You got some configuration. So what area should I patrol? What sort of targets am I looking for that kind of thing? We process the sensor data That's probably very possibly some sort of machine learning thing that that's going to attempt to take that sensor data And turn it into something that you're decision making part of your software can work with So here you've got your autonomous weapons systems logic And yes, I know that the collision with them amazon web services is unfortunate, but that is what it is So Your your your your aws logic is going to see okay. Have I got a valid target? What are my goals does targeting this target sort of meet those goals? What are my constraints? Have I met my constraints? So all this kind of decision making stuff that we have I'm based on that you're going to have your next action, which is going to be attack or you know continue your Continue your patrol looking for for more targets, right? So if you've got the harpy the this is the anti-radiation missile that we looked at Um, it's going to look something like this. There isn't really a lot of kind of AI or machine learning special sauce in here. This is fairly predictable stuff So you don't have a lot of like non-explainable black boxes here And that doesn't mean there isn't potential to go wrong because there is We could misidentify signals We could you know decide that this super powerful wi-fi router is a military radar and take out of school that kind of thing But there isn't sort of machine learning black boxes And the critical thing here is we've sort of solved the proportionality and distinction target by or problems by saying Okay, all military radar is a valid target and it's in scope. So this is the benefit of Not building these systems to attack these very very gray area kind of dual use targets But an autonomous weapon that is designed to say target People or or dual use weapons has it has a lot likely has a lot more of this kind of machine learning special sauce in right? So again, your sensor data could be phone signals and camera if it's if it's the cargo Um, you're going to process the sensor data. Have I have I have I matched to target? You know now you've got to start computing probability of you know, is it who you think it is Compute the risk of is it an imminent threat? So a lot of the time you can only target people if they're considered to be an imminent threat or at least according to A lot of countries who do target people as individuals And check proportionality. So how many people do I think will be affected if I make this attack? So all of these things very gray area A lot of risk of getting it wrong So just to sort of talk a little bit about the philosophy of Um kind of AI and machine learning A lot of people say okay. Well There's going to be progress here AI machine learning it's going to get smart enough that these systems will be really well able to carry out the intent of the commander The problem here is That means they have to be basically as smart as the commander That means this is essentially equivalent to saying that there has to be artificial general intelligence here Um, a lot of people think that that's not going to happen So here's at least not with the ways that we're currently approaching it So here's herbert reyblash wrote a very good book on this He basically says This stuff is great when you have You know fairly well structured problems But it is not good on less structured problems If you read any of the books on military targeting particularly around dual use subjects And they will tell you that it's extremely difficult an extremely gray area They do not have a defined process for doing this They will tell you that they have criteria and a whole process, but there's a lot of judgment involved Inevitably when we get into these complicated systems, there's going to be machine learning perception involved So whether it's um machine vision or other other types of things um Now we're contending with all sorts of things if you have a combat battlefield You have weather variations. You have smoke. You have a lot of stuff going on And you have potential for adversarial attacks, you know people have you know long figured out how to Change road signs so that autonomous vehicles will be fooled Even very basic things like tracking an object that goes behind something else is still quite a challenge in machine learning um And it's well known that trying to use an ml based system in conditions other than what it was trained in yields unpredictable results Now the problem with a weapon is that you know your battlefield could be anywhere in the world any time of the year Any weather conditions any sorts of human behavior? You know the environment is just very incredibly wildly Even if I went out and I trained my my machine learning weapon in a particular place Now doesn't mean that the same conditions are going to apply next december if I uh if I deploy that weapon there and I think that's a huge and It's a huge problem. I think it's a bigger problem than militaries think it is And I often look at the the progress in autonomous driving as as a sort of a guideline to this I mean the amount of money and engineering The amount of money and engineering time that's been poured into that and there are still quite a lot of problems with it and There will never be nearly so much Money and engineering time put into autonomous weapons. So I think There are problems there Eric J. Larson He basically you wrote a book called the myth of artificial intelligence Why computers can't think the way we do and basically he says that machine learning is a form of induction Bertrand Russell talked about the thing called the inductivist turkey Which thinks that every morning the farmer comes out and feeds him and he does up until christmas eve morning when he kills the turkey The turkey is surprised because the turkey doesn't know It doesn't understand the world. It doesn't try to sort of Model it the way a human being would and that doesn't mean that we can't be surprised But we do have more capacity to actually understand the way the world works and to predict it A great example of that was this gentleman here. This is Stanislav Petrov Anyone else who was alive in 1983? He may have saved your life and in fact all of us Because he was on duty in a salviate nuclear missile bunker And he had an automated alert come in that said the u.s. Has launched five missiles and he said No, well, I mean his job at this point was basically say, okay Yep deployed counterattack. That was his job and he didn't do it. He instead said There is no way that if the u.s. Is attacking us. They have sent just five missiles. This is probably wrong And so he declined to fire those missiles and pretty much saved the world um Now would a computer have been able to reason through that sort of problem There's a proposal that you could build autonomous weapons with an ethical governor And this is the sort of the metaphor for the governor on the steam engine Back in the the days of Newton and Watts It basically stops it exploding and the problem with this metaphor is that When you're talking about a weapon system the operator wants the weapon to make attacks The the operator of a steam engine does not want their steam engine to explode The the the incentives are not aligned There's also a bunch of other stuff. So the thing called the frame problem Which basically is the problem deciding what is relevant to any given decision Turns out that we are pretty good at this. We're pretty much built to solve the frame problem computers we have not figured it out yet And any real ethical governor And this has never been built that they've only been proposed with like a toy solution Any real ethical governor would have to solve a huge amount of very complex stuff If we did it based on on rules, there's a phenomenon called rules explosion where Once you get past a certain amount of rules in a rules engine based system It becomes unmaintainable because the rules interact in, you know, unpredictable complex ways Putting a human in the loop can't solve the problem. First off militaries want to use these systems in places where they don't have communications So human control is unfeasible And then there's a problem called automation bias This basically means that anywhere where we try to automate part of a task And sort of have humans supervise the robots We've always to date failed Because human beings are bad at this If if if the if the automated system is doing a pretty decent job We tend to just sort of zone out and let it do the thing And this is exactly why people keep driving their Teslas into the back of trucks You know, we risk We risk just people becoming button pushers and that's not effective supervision Stock market flash crashes caused by trading bots This is a phenomenon based on sort of emergent behavior in complex systems where you have multiple things interacting If we have autonomous weapons interacting with the world with each other with people That is a complex system We risk flash wars Because in a context if one weapon is going to decide to attack incorrectly Probably any weapon all weapons that you have in that area will decide to to do that In the stock market, we can put in circuit breakers to suspend trading when we see a flash crash In a communication jammed battlefield, there is no way to do that There is no circuit breaker for the real world There's no feedback loop or no effective feedback loop for autonomous weapons If you're aws or google you don't deploy these things with no feedback But militaries are very bad at getting feedback on how their weapons are performing So I'm out of time. So I'm just going to skip over this. I'm going to say Robot wars autonomous weapons don't mean robot wars with no human suffering. It's not this It's robots attacking people and and critical infrastructure like water plants and electricity plants that have a dramatic impact on human lives If I've convinced you here is a place where you can go to take action. Thank you very much Thanks, Laura. I hope you enjoyed that. So we're still in time. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to We're going to have q&a now if that's okay. It's only a few minutes. Do we have any remote? No, okay, so if anyone have any questions, please come up to the mic and You can have the floor and ask Laura question I think we got one Yeah Now if we refrain from developing this technology will not Dictators Do it and have an advantage and how would we solve that problem? That's an excellent question. So If we refrain from developing this technology and dictators develop it Um well first off I think it is better for the world if we do not have the big arms manufacturers developing off the shelf highly capable autonomous weapons Um, it's going to be very very difficult to stop somebody developing small jury rigged autonomous weapons. Absolutely But um, that doesn't mean that we can't stop the big arms manufacturers building them and selling them Then secondly, um, I think bringing in a legal prohibition Also acts as a sort of a a moral break on it. Like if we can build a moral consensus against this Most dictators and not all do not use things like chemical weapons Um, and most and you know, there are there are several regimes in the world that have Nuclear weapons and they haven't been used for the last 80 years And those are largely because there is a strong moral consensus that these things are bad Nothing is perfect. Um We we don't make laws because we think they'll never be broken all laws are broken sometimes um, it's not perfect but I think um Bringing in international law that says there's you know, actually an international consensus against this It will at least deter dictators so Okay, I think we have um, we should have time for one more. Let's try one more and see how you get on with the answer Okay. Um, thank you for an amazing talk. That was really great and very stimulating. Um You mentioned that you were asked to talk more about technology than philosophy I have a background in philosophy as well in my heart kind of sank when you said that because I sort of think, you know We should all Be thinking about these sorts of things and philosophy. I know I know I know vicki But I'd be interested to know what would you suggest to a group of programmers who might not be familiar with the field of philosophy and ethics where should they start like you mentioned the good place, which is awesome What else should they watch or read? What else? That's a great question. Um so in terms of war ethics, um, the The um, there are some there's there's a really good book on just war ethics Suggest reading that I guess. Um, although just war ethics is not perfect Um, it's a place to start um There are a lot of um There are a lot of sort of intro ethicsy texts, so they'll tell you like the difference between utilitarianism and you know Other different like virtue ethics all this kind of stuff. Um, I have never found one that was kind of super engaging Um, so I think my recommendation remains a good place sadly enough All right. Thanks, Laura. Um, so And thanks, Nicholas. So I think that's um, uh, the end of this Session we have coffee right now coffee break. It's 10 o'clock according to my phone. Yes. It is 10 o'clock And um, so, uh, thank you again and thank you, Laura


Hey, everybody. Matt here for Leighton Sports Cards, ripping 2021 Panini National Treasures Football, full case break number 128, tiered random teams. Here's another look at our random results. We'll leave that up there for a minute so everybody can find their names and their teams. And here we go. Good luck. Let's see a monster or two. Ready for this? Two shields in this case. Yeah, two shields. We're calling two shields. That'd be wild. A little monster here. Box one. That is Saints Alvin Kamara. 17 of 20. Bills. Andre Reed, 36 of 99. And Steelers, Jersey. 67 of 99. Juju Smith-Schuster. This is Treasures of the Hall. Patch 20 of 25. Chiefs. Len Dawson. Century Patch to 25. Niners. Samuel. And Dual Rookie Patches. 4 of 10. Najiharis and Travis Etn Jr. That is Steelers and Jags. We'll random that at the end. Noa B with the Steelers. Tim P with the Jags. This is Chargers. Rookie Otto to 99. Rashon Slater. And Titans. True RPA. 5 of 99. This is Packers. Patch Otto, 13 of 25. Jordy Nelson. Nice one, Green Bay. And a Redemption. That is Falcons. Rookie NFL Gear. Signature Combos. Kyle Pitts. Nice hit, Atlanta. That is Tim P. There you go, Tim. We have Eminence Football up after this. And then you're in for a real treat. Sam is going to be ripping personals. Oh, yeah. Eminence who? And then this is going to have some IRL backwards for sure. All right. This is Bears 2 of 5. Darnell Mooney. Chargers. Rookie 11 of 99. Rashon Slater. Steelers. Jordy to 99. Deontay Johnson. And Dual Rookie Patches. 24 of 25. This is Giants and Bucks. Bucks is Andrew L. Giants is Brayden K. We'll random that one at the end. This is Lyons. Century Patch. 7 of 25. Barry Sanders. Awesome color match there with the foil and the card design. Look at this one. Two old rookie Jersey Bengals to 99. Jamar Chase. And Evan McPherson. Really hiding in there. A little kicker love. That's awesome. And a redemption. That is Niners. Rookie Patch Autographs. Hollow Silver Eli Mitchell. Nice one, San Francisco. There you go, Wayne. This is Jets. Rookie Glove Relic Auto 1 of 15, Elijah Moore. Nice Rookie Glove signatures. Check this out. Niners. Personalized. Auto 2 of 25. The People's Tight End. George Kittle. That's awesome. Nice Kittle. There you go, Wayne. And Dolphins. Horizontal. Rookie Patch Auto 23 of 99. Jalen Waddle. Nice hit, Dolphins. That is Brandon L. Very nice Waddle. Box 3. This is Titans 4 of 10, Vince Young. And Jets 61 of 99. Curtis Martin. Jags. Jumbo Jersey 11 of 99. James Robinson. Jacksonville. This is Chiefs. Treasures of the Hall Patch 19 of 25. Marcus Allen. Nice one, KC. Seahawks. Rookie Dual Patch 32 of 49. Wayne Eskridge. There you go, Seattle. And Niners. Rookie Jumbo Jersey. 49 of 99. Traylands. There you go, San Francisco. 49 of 99 for the 49ers. Nice tray. This is Vikings. Rookie Patch Auto. That is True RPA. Amir Smith-Marcett. Minnesota. This is Giants. Auto. 405, Bill Parcells. Cool hit, Giants. There you go, Braden. And Packers. Jersey Auto. 8 of 99. Aaron Rodgers. Nice A-Rod. Congrats, Green Bay. That is Brandon O. Yeah, lower tier hit. Saints. Rookie Patch Auto. 67 of 99. Ian Book. There you go, nice one, Saints. That's Braden K. Another bottom tier hit there. Bottom tier team hit. Not bottom tier hit. That would be like Lamar Jackson or something. Whoa. All right, last box. We will do our randoms after this and then we'll do a hit recap. Eminence football is coming up after this one. Be sure to grab up your spots for tomorrow night. Lots of good stuff, including that Sunday Funday 30 box high end football mixer that includes a box of 2017 Immaculate Football. All right, here we go. Last box starting off. That is Colts. 29 of 49. Peyton Manning. Bucks. Super Bowl Immortality. 37 of 55. Leonard Fournette. There's a book coming here at the end. That is Raiders. Treasures of the Hall of Jersey 63 of 99. Eric Dickerson. And Triple Jersey. 88 of 99. Justin Jefferson, CD Lam, and T Higgins. That is Vikings, Cowboys, and Bengals. Vikings is Braden K. Cowboys is Eric R. Bengals is Terence C. So that'll be a random at the end. This is Niners. Franchise Treasures Jersey. 91 of 99. Joe Montana. That was work done. This is Texans. Rookie Jumbo Patch 5 of 10. Nico Collins. Go Texans. This is Browns. Rookie Otto. 10 of 25. Demetric Felton. There you go Cleveland. Panthers. Rookie Patch Otto. 26 of 88. Terrace Marshall Jr. Nice hit Carolina. Nico Tempe. Steelers. Otto. 21 of 99. Mean Joe Green. It's one of those ironic nicknames. He was actually a sweetheart of a man. Nice Mean Joe Green. And on the back. 99. Rookie Patch Otto Book. Mac Jones. Big hit Patriots. Congrats. That is Austin B. Mac Jones RPA Book to 99. Great way to close out the case. Give me just a minute here. We're going to do our multi-randoms. Let me just get those ready to go. This is number 128. Receiver Trio. That's Vikings. Steelers Jags. Vikings Cowboys Bengals. Alright. Here we go. Start off with that wide receiver trio. Randomize 10 times on that one. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Nine. And ten. That goes to the Cowboys. The Tony Trask Dual Patch. Randomize six times. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. And six. That goes to the Bucks. And the Running Back Patches. That was Najee and Travis Etn Jr. We'll randomize eight times. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. And eight. Jags. Get that one. Alright. Let's do a hit recap. Alright. First the Relics. Alright. We had Rookie Dual Patches. Najee Harris, Travis Etn Jr. Four of ten that went to the Jags. Dual Rookie Patches. 24 of 25. Cadarius Tony. Kyle Trask. That went to the Bucks. NFL Gear. Trio Materials to 99. Justin Jefferson. CD Lam T. Higgins. That one went to the Cowboys. Texans. Niners. Jersey to 99. Joe Montana. Raiders. Jersey to 99. Eric Dickerson. Niners. Rookie Jumbo Jersey to 99. Trey Lance. Seahawks. Rookie Dual Patches to 49. Dwayne Asgridge. Jags. Jumbo Jersey to 99. James Robinson. Chiefs. Patch to 25. Marcus Allen. Bengals. Dual Rookie Jerseys to 99. Jomar Chase. Evan McPherson. Lions Patch. 25. Barry Sanders. Steelers. Jersey to 99. Deontay Johnson. Niners. Patch to 25. Debo Samuel. Chiefs. Patch to 25. Len Dawson. Steelers. Jersey to 99. Juju Smith-Schuster. Steelers. Ninety-nine. Mingjo Green. Panthers. RPA to 88. Terris Marshall Jr. Browns. Rookie Otto. That's to 25. Demetric Felton. Giant's four of five. Bill Parcells. This one was awesome. Niners to 25. The People's Tight End. George Kittle. Jets. Rookie Gloves. Signatures. Otto. To 15. Elijah Moore. I guess it's kind of redundant, right? Signatures. Otto. Redemption. That was Rookie Patch Autograph. Hollow Silver. Eli Mitchell for the Niners. And then Falcons had the Rookie NFL Gear. Signature Combos. Kyle Pitts. Packers. Rookie Otto to 25. Jordy Nelson. Packers quietly had a nice break. Chargers. Rookie Otto to 99. Rashawn Slater. And then we had Saints. Rookie Patch Otto to 99. Ian Book. That was horizontal RPA. Packers. Jersey Otto to 99. Aaron Rodgers. Vikings. Rookie Patch Otto to 99. Amir Smith-Marcette. And Dolphins. Horizontal. Rookie Patch Otto to 99. Jalen Waddle. Awesome Waddle. Four color patch there. We had Titans. Rookie Patch Otto to 99. Des Fitzpatrick. And Patriots. Rookie Jumbo Prime Signatures Book. To 99. Mack Jones. That's going to do it for the break. Thank you everyone. We have Eminence coming up next.


The Global Environment Facility, Jeff Smallgrant's program for St. Lucia projects that it will invest at least EC$6.2 million in initiatives that can serve and restore the environment while enhancing people's well-being and livelihoods over the next four years. This period, the seventh operational phase, will be launched on Monday, 9th November, in a broadcast from the GIS studios. Research and innovation is the primary focus of the Jeff Smallgrant's program, and to set this agenda in motion, a consultation dubbed the People's Parliament will be held on the 23rd of November at Parliament Building in Castries. National program coordinator is Giles Romulus. One of our conclusions 2019 is that in the context of COVID and all the challenges from climate change, as a small island development state, we need to begin to focus on research and innovation. And basically, with research and innovation at all levels, we see from the bedrooms at the bottom, from the farm to the kitchen, from the cricketed pitch to the dance hall, research and innovation can be done at all those levels. So we are bringing together a cadre of what we call luminaries. Five St. Lucia innovators who have made tremendous impact abroad will sit in virtually. They are Dr. Nessia Dore, Dr. Whitney Henry-Dirand, a Professor Kato Lawrence, Parry Husbands Jr. and Professor Aldri Henry Lee. Representatives from Microsoft headquarters in Washington, DC have also been invited. In St. Lucia, we're going to identify luminaries in all fields, the disabled, farmers, fishers, doctors, lawyers who will sit in Parliament, and we are going to discuss the agenda for research and innovation in a small island development state. What should we do? Out of that, we will get a report, and then we have a drafting committee that will put a declaration together, and that declaration will go around St. Lucia for consultation. And we hope to finalize it just before independence next year, or sooner after, and then submit it to our policy makers and the private sector, etc. The Jeff Small Grants program develops countries toward climate change mitigation, conservation of biodiversity, protection of international waters, reduction of the impact of persistent organic pollutants, and prevention of land degradation while generating sustainable livelihoods. This year, the program in St. Lucia will conduct training sessions on how businesses and other organizations can tap into its funding. In 2019, the program supported some 14 projects to the tune of US $682,000 generating employment for 247 individuals.


to see us change what we're already offering to our students because I think that what we have here is something really special and that's what makes Vermont special, that's what makes our district special. And yeah, so that's what I have to say. Okay, okay, Jonathan? Yeah, I'll just add a few things too. Knowing what we know about the needs of kids now coming out of the pandemic, moving forward to my mind, any cuts that relate to counseling, that relate to nursing services, just would be a huge mistake. And additionally, I don't think that, I don't view languages, I don't view music or art as in any way extra, I think they are absolutely as integral to a curriculum as history or math or literacy. So that's what I think. So as I've done historically over many years now on the board and I don't support cuts to teachers, I'm fully aware of what as we all are, what the population numbers are showing, the trends. But as I've said many times before, in my mind, if needs of students are going up, even if there's fewer students, we need staff for those kids. So it's not so simple to say because our numbers are going down in terms of population that the needs therefore are also going down. It's just not a one-for-one comparison in my mind because we know the needs are greater in fact, not lesser. So that's what I have to say, thank you. Okay, so we have a long agenda still ahead of us. So I wanna try to somehow wrap up this conversation. And I have a suggestion, I've heard a lot of you say, let's go back to the first draft. I wanna speak a little bit about that. I think that we would just be delaying the cliff if we just say, we would be saying, we put this parameters, but really, forget about them, let's just go back to the first draft. I think that, I know that we, as a board, we wanna be brave and accountability doesn't have to be scary. And we're accountable to not just taxpayers, like it was really hard, it was really hard as a Spanish speaker to be put again in the same position that I was when I was in East Monk either to be speaking not against, but it's just like the realities that we face, right? Yeah, of course we would all love Spanish. I want Spanish in every single school. And I think, thinking creatively, we can get there, right? But what are the realities today? So we can do two things. One, we can do increase our parameter from 6% to 7% and that would have the options to ask. I think I heard agreement between all board members that the preschool idea is interested to the board that would bring some savings. And then, and let's see what that does to our budget for draft three. I don't think that as a board, it would be best practice for us to just put out a 9.50. And I know that it's not that anymore. Back to our voters and expect to be voted down and then come back and do certain cuts. That is not the way that we've been doing things in the past. We wanna be more systematic. We asked them, I don't know if Megan, you could go back to those. It was one of the slides that show what was in the budget from those parameters, the education. I'm trying to think about the slide, but like we, the multi-layer system of supports is still in, which means that the coach, our coaching program should be in good shape because multi-layer system supports does not exist without coaches, right? Is that a wrong statement or is that it's like? Well, what I would say, I think this is the slide, Juman. Yes, yes. One of the things that I would say is when we looked at reductions to get to the board parameter and show you all what it looked like, there was also a recognition that if we had to make difficult choices, we would want to do that and keep people in front of students and hence the reduction in coaching. I would say that that's, and I'm going a little bit not having gone back to the leadership team on this, but I would say that being able to come back to the board with a revised presentation with a new parameter would allow us to have that conversation. Is that a good idea to continue with a coaching reduction because that idea that coaching is part of how we make sure first instruction is what it should be? I think folks on the leadership team would agree with that. So I hope that doesn't feel like a non-answer. I think what I'm saying is the leadership team would appreciate an ability to say, okay, with this new parameter, this is what our recommendation would be. So that we could have that coming. And that's what, we meant that parameter, right? So like if the multi-layer system supports and first instruction needs the coaching and we're giving you a little more wiggle room, please take that seriously from all of us, Diane. But if we read back our notes, the minutes that were kept at the last meeting, there were several who were listing concerns over that 6% parameter. And so I still have some pretty strong concern over what we're saying around those parameters. And we were assured this was being brought to us so that we would know what that looks like. And so, Flora, you're mentioning around the coaching, but we also heard a lot about nursing. And again, that might be spread out. We don't know what that looks like because it's a structural change. So I guess my concern is if we're still, and I completely get the reality of we don't know until, and we will be probably lucky if it's early January that we know about CLA's, but our hands are tied by that. But I guess to me, I'm not willy-nilly approaching the fact that we gave this parameter and now we're not adhering to that parameter. I think the stark reality of what that parameter is going to potentially do when we haven't had completely the chance to have the structural conversation and creativity beyond about a month is what's worrisome to me. It's not that I'm saying I've got my head in the sand and I'm denying it. It's just that we need a lot of work toward that and a lot of firmer knowledge before we just say we're sticking to either a six or even 7% parameter because who's making the decision then about which parts are still in that budget or not? So what I would say to that, Dan, it's like if we give them some guidance, 7%, we hire them to be the instructional leaders. They would figure out what is the best way to use that money for best outcomes for kids. And when I mean outcomes, I'm not talking about test scores. That was a word that was used a lot. I don't think that either Jen or Megan in their curriculum instruction, while we look or when we sit as at quality, we're not looking at test scores, right? We're looking at test scores, but that is not the focus of what is best for kids. So if we at least they're able to agree on a 7% for now, see what that does for the budget. And they come back to us with the numbers. And then we are engaged as you all know, we put our requests for proposals out for hiring a firm to do our strategic planning community engagement, their number one goal we have and gives us part of this year and part of next year to really meaningfully engage the community so that we can be more creative and have more creative solutions that include structural changes. So we're not, like we all say right now, we're not talking about closing schools right now, but there is a potential in the future to changing, it doesn't mean that we're gonna change schools, but doing things differently and allow us that time to do that. For now, let's see what being creative with the preschool, putting that 7% does for the numbers and we have the meeting in January. We will have a meeting as a finance committee, I don't have it right in front of us as the planning right now. And if necessary, we have an additional meeting so that we can consult again with the public and the board before we make any final decision for the budget. Yes or no, or maybe it's not like, I'm not looking for a motion, I'm just looking for a guide, to give some concrete guidance to- So can I ask Megan a question? Megan, what is the sense as to what the percentage increases on that first draft now that we have additional information on the special ed? If you have a sense of it? I'm gonna ping to Suzanne who's shaking her head which means we would probably need to calculate that before we'd be able to answer it. Okay, because what I was looking for for there is that that would give us the number that the first draft budget would truly be in terms of an increase and then compare that to where we are now and get a sense as to, because we're still talking about significant cuts here in very select areas, like first line direct instruction in nursing and counseling areas.  I don't see anything that would reference there. So in the direct line, cutting the direct line instruction is problematic for me. So I'd like to see where we can come more than 7% because I don't think 7% is gonna do much. Susan Suzanne said it's what $240,000 and I'm not saying that's not a little bit of money but compared to what we're looking at in terms of a million, it's 25% more than, so it'd be a 25% reduction of the reductions that we already have. So I'd like to see that other numbers and come closer to a middle number between the six and whatever the higher number is in terms of a goal. I might be the only one who's confused here but I thought that this current budget that you presented came in at 7.5 something percent. Is that, so if we say seven then we're actually asking for further reductions from this one, correct? Or am I, yes. So I'm not personally okay with that. I don't think we should make more cuts or more reductions unless we find a super creative way that doesn't mean cutting programs or positions. I would say, why not try to stay within the state average which sounds like it's 8.5? That would be my vote. Suzanne, and then Ursula. I feel like the 8.5% people have kind of clung onto it because that was in the tax commissioner's letter. That was an average of every school district in the state that reported based on their first drafts. And many of them are in the same position that we're in where we're going back to the drawing board and saying eight and a half is too much. And already we've seen districts around us backing down to 6% in other ranges. So I don't wanna hang our hats on eight and a half as what the average will end up being. All right, well, thank you for that clarification. I guess that my sentiment still stands which is I'm not really okay with requesting further reductions from this current draft. I would say, fine, make it 8% or make it to 7.59%. Well, let's have Ursula and Joshua and then let's move into the fund balance because I think it would help inform this conversation too. And when I think about the seven going to 7%, without knowing the number of what the preschool savings could potentially be and being more creative that's where I'm seeing that maybe it was that half percent. So I'm not asking for further reductions. I'm just saying, go ahead and look at what preschool could look and maybe that brings us down to seven just so that we are coming in within others. Ursula? I had a question, maybe Megan can answer it. I know we just talked for you proposed looking at just flexibility within the preschool, the creativity with the preschool program. Are there other places that we can be creative in this budget that might help us further? That are realistically. Yep, some of the other creative solutions that were brainstormed only far enough to give the board a sense would be combining other grade levels, not just pre-K. Not just pre-K. So one could be moving a very small kindergarten class over to another school. Same thing with the sixth grade class that would be the next creative step that doesn't require full scale restructuring. We could put some more detail around that for the board if the board wanted it. I would like to see in the next draft like not just the preschool but what would we see with those other creative moves that aren't full restructuring that would be realistic for next year or in this budget. But would that include staff reductions? Is that where the savings is coming from? Okay, that's critical for us to know. It would in both. And just a reminder that 80% if not more is the only it's staff, right? So there's very little other places where we can. So let's say, Suzanne, can you, or I don't know who wants to take the fund balance conversation reality check for us. I will gladly turn that to Suzanne. I'm happy to lead that discussion. In your report, I think it's page 144 and 145 are the fund balance. Current projections for end of year fund balance are at $1,563,262. In the past, the board has used a target of 2%, which would be 2% of our current year budget and that's $723,385. So above and beyond that 2% is $839,877. That's based on a projection and a significant portion of that fund balance is derived from unfilled positions. And so we know that that does put a strain on the humans in the building. Buildings, multiple buildings. One of the things that has arisen is what is that 2% or why are we picking that 2%? And so I've reached out to our accountants, we have not been able to connect and unfortunately I can't connect with them until tomorrow, which is a timing issue. But some early indications from them are that we have this unique ability because of the vote that the district does at town meeting that allows the school board to decide what to do with the fund balance. Normally school districts are required to put that money to offset the tax rate. So that $1,563,000, we would be required to reduce the tax rate using that as a revenue. But because you have that article that the district votes on, you as a board have the ability to decide what to do with it. And in the past, you've made decisions to move it over to capital and sometimes just to hold that 2% and a little bit more, I know some people have a comfort level that is higher than 2%, they'd rather keep money on hand. Some of my early conversations with the accountants include designating specific things to hold that money for. So what you've done in the past indicating that you wanted to offset the equity scholar in residence or you want it to offset early retirement programs or adding teachers at certain schools, that's exactly what the accountants indicate they would like to see you do with the entire fund balance, have a certain indication that you wanna set aside $300,000 for equipment purchases and certain amounts for different categories. So there's bigger, deeper conversations that happen. You absolutely can use a certain amount to offset the tax rate, but that is your ability to decide as a board. Okay, questions from board members. So one, just to not get ahead of you guys, so thinking creatively with the fund balance, but let's discuss it before I put my, Daniel. Yeah, I have two questions for Suzanne. One is you're talking about savings, vacancy savings. Are these vacancy savings that are being realized this year through vacant positions or you're projecting vacancies next year as well and in expecting savings from that? This fund balance has nothing to do with next year. It's current year only and it's vacancies to this point in time with the assumption that we would fill these vacancies next week. Okay, thank you. And the other question was, how would allocating the full, just hypothetically, the full 839,877 excess towards budget spending affect our capital plan? Would it? One of this money is currently in the capital plan. The capital fund is a separate fund from this amount. So you've already deferred a certain amount to plan for your capital improvement plan implementation, so it wouldn't affect it. And the amount deferred is adequate? At this point in time, I would say it is. We are coming back to the board. I think it's scheduled for March to discuss the FY26 year of that plan. So the next year to add on. Okay, thank you. Yeah, of course. So Susan, my question was, because you're talking some of the advice is that the entire fund balance gets allocated, right? Like by other places. Do they have sort of like, I'll call it a fund for capital fund overtures. So like if we, if we allocated the full 839, 877, and we had capital projects that ran over because cost increases, where do we find that money? So, Susan, the, so exactly. Exactly, like that's what we're talking about there is your comfort level. So the board has to decide as a unit what the comfort level is. And so maybe that's putting money into different buckets. And that's why I wanna have that fully fleshed out conversation with our accounts is what they've seen in other districts and what best practice might be. We just have that really unique ability that the board can decide this and it doesn't automatically have to go back. Thank you, Susan. Kari? I think I support what Suzanne's describing. I would caution us about using the fund balance for normal operations, because unless something changes in the future, then we would have to come up with that amount of money plus the future increases in future years. And in my experience, we've done that before and it's extremely painful the following years. So it's sort of like the ESSER funds. We should be thinking about it as one-time sources and they should be matched with one-time uses. And so what are those things? You know, it would often be something capital expenditure that's above and beyond our normal spending. And if we can't identify any of those in the coming years then we should develop a plan to sort of rationally draw that down. Any amount that we don't need. But let's do it in a way that's thoughtful and doesn't cause us pain down the road. Daniel? I just wanted to really quickly add for the public's benefit the reason the members of the finance committee have all asked these questions is because we've been looking at bids coming in 80, 90, 100% over our estimates. And it's alarming and those projects often can't be delayed. And so we need to understand sort of what the risks we're taking are when we do away with excess fund balance. I'll agree to that. And also add that as a district we do not have enough money to properly take care of all our buildings. We each, you know, we have enough money to take care of the projects that we have right now but we haven't put enough money aside for the value of each building as it is right now. So, do we have agreement? Is there, is this a year when we wanna make an exception for a certain amount of money last year we did or two years ago we did, no, it was last year. We did Shelley this year, you know, we could say, you know, like let's take it, you know, for this one time money the extra funds are going away for the nurse that could be one option just for this year while we figure out how best to do nursing like Megan mentioned in that across our district if that's something that we can buy in for now but just that one specific and then keep the money for from what I hear from other finance but committee members is keep the money in case we need it because we're seeing projects come in really high and the built environment affects the outcome suffer kids as much and our staff too. Diane. So I don't know where we're landing as to what draft we're gonna get back what the draft is gonna look like but my sense is, you know, notness, I guess depending on the information what we land on there, if it doesn't look like we're really making as many cuts or cuts at all or whatever that we make the decision as part of that package that, you know, because I don't know what I would be agreeing to right now in terms of amount at all. So it seems to me that it becomes part of the package depending upon what it looks like once we know once we have more information. I guess I'm not opposed to potentially dipping into the fund balance but I don't know what amount that would be right now and I don't know what that need would be right now. So I guess to say an amount tonight I just don't know that I would know that. Versa. I would be interested in seeing the numbers for what it would like what it would cost to the capital fund or the general fund balance for covering the nurses but I think we need to look at the harsh reality that things are changing and we can't keep pushing off the changes that we need to make or they are going to be even more painful when we do have to make them when we can't push them off any longer. Okay. All right, see. Yeah. So I think that we have come in agreement that we don't wanna use fund balance to offset our taxes, right? That if we need to dip in just a little bit maybe for the nurses see what they come back to us and then if it seems to me that we might need that extra meeting for the community and for us and maybe cause we have to wait for numbers to come out maybe we talk about a meeting a January 11th or we can send something to you guys but it looks like we might need an extra meeting is that I don't know if it's realistic to try to find the time but it looks like we're gonna need it. So now that we've completely confused Suzanne I don't know Suzanne and Megan we've been extremely confusing in some ways and in some others trying to be really clear. So I think there's appreciation for all the work we wanna be creative. Let's see what 7% looks like it dip into the fund balance just a teeny bit to see if you need it for the nurses but don't count on the fund balance to upset our taxes. And I know Diane I'm looking at you and I'm looking at some others. I know that some, you know that we're really concerned about losing staff realities are harsh. Let's see what 7% looks for right now or 7.5 where we are if it doesn't Diane. I mean, I'm giving that look because it seems to me several of us have said repeatedly 7% and then when McKaylin pointed out that that's actually lower than what we're looking at right now. I guess I'm just concerned. I mean, if you wanna put it to a vote I'll vote no and that's fine. And then, you know the majority can do with what they're going to do but I don't know I'm just very concerned at putting forward and I am again, I'm not putting my head in the sand and not in denying the need for change and for structure. I'm just saying that right now we're making what I feel are some austere moves before we have the full information and to again say 7% when we're already at 7.5 I'm just very confused by that. I'm with Diane we have to come in above this above this draft. I agree. I mean, there's, we're hearing from the community like it's very, very clear what the vocal members of the community want, right? There are lots of members of the community who are not here but I would prefer to err on the side of a higher number and have the community vote it down then come in with a lower number and alienate the community. So I'm trying to process this. So when I say 7%, like I said before I was counting on the preschool stuff to bring it down to 7% or leaving at 7.5. I understand we had a lot of community members show up today and I'm sure we're gonna hear more from them and we're gonna take even more information. Let's look at both, look at 7% and look at what we were before at 9.7 was that we were Megan. So that we're showing, we're showing what that tax rate looks for both and I'm getting confused on my own self here. But I'm here from, I don't know I don't know what I'm talking about but I don't know what I'm talking about but I hear you, you know, Jonathan there's some hard decisions that we're gonna have to make. Let's see what 9.7% looks which is what we had before see what that looks with the tax number and where we land if we are above our 22 if we're above 22,204 from the threshold how high, much higher up of that we are with that. I know Suzanne said we are right now at 22,458 we can offset that by some, by some amount but I'm not, I don't think that we're comfortable going too high up from that threshold. Lindy. I'm in trouble finding my mute. The only thing, well it's not the only thing I'm confused by but you keep mentioning the pre-K I didn't think that was like right now we were planning to have that under control for next fall that we were possibly consolidating some pre-K am I wrong? I think we're saying to them what would that look like Megan. Yeah I would agree in our look at creative solutions that don't involve large-scale structural changes combining pre-K was something that felt like it was worth investigating because it could actually improve access and so it would realize reductions improve access and it would not be like a whole scale restructuring without the community engagement. So that's what I am hearing in terms of why pre-K it's also why I led with that one we're going to get permission to do creative things and again it wouldn't be a decision it would be showing you more detail about what it would look like. So show is what 9.7% is then show is what 7% is including pre-school is that with that satisfied the board and then we make that decision Daniel I see your hand is up sorry. I was just going to just to that point 9.7 we're not sure it's 9.7 right with the special ed funding changes it might be slightly different. Well I think what I'm hearing is let it be 9.7 recognize that it will still require a reduction because it went up a little but at least it gives us an upper bumper that is closer to what your original upper bumper was so it would require some reductions but not to the extent that we had so that's how I was hearing the 9.7. And Megan thank you for that I think that's a good clarification. Thanks. I like this plan floor I think yeah for me just the 7% does not compute anymore in light of new information I mean I think the reality is you know we have a situation with significant inflation we also have this $65 million education fund surplus sitting there and and the 7% budget at least with the best information now results in a tax decrease which just doesn't compute when you look at the pain that we are asking the district to absorb so I am much happier with looking at the 9.7 level again and more serious. Thanks Daniel so for it okay with that we'll look at both yes and we'll make a decision meeting. Okay can I say something I have to leave because I have to go pick up my kids in Lebanon they took the bus up from Boston so I have to leave unfortunately and that's Natasha Natasha and we I have a suggestion because we are so you know we've taken a lot more time can we can we just do 7.1 in the policy so we'll hold the rest of the policy and just do the mascots and school branding today sure is that okay with the board yeah so I'm not saying that you have to say it's okay Natasha can you do it that's comfortable with you we would just do that and then our students are still with us because we still have other business we might be good okay good we still have another little business to go in board operations Chris so I don't want to like shift completely right now before you go but I just wanted to make sure that before you go if that's okay with you can we do that absolutely can do that and if you want to also like address 7.3 the primary clarification I would point out to the board is that we kind of shifted if you want to just stay with 7.1 for right now okay okay thank you see you later good luck okay okay 4 point education quality priorities sorry students I'm not I know you've been so good we're almost there almost there this is going to be super quick thank you for sticking with us Kari it's going to be quick yeah I'm going to suggest we table the conversation and on page 18 there's a summary of the key themes that we took from the conversations that we had as a board and committee about the monitoring report we received in November so we wanted to take it the opportunity to check in see if we're on the right track to be capture everything you have additional thoughts please email me or somebody else from the Ed Quality Committee we'll have time to talk about this in the future but I think we need to move on thank you mail in ballots I want to thank the board members that attended the meetings and if I could have a motion I can read it if you don't have it out I move that in accordance with the votes of the five town select boards ballots for the WCUUSD annual meeting be mailed to all active not challenged voters in the school district to join us I can have a second Lindy was that you I think Daniel got it first Daniel, okay, Jonas and Daniel seconds all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye aye any opposed any abstain hearing none thank you everybody the motion carries staff appreciation Diane I think we've done a lot of appreciation through the meeting are you comfortable with that and we love you you know that this move into student reports hi guys thank you okay so the student council had a TA representative meeting so all these TAs had someone that they chose from their group and brought them to their meeting and they just talked about issues that are going on in the school it was really interesting my and I went and we just sat and watched and listened to what students had to say and overall it was pretty successful and in the future the student council is interested in trying to work closer with the school board and with us to connect the two yes also earlier this month we had the middle school theater performance in which we sold out and had to turn a bunch of people which away which was a huge success and then we have our high school performance coming up again soon in March I think we also are planning a teacher or staff in service for the district on January 17th run part of it will be run by SSJ and we'll be presenting on clear issues and questions that were commonly asked by teachers and just trying to educate the whole district about that so that's a big project that's coming up for us as well word of mouth is starting up again so that's going to happen when we get back so that is a student led kind of talent show but it's very low key and it's during I think callback so kids it used to happen when my oldest sibling was there and she would perform people sing people dance they do whatever so it's exciting that the music is coming back into 32 and finally we're getting into college acceptance season so we've already had a lot of seniors get accepted and that's super exciting UVM came out yesterday at 5 and so a lot of people found out they got it and that's all we have we will probably be heading out now yes please please save travels thank you for staying with us bye thank you you got to hang out with your principal pretty cool alright it good okay I'm busy myself so superintendent central office report you know I really want to make justice to this report because there was a lot of information there especially the class size we ask you for all this work and I know it's late does board members have questions or one Megan to just do a quick if there's a couple things that you would like to highlight would you like to proceed I mean I know in normal times would have given Suzanne a chance to kind of acknowledge the comings and goings of folks central office so I'll leave it there and the class size piece I mean I think I'll respond to questions because that is so related to the conversation we just had that I could reiterate it but I think you get the spirit of it if anyone has questions though I'm happy to answer them you're good but could I'm sorry could we have Suzanne talk a little bit about the comings and goings there is an important going but yeah sure we had good news and bad news and the good news is that we hired a new accounts payable accountant his name is Tom Hamlin he came on through the temp agency and was a fantastic fit and we brought him in on a permanent basis and we're really excited that he's joined the team but unfortunately Virginia Breer our senior payroll and cash account gave her notice and has a really great fantastic opportunity to be an assistant finance director for Washington Electric Company and so we're in search of a new payroll and benefits specialist to fill her shoes and we wish her all the best she's been a fantastic employee for the district and devoted and committed to making sure everyone gets paid and Penny and I have been doing a lot of training in the last couple of weeks and finding out exactly what that takes so it's um I think she was to fill she's been there a long time she's been there a long time and her and her she's an avid photographer and her pictures will continue to decorate our central office so we'll remember her and we wish her well she was great um let's and thank you floor for being very quick to respond and to share appreciation at her at her party I appreciate that thanks um and I got to meet our new employee and he was great too it was really funny okay principles report page 24 do you guys have any questions for our principal the poor guy our girls are still here okay though I know we've put you to sleep tonight there's I guess I just want to say thank you I know this is a lot it's a lot of work for our principles to put all this information is really clear it's great it really gives us a sense of what's going on in our schools and and really informs you know we're better informed as as board members so thank you I don't see anybody raising their hands for for questions no okay okay thank you again uh report the center of Vermont Career Center uh we're just gonna uh table that for right now we are doing the same thing we're going through the budget process and we'll continue to work on that let's move into our other report because we have an action page 30 I have a motion I moved to accept the audited financial statements for the Washington Central Unified Union School District for the year ended June 30th 2022 from R.H.R. Smith and Company thank you Jonas and Ursula oh oh okay Ursula has it uh well there was there any discussion any questions from board members I know the finance committee got to see it so uh before any questions seeing oh Diane can we just tag on with appreciation that we accept it with appreciation Jonas and Ursula okay with the amendment I don't really know anything about R.H.R. Smith but if they have your blessing Diane well no I I meant yeah you're right the staff with appreciation to the staff for the hard work Jonas comedian okay it's good all those in favor please signify by saying hi hi hi any oppose any abstain hearing none the motion carries thank you everybody policy committee Natasha I want to put you in a hot seat let's have a motion first is that okay and then if there's any discussion you can answer so could I have a motion for the second reading move to approve the second reading of policy F2 yes please I move that we accept the second reading policy F2 could I have a second second I got it yes Lindy you got it all right second by Lindy and Lisa I haven't been checking with you but I assume that we haven't put you to sleep and you're still with us and you got it yes I'm here thanks thank you all right all those in any questions okay thank you policy committee all in favor please signify by saying hi hi any oppose any abstentions hearing none the motion carries thank you and we you know we are tabling the other 7.2 to 7.5 for today then we have the consent agenda and we had several minutes and I'm wondering if somebody would be willing to make a motion for the minutes I move to accept the minutes of November 16th December 1st and December 7th 2022 with appreciation for Lisa Grace second thank you Ursula and we all second that appreciation for Lisa thank you for all you do all year and thank you for the cookies that you gave us the other day all those in favor please signify by saying hi hi I think my name was missing from one of those from the minutes from the community farm at Calis okay did you get that got it do you know which date it is offhand sorry 7.7 yeah okay thank you I'll change that sorry Natasha that's okay thank you now I'll say hi okay you know I was all you know with the small amendment please say hi in case I made that more confusing hi hi hi hi any oppose any abstentions hearing none the motion carries okay Lindy board orders I make a motion to accept the board orders of 1221 22 in the total amount of $1,820,676 $41 sorry can you say it again I'm getting tired 1,820 and then what 676 .41 thank you a second second second thank you okay any discussion all those in favor please signify by saying hi hi hi hi hi any oppose any oppose any abstentions the motion carries alright moving into personnel 9.1 I move that we accept the extended leave of absence request for Daisy Scarzello U32 middle school science teacher floor do we have yeah but let's separate them so it's okay do it individually okay all those in favor please signify by saying hi hi hi hi any oppose any abstentions the motion carries and now the second there's a second one sorry I don't have that if someone else has that I must have the old packet that doesn't have that you're correct Jonas this one was sent Monday if not it was email yeah can Lindy do you have it right there I'm looking for it did it come from Melissa it came from Melissa yeah I got it so it's a request to for 0.25 FTE unpaid leave of absence for Kate McCann for right thank you for base well let me she's in the legislature right yeah I just I was January 4 through the end of the legislative session could I have a second and then we can have a little discussion I'll second it Lindy so Lindy and Diane and then Steven or Megan enough to put you guys in the hot seat could we just talk a little bit about what this is sure I and maybe just we'll start with Steven can kind of give the detail about what that means 0.25 leave of absence was gotten to by a little bit of configuration about how best to maximize the time we have with Kate in the spring and allow her to serve so maybe I'll just start with Steven give a little bit of detail about what it looks like I know it's written in there but sure so the legislatures as you may know doesn't meet on Mondays and it also doesn't start as early in the morning as we start the school so one of the courses that Kate teaches is AP statistics which we don't really have a replacement for and so what we did was we've configured the schedule so that those kids will be able to meet in a first band class of the day and so she will be here on full days on Mondays and then two other days of the week in the mornings to be able to teach that class where then her other classes we have a long term sub and we've hired to be able to take some of her classes as well so that we can do that when you start adding up all the hours that she would be able to be here when the legislature is not in session and when she's here teaching plus the time that she's already spent teaching this year and will teach after the session what that comes up to is about a 0.25 leave of absence so in other words she's giving us 0.75 of her 1.0 FTE for teaching throughout this school year and so we have a long term sub to cover for her other classes and she's going to actually help that long term sub plan for classes on the Mondays that she's here so we have plenty of work to do around here let's not worry about us working somebody and so it will work out okay for us it's just kind of an unusual situation that we might have to consider how we do differently the following year when we have because we'll have more advanced notice because you know she's on a two year term so we'll just have more time to plan for the following year and so the leave might look a little different for that one thank you for that clarification I didn't realize I was muted Lindy and go ahead I just had a the long term sub will be full time is that right Stephen yes because we have more than just the needs to fill Kate's position as you guys might have remembered I'm teaching right now in math as well and so with the return of a teacher who has been out on sick leave and Kate going out on this everything kind of works out for us so that we'll have the long term sub covering some stuff and we'll be okay going forward you won't be having to teach math not right now in the second semester I get to just be a full time principal which given the length of these meetings is more than a full time job thanks Stephen yeah we deserve it it's okay alright all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye aye any abstention any noes any abstentions hearing non-demotion carries back to you any update they can cease besides the one that we just heard yes I would just reiterate what we said last time which is U32 continues to experience the most pain in support staff maintenance food service yeah it is not new information from before it's been really tough thank you May Stephen everybody at U32 have you thought of taking up Chris's offer to drive the mopping machine whatever that machine is called he said he would do that so I think we should it might be a liability Diane I might like you know some classes moving right on into we have an executive session I want to also try to let go people that don't need to stay for the executive session so after the session we have more reflection and we're pretty we have future agenda items I think the main thing is going to be a future meeting so I want to say that let's go ahead and have an executive session but this and everybody else you know that doesn't need to be inside executive session please feel free to go unless I'm missing something guys thank you everybody for coming all principals, administrators community members it was great we're down to 36 people but it was pretty impressive thank you Jess and Kat Michelle I see you I can't see everybody thank you Jess I know thank you all for staying tonight and also your dedication staff appreciation goes to you all you're in the central office and all the dedicated people and so hope you have time with families and time to be off the clock so to speak yes I have the ready whenever you're ready floor just let me know okay go ahead I'm about to move I move that we enter executive session for the purpose of discussion negotiation strategy who's that it was me Joshua you got it you got it to include Megan you got that Lisa I got it you got it okay thank you Amy I see still thank you Mark oops I missed it we have a motion to adjourn I don't think anybody has the bandwidth unless you want to I guess we could reflect on the meeting today it was hard but I think we did a good job it was a hard meeting and we can always improve but thank you everybody thank you Megan thank you David for sticking with us thank you Orca media good night everybody we have a motion to adjourn move to adjourn second thank you who's seconded Natasha everybody seconded all those in favor please signify by leaving hi happy holidays happy holidays to everybody floor who is the second on that last one Natasha I think Natasha seconded


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