It's six 32pm. And we're going to call this month. Montpelier Roxbury public school board meeting to order. First on the agenda is public comment. Do we have any members of the public in person who would like to comment. Online who would like to comment. No public comments this evening. Okay. Okay. Any, I just want to make sure we give this public comment space. It's, it's due any, any board members. Have any, any questions concerns related to public comment or can we move forward. All right. So, every meeting. Okay. Okay. Especially when there are no public comments. Our chivalrous chair is here. Tim, we started, we started just to keep things moving along. Consent agenda. Do I have a motion to approve the consent agenda? I'd like to move that we approve it. Can we take out the minutes of the 18 meeting and have a very minor edit. Yeah. So the motion is to approve the consent agenda. Without the 18 minutes so that we can discuss that. Do I have a second. All those in favor. All those again. Yeah, I have it. All right, Joe. I was not here, but I was listed as present. I was having a really nice time. That was all. Thank you. We can take that out. So, so do I make a motion to amend the minutes from a 18 to reflect that edit. All those in favor. Okay. And then do we have a motion to approve those amended minutes? I'll move to approve the amended minutes of the 18 school board meeting. All those in favor. All right. All right. Jim, I'm going to. Two things to add to the agenda. We're going to have a brief session. Part of the tournament. For the purposes of personnel. And then secondly. I want to make an announcement. This should also be on the website and going out to students who have. The families of students in Roxbury, both at RVS, also the middle school and high school, which is. Unfortunately, Jerry Huck had to resign due to work obligations. We forgot to do this last time, but probably thank Jerry for his service. She served very thoughtfully and very diligently on the board.  So we are asking for Roxbury citizens. This is a Roxbury seat to please. You can either write me or Libby. The emails are on the website. With your expression of interest. And then at the next meeting. We'll go through the letters of interest we have. Give any potential candidates a chance to briefly introduce themselves to the board. And then at some point during that meeting, we'll go into executive discussion and make an appointment to fill out. Well, Jerry's term till the next election and then that person or someone else. We'll have to run for the remainder of Jerry's term, which I have to admit, I'm not sure how much she has left on her website. I think she was coming up next. I think it was coming up next March or next. So she's finished. Okay. So you'd have to run anyways. Yeah, so, and if you want any more information, please feel free to reach out to any of the board, but me and I'll be happy to chat with you about what, what service entails. I'm sorry to interrupt. Does that mean that there might be someone trying to participate? I don't know if maybe that's spam. It's just says there's someone waiting in the waiting room. Yeah. Using the phone. Texting. Thank you. Okay. I think that we can move on to board discussion, which is a bunch of parties, routines and timelines. And also, after that, we'll have our fee for district visioning work. But grant ticket away please. I think that there must be a lag between doing at home and what you see on the screen. Okay. She's on it. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah, definitely. Like. Local paper. I don't know. I think Kristen is already going to put it on right first on board for. But yeah, I know any. Any other social media you have that. Or kind of informal networks, you have definitely put out word as broadly as possible. Grant. Yeah. Okay, well, I mean, we just started the 21 22 school year. And it feels a little strange, but we're going to start talking about the 2223 budget. Before I get started, I did want to introduce Christina Kimball right behind me. Christina was the business manager for. Washington Northwest and then most recently Caledonia central. She is now ours. And she works as the payroll manager and is also acting as the assistant business manager. And she's making sure that she knows all the processes since this is my last year, we want to make sure somebody knows how we run budgets, how we run audits, all those things. So it's to be a smooth transition. You should have all received a three page budget discussion document. And that's what I'm going to run through tonight. And at the end, there'll be plenty of time for questions or discussion. The document begins by outlining the budget process. We're at the beginning stages right now, we built a calendar over the summer, and this is our meeting tonight to provide some information to you and get some feedback and or guidance. The first significant or the first, I should say the first significant data point that we get for the budget process is our October one student count, which I will use to develop a, an enrollment projection. That enrollment projection comes in handy when we start talking about staffing levels. The enrollment projection and budget worksheets are going to go out to the principals and other administrators in early October. They will work with their staff to develop budgets and they will also provide input to other administrators for other kinds of requirements. For example, if they have facility issues, they will contact Andrew LaRosa. If there's special education needs, they'll go to build dice. If there are tech needs, they will talk to Mike Barry, although Mike is going to be pulling some double or triple duty this year, since he is the middle school principal. The leadership team is going to meet several times to go over the staffing requirements and budgets and eventually the idea is that we come to a consensus before we bring a budget to you in December. To meet statutory deadlines, the board has to approve the budget by mid January. We will present the budget one final time during the informational hearing, which is the day before town meeting. We will have a meeting on February 28th this year. And then town meeting day, which is March 1st, is when the communities will vote. The next thing on this document is statewide factors. And as you know, from the last time we went through a budget, some of these statewide factors actually have a larger impact on the budget than our increase or decrease in budgeted numbers. For example, a change of a hundred thousand dollars in the budget is about a penny on the tax rate. But a change of a hundred dollars on the dollar yield is a change of 1.5 in tax rate. A change of ten students, an increase or decrease of ten students is a penny and a half on the tax rate. And a change of 2% on the common level of appraisal is a change of four cents on the tax rate. So in all of those examples, everything resulted in a higher tax rate change than a hundred thousand dollars in budget. So it's important to kind of understand these different factors. And I will go through all of them in a second. I did want to start out though with an opening paragraph on COVID-19 and federal funding, which have obviously had major impacts over the past few years and will continue to have impacts in the future. I think SR three funds will be available all the way through, I think, September 30th, 2024. So at least that long. We've already received about eight hundred thousand dollars in federal funds via Corona relief, Corona virus relief funds, which I'll be referring to as CRF. And also in elementary and secondary schools emergency relief or SR funds. We anticipate much more SR funding as well as federal special education funds and possibly federal infrastructure money. So we'll see how that goes. We are using some of the SR money to fund three math interventionists and a community liaison that you're going to see probably as part of the FY23 budget. We're also paying for some additional ventilation work and professional development, but there's still a significant amount of money that's left to spend. And we will have to determine the best use of that money. And at the same time, be careful not to avoid a large revenue cliff. Because if revenues drop, it's the same impact to tax rates as if expenses are increasing. So just something to keep in mind. Is there any way for us to be able to project. Those documents to the viewers at home and on Orca. While you're speaking, just for to follow along. Thank you. And when that comes up, we're still on page one. The first statewide factor that I wanted to talk about is the dollar yield. And that is the factor that is used as a comparison point to our spending per pupil. So if both the dollar yield and our spending per pupil. Increase by the same percentage than the tax rate would remain level, or at least the pre CLA tax rate would remain level. Sorry, I have to always look at you when I say CLA. Unfortunately, we won't hear anything regarding the dollar yield until December 1st is when the tax commissioner puts out a recommendation. And even more unfortunate is we won't get a final dollar yield set by law until after town meeting days. So we always end up getting a budget passed before we even know what the real tax rate is going to be. The influx of federal funds and as Andrew will affirm, increases in sales and use in meals and rooms, taxes might reduce the burden on property taxes. So we're actually hoping the yield will increase a little bit. So if the yield increases, then our spending per pupil can increase a little bit without impacting the tax rate. So we're going to start by assuming a yield probably of $11,500, which is about $200 more than FY 22. Equalized pupils is the next factor. That's a two year average student count that's adjusted by factors such as our free and reduced population, our English language learner population, the number of kids that are in preschool, the number of kids that are in high school. And that's an estimated formula. That formula may change soon, but as far as I know, it's the still the same old formula that will be in play. Before COVID hit, as you know, our enrollment was on the increase. Due to COVID and its impact on attendance, we're assuming there's going to probably be some kind of a whole harmless provision statewide. So the districts won't see this big drop in equalized pupils because if you have a big drop in equalized pupils, you have a big spike in tax rates. It's going to be more important to other districts than us, because we have pretty good enrollment. But even our district could have a decrease because you do have, we had a lot of pre-K kids that didn't go to pre-K last year, lower kindergarten enrollment. The number of pre-K kids that we typically pay tuition for is 100 this past year. I think it was like 58. So that will reduce our count. But if there's some kind of a whole harmless provision, then what we might do is we might just see that everybody gets to keep the same number. If it goes up, maybe we'll be able to keep the higher number, or if it goes down, you may be held level. We're going to assume that we're going to hold level. So that's what we'll start with until we see some real numbers. Common level of appraisal or CLA. Ooh, I always struggle on this one. So basically that is a factor to adjust your property value. And it's, it's your, the real value of your property versus the assessed value. It's based on a three year average of sales date data. And that sometimes helps avoid large swings.  So hopefully I've written that so you can cheat and look at it again later because it's, it's not intuitive. We're going to begin the budget process by assuming that the CLA is going to drop about 2% in both communities. Although we are hearing that it could be a more dramatic. But we'll start with the 2% and we'll see how that plays out. That is probably the biggest tax factor. Because sales, since it's three years, usually you don't see a dramatic change, but the sales prices are so high that it might actually be dramatic, even though it's three years. But we'll start with the 2% and we'll see how that plays out. That is probably the biggest. But we'll see how that goes down. If it's more than that, it could be even more dramatic. And I will also say that last year, not really sure what the dynamic was, but Roxbury's CLA went up I think 4.5%, which was unexpected. So that good swing for the tax rate last year for, or this current year for Roxbury could be really bad next year, depending on what happens. So I think both communities are going to have a reappraisal soon. I know for sure that Montpelier is, but I've also heard that Roxbury might. When the reappraisal happens, basically your appraised value and your real value are the same. So the CLA is 100%. And there is no change in the tax rate when that happens. So typically when you get a reappraisal, the CLA is going up and your tax rate goes down. But your real tax amount that you pay is pretty much the same because it's a lower rate attached to a higher number for property value. But the rates actually go down whenever reappraisal happens. The next one is Act 46. For those of you who were here when we merged, whenever we merged Act 46 allowed us to get a tax incentive. And that tax incentive was an 8 cent reduction to the tax rate every year that dropped by two cents. Unfortunately, the way you could look at it is after year one, we've seen a two cent increase every year. I mean, that's really what you're having to deal with. This year for FY23, that's the final year of, or actually it's the first year that we're not going to have any kind of incentive. So we had a two cent incentive in FY22. There's no incentive in FY23. So this is the last year where we kind of see that in a way, two cent increase. After this year, it'll be flat. Let's see. I do mention, I think in here that the impact of that two cents, maybe I don't mention it. In order to kind of offset that two cents, you basically need to cut your budget by about $250,000. Cut the budget or increase your revenues like your fund balance revenue. Let's see, where are we at now? Health rates. For the past couple of years, the health rates have gone up about 10% on average. I'll assume the premiums go up another 10% this year, but I really don't know. I don't know how to, obviously COVID related expenses are high. But as we talked about at the finance committee, folks who would typically go to the doctor for routine issues are not going. So that may offset some of those other higher expenses. So we just don't know. We will get something from the Vermont Education Health Initiative, V-HI, that's who we get our health insurance from. We'll get a number from them in November, which is usually a pretty good guess. So by the time we have our first budget presentation, we should have a pretty good number in there for health premiums. Statewide healthcare bargaining is happening right now. The current settlement runs through December of 2022, which is half of FY23. I don't think we're going to see anything come out from the, the bargaining that's going to impact us dramatically. We're pretty much aligned and I think it's a pretty generous healthcare package for the state that we have now.  In addition to that, it's only going to be for six months of the fiscal year. So I don't think there's going to be a huge impact because of statewide healthcare bargaining. And the last thing on the list for statewide factors is Act 173. We've been talking about this for a while. That changes the special ed funding formula from basically a reimbursement model where we incur an expense and we get about 56% reimbursed back to us. It changes that model to more of a block grant where we get X number of dollars per student. That was supposed to be in effect. I think definitely in FY22, maybe even in FY21, I'm hearing that it is supposed to be in effect for FY23, but I'm not 100% on that because I haven't heard for sure that it's happened. And I also haven't heard the details of what that model looks like. Like, for example, how do you define a kid? Is it going to be an equalized pupil? Is it going to be an average daily membership? Is it going to be students, a student count for special needs? I'm not sure. And I don't know what the dollar amount is going to be. So I'm just putting on here because it could impact our revenues. So we could see, and for us, it would probably be a decrease. It would be an increase in certain areas like probably Burlington, Winooski, but for us, it would probably be a decrease in special ed revenues. That's the bad news. The good news is it allows us a lot more flexibility in how we spend special ed money. The other good news is that we have been working to change, let's see, to align our systems to increase effectiveness when kids need additional support. So we've known this is coming. We've been trying to posture for it. Okay. Moving on. So those are statewide issues. Now I'm going to get into kind of our district-wide pressures and opportunities, things that we know locally are, are going to be an issue. Salaries are always a pressure because they make up a high percentage of the budget. So even a routine salary increase or pay raise is going to be a pretty large increase in terms of dollars. I will tell you that a lot of times in the budget process, we're having to assume a salary increase. We don't need to do that this year because our, our collective bargaining agreements are in place for all bargaining units through FY23. Staffing, staffing levels obviously impacts salaries and benefits. Enrollment projections will help us kind of determine whether we should be looking at classroom staffing at all. The high school might need a minor increase if the trends continue like they were last year. The middle school has one grade cohort that is, that is a challenge. It's been real borderline as far as class sizes go. Other staffing needs beyond classroom teachers will be discussed by the leadership team. If there's, you know, any kind of custodial issues or paraeducator issues, we'll talk about those things as a leadership team and bring those forward. Special education, that budget is going to be based on requirements that we identify as part of the service plan. That service plan is due October 15th. But I will tell you, I spoke with, with Bill Dice and he has had an uptick in special ed evaluation requests. So those could end up driving additional requirements in special ed for the coming year. Technology is on here as a pressure, which kind of goes against logic a little bit. You know, I'm sure that we spent a lot of federal funds on buying student devices. So you might initially think, well, we'll probably see a drop in needs for hardware. It doesn't quite work that way.  I don't think in FY 23, we'll see that big increase because they're so new. But there might be a little bit of an uptick there. I think the hardware is probably something that you're going to see in future years that might have an uptick. The last pressure that I list is food service. COVID-19, I've talked about it before during quarterly reports. It's contributed to a larger than average food service deficit. This year we budgeted, in FY 22, we budgeted a transfer of 100,000. Over the past two years, the average deficit has been more like 170. So it might make sense to bump that up a little bit. On the flip side of that, though, I certainly hope that by FY 23, we're back to kind of normal food service operations. And we see the benefit of higher quality food with increased participation. And hopefully, you know, we'll see some improvement in the deficit numbers. I will say that in the near term, we have seen an even bigger increase in food service because we had to increase the hourly rate. We bumped it up to $15 an hour. Because we are having a real challenging time finding food service workers. So something that I'll think about a little bit and then bring to you as a proposal, whether we need to bump this up any higher than 100,000. On the opportunity side, we may be able to reduce some assumptions on the salary and benefit side because we've been coming in under budget. The fourth quarter report that you saw shows that we under executed again salaries and benefits. What I can do in the FY 23 budget, maybe is to make some different assumptions. Like assume that if we're going to, if we have a vacancy for a teacher, assume they're going to be a lower on the salary schedule. Assume that maybe they're only going to have single health coverage. Because right now they're pretty much on the higher end. And I'm assuming two person coverage. Somebody could come in right from college. Not needing health insurance. And that's a big swing. So I could make those assumptions. I could also reduce the assumption for how much we're going to use. How much the employees will use their health reimbursement arrangement. This past year, the HRA use was really low because as I mentioned, unless you were really sick. A lot of people weren't taking the chance of going to the doctor. So we'll see how that plays out, but we could bump it down a little bit next year to see if, if we can save some money there. I mentioned staffing as a pressure, but it could be an opportunity as well. Depending on how the staffing. Projections look. We know that UES. Is getting to a point where their class sizes could be too small. I know that sounds strange to say, but there is an optimal class size for instruction. But we'll have to see how that plays out. If it's not. Obvious. If it's not obvious, then we obviously, we wouldn't be looking to make a reduction. But if it is obvious, and if we think that it's actually bad, we'll have to see how that plays out. If it's not. Obvious. If it's not obvious, then we obviously, if it's not obvious and if we think that it's actually bad for instruction, we might be looking at reductions. RBS class sizes are low. It's not really an opportunity or pressure probably because I don't think we can do anything about it because the number of kids, the total number of kids is just too small. Even with multi-age classrooms, there's just so much you can do. Let's see what else we got. High school tuition, we budgeted $53,000 this year. That related to Roxbury kids who were grandparented with high school choice. That grandparented status goes away after this year. So that 53,000 we budgeted this year goes to zero next year. So at least we know there's 53,000 that we're going to see as a savings. And the last opportunity I list is fund balance. You know, we've had a very healthy fund balance. That healthy fund balance has got healthy. I guess that's a word. Because in FY 21, we finished with the surplus again. A lot of that has to do with just the, you know, the federal funding, the COVID impacts. It's hard to see how things were going to play out. For example, and I mentioned to this, this example to the finance committee. It looked like we had overspent $265,000 in hardware, which was deficit spending. But we actually received $415,000 in federal funds. That paid for that. So really instead of a deficit of 265. We actually came out ahead by 150 because we thought we were going to use local funds and we didn't have to because we had the federal funds. So those kinds of weird swings in addition, like projects, facility projects, it looked like we were overspending, but that overspending related to the ventilation work, which we got fully funded. And we actually out of local funds spent a little less than we anticipated for facility projects. So there were a lot of moving parts. If you want to get deeper into that, the fourth quarter financial report was included in your board packet. So you can look at that if you still have questions, feel free to pass them along. Fund balance is always on here as an opportunity because taxes are based on education spending, not total spending. What that means is you have your total spending, you subtract out non-tax revenues to get education spending. So if fund balance, for example, is a non-tax revenue, if you have more fund balance revenue as a source, then that reduces your education spending, just like cutting your expense side. So any time that you have fund balance, it's a potential opportunity because you could bump up fund balance revenue in your budget. That's the good news. The bad news is if you do that and you can't afford to do it in the next year, you have this revenue cliff that you fall off of and the tax rate goes way up in the following year. So you have to be real thoughtful how you spend fund balance. Right now we're assuming probably 400,000 because that's how much we have this year, but we can tweak that. We can use it as a lever to help control tax rates. And I think I've talked quite enough for now. There is another section talking about proposed guidance, but before we get to that, I thought I would open it up to any questions that anybody has to this point. Thank you. I have a few just clarifications. Confusion. So when, when you get all this revenues, then that's not good. Even if, you know, like, for example, the COVID or if you apply for a brand outside of that, you were saying that the dollar yield increases. That's not good. That sometimes it's not good if your revenue increases so much. What, like what, what, where is the. No, I'm always in favor of a lot of revenue. That's a good thing.  Well, next year, when that revenue goes away, unless I go away, then you've dropped revenue, but you still have the expense. So that's the problem with, with revenues is not when you get them. It's making sure that when you get them, you spend them in a way that it's not going to create a problem later. And there's nothing related to the dollar yield. That I just take my notes well. The dollar. Increase of revenue. I think if there's additional revenue statewide, as long as it's helping to offset or relieve some pressure on the education fund, that's a good thing. That would allow the dollar yield to go up. Which I know, like CLA, you want it to go.  You want the dollar yield to go up too, because in both of those cases, that means taxes go down. So revenue, as long as it's used for the right reasons, and it helps to take off some pressure, then it's a good thing. And it would make our dollar yield go up, which means our spending can go up for pupil. And as long as those are both going the same direction at the same rate, then the tax rate stays saying the same. Thank you for that. It's so easy. No, it wasn't, but I can ask a question. Don't feel pressured. So you met, you talked about access 173 and how that's used for special ed. And I was looking at the quarter four financial report, and it looks like the at spending was about 3.7. The budget, the special education spending was 3.7. Which can you remind me which one that was that intensive or was it extraordinary in the, in the quarterly report is just one line special education. And that's it. Oh, for expenses for expenses. So yeah. So 3.7 is what we are spending on special education. Acts 173 brings in revenue against that. Is that right? So. Yeah. Act 173 is would be state special ed. And funding for us to cover requirements. We're already getting it. It's just a different model. So right now. Some things will change in someone. For example, if we have state place students. We're going to get a hundred percent reimbursement. I think under the new model, we still will get a hundred percent for state placed expenses. For extraordinary costs. I think under the new model will still get a higher percentage of reimbursement for extraordinary costs like over $60,000. But most of the money we get is called intensive. And what that means is if you have a special ed teacher. That cost might be $100,000 with salary and benefits and everything else, right? Just to make it an easy number. We would submit that as an expense. And the AOE would give us about 56%. Or $56,000 against that expense. The new model isn't going to base it on reimbursement. They're not going to look at how much we're spending and give us a percentage of it. They're going to just say. You have a hundred kids. We're going to give you a thousand dollars per kid. So here you go. And then we don't have to track the expenses and submit for reimbursement. We have that money. We can use it how we feel is best serving students. And so there's a lot more flexibility. The, the issue for us as Montpelier Roxbury. Is I think because of our demographics. We're probably going to see a reduction in how much money we're actually getting in special ed reimbursement.  I think this one is probably going to mean that we're going to see a little less revenues in special ed. Yeah, I was looking at those. So I was looking at the expenditure was 3.7. The special ed. From the revenue side, the intensive was about 1.5. The extraordinary is about 400. And then the state place is about 18,000. So I was trying to add those up and see where the, you know, how much is it that we're getting reimbursed. And that's the portion that's going to go potentially go down as what you're saying. Right. When you look at all those revenue sources, like the state placed, take that off the table and extraordinary take that off the table. Cause I think those will be the same. I think what's going to be different is instead of a block grant and an intensive reimbursement, we're just going to have one that's going to be like a block grant. And I think the total dollar amounts probably going to be a little less. Okay. We actually probably would have made out this, this past year because we would have got X number of dollars that we could have used however we wanted. And so whenever we went into this pod model and we had a lot of special ed personnel doing general ed work. We wouldn't have had to worry about shifting those costs and then getting less reimbursement. We would have just got the numbers that we got. But it'll be interesting how it works. We'll have to see. My question sort of is related. And I, and I, I get the sense that I'm going to need an education on how special education funding works in the state of Vermont or federally. But so when you talked about there is a potential increase in the number of students who will be identified as needing special education services. And I think that that could increase. Our budget. I'm wondering, is there like a, so I think this is kind of what you were answering with etiquette, but is there a flat amount that we are reimbursed for those. Expenditures or. How does that work? Yeah. Well, the good news is we may all need that. Tutorial because I think it's going to change. The other way it works is everybody gets what's called a special ed block grant, which is like for us last year, it's like $400,000. So everybody gets a flat dollar amount just to cover expenses. Students are in the district. It's, it's based on things like the number of kids and also average salaries gets factored in. It's a formula that's done by Ali. So we get this flat grant called a block grant. And the next piece is called an intensive reimbursement. Which is, and the percentage changes every year. But it's roughly 56%. So throughout the year I submit reports to the agency of education and I show them how much money we've spent on special ed. And they give me basically 56% of that money back as a reimbursement. The other two pots are city 56, sorry, 56% about. The third pot is state placed. So if we have special education costs for state place students, we report that and we get 100% reimbursement to that. I think that is going to be the same for the new model. I don't think they're going to change that piece. And then the last piece is called extraordinary expense. So if, if we have a student who's in a placement and by the end of the year, the total cost is say $100,000. From zero to $60,000. We're getting reimbursed 56%. Once that student hits $60,000, we get 95% reimbursement from that dollar amount. That I think is going to be similar. I think there's still going to be a way for us to get a higher level of reimbursement for extraordinarily expensive students. But those first two, the block grant and the intensive reimbursement, those two I think are going to be combined into one kind of block grant instead of two different pots. And it'll be X number of dollars times X number of kids. And I just don't know what those two X's are. And what, can you explain what state placed means? Sure. Like say some say a kiddos in DCF custody. And they, they are serviced by us as the LEA. Then that would be a state placed student. There's, there can also be trying to think that there's a facility, I think that's in the bounds of Montpelier. What's that? Onion River. So some kids get placed there and because they're placed there in our area and if we provide services, then all of the expenses that we incur get reimbursed. Okay. If it's a special education student, if the student is just a, you know, is not on an IP of any sort, then we may not get reimbursed for that. And are we also reimbursed at these same rates for 504 students? There's no reimbursement for five. Yeah. I have a question on the dollar yield. One of the things that you have on page one in your notes was. We begin the budget process, assuming the yield will increase about $200. And then in parentheses, it's a, you've written 11,500. Can you say a little bit more about why 200 means 11,500? Because this year, the dollar yield was about 11,300 for FY 22. Oh, okay. So that's, it'll go up to $11, which would put it at about 11. Got it. So it's not exactly a translation of a very intense calculation. It's more just, we're adding $200 to what it was this year. Thank you. And that, like I said, the tax commissioner will come out with a recommendation that we, I mean it comes out, it always comes out pretty much right on December 1st. So it's a day or two later before I get it, but early in the budget process, whenever we're presenting budgets, we'll have a pretty good number. And then we have an inside person who sometimes can give us some tips on if we should make adjustments to that assumption. Not naming any names. I just had a real quick question. Amanda's question prompted this and Mia's too. And I should know the answer. Are these revenues that we've gotten these. As our money and the CRF money, are they counted towards our per people spending? So for instance, our districts getting dinged because they're per people spending went up a whole bunch this year. Like versus. That is a very good question. Actually. The answer is we don't get dinged for it. Okay. Because. Remember, I mentioned before that a lot of times I put things in terms of education spending because it doesn't matter what your total budget's doing. Because you could have revenues that are offset in a lot of that. So really it's the education spending that counts. And our spending per pupil is education spending per equalized pupil. And so that spending that we're having with federal money. Is also being subtracted because it's a revenue. So you spend 500,000, but you got additional revenues of 500,000. So your education spending didn't change. Okay. So it wouldn't hurt us at all. Thank you. Oh, that's what you meant. I'm sorry. Sometimes you have to. I didn't know the other part of the question that I was trying to. I was like, I have it in my notes. I do have. I know you mentioned this several times about the. I can, my accent. People wait and studies. I know that there's the working group that's working on that. And I'm just wondering. And I know you always say, you know, we will be one of the losers when this is the way it is changed. And so I'm wondering how to like plan for that. Like how do you plan for something like that. And how do you plan for that. And how do you plan for that ahead? And is that going to impact that one, that our next budget cycle. Because they're planning to finish this. Study or whatever. Soon, right? And. Yeah, I think it's been. What they're doing. If they're doing it in a rolling fashion. Or if they're doing it, they do it all at once or like those things matter. So because we have no indication of what they're going to do. We don't know what they're going to do. So it's hard to plan for it. Yeah, I would agree. And I think it's a lot like the, the six semester average for tech, tech tuition. I can't imagine that they're going to say, this is the new process and we recalculated it. So next year you lose a hundred kids. I think it will be something that somehow gets. Averaged in over time. I mean, it will hurt. Even if it's just 10 kids, I mean, they may say, oh, we're only going to, maybe there'll be a whole harmless provision where they say, nobody's going to drop more in statute right now. There's a whole harmless of three and a half percent. Nobody can drop by more than three and a half percent for equalized pupils. But even three and a half percent is a pretty big number. And would have a pretty big tax implication. I think. I don't think that we can plan for it necessarily, but I think during the year where it happens. There's going to have to be some serious thought about. Can we reduce some expenses to try to figure this out? Can we, you know, do we still have fund balance as a, as a lever to try to use? Yeah. Are there other revenues we can try to bring in to offset this? I mean, it may just be a kind of a new. Kind of a new standard that we're going to have to set is, is, you know, because of this, we're going to have to figure out a way to reduce education spending by so much in order to come to this new level, this new equilibrium.  Really, there's going to be people that gain and people that subtract in a number. It's probably, as a matter of fact, I know it's the right thing to do to recalculate this because there are communities that really should have more spending available to them. It's just a bad way to say it, but I think our equalized people count is probably going to drop and others will go up. I appreciate that. But not this. I don't think it will happen this year. I don't think we have to do it. I mean, could the plan would be somewhat analogous to what we've had to do with act 46 of just knowing that we've got this kind of graduated. Yeah. Essentially increase. The good thing about act 46 is, you know, when we did this the first year when we got that eight cent tax increase or tax rate reduction, we spent a lot of money on one time costs. And that way we knew we could just take it out of the budget every year. But that was, that was like staying at this level, you know, in a way. And now this is going to be having to really reduce. So we can't like increase expenses that we can strip away. We're going to have to really decrease expenses or increase revenues and come up with a new normal as far as spending goes. You know, hopefully it won't be as much of an impact as I think. And I, hopefully it does get averaged in over time where it's not going to be a huge impact. I can't imagine that they wouldn't do that though, because they would just be such outcry statewide because there are so many districts that would lose equalized pupils. And it would drive a huge tax rate increase all over the place. So this year I don't think we need to worry about it. And then next year we'll see how much it has to be, but hopefully not dramatic. Which might be for Libby might be for grant, but when you talk, when you the state with the external factors like dollar yields, I'm curious how you take those into account when you're in your deliberation phase, when the leadership is all. We don't in the beginning. Okay. We go into the room with the magic wall that you can write on. We brainstorm the heck out of what we would love to do. I love to see happen and we don't pay any attention to that and grant that's been rubbed his head. A lot. And it's all stressed out. And then from there, when the numbers start coming in, then we see how we need to prioritize. So we do eventually, but not in the beginning. I mean, I mean, you know, you know, it's years ago and kind of, kind of gave instructions to start the budget process that we're really thinking about what you need to meet the needs of the kids and to meet the needs of the district. Without kind of coming in already saying, okay, we can't spend more than this because then that automatically limits the thinking at the beginning stage. So. Thanks. And I'm going to go ahead and jump to the last piece of this because it kind of ties in and then, but typically what happens is I will give the board something to chew on as far as guidance, you're going to give back to us to follow. I mean, instead of you just having to come up with something from scratch. And what you just asked is kind of part of this because if, for example, CLA, I'm really concerned about CLA. So because of that, I chose a number of 3.5% as a, as a goal on here as far as an increase in education spending. One, it's a goal.  So it's a goal, but it also gives us something to kind of shoot for. And if the CLA was going to, you know, if I thought CLA was going to go up and tax rates were going to go down, then I might say, well, you know, maybe you should ask us to try to limit it to 5%. But really what I'm trying to see is what do I think might happen to tax rates because I try to maintain some kind of stable tax rates. And so that's why I chose 3.5% this year. I don't think it's really reasonable to think we come in any lower than that because most of our money is in salaries and benefits. We know what the salary increases. We know health benefits are going to go up 10% or health premiums. So it's very hard to come in any lower than that. But that's why I picked that number. But the guidance that, that I was proposing is that you could have us consider all the requirements that would improve student learning, obviously, because that's why we're here. Scrutinize staffing levels since that's where most of the money is in the budget. And then prioritize requirements at the end to try to get a goal of about 3.5%. I will tell you that if there's a lot of stuff on that list that we think we really have to have and we're at 4.5%, then we're going to come in with 4.5%. But we try to like at least keep this as a sanity check in our head. Like let's try. So that was the guidance. Now you could say, yes, that's the guidance. We want you to operate under or you could give me completely different guidance or you could not give us any and we'll just, you know, do the best we can. But at this point, I would say if you want to give guidance, you can give guidance. If you have other questions, I'll be glad to answer. And I'll turn it back over to you. Okay. And let's try to wrap up and that's the one that's going to get one more item. And then we're running a little bit hot. Small question. And I should know this, but can you tell me what the percentage increase was in the, in the prior year? Oh my goodness. I should know that too. I really should. I don't know the percentage increase in education spending. I think it was actually under 3%. I want to say 2.8. I think it's 2.8. Yeah, it was, it was under 3%. I know that. I know that's not that relevant, but I just wanted to know what it was. Okay. Thank you. So I'm also going to offer a grant that if you. He definitely can answer technical questions. But you know, just like looking at something. Oh my God. Don't bombard them, but he definitely is. He knows this stuff. And the budget process is hard. Yeah. Yeah, so I see a timeline or in September. And so you said December, if you guys will bring the budget back to the board. January gets approved and then in March gets voted by the, by the community. So. I know that last year there was like. Feel that are new. I know there's a new person that's going to come in.  In the state house, I think that was really good. Is that Andrew Chloe was the person that you mentioned? Yeah, she used to work. So I was thinking like if we could plan to have one of those trainings, just, I think it's really important for us to kind of before the vote in December. To be able to just like really understand all the things. And then the. Just like that training that's like on the CLA and also like the education funding. So that is like, it says like three months before. Before our December vote to be able to. Be informed as to, you know, all the things. That was really helpful. Sort of piggybacking on that. I think it might be good to have like more of a general, maybe it's just like a one hour. Meeting training. For all of us on like, what is the board's role when it comes to the budget? I think that, you know, you could offer guidance tonight. I don't feel prepared or equipped to know what would be appropriate at this juncture. In terms of guidance, you know, as an individual board member. So I think it would be cool to have a, like a one hour sit down with the more veteran board members. And maybe grant as well. Just to get a better understanding of what the words role is in this whole process. Yeah. One thing I'll offer as a resource, the podcast episode that granted me did at the beginning of this year, it was like the first one, I think. It was a really good primer on some of this vocabulary and stuff. So I'm going to make a note myself to, to re listen to it and it'd be good for any community member who's, who's feeling like dollar yields. You know, it went, it, that was very helpful for me to listen to. So I think that's a good start. I think that's a good start. I think that's a good start. So new board members and community members and. Returning board members. That's a good resource too. So good with that said. Before the vote in, in the March. I know that like you guys did that great podcast. And it was awesome, but also like just for us to plan on translation and being able to like do the community sessions to ask questions. So if that happens in January. If that happens, you know, I'm going to go to the board. Like, does that. So January is the, is. Around the middle of January is whenever the board has to say yes to take, this is the budget we're going to take to the voters. And the reason for the delay is because it has to go to the municipality so that they can get the warnings in their annual reports, all that kind of stuff. So once that's done, really, we're going to be able to do that. We're going to be able to do that in March. To do public outreach. And a lot of times, like, not so much last year because of COVID, but, you know, in the past, we've served lunch at this, at the senior center and, you know, they've asked questions during a break and we've talked. They're sometimes board members will go to. The rotary club or something like that. There's different outreach that we can do to explain the budget. Or, you know, just. I think we do. Right. And that's, that's the window from the middle of January until town meeting days, really just the window to communicate and try to sell. Yeah. If you're trying to get input, then we should start now with ideas and priorities so that we can throw that in. A lot of times that bubbles up though, because it's parents that talk to principals and then principals put it in their budget. So a lot of times it happens organically. But this would be a good time to, you know, talk to community members, find out what's going on, what they're thinking is priorities. This budget process, one of the wildcards is going to be all this federal funding. Because we have to kind of figure out in the facility size, especially what are we going to keep in the normal general fund for facilities? What are we going to put in the capital fund? What are we going to keep in the normal general fund? For, you know, projects. Versus what might be the side. We would spend infrastructure money on if the money comes, or S or three money, or. Fund balance money. So there'll, that will be a little bit of a dynamic to figure out. But yeah, right now, if you're talking to people and you're hearing what they're thinking is important and can bring that through especially, it works best if it goes through the schools.  Yeah, I guess I'll just stop talking. Yeah, no, definitely. Yeah, the music at the first presentation, the first meeting in December. Yeah, and then there's time really to change it until we approve it. So between, particularly now in November is kind of the prime time to do it. And as far as like board members trying to refresh their memory, do you still have that slide? There's a slide that we do. I'm sure you can see it, but it's the tax rate calculation that starts with total budget minus revenue, non tax revenues equals all the symbols are there that walk you through the math of it. I mean, you'll still have to refresh your memory on, you know, CLA is on there. So what is CLA? I mean, yeah, I struggle with that every year, but at least that'll show you how the math works to build the tax rate. And that's half the battle is figuring out how the math works on it. And seeing that the answer to your question is education spending on 2% faster. 2.8 was the total budget. So last year was a pretty good year. So on, on your timeline for tonight's meeting, September 1st, I think it's going to be a good year. It says for the, for the school board to discuss the process and priorities and guidelines. Those are your, you're in these process priorities and guidelines, right? That's not like none of that is supposed to come from the board. Yeah, I think process is, is me explaining what the budget process is that we follow. And some of the stuff we can't do anything about, like middle of January, we have to have an approved budget priorities is. You know, if there were anything that I knew of right now, I would have brought them up. I mean, I talked about some of the pressures and opportunities. As far as from your perspective, priorities was if you already knew of any priorities. And if you did great, you can bring them up now. If you didn't, this is my reminder to you that this is a good time to get input from people. If anybody out there is talking about priorities that. They want to come in. Yeah. So, you know, I think it's a good time to get input from people. You know, you know, a lot of times, you know, we're doing a presentation in January and, and somebody comes in and starts advocating for something that we didn't hear about until then, and it's really late to try to throw it in. So for the community to know that we're looking for priorities now that they can push forward for you to know that if people come to you, that's something to make sure that we're hearing about, you know, that we're going to be able to do that. We're going to be able to process. And then the other piece was both timeline, which you got. And then guidance. If you choose to get it. If not, then we'll just kind of proceed like we normally do. Which is basically throwing everything that we know of. Yeah. On the wall. And then trying to figure out what we can afford. So that'd be something we can talk about in the next four meetings. We're going to have a lot of discussions and kind of continued information. Opportunity for us to, you know, give the priority to the community and for the administration to respond and. For us to, you know. Again, give, give suggestions. You know, give some priorities, et cetera. Jim, sorry. Over the course of the year already we have heard several. Sort of asks from the community at these meetings. Not directly saying like, Hey, when you're considering next year's budget, can you do this? But sort of like asking about like the track facilities, which I know we're thinking about for us or funding or whatever. The federal funds that are coming down from infrastructure. But we've also heard about like. Was it a heat pump at Roxbury? And I've, I've heard of several. And I'm just wondering what you're thinking about. I'm just wondering if there's like a central place that we're sort of keeping all of that feedback that I could review. Just to see if there's anything that I feel is missed from these board meetings and the stuff that we've heard about. I mean, the two that you mentioned, I know about that we're trying to figure out. Well, actually the heat pumps and rocks where I think are designated use of fund balance. It's on the quarterly report. The track is a big one that we're trying to figure out. So which bucket doesn't makes the most sense. But as far as anything else that's come up, whether there's some kind of standing list. I don't know. The infrastructure presentation that we did in the last four meeting had a vast majority of them. But some of the other like social emotional, like. Those other conversations around special ed. You know, like just hot hot. When it comes to prioritization later, if we have like that, that feedback in one central place, just to see all, you know, like. Can you tell us a little bit more about like, these were some of the concerns that I had, you know, just. Just something to think about that we can now. Would I do that? Yeah. Yeah. I think having like one board member who like kind of keep track. That makes sense. Cause I lose track. Just my memory is as good as it once was. Yeah. No, but I. I think it's a good idea to keep track of this because it's easy to kind of for ideas to come up and then say, Oh, that's a good idea. Let me move on to the next one. Yeah. Yeah. I think having like one board member who like kind of keep track of that makes sense. Because I lose track. Just my memory is as good as it once was. Yeah. I think it's easy to come up and then say, Oh, that's a good idea. Then we move on to the next thing. So. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I do want to move on because we are over time. But thank you, Brad. I know we'll hear from you. Plenty. You'll be seeing plenty of me. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. RfP for district vision work. Is this you or I know Mia was working on it. Yeah. We're just opening it up for any more feedback. Amanda shared some over email with us. So I made adjustments based on Amanda's feedback. And so the one that Libby sent the, the version that Libby sent out on Monday afternoon or Tuesday morning is the most recent one. Yeah. This is really just the time for the board to take a look at it and say. You missed a period or. We actually don't think we need this or. What, you know. I have a question. I had a question when I read it before. I also. And is that something we can share with us? Yeah. And maybe you decided not to do this so that it would be more open ended. But I was just wondering. Well, I guess I have a couple of questions. One is, did you consider any specific deliverables that we might want out of this? Like there's high level, like, you know, we, we want a cohesive vision of what. An exceptional education within MRPS looks like, but like. Do we want to receive that via a report? Do we want to like. Have some presentations. Do you see the bulleted list on the bottom of the first page? We go. A written summary of findings. Qualitative data points on the bottom of the first page. No, I don't see it. We don't. Yeah. Oh, I think you are still showing the old one, Libby. Maybe we have the old one actually. We have the old one. If we have the old one and there's a new one with that type of stuff. It's under a doc. Where is it? I just did a search in the docs. And that's the one that came up. It wasn't the one in a packet. I don't know. It was a second email. I did a search and on the Google drive itself. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know if you can see it up on the screen. Yeah. So good idea. Yeah. Because. Yes. Can you highlight the differences between the version that I've read in this version? Are they like. Is that. The bulleted list is a, is a highlight. There's some differences in the first two paragraphs. The flow of them is a little different, but they mostly say the same thing. So. In terms of terms and conditions, there are no changes to projected schedule. There's no changes to. And then other big additions were Amanda had some great ideas for. Successful proposals. There's examples of numbers seven through nine. Are new. So let me ask this question. Would it make sense. We're running behind schedule. Would it make sense? Cause it sounds like you didn't read that version either. Yeah. I think it would make sense to bring this up next time, or do we like really need to move on this tonight? And then which case we might want to take like 10 minutes to review it, but we're a little behind schedule. So. I think rather than wait until the next board meeting. Because as you can see, we would like to. We'd like submissions back by October 13th. And so I want to give people time enough to prepare their proposals. If you don't want to take the time now, because we are running behind, I would say read and send. And it's just straight to me, Jim and Libby. And again, like we will just look at any themes that come from everybody's feedback.  It's not something we actually have to vote on is my understanding. It's just more like we're just getting. Yeah. Yeah. And this person. Yeah. No way. She just sent me a text. Waves crashing on her face. Seriously. Maybe she's muted. Maybe she's pressed star six. She's there on the top. Maybe we need to like unmute her officially from our end. Do you want me to go. Hi, everybody. Can you hear me? Yeah. Miraculous. Okay. Yes, I am on a boat. I'm going to try to be succinct and brief. I had one question is if there is a budget that's established and if that would be mentioned here so that a consultant might know how to frame their proposal. And then I was just curious if we had a budget. And then. Yeah. If you put a budget. It's not that common practice actually because what will happen is you have bidders that might be willing to. Go below. Yes. They're going to go up to that point. Yeah.  That could be one thing. But if your number is low, then I would. Number of bidders, you know, a lot more. It's a good practice to put a budget number. So you're going to get really lots of bids and they're going to compete. But if your member of bidders is low. Then you're going to run into if you put a budget number, then it's going to be. You're not going to get to. So for the work that I'm doing with all the organizations and consultants that are by pop, that are. That's one of the requirements because if they can, you know, either team. If this, you know, like the VFBA, the three years, 40,000 dollars. If you put a budget number, then it's going to be. You're not going to get to. Not starting. So for the work that I'm doing with all the organizations and consultants that are by pop that are. You know, like the VFBA, the three years they put in years, $40,000, $90,000, and we might pick five facilitators for this. You know, like that. Considerations when. In equity work. Yeah, but you can, if you look at state contracts, for example, a lot of state contracts, there are requirements that certain wage like certain wage requirements are met certain labor conditions are met. And then you don't put your budget out there for an undertaking. necessarily. So I heard Kristen asked the question. I think as a way of recommending that we do it. Amanda's recommended to do it. I saw Jim nodding. I'm just saying like maybe if the consensus of the board is that we should do it. Maybe we do it. I would strong. I would vote against it. So I would like to put it to a vote. I think it's a bad idea. But I don't think it serves our task. That's, that's my thought. Would we need to vote on a budget? Would we need to, would that be something that we would need to vote on if we were to put it in there? We have, we have a light. We have a light. I'm in the budget. Just probably public information. Yeah. That's one. That's our advice. The board wants to do it. I don't feel strongly either way. I think I just don't think it. Yeah, I think it's a bad idea. If it's public information. That information can be. Yeah. Accessed. Then. Then it may become an equity issue is like some people be able to access it just because some others don't know. Why are you hiding it until.  I guess on the equity front, if we wanted to ensure certain requirements for that, we could, we could stipulate that. And here, if we really wanted to do that, I mean, you could just use a state contract. As an example. Because a lot of state contracts. A lot of state contracts have. The state contracts are still on the same level, whether it be through requirements and environmental. Stewardship requirements. So like when our fees go out of the state level. If, if, if we want to, when you're talking about equity, what do you mean. Yes. Access contracts like this. And so there's a whole conversation around what are the challenges for. good work and this is one of them is like that we're going to like institutions are not transparent around funding there's like this whole conversation you can ask the senator that that's part of the conversation that happened on this day it feels a little akin to me to the movement now to make sure that salary ranges are on job descriptions so that a candidate isn't guessing so essentially we're not hiring a staff person but we're hiring a consultant what we'd like to do is take out some of the guests and I just I overlooked it in drafting the RFP I think a salary range for a job it's different than this yeah exactly it feels like in the same spirit yeah we do still have christen on the line did you have any other questions or feedback christen hi I do sorry so yeah and mine wasn't necessarily a recommendation it was a kind of a wonder and a curiosity is if that's something that's standard so I'm hearing the dialogue and it's a little bit broken up for me but I'll have to come back and listen to the meeting and then my second thought was just kind of acknowledging that we're still in a in a very fluid and dynamic public health situation with COVID and just if it made sense to you know in a couple sections maybe the you know successful proposal piece that if you know someone wanted to speak to you know a variety of strategies that might respond to the dynamic situation that we're still in and then if it also made sense to include anything like in the terms and conditions not knowing kind of how the next you know handful of months that are within the work schedule time frame are going to pan out and just if we want to name anything specific I mean ideally I know that this process is happening you know a year later than or we have two years later than then hoped and that it's timely and that it's needed but if we wanted to build anything in that just would allow for some flexibility because I know that we want to optimize this process and that there could potentially be curveballs in the ways in which that we're able to engage with the community so I was just thinking a little bit about that the announcements over the PA system I think I gathered there were two things she was thinking that we'd like to see the people who are proposing include strategies for how they'll keep how they'll do engagement in the time of COVID safely and then the second one I got was a little bit lost to me that she was recommending the fluid or on call it yeah okay well we can center and even on the special issues yes so we'll just set a deadline by this Friday to have final thoughts um I'm just with this whole question about like adding the salary the budget for it um I just quickly opened up the policy our policy on budget as execution E02 and there's an RFP section I'm just wondering I'm guessing you already looked at all that and made sure that we were in compliance of our own policy just know that that RFP is that part of the policy there's a lot of contractors yep there's just a okay so request for proposals contract only basically yeah that's pretty much what it's talking to okay great so yeah all by Friday yep um and then we can get this out and get this process moving which is exciting um Libby your yeah yeah okay so this presentation was supposed to be aspect scores however last week late last week we got an email that says aspect scores are still embargoed so we can't share aspect scores um we're not sure what's going on there so um most of this presentation is the exact same presentation that I gave to the entire faculty for in-service okay so um changed a little bit for y'all but but the slides are generally the same um so this was all the same information so I'll start with um this is a piece that we're working on with our faculty around it's not there yet the board has a vision statement that's on our letterhead um and when that vision statement was made it was um discussed that the mission of the district it's charged to us um and so this is what the leadership team is playing with it's our moral imperative to ensure that any child who graduates from MRPS has a limit less future it's our responsibility to build systems where student success is not determined by luck will power family dynamics or any other mitigating factor that's out of our control um so we're still mulling over how to make that sound a little better and less worry but the whole the idea is any kid who graduates from us has any choice out there they have the skills and the confidence to go out and get it um that's the main gist of of what we're thinking about right now um I also shared with them over the summer speaking with different MRPS parents this was the this was the sentiment that I heard from from at least five of them this summer it's almost like you're waiting for my kid to fail um and and that's an accurate statement from those five parents no perception um so we I shared that with them uh with our staff and talked about so this right here is the reason why we've been working on the systems we're working on right so when this is now my fourth year as superintendent our first year really focused on culture did we truly believe that all students will learn at high levels because of what we do every single day with them not what you all do at home with them but what we do with them um so we worked on that quite a bit around what's a healthy culture and what's a toxic culture my first year I did a lot of listening I did a lot of watching little a lot of data analysis and at about mid-year through that first year we came up as a leadership team with the four pillars which better and more veteran board members have seen as the red Venn diagram so that red Venn diagram has kind of morphed a little bit into something a little slightly snazier because I now have Anna um so this is it it's the MRPS theory of growth with this idea that we want limitless futures Jim has given the feedback already to make this less wordy um so I'm gonna maybe call on you all to help me because it's this is like my world and I want out on this so it's hard to make it less wordy for me um so we have some ideas the four big ideas that we're going to go into the idea of collective responsibility and collaborative practices formalized essential learning timely system to enrich intervene and remediate the high quality instruction in every single classroom you've seen this before you've just seen it in a different form in the red diagram as board members because this is certainly not new it's been around for I'd say we named it about two years ago as like a public document maybe three years I don't know with COVID I keep losing track of where we are um so the idea is just quickly collective responsibility and collaborative practices that what we do with children every day is incredibly complicated and no one person could possibly have all the knowledge they need to make it happen for kids um this is not an assembly line and so in order to have that limitless future in order to create that reality for kids then we have to do it together and build on each other's unique strengths as educators formalized essential learning is the idea that we cannot possibly teach everything that the common core alone if we were to teach every single common core standard and assure ensure that um students master every single one of the common core state standards in reading writing math and listening that they would need at least 22 years of schooling with us we do not have that time that's based on marzano's research who writes a book every other month who's a big educational researcher we don't have that kind of time and so we need to prioritize what it is that we truly are saying every child will be proficient in by the end of their greater content there so we're thinking about what's nice to know and what's essential to know in order to be successful when they move on in order to build content knowledge that's imperative um that kind of thing we're also thinking about timely system to enrich intervene and remediate so every learner is unique no two learners are the same and some kids need more time with ideas um and so the traditional schooling method is that um learning is the is the thing that's a variable and time is not if i'm done teaching this i'm moving on we want to flip that around so that learning is no longer the variable learning of the essential skills there's essential learning that we're naming in that formalized fashion is the thing that we will enrich in will intervene in and will remediate in if necessary um and i'll go into that a little bit later high quality instruction to every classroom is that as a profession there are certain practices that we know get good outcomes for kids and there are certain strategies that we know don't and so as a staff we need to come together and name what does that mean and that every single learner will have a teacher in front of them that knows what high quality instruction looks like for MRPS so it takes the luck out of things so Emma's kid if he's choosing it petr's in a different class than Mia's kid they're still gonna have same high quality instruction around the same formalized essential learning but it's not different so that's high quality instruction every classroom we'll go into that a little bit so these slides are evident of what is the work this year okay so formalized essential learning for this school year because this isn't the first time we're working on this right but this school year we've now named curriculum teams curriculum teams are pretty common practice across districts MRPS never had them before so they're district wide teams with a range of teachers from kindergarten to 12th grade on it those curriculum teams are naming the priority standards so when we go into the common core we're looking at which ones are the or next gen or whatever sign whatever standards document that content area is which one of these are our priorities which one gives us longevity which one gives us staying power which ones are the ones that other other standards build upon and kids have to know them the curriculum teams will name those they'll develop a proficiency scale for each of those priority standards so right now when you get a report card from different students we don't use that as a data point for a district because two first grade teachers might have different prior might have different proficiency scales they might be using different proficiency skills because we haven't formalized them and when I say formalized I mean written them down so you can access them as a parent when we have this priority standard on a report card you'll know here's the proficiency scale so that too is not a thing that you're like what's that me right it's going to be spelled out and need which we do not have right now and it's a big missing piece for a place that's celebrated for proficiency based learning that's missing from us right now we'll be that team will be providing an index of assessment items that match the rigor of the proficiency scale so when we say a student is a three and a priority standard then we have assessment items that match what that rigor what that three means so kids are assessed not at what a teacher is guessing that proficiency means but what we've named that proficiency to be and forgive me because I know there's a lot of educational jargon in here so if I really say something that's really jargony just call me out on it and then they'll also this team will also communicate back to the teammates get feedback on what they're doing bring that back to the curriculum team and revise and work so it's not one team making all the decisions that all the teachers are involved at the school level we're participating the admin is participating in two different teams we're giving time and the admin real we're working really hard on knowing the why and the what so we're all talking about the same thing when we say this we all when we say priority standard all of the administrators mean the same thing and then at the district level we're providing resources a whole lot of time Mike Barry's done a heck of a job organizing the learning that needs to come if there's professional learning for these curriculum teams they need the money we're paying teachers stipends to do the work because it's after school hours we're providing direction we're monitoring them and we're going to publicize them so I'm starting to work on my own superintendents newsletter or blog and that blog will be split into these four areas so the idea is each time I write it that it will be celebrating work within these four areas so to make them more public for the community when we're thinking about collective responsibility and collaborative practices I was trying to get to the teachers that just because we're saying that does not mean that we are all locked up right and that we're all doing the same thing that when we're really talking about what high quality performance is it's when it's the performance is impactful and it's increasing and I've asked the teachers to look at these two statements and think which one of these statements are you really grabbing to right now the research is incredibly clear by John Hattie who has done meta analysis so a meta analysis is looking at thousands upon thousands of studies to see what the effect size on learning is around different practices schools that are here who where teachers collectively say this statement have a much higher collective impact on learning than teachers who say I know I can reach my kids right it's our kids we all have responsibility for these kids so we're really working on this piece right now it's called collective efficacy I'm sure you've all heard that term so John Hattie's research says that it has a 1.5 effect size on student learning so when you think about what that means his research on these meta analyses is that a 0.4 effect size roughly translate into one year of learning it's a typical year of learning a kid comes in the beginning of second grade they learn one year of second grade work and they're ready for third grade that makes sense so if a school is displaying collective efficacy we can move all kids together then those schools are showing a 1.57 effect size which is two and a half years of learning in one year yeah so it's big it's so that collaborative practices piece is enormous for us um it's the it's actually the number one influence on student learning and if I want to make it really clear with teachers that it's not sitting around and collaborating around what are the next field trip is the nice to know conversations it's looking collaboratively about evidence and taking collective action on what the evidence is saying to us so one of my main things I say to teachers all the time when I'm doing data days with them is that data is not condemnation it's information it's information for us to act on or not we get to make those decisions um but a collect a school that has strong collective efficacy takes that data take that evidence and decides to take action collaboratively on it give a question can you give an example about what what a piece of evidence might look like and and and a kind of collective action yeah someone might take yeah so two so a year ago I have three what's called data days a year with guiding coalitions which is the teacher leadership team in each building um in each of the building and three years two years ago virtually the ues first grade team showed data that their first graders came into the year with not knowing all their letter sounds right that is a skill first graders should know when they come in they shared that data openly in a very respectful way as because they were talking about how they were going to collectively move them off the dime right the kindergarten teachers heard that information because they're you know they were in that too in that day to day team meeting and they made a collective goal that that would never happen again and so this year you know so then we had the next day to day they were specific to show evidence that they had targeted that they knew exactly which didn't have their letter sounds at that point and they knew you know they're the plan for moving them forward that's the kind of thing we're talking about right they heard the information they didn't say oh what was me or those kids or whatever they said that's on us we're going to talk about that and we're going to move on it and last year was the very first year that I think there was an award presentation that we had all first graders knowing every single one of their letter sounds right and that's that's the difference right there yeah that's a good example thank you yeah um so what's happening this year with that remember this is the work for this school year um in the it's in the professional learning communities you'll often hear me refer to that as plcs so in their plcs they're answering these four questions every single every single time they are focusing in on one of these four questions what is it we want all kids to know so what's the professional learning community so it's the grade one team talking about their next unit of study in math or their current unit of study in math so that team will be talking about what is it that we want all kids to know in this unit those are the priority standards let's make sure we're all clear on that and we're all clear on what proficiency means how do we know they will know it so what's the common formative assessment we're all giving so that Jill's not giving a different assessment that could be easier than Mia's right that they're giving the same assessment on the priority standards how do we know if they don't get it so they're all analyzing the data together right and what do we do if they don't what do they do if they don't know it so if Susan Koch's kids are not going to the park and Linda Dostie's kids scored low or Linda can say to Susan what did you do to do that so I can do it myself or let's switch our kids all up because Susan really did a great job there so she's going to take the kids we're still struggling with this and Linda's going to take these kids you know so they're splitting it up it's collective and then what do we do if they already know it right it's it's the bane of my existence when kindergarten teachers are doing the letter of the day not to say ours do when my kid already knew all their letters why are they sitting there talking about what an a looks like when they already know what an a looks like right so um and excuse on my primary examples I was a primary teacher so it's just easier for me to say primary examples than others at the school level we're ensuring that the plc time is built into the schedule it is not extra for teachers um that the principals are getting better at monitoring and coaching the plc so naming where they are in the plc development because our groups are all our plcs are all over the place just like kids and so they're naming where they are and then coaching them to move to the next level and celebrate the learning that's that we don't do enough when adults do really impactful behaviors on student learnings we don't make that public enough and we need to do that better we need to celebrate it and at the district again we want to ensure resources are available we want to message that again through different different means um we want to assist in continuing to create the common language and we're coaching our administrators on how to coach their plcs going forward this is the biggie for us this year both the priority standard work and the plcs we've been working on in fact we focused in on those particularly last year because we didn't have the time we normally did so it was easier to prioritize right we said you can you want to have time to teach the nice now you only have time to teach the priorities last year so we did actually a lot of work there last year across our district and they knew they had to work together in order to get it done so we we actually have a lot of really good momentum in those two areas from our last year and a half of what we've been through this is the place that we know we need to move strongly in and quickly in um it's a place where when I started we knew that we needed to move there however you have to have priority standards in place and you have to have a collaborative mindset before this means anything so there is there is now people may argue with me about this but I can't hire tons of billions of interventionists if we don't know what we're supposed to be teaching right it doesn't matter and so um so we needed to get those two pieces really moving forward before we focused on this we have a good step up on those first two pieces now so now it's time to say we got to change this it's not working because we have people saying it's like you're waiting for my kid to fail right so we this is the area for the next year or two we're really laser like focus in um yeah part of the priority standards get this like what was the process to decide like we're going to focus on this five or yeah there's a great book called standard I don't remember the title right now but um there's a process that the teachers will go through so and there's like kind of like a question and answer does it have longevity will it support next year's content um doesn't matter in life you know so I'll give you an example in the English language common core standards for I believe it's like ninth grade I want to say maybe a little less seventh grade there's um there's a reading common core standard around naming theme and being able to provide evidence from a text to get theme now the idea of theme is critical for critical thinking for problem solving for everything right so that's a priority there's also a standard that said compare movie and drama of the same story that's nice to know right like that's not really that's you know like that's not a priority a kid kid doesn't necessarily need to do that in order to think critically they could do it as an activity right does that make sense so teachers are going through those those standards and saying which ones are the ones we're ensuring and then they ask themselves a question okay we have this list of the standards do we have time to do all of these is it possible to get every we're saying every single kid we'll get we'll be proficient in those is that a possibility right or we're going to work our pushes off to get there um so so then they have to ask those questions that it's a whole process that they're looking at there but it's based on the work of Tammy Keppelbauer you want to write down I mean it's something like standardized it's like standardized grading for school leaders but I if you want to borrow it I have it I'm so the final say on that or do they have to get the approval of the principal no teacher it's the teacher's work it's not our work yeah teacher's work got it we're guiding the process but but they're it's their work right they have to own it okay so this is a piece when we're thinking about I'm going to throw out some acronyms RTI or MTSS so RTI's response to intervention which is was came out in the 80s right MTSS is Vermont's doesn't matter it's synonymous is multi-tiered system of support the two things mean the same thing okay um and so when we're thinking about MTSS what we do they're real we're really talking about timely system to enter and enrich intervene and remediate I argue as a leader that MTSS encompasses all of these four things all of these four areas of growth okay but really when we're getting nitty-gritty about it we're talking about this one of the things that schools in general and I'm talking about the royal schools not MRPS in general or specifically did with RTI is that they never defined things clearly they hired interventionists without any goal for what they were going to do and kids kids who didn't get it the first time the loudest teacher would say take them from me they don't get it and then they'd go to a separate room and it doesn't work it's not effective okay and the 80s MRPS is not alone in the structure the ineffective structures that are occurring now and they are ineffective we do not have evidence that they are working right so um so the first thing we need to do is define what it means and how do we use our limited human resources right so when we're talking about universal first instruction this is what is happening in the classroom this is what happens what you would say is teaching right so when we're talking about universal first instruction it's on the priority standards for our academic and social emotional behavior um for the grade level or content area if we're talking about high school in middle school that the PLC team so the professional learning communities determine what the shared formative and summative assessments so formative is kind of like the doctor's checkup and the summative is like an autopsy okay so that when you're when you're alive and kicking you're going to the checkups to make sure you're both that's what formative assessment is summative means the unit has been taught and right the unit has been taught and and you're not really moving on that anymore with a whole class um on the priority standards and the PLCs are also conducting data analysis it's all the work of what the PLC was and those four questions the instruction needs to be the first instruction like instruction kids are getting in the classroom with with who you would name as your kid's teacher right it's differentiated it's based on a growth mindset it's intentional so when I walk in I say what are you working on they should be able to name it for me the kids and the teacher it's goal oriented and it's engaging to the students okay that's what we're going for with that and that a hundred percent of our student population fall into this category every student has access to first and universal first instruction okay when we're talking about tier two this is where it starts getting fuzzy for people tier two and tier three if I were to ask most teachers across the US to differentiate the two they wouldn't be able to do it okay so tier two is what we're talking about prevention or intervention it's still on the priority standards so we want the person or the people who are most expert in the priority standards of that grade level to provide the prevention or intervention and who that who is that it's your grade level teachers right it's your kid's teacher so it's still in that classroom it's just good teaching you do a form of assessment you get your data you reteach to the kids who need it you enrich to the kids who don't you know like when you're going through this cycle but it could include pre-teaching it could include reteaching it could include just more time it could include some includes them enrichment but it's fluid and active within the classroom and it's based on the work of the PLC okay so some examples might be at the high school level they might be pre-teaching vocabulary so I'll just stand up oh that's that one oh okay I don't have to look for that so oh that court is in my room um I have that that's for you isn't it it's in my it's in my office it's in my office to see it on the floor okay so uh let's see here some other examples are are regrouping the kids right around for for different you know Susan takes some Linda takes from that kind of idea so that's prevention or intervention that's just a reminder of what the priority standard is right so we're not giving prevention or intervention on everything we're giving it on the priorities right so there still is some nice to know things right like that compare a movie and a drama that we're not giving intervention on that though if somebody if somebody doesn't get that we would give intervention on a kid who's not understanding anything makes sense um and then we have tier three which is intensive remediation it is not special education it's intensive remediation and it means that there's we're looking at multiple data points that need that a kid needs in a universal skill so I'll give you an example what a universal skill is I was a second grade teacher right so decoding multi-syllabic words in second grade is a second grade standard that's what we want second graders to be working on uh multi-syllabic words like multi-syllabic right um however uh letter ID is not like not a second grade standard right you letter downs or it's not a second grade standard if a kid comes in without those two things that's a universal skill they need in order to be successful in second grade standards right so they would need intensive remediation and that the person who's going to give that intensive remade remediation is the person with the greatest expertise in that skill so it's not an instructional assistant it's you know it's a person who has skill in that area this is where our interventionists come in right um and so eventually we've bought we we're we're working with a group called VCAT which is a local Vermont uh group for an instructional plan in there that the parent's going to be a part of building and that the parent knows about I was a parent or my kid was receiving some remediation I didn't know about it until parent conferences when the teacher said would you like to meet with me and I said who are you right this is the place where we don't we're not good at this is the place we need significant work on absolutely 100 without a doubt and we have this so this year we're having intervention team to really name what those universal skills are by grade level so they're not teaching anything but we're really naming what they're teaching that we know how to write a really targeted focus goal so the goals aren't the child will increase their comprehension comprehension is enormous there are tons of different ways you could increase a child's comprehension so we're going to name what it is that we're going to actually work on we have a lot of work to do here it is not going to happen overnight it's not going to happen probably in a year but this is the place where when I hear parents say it's like you're waiting for my kid to fail they have not been a part of this because we haven't been doing it well that's what's happening there and so when I hear that I'm like I thank you for telling me your story in my head it's thank you for telling me your story your story is is helping me folk say yes this is what we need to work on right because our our schools weren't there yet they weren't understanding what we needed to do yet they're there now that that statement that I put up on the slide of it's like you're waiting for my kid to fail that hit home for our teachers they care right and so I had so many come up to me and say let's get to work on that right so um there's some examples of that but really it's a plan it's intensive it's a three-week period of time the kids mixing up their short e and short i sound that is not 30 minutes a day five days a week that's not what it means you don't need that you need 10 minutes for three days straight of jumping on lily pads that have short e short i you know like you need really intensive focused work and we're not good enough with that yet um so this is the place where we're really focusing in on building our understanding for what this means and then high quality teaching in every classroom this is big for our teachers that this is a quote that I really hold on to because we have some veteran teachers who are good teachers right but to suggest that the quality teaching could be improved is not to say that teaching is of poor quality our our job as teachers is really complex and we can always get better so you don't have to be bad to get better um and then this year our teachers are working with uh Christian Cordemont who he worked they've been working with him for a while or on math menu at the at the k6 level so it's differentiated math instruction uh teacher's development group that's what tgg stands for sorry I didn't put these out this was just a slide for the teachers that's for our 712 teachers in math around math practices and math behaviors um teachers called reading and writing project we'll be focusing in on writing for our k8 teachers um pll is a Vermont firm who's working with the high school around disciplinary literacy um and then core collaborative is working with some belonging and inclusion work with us and um they're going to be making plans with colleagues to not just practice the work but deliberately practice this work I'm really focusing on this one idea that I'm going to practice as a teacher to get better at did you say discipline literacy disciplinary literacy so what is what is disciplinary so it's the idea that literacy is not um something on the plate it is the so it's like science disciplinary how do you read like a scientist how do you read like a mathematician how do you read like a social scientist that all of those domains if you're not literate in the domain meaning how do you read that work then you're not successful there I'm glad you asked I thought it was like a behavior oh sorry discipline discipline of English yeah and then we have a lot of work to do in the background so sometimes I say what's on the stage and what's behind the stage and what's behind the stages as our as a leadership team we're really working on how do we build a common understanding of what we mean when we say best practice right what do we need what are we looking for and how do we give non-judgmental feedback so teachers are truly thinking about the choices they make in their classroom in their instruction we're doing a lot of that work behind the scenes as a leadership team and then thinking about how do we develop that strategy with our teachers to develop the teacher leadership and to build an understanding of an instructional framework which we're using with the University of Washington called the 5D and so five dimensions of teaching um it's a great framework that uh if you want to see it I'm happy to share the PDF around that with you uh so that's that's this when I'm talking about theory of growth I know a lot of a lot of you know we've had questions around what is the work these are this is what we're focused in on these four areas and I call it a theory not a strategic plan because it's evolving and each of our buildings are in very different spots in these areas in that it's my job to say you are clearly working in one or two of these four areas so that's about all we can handle um name which one it is based on where your school is and then we'll support you from the administrative level but it's not we're all locked up with them the same thing because not everybody's in the same spot um so I know Emma asked for the continuous improvement plans today I just shared it with you in a new email um and I can share it with it's a dense document because it went to the AOA and has lots of links and all that kind of stuff but I'm happy to share it but in the continuous improvement plan this is what it is at at the highest level this is what it is and questions that's something that you share publicly like that it's on our website now it is on the website because I thought it was and it wasn't okay I was like where is this when you asked today I thought it was on our website and I was like trying to find it quickly and I couldn't so we got it right so this is uh like a how many year plan do you envision like to get there or you're like we know exactly what we need to do like well I know I know our steps that we need to take yeah there are definitely like substantive steps that need to happen um however I couldn't say we're going to be top notch in this many years because it's so evolving and we have such different schools in different places that one school could be mailing an idea like UES right now is really good on it's really good on that collaborative practices and collective responsibility they're awesome at it right but they don't have the MTSS fees so um that's going to take multiple years for them to get to right um so we're you know naming the priority standards mhs has like their math team is really fantastic at naming priority standards they're developing a positions details but others other content areas aren't there yet right so they're so it's hard to name exactly how long and that's really the theory is that we should constantly be evolving um and constantly be thinking okay we're here how do we get here I will say I met with Mike Barry like a few years ago on some curriculum at the middle school and so I know that people you've been already were at it for years and there's some great work being done and real palpable improvements being made um that impact the students and their learning so it's been great I mean also I'll just speak from my experience that I think every school in Vermont you know proficiency based learning was a huge paradigm shift and it's going to take time to get it right and like the quote on the slide said you know you can still be doing a good job but there's always going to be improvement and um I think you know the schools that I've taught at are along this same track of identifying priority standards and all of that so I for so for the parents that have come forward sharing about like their kids current current like I'm just like thinking the kids now for the kids in five years it's going to be very different because you have evolved the system so what are the mitigation strategies for the kids now yeah like yeah so things that we're working on right now that um we don't have right so one parent I know you've heard said you don't have any special educators or interventionists who know multi sensory teaching accurate yep so this year we're getting you know so with that RFIDA money we're pairing up with the CERN center and we're getting our teachers training multi sensory teaching right so that's going to have an immediate impact on how how instruction is handled in the classroom um we also have just the idea of an intervention team that we're clearly defining what they do so it's not you're not teaching everything right you're going to have data in front of you that shows which kids you need to target and how you write those goals that's going to have an immediate impact right um so when I was a curriculum director in slantan for instance they really focused in on timely intervention and within a year they had completely changed their system and they had absolute success and they had evidence of that success it was amazing what they did um but they were laser like focused in that now we're still in a global pandemic yeah so will we be laser like focused like that right now I'm going to say probably not um I'd like to be but there are other stressors getting our system too so we have to recognize that I mean this was really so helpful to to see the the big picture and the granular way that you're that you are um it's it's to me feels like a big mind mindset shift that you're working toward and practical application of it and so I just appreciate you sharing this with us and um the uh I just had a couple of like little follow questions really the um the curriculum teams are they so like if it's the curriculum team for the first grade is it are those only first grade teachers on the curriculum team or is it teams are district wide oh okay we ask teachers to um apply for the teams so we have grade level representation um all the way up and uh so it's like it might be one first grade teacher and they'll make some so it's vertically aligned right because one of the things that we notice right away with some things we did have down on paper which was not a lot when we took over that's why you see formalized when I when you see the word formalized it means it's on paper got it right right so um what we found was that either grade levels were repeating the same idea even though it wasn't their standard or they were just picking standards whatever they felt like teaching or you know so um so that first grade representative will go back to their first grade team and they'll say this is what we did as a k12 vertical aligned piece what do you thoughts and then bring it back and then so it's an iterative iterative process it's usually by subject by content yeah so we have a we have a literacy we have a math yeah so that makes that that makes a lot of sense and the plc those are those like the first graders are just first grade teachers generally yeah yeah it gets it gets a little wonky at the high school the lcs are tough when you have a small high school because you only have uh you might have two teachers teaching algebra one and they may not be teaching on the same at the same time meaning wait they'll teach both teach algebra one so we may have two math teachers at the high school who both teach algebra one right however one may teach it semester one and one may teach it semester two got it so they're not doing the work at the same time which makes it a little more tricky so the plc's at the high school may not be by content or class it may be by it may be by a math team or an algebra team or whatever that is okay um so just it gets wonky a little bit more tricky and you also have singleton we only have one joke in land right right he is the plc right well now we have actually a point too much but you know what i mean yeah okay so it gets a little wonky when you're in a small high school are there ways though like i realize it's not a modern language latin is there are there like a language group that yeah together yeah so it in middle school it's our it's our languages right so so viva and our new spanish teacher are one so they look at where the commonalities that they both want to happen whether it's like oral expression or whatever and so viva will think about it in terms of french generally and the new teacher will think about it in terms of Spanish because it's hard to do it that way but yeah thank you for sharing it with us it's exciting to see yeah this is amazing um do you think there are ways like then when there's budget profit to like take this and do like this how yeah so the last budget um i don't remember yet but the very first board meeting we had on that december 1st or whatever budget presentation what we did was we took each of these what we call them pillars then each of these pillars and we said here are the budget priorities that are aligned with these so yeah we aligned it that way we'll probably do the same thing it's a board like that no that's great that's amazing thank you so much yeah it's really nice to see you it's a beautiful thing yeah um excellent so we are around you know the agenda to policy monitoring reports to approve g1 or go for teta one comparability and go five animal dissection do i have a motion to approve the policy monitoring report for go for teta one comparability i have some questions which i guess happened after a motion i needed two minutes because i didn't see it end up crying i did not rename it as policy monitoring it also had share permissions issues oh me too oh me too and i and jim that's the policy meeting on this one should we just push this next time because we're running late we did yeah that's my fault i told you i made mistakes yeah that's a fine one to make that's a fine one to make and i didn't mean i couldn't find the whole section either it just was the permissions weren't set to be to for us to be able to open it so when you went through the board pocket it just skipped all right so let's let's push both until next week let's do a quick executive session to discuss the personal matter before we do that i do have one question there were there were two policies those draft proposed changes doing they were they were in the i think they're for the benefit of finance they're going to come before we made a decision to bring them before the board next time so that board members have time to read them because otherwise we would have just voted we would have just reviewed them and there there were at least one of them there were some changes to yeah and then you wouldn't have had any time to read them so thank you do they need three readings for changes or they do need three readings for changes we we can bring them back to the policy committee this is pretty boiler play for the most part and the whole board reviews them has to read it three times yeah it doesn't have to go through i mean we would probably have time if you wanted to come look at it you know we could send it we could send it to the policy we're meeting on the same day as the next school board might as well send it there will be three policies that will be in the board packet you know if we want if we want to take it up that day we can yeah the board they have the buzz equity at that age yeah we can bring changes to the meeting yeah yeah um don't motion to go on to yes for i moved to go into the second session for personnel matter the second hi hi any opposed great we'll do that on 126