We actually called our meeting to order before at 5.30, so we are already in session. And I just want to quickly ask that there are any agenda conclusions. In any public comments other than access to course, chemistry, or the Black Lives Matter, is there any other public comments? I'd like to bring up special education. Right. In a future meeting, my son would actually like to speak. Will you introduce me? Sure. Every time we call him a crouch, my son is Tyler Crouch, a freshman here at U32. And we would like to discuss accessibility here at U32 and some of the problems that we're having and how can we work with everyone to get this accomplished. Say to give this accessibility and challenges. So when you say accessibility, you mean like in the physical space, moving through the building? Exactly. Being able to go to the bathroom by yourself. Not having. I mean, we already know there's water issues in the parking lot. That needs to be looked at every day, because not only do we have water issues, but there is a major divot. And if I don't walk my son across that every day, he's going to fall. We have some major challenges here, and we need to work together to get these figured out and make it accessible for all. Have you spoken to any administration? Yes. I had a coffee with Yvonne yesterday. Yes, we did. And she had a very interesting suggestion that a board member and an administrator spent a day in a wheelchair just to sort of experience the physical reality of things and all of that. And I said, I don't know if it was a day in a wheelchair. If someone could even spend an hour, and it needs to include being in the parking lot, getting into the school, trying to get lunch in the cafeteria, trying to go to the bathroom by themselves. An hour would be all it would take to follow my son around to understand what we're talking about in a manual wheelchair, not an electric wheelchair, too. Thank you.  And let's start with the access to course section. And I understand that there's some ninth grade no, sorry, there's some eighth grade students who are hoping that they can enroll in chemistry in ninth grade along with biology. And I think there's some people that want to talk to us. See you in a minute. I'm trying to come in with some new homework, and then I'm trying to meet eight years here, 832. I've been taking ninth grade assignments this year along with about 10 other students. And I really loved taking it. It's like my year is so much better. And I really love science. And I really wanted to accelerate my learning by taking bio and chemistry this year. However, when I asked to try to take these, I was told that I couldn't. And I was extremely frustrated. As of right now, with my schedule for next year, I'm planning out two free bands so I could take chemistry very easily into those thoughts. But without these bands, I will be a whole new world soon. And unless I can find one of those STEM bank class, and so there really aren't many for ninth graders. In seventh grade, I took an online class through Yaltakins. And it was called Crafting the Essays for Writing. It was amazing. And when I tried to take that class, I got tons of pushbacks in that I already had a writing class in school, so I didn't need to take it. And now, when I'm trying to take a harder class next year, I'm told to take it out of my class. It is making me frustrated, and I don't know why. So if I can't take chemistry next year, I'll have to take it online. And it's definitely a more isolated and stressful way of learning. And so I hope you take my requests to take the chemistry. Hello, my name is Oliver Hansen, and I'm an eighth grader. I'm an avid mountain biker, cross-country runner, and Nordic skier, but I'm also a very avid learner. And I'm here because I care about my education and that I'm interested in taking a bio again next year. And I know it will be a lot of hard work, but that's also why I want to do it. Another reason I want to do it is because it may open up spaces in my senior year to take college credit classes and possibly do the BAST program. And I know that the scheduling out of the norm can be a hassle, but this is also my education. I want to feel the challenge in order to be prepared for college and after college and in my career. And currently, I'm also taking Algebra 1 and Earth Science. And I guess Algebra is the only one that's really providing a challenge to me. And it's also making the class a lot more exciting because it's making me come up with new ideas and solutions to problems. And it's just lining up my second semester. And with challenges, I also feel that I'm more engaged. And I feel that the classes that provide challenges are more meaningful for my education. Thanks for your time. And I hope that you take what we said you did in consideration. So I, this is actually the idea that I am wanting to support here. My point, the most important point, is that numbers of students enrolled in courses is always somewhat influx. There'll be families who move out over the summer. There'll be families who move in. And if four families were to move in, maybe one from Orange, one from out of state, somebody from Montilier who loved graders and wanted to take advanced chemistry, they would never, ever be told there were no longer spots for them in chemistry. Similarly, there are several kids who work to head in 10th grade who are ready for advanced chem and were to head 9th grade to take 10th grade science and now in 10th are ready to take 11th grade in advanced chemistry. I don't believe those children would be told that that was not allowed either. And that leads me to believe that the only reason these four kids can't is because they're in 9th grade, which is not following along with the huge effort that everybody has put in towards proficiency-based learning. It's really proficient. The kids are ready for it. It's Alderba 1 is the level of math in advanced chemistry. They can do this work. They were, Elise Maeve had checked with the instructor. There's no problem there. And I know that other science instructors have been supportive as well. One of the arguments against this by the administration is that they don't know what the kids would then take sophomore year. I don't think that's valid. The issue is we need classes for a freshman year. All of these kids have two free vans, plenty of room for chemistry and chem lab. We can figure out sophomore year. I actually wrote a long email to the parents involved. It's going to be a very complicated sophomore year if we can't figure this out now. So they could take anatomy and physiology. The free rec is advanced chem and bio. They would fill those free recs. They could take that sophomore year. They could take a programming class. They could probably go to CCB. And they could coordinate. I wouldn't do that in 9th grade, but that's certainly feasible in 10th grade. When Maeve's oldest brother, Charlie, was in 8th grade, laying out his coursework for four years would have not been meaningful because we don't have AP classes when Charlie was in 8th grade. AP classes didn't show up until Charlie was in 11th grade. So I think there's plenty of time to figure out sophomore year. What Maeve would like is challenge a freshman year. My last point is that 9th grade and 10th grade, at least 9th grade, I'll stick with that, have actually become somewhat less challenging in the last few years. 9th and 10th grade are now working with a core format where there's less tracking, both in the science and the math, actually all of the academic classes. Bio has been removed from the advanced bio class. And so for eight classes, she has a math class, a bio, which is manageable for her. Global studies is not as challenging as it could be in the language class. And there's simply plenty of room for her to take this on. So I don't think this is a student issue. I understand the argument about a space issue, but it wouldn't have been denied to any 11th and 10th graders. So school committed to ask some proficiency-based learning that I think is something that should happen. Well, I'm here to see how our addressing interests really challenge themselves in the school. And I do believe in the ability for the school to provide strong STEM classes for those people who want to have that path, especially as they're moving into college and pursuing that area. But I also feel like, I want to talk about more of the broader lens with a broader perspective. I have been excited to learn physically and mentally, academically and creatively. And he's eager to challenge himself to see what he's capable of. And currently he's testing some skills around planning ahead and being proactive about his education and formulating his thoughts around this and being able to speak to adults about it and actually move toward something that he wants. And I think those are great skills for any teenager to be actually practicing right now, currently and also for their life. And Oliver's interest in doubling up isn't just to provide flexibility in a senior year if he would want to take all of those classes, because the path he continues to want to go down. But it also means that his educational experience will be more meaningful. And when it's more meaningful, you learn more and you're more engaged. I also think that it makes sense for students to be able to have an opportunity to challenge themselves and to know what it's like to work really hard. And that's going to be different for every student, what that means and what that looks like. And I think it's also important, maybe even for the potential to fail, to take on something that might be too hard so that they know what it's like to learn how to be a student. And so they know what it might be like to fail and have to get back on the way in and try again now rather than as a freshman in college when they're on their own for the first time, navigating a much harder course load and trying to figure it all out. Also, at a time when learning development is literally pulling kids to wanting to take more risks to wanting that desire to begin. And at a time where they're being exposed to technology that is a helpful tool, but I also feel that it's a tremendous experiment on our youth about learning how to interact with other people and for themselves and that they're at a time of their brain development where they're exposed to substances, there's more chance for addiction. So at this time when all of those things are just literally happening physiologically in their bodies, if there's interest in wanting to have an engaged, excited desire to learn and excel, I really feel like that's a healthy way to help kind of meet some of the other challenges that are gonna have to navigate at this time in their life. And it's a healthy way to do it. So while I am hoping that the decision to not allow advanced chem and bio combo for 930s next year will be reconsidered, I'm actually more important and interested in the conversation of how can U32 provide more opportunities for students who do have this academic drive to really kind of see what they've got and are preparing for what they think they wanna do in college and knowing that that might change. But how can that be allowed to prepare them to be fully, proactively, vibrate, and engage in their education and for moving forward in life. So I thank you for listening to what we all have to say and to also taking into consideration what the students themselves are saying that they actually wanna learn more. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Sorry, I'll tell you about that again. Now two of the students couldn't come there actually for who are making this appeal. And my sort of follow up is should this not be reversed, we would like the administration to tell us some classes what some choices these kids have because we couldn't find any. And it would be hundreds of dollars if not over a thousand to find that chemistry class somehow somewhere and under a much less desirable learning environment. When the same class is actually being taught in the building probably four or five times a day. Can I read my stuff out of here? Of course. And my daughter Ella couldn't be here tonight but she writes this. So my name is Ella Bradley and I'm taking one. I'm one of the three who are signed up who signed up to take advanced chemistry next year. I believe I should have the opportunity to take this course for three reasons. First, I am taking physical earth science currently and I like it but it is not challenging. Second, I started taking physical earth science with the purpose of getting ahead in STEM classes and not being able to take advanced chemistry less than the purpose of taking physical earth science. Third, our proficiency system is based on students having the opportunity to take classes that challenge and are proficient in regardless of grade level. I hope you will let me take this advanced course because it will challenge me and allow me to get ahead in my studies, thank you. Thank you. Any other discussions? We are, I was just wondering if you have information for us, I'll talk. We'll absolutely discuss that. So, yes, I would like to start with one of the reasons that we decided as administration is that that the courses are larger this year and it is partially a resource issue. We have not had freshman take chemistry in the past. Typical chemistry is taking concurrently to an alpha or two as the course and or alpha or two is taken prior to chemistry. And so that's one of the other pieces. But this year we currently have 49 students in our CP chemistry or college prep chemistry. Next year we have 59. In our advanced chemistry this year we have 58 students, 10 of which are sophomores. Next year we'll have 85 students, 36 of which are sophomores. And in our Chem two class, we have 21 students this year and we'll have 24 students next year. So I do understand that four students does not seem like a large number but we've already expanded our classes. There are over 20 students per class in a laboratory class. And we are at this moment in time. We don't know that we have a certified teacher to be able to teach one of the lab sections of the class in order to make this all run. So we have one of our teachers who resigned, Pauline Sheisman, was chemistry and physics and she was going to be stepping in to help us with the lab sections that we have current that we would be next year. And so all of our certified chemistry teachers, we have already booked them to their limit and we are still in need of chemistry support. And so for that for you, that was one of the reasons that we certainly said that freshmen were not going to be put in this course as a dual enrollment. We have asked that our school counselors and the TAs of these students sit down and help create that four-year plan so that they can see when things can be taken and when they're available. I would offer that those free bands are times where other course requirements might be able to or proficiency requirements might be able to be taken care of in their freshman years so that it would free up space in subsequent years for them to take courses. I can't speak specifically to any one of them. I haven't done the four-year plan with any of these students. That's something that their TA and their school counselor would work on. And so I would just say I understand a desire. I think it's a little unfair to say that the freshman year is easier or anything like that. I think that we are constantly striving to increase the rigor and the relevance of our classrooms. And I do know that there have been in the past that there have been reputations for some of these courses being easy. But most of our students who have accelerated in the science program of studies would be taking biology in their freshman year and chemistry advanced chemistry in their sophomore year. And that's where we see the 36 sophomores next year taking the advanced chemistry class. See, I thought I understood Michelle. Also to ask if there isn't a possibility for them to take advanced chemistry, what other options are there in this time period? So I mean, that's hard to say. I mean, we don't necessarily have a whole lot of options in the freshman year. I mean, I think that that's a valid point for us. I mean, if you recall back when we looked at our studies and kind of what the programs look like if you accelerate more of the opportunities for multiple classes come in your 11th and 12th grade years of science because it's usually a biology freshman year, chemistry 10th grade year. And then it would be chemistry two, AP, physics AP, bio, computer science, those courses fall more into the junior and senior years in terms of an accelerated coursework is what we showed previously. So there's not as many options. I mean, I understand that, but I also don't know what options some of our school counselors, there are VTVLC courses, online courses that may or may not be chemistry that are science courses. But I even have a question on here. I'm not sure the answer of it is, can students do a CCB in their sophomore year? And I'm not sure that they can even that. So that's a question that I would have to go to answer. And so I'm not sure if a CCB does a sophomore. Well, they usually, if we think about the dual enrollment with Vermont, that's open to CCB, by the way, that's at 77, but find out what's the pathway. Do you need to say the number again? Did you say 36? 36 sophomores will be taking advanced chemistry next year. Okay. 10 took it this year. And is it, but it's normally a junior level, sorry. Correct. So the remainder of those seats are primarily juniors with two or three seniors. I guess, how many, how many in total are you in terms of? In advanced chemistry? Yeah. 85 students. And that's how many sections? That is four sections. Is there any possibility to considering the demand to create another section? That would be nice, but I don't have a teacher to fill that section. We're already searching for a teacher to take care of one lap. So let me help just for the board. Science is one of those areas where you're not, you can have a general certification, but especially in the advanced sciences, you have to have certification for that subject area. So you need to have a chemistry physics certification. So presently, you still don't have a lab covered? Correct. So you need to hire a physics and chemistry teacher to try to cover what we have needs for now, because we had, this is Randy, his lead of absence was for physics. We happen to have hired someone who was physics and chemistry, but she is moving out of state, our long term sub is moving out of state. And so we're searching for someone to teach physics and if possible, take a section of chemistry. That's so long. I have to admit that's a long shot in terms of getting a one year appointment to take either one of those subject areas. Does both feel like room lighting? Well, he does. No, I didn't see that many times. I wish I was back to where I was, but I do not hold those endorsements anymore in physics and chemistry. And I said this very publicly. I said this just the other day to one of our science teachers, I said, I taught AP physics. I don't think there's any way back to what we used to call when I was teaching a freshman level physics, because I just, I should be very sacrilegious here. Correct. If the primary rationale for this decision is the course, the section, do you think that if we have lower numbers, you would accommodate this recall? I would still be hesitant. And I would just go back to one of the first reasons I said is that typically the chemistry in algebra two, it's not necessarily a prerequisite but a corequisite. They're typically taken together or algebra two is taken before. So what math will be taken in ninth grade? So this group will be taken geometry with algebra two. And then algebra two is the following there. Correct. Michelle. So when we approach Mark about it, he said absolutely the math in this chemistry class is algebra one. It's algebra one. And he thought it would be just fine. And there aren't STEM options in ninth grade. I mean, I just, and I does feel like the ninth grade class work is fairly light. Lucy, we just bring up the math thing. I took chemistry as a sophomore and I was in geometry at the time and it wasn't a problem. I understand that it's taken with algebra two guys. Do you guys have thoughts on this opinion? Well, to me it feels like as someone who's been in violin chemistry, chemistry is, I mean, it's a difficult class and it's even more difficult when there's too many students in the class because it's a mastery class. You need that attention from your teachers and there'd be times where we'd have work time and like Mark would have a pile of quizzes this big and he could not get through them. And it's like, it's one of those things that you open the door then in coming years, like how are we gonna accommodate if there's more freshman and more that want to take this class. But I feel like, I mean, for me personally, even if I do feel like a course loader's light, there's always been more challenging options if I ask or if I seek them out, teachers are usually willing to accommodate extra work or extra projects or extra work. So you felt like class size matters. Do you remember how many were in your class? It was a big class. I think we definitely had 20 or more. 20s. Yeah, I was in a big class too and I had a similar experience in that it was just hard to get help and a lot of kids sort of fell through the crisis because so many people were in chemistry and there just wasn't enough, like a bunch of teachers. So I would add that this year our number of advanced STEM students is actually the lowest that it's been in the last five. We've typically averaged between 60, well, we've gone between 62 and 66 kids in the advanced STEM class. So that's more than 20 kids because we're running three sections of it. So now we're running four sections. We're gonna run four sections of advanced chem and three sections of the CP chem and one section of chem two. And that's with labs as well. So we should always remember that with each one of these classes there's also a lab class that goes with it. I know the logistics are a constrained factor but in a general rule, if there are kids who want it we're really eager to learn and to study more, to learn more. I think it would be great to try to do everything possible to accommodate that and to generate that interest and stoke it as much as possible because not just for them, I think it's quickly the entire school because there's an energy that comes out of it that is infectious in a good way. And there's always, I'm always concerned that parents have the role of all to do this and feel that their kids aren't getting what they really need but they'll put them out and go over somewhere else. A real loss on our end. So anyway, I know, I don't wish to minimize the difficulty of trying to figure it out. I think for myself that if you need to spend more money I mean obviously there would be a reason but I would support it or something like this, absolutely. I understand but we already have the money set aside for a teacher that we don't have hired yet.  I just need to add this.  We're at our time just getting our physics. So you would all have a teacher for the students you have now. So it's a huge problem whether you add four more kids to it or not. Correct. Right. Yeah, I mean I think our assumption is you're gonna fill that position, right? One way or another. Right. You're gonna do that. I am. So that, I feel like honestly that's a separate, I understand. Okay. I pulled out the program studies because I was just kind of curious about the whole pathway and all the courses. And I read your letter at the beginning and I won't read it at all but there is, it says the program studies is one of many tools that will help you plan for success in college. This is to the students and career. With help from your TA teachers, counselors and administrators, you should be choosing courses that challenge you and provide a broad range of experiences. U32 strives to provide an inspiring experience that includes strong core courses and a broad offering of elective courses. It's my hope that you'll take advantage of multiple pathways and U32 has to offer early college AP courses, community-based learning and branching off programs. At U32, we expect every student to strive for the highest levels of achievement socially and academically, which I agree with 100% right there. Very well written. So I'm torn too. I get, I get the logistics of it. My goal on this board has been to challenge every child here and I can't tell you how many people have come to me over the way too many years I've been there and say it's not hard enough. I don't have enough challenge and to see four eighth graders, especially a boy and I don't mean to be sexist or anything but I am thrilled to see an eighth grade boy who is so excited to work and I really commend you. I commend all of you but that sort of goes right to my heart there. Well it's actually two boys and two girls. Sorry for the other boy. I didn't know what happened. It didn't come, that was good. So I just feel like we should do everything we can to get kids to rise to the highest level of challenge that they want. And I know it's hard and I know it's difficult but I think that's the right way to help these guys move forward because it's gonna bring us all up and make us all better. You're so excited. Yeah. And I'm not even vouched for that. You teach them a lesson. Yeah. With the difficulty in setting up a laboratory situation and grading lab papers and making a laboratory experience of genuineness so that you can work with all your students. And I don't know that I would wanna really push more students into an already full-land situation. And I think it's a unique situation where we are that we're full. And I think that maybe we should look at the timeline and look at the course of studies and look at what other options we have available and just push it back and see where we get before we make this decision. So, well, I don't know if it is our decision. I don't know. We're a policy board. What are our policies saying about this? Well, I look for a policy and the class size policy is the closest it gets. And it says? It actually tells Steven and I to set the class sizes. And comment once a year. Comment once a year. I'll give you the report each year. So, before we end, we pretty much said a minimum for 10. And when we look at the labs, George and I think he's exactly the same as yours. Did I remember those many nights sitting in the chem lab? And at that point it wasn't microchem, so it was a lot more chemicals, but it was making solutions in the end. How many lab schools are there? 30. What we have, our lab is a multi lab group. So, it accommodates three classrooms of kids. At the same time? At the same time. One class at the same time. So many times where it's... I don't, yeah, there's always two. So, do you have two classes of 25 in there at the same time? Well, you could if you have the teachers. Well, I'm not, it's just, you know... Yeah, you can have two classes. You physically can, so it's not... It's not, that's not the physical spaces and the limitations. Okay, thanks. I think it comes down to, I think George, you expressed it wrong, as a teacher, as a former science teacher. And so, to finish the class size, we try to maximize their class size into around 25th with our class size. And we try to keep our class sizes at a maximum, but we can go over it in places and in sections. So I'm gonna play Devils Out of Kids 22, around 20. I'm just, I'm playing Devils Out of... So, in any scheduling scenario, you're gonna have classes that are slightly larger and slightly smaller. I remember coming to the alphabet sections that work. So, can I offer us just at least our first step? I don't know that this is a solution, but at least the first step is that one of the things that I hear is that we have to find challenges for our students associated with STEM, particularly around this ninth grade group. We do not have a lot of options right now, but it sounds like it's incumbent on us to figure out what those options might be. If we cannot provide for the chemistry at this point in time. It's what it seems like to me, right? And so my, I think it's incumbent on us to figure out what other things we can offer or what other things we can do. And to try to make that as a first good of faith that we're in solving this problem. And then if that does not solve at that point in time, I'm still answerable to you guys and the process that we have. I would ask us that we have our first, our first option is to make sure that we have the four year plans for the students that get at least a framework for what they might do and to look at what are some options that we can present as viable options, not just an online course for our students. For ninth grade. For ninth grade. Yeah, I would just in your effort ask that it would be very specifically STEM challenge. I'm not interested in me taking PE, health, financial literacy, and so on. I'm not interested in the other stuff. She has two bands for a relevant challenge in class like the one that's already been taught in the building. And it may be that you hire that teacher and you have four sections and you do add one student to each of four sections which would mean you have 21 students or 22 instead of 20. I mean, I actually think that this will work out quite nicely and I'm hopeful because Stephen and I had talked and you said there are other STEM options and there really aren't other STEM options, so. So let's give the administration a chance to do that. Let's have each of those kids do a four year plan and give TA in there. So the issue is that then you drop in, you don't put chemistry in. No, no, no, I'm not, okay. You don't do it both ways. We've done it. Figure it out. Yeah, we've done it. But it's nothing for ninth grade. I'm here to see you say he's gonna try an option and I think we need to let him do that. He's heard what we've had to say. And he said, we can come back. Yeah. That doesn't work. And I just encourage that for what you say about keeping kids challenged and we want those kids challenged. Stephen, if you feel inspired to maybe look at some of your ideas regarding this. I know which one. You know what I'm talking about. Yeah. I think that would be terrific. Thank you. We now have a whole nother group of students. Thank you so much. Thank you. And you guys came to us last week and spoke about the Black Lives Matter. We're very passionate about it. And we said we'd in order to discuss it, we needed to have it on the agenda, which we do have on the agenda. And I don't know if you wanna say anything first. If anybody's prepared to say anything. Do you want, would you like the teacher to read what she read last week to like? Do you have it there? Yeah. That would be great. Okay. People, do you have that? She's gonna be lesser because she's already done it. The Black Lives Matter movement was established four years ago. It was built on bringing attention to the violence that was being inflicted on Black communities. And it was also built on anti-Black racism. Throughout the years, it has thrived into focusing on trying to make a world where a Black person can be successful economically, socially, and politically. We started BLAM, which is our group, and it stands for Black Latinas and anymore, for people of different races to come and talk about the struggles that they have because of the race. We talk about the everyday things that are said to us by ignorant people and the looks that we get because we are not white. Racism isn't the biggest problem at E32, but it is a hidden problem. And a lot of the racism that comes from people who just don't understand, so they don't see the harm that they have done. To hang the flag will be to show that we are invested in supporting the movement and making people aware that the very few not white students at E32 also matter. We believe that Montpelier started a big thing by hanging the flag and we would like to be a part of carrying that on. It's not about someone's life mattering more than anyone else's, it's about my life mattering the same as yours. And so what is your wish to have the Black Lives Matter every day, all year, for five years, for 10 years, have you kind of thought? I'm just trying to get a sense of where you guys are. I mean, it would be good to have a hang here for E32 for years. Like, I think that's our goal. Can I say too, like every group as a whole has like multiple goals and all of this. Part of it is to like start groups where they speak with students and kind of have their voice heard for really the first time about what it feels like to be a student in this position. And so a big goal is to take time figuring this out and kind of creating these situations and this dialogue in this community and then to raise the flag and celebration of this community. So it's not to just raise the flag but to have like all these experiences along with it. I don't know that we've had dialogue about like the idea of time because I know that Montpelier did it for the month of February although I think it's still up. So just to, so it's through the end of the school year they revised their piece through the end of the school year and then it'll fly in subsequent February's. The original request that the Montpelier board received was to put the flag up until the American flag represented everyone. They did not, they put the metric at the back end of that was a little too complex. So they addressed African American history month. The board addressed that. That's what they originally targeted, the Burlington High School and put the flag up in solidarity with Montpelier High School and they put it up till the end of the year at which point Montpelier agreed to keep theirs up through the end of the year because of that gesture. That's where they're at in terms of how long they're planning to have it up. Thanks. And then you have. From Montpelier. Yeah. And I do as well. Yeah. Can I say something? Absolutely. I think that's a great idea. Having it right here until the end of the school year. Do you want to elaborate? Oh, I could but I don't want to go too far down the road on the two cranked up. So I think it's important to show support for the kids that are coming forward and the kids that care about their own lives and the kids that are seeing things that are happening in this country that are upsetting for them, but for all of us really. And so I just think it's, I think it'd be a very significant and important symbol to show that we hear what they're saying. We share their concerns and we support them. And can I say too, in regards to, I think one of the things we, as a group have talked about is the idea of keeping the voice present. Because it's really easy for dirt to be an experience and then that to kind of fall right away slightly. So it is a really great idea to have this like kind of thinking on a yearly pitch like where like, maybe there's experiences and the play, the grace that's started on time. And I'm sure the ideal would be to have it all the time. But at least to have it be a reoccurring experience. I just want to work into it. I mean, I think I like the idea in terms of reoccurring. Black History Month, it should be up. I mean, to me that's a given. As time goes by. I don't know. I'm curious, are you all in touch with the Black Lives Matter headquarters or wherever they are? Do you have any connection with them? Not really. Or does that work or anything? No, not really. At this point? Yeah. It's okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But you have had contact with students who are involved down there. Right? Yeah. Yeah, so it's a student, right? Yeah. Yeah. Personally, there's a Black Lives Matter that I follow on social media. And it's just, it's not like the whole thing but it's like, I've learned a lot of things that's more personal than what I'm asking for.  And it seems to me that the Black Lives Matter flag is very dramatic.  So it has a kind of funerial quality to it. And I'm just, I'm a favorite of flying it. What I'm trying to sort of work out is how to make it as meaningful, a kind of learning experience for, not just for you, I mean, you already know a lot that a lot of your classmates may not know, but how to make it a learning experience for your classmates as well. And in this recent incident in Oakland, I don't know if, are you, is there anything, is there any way that you're connected with sort of informing your classmates about things that are going on in the country? Do you mean like in class? Either in class or in, I don't know, I guess in an hour, then you do tell me, yes or yes or yes or yes or yes or yes. In real school, yes. In real school, yes. I know that our classes like Dan Roots or U.S. History, if something like that happens, we don't have a discussion about it, like in class, we can talk about it. And sometimes we talk about, we could like debate about which side we're on and say that we do talk about it sometimes. Additionally, they're going to visit the 8th grade for the first time to talk with the students about their experience in connection with their Civil War unit. So this is like kind of something that's not a Civil War idea. Not a Civil War, Civil War. But like this is something like, like the word's getting out and it's really moving forward. That's great. Very good. Yeah. When we come to it at our last meeting, sort of raised this very good question, about what does this actually mean on a practical daily basis? Just put in mind, how can we use this to really make it maximize the impact for students to learn the reason why we're putting it up there? And any ideas that, I mean, it's really sort of, you're the most powerful voices for them. I don't know, I'd be happy to see you make the same thing that really kind of leverages whatever symbolic action we take by putting on the fly to get the message across in a strong way. We have talked about like meeting with each class and the joy in talking to them about race. So we could talk to them also about the flag, what it means to us, what the movie is, like maybe right before we put up the flag.  It's great. None of this stuff. I've sort of got a lot sort of complex message stuff. So maybe. All right, I'll just start. Well, maybe this is completely up to you with this, but what I was asking last week is how are we going to think about the next response to fly it by heart? What is the criteria that we're going to use if you've got some information about the other schools? I can speak to someone to not feel your situation and what they think. And I don't know if we're just the same. Sure. So I don't know if we're going to make decisions as a board. We base a lot of it on the policy that we do. And so we always need to think about which policy we're thinking about or if we need a new policy or the ramifications of doing something on a policy. So that's kind of what we call the ball. If we do this, what might we have to consider and do we have the criteria in order to make a fair judgment? Steven, you said you had some input too. Yeah, I think yours is going to be more specific to what the board decided might more around what administration and teachers dealt with. I bet there's over life for me. There probably is. Yeah. Montpelier currently has sort of requests for input out to the state's attorney general. As of Sunday, they hadn't heard back fully from him. They got some information from the attorney general's office. As I told you about the original request, they had decided what they learned, A, one of the things they believed they learned and I don't know how written in stone this is, that there's definitely some difference between what the attorney general's office and what their school lawyer felt were issues. And that's the question of whether the flagpole is a public forum or not. And that's sort of where, that's sort of the linchpin of what they're concerned with. They got the information. Julio Thompson, the assistant attorney general of Vermont shared the following with him so far. That the flagpole, that the flagpole he used to play the Black Lives Matter flag is used solely by the district and it's not a public forum. So the attorney general seems to feel that the flagpole is at the discretion of the board. We could, there's also the possibility that depending on how we handle it, we could define it as a public forum. And that would change, that then we would need a policy in place as to how to deal with different requests. Montpelier has been flooded other requests of flags to put up since they did this. Many of which are almost in antithesis, they're not strictly antithesis, but definitely challenging political issues have been brought to them. So really, it appears that the attorney general thinks the flagpole is ours to decide what to do with and that we could maintain it that way if we choose to. Maybe Montpelier's school's attorney isn't sure that they agree with that. They both said that if it is open to student groups to decide to submit stuff to it, then the district can't control what goes up and would have to go through the process that we set up for students to do that. But we, at our discretion, it looks like currently could make a choice to put on a public forum. There's a little confusion at Montpelier when the whole process started in that a lot of the folks involved thought that the three flags out by the road were the flags they were talking about. They had at the entrance to Montpelier's driveway is a Vietnam Veterans Memorial. And it looks like the flag's entering the school, but that's actually part of the memorial and they don't have any say over that. Their flag is actually around by the office door. So I think that's the pole there. We only have one flagpole out here, so there's no confusion there for us. Actually, we have a second flagpole that changed for sporting events. That's changed by down by the field. So, and those are the same few flags? It does not fly a flag except during the sporting events. So it's only American flag down by this score pinup. American flag for games. For games. So it gets complicated in reverse. Yeah. I would also, can I also offer, because I've heard kind of the discussion. So I went and did my research on the flag code, which is there are codes about how to fly the American flag and what circumstances to fly that. They go along with should you choose to follow. There is no flag police that says that you, you know, there's any problem, but there is certainly a code that is given to flags and how they're flown on any institution. Public, private, they all have their kind of code. Who sets this code? So it was actually set by Congress, but it was, it is not wall. It is just a recommendation, an advice, and tribunal. Tribunal. You can find it in the New York Public Library desk, right? I don't know the rules right now. I would add to what Carl said, that about 12 years ago, I certainly know there are issues where someone wanted to fly another flag and the ACLU got involved. And I think we're in a different era now, so don't hear me that that's the same, but my experience is once you speak about policy, about how you make selections, then you don't have a way of saying no. That's really my concern. Yes, we do not have policy right now. We do not have policy right now. We do not have policy right now. So that doesn't mean you can't, well, we do good, but I just, that's my only apprehension for superintendent is that we're thoughtful about doing this. I agree wholeheartedly with the sentence where the students are coming from. I want to say, I'll say it very publicly. I agree with where they're coming in, their request. I want to make sure that we have a good way and as we think about it, even when you were saying earlier that the board thinks about policy and thinks about how do we do this to the right way. So I'd like to end it in the school's attorneys just as called. There's three main attorneys, three or four main attorneys in the state for all of the schools. And then Julio, many of us know Julio as a resident in our community here. There are different opinions on this. There isn't one slow by opinion. About whether we have the right to say it. Exactly. So I just want to, to me, that says, the board makes the, yeah, we can get you if you want. We use the same attorney that Montpelier School District does. So does Montpelier High School have a policy now? No. They acted, they decided they were willing to, given the important, I'm trying to, I want to get the wording right for Michelle spoke to me. She said that she and the new, the chair of the new Michelle's chair, Montpelier, Roxbury, no. Well, there's a new, there's a new chair for the Merchant District for getting, I guess, meetings. Anyway, there's a new chair for the combined, for the combined board. They both agreed that they, as a board, felt that the circumstances for African-Americans in our country at this time is unique enough, this time always, is unique enough that it merited their attention and their action, and they were willing to stick, you know, to some degree, I think they sort of felt like they were sticking their neck out because there isn't, you know, they're not getting clear answers to how it's supposed to work. I think they felt that this was important enough issue that they were willing to stick their neck out. I think, given the mixed information we've got so far, it sounds like we could choose to make that decision, a one-time decision, and work on developing a policy for how we handle it in the future. Maybe we want to develop policy before we do anything. It sounds like we could probably say that the flagpole functions at the discretion of the board. I'm getting the impression that we could probably make that argument, which would allow us to just say yes or no in any given circumstance. I want to say I'm totally in favor of it, I can't handle that right here. But the question of what precedent for future requests we create is what the real issue here is, not whether we're willing to put this flag up today. So I'd like to offer some of them. So I've spoken with Mike McCrae several times, Principal down at Montville High School. And one of the things that I think is important that he stressed is that this wasn't the initiating event, this was more of a culminating event. So when the flag was raised after a year in which the students first brought the issue to them. And then their leadership team attended three days worth of training around anti-bias and there were several different things, but anti-bias was the biggest part of that. And then their whole staff went through in-service that was dedicated to equity, including student led sessions for teachers. So that all occurred prior to the flag being raised. And so the bigger discussion as a whole they'd been working on racial justice down at Montville High for about three years. So this was a process that occurred over time for them. And they felt like they were ready for when the flag was raised as opposed to it was something that just occurred in isolation. So there were a lot of other activities that went into training staff and working with staff and students and bringing up equity issues, bias issues and all of that prior to the flag being raised. I wanna say whether or not we find a mechanism to put the flag up, the important piece of it is the dialogue that we have within our community. And that's, we're not gonna be the ones driving that. That's gonna be you guys. That's gonna be here in the school, not out on the flag pole. And I just wanna say I think I can pretty safely say that we're all on board with that conversation occurring and happening and that we'll do our best to figure out what we can and can't do with the flag pole. I have the, I happen to say from the world paper the speech that the student at Montville High and what impressed me the most is what Steven just said that it was a two or three year process of engaging the entire school in this kind of talk and understanding. And I heard you talk a little bit about the kinds of things that we can do at U32 and I would encourage you guys to really take the bull by the horn and start to do those things and work with the administration, with the students so that this does become an entire school-wide thoughtful understanding and process because it's unbelievably important. And you guys are just the tip of the iceberg, but you have the power to kind of spread it and make the understanding much better. And I agree whether we do this and then make a policy or we make a policy and then do it. I think you guys have a lot that you could do to make this a better environment for you guys. Matthew, it's nice to see you here. Hi, thanks. I hope you'll continue to have that feeling. I didn't come here to speak to this issue today. I'm speaking as a parent. My son is 10, he's dark-skinned. Around the end of 2016, he was told by a classmate after the election that someone was taking power who didn't like brown people and that he was a brown person. And I think that the implication of that remark was that he should be concerned. And I can assure you that he took it that way. So I just wanna say that I appreciate what you're saying to these students that they have a responsibility to do as much as they can to kind of advance their cause, but I think that the board too has a responsibility. My son maybe will be in this school in three years, maybe. And so it's a great interest to me to know like what the position of the school is. If the position of the school is, he heard in the school setting that brown lives matter less and that he should be afraid. And I'm wondering if the position of the school is consistent with that or is consistent with the message of black lives matter. So I just wanna encourage you to think about it that way. And I'd actually sort of be, I would ask for a stronger statement of commitment, I guess, to that principle. And that the statement is that the board intends to do something. And I would argue also that simply because flying and flying is symbolic, that doesn't mean that it's not powerful as a symbol. It's a statement of principle. So not to disregard it as an action that can be taken. So there's a commitment to find a way to do that or to do something visible and strong and clearly stated and then to state a purpose to figure out if you have to figure out a policy to do that expeditiously. And as a priority rather than as I do with your statement, you're hoping to figure out, so thanks. I think what the students are trying to do here is terrific. I think that they are, instead of trying to use the flag as a culmination, they're trying to use it as a catalyst to start the conversation moving forward. And I really think that I'm really on their side on this one. It's really important and I do hear the racist comments on a regular basis in school and it really disturbs me. So I really think that they have, they're on the right track. I think as a catalyst that this is something that can really positively affect the U32 community. Oh yeah, sorry. I just wanted to respond to what you were saying about kind of putting the response of the students. I don't think that's fair to the students. I think their presence in the school, their diversity in the school, I don't think that's their responsibility. I think that is the administration, the teacher's job. My children have had to deal with comments every year and I have one at the school now and I have another one that'll be coming up in a few years and we've literally had comments every year with every kid at all of the schools they went to. So my children will sometimes disagree with somebody in a respectful way and sometimes not respectful because they don't know what things can be. But it's not their job to correct people and tell people what is ignorant versus what is racist, what is fact, what is fiction, as far as history goes. I think that's really not their job, you know? Yeah. So I think I would like to see the school be more involved in promoting diversity and teaching them about what the Black Lives Matter is and what isn't. I want to be clear. When I was speaking to the flag versus the effort in the building, I realized that came out a little clumsy. I did not mean to put the responsibility of it on the kids in this room. I think it is us as a community that has a mandate to improve the world we live in. And I just wanted, I'm excited they're here, I'm excited this effort is occurring and I want them to. Not where, I don't want them to get bogged down by the silly challenges of bureaucracy around the flagpole, you know? I want to make it clear that we want to see this effort continue and we want to see the environment in the school be welcoming to everyone. Steven, do you have thoughts about specific things the school could do, kind of in light of what you said? Yeah, so do I have thoughts, yes. So I think Cassandra is exactly right. This is not the student's responsibility in any way to make the change happen. The change needs to happen so that they control the same level of comfort, respect, whatever that feeling is they have that's not. That is not the same as those who have privilege right in the school. So I think some of the things, you know, we've started down the road and it's a slow road, right? It's, we have restorative practice as a way for us to begin to build trust and communication in our school. We started to become more trauma-informed as a staff in terms of our training, which helps us understand both real and perceived trauma by students and it helps us think about what we're gonna do. We have done very little training around anti-bias developing a culturally sensitive curriculum, doing any of those kind of things. These are areas that we just have not focused on as a school and to be quite honest, it's easy to do in Vermont to avoid that conversation because Vermont is predominantly white. And so that's the very marginalization that we're trying to avoid in this piece. I can say better and I asked Mike if I could share some of his stuff with you guys. So this was Mike McRae's statement in our conversations. He goes, I've learned so much from this experience. I might have been a lukewarm on the actual Black Lives Matter movement a year ago. He says, I'm now squarely in its corner. America is an incredibly racist place and Vermont is no exception. The white privilege, fragility and systemic racism are more visible to me than ever. He says, I have no regrets about it, so it might have been the hardest thing that I've ever done professionally and do you think other schools should push themselves on this topic? I'm not saying that all schools should necessarily flag Black Lives Matter flag, but I think they should find their growth edge and then move past comfortable. And that statement alone I think is what we need to figure out. Where is that uncomfortable for us so that we can grow so that we can create a school culture that is inclusive of all students and certainly helps us identify our ignorance, right? That some of our students and staff have around race issues, around many issues that our students face, but particularly around race, because I think it's very, it's one of the most visible things. It's also one of the least, what's the thing? Race is a hard thing for people to talk about. It's the scariest conversation to have is whether or not race is something that we're going to discuss because people automatically assume that racism, that you know the saying, right, I'm not a racist. I know somebody who's racist, but I'm not one. Yet some of my own actions may very well be racist because they are institutional, they are hereditary in some ways in that where we grew up and who we were around and we don't recognize those things. So I would say that what's most important for us is to develop any bias training. It's to give our students voice so that their stories can be told so that we can learn from them. And the next big piece, and this is what I'll get to you guys to share with you at some point in time, what Montpulier was able to do is compile the list of resources, of videos, of testimonials, of workshops, of what white privilege looks like. And to start sharing those with each other so that they can then start to identify their own bias, their own cultural, you know, unawareness, if that's really the word. But I think that that's our job. And I wish I could say that, you know, I can stab my fingers when we fix the problem, but I can say that as a school we can build in training, we can build in awareness and we can start to support our kids so that they feel like they have their voice and that they have the ability to do these things. I don't know specifically what we would first bring in. There are good programs out there that help address some of these pieces. And then there's certainly the need for us as a staff and students to come together to decide what's best for us and what's the best process forward. And so I would say that, you know, we've got a lot of work to do. I wish I could say here's the starting point, but, you know, we'll figure it out. I think what's important to note is that last year we did have a peace and justice center in, we were searching for, we need help here. And they met with a really small group of students, but out of that came the idea that we needed an opportunity for students to be able to meet. And that's where BLAM came from. It's from voices that work in that piece. And I think the staff also had a really small training, not nearly enough that day, and it wasn't the right fit for us. And we kept looking. So I went to a World of Difference training this summer looking for that. And their training for students is almost exactly the same as our restorative practice training, except that there's the anti-biased use in there. And so it's, rather than buy a whole program, how do we already incorporate that into what we're doing? And so I'm excited that we have these resources. I'm excited that you're gonna work with the eighth graders. I think that's really important because they wanna know what's, they're studying this civil rights movement. And some of them are like, but stuff's still happening and some of them are like, no it's not, we had a blunt presence all over. And you've probably heard people say that it's not over. And so the opportunity you have to share with them that it's not over and here's how I know, is huge. And I know that if I talk at them or one of you talks at them, huge difference. And so I'm so excited that we're all being able to work together to keep working on that, to build those resources and to work with our staff and help you to work with students in whatever way you think is gonna be best. I think we're gonna move forward. And I'm sorry that it didn't happen even sooner. So I think we as a board have to decide whether we wanna fly the Black Lives Matter flag as a catalyst to get this whole thing going. If we wanna do it and then figure out a policy if we're comfortable moving that way or if we wanna pull it off a month and see if we can pull a policy together by the beginning of May. Can I just add a couple of things? Just along with the resources piece, I don't know if you guys have looked at the Southern Poverty Law Center, if you guys have, they have some resources. And then just one other quick thing. You know, 50 years ago today, Martin Luther King, Dr. King was shot. So we're still talking about these things now. And so one of his great quotes is justice, justice delayed is justice denied. So we have an opportunity not to delay justice. You can just say let's put the flag up tomorrow and you guys start working out how we can raise awareness in school. That's my feeling. My understanding is we don't have to have the policy. If we need to talk to our lawyer, we can talk to our lawyer and get their opinion. But we have discretion as to whether or not we wanna fly it. I say we do, tomorrow or as soon as possible. And if we wanna just create more bureaucracy with another policy, sure, we could do that too. But that's not what I see. That's not what I think is the way to go at all. I think we show support and we show it soon. I think you have a go. I agree with you 100%. And I feel like talking to the middle school and including the younger kids who are gonna push the conversation when we're done would be huge. Because I know when I was younger, I dealt with the same exact things. And I have little siblings who deal with it just as much as I did. And I feel like knowing that the older kids who are there pushing the conversation would mean a lot. I just wanted to say also, as soon as possible, Chan and I were seniors. So the more you push it back, the more we're not gonna be a part of it. And I just think, before I graduate, I would really love to be a part of this experience and be a part of that movement for our school. Based on the fact that the best information we're gonna be able to get in the last few years to me that we probably have the authority to decide what goes on that slide. That said, I'd like to make a motion like that. Good, I can wait. But it doesn't matter if I... Whether we do that tomorrow or whether we set up a ceremonial occasion before us, maybe up in the air a bit. But I think we should get it up.  Did you get the motion, Lisa? You want to tighten it up a little bit? Yeah. Well, before we tighten it up, are there pieces of that that we feel we need to answer before we vote on putting it on the flag? Do we want to decide how long it's gonna be up first? Do we want to put it up now and should we choose to take it down later? Do so then? Do we want to pre-determine when it comes down? I don't necessarily think we want to do it. Yeah, I suggest just a point of order. We've got a motion on a table on a second. So, I think you have a lot of great questions but you can solve those in discussion. Yeah, well, that's what I was going to say. So, we're just gonna set it up tomorrow. Okay. So, figure out, read what you have, Lisa. I have Carl Wickey moved to... I don't know, I don't know, I don't know. Life's matter is life. Okay. Time to be determined. Do you want to add that or not? Sure, the time to be determined. And the time and the method to be determined. So, you okay with the second on that? Yeah. Okay, I just wanted to get that in. Go ahead, Vanda. All right. I think that we should make it, like if we do have like a ceremonial thing instead of like just out of nowhere, that we should have these younger kids involved or maybe like during and all that when people came and scheduled to come and watch it but not force on everybody. And I think maybe the feeder schools that would come here when they're older, maybe be able to see that and maybe the group from up there who did that at their school. Sounds like we thought about this a little bit. Yeah. No, no, no. Any other discussion? I would just like the board know that this is, it's a bigger issue than you're there to. We've been in Montage, right? We've been seeing this, so try it. As Steven said, I want to put it, where do we start? And it's been an issue for a couple of years. And so I just want to echo, not only it's not only a youth care issue, it's not only a Washington Central issue, but we're here about those two places. May I also offer that I would, I do have a feeder, right? I need to go ahead and place that out there. So we have a diverse community that is both educated around this matter and not. And so I would ask the board at least consider that we need to, we have work to do before we were to raise the flag so that it's not something that is, that creates a backlash immediately, right? There will be backlash when it happens. We understand that and we accept that. But we also need time to prepare our own community for this kind of event. Working with the kids to talk about what's right. Devonte, you've got some ideas already, obviously. But I think just the opportunity to work with them so that it's done in a way that is meaningful, educates others, and that we have the ability to at least prepare our school for the discussion that needs to occur. We have the vehicle to have discussions. We have RP. We have TAs. We have ways to do that. We just need to be able to prepare for it. Is that some reasonable to you guys, that sort of a vision that you have for this? I'm going to go on with Mark. Hi. What would you do to prepare students for that? Because I came to this school about 18 years ago. I happened to be Native American. I dealt with all the same issues, not as much, but touching your hair, asking different things. So this is clearly not just a black lives matter thing, but what do you mean prepare? Because you're not going to change people's minds. No, I understand that. The long-term goal is the education, right? But I would say working with this group to actually have this statement about what it means, why it's being placed up, how can we have that conversation so that all students are aware that it's happening? Yeah, the black lives matter if a non-chapter comes and speaks at schools. So if you... That might be a dead next slide. That might be out themselves. So just for being able to do a few of those things so that it's not something that just occurs without knowledge, right? And I want their message to be clear. To everybody when it's raised. And so it just takes... I'm not asking for years. Like that's not what I'm asking for. My next question was what kind of time do you think we would need to... I know that's a tough question to answer. Yeah, because we have another break coming up as well. So how often do you guys meet? A week. Weekly, Wednesdays? I would... Is it fair to say a month? Is that fair? I mean, I'm asking you guys, do you think we could pull this together in a month? I just want it before this... That's what I'm hearing guys. That's what I'm hearing from my kids. Does it want to work? Yeah, I'm fine with that. And then it may be something that we do as a ceremony for a limited amount of time and then say we're going to continue and then maybe something along the lines of what Montpeliers decided that it flies during the Black History Month, during that time period, February. And I would be very comfortable coming back to the time period. Yeah. And you know, maybe we'd write a policy, maybe we don't, you know. But I think it's okay to say, this is my opinion, that we can fly this flag. Let's get it up in there. And we're leaving it open at the right now. I think we do need to write the policy. We at least need to try. I feel strongly. Before... I think so. Well, you've got a month. The other thing that we need to do is communicate a little bit. I think that... We have a whole community that has no idea, basically, what you're considering. That's exactly what I'm seeing. The other thing I just want to say is that you coming these last two weeks is actually one of the most meaningful things that has happened to me on this pre-point. I appreciate it. And I think that you have shown leadership and we need to respond with leadership. So I think that we should think more broadly as a board. We've asked other folks to do things. What can we do in policy or resolution or some sort of statement about what we believe in this? We need time to do that. I believe that will be stronger than the motion. Because that will... That, your policies, the board's policies, is what drives the work. And it will allow last- And it will allow last- And it will allow last- The individuals, it's not an individual. So, Kari, I want to ask you. Actually, I think they will... Would you be willing to take a stab at that policy? Yeah, no. Yeah. Sure. Kari, why don't you and I work together? I think that there's some research. You have some... I'm trying to start... I don't have something right this second, but there are avenues to go down, too. And I think one is worth what you're saying. So if we can bring something to look at our next meeting. Yeah. So we... Is there more discussion? I just want to say I think that we're all supportive. But we'd rather do it right. We'd rather do it once and do it right. I think that we need to support our administration so that it does get done properly, so that it works short and clean. So the motion on the table is to... Will you read it exactly? It's just to put up the Black Lives Matter flag in a time and method to be determined. Are people ready to vote? I don't know. Could we get a duration? Do we want to vote? Is that time? Is time mean duration? So a duration? Time... So the time is when we raise it, though. Correct. You were talking about duration. Right. So for example, each February for the month of February. About what the specifics to be determined. Correct. Sure. Specifics to be determined. Is that okay? I mean, we've got to figure out whether we're going to buy this flag and make it. There's all kinds of details around. You're saying set up in a time and then do we change it to specifics? To be determined. Okay, so take out the in a time and method and put it in with specific... Yeah. You okay with that? Yeah. You okay with that? Absolutely. Okay, we're not ready. Time meaning hair will. Are people ready to vote? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Aye. That motion carries. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. So we're going to work with you guys. On how to make this happen, all right? Neither one of us is here on Wednesday of next week, so we'll get some bacon and we'll be right in after. We'll have some questions. And you're welcome to go, you're welcome to go. He's done a really good part this week. He'll do your homework. Thank you guys. Thank you for coming to do this. Thank you. But a lot of times we're really good. Yeah, we're really fun. Thank you. We have a stretch. Part of us are made in 15 minutes. Is there anything else I'm here that you're desperate to hear? Or do this after there's nothing else I don't want to hear? Oh. There's a station like this. That's got something to shoot out there. I know what. Are you guys okay? Yeah, we're fine. Okay. So let's skip. I'm going to skip right down to the administrator before we go. Okay, one point for you. So we all know we've had a pretty trying winter with snow and road conditions and all that. And there's been quite a bit of lobbying for calling snow days, calling more snow days than we currently do. Right now, if the seniors were to get everything to stay the way it is, and I had to call snow day before April break and April, we would have to have to go to the state board for an exception for the seniors because they'd be less than 175 days. So, and in the conversations that I've had, I said, folks, we can, I can call snow days a lot, you know, a lot more. But it needs to go further into gym. And what it really means, and I need feedback from the board, I'm asking you to take a motion and I realize it's my responsibility as a superintendent and I'm asking you to go out there. But last year, I moved graduation from the first Friday to this second Friday of the month in June. And we're doing that again next year, possibly. And what I need feedback from you is, are you willing for me to move into the third Friday in June? For graduation, sorry, Lizzie. But this year, but next year, I can't move this year. I'm gonna say, I will have to know that there's parents and grandparents that have plane flights and the tickets all figured out. So I'm asking now for 2019 because if I have, and one of the things that is part of, goes into the ability of thinking about snow days is number of days we have. Right now, 175 days is on June 15th for this year. So the problem is, if I have to call one more, it doesn't mean we can get it. But the law is very specific. It doesn't say what seniors have something else. Now, I already know what has been done previous to myself being here. I haven't been put in this situation since my sixth year. And I know previously there weren't that many days. There were days where, I should say, there was graduation help with the seniors who had gone on and on and on. But I do, you all know, I feel like I have a duty that my license makes me sign off on every year is that I fall all state sanctions that I'm gonna get to choose. So I need reflection from the board is, if we're thinking about that piece, because this is the piece that really designs for graduation in 1732. You can usually get four or five days, but after that, the ball isn't going to move. And that need to get carried out today. Is that a question? I do. Whatever happened to the five built-in snow days? We have those. How come? We've never built them into the calendar. We've always said that there is a day of school and 180 days. And any snow day is added on to the end of that. For as long as I've been on the board, that's the way we've done it. People, they have understood that they were built in, but they aren't, they're added on. Does that make sense? Back when I was here, we never had this kind of problem. And we've always had winters here for the moment. Well, I think that's the case. People are getting weighed when we're here about driving self-mining. Well, the last snow start we had, I was going sideways, down in town, and I understand what you're driving. I'm sure I've got it. It just, these are the things that we're going to start to look at, and I want to be really clear because those are the things that come into this, or, you know, and you can't, for next year, change the calendar, but it's changing the school calendar and we have to do that with five super, five weeks. This is a lot more complex than all the moving parts. So changing graduation for seniors, still wouldn't affect. It gives me more flexibility, George, and then where we can... No, this is a long time to clarify with your statement and your dates. Yeah. Then we could, they could still graduate and underclassmen could still continue. So they, we need 175 days. This year, we're already going to continue with the underclassmen. We'll get to 180 days for elementary schools, by my counting, and I'm being very careful using those words, my counting. We have 177 days for all students for 19 to 32, because of the way we run some of our operations here. So if we could change, you know, we, for example, if we start off with three grade O's one day, three grade O's one another, but not all those kids are here both these days, so, and we do that, we have a day in January. You know, it's those types of things. So today, this year, which was a relatively snowy year, more snow days than me. It's the most I've ever been, I've had it all. By your calculations, we're currently on 177, so if we had three more snow days. This year, for the seniors, 175 days for the day of graduation. We're right at it. We're right at it, basically. The other kids will go, they'll go, they'll go, they'll go off for one of our days. It wasn't a snow day, it was a wind day. Right. Just, you know, incredible. Weather. Yeah. So for next year, you're looking at a graduation on the 21st, on the 21st, on January 1st. If you push it back, push it back another way. Otherwise, it'd be the 14th. Sorry. I understand, because I hear from, I have to ask the question now. No good, great options with this. I mean, I think the main principle is that these weather days are called for safety reasons. I can't just think that you're trying to calculate, you know, we'll see you graduate on time when you're trying to make these decisions at four in the morning. I don't want you to. So in dosy, we probably need a little more flexibility if that's what's going on. And whether we're dealing with it on the front end, during the year, or on the end, I don't know what the question is. And you're feeling that the state statute calls for seniors to also have 175 days. Because the same thing about seniors is that all students in the school are on us, school year of 175 days. Can graduation be moved after, say once we've had a session? So it should, and in this, and I think the only word I can think of is tradition, or maybe pattern is a better one. So pattern has been in U32, and I was told this when I came in for Michelle Sushka, who's been on the count, working on the calendar for the years. It's that graduation year next year, which usually was announced two weeks ago when it was the calendar. I purposely took it off to have this discussion, because I was not going to put this back in the corner that we've been in without having some discussion. I'm not asking you to tell me what to do. I'll make that because I'm going to say piece of card I'm not trying to put you as a board, but I do want a temperature take of, should I think about pushing graduation back, or should I be thinking about different ways for things to be operating in U32 so there's not this pinch? Or we're thinking about making the graduation date more flexible. I can make it now. There are some schools in the state and it makes it harder for your families that they don't know what's going on now when they announce the graduation's going to be. That seems too late for me. And I understand that, because there are many folks that my daughter's graduating, my sister hopes she'll be here and she's going to be coming across the U.S. So my plane ticket's two months ahead of time. It's going to be really expensive and she'd rather do that other thing. Sure. And I get that. I mean, it's a big event. It's our culminating event. And people need to do it. Calendar and all that. I respect state statute work. I also think about seniors in June. And whether really two days makes any difference to us. Anything except any change. I'm just being realistic. I think they're probably checked out about now. I was going to say seniors in April is a year. We both did it, we were all saying years. End of the year versus beginning of the year. So this is why I'm asking for your input. If you said to me, Bill, do you think where it is? I'm going to be talking with my colleagues to my right here about how they operate in school. Because I'm going to say I need a little bit more days than just 177. And that's what I'm going to be talking about. 220. 210. That's not going to make sense. See, you have to vote for that one. I'm going to try to make it up to 220. But I mean, that's kind of the play. That's the temperature. So how are people feeling? Will you graduate and let the administration figure out how to work? Third week of June is pretty late. I could be in favor of rolling the dice next year and think about the compute for the fall. But I'll make sure we can do some things. I think our community would be more open to starting a couple of days earlier than going a little later. I think our community would be a lot less shockable. A lot less shock than our community would take. Or, as you know, I don't mind. So we have to come on to stay on. Yeah, so I wonder what we're going to do. Is some operational things that we do in New Jersey? We're going to talk about that. OK. Don't need to figure out the calendar. I just need to know. I needed to have that. Keeping graduation the second week in June and let them figure out the problems earlier than that. There you go. Is that what you needed? Thank you, Cardi. Sure. What did you think? I know. What? The story? I know the story. Yeah, she's good. It's been a quarter of a course. They trust Orca. Yeah. They go to Orca. Yes, they did an action. They'll call two days after Orca and say, some things that happened in the second week. Lucy and Shanna, do you have anything you want to say to student reports? Not being really an admin. I have to meet. I really didn't have school on Tuesday. What? You didn't. We didn't. I didn't. Oh, there. There are a lot of problems there. And there is. OK. No, yeah, we don't have anything to report. We just want to let you know. I'm really glad you were here. I think that's a really important conversation. Yeah. Are there any discussion? Yeah. How is the social justice group working with the lab? Are there? I don't know about that. I think the social justice, I don't think, big thing right now is the lockout. And actually, they've been dealing with and doing continued dialogues on that. But I'm sure that they would be open to working this way. I think, like, all the clubs are great. They're increasing more communication. I'm sure many clubs would be in favor of this, but we're not talking about it, how they support each other. I don't know how that would happen. We're actually seeing a surge in student engagement around a lot of these things. I mean, see, there's more students that are involved in something right now. But the coordination between groups is minimal. So it's understandable. There have been their own little cubicle right now doing their stuff. But I think now, as we start to mature with some of these clubs, I mean, see, King Social Justice is new. Glam is new. As these clubs start to now establish themselves as organizations within school, we can start to coordinate the activities a lot better. And students can work together on similar issues. Just there's a lot of newness right now around student voice, which is exciting. But it's also hurting chickens. I would recommend that they do what Matthew does, which is attend everyone. That's what you asked for, I know. I don't understand it. That's a good one, Matthew. Yeah. I'm surprised. Some of them are not as interesting. Thank you. I just wanted to make sure we heard you. So back to Consent Agenda. Is there a motion to approve the minutes of 3, 28, 18? A little bit. Second. Second. Second. Any comments or changes? I thought they looked good. I know, just one area. Oh, we saw one. This is the principal. This is the place where the one with Bill Dice is made. Oh, director. It's Bill Dice. I don't even got that. Well, I decided to question the teacher that was speaking. So Kristen Beebe was the teacher who was. Is there a name on here? Oh, it is. Okay, there. She's the advisor for. That's why I just wasn't sure. When I looked at those names, none of them land a bell for her. Thank you. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? That motion carries. Residency hearing we're coming back to. Access to course settlements will be done. Black lives flag, we've done. Implementation plan. Do you want to do that separately or as part of your report? Well, I didn't talk about my report. I do have a handout for you. Just to give you a little. Little info here. So the implementation plan. If you guys remember, I forgot to actually bring my copy of it. But it lays out three strategic objectives. Objective number two is the comprehensive and malice assessment system as well. We just. So. Yeah. So I pulled. This is on the agenda because it was part of our board calendar. To make sure we kind of. Got to all of our goals and one of the goals is. Sorry. No problem. And so the the. Objective is that we have a comprehensive and balance assessment system. It's necessary to ensure that all. Students are progressing towards a mastery of the student learning outcomes. And that are that are necessary for the student graduate. So we. We have data to monitor. Progress plan. Instruction provide enrichment intervention and plan. Programmatic resources. So. I put down there some of the academic data that we currently. Contract. And so. The objective is that we have a comprehensive and balance assessment system. And so we have an academic data that we currently contract. Right. So I kind of kept this around the academic piece. The first list there the S. S. S. S. S. S. S. S. S. S. S. S. S. So those are some of the data points that we can local. I would say that. Looking at. Data. That is surrounding proficiency. So the performance indicator standard, that's very. We have. Last years. And we have this year's. And this year is even more comprehensive than last. Because we were able to add to what we were able to do. So this. So this is really, it's not clean data. We don't have any kind of history, we don't have this way to look back. Where Star 316 now, we're getting several years of data, which is, this is our screen test that we give to students around reading and math. It's actually given from grades four, well from one. Yeah, I wasn't sure how far down it went. From grades one and all the way up and we give it to our, to our 10th grade. Did you take one last? You took one? Yeah. We definitely heard about it right on our fifth grade but I didn't hear about it in the first grade. You were first? Yeah. That's why I was... I arrived a little late. Well... So we're starting now to be able to use some of that. I'll talk a little bit about how to use that data. So for each one of our objectives, there's several strategies that we outlined in the implementation plan. I put it together at a table with the strategy on the left-hand side that we were working on and our progress on the right-hand side. We're really information for some of them. It's not so much progress so that you can see what those pieces are. So I don't know that I'm gonna... I don't think there's a need for me to read every single thing to you but if you look through there, if there's some questions that you might have about it, either strategies or some of the progress, I'm going to point out a couple of things and they'll give you a chance to look at it. And this will be 7th grade, 7th to 12th? In general, 7th to 12th, most of our implementation plan is built around the proficiencies in the student learning outcomes. So, yeah, the 11th and 12th grade are not as affecting by questions as you first looked at it. There's a lot of stuff in there. Yeah. This is leading up to a question. How does it get supersized so that when we actually see something that's meaningful at the end of it? So a lot of what you see is when we do the data report. So earlier in the year when we do that report out to the boards and Bill does a big bulk of the work for the whole Supervisors Union Is it the monitoring report? The monitoring report should be one in the next meeting here. Don't mean one next week. You're missing a certain meeting next week. Yeah, oh good. So yeah, so we reported out. This is part of our monitoring report is where you see some of the data. You won't necessarily see all of it, but you'll see a fair portion of it. And I would point out to two of the biggest areas in this are the reporting part of this to parents and students, not just to boards. And that's I think that that is an area where you see the grading reporting which is a second strategy on there. That's an area where we have spent a considerable amount of time and still need to spend a considerable amount of time. It's just how do we report out student progress towards meeting our proficiency standards. And so that's what we want to work on. I think the other area that I would like to highlight, the positive side of all of this data that we're starting to collect is the last piece, the last strategy, which is the educational support team process. So at the SU level there's certainly a team that's been looking at this, but at U32 we have a group of teachers, a couple of sixth grade teachers, middle school teachers, a couple of administrators, special education. And we look at data for all of our incoming seventh graders, so we've already spent time this year looking at their data, historical data. And it helps us plan what interventions we need to be prepared for. How much reading support are we going to need, what kind of math report are we going to need. And we've been able to do a third year to use that data. And we do each year we also go back after about half way through the year, we look back at what were our recommendations based on what we saw and how close were we. Did all of these kids need this level of support? Did we miss any kids? Was there anything that we missed or hit in all of this that was meaningful? And we felt like last year we did a really good job identifying the needs this year where there was very little movement of kids having to both leave the program because they didn't need it or come into the program because we hadn't identified them. And so we felt like, and a part of it is we just had more data to work with. And so that process I think is a real highlight to us collecting this data at the elementary level and being able to aggregate it for the high school and middle school. And so that's been a real positive for us. And then I just made some extra bullet points there. What's going to need to happen in the future for us to continue to work on this strategic objective? Like what are the areas of need or in terms of resources? I think that Infinite Campus, that's the IC there, is our student information system. It's our grading system. It has all of that. There's a lot of functionality in this product that we don't necessarily use that could be helpful for us. That requires training and both teacher, student, parent. I'm always reminded I just went to the conference a week ago and they remind us every time the number one user of the program, the vast majority of users of the program are students, not teachers. And so helping our teachers create good information in IC so that students can do what they need to do is really important. We're not great at that yet. I would be common. I make them proficiency classes and the way it works in IC is like you have all your transferable skills, but because I'm a junior it's not converted back to a hundred grade until the quarter closes. So it's like a fun little surprise. Like in the class when the quarter ends. Yeah, exactly. So why is that? Is that because teachers don't have enough time to No, I think that I would say that the number one reason why it's not being fully utilized is that we have not had a good comprehensive training around using it in a while. We do just enough to where teachers can use the basics of the grade book. Maybe with a thing called the message center. There's a few pieces, but there's a lot of functionality that would help teachers. And so we're going to be developing some additional professional development for our teachers at the beginning of the year to really use the product better. Because it'll make their life easier. If they know how to use the shortcuts, instead of trying to do work arounds, it'll make their life a lot easier. Is there a one person on staff that could maybe develop a shortcut cheat sheet? Yeah, we have lots of those. So we have two teachers that we pay as coaches for this and they work with our teachers all the time. Michelle Seth got a central office. Is it a huge resource? Michelle's been pretty much dedicated. So we're not reading around for some prior consultant to show up. No, no, no, no. That's fine. We're building that in a capacity house. Yeah, and that's why I've been, I've gone, this is my second year to go to their conference where it's training. Yeah, and we said, we said a team of an elementary educator, high school educator, Steven, usually a one around elementary across the district and it shuts us down. And you there too, this year, Steven's not saying this, but it's being identified nationally. Yes, so we're leading some of the curve right now. So we get the calls from the development, so the infinite campus corporate development offices to say, okay, what do we need to do to make this work at our standards? Because we made a lot of noise but we've also, we lead the way. We've made some, we have been working to develop our own tools in some cases and the next update, one of our tools is right in the product now and that we developed kind of independently because they're like, yeah, this is going to work and it's nice. And it doesn't matter what student information system here, we could have talked about these same issues across the board with these student information systems that are accessible in Vermont. Yeah, yeah. This isn't, the learning curve on this is the same for all of them. Power school. Power line team. Yeah, power lines has that big issue. I mean everybody has, we can go to jump and start going to anyone. Yeah, I would point out the next bullet on this on the where are we going to need to commit resources is how do we align those outside assessments to our SLOs? Are they aligned to our student learning outcomes? And can we say that by performing at a certain level on some of these assessments you've demonstrated proficiency of some kind. I think that this is a big, big question and a really important one for making these outside assessments much more relevant to our students. And so if you're taking the SBAC test and you could show proficiency and math in some way. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So those are some ways that we need to do. Can SBAC help? Does SBAC, can that organization help you determine the alignment with the SLO? Well, they publish all of their information about, you know, how their problems are aligned and those kinds of cases. They're not going to come up with one. We don't have enough dollars to get an SBAC to even look at us. But they do publish the materials. We just will have to do the language. Right? And then the last bullet up there. Yeah. I agree that would. That was my slide. We move a tremendous amount of data through our supervisor union as a whole now. Like as we collect more and more data, how we pull that back out so that we can use it to make decisions, it just becomes more and more difficult. So having somebody who has the training, has the ability to develop more tools so we can develop a lot of different ways of looking at data. But this is a wish list. But I think that having somebody who could really help us develop that kind of stuff would be important. So this would be an SU kind of? It already is. It is. I know it is. It's a different, it's a, he's going somewhere which I know where he's trying to go. But push it. Yeah. Most student information systems take two or three different types of job level professionals. We are so small that we couldn't hire three full time people to do that, say, right work. Michelle Sapka is great at what she does. She does a great job of organizing the data, making sure the data is in the right place. She's daily increasing her skills, absolutely. But a good example is she's not a SQL coder. We probably need a SQL coder for 0.4, 0.5. Because we've got to build, no matter what student information system you've got, you've got to have someone's computer program on the backside. That's what a database is worth. We need somebody that's just a network database Google. They're not the ones programming it, but they're just making sure everything is running fine on the backside. And these are when I just said that, to give you an idea of what the price point is, for someone who's really good at SQL coding for what we need, we're talking about $80,000 to $100,000 salary. That's the time? Full time decision. We're talking, you know, and same for the database networking. You want to make money pieces. This is where people are making their money in IT. Pick whatever IT company you want. This is what's really happening on the back end. So is it not feasible to figure out this position and maybe bring on board another Central Maron school to share the other 0.6 or 0.5? George, I've been trying to do that for 20 years in my career when I was an IT person. It's really tough to do. It's really tough to do. So we're trying to And this wasn't meant as a slide against our ability to do this, but this is, you know, the reality. I mean, Baltimore County City, sorry, Baltimore City school system. How many developers do they have? I don't know, but there's a lot more of them. So they develop the same dashboard that I developed, and of course there's prettier and it runs faster and it actually doesn't have all the plugs in it. But it was the same dashboard. So what it is is I went to them and said, all right, can we share some of this? I don't have the time to go. I'm a high school principal. And she's like, oh, I'm in charge of the data departments. She's got multiple programmers, multiple people working on this. And so if I can find the places that we'll share, and people are very generous at this conference about sharing your stuff. And it gets back to, I mean, here's the example. Great, we can work with another school system, but they don't want the same SLOs. And they don't want the same efficiencies. And they don't want the same assessments. And they don't want the same assessments. So you gotta think about it. It's not really the data IT piece. It's more the educational side. That's my dream list someday. We'll forward it to Santa. Any other questions about this is a quick update. Is this helpful? I mean, I want to so that in the future, I don't want to do something that's not at least helpful to you guys in terms of what's going on. Will we be able to use this sometime in the near future to deter scheduling problems for the following year? So once we know proficiency of students, let's just say Yeah, I see what you're asking on that. So once we can better track proficiency, yeah, we can probably do some of that. Yes, we could. I think that we're also, when we start having discussions about the school start, time, school day, some of those kinds of things, opens up more opportunities. Our schedule's extremely tight the way it is right now. I think that we're going to start having some we're going to put together a group of people to start looking at how do we build a proficiency schedule not a credit schedule, which is what we're living in right now. And that might provide us more opportunities, more unique opportunities for kids. We're moving in that direction a bit. I'm curious because I don't see it getting easier with greater population and more teachers that you know they can see coming in the way. It's kind of a crystal wall. Yeah, I would say what this does do is kind of a tangent to your question, George. It allows us to personalize more. More information we have that easier it is to personalize. And personalizing to me isn't, yes I want to help every individual kid but I want to be able to say where their good life is because they're interested in the same thing and having that information will make it easier to say. And then how do we adjust the system to serve? Personalize not individual. Thank you. You're welcome. Board observations is next. This is just a friendly reminder myself also that part of the monitoring system we've tried to develop, one of the pieces is a board observation piece. And when we go to, yeah I mean we should you know we used to when we had those student presentations at the beginning we would pull out those board observation forms and just kind of mark down what we noticed and what we saw. So it's just a plug when you go somewhere, pull it out and just know it and we've gotten more, we were doing it better before. And then there were a bunch of letters that we saw briefly last week from students it looks like was the democracy class, what's that class called? We got letters from students of climate change and so there are a whole bunch being here. And I think somewhere from a democracy, what's a democracy class? Democratic groups, that's it. If anybody has any comments or they're just in there because they were sent to the board. There are some interesting ideas. So you were their authentic audience I think we should I was just going to say should we give them a reply? Of course. I am really good at telling you. I'll give you the compliments this week. That would be great. We've come down really hard on spelling punctuation and cross checking their facts. I'm going to get began. Appreciate the effort and thought. Thank you Scott. And if you want to pass it by me, find it. Reports to the board. We just have to say it. Students said no. Administration, do you have anything else? I just want to add one thing is that we're in the fake of hiring right now. We've got several committees running right now. We've already seen our social studies candidates have talked and we're going to be forwarding our candidates on the bill for those positions. And we're moving along. We shouldn't. Special educators as well. So we actually have two social studies and a science. Two science now. We didn't do that last week, right? We did resignations. We did resignations. We did resignations. And so we're on the map and we're missing one, Stephen. We'll get to that. But they're all in process right now. You should start hearing about appointments soon. We'll get some. Finance, they do team. The finance committee is not there. Does anybody have any questions on that? We're in a healthy shape. We're not too healthy. Pretty healthy. A lot of money. They're deep. Executive committee has not been met since last time. And policy committee. Can. Do you guys know when your next policy meeting is? We're trying to schedule that right now because Berlin should do their school board meeting on top of the policy. We will pull out the people that you saw that said when are you available during the month? 430 is not a great time. I know that went out. We did the black lives flag vote. Do you have any of your resignation? It wasn't in the minutes. It wasn't last week. I don't have it in front of us but I know what it says. Call of Achievement was our one year. Actually it was a two year appointment. To fill Randy's leave of absence. She and her partner are moving out of state. I moved here in the state. And they decided to move on to New Hampshire. So she's respectfully submitted a resignation from that position. So a motion to accept. Call of Achievement. Any other discussion? All those in favor say aye. Opposed? That motion carries. Not yet. We don't have board orders I take it. The motion to accept the board orders. Do I have a number? $38,630. $29. Any questions on those? Opposed? That motion carries. For the agenda items we've got accessibility we need to talk about. Anything else? Just a reminder that the board retreat is May 23rd at my house. It's a Wednesday. We started six. We set goals. It's not far away. Board communication. Well since Cardi's not here I guess I'll get the right one. I'll write the front court tomorrow in one. Did you write something? What were you going to write? You were going to give me something. But do you want to do something about I think it was the Blander that they requested. And then there was another piece on proficiency. I know that I know you something. You were going to write, yes, draft something about Blander Black Lives Matter. Yeah, that was me. But there's something else I believe. Something about the implementation plan. Distillation. See you don't give it to me. I think we should write something about what happened tonight. And I can try to do that. I'll do that for the newsletter. And I wonder could I get a copy of what Tisha was at her name? What she said. If she's willing to. Did you get the newsletter that just went out? I got it. I need to get it as an email. Instead of looking forward myself. I just forgot. Give those to Stephen. And I'll wait for unfortunately. So I think we're going to adjourn. We have to go to the executive session. We do it right here. Thank you.