e two factors, there are more than two, but there are two big factors that we tend to bring to mind. The first is, how much impact will it have? Let's start with the things that make a big difference for kids. And I'm really talking about particularly like if you're already doing something, like that's not that impactful, because you're going to keep doing it. That's the nice part. So this is really about what do you have to do differently. So you're very fortunate that if you've got something that's working, just keep doing it. But so what are the new things you could do that are going to have more impact versus modest impact? So all things equal, everything that has the most impact on the most kids. But we're pragmatists, right? Some things are easier than others. And to be clear, I wrote easier, not easy. There's nothing on our list that is actually easy. So some things are easier than others. And so what we try to do is think about, hey, if there are two things, they're both equally impactful, but one is a lot easier to do. And it could be easier to do because you already have staff with the talent. It could be easier to do because you have staff that would like the idea. It could be easier to do because you've already got some successes in the district or the SU to build upon. Lots of reasons it could be easier is to think about that dimension. And what I'd like you to do, if you flip to page two of this, just to make life easy. We have taken, and again, you may want to just skip number five if you didn't spend much time on it. But which of these areas, and maybe the answer is, like, hey, we really want to focus on chair one, but then we want to focus on chair one at the elementary focus. And we want to focus on the secondary. Maybe both. But we do definitely find that as folks roll this out, the elementary focus and the secondary focus might be different. Doesn't mean it has to be different, but it might be different. So we have purposely given you 10 not five potential areas of focus. So one is chair one instruction that one E is elementary, one S is secondary. So I'd like folks to spend a few minutes individually mapping at least the first floor for elementary and the first floor for secondary where you think it falls on impact in ease and then talk amongst yourselves once everybody has made their own thoughts that's going to facilitate against its side. And then we're going to do a little bit of sharing out to see if there's consensus or not as to where to start. E is an impact. And you all get to have your own personal judgment on both impact and unease. Attempt, but I'm going to do it just the same. What I want to try to do is this is a way to get everybody's feedback really rapidly. On your table, you've got some post-its. I'm going to force you to do something that everybody hates to do, and that's called prioritized, but this was a prioritization exercise. So I've asked you to think about impact and ease. And obviously in this perfect world, which we do not live in, two things would have landed right here. Very high impact and damn easy. And you'd say, those were the first two things I do. I looked over your shoulders. There were not a lot of things living right up here. Happily, there weren't too many things living in the low impact, but that just makes it a little harder to choose. Art experiences, you're going back to the implementation best practices. All this stuff is worth doing. You cannot do it all at once. You just don't have the bandwidth. Districts that are bigger and have big central offices and every school's got an assistant principal and every school's got two coaches. They don't have bandwidth to do it all at once. And you don't have any of that. So what I'm going to ask you to do is having thought about ease and impact. But again, it's not 100% clear like if something, if something lives here, is that better than something that lives here? I mean, let's skip all that stuff. If you had to choose this moment to move forward on just two things, one E and two S, two post-its, just pick the two things that you would, was up to you. This is where you would start. This is what would come next. And then in something resembling less of a mad cattle call, I tried to recreate on the wall here. Our grid just placed your tube. Then you get about a 10 minute break for a fact. One for table or two for a person? For everybody? Everybody gets their own. And while you're on your 10 minute break, I'm going to try to make some sense out of what you put up there. And I will discuss it with you prior to that.  I just wanted to ease it, but it's not, it's okay. The two guys are seized over. She's in the corner back. She ended up getting out of the beach. I'm staying by 19, so we need to not need to get that sauce from the map, so we're having the feeling that we are having the food. Oh, hi, how are you? Oh, he changed. I really appreciate the folks resting with, I will smile like, the one hard thing to do is deciding that you need to change. And the second hard thing to do is realizing you can't do it all at once.  Amen. The book is a book. You just need to take care of it. But wisdom being the third part of valor. I'll drop you aside. When I was a superintendent, I did rule out many of these changes with urgent outcomes and people who are on the country came to study. And it was interesting that they were always asking these questions like, what do you do and what would you do differently the next time? What we did was assured them, what would we do differently the next time? They always wanted me to leave the room. They said, what are we going to get the real answer? The answer is, quite honestly, we had the right plan and I implemented it the wrong way. And that is really too quickly. I had a great sense of urgency. I came to understand and I did not invent this plan. We identified our high school teachers, we identified our high school schools, and it's fortunate I got to travel the country to visit some of the highest performing, got close in schools, and through a lot of research, we had come to this plan and said, hey, this is what kids need. And once we got to that point, and you're the leadership team really concurred, then it was like, damn, let's all go do it. Let's do it now. Like, do I wait? And so we did. Kind of like a bulldozer. We just implemented it fast and furious. And it created a whole lot of pushback and a whole lot of anxiety. And definitely risked this thing's survival. I did not survive, but the program and efforts did. And so the thing that I've learned the hard way, and I've worked now with more than 100 school systems across the country, have gone on this path, is you should move as fast as you can to go faster than everybody else can keep up. You need more behind the team, leadership behind the team, building base leadership behind the team, most of your teacher is behind it. You need most of your parents behind it and building the support and rolling this out methodically. And really importantly, and this one gets totally overlooked, doing it well, doing it well. I want to share two things not to do. So these are real life stories for real life clients who are not, shall we say, clients always take our advice. Then I say, hey, we're going to specialize. I get that. Folks are being asked to do too much. Behaviors are being challenged. We're going to create a core of behavior specialists. Family will assign them. It was one to every two schools. We're going to do this for the start of next school year. All seems pretty good. I mean, this is like teachers were asking for, principals were asking for, staff appreciated the chance to specialize, and that was the plan. Here's one thing that we have to do to do it well. So I'm in front of this is a, we'll say it's a very large school district. So I've got six year more principals in the room, and I am sharing some of these ideas. And you know, I'm pretty good at talking for a living. So I'm pretty good at reading an audience, and I didn't have to rule you guys were mostly not in your heads and not inner monologuing. This is the stupidest thing I've ever heard. At least that's my take of what the room. But I'll, so I'm out to the West Coast, and I'm talking about this stuff. And you can just tell from the body language, I mean, people are fidgeting, people. Look at a lot of this, and there's wristband going on, and you can just say, some people are turning red. It's not just like, stop, I said. Help me here, folks. I've said something that is really in accord, and I don't mean in a good way. Because you are not liking what I'm selling this for. That is clear as day. That doesn't happen too often, right? And you know, if I could do some edginess, I would also learn polite, but I can't hide their emotion. I mean, I can see they are very unhappy, but nobody wants to say it. I said, look, we're way past that. You have said it in 100 different ways, just not with your mouth. So I really like to move past your body language and move into verbal communication here. I said, what is offensive? What is problematic?  This is a total, this doesn't work at all. Really. Yeah, it goes, our superintendent must have read your dance book, because last year, they rolled this out. We're in year two of this, and it didn't help one bit. Problem is probably worse, not better. Really, don't mean how. And so this principle, you know, the brain's one of the soul. In other words, I'm retiring. That's why she was the brain. So I'm going to tell you what I really think. I said, I know you know one of the room who will, but I'm really confident you're speaking for many of your colleagues. She said, you know, we were so excited. The superintendent said we were rolling out behavior specialists, one for every two schools, which seemed pretty reasonable for them, because they were basically one for every 50,000 kids prior to that. And we were so excited, and first year, first week of last school year, our behavior specialist shows up. The leadership team of the school, really, second day, we've scheduled a two-hour meeting with her, and we have them in the room, seven folders, the seven high flyers. The seven kids were creating huge havoc in our school. We started to give her the profiles of the set. And we said, so now you got a sense of the lay of the land. I know you want to meet them, but what are you thinking? What are you going to do? Where do you get started? And the behavior specialist said, well, I'm not really sure. I'm hoping you can help correct me. I'm hoping that you guys have some ideas, I'm not really quite sure what to do with kids like this.  No. And so she's turning to the assistant principal, who's a really large guy, and said, I'm going to really need your help. The principal said, you know, it was just so devastating. Now here they said to us, a behavior specialist, and it was no good. And then I had to stop, where I said, we've got a failure to communicate here. Because in my world view, a behavior specialist is a specialist in behavior. And the person who clearly showed up to that meeting at 10 o'clock on the second day of school, is a school psychologist who was forced to be a behavior specialist, because they didn't have enough to go around. And it was devastating. And I mean, unfair to the teacher, unfair to the teachers, principal is retiring, he was just like the last straw, the behavior specialist left at the end of the year too. Here's the deal.  They said, we want to move quick. They said, we need to do this, it's so important we should never build it. All well and good, because they never had to check. They're now enough people with the skill. So they took somebody with the title, who was willing, I'm not sure how willing she really was, but didn't quit over it yet. And you see this more than you would suspect. We've had people specialize in reading who really weren't very good at reading.  Then you'll have a behavior specialist. So the issue is that one is leaders and senior truth is there's a limit to how much capacity people have to change. We got to acknowledge that. But there's also a core to this work, especially, what is it the core theme of what we're talking about all day? You got to be really good at teaching math, you got to be really good at teaching reading, you got to be really good at behavior, you got to be really good at, this is a lot of expertise. And this is a, this is not, what do they call it? This is a, not a normed reference test. It's not a screening on a scale. Like if you were the best person we've got for behavior, that's not the same as being good at behavior, actually. This only works if you've got people who are good, not just willing for better than me. So as you think about phasing this, part of this, how much capacity do you have? And part of this is gonna be if you've got people already with the skills, you can move quicker. If you've got people who want to have those skills, you can move moderately quicker because you can build them up. And in some cases, if you're really in an honest assessment, so as well, we really don't have enough skilled reading nature, skilled math folks, or skilled behavior folks, then you got to take whatever steps it takes to get them. And it is a mistake to rush into this with the wrong people. One, this won't work. But the second is, when you're helping kids to score more, if I find that it's closer to one strike in your alley than three strikes, you lose the confidence of parents, you lose the confidence of staff, you don't get to say, oh yeah, silly us. Maybe you tried, but you failed. But they really say, we're done. And then when you try the next person, you've created so much more than that. So I do think that how you proceed and the pace at which you proceed is as fast as you can, but no faster than you and others can keep going. So it says you're gonna have to focus. So I'm gonna share some of the results of your appreciation of how quickly and orderly and thoughtfully people shared what they would focus. Thanks for the question. Sure, thank you. I'll say then. So from here, can you ideally phasing, maybe piloting and then scaling? In some instances, it's good. I'm also wondering, given our science, do we even have, is that even an option where we are already just by the nature of being small and having perhaps working together already there's less opportunity for that? So a couple of blocks from it. So one is, phasing could be, you start on quarter instruction rather than on intervention. That could be a phasing. Or you start on tier one social emotional supports versus tier two. So the phasing can be which of these things you tackle first. Certainly as I've mentioned, some places have taken one place to start at the elementary and one at the secondary. You know, a different one at the secondary. So that's another form of phasing. One form of phasing is to say, and it's always depressing, but like when I get to this stage, it was funny, we did this kind of work with a couple districts in Vermont and won't tell you who they are, but we're kind of sharing a finding. So we're in this kind of finding, sharing, stage, and it was like, early June, so it wasn't quite out yet it was about to be out. And so we had shared it with a couple districts and one district had this kind of totally get it. You know, we should have been doing this all along kind of reaction. And I said to themselves, what can we get done over the summer? So then the first day of school, things will be different. And they actually looked at it officially, swapped out a few parents who had left and they hadn't yet been placed, hired some reading teachers, held the principals, we did their schedules, and literally from June through September, so we're ready to go. Very similar recommendations from another very good district. Leadership heard the same kind of story and said, we should really do this, our teachers are gonna hate it. Our parents are gonna be up in the arts. But we need to do this. So their basic was a year of knowledge sharing.  They were not, they were going to hire, hold their knowledge and hire exactly the people they'd rather probably not be hiring out of your parents for every person who left because they did not have the depth of agreement with their community, the stakeholders, and they said, our first step in this phase is to get more people understand. And they did. Just looking at it. So I think where you start and how fast you move is very, very particular to your context. I think this issue of pilots, so there are two different theories. One is start with the volunteers. But this kind of change if you've got a school or two where the staff is all on board, there's certainly an argument that's a place you wouldn't start. Other issue is I said, these are big lists for the individual school. Given your size, it seems to me that you need to plan and move as a unit. Particularly if you're going the route of, this is a guarantee, this is a commitment to our kids. This is a little harder to say we commit to these best practices for one out of three kids. Because if you're the other two, that's not so good. But I think the issue of how you move forward is very, very localized. Also, one of the things that I've drawn is I was looking at this, your results. One of the things I think as I look at their results, one thing that just came through Claire's convene is that most of you are on an elementary school. Three quarters of the responses said start at the elementary. But I also suspect about three quarters of you, your second job is around elementary school. So I think one piece is half your kids are not in elementary school. So I think that one of my takeaways is, the SQ thinks about where to focus. We're gonna have to figure out how to balance what's gonna move at the elementary and what's gonna move at the secondary. And you all might not be a representative body. But the second thing that I saw was, certainly the number one winner of votes was elementary tier one. It's not all a crazy place to start. It's actually a good thing. At close second, time for second were the instruction, extra time, and the confidence of the teacher. And you'll clearly these three have to work in unison. But it's certainly reasonable to begin. But the other thing that I noticed is I was taking these off. So the way I'm gonna process information quickly. So I'm gonna grab all the one E's off the floor. And here's what I did. So I started here, because the C is inside. So here's a one A. And I went over here and I grabbed another one A. And then here, and here, here. So there were 16 of you who voted for one A. That is number one vote gap. Four wanted the elementary. So some sense of, hey, that's really important. And if there's anything resembling you guys have some agreement, it's pretty good. No agreement like forever. But this is a very hard, modestly hard, impossibilities. And I think, you know, again, there's perhaps the four members aren't in the middle of the chore and get very in school by school. So one thing that came out of this, and we're gonna begin, was, you know, very different senses of what's easy and what's hard. And that's not unreasonable, but it's a fact that there's not. Some of you thought some stuff was very easy and all this stuff is really, really hard. So one thing that I'm gonna suggest, they're your schools, your district, and your SQ, so I'm just visiting for the day. But I have microphones, at least to get to give my opinion. What I've picked up on the room is the following. These ideas make some sense to most of you. If there's an easy button, you would not be disappointed if these things happen in your schools. And I think many of you would actually be excited if they happen. Not agreeing on what seems to look hard, kind of a skew on the elementary versus secondary. My sense is that one of the next steps, I'm gonna view a chance to wait in a disagree with you, but my sense is one of the next steps should be is you as board members should turn to the superintendent and his leadership teams, both the central office and school level, and say, you know, this thing's really hard. It's not completely clear where to start. It's not a given how to face this. It's very localized, but the where you want to get to ultimately, I think there is a right answer. I think that there is actually a lot of consensus in the room of where you want to go, but the path to how to get there, and the order in which you do things, and the speed at which you do it, deserves more time and more planning and planning than we're gonna do in the afternoon. And so my sense is that it would be very reasonable to ask the leadership to come back to you with their conversation, where the couple of things they're going to start, you know, where would they start? Let them make a recommendation. Let them think about the things, and whether it makes sense to start in one school or all schools or start on the tier two or the tier one.  And again, the reason I think that that's reasonable for you to put it back on that is the things that influence your opinion. You're not that big. Like if you have two people who are really, really strong in behavior, secondary level already, you might be able to move a lot quicker on that one. And that's an assessment that I think they can make better than you can as board members. And if they look and have that honest reflection and say, we've got great people, but not a behaviorist in the bunch, that's probably not something you're gonna start on tomorrow. And the first step might be how to go one, how to find one, how to hire one. So I think that because you are small enough that this is about people and individuals and let's face it, culture and history. I get the sense there's at least one school in this room that has gotten comfortable with reducing parents. My gut says there's at least one in this room that's not nearly as comfortable doing that. But for those kind of contextual things, you really need to influence your client's work. Let me put Matt and Bill on the spot. How do you say we should move forward? You're again the direction of coming up with the client, coming up with the client.  I could say a couple of things. I mean, the focus of this day has been talking about what we call goal two, board monitoring of student learning. And one of the objectives or deliverables of that goal is to essentially work with the leadership team to figure out what a one to three year student learning improvement goal looks like. And to do that, certainly by late fall, preferably sooner if possible. So it's already sort of built into the structure of what we've already agreed on to be talking about this and trying to figure out what challenge we want to lay down for ourselves and for the system. But I very much agree with Nate that I think one thing that's really impressed on me today is that I wrote this down in one of our exercises as an asset that we have. Because it's very clear to me that we have a very talented and united leadership team with regard to the things we've been talking about today. They are committed to working on some of these things. They've already started working on some of these things. There's not a lot of division or confusion about sort of where they want to head. So it seems appropriate to ask them or to challenge them to come back to us and say like, what would something like this look like? And then it's our job to ask questions, but then agree and just support them both politically and with resources, no matter. So those are my comments. I'm pretty much in line with Matt. I'd like to talk about this school quality subcommittee. I believe the board should be saying we'd like to have a goal in an area and what we've seen from the data over the past couple of years, but we've really been focusing on that in the past year with the school when we started to monitor results. And I know we have a very talented leadership team. And they figure stuff out. And I should say we figure stuff out as a part of that. But we need to know what the board, I think this is a system and Matt's talked about the collaboration that happens between the staff and the leadership team and the board and the community. But part of the board has a role in leadership and the role of leadership to me as a superintendent, the board has is to say, we are looking for evidence of improvement. This is what we're looking for in something necessary. You've hired a leadership team of professionals to design how to get there. And for you to question that plan and say, why do you think it's gonna do that? Nates, a lot of what they brought today is an alignment that we're doing. It's not surprising that if you read one of Nate's books and if you look at the research sites underneath them, there are a lot of the same readings that we do as a leadership team. And that you've been presented to many times before me. So it's that we'll be willing to bring back the plan, have you question it, but really I need the support as a superintendent. And I think we as a leadership team need the support of the boards to say, hey, we expect some goals to be set. And it's not a black and white goal. It's a goal of we wanna see you get there. How do you think you're gonna do it? Just as you do with, we're doing supervision and evaluation with teachers, so be improved and if you haven't, what are you gonna do to try to make that change? I'll just add a couple of things. It may seem like Bill and I planned this, we actually did not talk about this in advance, but the way that I think about this is that in 25 days, roughly 1,350 students are gonna show up at our schools to get educated. And that may not be a huge number, but there are not many aspects of my life in which I have an opportunity to take decisions that will affect what happens to 1,350 kids over the course of the next year. So I take this pretty seriously and I think that what I hear Bill asking us for is essentially to take a stand on where we think the school system should go, what we think is important, and to have unity of voice across our schools and our school boards on that and also consistency of voice, so that when we inevitably encounter resistance for challenges or obstacles, obviously we can adjust and react to them, but we maintain fidelity to the principles that we agree on when we take that decision. So, that's kind of what I would ask, and I just thought we'd have to find this is, and I've said it, I've been at four tables so far today and you've heard me say it before, we really need that support of the priorities One of the things that I've observed and learned over the past six years is it's not an easy place to be a board member when a friend of yours is saying, hey, I need this out of the school and it might be contrary to the priorities which the board has sent. That's not an easy place or comfortable place to be, but we need that because we can't do it all. If we try to do it all. Here's what I think we may want to think. We'll have a few minutes early. Then I ask you to talk at your tables and then we'll share out, but here are the two things I want you to discuss. So the first is, what are the things, particularly this is a charge to the board members but also the administrators. So the first is, what are the things we've heard about today that you think are worth being, at least in the long run, the kinds of guarantees you want to be able to make to your kids and to your teachers. What are the things that you really want to plan if I can say, hey, we really have to be doing this for all four kids. And the second question is, what do you think you as an individual in your roles, I could do over the next couple of years to help make that happen. It's gonna take all of you to get there. So it'd take about 10 minutes or so. What are the kinds of guarantees things would really hope to see in place for years from now and what can you do we've just asked this guy if he could do a few things or what can you do that's gonna help make that happen. So talk amongst yourselves and then we'll share out and we'll talk. He has been a long day and hopefully not a gropey day. I'm here to give you this conversation, Joe. It's a beautiful day on the side. We're inside. We'd love to kind of make one more round. It's really rude. I'm kind of going to take this and sharing out that entire conversation you had but something that you thought either on what you're willing to, for hoping to see a couple of years from now is a guarantee from your kids for what you're willing to do to help make that happen. Who will go a different way? How about we start in this corner here? Who wants to share a highlight or two of your conversations? Yeah. So my guarantee was that all students have equal access to high-quality insurance. And what are people willing to do to help make that happen? You get to that part? We've never met before. I'm sure you get your response. It's probably my fault because I insisted that everyone else could produce the guarantee. So this is, I mean, today's goal is to start a conversation. If we were successful today, the leadership teams would come back with a plan and you guys would discuss the plan and then you would go with the plan, so. And again, you're totally acknowledged with it as an SU, you are well down this path. You're way ahead of so many of your peers in the state who really are just thinking about how to do the first step. So you're much more in the case of how do you go back to it? And when you've done that exercise your own data on the strengths you've got, I'm going to learn a lot more in that column then. Some of the other districts I have worked with are the states. I'm up at this table. What are you willing to do or hoping it happens? I think, yeah, it's hard for us to break down without talking to our, you know, basically the L and our promotional staff. I mean, I would break them too. Personally, I would look for some really well-hanging food because they're small, they're small pictures. You always want that, and it builds momentum. And then simultaneously, you know, breaking this down, looking at these bigger strategic pieces like number five there, for instance. I mean, any second that we should be simultaneously having as I know it, the people like the legislature, how can we configure this in a way that would actually work across, you know, multiple, it's huge, you know, where we could actually get enough scale to make that process, I think, and simultaneously, yeah, good calls. So, I mean, I'm, we have to say it's a specific, I'm just writing it down, I'm just going to sit down for any of the pieces that are identifiable in a second. We can move where we can get those early. In effect, I think they're important to say. I agree, and I like to hear other victories. The other thought, just to factor in, there are things that, you know, because I've certainly floated more than a couple that would be easier beyond a single SQ. You know, a single SQ. And I think in other states, you know, legislature, particularly a lot of this happened in the 70s, you know, late 70s, federal government, Gerald Ford signed the first Special Education Act, and basically he said, you got to take care of all your kids. Because prior to that, you as a school sister, we could say, oh, you're in a real chair, you can't come in this building. And when that happened, it was a big shock. And many states created these regional entities to help. My sense is, and what I've seen across Vermont, what I've seen elsewhere, I'm a big fan of regional entities. I think it's gonna help. I'm not a big fan of waiting for the government to get around to do that for you. In a great world, they were, and it is a vice I have been giving, to your legislators and others. But my sense is that this is likely, if it happens, it will happen because some nearby superintendents who work well together are going to launch the first ones on their own. And then the state will say, hey, that seems like a really good idea. We might want to do more of it. So I just encourage you to think about what can you do with others, but not necessary. I hope for the state support, but don't wait for the state support. Well, I agree with that. We've worked with the state a lot. So, and the legislature, and they, I mean, I agree that you take the leap, but they already have been able to do it. They already do. They're already methodisms. So we've reached many groups of something that actually provide shelves and actually do something like this. Yeah, I'm with you, I think the fact that the movement of this can be driven by superintendents and by ARI, and I think the legislature will follow up with them, they definitely will have to be able to do it. And I think they're starting to get it, like a reactiveness. How about you guys? Jim? Sure. I think... Volunteer. Jim, volunteer. I think, overall, we were talking about the importance of focusing on excellent first instruction or instruction, meeting the needs of the vast majority of the members. We said that in some different ways. We acknowledged the need for meeting the social-emotional behavior and the needs of our students. We acknowledged the need for setting lofty goals to close the achievement gap, but I think fundamentally we were in agreement that that's where it would begin. Does it sound right? We talked about potentially one of the reasons that many elementary things came there, and there's a lot of U32 board members here, is that from the U32 perspective, the secondary, that's a cool. They're gonna come to us, and there's inequity in college showing up, and so if we focus on elementary with many of these things, they're gonna show up to secondary, better prepared, and we're gonna have different challenges, so that was our big thing. We spent a lot of time talking about scheduling, and I think that's not surprising considering how we have the two principles from the two small hospitals at this table. And I think particularly around scheduling, looking through that lens as a way to provide adequate additional time outside. The structure for all students who struggle with which, and Kat and I have both found challenging. And for me personally, speaking of the boys in the smallest school, we often brag about how even with a school of 80 students, we provide an experience that's pretty similar to our largest school in the SU, and in order to fully implement item number two here, we might have to talk about what we should not do in order to do that, and that's a really hard one. I appreciate that, and it's interesting how much of this does come down to scheduling, and scheduling then totally comes to priorities. And it's so easier said, you can always say that reading is really, really important, but when it comes to building a schedule, you actually have to put that in action. That's how we started the conversation was our guarantee to go on a meeting. You know, what does that look like? What are the elements that we're gonna need to put in place?  And they had this realization, it's like, what, this is just wrong. This is morally, ethically, logically. And you know, this is not about, is a state made you or made, it's that you had to, you gotta get into a place, I hope, where you're looking in the mirror and saying, I'm not doing my job. I'm not a good person. If I keep letting this happen, because 30, 40% of your kids, you're going to launch into a world in which they're not going to thrive. There's a sense, no place in this world for poorly educated kids to thrive. And that world doesn't exist anymore, so at some point you get mad and healthy, and say, we just have to do something different, and maybe you would say, the different is what we talked about today. Because what happens is, so I was watching this district when we were there for a couple of years, and they went through this evolution, and they got mad and healthy. When I say dead, it's not everybody. So we're sitting around the table, got on the leadership there, they're doing their scheduling party, they are scheduling all their schools collectively, all the key players of the room, and then just like out of a bad movie, the music teacher who realizes that four kids, in the district of 4,000, four kids are in fact going to miss music to get the reading guarantee. And the music teacher, and I'm not against music, loses it. The rent, the uncontrollable old child, you don't care, the world is gonna end, it's the only reason these kids come to school. But to be clear, the reason these four kids are missing music, they say it's huge IPs, mile long. And we actually asked the kids and their parents if they had to give up something, the reading guarantee. What did they want to give up? And they actually do particularly love music. But this music teacher, and I had to pick on her, she just loses it. And she is loud, and she's screaming, and she's standing, and you know, I've been a consultant for a lot of years, I've been in one of those meetings, and this is the way it always plays out. Everybody backs down. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Whole childhood, you know. It's the reason they come to school, they can pull. We already know these four kids don't actually like it, and they can't read very well at all in their life, but in nine out of 10 cases, 99 out of 100 cases, it's really loud, vocal, long time employee who screams ugly things, will get the entire schedule rewritten. In this district, having, you know, they spent a year, they really talked about the guarantees, they really paid to believe they were just unethical. That kids who's dramatically struggled to read, not to be taught how to read, but how to still teach. And the entire room politely said, we hear you, but no, we have a guarantee. And yeah, we'll take one more look to see how we can meet that guarantee with these four kids. But the guarantee is going to trouble. You're wrecked, and we're sticking with it. That was a good thing. That was great for those kids, it really did change the district, but it was really in that moment. And it's in case we'll maybe get on this tangent. Is it usually comes up while you're going to schedule it? And you know, I think just so often we think of scheduling as this kind of tactical thing, often done in the summer. But this is like really strategic. This is really where your values and your priorities win or lose. And I think elevating scheduling to that kind of importance is I just feel too often those very hard, difficult trade-offs get made in the worst of settings. Couple of people yelling, see what's the current thing, so on. I have empathy, I believe it can be done. And again, I think definitely having that clarity of guarantee, the priority priorities, doing it in a group, and yeah, maybe thinking outside the box, I haven't figured out how to make it work best, but totally empathize with the scheduling. And even in the bigger schools, it's still a bear. Just a little harm in the small schools. How about this group? We got us thinking about these really concrete benchmarks. And so we worked, we don't know if we came for the right ones, but the ones we talked about were every student guaranteed that every third grader reads proficiently. The guarantee that every eighth grader reads at grade level is a little aspirational. The guarantee that every student successfully completes algebra by the end of ninth grade. Now in each one of these, we start thinking about all the things that would have to be in place in order for that guarantee to counter fruition across a little five strategy areas that you talked about. And we didn't talk a lot about commitments, but who are people, if they're contract implications, quality, cognitive recommendations. I would just say I commit to, I commit to doing my best to hold space for really courageous conversations about all the different things we might do that we've never done before. That might be. I agree because our experiences, we start with those kind of, what I would call, aspirations. We've won all our kids to be proficient and capable and successful. I do think, as you mentioned, you gotta take it to the next level. What is the specific strategies? What are the things we're going to commit to to make it happen? Because that's where the rubber meets the rubber. And that's where, you know, boards and school and district leaders have to be aligned so that, because I'm just telling you a few things, this plan works and this plan will annoy at least one person. And it just, I was sharing it at lunch, and we used to work across some public schools, 55,000 kids, 125 schools. I can think of like two teachers and three parents by name, who can stop the mayor, the committee. I mean, the entire district can be a couple people. It is surprising how few people it takes to stop an idea that maybe 30, 40,000 kids would have benefited from and maybe, you know, 8,000 parents would have liked. So I do think getting agreement on not just what we wanna have as an outcome, but getting agreement on the steps we're gonna take and the things we're gonna do to get there, really helps. Because that's where you can, then you know where like this is the line if you've gotta take a stand and make sure it happens or not. Because again, most people like this have a few people who are not. But rewriting our group, we've never underestimated what a small group of people can do to stop change. Last for it, Elizabeth. We think a lot about your gig away also for instruction matters already. We truly believe that it makes everyone a part of our priorities, right? So, you know, we already have a position on the ground and that's gonna go ahead. Part of the position we're gonna talk about what can we do that's worth so we're just gonna support them because you've gained the impact of your support budget. I think I had a set, you know, my hope for today really for the retreat was that we would learn more about each other and you know, have that common understanding with each other as people too and how we make decisions and inspire us to be quite lovely learners like we asked our kids to be. Well, I think it's a great place to end. I'm not sure what else I can say that it's better than that other than I want to thank you for a huge, steep level of engagement today. I know there have been in your shoes. It is, it can be a thankless job and it's definitely a hard job. But despite, you know, the best efforts of your teachers despite the best efforts of the past, you guys have made a really good head. Good things are in place but they're not enough of them. They're not affected enough.  The better news is you got enough money to do it. Better news even yet is you've got a leadership team that's really committed to doing that. This is gonna be, it's long, hard, slow work but I think everybody's growing in the same direction. We'll build that commitment to a set of principles. These are others, get that thoughtful plan and then just stick to it. It's a three to five year effort at a minimum so that this doesn't matter if I'm not a sprint, but I am. I'm certainly even feeling like you guys are on the right path and you have what it takes. Sometimes if I at this point in the day, I'm thinking to myself, whoa, these people that are climbing a hill that they're never gonna get to the top. I don't usually share that but sometimes I do think that. You guys have what it takes. I really feel very, very happy with that regard. Just gotta stay diligent and make your ideals, your practice and your great shape. But that thanks so much for all you do and thanks for your energy today. Come back to your point. Couple things about today, couple things about our other goals and then a couple of housekeeping things. I also wanna thank Floor and Steven and Lady Processed Ari as well as Bill for helping to plan this and pull it together and of course Chris to the rest of here but he was passing on our appreciation. With regard to what we discussed today, it occurs to me that the school quality team and the leadership team are already hard at work looking at these issues and discussing them. I can't charge you with anything or even ask you to do anything. But it occurs to me that if you were to come with some idea of what a goal could look like or what a series of guarantees could look like in time for us to put them on the agenda for our September SE board meeting, we certainly could. In terms of our, just very briefly, in terms of our other goals, first goal that we have to examine our board practices, I brought my copy of this exciting tract on policy governance for one of the executive committee members to take with them when they leave. I joke, but if you read the first page and you are not hooked, then you are not paying attention. So please take this, someone who's interested and build another two copies of this. I'm pretty good at borrow as well and our next meeting is on August 15th and this will be on the agenda as we borrow and work on that. Our third goal is on community engagement and we have left the responsibility for that to all of our boards severally which is a little murky and confusing. But I just want to encourage all the district boards that are here to please put that on your agendas for your meetings this month and at least have an initial conversation about what that means to you and what resources or knowledge or steps you think are required to advance our work. So the last thing I just want to note is that I think some of the district boards are planning to meet after this meeting to discuss Act 46, specifically appointing myself and Scott to represent the board that the August 15th State Board meeting as well as to approve the written responses to the questions we got from the State Board. Those meetings are going to happen over at Berlin Elementary. I know that seems odd but given the amount of public participation we had or our last meeting on this subject we didn't want to draw a huge crowd to visit it and sort of make this a bit of a scene. So Berlin Elementary finally made a facility available. There are rooms over there for the different boards to meet. I will be available if people want to attend those meetings and answer questions or speak to what went into the thinking of that written document. You don't want me at the meeting, that's fine too. So anything else? I have to go over there to get the agendas. Just tell you the rooms but I'll get you those and I'll meet you over there. I would again echo the thanks to Nate. I think this is a great day. It really is really an alignment. We worked, we did a leadership team this summer. We did one day back in June, the previous two days. I hear it's really a leadership team. Colleagues here have been sitting for three days so I think they're quite serious. Yeah, yeah of course. So I just want to give everyone a quick heads up. So place that I work, cast and community action, we only think we do is operate the Head Start program in Central Vermont and then do a lot around trauma informed practices. And we're, our Head Start programming is holding a conference on August 23rd, Capitol Plaza.  I don't know how many people be on sort of the scope of all the partners that you have space for. But I'm hoping there's extra room for people that are interested even to drop in this, the checkout, the screening or the resilience. I'm not sure if most of you have heard about which is really a form of documentary that I think goes along a lot of what we've been talking about in different ways today. But I will follow up with all of you in some type of mass communication to let you know if it's in more details but just don't want to make sure that we're aware of this opportunity might be fit for us. Would there be materials from that conference that might be available for sharing? I would think so, yeah. I would imagine you get a set and maybe just circulate a set. In addition to that, it's very preliminary for the panel based on one of the boards we're meeting in September and October. We're planning to host an evening with the supervisors and you knowings of them. And so that'll be an invite for folks as well. One evening in the early fall. It's worth seeing. I would say you get all your answers to the answers. One thing I forgot, I just want to pass the long information of the fidelity and the gallows school boards have already. Are there any other comments or issues? Welcome back from summer. Welcome to the 2018-2009 school year. Let's get to work. Take care.


What's everyone take down here welcome back to another video today I'm gonna be doing my first game review and it's gonna be on Marvel's spider-man on the ps4 now This game for me was a lot of fun. I really would recommend it to anybody. So that's what we're gonna be doing today Let's get right into it Okay, so I got my copy of spider-man on black Friday for 50% off and I actually got it on digitally for my ps4 So for me I started playing it right away and it held my attention the whole time I didn't really want to play any of my other games because the game was so freakin good Everything was interesting about it. The gameplay was phenomenal the characters everything about the game So the first thing that I want to mention is it is more open world at least in my opinion than any other superhero game So other superhero games I always have the feeling of you have to do things in a specific order to advance and beat the game But for spider-man you could either go and do the main story missions Or you could go and do the side missions, which were also a lot of fun Or you can go and explore the city and do all the other tasks that you can do throughout the city So all in all it really gave you the choice of what you wanted to do and you could go and do it So one of the first things I did whenever I got my game is I went to all the single towers and unlocked every region So you have to do a small little puzzle and it basically unlocks everything that is in this small little region So I basically went and did all of that to me It's so much easier because you have the whole map unlocked now And you can basically see everything that there is to do the mechanics of this game We're so freaking fun all of the different little hidden stuff along the way as well that you spot One thing that I think is cool that makes me want to think that Marvel is gonna be doing other video games with other superheroes that are part of the Marvel universe Other than just spider-man is because there is the Avengers Tower in the game and spider-man throughout the game keeps Referencing them which I think is really incredible the swinging mechanics of the game is really cool The web mechanics shooting down and taking down enemies the combat is a little bit Repetitive but the more gadgets you unlock the more interesting your fight scenes are going to become because you have so many options That you have to take down the enemies super villains in the game include shock master tombstone scorpion rhino taskmaster electro vulture Martin Lee and Dr. Octopus. I did that all by memory. I can't believe I actually did that there to me Those are some of spider-man's top super villains But I think it'd be very interesting if they had Sandman Venom the green goblin But whenever you play the game and you see the ending of the game It really has a strong feeling like there is going to be a second spider-man game and hopefully we see those villains in the second Game I think that's something that Marvel is cooking up right now because of the success of spider-man I think it's definitely going to happen another thing that I want to mention for this game is that Stan Lee Makes a cameo in the game. I didn't think it was going to happen. I didn't know ahead of time I just was playing the game and it happened and I thought it was so freaking cool Especially since Stan Lee had just passed away the fact that they did put him in the video game I thought that was amazing for me now in the game There is so much to do that I could be here for so long explaining everything about the game But I actually played this game so much that I actually beat and platinum the game within three weeks Which is something that usually doesn't happen for me So one of the first hidden things that I want to mention is that you can actually find Ben Parker's gravestone within the game and that also unlocks a trophy for you But throughout the game you don't only play as spider-man you do transfer to different characters along the way One of them is of course MJ That's one of the most iconic spider-man characters, which is spider-man's crush or also girlfriend Different parts different games different movies and different shows have it kind of set up differently But in this game MJ is actually spider-man's ex another character you play as in the game is Miles Which is the son of a police officer that spider-man helped in the game during the end of the game You actually see that miles got bit by a spider and at the end credits for the game after each credit There was something special and he actually jumped on the ceiling and showed Peter Parker who also jumped on the ceiling as well Basically revealing that Peter Parker was spider-man So for me the fact that they put this in the game where I assumed whenever he got bit by the spider That's something that was going to happen to me It makes me think that if there is a second spider-man game that you're gonna be playing miles as spider-man I think that'd be very interesting or maybe Peter Parker and miles Swapping back and forth as spiderman you get to play as them both. I think that'd be very cool This game for me if I had to rate it I would rate it a 9.5 out of 10 It was so unique, but in my opinion I did beat it in three weeks. It is so freaking unique I would have gave it a 10 out of 10 But but because I beat it within three weeks of me purchasing the game I'm only gonna give it a 9.5 which is still incredibly high and I recommend this game to anybody if you're a fan of superheroes If you're a fan of spider-man Marvel or just amazing gameplay I recommend checking out this game as of right now There is three DLC announced two are already out But I'm gonna basically be purchasing one in the spring one in the summer and one in the fall just to break it up So I can actually play the game throughout the entire year So that's what I'm gonna be doing But for me, this was so fun the mechanics of the games all of the suits that you get to unlock along the way all of the gadgets All of the takedown moves all of your skills everything about the game is so freaking cool and unique It definitely for me feels like there's gonna be other superhero video games in the future that are along the Marvel lines And I think it's gonna have the same effect as this game where it's gonna be kind of open-world Story-based, but you can go and explore and do different things throughout the city comment down below if you have played Spider-Man, what do you think of the game would you recommend it to anybody? I certainly will and I definitely wish everybody would at least try out this game If you do have a ps4 because it is a lot of fun. So I hope you guys enjoyed this video I'm going to leave it here. This pretty much was my first game review. I just enjoyed the game so much I wanted to talk about it briefly here for my channel. I'm gonna leave this video here Hope you guys did enjoy. I'll see you guys in the next one. Please take care. Peace