I can put them under my superintendent's report, but I'd like to give you a recap about the work of the administrators today, and I have a lot of updates, so when it's time. I also gave you the Vermont Code of Ethics for school board members and also the roles and responsibility for school board members, and that's something I've done in the past with boards as they form. I just thought maybe we could review them and if you as a board want to sign them that would be good to do that, but some boards don't. I'm not putting any pressure on anybody, so, but it doesn't hurt. This is a standard standard two items that basically most superintendents give their boards, especially when they reconfigure the board, so yeah correct that's right that's right mm-hmm any administrators might have something we've been pretty locked in the last couple days so they probably ought to give a report on how we have this was our first day of giving out food and how when I know what the count is in Bethel but I don't know what it is in Royalton so there's two of them now and how about nine four who's nine four nobody's talking they're they're muted whoever is up you have to press star six to unmute themselves I cannot unmute them oh Tammy okay good good good I have a question about the last meeting Lisa okay the other meetings I'm okay with I guess the last meeting was that the reorganization yeah the reorganizational meeting yeah yeah at that meeting I asked to be put on as one of the three members of the full board and at least this is my remembrance of it and Andrew I think decided that he would be an alternate but I read in the minutes if three board members attend will identify three voting board members for that meeting and it says that the members are considered alternates and I thought we appointed three right oh you were going to be on okay because I wasn't sure exactly who was going to be and and then the feedback that I got back from you was because as we were kind of going in discussion the idea was that as alternates when we show up something else I'm happy with that but I asked for clarification there and that's what I got because I do recollect that um myself and Andrew would be the regular did you get these bad that's what I was talking about I haven't got a lot of no sounds okay as long as we have three we can all be voting members so I apologize for that confusion any other clarifications about the draft minute so should we approve the tree without getting amended or I make a motion to approve the other three minutes before we go any further Lisa the the rest of this when we get down when we get down to the AP in the payroll is that separate Jamie you can come in if you want are we gonna discuss that later yeah yeah are we gonna do it later all right I'm good I thought didn't we agree that we're gonna did wasn't part of this we were gonna select three people or not that's right I'm okay with that March 5th minutes to reflect that that's what we would approve for the March 5th minutes so I heard three eyes yeah I'm okay yeah that's a board comment do we have any more comments to add I just wanted to express a lot of gratitude for all the work that people have done getting packets of work in the hands of students getting meals in the hands of families as early as today this is a really hard time I think that people rely on so much nowadays in our communities and the supervisor union to make this as smooth as possible I know that there there will be hiccups we've never done anything like this before my life time for sure but for right now I'm just really proud of the efforts taking place and I just wanted to say thank you Lisa I'd like to I like to thank the superintendent I think he's gonna I think he's done a really great job in a situation where nobody knows what to do really he's provided some really good leadership and I really appreciate it thank you Bob appreciate that okay I've got a little bit of a lot to say actually so we have been met it will be been meeting for the last two days we've had a real real healthy agenda and we've taken minutes on everything we've done to try to get going I'm trying to keep everybody working together and not having anybody get a hat out ahead of any group and there's a lot of you know the the principles are all leaders and they're all a type personalities and and they you know they want to get this done and get it done well and get it done as quickly as possible but I've we've tried to bridle them a little bit and I that's not a good word but to try to keep them moving together in groups and so that we can all work together and accomplish this so I'm going to speak to different areas we have now begun a resource list for the teachers and for the community I wanted as we began this to start to ask expectations so that we all had a common understanding of exactly what we mean when we talk about contact with students what that looks like how much it's going to be done and we have settled some of you were on this call last night and if I'm redundant pardon me for that but I know all of you weren't but so we are we did have a common understanding a common agreement that the teachers would contact every student three times a week and we don't we don't know how long that's going to be but but we want to make sure either by computer online or by phone we are going to be providing a thing called Google Voice to people so they don't have to use their own personal cell phone and we are going to make sure that that's available for students to be able to contact their their teachers Ray's got a point maybe I'm not maybe we're not I don't know that was the plan it's now a paid product we're reevaluating okay so we're going to try to make that happen I don't want I we are going to allow the teachers to access the building but we're not going to allow them to come in in force we're going to stagger them so they can come at different times and we won't have these big groups of people to be able to do that so and the teacher the principals are now coming up with some kind of plan so that they come in at different days and not to have a lot of people in the building at one time so three days a week it can be more than that if teachers are comfortable what I've heard through the principals is there's an awful lot of expression of caring for the kids they they're worried about them the teachers are and they really really really want to get back to seeing them talking to them communicating with them and these three times a week will be one-on-one it won't be in groups so we'll use Google Hangout when we can and try to make sure that that happens and there will be a contact log established making sure that we get special ed services where they need to be and that will be maintained so that there is record of the contact that happens between two teachers and students we have a curriculum committee and there's expectations that the faculty will do planning check with it check with students we've been emphasizing relationships relationships relationships making sure that we have folks making contact nurses counselors librarians and support staff special ed we talked about that today and the the principals are going to make sure that those people are involved in things I know there's going to be a MTSSB group along with the counselors tomorrow there's also going to be a nurses committee meeting virtual committee meeting that will be taking place Bill Ketter Dr. Ketter has been on all these calls he's got a lot of resources for families about how do you talk to your kids about the coronavirus and things like that so he's been a real asset and he's also very worried about the kids in the responsive classroom and making sure that they're taken care of and so he's he's been on there because he's really really involved with the kids that they serve in the restorative program so we have had a meeting with the Owen was in charge of this he he worked with all the custodians and the whole SU this morning this thing about deep cleaning understanding what that is making sure all of them are doing that and we had a CDC I don't know standard a handout to them about what that entails I think it's the equivalent of summer cleaning at least that's the way we're taking it with the idea that we're scrubbing down walls and in some cases ceilings to make sure that everything is real clean we have a special ed Deb asked Deb Matthews is working on that food service started today curbside in each of the buildings in each in the whole SU I know like I said we had 79 I think in in Bethel 73 in they had 45 in the first half hour or so so people people came by they were instructed not to get out of their cars that we would bring the lunches to them and and then away they went do we have a total on what happened in Royalton anybody David or Reed you know how many lunches were served okay alright we also there's been some meeting going on with counselors and support staff and we're tonight I'm going to write a letter to the teachers that basically tells them what we expect of them we're thinking a five-hour day working with students you know online or whatever and I'm going to talk to them about the expectations of three days a week contacted with every student they serve we're a little concerned because we know that not everyone has connectivity we did talk today about computers and how many and wherever there were computers at school for student use we're going to try to get them out to the kids to use so you know that's something a lot of them some of them took them home on Friday and we're going to make sure that all of the Chromebooks and other devices that we use right now that are in the schools get out to the kids we will make sure that they sign agreements treating them well but we want to make sure that those things are out there with them and let me see what else are you gonna try to buy some to get to other kids maybe have a connection but don't have a computer we have not talked about it that doesn't mean we won't one thing else with the custodians I want to mention we've just we talked Owen talked to them about cleaning the buses and that's how it's going to be done they're going to clean the buses so when after we make runs Tara you heard Tara in the beginning of this meeting talk about the red light thing well the red light thing is a letter that came from the Department of Education Agency for Education today that basically said when the buses don't have kids on them they're not school buses any longer they're transportation like trip buses and we can't use the flashing red lights in order to stop so we're gonna still use them but they're gonna have to pull over and we have to take some care that kids don't come running out and and put those kids in harm's way so that's just another little wrinkle we think it may change I don't know but I did talk to the Butler bus this afternoon and they are they they've said in the last two days they're ready to go they have we have all the buses at our disposal and we intend to begin to use them to shuttle work to kids a lot of that in a lot of the cases that the parents have been in to pick up the work in in a case of if some of the schools they put it in a room and let the parents just come in and take it it's all marked and with the kids names on it so we're going to use the buses to get out materials and we're also going to collect those materials the idea is one run a day and that run will also take food starting on Monday that's when it'll begin tomorrow two of the districts are going to start shuttling materials tomorrow on buses that's Rochester and Stockbridge the rest of the the rest of the districts are trying to do it by having the parents come in but we know we're not going to hit everybody so that it'll start for everybody SU wide on Monday what else today we formed a we're going to be meeting with Wendy waltz the from the health department tomorrow at 10 15 we have a standing meeting at 10 o'clock and it just kind of goes till it's done with a lot of different issues that we try to cover one thing well two things actually I we got a call from Gifford today and they would like us to set up childcare for health care workers that have to report to work and so we were trying to wrap our head around that we've had to two of the districts volunteer to be host sites Bethel and and Sharon we think and we've also had some people that kind of raised their hands to man those sites with kids we're gonna I we don't have any idea how much how many people are gonna want to do this and of course there's some risk and we're concerned about that but we're still working on that we thought that if we can get everything organized that might start on Monday I'm gonna have another call with the Gifford folks and I think we're probably gonna have to do one maybe the Sharon one for those professionals that are going south to Hitchcock and yeah and yeah Alice Peckday as well but again I we didn't get this call until this afternoon and we've got a lot of work to do and I know that Randolph has set up one that's gonna happen pretty soon we've seen the the particulars about what how they're gonna do at the times and and all that so we are gonna kind of model some of that it it has to be a plan that allows them to get to work and their work hours are from seven in the morning till three which means we have to have it open before that and after that so we've got a lot of we've got a lot of labor out there that and there's a lot of willing people but we don't also know how bad this this is going to get and so that's an issue we may we may have a may have a lot of kids if we do this so that's still something in progress I wanted to tell you about it also this is the idea that kept me up last night actually it's kind of exciting I think or or something that's oh we talked about report guards child care literacy work nurses all kinds of things what else professional development some of the teachers need some training on doing professional development over virtually and we're gonna we've paired with Castleton they're gonna provide some professional development around accessing courses can you talk to that Ray to the board or so VTVLC Jeff Bernard from VTVLC which is a online education provider in the state which Bethel and Royalton are using in the high school is one teacher who is providing a class Jeff Bernard the person who runs that program is going to has offered a course to the SU teachers about how to teach online yep yep Dr. Ketterer has a lot of resources and he we're ready to send them the families about this virus and about sensitivity and trauma sensitivity and things like that so he's been a great asset throughout all of this last thing is the idea that I was telling you that's kept me up at night you're kind of my first sounding board to find out whether this has got any well actually the principles were but whether this has got any value last night when we were briefing the board one of the board members from Straford made the comment can you use the buses to take food to the elderly and I think she was talking about Straford which I think only has about three people that might need it but it's a growing issue around the SU and so I was I went home thinking about that and and really kind of got up early this morning thinking about that and I I think because of the resources we have in the transportation it might be timely to start to do kind of a town forum type thing with select board members some of the legislative leaders board members to talk about the things we need throughout this SU community kind of together online and asking questions I know I got a lot of questions last night that I really valued and it changed the way I was thinking about things but I'm thinking if we could do kind of a town hall forum knowing that we have these resources to be able to do it it may be good in trying to bring all of our resources to bear to try to help people because we're all under the impression that this is going to get worse not better before it gets before it gets better the idea you know of doing meals for for the elderly in all of the districts is important I think not just in one town that's asked for it and I wonder because we have the resources of transportation how we might use that while we go about our you know our daily work and getting food to kids and work to kids and collecting work from kids you know I think maybe if we did it on a weekly basis or every couple days for a while I'm not to say that people don't have cars but you know I the attendance on the on the meeting last night was way over the top more than I expected of 32 people on the on the call and what that says to me people want to know what's going on you know they're craving information and I don't know I mean there's a lot of ways of getting it out but I don't know what do you think I think it's a good idea the only question in my mind is that we haven't discussed that the sensitivity I mean I guess maybe the people that can be distributed and collecting it can wear gloves for one thing but you know I guess that's something we ought to talk about we talked about the custodians using foggers today do you familiar with what foggers do well I mean we're going to try to get some of those which is a way of kind of a mass cleansing of everything I wasn't familiar with those but that's something that we talked about today because the principles knew about it so you know there's that I think we're going to have to be careful and I and I think we're going to have to get some latex gloves and give them to those people that are on buses and being being thoughtful about that you bring up a good point one thing to do with returning work is just scan it all in like I have one person who handles it and then distribute it digitally then it's just one point of contact on the actual you know returning work yep so you're going to start this you're going to you're thinking about it so are you going to you're going to start it by talking to your legislatures like men and well we're going to have to get some we have a communication committee okay that that's that's whose hands I'm going to put it in how do we get this disseminated out to them so that they will call in and we can start to provide you know a place that they can talk my question is you're going to start by including all these people pulling them together and trying to create a I think it's a good idea well I don't know whether I don't know whether they need that but I I what I saw last night was a lot of need for information that's a real I mean I think that's a real positive approach to and you get community to stand behind you and that's a really good thing well I know Royalton acts like Royalton Bethel acts like but we don't have any common thread that holds this SU together you know I mean and I would I would think that we can learn from each other you know about what's going on what do you think you guys out there I Bob's weighed in but what about the rest of you I think if we publicize that we have the buses that entertain ways for them to be used I'm sure people will come up with ideas and contact I think it's a good idea as long as we have standards for you know what they need to abide by as far as safety on others I think it's a great idea no we we are that's one of the things that that baller wants to make sure a lot of their drivers just not able to do that and so we're going to provide somebody on the bus with them maybe one person maybe two people I don't know how that's going to go that the we're going to start like I said in the two towns tomorrow in Stockbridge and Rochester because they wanted to get on with it but the rest of the towns will start on on Monday but we will be providing paraprofessionals or or others who want to do this I think the teachers want to get into this you know I mean many of them are you know want to get going and and help you know somebody else well it's more about the sharing of ideas knowing that we have the buses but the sharing of ideas is more important I think than just the fact that we have the buses you know and welcome Bob as a new board member thank you one of the time we're living in and some folks have heard me say this but I still truly believe this that we should take care of ourselves first so that we can be good leaders to others and model what leadership is I would tell you that I met with the custodians and I raised my hand as the school leader to to work with them and they're awesome and they have a plan to keep our schools clean and ready to reopen but also to be cleaned and disinfected and we met and we reviewed the CDC school cleaning and disinfection protocols and they're doing all that so that's wonderful I'm really I would agree with you Bob on the fact that Bruce has been great leadership and and he's in a transition mode but at the same time it doesn't even seem it he's just the leader we expect him to be and I'll stop there for now but thank you Bruce and thank you the board for all your support thank you own so the other thing on my report I don't know whether anybody has any comments I went through a whole kinds of all kinds of things you know anything on food service anything on our committees anything that I've left out I do have a question so the three times a week contact how what about special teachers yeah that's a good question Andrew we haven't gotten to that yet it's first on our agenda for tomorrow but it's and it's up here on the board to to deal with nurses counselors art music PE librarians special ed OTPT etc also student support services and MTSS coordinator you know they're all things they're all people that we haven't talked about deeply about yet so and we're good we're on for doing that tomorrow anybody else want to comment you were all the the principles are all on the call so yeah we have I've got another call with her last name's Harris from from Gifford tomorrow after we meet as a administrative team there's a committee working on this and we also have the feedback from what Randolph did so that we can make sure that we try to duplicate it I don't believe they were charging for it there were lunches provided the time was 645 to I think 330 or something like that you know I I don't I think we're gonna have to have not just one size fits all I think we're gonna have to have a couple different age classrooms you know doing this so it's it's more than one classroom you know so but that's only that that discussion is only about four hours old so I really the committee's gonna come back with some things they met after we finished our administrators meeting for about a half an hour to discuss things and there are five people on that committee so we're gonna get an analytical cost I mean we're all these ideas are good I like them all I'm in favor but well it is gonna cost some money and we ought to have we ought to have that laid out for us so we understand what it is well we have we have contracts with all these groups the teachers the support staff the bus company one one planet folks maybe maybe maybe we don't I'm not sure about the contracts with them but I would could ask Carrie about it she's researching that and we we're gonna have to pay them you know but you know there there's so many things that are that we're not doing now field trips and ordering materials and you know all those things you know but I think you know somebody can put together an analytical well yeah it's gonna be a guess you know it's not gonna but at least we're gonna have an idea and you're gonna be able to say it's all within the budget hopefully you know absolute well absolutely well salaries are already budgeted why don't you talk to this is on your mind food service the meals that are being provided we're utilizing the summer food program because our schools are closed so that is fully the state that's what the state has told us to do secretary French issued an order in support of the governor's order that we're required to pay all contracted salaries so as we all discussed we should utilize them because we have to pay them regardless so that's already been budgeted for and the transportation contract was already budgeted for I had a call from but today asking whether we were gonna fulfill the contract I said yeah we have a contract don't worry you know we'll pay your drivers will or we'll pay you to pay your drivers and so yeah but I think it's like anything you look at it put on a piece of paper mm-hmm and and then you add and subtract multiplying divide whatever you do and come up with all right this is what we have and this is what our costs are going to be or we think they're going to be you think we can do something like that for in the next couple weeks maybe I think maybe it's it's things that we didn't anticipate that are going to bite us you know more than anything else and you know because that we're in such an unusual time but that's noted and we'll try to do something with it others we can't order them no you know I I'm very some of them are very sensitive about this and and some of them are concerned about carrying anything back to their families which is you know a concern but when I was over at Bethel today you know the teacher Holly Williams was out in the parking lot delivering meals I mean she and I said to her I said thanks for doing this and she said I need to do something you know I just need to be busy and they you know you know they will step up I know most of what I want from the teachers though is communication with the kids so and we are going to allow them to come back to the buildings and access telephones there if they need to so doesn't have to be on their own personal phone or anything else so so Lisa other than the code of ethics if you want to talk about that or the roles of the board maybe the board wants to discuss this this isn't the first time I've given this out I've given your board this board I think a year ago this same paperwork so it'd be great if you guys were good to sign it but I can't compel you to do that so before we jump into the code of ethics and the other element I wanted to weigh in on all of that discussion on all of those things you identify Bruce this is Tammy yeah just a community member and so this spread fast and students can be carriers though they are not showing symptoms and so as we as we think about moving forward we need to kind of follow in the shoes of Italy and mitigating any groups larger than a certain size potentially 10 whether it be a child's age you know K through 5 or a child group age 6 through 12 and mitigating that so that we can isolate that is very very vital and I think that Gifford is definitely aware of that I'm confident that Gifford has a sense as to funding resources that might be available by a grant for state funding in such a state of emergency and there might be funding that we can learn from to Bob's concerns or Chris's concerns or all of our concerns as a result of the pediatric responsibility to the community maybe there's lessons we can learn from other schools in our area on how they've afforded some of these options thank you anybody want to weigh in on what Tammy just said I think she's right yeah I agree with what Tammy just said I think those are important things to be thoughtful as we proceed think I think looking to Italy we can learn Italy is about 10 days ahead of the United States but I did not pay attention to the school system in Italy at this moment in time but I think that that would allow us some predictability as to if you have if you have friendships with educators in Italy what can we learn from them to help our community but not only our community but our students Lisa you want to talk about these other things or not I copy right in front of me I have a different PDF that I got earlier today but it's something that we look at we try to look at annually and it's in the orientation book from the Vermont School Board Association so I think in general it's just sort of the best craft our work to each take a copy read it and then discuss it in more detail at our next meeting at least I've been through it and I've wrote a lot of comments what I've got to say is going to take a while okay so you might you might not you might not want to do it right now so I'm saying I'll just soon I don't have a problem with that but in your mind the newest number of the group I just didn't want to catch you oh I'm ready sure okay thank you I'm sorry I haven't had a chance to thoroughly go through everything so Bob do you have something you'd like to share well I can leave the discussion if you want it's fine I don't mind do you want to do that I mean I've got I've got a whole lot of a whole lot of questions and a whole lot of thought behind this and at this point in time I wouldn't I wouldn't sign it at this point in time okay I don't know how the other board members feel if they've read it yet or not but should we just go around have you all looked at it we we've looked at it in previous years so you know Bob I think you should just go over what your issues are with it okay in the past I think we've signed it nobody's weighing in right this minute but Bob similar to what Andrew said if you want to share what you find that you disagree with that would be I don't know as I would disagree but I I've been in the situation like this okay I've been I've been in a situation like this as a principal and where where there was a where there was a complaint file against the board member okay and actually I was involved in filing the complaint and when it came to vote before the board it was denied that was my experience okay and it was really serious really serious well let me just go through a couple of things here so have the board members signed this have board members already signed this no not this year I mean I believe so that's what Andrew I don't I don't I don't I haven't kept it I guess we it was more or less okay all right so in my experience my experience who decides that there's a violation of this code of ethics that may be but if there's a violation if there's a violation here and in my case it was very serious get very serious so if there's a violation here is it is that the responsibility of the superintendent to work with the board or file the complaint with the board how's how is that it's not talked about here but it's gonna say you just you just went right out of the picture okay well that should all be written down in here if that's the process that you're gonna use the process that I was involved with all the and all the work was done by the superintendent presenting it to the board and then the board voted in the process that the process that I was involved with because it's gonna take some kind of a board somebody's gonna have to say you know that this is an all right and you violated the ethics agreement and if you're a board member and you're involved with the investigation or talking about it you're not gonna be able to make that judgment but the board's gonna have to make that judgment so my sense is it belongs to the superintendent he needs to and he would need to bring it before the board so the recommendation so in your board handbook is the process for addressing board member misconduct what is that page 77 I think I'm gonna read that whole page says it will be considered misconduct for a member of the board of directors to fail to adhere to the expectations agreed to by the board or to engage in conduct that is otherwise injurious to the district the board chair or if the situation involves the board chair another board member shall document and give written notice of the alleged misconduct to the board member such written notice may be subject to a public public records request and should be limited to a description of the alleged conduct and the specific expectation that was violated by the conduct after three documented instances of alleged misconduct or one instance of serious misconduct that directly harms the district the board chair or if applicable the executive committee of the SU SD board will meet to review the conduct of the board member the person who is the subject of the misconduct allegations will be given a chance to view the documentation of alleged misconduct and to meet with the board chair executive committee to respond to the allegations discussions of board members performance is a permissible subject for discussion an executive session under Vermont's open meeting law however any action taken to censor or issue a formal request for resignation must occur in public session after meeting with the subject of the alleged misconduct the board chair or executive committee if applicable may recommend one or more of the following actions to the full board of directors for its action board level discussion of misconduct including a possible vote of censure against the person in question communication of the misconduct to the community represented by the board member a formal request for that person's resignation from the board of directors before taking any of the above actions a board should also consult with its attorney to ensure the wording of any proposed motion does not create legal issues for the district you're welcome and it doesn't include the superintendent at all not at all well my my sense is what you know what the board votes on and agrees to but you're gonna have something in here that tells how you're gonna handle a complaint okay there's nothing here in this page talks about that so it may be in there the ethics that we're gonna follow and then the board handbook then outlines right and you as yeah and as a board because it's more of an operations manual thing rather than adhering to your code of ethics yeah usually two separate documents but you'd still have to say that's what you're gonna do that's all I'm saying I'm not saying not to do it I'm just saying that's what you have to you have to have something in there that says how you're gonna how are you looking for like a sentence that says finally this this document can be addressed by yeah however yeah however you would do it I would still vote I would still vote for the superintendent only because I've been through the process and I've seen how it works I would stay with that because the superintendent isn't our supervisor and so usually it goes to the person that has the highest rank and the superintendent doesn't have any rank over the school board members well in my opinion certainly be able to vote on it you know as a board to be able to vote to do what you want to do if the board so chose we could make a motion to agree to that agree to adhere to this code of ethics I mean we're not all together to physically sign it at this moment well I have some other I have some other questions okay okay I'm under the first act within the scope of official role recognize the responsibilities see the schools are well run but not run by them meaning one of the board members okay so the board let me get this right I made a note to myself so at board meetings it's really important that the board takes votes and not deal with general opinions you understand what I'm saying okay not just say that it's the general opinion of the board you know for feedback they're only on everything how to promote our schools to try to attract and read is looking for feedback and then the board can give their opinion as opposed to a process where we need to really agree and formally go through that process if that makes sense well if that's a responsibility the board to see that the schools are well run then part of that responsibility is to take some kind of motion or action to make sure they are well run all right let me go on I think any you know if there's a subject of disagreement or something you can put forward a motion or you know any board members can do that right yeah you know if we all kind of are agreeing you don't necessarily need to have a vote on it must feel that I respect your opinion Andrew only as a member of the board and not to assume in the any individual authority when the board is not in session otherwise directed by the board so so that that goes back to what I've told you guys before that you have no authority as individuals you only have authority as working together and that's I understand all that so if you're at a board meeting supervisor union board meeting and you're appointed to represent us but something comes up that you're not sure how the board feels about but you like it are you going to vote you're going to vote yes and that's going to be okay well we hear at the full board we've sort of been spoiled to the last little while we've all been making the full board meeting so that makes it really easy to know what people are thinking and we we have had consensus for quite some time on a number of issues so there have been time when we have had to say at the full board that we don't feel comfortable making an agreement at that time and that we really just need to bring the information back to our board and then come back to the full board in order to make a decision okay I want you I just want I want you know like board members are that's a separate board which has separate authority so they are as individuals of that board able to make judgment calls and all that by themselves but you know in general I think the general practice is that we should try and get the agreement of our board before we do something well I think that statement not necessarily legally necessary you know I agree with us telling the principal what to do as an individual is not legally we're allowed to do it can only tell the principal what to do as a board where I guess a superintendent tells me I'll get to that Andrew um give no directives as an individual board member to any school administrator or employee publicly or privately understand that okay give no directive but does that mean that you can't have a conversation you can't express an idea you can't express an opinion does that mean that I think there doesn't mean that your idea should hold more weight than any other member of the community exclusive of your time with the board and the board making a decision so you can share an idea as they can choose to to do what they want with it is my my interpretation of that yeah and I think similarly like you know I post on facebook sometimes about school board stuff and I try and be clear when it's me as an individual talking versus the board having put out a release or something like that or something that we voted on as a board you know try and separate what my individual opinion is versus the board collective opinion you know but you do have an individual opinion sometimes Andrew right okay when I I try and be as clear as I can to say you know as an individual this is what I think okay all right let me go ahead here avoid making commitments that may compromise the decision making ability of the board or administrators now that says commitments okay but it doesn't say opinions says commitments so no board member can make a commitment you can't do that because your takes it'll take on this board it takes majority to make a commitment one person can't make a commitment but one person can have an opinion I don't think I have any problems with the middle I think I'm okay with all that respect my peers my constituents and confidentiality considerations I have no problem with the confidentiality piece I think that's right voice opinions respectfully and treat with respect other board members administrators school staff and members of the public I agree with all that what if you're discussing something with an administrator or a board member and they walk away and not listen to you who says respectful in that situation there you go that's right you would need more information maintain a confidentiality and information discussion exact recession I agree with all that um there's nothing there's nothing in here about what a board member would expect from an administrator I have a problem with that this is all about board members there's another there's another part there's another there's another part to this and that is honesty and openness by administrators with board members answering your questions that's really important a board member you need because you represent the community you need to be able to walk up to an administrator ask a question and expect some kind of an answer and if you don't get the answer the administrator can say I don't know now that's fine but you need to be able to do that you need to be able to have conversations your community and that we enjoy the fact that our administrator is meeting so we have a forum do they do you as a superintendent and do the principles as principles have a code of ethics that you are expected to a you too I mean because I mean that's part of it though for me at least this document is the code of ethics for school board members it's not the code of ethics for principles or superintendents but I would assume that there's a separate code of ethics for you all and that that would go into you know any decisions that the board makes about your performance yeah it has it has somebody jumping in we have licenses and we have responsibilities through those the licensure there's a person at the AOE that basically looks at all complaints and and and because we have those licenses can take them away so if we you know the ethical standards that that are written for superintendents and for principles so I can't pull them up right this second but I can certainly get copies of them if somebody has an issue with so the superintendent and superintendents in charge of the principles so if a board member has an issue with way administrators behaving they can bring it up you know in presumably an executive session with the rest of the board and then if it's deemed by the board to be something that needs to be addressed then the board as a whole could take actions but sounds great and it was not written in here but that's I agree you totally but that's not again it's not this isn't addressing that part of it like that's that's just how the board operates so it's not like what we're expected to do it's what we like it's a completely separate connection this document isn't an attempt to address every single aspect of being on the board it's just what we're expected to provide so this is the code of uh the standard for educators uh you have that okay he's going to pull it up this is the standards for leadership standards for vermont and uh you can all see that thanks andra for producing that quickly um could we just have that forwarded to lori email so that we can look at it another time yeah I don't mean to I I didn't want to miss the moment that you were asking about that's a good idea that's good thank you uh Ray's doing that right now great thank you how long's the document 51 pages 51 pages oh wow it's wonderful reading material so you guys can like are there changes that you would want to see to this before you agree to it or oh yeah before I agree to it I'd want some changes made yeah well I mean it sounded like you wanted to have more clarity on things that are kind of different subjects but they wouldn't necessarily be part of this document other than maybe like the um something about where you would look to find out how to enforce well I think I think you can't have a document like this if you're not good if you're not going to enforce it in some way or you know you're not going to handle the complaint so um and again I'm just telling you my experience was that the board the board was the jury and the superintendent presented the evidence and it and I'm telling you it was a very difficult case I was involved with and then a board member that did something that was really really wrong so um the other thing is protocol outlined on page 77 of the handbook you're talking about what um was read just here yeah yeah I don't think so and then from the board by the full board well no and and part of that reason is is because this happened to be a 15 member board and there were a lot of relationships on the board and um and it was so it was really difficult it was a real difficult situation presenting the issue to the board and then having the board take a vote um and in my opinion it was done more with the relationships on the board than it was with the process the the guilt of the person that did what they did so there are layers of unethical behavior is what I'm hearing yes yeah okay in that case it would be one where you would then bring it forward to the SU board and and bring forward that all of the board members on that school board were acting unethically um and that then it would be up to then the full SU board to then decide if all of those people on that school board need to be removed or censured or whatever it needs to be executive board right the executive board it talks about our board can move the situation forward our board can censure and move it forward to the full board which can then vote to remove so that takes that conflict of interest where the relationships on your individual district board could negatively come to play sort of out of play because we don't have the same relationship with people on fbud or um our side or or Sharon or Stratford in my opinion well I think those would all be things that you'd have to put together in a document people would have to look and agree to or not agree to so and then there's one more thing here says at the very last paragraph it says once the vote is taken a decision has been made by the majority in other words um agreeable and by the principles outlined in the coda ethics that will do everything in my power to work as a productive mentor leadership team once the vote has been taken and the decision has been made by the majority which means that um if you take a budget vote and you know let's say the majority of the members of the board vote to support the budget and you don't then that means that you have to stand behind the board and the budget that's that's what that statement means is that right yes the public record that you disagreed would be your minute so there would be a public record that someone disagreed however it it's still political racist my candidate doesn't win but that filled my representative no i just i read it i don't know what i think about it but i'm just saying that that would obligate everybody everyone on a vote budget no matter what it is firing of a teacher you know whatever that once it happens and even though you might adamantly disagree with it that if that if you follow this you cannot or you should not step out if somebody says well how did you feel about that and you could say i didn't agree with it but you really couldn't say it didn't agree with it you would have to say that the board voted to do this so therefore you have to you have to agree to it you know and i i kind of don't like that too much well that's not true because we had a same situation this year in a budget that passed and two members didn't like it and their community members asked them at the annual meeting why they didn't support it and they gave their reasonings so i mean you can still express the reason for you turning down or not agreeing with the majority vote and that's is that how you interpret that lisa you can still express your opinion um however i think the budget is still the budget and i think if we get into like but that's not you know i just used the budget an example there's a lot of other things that happen in front of the school board where votes are taken very critical votes to take in on issues that are very difficult so i think that what's really important you can express that you disagree but i think that what's really at the end of the day at the board can say we took a vote this is the budget as is you can express why you disagree what would be unethical is then working to defeat that budget because you disagreed with the budget so i think you can express your individual opinion but then still at the end of the day if your budget is your board and working across purposes with the board is where things get get more challenging and less ethical okay that that's your opinion i don't know if that's the actual that's what everybody would agree to but let's say you didn't and you were upset about whatever the situation was and and you made a statement out there in public that said you didn't agree with it then you just violated the code conduct here and that's all i'm all i'm trying to point out is that a lot of these things that are that are here are judgment calls by somebody they're a judgment call they're not any one of us at any point in time can violate this not thinking that you are but you would be in somebody else's opinion sitting there that didn't like what you said okay so all i would say is when you do things like and i'm not opposed to this okay i'm opposed to how some of this is written because i do believe in code of ethics okay um and i think it is important i just would like to make sure that whoever's interpreting them understands how they're going to be interpreted it's not up to you me or andrew or anybody else to decide what's right and what's wrong it's not going to be that way okay so the code of ethics is it's tough stuff it's important but it's tough and and not everybody's going to agree but i'm that's why i think that if you're going to have this put together a process that says okay this is how a complaint's going to be handled if there's one file okay and i think we have that i mean if this is for board members so we do have that of the handbook for board members well that's not law that's not law no so it's not law and i'm i mean i want to read you a law lisa to behave ethically and represent our community and i don't fortunately in my time on a school board i haven't seen board members behave in ways that were illegally okay that were illegal okay um so i haven't had to delve deeply into a lot and i'm happy to reach out to our legal resources when we do well here's uh this document is important because it sets forth the expectations for board member behavior and i'm concerned that we'll have now spend title 16 you're familiar with title 16 title 16 is educational law for the state of Vermont powers is a school board just something you might be interested in a school board may also a school board may also approve or disapprove rules and regulations proposed by the principal or superintendent for conduct and management of public schools in the district just want you to know that there's a lot more what year um this is current and you know if you go on to Vermont statues and look up powers of the school board it's all right there it's pretty clear i was the only reason i brought it was that i thought that each of the boards need to make a commitment to each other at this time you know not you know just all of you agreeing on how you're going to act basically and that's the only you know that's the only uh the the only reason for this i think is that we all have to have a standard that we live by and uh and that's i don't know there's been a lot of things that have been talked about there though that weren't my intent i just think you guys need to have a a standard to live by or disapprove rules and conduct for their school and so in my mind with the training that i've had from the school board's association um annually for the last four years we pay a lot of money for people to write rules and unless i see things going in a direction that i find concerning i think it's not the board's role most of whom are not educators i mean on this board now 50 percent of us um more than that um if you take into account the private teaching that Lisa does um our educators so we have more background experience but in general i think that board members are lay people and so probably not well suited to be approving the exact function of a school and i for one um see my role as one of offering guidance offering approval um related to policies et cetera that's why i've spent so much time on the policy committee um but i don't see my role as approving specific roles of rules and procedures at the school level um i'm not sure what andrew chris and lisa um had to say they haven't weighed in very much um yeah i mean i generally agree with that that we're more setting the direction and and philosophy and policy and the administrators do the implementation of what we direct i think that's kind of different than what we were discussing in this so i guess by the way tara just pointed out to me that there's an updated copy of this in the handbook uh page what is it 41 41 and uh there may be some this is an older one that i had that i've given out before basically but it's in the handbook and we if you're going to sign something you might want to think about doing the most current okay so i think that we've all got um some level of experience and expertise behind us but that i i definitely defer to the superintendent and the administrators and i feel like as a as a parent and a school board member and a citizen of my community i'm i'm gonna provide feedback but i don't expect that i'm going to be um determining or creating policies i'm going to help um we can be expected to do but it's not it's the superintendent's role to do that yeah i'm good uh with adding some language that you know directs again the code of ethics to the page 70 side of the handbook but i feel that the rest of it is good i think we can get into lots of different what-if scenarios and things and play different things out but it's it's just going to be perpetual it's all just a matter of how we deal with something as it occurs and you know i would maybe propose that for our our board retreat in the summer if we want to we could have you know you know there's videos online on on ethics and you know how to interpret situations if we feel like we need any sort of board ethics training or something like that but uh but i think as written i think i'm good with with the way your things are laid out uh it may be that we just need to update uh or have some sort of operations manual that reminds us of where some of these things are at you know because there are these different documents and it's important to remember where they are i will update this and send it i'll send you the updated one tomorrow i didn't think you were going to do something tonight but are we looking at the 2019 i think it is yeah it's the yes no it's the book from 2019 the essentials of essentials work of school boards that's the most recent board manual that vsba is put out okay because i've got that in front of me now and i think the page on code of ethics is yeah so the the stuff that was outlined on page 77 that's the general recommendation for how the school board deal with that's what that's what terra read yeah right so do we need to actually like separately maybe next meeting or something like officially adopt that as our board and the policy and then that applies you know what i mean like it like you want to tie in both together the rules and then we need to separate if we're going to officially accept this then separately accept something that says what do you do when we're broken i would recommend that you all read page 76 so i want to read it to you you know i don't think i think we should move on but come up with kind of concrete next step so if we don't want to be accepting this particular document like how are we going to change it what are we going to do differently you know and it sent all of chapter four seems like it addresses everything that you all have been talking about the common board challenges so perhaps it would be good to all read that maybe i need to get you the new books i only gave them out to new board members we all got them last year i got them last year i have mine all right when they came out we issued them to all we gave the new board members the ones we had on hand but we don't have any more so basically um board member conduct is at our next board meeting so we'll all review and discuss at our next meeting thank you to our business managers report Lisa before you go there i want to just make sure we get a chance to have Fiona maybe give some insight into how the kids are feeling her friends and others you know no not now but but if she's willing to do that at some point you'll i'm hoping she's still there i'm having to do online classes but i think everyone is starting to understand that like we need to close and how it's important that we are but overall i think they're handling it well i don't think there's any like anger or anything the transition then to learning from home so a lot of our teachers just started posting everything today like today was basically the first day because yesterday we were just getting ready and i think they were making a lot of plans but none of my classes have been any like facetime or anything it's just been like assignment so i would have done in school so it's not bad so far she's a student representative she's a junior or senior what are you this oh okay so she's a student yeah student yeah she's that wrong she's a senior um with some of my classes it's like a high school assignment so that like they're how you only way to have a student program kind of have to just look at examples in the book to teach us yeah what we're doing but so have you talked to your friends um i've talked to a couple of them i think she's students are talking with each other like small groups i think it's seniors or senior i haven't really done anything like that yet but i'm sure we'll because i think in some classes we're gonna start using like google hangout and stuff like that to just like have discussions but our teachers are making themselves available for questions and everything so yeah i'm wondering so i this is like me thinking about like um just like an educator of like so you all communicate prior to us being out of school are you still doing that level of communicating like like phone and texting and yeah yeah how do you all communicate um share with share that with us some of its uh secret i only talked to like a few of my friends outside of school but i mean we don't really text about school or anything like that i'll probably start talking to more people now that i won't be seeing them for the next three months i'm sure a lot of kids have been hearing this three months three weeks that's gonna say let's uh let's be a little more optimistic than that what do you what do you think is so your opinion i'm gonna put you on the spot a little bit so um what's what are you worried about classes and units and learning everything you need to know before the exam because the exam is just sooner than the rest of the classes so i'm kind of i'm a little bit worried about that but sure and if you could change one thing i mean it's only been two days so i think it's really important to remember that it's only been two days if you could change one thing what would you change and you don't need to know the answer by the way yeah i think a lot of times when students are on boards or in in assemblies adults put them on the spot so don't worry about that and just know this and i know mr mccracken is available to you but all of these adults are here to help you and as a school waiter if you know what the students need you can reach out to any one of us and we'll try to help you thank you fiona i'd like to ask a question um is there anything that you believe we could do better uh some way of providing things i know school closed pretty abruptly and you guys you know i i guess if you hadn't been given a little warning that maybe you should take some materials home uh that you probably would have been worse but is net hindsight 2020 is there something that we can do um that you're lacking that we could help the student body with i guess i'm talking about the high school students really uh on the facebook page and everything because it's really not municipal it's happened like so fast so i think everyone's kind of like understanding that i can't think of anything because i think it's going well so far but there might be some problems in the future well would you urge um your fellow students to reach out to mr mccracken or your teachers to be basically let us know what would be helpful because i know we put you in a tough spot and uh we'd like to be able to make it as as comfortable as it possibly can in a tough situation so please just talk to us um so we we know what's going on okay because i don't think we can i don't think we can imagine everything uh or anticipate everything so thank you thanks for being aboard so mine i hope is very short i've been working with my staff the last two days to develop some kind of normalcy for us um what we've come up with as of today subject to change um rose and i are working remotely all day long eight to four from home i will be in the office in the evenings when needed um i have to stay home with my two kiddos ann is working from five to eight every day in the morning joe is coming in eight to twelve and jane right now is working in the office eight to four and lisa is willing to do whatever we need her to do so we're trying to develop what will be best because we're trying to remember to keep under ten people in the central office building also and trying to just keep you know workflow going normal so bills get paid and payroll still happens because we have to pay everybody so we'll plug along do you have a current do you have a current budget report not with me tonight no you want to get one for me i send them out once a month to the boards wouldn't you do that um i usually wait for the first ap run did you guys hear that so that would have been last week but with everything that happens so probably next week it was about budget update yeah i wanted to know when i was going to do a budget report and i said i send them out once a month and i try to get them out after the first ap run of the month but with everything that happened last week it didn't happen so it'll probably be later this week or next week just the way i've been sending them yep okay via email the pdf and then the awesome spreadsheet that andrew created the fact that she set up last wednesday's injured service as a time for us to plan for the potential to be out of school like the foresight that she had on that and the whole su staff and had on that that our faculty were able to plan for a full day last wednesday to be able to be ready was makes us in a much better place so just so you know the work that the middle school faculty did the tarrant institute for innovation and education at and uvm have shared that information statewide and some people have taken it out further than that and i'm really proud of what we've done and i'm willing i'm happy to put that into the minutes with tammy and i'll i'll send that to her read david andrew i got a couple of things you hear me okay yes okay um the last couple times we we've been together we've talked a lot about the open house in the spring that we use to recruit folks this week we're going to start planning that that's going to be on hold for now and have to think about what other ways we have for reaching out to folks i will share that last friday we had two students from chelsea who came in shadows and again good experience and that's one of our recruiting tools doing that i don't have any questions about about that or suggestions one of the things that i i picked up that the recent meeting was the idea doing a competitive analysis that's on my to-do list if maybe being able to work from home allowed me to get to more projects that might be a bust of all of it like that so i think that's good to deal with uh read uh bob has a question or comment would you just talk about your your new schedule class schedule sure our current schedule bob is a modified watch where we alternate between green days and gold days on monday tuesday wednesday thursday the last period of the day fourth period uh is meets every day for 50 minutes monday to thursday and then on friday there's no fourth period but all the other classes meet so there's six six classes on friday that are 50 minutes basically the block classes are 80 minutes each the new schedule that faculty staff and parents all weighed in on will be a 52 minute schedule where classes meet four times a week and what might be termed a modified waterfall schedule um the staff unanimously on that and the feedback from the students including yonah who was on that a panel of students who met with the faculty um was drawn in favor of shorter class periods and what we currently have uh the other big change came out of last april fourth meeting where a group of parents came to the board and asked the administration to consider expanding the course offerings the students could take from seven courses to eight and we have agreed to go to a eight course schedule for students so they'll be able to squeeze in one more elected of our course courses that time they choose to fill that time next week how's that i totally agree with everything you've done um i'm still trying to figure out this eight classes eight classes four times a week so how does that work you're skipping a day or what yeah so each each class will skip a day so on monday periods one through seven will be and then we drop a class on Tuesday you know with the different seven periods and then on wednesday thursday and friday we actually only have six classes and the fully extra travel schedule we have what we've been calling learning block which with 45 minutes currently five days a week and that will drop down to three days a week and what do you do in those blocks the uh students you know one one thing people might be familiar with is the idea of callback time it's a time where students can schedule themselves with a teacher where they need extra help with a class where they need to make up work they can schedule themselves with a teacher or we we have a computer software program where the teachers can schedule the students to come see them so the students are all accountable work through attendance uh they need to be somewhere are they enough there's a study hall yeah okay but the idea is there for enrichment um and for extra help good thank you on the topic of scheduling we were going to spend one of our learning blocks this week giving students an overview of all the classes uh then we're going to take the next two learning blocks to give them time to talk to their advisors about what we take steps for next year and then ask them to choose their courses for next year uh we're going to push that off at least another week come up with another plan but i think we can do that remotely uh the challenge might be that we're not going to be able to answer students questions as well as that of faculty in front of them to answer questions about course but all right what they sign up for now allows us to build a master schedule they can change their choices up until the seventh day of the school year all right read are you involved with the scheduling are you personally involved in scheduling you are do you make the decisions on how many um how many um sections you have of the class you do you know what what we do now uh bob and we after all the students choices and do our student management course management software which is called wetland school and we then give priorities to the computer and it uses an algorithm to identify the most efficient schedule um where the most number of students can get the courses that they want to take then what we do is we come back and we got a stress test that we take a look at a couple of students who have the most you need scheduling needs uh for example we want to make sure that students can get their uh you know Spanish three class in along with tourists and then we'll take two or three students from each group look at their schedule and see where they may have a lot of gotten their first choice of classes and we might rearrange some schedules manually to make sure that we're taking care of students needs in a way that the computer's not sensitive right do you um I'll just in my experience I've scheduled music and pe first that's what we did last year we scheduled the music classes first and uh if you had a chance to see the grant letter you'll see that one of the outcomes of that is we have many more students enrolled in our music program this year last year so that will continue to be a priority of ours we we also will prioritize the AP classes because they can only meet once in the schedule and they naturally have low enrollment so we don't want to have eight kids you want to take AP actually we have nine kids you want to take AP uh physics next year I believe we don't want to go out with a schedule that the forces five of those kids they're not be able to take AP to this how many how many students do you have nine through 12 it changes every week uh we've added two new students in the last three weeks but we're running about 157 students who are enrolled in our program on a daily basis we have another 38 students who are technically ours uh some of whom we see who come to the school and get transportation for their alternative program some of them get themselves to their programs or get picked up uh through special transportation so our our total uh number on our roll is about 197 give or take on any given week thank you yeah you're welcome Andrew, David, anything you know what we might have said before has shifted to what we are thinking now uh we have been both going to build this plane while flying it and I think that I'm so impressed I can't say that enough with how well our teachers are doing at um meeting the academic needs of our kids in a very unexpected and new way so I've been meeting daily with the Bethlehem elementary staff virtually um in Google Hangout meetings which is nothing we've ever done before but we are hanging out and and they're doing great and we've been just trying to be very prepared about how to have take this one day at a time one week at a time and potentially um for a long time so and I would add we're meeting virtually and using Google tools on the South Royalton campus as well but we want to work together on both campuses at this school and we have a virtual faculty room with all of the teachers in both campuses logged on I'm sharing ideas and working together it's been tremendous to see how teachers have ended up with the plane. Alright this is Reid again I don't know if you were able to kind of look into the high school section of the principal's report but in there I included a copy of the grant request letter that we sent out to donors looking to raise money to fund some exploration of a music rehearsal stage at the high school we received a large grant from a anonymous donor that quickly met our goal it took less than two weeks for that to turn around so we began talking with an architect last week about how to put together a request for bids our proposals we started looking at some of those like the Springfield library just put one out so our committee who knows when that will meet now but we've got a committee that includes music boosters and members of the community who are vested in what happens with the the stage of Torium or whatever you want to call it the idea would be creating some extra storage space for the music program and the theater program and giving ourselves more space so that high school students would be able to practice right now we sometimes have high school students practicing their instruments out in the hallway and it gets a little bit loud at time so there's definitely a room for the more appropriate and choir quality space for our versioning program the the concept of the committee that's working on this is that we would see private foundation money private donors that fund this so that's where this ahead are you are you expanding the the stage area is that what you're talking about read or a new auditorium or what are you talking about yeah in the letter that's linked into the principal framework on the second page there's a list of items that we're including as what we'd like to find funding for that includes upgrade to the stage that the stage itself wouldn't change but it would include debt and prop storage installation and purpose of sound and lighting equipment we had a development last week i signed a contract with the theater and woodstock that is loaning us their lighting equipment about five thousand dollars worth of lights and ringing and those are on permanent loan with us the only stipulation is that we loan it back to them upon their request and that we maintain the equipment with with working lights and keep it operational for so we won't need to go out and spend much money on lighting equipment included in the specs for this are a grand piano and possibly some types of collapsible here in audience seating that would create more of a stage effect in the gym as opposed to you know just have a folding chair on the gym floor where does the what is the band and the chorus where do they where's their classroom now is it on the stage or against the no the elementary and oh downstairs teachers share a classroom in the basement and occasionally because our schedule difference on the elementary schedule whenever the schedule changes because we have a two hour delay or a half day uh it creates the need to juggle elementary and high school classes around because they're kind of competing for the same thing uh the the other thing that is a space thing we're looking at at the high school is uh you know there's been a lot of talk there's been mentioned frequently this past year of some sort of alternative placement how nice that would be for us to have as a resource for high school students we have a couple of high school students right now where we think would benefit greatly uh making that 58 students maybe and we don't have a lot of options for that so one of the things that was going to happen this week was having everybody who might have a stake in that sit down and start to talk about what that looks like in an ideal world we locate a classroom that we can use as a home base for the whole day um we might end up sharing a classroom but that's part of exploring what that might look like I think we have that the staff as you know I've mentioned having more staffing capacity than I think we we need I think we can reallocate some of our staff to work in a smaller personalized setting that may be more project-based learning or more one-to-one base kind of using the East Valley Academy as a model they provide pretty extensive psychological and counseling services the family and students that's well beyond what what I envision here but for students who might not need all those services we might be able to provide something we you know if we've got a number of students who for one reason or another experience real anxiety whether a classroom with 20 other students um and you know some of it has to do with stuff that happened back in fifth grade or seventh grade and some experience has triggered them and it continues to haunt them until we can provide certain some alternative setting to give them more flexibility um that's what we're looking to give to them do you have a do you have a school psychologist that's regular education we do not that's the perfect segue into this we we do not have a licensed clinician a social worker to work with our students and it's been a challenge this year because many of the students who most would benefit from that their parents work 12 hours a day or don't have transportation of their own so getting them to a psychologist is problematic for some of these students so we've been talking with private clinicians about whether they would spend part of the time with the students and we just initiated a relationship where we have a licensed counselor working with two students but we are in talks with Claire Martin Center to look at what it would take to have them hire an in-school or school-based clinician that would be under their supervision that they would pay for the majority of if we could provide eight students to our Medicaid as part of that person's case load they'll pay 60 percent of the contract for that person that would leave us with the need to find about 20 000 dollars to pay for the other 40 percent of their salary and i think we can do that and squeeze that money out of our 504 budget line and and hopefully save money from our 504 budget line because that's you know right now that's fun we use to pay for students to go somewhere else for their educational purposes to the left we have to use that and what he's asking is if we can pursue this that it's important that we try to put this together and he's asking the board for permission to pursue this you want to wait and think about it for next meeting what do you want what do you think the budget this year right now in knowing inclination i feel like if we have more of a handle at this moment on the budget piece i would feel really comfortable jumping in because i believe we need this and i believe it's something that we need to do um it's just where we find the money um yeah i agree do you think it'll be possible to put together something for next meeting where you might show like how many outside work will be used and how much money went to that and how much you might keep in house you know like if you could show us that's got to be budget neutral it's going to be a no-brainer right so i think if if you could provide some statistics on what our current usage is and how it might change with this new position then that would help make a decision great suggestion read my personal experience with uh claire martin was that you get a person and they're assigned to your school but then they have an overload of parents of patients or whatever they bring that they bring that person back into the claire martin center to work with clients that they have so i i don't know how the grant will be written i don't know what they're willing to if it's a full-time position for you or they're going to call that person out to do things for them and uh in my experience um i lost that person probably at least a third of the time we do have uh some experience with claire martin and providing this we do have two people right now one at chelsea and one in a ton bridge that we're working we do have their contract it's been in front of our lawyer to make sure it's favorable uh to us so we do have uh you know a potential contract that we would sign uh as a model for for what we're asking here and that's a very very recent thing i mean within the last three months so does that land that student does it land that person in the school full-time i don't have anything to do with the contracts just how about chelsea do they keep them in the school full time i don't have any idea on the contracts i don't do them that's bruce and the lawyer i just know they're in there now thank you rean yeah i like your schedule it's really good well done


minute slots, so you should have like 15 minutes for the talk and I give you a signal some minutes before the end Can everybody hear me? Okay, perfect then first of all I would like to thank the organizers of this very nice conference for Giving me the opportunity to present our recent work, especially in front of a real-life audience and not a screen And I think this talk very nicely maybe continues, but we just heard so it's also about period tripling or higher-order period multiplication due to parametric down conversion in circuit QED and You will probably notice quite a few similarities also to the talk this morning by Fabian hustler Since this was kind of a follow-up project after that So because of that I'm also going to talk about parametrically driven systems and period doubling a little bit first And but I will start from a completely classical perspective so for period doubling we have a Demt harmonic oscillator that is driven parametrically proportional to the amplitude X of the system At twice the resonance frequency and then additionally There's also some small stabilizing potential that only becomes important if the amplitude of the oscillations becomes very large and as we heard this morning the system has a stable vacuum state below a certain amplitude in parametric drive where there are no classical oscillations whatsoever and then at a certain threshold the system has a pitch fault bifurcation where we get an instable vacuum state and To stable symmetry broken fixed points that correspond to an oscillation with half the driving frequency and And the exact shape and form of those points then depends on the details of the stabilizing potential What I want to talk about today is what happens if the system is driven at more than twice the resonance frequency so three times or higher and Mathematically the biggest difference is that instead of this linear parametric driving term in X now we have a nonlinear drive and this has quite a big impact on the qualitative behavior close to the vacuum state Because this means that the parametric drive is no longer able to turn the vacuum state in stable however, if the amplitude of the drive is large enough and at some point the Unstable fixed points that exist in the system will come closer and closer to the vacuum state and the value of stability around the vacuum state will become smaller and smaller and And today I want to talk about how quantum fluctuations can then induce a Transition to the symmetry broken fixed points We've already heard that For the period doubling case the quantum fluctuations kind of wash out the instability transition and we can already see photon emission below the threshold and Here in the case of period multiplication. They're actually necessary to even induce a symmetry breaking transition and Going along with the previous talks. I will show the same circuit again so one possible circuit that can Implement this in a microwave setup as a DC by the bias Josephson junction That's in series with the microwave resonator and then parametric resonance is achieved if a The voltage is biased in such a way That each tunnel in Cooper pair excites M photons in the resonator And you probably also seen this before this is the Hamiltonian of the circuit but in contrast to my predecessor, I will be talking about the quasi classical limit of small vacuum fluctuation strength which because it's a usually quite good to achieve in microwave resonators and be it's also a nice quasi classical physics But first I want to perform rotating wave approximation with respect to The driving frequency to EV over M. So depending on which resonance we are looking at and this then gives this Hamiltonian also with the Bessel function that we just talked about in the question session and In order to just study the transition from the vacuum state this whole Hamiltonian is actually not necessary for this We can just approximate the Bessel function to lowest order and just look at the dynamics very close to Zero amplitude So that Hamiltonian looks something like this, which I think is pretty much exactly what we just saw in the previous talk I just introduced this epsilon which is proportional to the Josephson energy and encodes the driving strength and This very generic Hamiltonian for the symmetry braking Has a face portrait purely classical that looks something like this So in the case of no detuning between the parametric drive and the resonance frequency The system has one single fixed point But this fixed point is somewhat special because it has a completely vanishing stability matrix This is the case of period tripling but basically looks the same for higher orders as well and This sounds very promising because this kind of means the vacuum state is effectively already pretty much unstable at least from a classical perspective However, as soon as there's even a small detuning between the Resonance frequency and the parametric drive this single fixed point splits up into M Unstable fixed points that form a valley of stability around the stable vacuum state and The distance of these fixed points depends on the detuning over the parametric drive and From this one could in a very semi classical picture Say that escape from the vacuum state due to quantum fluctuations is possible If the vacuum fluctuation strength is of the order or larger then this distance of the unstable fixed points from the vacuum state However, I haven't talked about what happens if we also include dissipation and Disappation is of course known for stabilizing the vacuum state So we definitely have to take that into consideration as well and Keeping with the quasi classical description of the system We can write down a lingerie equation that encodes the quantum fluctuations by this white noise Gaussian term here And for this system if we again look at the classical phase portray We see this is now at finite dissipation, but zero detuning so we can see the effect of the dissipation It still has M unstable fixed points that surround the stable fixed point at the center Now the distance of these fixed points will depend both on the detuning and the dissipation So indeed the dissipation does increase the value of stability around the vacuum state But from this one can still say that an escape is possible now We just have to take detuning and dissipation into account and go into the limit where they are both small when compared to the parametric driving strength and To make this a bit more quantitative We write down the Martin-Ciccio Rose action, which you might remember from Fabian's talk this morning Which encodes the exact same physics as the previous lingerie equation But we basically have done that instead of encoding the quantum noise by this stochastic variable xi Now the quantum noise is encoded by this auxiliary variable alpha q via this last term here and With this action we can look at the action that is accumulated when going from the stable Vacuum state at the center to one of the M Unstable fixed points and the action the minimum action that is accumulated then gives us the exponential escape rate By e to the i times that action and for the case of period tripling one can actually do that calculation And this is the exponential Rate that we obtain I think quite intuitively it depends on this distance that I talked about before so gamma squared plus delta squared Over epsilon squared is this distance of the unstable states from the vacuum state and then we have this Noise term here, which depends on the vacuum fluctuation strength kappa with this plus one Which is the quantumness of this calculation and the buzzer Einstein occupation and this additional factor two-thirds Is just what comes out from the Martin-Ciccio Rose calculation We have also done some numerical simulations of the longevity equation to compare it with this result So the first plot here shows the exponential dependence of the escape rate on the fluctuation strength and then the fitted Lines Then the slope is plotted here on the right and compare it with the solid line Which is the result here on the left and they seem to agree quite well After the system escapes from the state it will go to one of these Symmetry broken fixed points that I talked about in the very beginning that correspond to an oscillation of the parametric driving frequency over M and In order to look at those states a little bit more we expand the Hamiltonian from before with the Bessel function Up to next leading order To also take the stabilizing effects into account They are of course different stabilizing potentials and they can lead to very different multi-periodic states So often especially in the case of period tripling one looks at the Duffing oscillator as the stabilizing potential Which behaves quite a bit differently from this stabilizing potential here that arises due to the Josephson parametric down conversion So what a system could look like in one of these period tripled states in this case Is plotted here? So we have the current as a function over time and the black line corresponds to the original parametric drive and Then all these colored lines correspond to possible face locked solutions That are face locked to the parametric drive with different fixed phases and a certain amplitude and If we look at the again classical face portray now including this additional term Then you can see that this system in this case of Josephson parametric down conversion has six of These stable symmetry broken states Which is a bit different from the Duffing oscillator, which has three Which is the minimum that you can have because you have a three-fold symmetry in the case of period tripling and I plotted here the face diagram for delta equals zero which Which I will remain at for the last three minutes of this talk Because this is also the best limit in order to achieve this symmetry breaking in the first place And in this limit the system is equally likely to end up in any of these six states because each of the M or in this case three unstable fixed points via which this initial symmetry breaking is most likely to occur is Equally connected to always two of those symmetry broken fixed points So in the end, it's really completely equally likely to end up in any of these points and What's nice is that in the limit of vanishing dissipation or very small dissipation in relation to the parametric drive these six symmetry broken fixed points are actually completely equidistant around the vacuum state and They have an alternating frequency that is proportional to the parametric drive And then the last thing I want to talk about is the timescale of the defacing monster system is in one of these symmetry broken states Because one can really only talk about a symmetry breaking transition if that timescale is much lower than the timescale of the initial symmetry breaking and To do that we went back to the Martin-City Rose action and Again looked at the different tunneling rates from one of these stable symmetry broken points But in contrast to before where the vacuum state was equally connected to the three unstable fixed points and it didn't matter by out which one the symmetry breaking occurred because they were all Identical Here now the system has three different unstable fixed points and they all correspond to a slightly different case of defacing What we can see this is a numerical calculation of the different exponential escape rates via the three different unstable fixed points what we see is that at Slightly larger dissipation rate gamma over epsilon it is most likely that the system escapes via this green point and the green point actually always just connects these two symmetric Fixed points with each other. So this leads first to a defacing to a three-fold symmetric state before it defaces completely via one of the other unstable fixed points It's also quite nice. There's a very nice technique based on the Poincare cross-section method that allows one to calculate this particular limit here where gamma goes to zero and One can actually obtain an analytical result for the tunneling rate in this particular case It is also quite intuitive that in this particular limit the escape rate via these three unstable fixed points is Completely identical because in this limit the system performs many many oscillations around the fixed point before escaping So in that way these three points and the rotation trajectories that kind of connect these three points Make those points identical And yeah with this I would like to conclude with This short note that yes indeed the defacing time is much smaller than the time of the initial symmetry breaking if dissipation and detuning are small enough and That's what can actually talk about this period tripling as an actual symmetry breaking transition And yeah, but this I would like to thank you for your attention. Yeah. Thank you very much All right, there's already question in the back Can you please go back to the expression for the escape rate? For what for escape rate? I think it was It was No, no escape rate. Yes, and then you have our equals. Yeah, I wonder if it's valid at zero temperature Yes As long as the we're in the regime where the vacuum fluctuations are small then of course We just have this this quantum factor one there But then this is valid. Yes, because you have this like quantum fluctuations that cause the escape from the vacuum state We don't need thermal fluctuations for that Okay, thanks So it may be a follow-up question to that so if we were trying to make the Description more quantum and and we were for example chirping the frequency to go through the delta equals zero at a particular M Would it be possible to make? some sort of cat state or voodoo state by splitting the The trap state into all these different so so basically like it's like a yeah superposition You're competing with the phasing and the question is is it feasible? I mean, of course, I've only looked at this semi classical regime. So there are no quantum superposition is really possible It's more of a Statistical mixed state then that the defacing causes So I think in order to really look at that one has to take more quantum effects into account I think it could be possible But I haven't looked at that in more detail Thank you Maybe just a very quick follow-up on that question isn't isn't this what has been done in the group of Michelle devoree where they looked at the to photon pumping where where you split these vacuum fluctuations in into two and And then if you measure fast enough, you see that there's coherence actually Yeah, I think for for two it has been done I'm not 100% sure if it also then works for three or four Because there is quite a bit of qualitative difference between the different cases, but yes, of course in this way It sounds possible. Yes Thanks. So another question Yes, sorry if it's a silly question if I were to measure this stability diagram I just need to to sample the output field many many times construct some histograms and I should see three blobs Okay, yeah, or six or whatever. Yeah. Yes. Thank you All right, so last question and maybe the next speaker already Start to connect My question is about me to calculate this are you use a settle point approximation, I guess So, yeah, it's really just exactly my questions. What are the corrections to the subtle point approximations? to this, I mean you're saying this are is Is is valid up to temperature zero and then my and it's of course only the exponential rate So there are three factors that I can't calculate That I haven't looked at. Okay Okay, then thank you again for the talk