It's almost five afters. So I think we may start. This is an informational meeting only. It's now about five after three. This is the meeting of the board. The continuation of our agenda that we had last Wednesday, we're going to hear reports from the presidents of the colleges. They have restart reports and restart plans. And it's important for us to know that that we did talk about last week about approving these, but we have decided that because these are living documents and there's changes coming in literally almost every day that we need to give some flexibility to the presidents and to the administration to adapt as the situation is needed. Many common elements of these plans, but they're all just a slightly bit different because they're all different institutions with different kind of academic needs. So I guess I'll get started here. And Sophie, do you want to start off with any comments on this to start with before we move to the presidents? Sure. So I mean, there is no sort of perfect solution to what we're dealing with. So I think that needs to be acknowledged. There's no simple answer if there was all the colleges across the country would be doing exactly the same thing. There are disadvantages to not bringing students back, particularly those students that are housing insecure, have mental health challenges or have no reliable access to broadband internet and some whose home life is not conducive to them learning remotely. So, and I think at this particular time, we want to be sensitive to inequities between students. And so I think it's important that we have the ability to bring students back that need to be on the campuses in order to learn. So we do recognize obviously there's pushback going on around the country with respect to reopening plans. I would want to point out though that in Vermont, we are having a somewhat of a different experience here given what our experience with the virus has been and the conservative approach that the governor's taken, the compliance generally across the population and the low incident rates. So I think of all states that could be prepared to welcome students back, Vermont's probably in one of the better positions to do that. We do have guidance from the governor. We have guidance from the Vermont Department of Health and we're following those closely. And as those evolve, again, Lynn referenced the living document concept, but as the situation changes or the guidance changes, changes will then be made to the policies. The colleges have developed robust procedures to deal with students returning, both testing procedures, quarantining procedures, isolation procedures, and I'll let them talk more about that. Obviously for us, we're a little different than some of the other colleges and universities in the state of Vermont in that most of our students are Vermonters. So they've already been subject to the restrictions in Vermont and have had a good experience so far with the virus. Our presidents and their senior leadership teams have been in touch with their local communities, their select boards, town managers, et cetera, to bring them up to speed on what they're doing. We've been working with our faculty and staff to address concerns that they may have regarding returning to the classroom and accommodating where we can, so that people that are uncomfortable have health conditions or whatever that are causing them concern about returning, making accommodations for that, being able to teach remotely or work remotely. Obviously that's not possible for everybody. Some people's jobs physically require them to be on campus, but we are working with faculty and staff to address those concerns as best we can. I know the colleges are working hard to create a culture of compliance and to be very, very clear how important this is. Students are being asked to sign pledges. There's a commitment to discipline and make clear that half-heartedly following them or being casual about following the rules is not gonna be acceptable. And I think everyone understands that their safety sort of relies on everybody else following the rules as well, that this is not a time to be selfish, but everyone has to work together for this to be successful. We have talked about hiring. There are some significant administrative burdens with meeting all the guidance. I know at least one of our colleges has already hired someone to assist with that. And I think our other residential colleges will be moving in that direction too to make sure that we are in a position administratively to comply with the requirements. I think, again, you've already noted, but the situation is continuing to evolve and unfold. And so we just have to be flexible and respond as it does so. So those were sort of more my general statements. We did provide the trustees and it's part of the board materials, a summary of where all the colleges fall on particular key issues. I understand that some of the links weren't working in that, but we'll make sure that we've got an updated one with all the links working. And we'll put that with the board materials when they get posted on the website. We know nothing is risk-free and the reality is, and we've been told this by the Department of Health, there will be positive cases. The test is gonna be how well do we manage those and make sure that we avoid an outbreak. But the expectation is that there will be positive cases. We just have to make sure we catch them and that those that have a positive or quarantined and isolated so that there isn't an outbreak as a result. And with that, I'm happy to step aside and let the presidents discuss their plans. I don't know if you have a preferred order that you want to call on the presidents, Chad Dickinson. Well, I was thinking maybe reverse order alphabetically. We always seem to start with- Since it's a DAT&E, I appreciate that. Why don't we call on President Moulton of VTC? Thank you, Chair Dickinson. Why did I know I'd be first today? But I think it's probably appropriate because we did have our first positive test of a student last Friday. So I will just discuss generally where we are. We are opening in a hybrid model this fall, meaning all our lectures will be done remotely and students will come in for low residency weeks to do their lab and other hands-on applied. And this is driven by so much of our curriculum has to involve practical hands-on applied learning. It's tough to learn to be a nurse and not actually give someone an injection or learn to fix a diesel truck or a car without actually putting your hands in more and so on and so on. Classes start for us on August 24th. We'll have no breaks this semester and students will leave and go home at Thanksgiving and finish the semester remotely. We will have approximately, the students will come for approximately three lab weeks total staggered throughout the semester. There will be different students during those lab weeks. We have offered full semester housing to our out-of-state students, students who may have challenging learning environments at home or may be technically challenged or those who absolutely need to be here for access to clinic regularly, such as our dental hygiene students or professional pilot students that need to be near the airport, our veterinary technician students, our agricultural students, et cetera. We anticipate we'll have approximately 100, 100 all semester long residents here in Randolph Center and about 28 in Williston. We're putting them all in single rooms so they are by themselves. They will be in two dorms approximately where we will try to have and it would not try. We will have our permanent semester students in one part of the dorm and our commuter students who may be coming in for multiple nights during lab weeks and another part of the dorm. So they'll be somewhat isolated from each other. Every student, we are requiring every student to have a test prior to coming to campus. The out-of-state students had to send us a test before they came and then we tested them on day zero, which was last Wednesday and we'll test them again day seven, which will be this zero or this Wednesday. The one student we had that had a positive test, sure enough, had a negative test he provided prior to coming to campus and then had a positive test five days later when we tested him on August 12th. That student is in isolation as required and the other students on the floor of the positive tests are in quarantine. All students are quarantined meaning they cannot leave campus, but the students on his floor are quarantined meaning they cannot leave the building, cannot leave their room. This is until we can get tests done and or we confirm that there are no issues with symptoms. The student who does the positive is asymptomatic and feeling fine. As the summary says, it's our plan to have that one testing protocol that two times for out of state students and then ask all our Vermont students to test and provide us a negative test prior to coming campus. We're still debating whether or not we're gonna require students who come for lab weeks to get a test before each lab week. If we were to do that, we feel it's gonna only be those students from any yellow or red counties in Vermont or elsewhere. So we may require they have those commuting students who are here for lab weeks to have up to three tests. We are not requiring tests for faculty and staff, but we are strongly encouraged that they do that. Gifford Hospital will provide testing and folks can make appointments whether they're symptomatic or not. We are doing the required health screening for everyone who comes to campus. We've been all summer long doing that via checking in with public safety, getting their temperature checked, answering the questions and logging who came. We expect to have a lot more folks coming, mainly faculty for labs and to do recorded lectures or synchronous lectures. So the public safety route is going to be difficult. So we're moving to a self attestation model using Castle Branch software, which requires you to enter your temperature every day and answer the appropriate questions. Then we're also monitoring and that self attestation by doing random checks each week of a certain number of employees and a certain number of students and validating. Did they in fact enter their data into Castle Branch? So we have that. We are requiring everyone to wear face coverings. Anytime they are out of their room, they're gonna have to wear them in classes. They're gonna have to wear them in the dining hall except when they're eating. And at this point, our dining hall is doing grab and go. So they're taking it back to their room. And if the dining hall were to open, we would be socially distance and minimize the number of students in there at any one time. So face coverings are required, social distancing is required.  Social distancing, hand washing, et cetera, apply. Let's see, outside vendors are required still to check in with public safety and get their temperature monitored and their questions answered. So that's regardless of what facility they're going to here on the Randolph campus and same in Williston. Oh, I should back up. We have isolation spaces identified at both campuses. We have a wing, an old dorm here in Randolph Center and we're actually gonna put students in the fitness center in Williston because that has two private use bathrooms and we have to have isolation given the number of students for maybe three in Williston. And we are required to provide isolation for 5% of those students in residence. There was a discussion today on the Association of Vermont Independent Colleges has invited us to weekly meetings of the presidents there and there was some discussion about whether we would be required to isolate commuting students. And that answer is all over the map amongst Vermont colleges. At this time, we are not planning on isolating commuting students. Most of our commuters come from home unlike UVM or Middlebury where they have commuters in apartment buildings in and around their towns. We're not having that as much here in Randolph. We have that to some degree in Williston but they're again required to provide the initial test and do the self attestation. Outside visitors are not allowed in the dorm. We are not doing, or residence halls rather, we are not doing any outside groups. We're closing our shape gym facility to all but students and faculty and staff, students and employees, no general public. We're not holding events. We're not releasing spaces. It's all college direct activity, athletics. We do plan on doing cross country and having competitions in a controlled way, staggered release, time-based, et cetera. We are contemplating soccer but that's not looking really good. And if we were to do soccer, one of the conversations has been required testing and we may not end up doing competitive soccer season but more just conditioning and training. Our basketball team is arriving and they are just conditioning and training, no competitions and no out of state travel. Let's see. And yes, all our students, I would say students are quarantining for the 14 days. Our commuting students will not be required to quarantine but we're, and we are asking all our students to sign a health pledge and that's one of the links that wasn't working in the material you have but Sophie has a corrected version now. And we're also asking all our employees to sign a health pledge as well. We've had the benefit, if you will, of the first positive case to, we were gonna hold a tabletop exercise but we had it in real time last Friday. We learned a couple of things that I've shared with my colleagues that we weren't quite prepared for but we're overall very pleased that we were prepared with appropriate PPE, isolation rooms, personnel and good and excellent contact and assistance from the Vermont Department of Health which is doing all of our contract tracing for us and seemingly happy but their primary message was this will not be your last positive and not every positive means that actually you're gonna have an outbreak and that's what we're trying to control. So that's my report and I'm happy to answer any questions. I'm debating whether we should have questions now or hear from the president's first and then have questions for everyone. Is that satisfactory to the board? Yes. Okay, I would like to turn to Senator Collins. President Collins for Northern Vermont University, please. Okay. That's you Elaine. Yeah, I know I'm trying to see you. I've lost, well, I can't see you so can you see me? We can see you. We can see you. All right, then let me just go ahead. So as you know, we have opened in a face to face hybrid and fully online manner. We similar to BTC are also intending to not take any breaks this semester but to go through and then release the students at the time of the Thanksgiving break. We are very pleased to report that thus far with all the students that have taken the tests as well as some of our staff and faculty, all of our tests have been negative. We are anticipating approximately 300 students on each of our campuses. And I really wanna turn over much of the discussion to Jonathan Davis because he has been at the front lines of this effort and I've been very pleased with my entire executive team. They've really taken on just an amazing amount of work with what has been required to launch a semester under these conditions in a safe way. Just one point, again, unlike BTC, Northern Vermont University has chosen to not utilize Castle Branch for our purposes. We found Castle Branch to be a little bit too invasive with the types of process that they were requiring. So we chose to use a different group that Jonathan will tell you all about. And also I just wanted to follow up something that was stated at the Wednesday meeting last week. And that was a question kind of related to the type of testing we had, as you remember, contracted with the Broad Institute and we are having a very positive experience with the Broad Institute. What I particularly like about them is that they are able to turn their tests around in just a few days, almost like 24 to 72 hours. And the question came up from the board, is this like, is it a test that is giving kind of false positives and false negatives? I just wanted to point out that UVM is using the Broad Institute as well as Middlebury. So I think we are in good company. And with that, I will turn it over to Jonathan so that he can give you more of the details. Jonathan? Thanks, Elaine. I wanna just share for a moment, I spend a lot of my time these days clicking refresh on the results menu for the Broad Institute and waiting for the next set to come in. So that's how I spend my time these days and happy to report that it's all been positive so far. So we have had our initial check-in. We started checking students in on the ninth. We had a staggered check-ins the ninth, the 13th, 14th and 16th. So, and all those students have been tested and we have sent out communications to students who have not been tested that they will not be able to attend classes in person until they get that test. Our next big round of testing or day seven testing, if you will, will happen this week on Thursday and Friday, we're preparing a communication to invite our faculty and staff as well to participate in that round of testing. The results have been coming back within 24 hours, happy to say, and that has been wonderful. We do understand that Broad is ramping up though for increased testing with all of the larger schools. So we're curious to see if that increases at all to 36 hours perhaps, but so far so good in the communication if we need support has been amazing. So with the check-in, we welcome students in staggered time blocks of three time blocks per day, three hours each to have to check in. It was all drive-through testing with support from Linden Rescue and Newport Ambulance. They brought all the PPE necessary that that partnership has been awesome and we really appreciate their support. We've given every student eye protection, multiple masks, hand sanitizer, and a thermometer if they don't have one already as well as a lot of information about the NVU pledge that they signed as well as safety information about using a face mask properly, putting it on properly, taking it off properly, and of course cleaning it. And to use eye protection when not to, et cetera. So lots of information. We hope that they're absorbing it, but we're spending a lot of time with them in a safe way to make sure they understand it and answering their questions. So the students have just been wonderful. So far they are abiding by the pledge. They are putting their masks on. There have been some reminders here and there to both faculty staff, the all faculty staff and students, but for the most part it's been wonderful. I just want to say how excited they are to be back on campus, but the density is reduced. There are fewer of them. They all have single rooms in the residence halls and they are very comfortable with that. Like I said, been asking some great questions. The students in quarantine that arrived, we have a little more than 30 students that are in quarantine right now. And no doubt with the sun shining, they are eager to get out of there. And we may be with the right support and approval. We may be working on a way for them to get outside in a fenced area to get a little bit of sunshine here. So they'll be testing on Thursday to get their second negative test before they move into housing that they were going to be assigned to in the fall. And all are cooperating. We're happy to report. As President Collins mentioned, we are going away from Castle Branch. I think Castle Branch is a terrific product. But I think part of the issue for us is not having enough time to do some of the workarounds that are necessary. For instance, two temperature checks per day and other things like the use of a social security number. There is a workaround for it, but we're going to utilize a web form through a platform called Formstack. And we're gonna be tracking that weekly and doing spot checks, monitoring every day for any symptoms by dumping that into a spreadsheet. And so we had two students today, for example, hit that they had fever. But we, so we reached out to them immediately and sure enough, in both cases, they had to mistakenly hit that checkbox. So we know that we're gonna have some of those challenges. We gotta stay on top of it. We have a team from human resources, academic affairs and a larger team in student affairs that are gonna be monitoring those. And so we think that will work. We also leaving on the table the possibility of contracting with RAVE Mobile Safety, which is our current emergency alert system. They do have a COVID-19 tool add on and that we could consider. So we're gonna continue to speak with them, but we're happy with Formstack platform for now. A little bit about visitors. We have signage all over the campus, welcoming our students, staff and faculty and welcoming visitors if they're approved and giving them a method to contact us for that type of approval. But our campus is essentially closed off to anyone else. We've made it clear in our residence halls that our community students, unfortunately are not welcome to visit our students that are on campus. So we're feeling good about that. Our communications and marketing department has done a terrific job in branding all of those communications. So we have some really nice looking materials and not just a bunch of eight and a half by 11 marketed up posters. And so that's important. It sends a positive message to our community that we're taking this very seriously. And I think there's a sense of pride in how we're handling this. So I'm happy to report that. President Collins mentioned the academic calendar already travel has been greatly reduced and that has to be approved by the president if there's gonna be any travel. We're considering right now, for instance, our typical travel needs on the Johnson campus going to Morrisville, we will continue that but it'll be a maximum of three occupants including the driver. There'll be some other limitations as well and then we'll have to be scheduled and those students will have to be screened before entering. But we still feel like we can offer that service but in a very safe way. Campus events, we have some great open spaces on the NVU campus. And so we are able to program a little bit on the outside. We have partnered with Catamount Arts they're doing the drive in to stay safe program. We have a in our main parking lots which has been hugely successful. There's a great concert on the Linden campus last night and we were able to cordon off an area sort of away from the cars for some of our students that arrived on campus who already tested negative to enjoy that separate from the rest of the group. So that partnership continues to be amazing. We're able to have some of those things with their safely distance with masks on at all times. Like I said, that part of it is going well. Health screenings, the students will participate in the same program that the faculty and staff will be on a daily basis. I think I mentioned that already. All the students are being encouraged to maintain an informal contact tracing journal. They can use their own template but we're asking them to be thinking about that every day. But of course we also have attendance tracking in classes. We know exactly when, at what time they've entered the dining hall and our Sodexo partners are doing a tremendous job with not only signage but tracking the number of guests in the dining hall at any time. And so I toured that today as a lot of our students are using it. The facility looks fantastic. So happy to report that. Athletics and intramural programs. It's still an open question that we're waiting for further guidance on. Obviously our student athletes and our athletic administration are anxious to see what the next steps are. But I think that we're still in a holding pattern but we do have a safe plan that we're ready to unleash is for the safe use of our shape facilities. But that will be for our internal community members only. We have a great program of telehealth, telecounseling ready to go for our students especially those students in quarantine. And if we do get a positive case those services will be available. We have at least 5% probably more at this point ready for quarantine and isolation housing if necessary. We have private apartments on the Johnson campus for the isolation and at least two buildings, three buildings on the Linden campus for that. So we feel like we're ready to go. We're excited to be back. And I have to tell you it's really energizing to have the students back with us. And that's all I have. Linear muted. Can't hear the lawnmower outside. President Collins, is there anything you want to add to that? No, I think that that is all I have to say for now. And I think you have a full report. I'll wait to see what the questions are at the end. Okay, thank you. Yes, I believe community college of Vermont is the next one. Joyce, Judy, you can give us your rundown please. Okay, I will just start by just reminding people that for the fall, we are offering five different formats, our courses in five different formats, primarily online. Some are synchronous with an online component, flex accelerated, and then we have a hybrid model. And of the 700 classes that we're offering, only 25 are hybrid. And those are the only, only those 25 classes have any on-ground components. So it's a pretty small number. Just as also as a reminder, our centers for the fall will not be open to the public. And only faculty and students can come with appointment only. We only expect students who perhaps need to use the computer lab will be there. So we're expecting very, very few students to come into our centers. Our staff for the most part will continue working remotely as they have since March. So given that, there's not a lot of activity in our centers, but I do wanna let people know some things that we have put in place because for the staff who are there and for students and faculty who do come, we need the procedures in place. I do wanna let people know that we received a waiver from the agency of commerce and community development. So we have a waiver for testing because it didn't make sense. They decided with the few numbers of students that we are having come in and how sporadically they're coming. Our hybrid classes, the 25 that we'll be meeting have a face-to-face component. They will meet about once a month, no more than four times. And those 25 classes are spread out over six to eight centers. And again, at the most, they'll be in face-to-face contact four times, about once a month, as September, October, November, and December. The staff who do come to the center, as we put this in place in May, do a daily health screening. So we've set up our centers, so there's one way to come in and one way to go out. People take their temperature. They check off the standard things that you have to do that are required from the Department of Health around the daily health center. For the students who are coming into the center for our labs, they will be signing a student health contract. And we have also on file both the exposure and the restart plan for those very specific courses. So there's a very, we have been very planful. They'll be socially distanced. The classes are small. And so we believe we can manage those according to the Department of Health guidelines. With that, I will stop. I will just give you an update. We decided in June to move to primarily online. And I have to say it gave me great pause because I wasn't sure how our enrollment was gonna look. Our enrollment is incredibly strong. So we are very happy with, I think the certainty that we provided to our students and to our faculty. And we have three more weeks of registration, but right now the enrollment trends are strong. So I'm happy about that. And I have to say it's one of those things that when you make these decisions, it causes a lot of angst. So I think I'm happy that we did what we did. And I should also say that we are about to, we are looking at spring. We need to make decisions about spring very soon in the next two or three weeks. And we are leaning towards doing spring just as we did fall. We will make an official announcement, but we are looking at all kinds of data of what other places are doing, particularly community colleges. And we just feel like we're gonna be in a similar situation in the spring. So I will let the board know at our next meeting, by our September meeting, we will have made a decision. So I'm happy to stop there and answer any questions at the end. Thank you. Kasselden University, Jonathan. Thank you. And Chair Dickinson, I do strongly object to going in reverse alphabetical order. I'm just impressed. Whoever heard of such a thing. And I'm glad Joyce is thinking about the spring. I'm trying to make it past five o'clock this afternoon so I admire her ability to be that. That's impressive. I want the board to know that these four institutions have engaged in extensive collaboration, unprecedented collaboration on a daily basis, seven days a week since about the middle of May. But as you've heard, CCV is online with no residence halls. NVU is in the classroom and in the residence halls. Kasselden is not in the classroom, but we have a few hundred students in the residence halls. So we have our differences. Despite them, I need to reiterate that we are all following the very strict guidelines issued by the governor and the health department. We all have masks, in our case, green Kasselden masks. We all have social distancing protocols and quarantining and no outside visitors in the dorms, testing, isolation, tracing. But because each campus is different, the details of implementation differs slightly from campus to campus. And I think that's how it should be actually. The state, for example, has issued core principles for how businesses should reopen, but how those principles are applied differs from business to business. A drive-through fast food restaurant is not the same as an indoor furniture store, which in turn is not the same as an outdoor farmer's market. So we're different as we should be, but we all follow the core principles. We test on day one and again on day seven. So far, all the tests are negative. I think we have about 190 to 100 results still out. They'll be coming in later on this afternoon. But we are prepared to have positive tests. We're gonna have approximately 350 students on campus. And if you take the generalized positivity rate of 0.6%, that means we should expect to have about two cases coming in positive. And I think everyone on this call should be prepared for positive cases. In defense of my beloved colleague, President Moulton, who had a case the other day, Dr. Levine repeatedly reminds us that a positive test means the system is working. We know there are people out there who are asymptomatic and testing simply reveals who they are. And a positive identification, as with VTC, means that we can now isolate them, contact trace and so forth. So I just, I want to prepare us for the fact that there probably will be other positive cases. I'm inclined to stop there because we're really not very different from our sister institutions. Happy to answer your questions or turn it over to our amazing Dean of Students, Dennis Prue. If you have questions about the specific details, but again, we're all following the exact same generalized principles. Any questions? We've heard from all four institutions. David. I'm curious from the presidents to hear how the local communities are reacting to the return of students to their communities. So I get to go first this time because that's only fair. David, as you might suspect, it's split right down the middle. Half of, I'm talking about Kaston and Rutland now, half of our population very much wants and needs the students to return for obvious financial reasons. Half are very concerned about irresponsible teenagers running amok on the streets of our town. And I'll tell you, I clearly see both sides of the issue. I think they're both right. We need them financially and we need to make sure that public health is protected. But I mean, I'll show you my inbox. We literally, one message will say open up and the very 10 seconds later, another equally vehement message saying close it down. So that's Kastleton and I'll cede my time to my sister presidents. I'll go next if we're going to go back into order. I would say that I concur with Jonathan that that's what I've read essentially that it is a 50-50 split in terms of how the communities are viewing it. However, that said, I have not had any messages in my box that's from the community that suggest that they are not happy about how we are proceeding. I think Jonathan has done an exceptional job of keeping everybody apprised as to what is going on so people feel safe. And so far, things are going well. Anyone else? Well, last I know C came before V so I'll let Joyce go next. We haven't had any pushback from the public. I think that, I will say our faculty and our students are pretty happy because prior to us going mostly online, we were getting a lot of pushback from faculty that they did not want to be in the classroom. So we're doing essentially what we did this summer and what we did for fall. So there's not really a big change in terms of students coming to our centers. I have spoken to the Randolph Town Manager probably a month ago just to see what he was hearing. He had absolutely no concerns. The biggest concern that he was hearing was hoping students were coming back for the economic activity. I did notify him last Friday via voicemail of our one positive case. I also notified the CEO at our local hospital just in case something goes horribly wrong. But I will confess I have not talked to the Williston Town Manager but I've written it down a second time to make that call. And we have such a small population in Williston that are in the res halls. Majority of the Williston students are commuters from the greater Chittenden County area. So they're living in their own homes. We can house a maximum of 50 students on campus and we're only gonna have 28. And we have some rental it goes on in the community but limited amount, but I will absolutely be in touch. I have not heard anything from them directly. Any other board members have questions? Megan. Thanks Len and thanks all for sharing this information. It's clear you've given this a lot of thought and I know there are no easy solutions to this. I just wanna confirm. I think that I heard from you all a similar approach to quarantine and I want to confirm what I heard and just make sure that I heard this correctly. So the students that are coming from out of state from what we think of as the quarantine counties that Vermont has designated as areas where students need to quarantine. If I heard correctly across our residential colleges there's two ways that those students can integrate into the community. They can either attest that they have self quarantine for 14 days prior to arrival which would mean that they have not shared a room or a space or a car with 14 days prior to landing on that campus. That's one way they can enter and you have a process for attesting and signing. And I think if I remember correctly also interviewing those students to push on that a bit. The second way would be that they could come to your campus and then move into quarantine housing where they would be the only person in their dorm room you would deliver them food for seven days and they could test out of that quarantine. I just wanted to check that understanding with our three residential colleges that I might. This is Dennis at Castleton and I would confirm that that's accurate to what we're doing. The option of a 14 day quarantine and then come or seven day with a negative test is what they can do at home just to clarify that. And I guess Dennis a further clarification for those we've been living this for six straight months but for those who are new quarantining has a different definition than isolating. So quarantining is exactly what trustee Clover said it is with students who are coming to campus the first time are quarantined for 14 days or seven days followed by a negative test. Isolation is what you do after someone tests positive and some more stringent form of quarantining. So I don't know if you all knew that but it took me a few weeks to understand the difference and that is the difference. Thank you. The other nuance to your question is that the state guidelines does allow someone to come by private car with their supposedly family and with few stops and come to campus. So you mentioned by themselves in a car that that's not completely accurate. The state does allow them to come by car with infrequent stops. I can confirm that is true for Vermont Tech. I'm sorry Jason Enzer isn't here but we have an incident response team scheduled at the exact same time every Monday at three and he's chairing that because we've got some things we've got to sort out still. And I agree with everything that's been said and thank you for the clarification President Spyro.  They cannot leave campus. They cannot congregate. Whereas our quarantine students who are on the same floor as the positive test cannot leave their room. They must remain in the room and I will say that it's causing some concerns. We have heard from a couple of parents of students who have anxiety and depression issues that treat them in part by outside activity and exercise and fresh air. And you can imagine that they're not doing really well in the circumstance. So we're in the process of actually that's one of the things Jason is talking about is might there be circumstances in which that could change under supervision and then we would seek approval from the Vermont Department of Health for whatever plan that finally looks like. It's very tricky but yes the isolated student is exactly that isolated not leaving the room food being brought in refrigerator and microwave to accommodate his food needs. So that seems to be working. Yeah I can also confirm that for NVU Megan that is what's happening. And I think you mentioned interview process that is our last step at the drive-through check-in taking them through a rather in some cases rigorous interview to test them a little bit. And so we definitely did end up with a few extra quarantine students in that case. And they are asking to get outside. We're hoping we can work out some kind of solution. Looks like the rain clouds are coming over us though. So maybe they're not missing too much sunshine but that has definitely been a struggle for them. Anyone else have a question? Go ahead Linda and Michael. Yes I know you're working a lot with the Department of Health following the guidelines. What I didn't and I fully get as many of you said that there will be positive cases and that many of them can just be isolated and we'll get over it. What I haven't heard and I expected because Department of Health will be doing a lot of contact tracing and be a large part of the decision is have you folks in your plans establish the threshold at which you'd have to consider if you'd have to consider closing like how many cases that kind of thing or is that again something that really is depending on facts working with the Department of Health and looking at those statistics and things. Anyone? I can go first on that one if that's okay. So your question is a timely one. We in fact our emergency management team is meeting tomorrow at this time to finalize our plans. But I can tell you in general, oh it did just start raining. If you don't know presents and deans pray for rain the first week of class because it means the socializing is at a minimum. So that's just great news. It's not just one statistic. It's a whole categories of metrics that must be consulted. Clearly how many positive cases do we have? And I think you could, we haven't finalized, we'll do this tomorrow but I think fewer than 10, okay. More than that then we need to start getting serious about our plans. Another metric is what percentage of tests are positive. If it turns out to be greater than 5% or if it's increasing over a seven day period then that's another warning flag. Another is what is the capacity of our quarantine and isolation facilities? So do we have fewer than seven days remaining until our capacity reaches zero? That's of interest. How quickly is our testing capacity going to be overwhelmed? If we have fewer than seven days remaining until testing capacity is maxed out well then that's another signal. If the time to process tests starts exceeding 48 hours then that will be of concern. Do we have sufficient PPE capacity? We have concerns about our supply lines for the next 15 weeks. So if we have fewer than seven days in the pipeline then before our PPE is depleted we'll take that into consideration. So it's not one metric. It's all those combined. But this is a work in progress because we've been living in the day and we're now pivoting to looking to the future. It's a great question. I'll know more tomorrow for Casselton. Right, well and I understand that it changes. I've heard Dr. Levine answer that question somewhat in response to the state as a whole. I'm not surprised that your answer rather reflects that answer just on a different scale. Anyone else, Pat? Thank you, Jonathan for summing that up so well because it's very similar to what we are and we will be looking for the Department of Health to really advise us on this but it really relates more to our capacity. We are required to have isolation for up to 5% of our residential student body. If we have that many students in isolation who are actually sick, that will certainly trigger our thinking and we will certainly then look at pivoting. But we are learning that the positive cases we shouldn't panic about but the first time we get someone who's actually symptomatic has concerns and we have to isolate them, that would be what would trigger. And we also have a requirement that every student come with a plan to return home should they get sick. And so the plan is to send them home when they're sick but the isolation is for those students who may live out of state that won't be able to get on an airplane or on a bus or on a train and how long will it take for family member to come and pick here she up. So very similar to Castleton, not one metric it would have to be judged based on a lot of factors and Jonathan's absolutely right. We're very fortunate to have what we hope is an adequate supply of PPE but one can never tell. I think for NVU I would respond similarly to the presidents that have gone before me. One thing I've been really happy about is the relationship that we have with the Department of Health.  It's like we're a team in Vermont we're all kind of want the same end goal and we're all working at the same thing. And I think Pat Moulton with her recent experience and as she shared, when she called there's a feeling for all of us that we're very concerned. We don't want to have the cases or the upticks or we don't wanna skew the data and we don't want to have our communities in danger. We're all worried about that. But what they're telling us is we're here for you. Okay, this is normal. This is what's gonna happen in a pandemic and we have a process and we can assist you through it. So I'm trying to look at it as this isn't just NBU in isolation. We are a system. We have that. We have all of the good thinking of all of the presidents and all of the community and the trustees and everybody who makes up the Vermont State Colleges. But we also have the Department of Health. We've been working with UVM. We've been working with Copley Hospital. We've been working on if these people can't assist us to make an appropriate decision, I don't know who can. So I'll stop there. Michael, I think you had a question. Yeah, thank you, Lynn. And thank everybody for participating this afternoon. So just wanted to reiterate a couple of points that have been made. One, I mean, we certainly can't anticipate seeing cases on our campuses as we said. I mean, people coming from Vermont, students coming from Vermont might be less likely given our low disease prevalence in the state. But certainly the disease is still in Vermont. So that's a possibility. But again, students coming from places outside of the state with a higher disease prevalence, all the more likely that the robust testing that's going on is going to pick up cases in our campuses. And how we respond to those cases is really of critical importance. I was glad to hear Jonathan mention some of the things that they're thinking about in terms of metrics. I think just one to point out, to keep a close eye on is the turnaround time on testing. I think that one's critical. Because Vermont's been very lucky. We've had a very steady turnaround time. And that's allowed the Department of Health to get quickly to all the contacts and manage the contact tracing before someone that might have had three contacts. If the test is delayed five or six, seven days, that might be 15, 20 contacts. And it just becomes much more difficult to isolate and contain. So certainly keeping an eye on that. The question I had then, I heard Pat say 5% for isolation rooms or facilities. I was just wondering what was the isolation capacity for each of the campuses? And then secondly, I was wondering who is doing the contact tracing for the institutions as the Department of Health, like they would with any other positive case, or are the universities helping or taking the lead in that in some way? So you're absolutely correct that the state made, in essence, a deal with us, which is that we will pay for the testing, but they will come in the Department of Health and do the contact tracing. And I can only echo what Elaine said, it's just a pleasure working with them. They, as Pat can tell you, they sweep in and do exactly what they told us they were going to do. So that's been wonderful. You asked about the capacity for, was it important? Yeah, how many isolation? I think it's, well, it's mandated by the state, which is 5%, that's in the governor's guidelines, which for us, I think is 100 beds, but Dean Prueb, can you correct me if I'm wrong, please? Our 5% originally taken on our normal occupancy was 55 beds, which is what we took offline. Initially, we've now doubled that, actually doubled that plus 30. So we have three actually halls, depending on the profile that we can use for quarantining. And so, well, beyond the 5% expectation. Right, so over the 5%, great. Yeah, at NBU, we have at least three full buildings available, plus campus apartments, and then a smaller building that was turned into a residence hall from a house years ago. So we have a pretty large capacity for quarantine and isolation. And that's on both campuses. That's correct. Great. We have capacity to isolate a lot more students than we're gonna need to. We have really two and a half empty res halls when we get finished with all the students who are here for the semester and the lab weeks. We anticipate approximately 100 during the semester, so that's five rooms here in Williston. During lab weeks, that could grow by as much as 60. So we've got plenty of rooms where essentially holding old dorm as our isolation facility. Williston's a little more challenging because we don't really have a lot of res hall space. So we can max out at approximately for three to four students who would have to isolate. And then we're gonna be challenged. But here at the moment, we have, we meet that 5% and then some at Williston, but and we're unsure still exactly how many students are coming to Williston for lab weeks. I know it's gonna be a small number. We're gonna have those numbers by the end of this week as students sign up for residence capacity in during those lab weeks. But as I said, roughly 60 plus percent of the or 70% of the students in Williston are commuters. So we expect that if they are having symptoms, they're just gonna stay home. And that's, so we hope that the three to four spaces we have will be adequate in Williston. I just wanted to comment on the second part of your question around contact tracing. What I've been sharing with the community here is that we view the Department of Health as the incident commander. We will partner with them, but we will be prepared to, with a lot of information about any particular student staff or faculty member and where they've been and what close contacts they have. So we're ready with that information, but we expect them to take the lead and guide us through that process. All right, thank you. Apologies for interrupting Jonathan before, but yes, the department's doing contact tracing us. We are encouraging all our employees and students to keep contact journals. And we are in our case Friday, we did do some additional intel with others on campus who might know where that student had been and who they may have come in contact with. So we anticipate we'll be assisting in that tracing. Karen, you have a question. Apologies. You're muted. Yes, thank you and thank you everyone. Again, I'm proud to be part of this group of people. I just need to be fresh in my mind. I'm not sure I got all the numbers. I'd like to know from each of the presidents the number of students we will have in residence halls this semester, number one. And number two, I heard President Moulton refer to an agreement by students in advance to go home if they have symptoms or are sick. And I didn't hear the other presidents say that. I'm wondering if I should just take that for granted or if that's something that has done or it should be done. I think for NVU, it depends on the case. If it's, we could have a case where a student, you know, Vermont student, let's take who lives, you know, 20 miles from home, goes home for a weekend and has developed some symptoms and decides to get tested. I mean, that's a case where they're gonna be home and they're not gonna be allowed back on campus, but we also have students coming from a fair distance and it wouldn't be, we'll need to wait and see what the circumstances are for them to be able to travel safely without potentially putting someone else in harm's way. So I think it's gonna be case by case for us. And if they're here, they're gonna stay here until we get some guidance that suggests otherwise. The other presidents. I'll just see your, to your first question, Karen, we anticipate 100 students here all summer and Randolph Center in 20, or all semester in Randolph Center and 28, all semester in Williston. We currently have 42 on campus. So more will be Vermonters who wanna live in residence. I'm unsure of the number for here for the lab weeks. We anticipate that might be as much as an additional 40 to 50, but we will have those numbers by the end of the week. And same with the number of lab students in Williston. And yes, we are asking students have a go home plan, but I mean, as Jonathan and Davis explained, I mean, if there's some extraordinary circumstance that that student can't go home for whatever reason, we'll figure out how to accommodate here or if that student simply cannot isolate at home or a student can't go home because they've got people at home that might be sick but did not test or that maybe are sicker, but we'll take a case by case, but generally we want students to go home if they are not well. I wanna weigh in too on the first part of your question in terms of how many students are we expecting? Trustee Luna, we have 300 expected at each campus. Thank you. We have room in the residence halls for 1,050 students approximately. We are expecting 300 to 350. The last day in time to move in was two minutes ago, so I'll know more this evening about what our numbers are. So it would be around 300 to 350 with the caveat as always that a lot depends on the fate of athletics which as some of you know is still waiting for the governor to issue his guidelines. So maybe 300 on campus and we're teaching online so all the rest are taking classes online. I have a question about the for the presidents. I'm sorry, Bill, you go first. Well, I'll go first. I wanna know what happens if there's a disciplinary issue. What are the plans if kids are having large parties, things that are maybe not safe, not within the guidelines? Are we gonna be tolerant? Are we going to correct it on it? So at Castleton, we have our normal disciplinary procedures which are still in effect and were devised to accommodate a situation like this. And given that the whole world is watching, you might be able to guess on which side of the pendulum we intend to land regarding leniency versus severity. Anyone else? Go ahead, Pat. Very similar. We have amended our code of conduct, student code of conduct to include language of round adherence to these types of protocols but the usual behavioral process will ensue should there be a problem with either someone not wearing a mask regularly or not practicing safe social distancing, et cetera. Faculty are allowed to keep them out of class for the moment until they can realize they have to do what they have to do. They will be reported, will follow the necessary disciplinary process. The only real problem comes is when they do something off campus. Like we have one apartment building we affectionately refer to as the soccer house that tends to be where the soccer players are and have soccer parties and they are not on campus but if they are our students they are all subject to the code of conduct and therefore the disciplinary process that would ensue. And we fully intend to make an example of the first few to set the tone. Similarly with employees who may not wish to comply, we will make an example because we feel it's important to make that statement upfront that we're not kidding. And we are taking this extremely seriously because it's literally a life or death matter. Thank you. How about NVU? The same, we are, you've heard Jonathan talk about our health pledge. So what I'm happy about is that we have clearly stated in writing upfront that any deviation from the protocols that we've described in all of our processes will, we will have disciplinary action. And I think that the timing is the importance here. This is something that as soon as we find out that somebody has broken protocol it's really important to get up and very quickly in front of the matter and resolve it. I was very happy during the summer when we had a breach. We had a breach, we had something occur as Pat was mentioning off campus which is a little bit harder to work on. But I was really excited to see that students were the ones that reported the other students because they were concerned that they didn't want anybody to violate the kind of contracts and pledges that they had made and they wanted to make sure that everybody in their community was safe. So that's what happened. Okay, good. Bill, you had a question. I mean. Yes. Perhaps this has been mentioned and I missed it, but what are the, are there restrictions or what are the protocols for students who are now here, they're on the residential campuses and they wish to socialize in the local community?  Let's go, let's go do whatever. What is, what are the expectations with regard to students in residence on campuses being part of the community more broadly and what expectations follow them into the community? Pat, I am muted first, but you don't raise your hand first. So you get to go. I was gonna say something about age before beauty, but I'll leave that aside. So you're probably younger than I am, Jonathan. We, after the 14 day quarantine period and essentially students become like a family pod, assuming no one's ill, they've tested their tests, they're answering all the necessary questions, they're doing the daily temperature checks. So they can be out in the community. We have in our promise, our pledge, the health pledge that we're asking them to not travel further than 10 miles from campus, to not go away on weekends, to not go to any major cities and we're counting on them to live by that. But yeah, if they wanna go down and get a pizza, the same public rules apply. You have to wear a mask, you can't socially distance. Technically you can't ride in the same car to go get the pizza. So there will be some tricks to how they do all this, but they will be able to be out and about to the extent they wish, but they need to be practicing all the same protocols. Jonathan. Thank you. I would note that student testing is not required by the CDC. It is required by our governor. And so we test on day one, we test on day seven, that's followed by surveillance testing, but bear in mind that after 14 days, our students are residents of Vermont. And as far as we're concerned, have all the rights and privileges thereof. And since one of the reasons why we're allowing students in the residence halls is to bolster the local economy, we do allow them to wander off our campus. So yeah, so I'll stop there. So the answer, Bill, is yes. They are allowed off campus. Thank you. Well, my question was prompted in part by some community members eager for students to come back because of the financial impact on the community. And that includes people who wear their patrons. And so I wanted to just make sure I understood what the plan and protocols are. Because I would think that the community also has an expectation that students will, because each community has members who are some who are concerned that the students are back and others who are perhaps delighted that the students are back. It puts additional expectation that students actually follow at least the protocols that are expected. And so. Oh, you betcha. And I happen to know for a fact that members of our local community are out there with cameras, eager to catch our students. Right. Yeah. Anyone else? I'm just gonna comment quickly for NVU that after the students who are not required to quarantine clear their first test with a negative result, they are allowed to leave campus. Our pledge talks about following cross-state travel guidelines. And I'll just go back to a quick comment from President Collins earlier that mentioned that our students are watching as well. They're watching each other. And we have received some reports of behavior. This happened in the spring, the incident that President Collins was referring to. So long before even the pledge, our students recognize the importance of compliance and staying safe, but they are allowed to travel into the community. The quarantine students are stuck where they are inside until the second negative test, but they'll be out there soon enough. Okay. Are there any more board members with questions? Anything else the presidents wanna say? Okay. David, I think David has a question. Oh, David, I'm sorry, go ahead. I just wanted to address, we've covered students. I think we've covered instruction, but we haven't really talked too much about support staff and all of the other important players on our campuses. And whether, I think the governor's guidance with regards to returning to work in offices and so on and so forth, is still leaning towards if you can work from home, you should continue to do that. And I'm just wondering how that's going to look like on the campuses, understanding that face-to-face service, in some cases, including counseling, is probably pretty important, the advisor relationship and so on and so forth. Sorry to be always jumping in front, Jonathan, I'm feeling the power of going first. So to answer your question, David, yes, all the governor's protocols regarding return to work are still in place. And we, as I mentioned, we've been doing the temperature check on everyone coming to campus this summer, but we're ending that one class to start for the self attestation. We are not planning on bringing most of our employees back on campus. We have essential services that can only be performed here, facility staff, business office, student accounts, student affairs, et cetera, but there's a whole lot of back office employees too who can remain working from home. In fact, as part of our transformation planning, we're expecting we're to make this fairly permanent and provide options for work from home, we're updating our policy, we're looking at different technology purchases to enable folks to work at home in a better situation than we had to throw together last spring. The exact number of employees, I mean, most of our non-faculty, with the exception of those essential services that must be performed here, I expect we'll stay at home. We've done surveys of our employees, found out that in most cases, they're pretty happy with it. But we are planning obviously for staggered schedules, opportunities for folks to come in, hotel type office space, versus permanent assigned single offices in an effort to reduce our footprint also. We are not requiring them to get tested, but we're encouraging, and we are absolutely telling any employee who is health compromised or lives with someone who's health compromised to stay working at home. And that includes faculty who can teach from home. We're buying a fair amount of technology, not just for classrooms, but even to enable those types of faculty to have that to conduct their work from home. And you? So similar to BTC, we have a protocol where high risk people or people who live with other people who are on high risk for COVID can opt to work from home. For essential employees, we have tried a variety of techniques. One thing is that we have purchased, and I think I've shared this before, a few outside tent areas so that people can move outside where they have the fresh air and where they have a huge ability to distance from others. So that is available to do their work. We have also encouraged that advising be done if necessary through the computer and through technology because it just makes good sense. So we're trying to accommodate as much as possible. I think people are coming up with really good solutions as to how to meet students. We're working out processes in terms of how people are coming into buildings and then how they are dispersing to meet with other people within buildings for certain services. So that is, we're taking that very seriously just as much as we're taking the students, the health of our students and everyone else into consideration, but definitely keeping an eye on how that's going to all work out. But that's our plan thus far. Pesseldon. And I think we're the exact same as CCV maybe in the sense that we're teaching remotely so our faculty aren't really part of this equation. Our staff, as someone said a few minutes ago, we need our staff here to serve our students. That's what we're about. With the exception of some staff who might need accommodations, our staff are coming to campus. The very first thing they do when they walk in the building is they take their temperature and they attest by signature that they are complying with the governor's guidelines. So it's very similar. And as I said, I think CCV is the exact same protocol. When I go into, if I go to the office as a Vermonter, I have to do that to go into my, go into the office. Yeah. What Jonathan described is yes, that's what we're doing. We have, you can only enter all of our centers one door and you have to take the temperature. You have to sign a form that says, yes, I don't have any of these symptoms and we do that every day. And at that table, we also have masks. So if people need them and ask and they've forgotten it, they can take one. We have hand sanitizer and we have gloves and gloves that this morning we had a bear and an ophelia. We all had to put on our gloves and go outside and pick up. We actually had him on video this morning. He got into our dumpster. He was quicker.  So the gloves came in very handy. Anyone else? Speak up. Okay, we have a question from Beth Walsh. You're muted. Thank you. Thank you. So for those of you that don't know me, I'm Beth Walsh. I work as the Director of Career Development at NVU Johnson and serve as the President of the Vermont State Colleges United Professionals. Trustee Silverman, I really appreciated you asking about staff. We are often forgotten in the list of students and faculty. And so everybody seems to be doing things a little bit differently. You have a lot of things in common, but I'm wondering how you decided not to test staff and faculty if they're gonna be on your campus. Since it's been shown that that really does help us have control over outbreaks and such, I've appreciated being able to test at NVU Johnson. And I like the plan of testing our faculty and staff. And I know it sets an example for students as well because I know that we all have faculty and staff on our campuses that honestly think this is a hoax that it's not to be taken seriously. And I worry about that, especially if they're supervising other people on our campuses. So I'm just curious as to how that decision was made not to test faculty and staff. Okay, some president wanna address that issue? Pat Moulton. I was waiting for you, Jonathan. We made that decision primarily because we're having difficulty finding a capacity to do the testing from such a large number of folks. And also the fact that our faculty and staff come from Vermont, predominantly. Anyone who might live out of state in a yellow or red county, it's a different story. Also the fact that we're not anticipating a lot more additional staff, faculty aside for a moment, on campus this semester that haven't been coming to campus all summer in staggered schedules and having their temperature checked. We are requiring all employees to do the self-attestation through Castle Branch every morning. So we know their temperature and they're answering the questions. But this was felt that the risk seems quite low mostly for faculty, staff, given that they are from Vermont aren't from yellow or red counties and have been coming here a fair amount most of the summer. So that's why we decided we've still debating whether or not that's gonna have to change. But we don't have guidance that there's no guidance now that all employees must be tested prior to coming to work. So that's where we landed on that, Beth. Oh, that means it's my turn. Thank you, Beth. That's a great question. I deeply appreciate your, in my view, correct attitude about testing. For Kaston, the short and easy answer is because we're following the governor's guidelines and the governor said test students and period. So that's what we're doing. I would just add there's another ingential reason which is that no one in Vermont is testing everyone who walks into the local grocery store or the local car dealer. And so I'm not testing everyone who walks into my administration building. But if the governor requires it, you bet you will do it. So, Beth, are you the person for internships at NVU? No, Ellen Hill recently left to become the executive director at United Way in LaMoyle County. And she was working 0.415 because I am allowed 50% reduction in workload to serve as president of the union, which I expect is gonna be used up quite a bit this year. I have not volunteered to take that on. So our faculty and our provost's office are taking that. But I will post internships for you on our job board. I will help students with their resumes and I'll encourage them to do at least one or two internships. So I'm still the cheerleader, I'm just not the coach. Well, I appreciate that. We're prepared to welcome a intern this coming semester in any event already. So we're looking forward to having her in. Thank you so much. Thank you, Beth. Is there anyone else with any questions or any comments? Well, seeing none. I'm going to have Sophia, she has a parting word for us. Lynn, can I jump in and ask a question? Sure, go right ahead, David. Yes, please. So a couple of things. First of all, so I think I just heard Beth say that there are people in higher education that think the coronavirus is a hoax. That's a real disconnect for me, I have to say. But anyway, I wanted to congratulate all the campuses. You've obviously really worked hard. And actually I'm not surprised because a lot of smart people working towards a common goal produce good results. I also think we have to count on some good luck, unfortunately. Michael's the guru for the good luck. Yes, Tisha. So I just wanted to echo some of what David just said. I think each of the campuses has responded in a way that is appropriate for their circumstances. Certainly the more that, more information that we've been provided as a board, the more materials that we've been able to look through, the more discussion we've been able to have. I think the more confidence that we gain that the institutions are really methodically planning this out, that again, you cannot control whether you're gonna have a student with the virus come to campus. It's really out of our control. All we can control is that we find that quickly, we do all the contact tracing, the isolation, and that we have the capacity to do that, which you all have done. So that's really key. And then I think as we go throughout the semester, certainly how do you make sure that, that sort of compliance stays there and is high. And I know the local communities will be concerned about that as well. But it will be a, it'll certainly be something we have to, I'm sure we'll be having a lot more discussion about it as the semester goes on, but everyone has demonstrated that they're off to a good start. Yes, thank you. Your I.C. complacency is not our friend that we have to make sure the students don't become complacent as well as the rest of us. So, but thank you. You sound like you put together very thoughtful and good plans. And I hope we have very few positive tests. Sophie, do you have anything you wanna add? I just have one other piece of other business, which was we didn't get a decision on Wednesday about whether we would add a regular board meeting in November on November 4th. We did talk about doing some more, shorter, more frequent meetings, but this was more just a regular meeting between our September retreat and our December, early December meeting. That seemed like a very long time to go without touching base with you. So I just wanted to check if we could get a vote on adding a board meeting on November 4th. I would suggest that we just plan to do that. Okay. That sounds, is that something that everyone agrees on? Yes. I anticipate we'll probably have some more board meetings in addition, but just to at least get a regular, another regular one on the calendar just seemed like a good idea. Yes. That sounds good. Thank you, Bill. Anyone have anything else? Go ahead, Bill. Well, I'm just, I didn't, just on that note, it's a minor thing, but a reminder to other trustees that the legislature is reconvening on August 26th. We expect to go through the month of September. And so the retreat is scheduled for two days during the month of September. And it's going to be at a time when, frankly, it may be difficult given the number of things that are going to be coming to a head at the end of September. We just need to be, you need to be aware that some of us may not be able to fully participate. Maybe we can have a discussion with the speaker about that. Well, give us a break. Maybe we should have some discussion with the board. Well, we don't need to take more time now publicly about this, but I meant to mention it previously. Yeah. Well, I know in the past during the, you know, normally the only meeting we have that's during the legislative session is the March meeting. And we normally do that on a Saturday. Yeah. Who knew September was going to be in the middle of the legislative session. Right. So we can, we can, we can talk about that and just check on availability. Cause obviously it's important that we get as many folks as we can. Absolutely. Okay. There are competing interests. I'll just mention, if you move it later, then you get into heavy audit season for me. So, but I'm only one versus a handful of legislators. Okay. Lynn, thank you for again, for facility facilitating this. Oh, thank you. I kept it to an hour and a half. That was my goal. Good job. Thank you everybody for, you know, being part of this. Go ahead Joyce. I think she's just waving goodbye. Goodbye, just waving goodbye to people. Okay. Well, we need a motion to, we're not going to take any action on these, on these plans. I think we've all heard a lot. And I think we've had a lot of our questions answered. Do I hear a motion to adjourn? So moved. Second. Second. Any, any other further discussion on that? Okay. All those in favor of adjourning, please indicate by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposition? Okay. Well, thank you very much all for coming and we appreciate your, your attention and really good work on this issue. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks. My all. Thanks everyone.


Five hundred white supremacists with guns gathered outside the mosque. Hate and venom spewed out of their mouths as Muslims tried to enter their holy place and pray. I stood with about five hundred other people of faith between the hatred and the holy. Two nights later we gathered again, whereas the skinheads had brought their guns that night we brought flowers. Jew, Christian and Muslim together in one place of sacred worship. A glimpse of what the divine imagines is possible when people of faith come together in love.


Y gallwn cyfwyr o gwelwch, mae'n gweld o'r flynyddoedd i'r dynnu ein ffordd, yn anghytig gyda Ben Baxter o'r Ffair Nhaid Ffawr, yn gweld o ffair nals y mae'n ffordd. Mae'n gweld o'r fliesnyddiaeth gyda'rIP ond yn gweithio i gael, ac yn ddweud mor gynllunodd o'r ffordd, nad wrth i gael fwy o gydaidennig yng Nghymru, mae'n gweld yn gweld osweithio i'r dynnu. I now call on Jane Baxter to speak and to open the debate. You have seven minutes or thereby please, Ms Baxter. Thank you. I'd like to begin by congratulating Fife partnership for what I believe was a bold decision to set up the Fairer Fife Commission. The commission was set up as an independent body with a membership from across the public, private and third sector, with support by a secretary act comprising officers from the council and from Carnegie UK Trust. I welcome that this commission was established to provide a strategic overview of the scale, scope and nature of poverty in Fife and the effectiveness of activity currently undertaken to address such poverty. The commission was asked to report to Fife Council and Fife partnership by November 2015 and my motion seeks to acknowledge the significant contribution that I believe this report will make to the on-going efforts to reduce inequality in Fife. I want to thank all those individual commissioners from the public, private and third sector who gave up their time and energy to fulfil the brief set out by Fife partnership. The report is enriched by the evidence from a wide range of witnesses and the testimonies of community organisations across Fife. Thus, we have a report which combines data with lived experience and this, I believe, makes the recommendations all the more powerful. I attended the launch of the report at the Cottage's Family Centre in Cercodi last November. That's a centre which was originally developed by a group of local parents and established in 1987. Its purpose is to provide a family centre Cercodi, which caters with the needs of families with preschool children. The Cottage's Family Centre adopts a community development approach that puts the needs and aspirations of families and children at the centre of its service development and delivery and it encourages their participation in the management and development of the centre. The centre embodies the ethos and culture called for in the report and along with six other organisations, it hosted visits by the commission and supported their service users to give personal testimonies to inform the commission's work. Now, it's true to say that fairness is a broad umbrella which encompasses subjective and objective concepts. Fairness can mean different things to different people. The commission defined the fear of Fife as a Fife where all residents have the capability to live good lives, make choices and reach their full potential and where all children are safe, healthy and happy. I believe that poverty and inequality is a huge barrier to Fife achieving that vision but I also believe that poverty and inequality are not inevitable. They are created by the collective actions of society and can be reduced by that same process. The commission's own analysis states that ever-widening inequality is neither natural or intractable and as such it's important to recognise the scope and ambition of the Fair of Fife commission report in addressing this important issue. Fairness matters may be a report specific to Fife. However, the messages within it are pertinent to all areas in Scotland and will resonate with many. Indeed, the organisation for economic cooperation and development is a strong advocate of the argument that inequality is both a moral issue and a severe drag on the economic performance of a society. I believe that this report, while concerning Fife, does have value across Scotland for it provides a route map for new ways that the public, private and third sector organisations can work alongside communities to reduce inequality. I'd like at this point to highlight that the report does recognise the work Fife has been doing to tackle these issues. It states that there is no doubt that Fife has hugely capable, knowledgeable and committed people working in all sectors. Fife, along with all communities across Scotland, has no room for complacency especially with the hard financial choices now facing councils in Scotland. We must ensure that resources are targeted in order to develop person-centred and sustainable solutions. That will require more partnership working, co-location of services and a willingness to reach out to where people are rather than expecting them to come to us. I'm heartened to see that the commission's approach to tackling poverty and inequality is truly citizen-focused, put in community at its centre. That inclusive approach can result in evidence that leads to solutions rather than simply recognising the scale of the problem. It's the difference between data and knowledge, and more knowledge leads to better decisions. The report includes recommendations that reflect its local perspective. For example, why not replicate the principles of the city deal concept with a five-town deal with support provided to local geographies? Or a free travel card for those seeking work or recently gaining employment? Or a non-commercial tariff for broadband to be made available for social housing tenants? The report includes numerous such recommendations, which are rooted in local people's lived experiences. The challenge will be to make them happen, to develop a why not culture and release the latent energy in organisations and communities. I believe and have seen from myself through my work and political experience that putting communities at the heart of decision making increases the quality of decisions made and the likelihood of them having a positive impact. I am therefore confident that the report's recommendations, of which there are 40, gather into eight groups—ambitious, poverty-free, fair work, affordable, connected, empowered, skilled and healthier—are relevant. They have realistic timescales and targets, and they have outcomes that will lead to reduced levels of poverty and inequality. The big message for me coming out of this report is the emphasis on maintaining a citizen focus, working together, being ambitious and achieving improved long-term outcomes for people, not just improvements in process or inputs. When the action plan that follows the recommendations of this report is published, I am sure that strategic partners will work together alongside communities to ensure that a beneficial change is made. I am looking forward and pleased to see that the initial focus will be supporting new ways of working and the intention to drive the cultural shift that will be necessary to create the fairer fife to which the report aspires. I hope that the fife partnership fully explores the more innovative recommendations. Further to this, community action will beat the heart of making real change. I welcome the report's assertion that top-down and post-change will no longer be effective. Fife Council and the community planning partnership have an important leadership and convening role, but change requires action from everyone living, employing, doing business and working in fife. I hope that this report will start a conversation in fife, a conversation between all sectors of our community and inspire a real drive for change led for and delivered by the community. The fairer fife commission report is trying to tackle an extremely serious matter in our society. Ways of Parliament must welcome any attempts to address this problem and, further, we must also take serious consideration of all recommendations to lessen what is a great unfairness in our country. I am pleased that this motion has been recognised with cross-party support as it is only by working together to address the new concerns affecting people's daily lives that we can build a better future. Thank you. Thank you very much. I now call on Rod Campbell to be followed by Alec Rowley. Thank you, Presiding Officer. First of all, can I apologise to the chamber for not being able to stay for the debate after my contribution to another engagement? Can I congratulate Jane Baxter on bringing this debate to the chamber today? I welcome the opportunity to speak very briefly on the Fife Fairness Commission's report. Since the commission was established in September 2014, it has progressed towards its remit to take a strategic overview of the scale, scope and nature of poverty in Fife and the effectiveness of activity currently undertaken to address such poverty. Tackling deprivation is a strategy that ought to be close to all of our hearts and one that I am sure members will agree is fundamental in achieving a better world for everyone, especially young people. I commend the people who make up the commission and have given time as volunteers in the creation of the work of the commission for the benefit of others. Martin Evans, the chair of the Fife Fairness Commission and the CEO of the Carnegie Uke trust, said in its introduction, that our report has been enhanced, enriched by those taking the time to contribute their thoughts and experience. That is undoubtedly correct. He particularly welcomed and expressed his gratitude to the looked after children from Fife who, supported by the Scottish Children's Parliament, spent the morning with him and provided an outstanding evidence on what is important for all children. The view expressed that all children should be safe, happy and healthy. That is undoubtedly the case. Can I also commend the contribution of the chief executive of Fife Council, Steve Grimond, who I believe has given valuable advice and support throughout? Looking at the report itself, the introduction obviously makes the important comment that the issues of fairness, poverty and participation are at the top of the political agenda in Scotland and indeed in many other countries. One of the great problems today in many western countries the gap between the rich and poor far from narrowing is getting wider, but as the report makes clear, there is no universally accepted definition of fairness. What is clear however from the report is that unfairness exists when inequalities are allowed to interrelate and compound, which results in those experiencing disadvantage in one area of their lives to often experiencing disadvantage in others. In our society, income and wealth inequality is strongly connected with inequalities in education, health, housing and our environment. That is undoubtedly true. I also wanted to highlight the evidence, the view of the ECD, who in a recent report advocated the argument that inequality is both a moral issue and a severe drag from the economic performance of a society. I think it is undoubtedly the case that if we tackle inequality, we are more likely to have a growing economy, so it should be a win-win situation. Looking at the recommendations themselves, I just wanted to highlight recommendations in particular the section headed fair work, which involves not only recommendations in relation to the aim of making Fife a living wage region, but also a recommendation to explore fairness and self-employment with a view to encouraging employed workers to structure their work and enterprise arrangements to maximise their earnings and work security. In my view, self-employees are particularly at the risk of economic downturns, of recession and of poor health, physical or mental, so I particularly welcome this recommendation in the report. Jane Bax has talked about the number of recommendations, there are too many to go through in detail, but one other one I thought was relevant is the recommendation to refocus the geography of economic development activity from a five-outwards view to one that looks at the assets within Fife and to support towns to attract good jobs to Fife. It's an important debate, I welcome the opportunity to make that modest contribution and I thank Jane Bax once again for bringing the debate to the chamber. I know Colin Allitt Rowley after which we'll move the closing speech from the minister. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. I also would thank Jane Bax, I congratulate Jane Bax for bringing this debate to Parliament today. The Fife, Fairer Fife commission, was an important step in the right direction in terms of looking at how we tackle inequality and poverty in Fife and I congratulate those who served on that commission and indeed the report that they brought forward. It is important, however, that we then start to look at these recommendations, all 40 of those recommendations and it's important that the partners in Fife, who set the commission up, now start to set out the detail of how they intend to see these recommendations actually put into action and they start to set out in that programme a timescale and actions that need to be taken and by whom. Because whilst the Fife partnership, I did have the pleasure to chair the Fife partnership over a period of time and it was not always clear, as I would say, for community planning more generally, what each partner brought to the table and what their role actually was and I think that's something that, and it's not a criticism of the Government because I know the Government's committed to community planning as I am, I am also committed to community planning but I think we actually need to start to actually get much clearer outcomes and much clearer information of who's actually responsible for what, what is it that they're going to deliver and how all that comes together. An example in terms of one of the recommendations in here around the living wage, clearly employers have a large part to play in the living and the living wage as they do in terms of apprenticeships but I was never convinced of the role of employers at the table in terms of the Fife partnership and who actually represented them. Indeed I would say the same about the third sector. I was never convinced that the body that came on the third sector actually represented all third sector organisations in Fife so I think there is, whilst in the right direction, there's a lot more work to do there but you know, if we go back to the first half of the last century and the beverage report and the five evils that beverage talked about once, qualar, idleness, ignorance and disease he set out a clear agenda at that time of why we had to tackle these five giant evils within society and the reality is, in one shape or form or another these five evils are very much with us in Fife and across Scotland today and the fact that there are 75,000 people in Fife living in poverty indeed poverty in Fife you would say in absolute terms has grown over this last decade or certainly this last five, six, seven years and we've seen with the welfare reforms that are taking place just now and the evidence of that is that we have food banks and absolute poverty can be defined where people are not able to actually access what you would describe as the very basics in order to survive and I would suggest that being able to eat being able to feed your kids is the very basics in our society that people need to be able to survive and so the growth of food banks in Moncastiton say in Crosshill, in Cowanbeath, in Recythe and in Burkain the growth of food banks right across Fife and right across Scotland is the absolute evidence that absolute poverty is there in communities across Scotland and we need to work out how we're actually going to tackle that if I could pick up, as Roderick Campbell said there's a lot of recommendations here all worth it and we need to see a programme on how they're going to be implemented but if you take credit unions for example I myself, I'm a member of the Dumfemlen and District Credit Union and they have a branch up in Kelty that I save and borrow with but we need to see the development of credit unions not just for poor people but for the whole community and there's more that needs to be done there and more I believe that the local authority can actually do so it's nice words to say that we need to grow credit unions and grow them into employers and I agree with that and part of the partnership should be about that but we need to set a clear strategy a measurable strategy we measure outcomes about how we're actually going to grow credit unions across communities one of the most successful community credit unions in Scotland is a small credit union up in Blingary in Benarty, the Benarty credit union and it sits now, we are sets in millions of pounds and it has helped thousands of people in those communities over the years it is a massive success story so again there are lessons to be learnt there but the key point for me is I very much welcome the support I welcome the work that has been done but I do say that all the partners now need to look at this set out clearly how these recommendations can be taken forward, how they can be achieved how they will measure that and more importantly is going to do what to try and achieve that thank you thank you very much Mr Rowley I have now called the minister to close the debate on behalf of the government seven minutes or thereby please minister welcome thank you for the chance to come here thanks to Jane Baxter for this motion on the fairer of life commission this has been really quite fascinating for me as local government minister because it is a wonderful example of a local authority leading a partnership approach and really reconnecting with some of the spirit of even before beverage when very often across Scotland it was our local authorities that were the pioneers the experimenters that were at the forefront before national government had caught up fully with the need to deal with inequality the term municipal socialism was very fashionable in the early 20th century but that sense of local authorities as champions for their areas to advance well being to identify the ills in their local area is a really important one the fairer of life commission work is remarkable in a number of ways I have noted the division of the work into the four themes of paid and unpaid workplace being well life courses and transitions but how that has produced a great piece of work more of that in a moment the commission certainly has an impressive line up it has a series of people of distinguished background coming from a variety of different backgrounds as well I know one Jim McCormack who sat with me on the commission on local tax reform and made a great contribution but just like that commission it's not all in the people on the commission the commission itself is more important than that it's about the way of working that has been talked about that participative approach I have been fascinated both in my own work through the commission on local tax reform what I've seen from fairer Scotland and what I've seen here in the Fife commission about the sheer effect that having the personal face-to-face contact with the people who have to live these problems every day that you're trying to solve can have to sit around a table as the commission did looked after children, the users of food banks or people who have experienced sanctions to tell that story does mean the difference between as Jane Baxter very eloquently put it knowledge and data you get the understanding of what the real experience is with far greater colour than you would otherwise and those colours are very often very stark ones but it is remarkable and you see it in the recommendations that have come out that the people who are facing these challenges are not short of ideas for how to fix them they're not short of what needs to be done and the approach that has been quite common to public policy for many decades now of putting experts in a room and having them come up with the ideas for what to do on their own is seeing its day and this kind of approach where government does things with people rather than to people has a lot to commend it another thing that Jane Baxter said that I thought summed it up very nicely was the idea of developing a why not culture so that instead of these ideas sitting there and being felt to be impossible and people thinking well what can I do with that no one will pay me any attention to think well you know if we want to if we want to have a social enterprise capacity in business gateway that's greater why not if we want to join up services to look at one of the other recommendations that NHS staff provide a bit of information on income maximisation then why not we have to look at these take these ideas and run with them one of the great one of the great pieces of one of the things I have been constantly trying to do as I have gone around the country as the community empowerment minister has been to emphasise this message of participation that participation bringing people in getting them to give their ideas is very different to the old style consultation you can't do it for everything but for the core issue of equality and inequality in this country the people that we are trying to help should be the people in the driving seat of the action that is being taken and the only way to empower the disempowered is by showing faith in them by having these conversations by taking them seriously but then also showing the action that is going to come from it because there is nothing that is going to compound cynicism more than bringing people in listening to them and then going away and not acting on what they say or doing something else entirely and that is a circle that we have to close in all of our public sector activity to make sure that we keep the faith with the public here Alex Rowley mentioned some of the issues with community planning partnerships and I have to accept that I would agree with him on some of the areas where community planning partnerships do need to step up their work I have sometimes referenced somewhat frivolously the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy where somebody else's problem was recognised as a thing that could make anything invisible even if that is a flying sofa across lords if it is not your problem you just don't see it and wherever I go whenever I bang the drum for community empowerment and public service reform I say that somebody else's problem is a phrase that should be banned the community planning partnerships exist to bring all the people around the table so that the priorities can be isolated and the problems that can't be solved by anyone alone can be solved together and making sure that there is buy-in is some of the thinking behind the provisions in the community empowerment act but I think we'll need some further work in the next parliament probably building on that act as Alex Rowley said perhaps the key is making sure that we have very strong employer business representation around the table and that all third sector organisations can feed in because there's a very big difference between the big third sector providers that will work fife-wide and for example a small neighbourhood association in a deprived area and they both have really important things to bring to the table so I would just conclude by saying that this is a model of good work it's a model of combining the different public sector players the voluntary sector players, expertise and public participation I would commend it I do not envy the people who have to take these recommendations and turn them into an action plan that is ambitious but I would commend this work and I would recommend to any other council thinking about whether they should do something likewise to do so Many thanks and thank you all and now close this meeting appointment