This is Mises Weekends with your host Jeff Dice. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining us. Welcome back once again to Mises Weekends. And our guest today is Alan Mendenhall, who actually lives here in Auburn, Alabama, is joining us in studio. He's a longtime friend and a scholar associated with the Mises Institute. Alan runs the Blackstone and Burke Center for Law and Liberty at Faulkner University in Montgomery. He is a prolific writer on all things related to liberty and culture. He is an attorney and also a PhD in English. And we're very pleased to have him join us as we try to give some sort of new post-mortem spin to this election that happened last week. Alan, how are you today? I'm doing very well. Thanks for having me. It's sort of disorienting to be here in studio at the Institute and have you be somewhere else. Yeah, well, I'm on the road today, ladies and gentlemen. But let me give you sort of a devil's advocate setup. And I'd like to get your response. If you had told progressives, let's say five years ago, there's going to be a Republican president after Obama. But this hypothetical president is not going to be from Texas or Oklahoma. He's going to be from New York. He's going to be a sophisticated elite guy who's had a succession of beautiful wives. He is going to be very comfortable with gays and lesbians having worked his entire career in New York real estate. Similarly, he's going to be very comfortable with Jewish folks having some of them married into his family and having worked and had colleagues who were Jewish. He's going to be someone who's not animated by social issues like abortion, who's not a religious ideologue in any sense, and who, at least on union-type issues, is going to be a populist protectionist. Don't you think liberals would have said, man, if we have to have a Republican president, make it that guy? Yes, that's the short answer. I think they absolutely would have said that. But Trump is so unusual. He's somebody that nobody could have predicted. Alexis de Tocqueville, when he was touring America, wrote, you know, a great democratic revolution is taking place among us. Everyone sees it, but not everyone judges it the same way. And I think that description really captures our own moment. People are viewing Trump's rise to the presidency in very different ways, even among people who are libertarian. My own view is sort of that this is a good thing for a few reasons. Number one being that Trump, I'm not sure, is beholden to anyone, at least not in the same way that your sort of standard cookie color politician has been. There is a sense of alienation and disempowerment and disenfranchisement that people are feeling. And Trump tapped into that successfully. When Papua Can and the night before the election wrote an op-ed, he said something to the effect of, you know, whatever happens tomorrow, we can at least say for sure that Trump has changed the course of American politics. And the philosopher Slava Gizek said something like that, that this is a moment of awakening. This is a major transformative moment in American politics. And I think when the way American politics has been for so long, any sort of transformative moment like this should be met with caution, yes, but also with eyes open to the possibilities that it creates. Well, right, libertarians have gone around and around about Trump. There have been, you know, sensible libertarians who thought he was great, sensible libertarians who thought he's horrible. But here's what I don't get, Alan, is that we've got a guy who came out of nowhere and basically put a shiv in the Bush crime family. We're never going to hear from them again politically. He basically put a shiv in the Clinton crime family. We're never going to hear it from them again politically. And we're somehow, as libertarians, not supposed to see any upside in this, simply because he's not a libertarian. But, you know, hating the state also, I think, implies hating the political class that controls it. I agree. Rothbard, and if you can find this in the irrepressible Rothbard book, he says he talks about how can we mobilize the mass of Americans to undercut and short circuit their domination by a small number of opinion-molding leaders. And I think we just got our answer, not because somebody planned or designed it, but it just kind of happened. Nobody predicted this. Nobody drew it up in their playbook. And I think, you know, the results, no matter what Trump's policy positions are, and really, quite frankly, I don't know what Trump's going to do. I don't really know what policies he's going to implement. But what he's done already simply in his campaign and exactly what you say, knocking off sort of establishment figures and establishment institutions is already a success. Well, let's talk about the rights reaction a little bit. Obviously, there was a huge Never Trump movement led by people, let's say, at National Review. There's already an article in National Review about resisting Trump. Let me give you a quote from that. Conservatives would be happy to live in comfortable exile. It's a condition with which they are familiar. I mean, it sounds so defeatist. I mean, what's the GOP or the conservative posture with Trump as president? Well, I guess it's sort of like what you say. You know, it just kind of depends on which conservatives we're talking about. And you know, part of the nature of conservatism, I'm thinking of people like Russell Kirk, is to look more locally and to look at associations and mediating institutions at the local level, churches, families, communities, clubs, little league sports. These are the relationships among people that are most important in our lives. And the change that comes, the major shifts in culture are usually due to spiritual matters, entrepreneurship, technology, and these sorts of things. They don't follow necessarily a person or a political party. And I think that conservatives have been too invested in national politics in a way that has come at the expense of just basic associational life at the local level. Well, it's true. But what we forget is that with just a couple hundred thousand votes difference, you know, scattered across the various electoral college states, conservatives would be singing a very different tune today, right? I mean, conservatives like Rod Draher were talking about Hillary presidency and the Benedict option of having to retreat into enclaves in the face of this culture that's inalterably hostile to Christianity. I mean, I'm not sure that this changes that. You know, it may or it may not. It really will depend, I think, on the people Trump surrounds himself with. I see a lot of chatter about John Bolton serving as maybe secretary of state, and that bothers me. If I had Trump's ear, I would immediately tell him, no, please don't do that. I would give him Andrew Basavich as an alternative to John Bolton. I think he would be much better in that position. But, you know, I think a lot of that really depends on the people Trump delegates responsibilities to because I'm not sure Trump has settled on policy matters. And I'm not sure he knows exactly what he's going to do on one. He's made a lot of promises about what he's going to do on day one. You know, I just quite frankly not sure what a Trump presidency is going to look like. And I think we'll learn a lot when we start seeing his appoint. Well, let's talk a little bit about where this leaves a left. You know, the left has become an elitist party, a Wall Street party, a party that's obsessed with social justice issues and identity politics. It's not your grandfather's blue collar factory organizing party any longer. Do you think the left maybe overplayed its hands on some of the social issues this cycle and that it came around to bite them? That's probably so. I think that there is definitely a disconnect between what I'll just call sort of clumsily our ruling elites and the average American. What Judge Napolitano called in his op-ed yesterday, the forgotten man. There's a major disconnect there. And obviously, Trump realized that and Trump is not part of that sort of leftist elite. He has been at times, but he didn't represent that on the campaign trail. But I do think there was probably an overplayed hand on some of those issues. I think I'm thinking in particular of Hillary Clinton coming out and listing just the parade of horribles saying Trump supporters are, you know, Texas homophobic, xenophobic, and the list I think went on. But what she was doing was essentially demeaning half of the country. And I don't think that that is a very good political strategy.  And I think some of that has to do with people getting insulted by one of the two major candidates. I mean, in a certain sense, you have to almost say that the left has chosen identity politics. For instance, the transgender issue. This affects a tiny percentage of Americans. And the fact that Obama has been so out in front on this, when it's not really necessarily a winning electoral strategy, most people are sort of indifferent or maybe hostile even to transgender folks. In a weird way, maybe they almost put that principle ahead of their own electoral success, because it sure seems like they were running an elite identity issues campaign in a year when populism won the day. I think that's exactly right. Do you think that this actually means that the American electorate has shifted? Do you think Trump has brought something out in people that wasn't there before?  Well, two things. I think in a way, yes, he is sort of reflective of views that were already out there. But I do think there is a new sense of anger at sort of the Wall Street bank bailout culture, tarp and all these kinds of things. And I think Trump tapped into that resentment as did Bernie Sanders. I think there are a lot of different ways of channeling that anger. Some people are going to look at the Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren people, but there's an alternative. I mean, there's certainly a Rothbardian view on these sorts of things. We're diagnosing the problem. I think we would agree on the problem. It's the solutions. I think even someone like Cornell West that obviously identifies the problem, but we just sort of disagree about means and what the solutions are. I think a lot of people, without knowing really what they thought about the solutions and not having a coherent theory about it, just saw the problem, got angry and voted against the problem. And Hillary sort of represented that problem. Everything from the Clinton Foundation to our Wall Street connections to our corruption to the cronyism.  Well, let's talk for a minute about the Supreme Court. First of all, the current situation. If I'm correct, there is a historical precedent for having fewer than nine justices as few as six. And presumably there's no chance now as a lame duck that Obama makes any more hay about nominating Garland or anybody else. In other words, we're going to wait until the new year. Do you agree? Oh, yeah. Garland's off the table and we definitely have precedent for smaller Supreme Court. The Judiciary Act of 1789 had six justices. Article III doesn't actually specify how many justices we need to have. And we've had three. I think in 1807 we had seven. We had nine in 1837, 10 in 1863. I think we've had nine since about 1869, but there's nothing that mandates that we have nine. And FDR's court packing plan was so controversial because he wanted to fill the court with new deal people. He would have had up to 15 and he would have added a Supreme Court justice for every justice that reached 70 years and six months. He would have added a new justice there who would have been more inclined to his new deal program. And we have state Supreme Court. The Alabama Supreme Court right now currently only has eight with the Chief Justice being suspended. The West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals just has five members. So there's nothing that there's no magic number, I guess. It doesn't have to be an odd number. In fact, the benefit of having an even number is that if you do get a 4-4 split, then the issue goes back down to the circuits. It allows for sort of dispersal or diffusion of power, sort of some pluralism and diversity that inheres in the system, which I think is constructive. Well, you've had a chance to look at Trump's proposed list of Supreme Court nominees. We were speaking off-camera about how it's actually pretty geographically diverse and it's not weighted as heavily towards the Northeast and Ivy League pedigrees. So what do you think of his list? Well, I think it's a pretty good list. I mean, I like the fact that he has state Supreme Court justice on there. I like the fact that he has Mike Lee, a senator on the list. Obviously, when we're talking about the Supreme Court and our constitutional system, I'm speaking sort of within the system that we've inherited, within the system we've got, this isn't a conversation about social contract theory and the validity of the Constitution, which I'm actually very sympathetic towards some of these views and whether constitutional government has been a success or whether something like common law or private ordering, work that Ed Stringham does and Bruce Benson and Todd Zwicky will do in private ordering is better. But the conversation I guess we're having is within the constitutional system. What kind of justices do we want to have? And I think Trump's list is very good. I think if he wanted to appoint somebody that were in the mold of Scalia, his best option is probably Justice Pryor over in Birmingham on the 11th Circuit. I think Pryor most embodies the Scalia form of textualism and originalism. But there are some exciting names on the list, including Justice Don Willett from the Texas Supreme Court who does have some libertarian leanings. And this raises actually a very interesting fault line, which will probably be part of the Senate confirmation hearings no matter who Trump chooses to nominate. And that's this divide among people on the right and even within libertarian circles about the views on say the 14th Amendment, substantive process, privileges and immunities and on judicial engagement and standards of review and sort of the powers of the federal judiciary, issues of federalism, issues of checks and balances. These are not issues that the right sort of has a uniform view on. The views are diverging widely on a lot of these issues. And I think that in the confirmation hearings, you may see some interesting questions along these lines sort of getting right at that fracture on the right. Well, yeah, he certainly doesn't come across as a civil libertarian in style or tone. In other words, he's a guy who's been used to sort of running his own corporations and having a lot of people say yes when he tells them to do things. I wonder sometimes whether conservatives and libertarians make too much of the Supreme Court. Nick Gillespie tried to make this argument in his debate with Walter Block a week or so ago that the Supreme Court doesn't matter as much as we say it does and that it's an overblown concern. Would you share that? No, I think I wish that were the case. I guess is the way I would answer that question. I wish that were correct. I do feel that the Supreme Court has quite a bit of power and you don't see sort of the institutional resistance to Supreme Court decisions that you might have seen in the early republic. So, you know, I am a little bit fearful about what Supreme Court decisions might mean. I mean, I think Chief Justice Roberts' opinion on the Affordable Care Act is a case in point. I mean, when he held that the individual mandate is a tax and upheld it on that basis, that affected a lot of people. Now, fortunately for us, the Affordable Care Act is just sort of unraveling on its own terms because it just was not a sustainable model. So, no matter what whoever the president was going to be, whether it were Trump or Clinton, somebody was going to have to do something about the Affordable Care Act. You know, the mantra on the right is sort of repeal and replace, maybe just repeal and do nothing is the better strategy. But I do think the Supreme Court wields a lot of power and maybe the issue is not trying to therefore fill it with people who are like-minded so that you can exercise your power over the other side. But maybe we need to really step back and think about the nature of that power at all, whether that power is justified or legitimate or good. And that may be the way we need to look at this conversation. What can we do? There's jurisdiction stripping and there are all kinds of mechanisms that are constitutional that we could look at. But I do think the Supreme Court is a powerful institution and I have no doubts about that. I think the federal judiciary has come a long way from when Alexander Hamilton said it was the least dangerous branch and that's coming from an art nationalist. And I think he would never have been able to conceive of the federal judiciary as it exists now. I mean, since 1950 the size of the federal judiciary has more than tripled. Matters that the Supreme Court undertakes seem to be increasingly invasive and controversial. I don't think the Supreme Court was always as active as it is today. Well, if there's one thing we can always count on from Alexander Hamilton, it's to give us the most illiberal view of any situation. With that, ladies and gentlemen, we are out of time. You really need to be following Alan Mendenhall on Twitter if you're looking for someone who basically curates for you the intersection of law and libertarianism and culture and even literature. He's got a great Twitter feed. I tend to get caught up reading a couple of articles that he sends me virtually every day. You can reach him via Twitter at Alan, A-L-L-E-N Mendenhall, M-E-N-D-E-N-H-A-L-L. And Alan, I appreciate your time. Thank you so much for joining us. Ladies and gentlemen, have a great weekend.


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meeting to order and welcome all our guests. It's nice to see you. Any agenda revisions? Student presentation. Let's do it. Any other revisions? Okay. There'll be a what? Another appointment. Oh, got it. Another person that's in my hand. Yep. You guys ready? I am. Sierra? Sierra, are you ready? Do you care if I turn out the light? No, I'm not. So this is my STEM project from Agra to STEM, and it's on religious architecture. And my project's statement for this was that I was going to create a building that could accommodate four different religions, which is Islam, Christianity, Judaism, and Hinduism, and Islam. And the idea that there was a population that was multi-religious and they did not have a place of worship for all these things. So it was to create a design for a building that could accommodate all religions using the architecture of each of them. And so my first religion is Hinduism, and the Hinduism cosmology theory suggests that the universe is continuously in the cycle of creation, preservation, and destruction. And so these stages are represented by the three main Hindu gods, which are Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva. And the cycle is infinite as well as the Hindu concept of rebirth, which is believed to occur until one becomes enlightened. So infinity and repetition are really big themes in Hinduism, and so is the journey towards enlightenment. And so all of these themes are found in Hindu architecture through the use of fractals and layers. And most commonly known as Hindu mandalas are derived and inspired by fractals. This is a mandala. It's not specific to Hinduism, but it's obvious that it is a fractal, as well as the exterior designs of Hindu temples, which are actually designed majority from a helicopter view to show this fractal, which is imperfect, but it is based on a fractal, which is called the Sri Yantra, and it's believed to represent the entire creation of the universe in the Hindu religion. Sierra, I'm going to interrupt for just a second. Just introduce yourself. Oh, my name is Sierra Henderson. And take a deep breath. You're fine. I'm a salt horn. You're doing great. You're doing great. And so I went through some of the math for time purposes. I'll be brief. For the math of Hinduism, which uses fractals. And I talked about some of the main principles and rules of fractals that are used to create them in Hinduism. And I also went through and created the Sri Yantra, which is the origin of the universe. And I actually, because it's an imperfect fractal, I ended up using geometry of triangles with proportional changes in angle and in size dilation to create it where everything is intersecting at the same lines. And so for Islam, Islamic buildings often have numerical components of four and eight or multiples of those numbers. And that's because these numbers are significant to Islamic culture and architecture because there are numbers found in the Rubel heath or the eight-pointed star, which is that symbol up there. And so the golden ratio is also used to inscribe circles and squares, which helps create the eight-pointed star symbol with the circle in the middle to be proportionate. So the Rubel heath is used to represent the Islamic religion as a whole similar to the star of David or the Holy Cross for Judaism or Christianity. And the eight-pointed star, the Rubel heath, if you trace it back through history, it actually originally is from the seal of Melchizedek, which is a royal line in priesthood both found in the Christian Bible and in the Torah. And King Melchizedek was a biblical character. He was the king of Salem. And what's interesting is that King Melchizedek and Jesus Christ, this proper Hebrew name is Yahshua, they had many connections and some forms of Christianity even considered King Melchizedek to be the... to be, I think he was Jesus Christ before Jesus Christ was born. And that's because they both had the anointing to bring heaven to earth because they both had anointing to be priests and they had royal blood lines so they could be kings, particularly King Melchizedek, so they could bring religious aspects into political life and rule everything from God's perspective. So this is some of the simple geometry to create the Rubel heath symbol which is used by bisecting lines with compass and connecting lines that are made and then bisecting again the original square to get one that's at a 45 degree angle to it. And so this explains how the golden ratio is used to create the circle and the Rubel heath and so you bisect the lines of the square twice to create points for the center points of the circles that you make and then you get this shape which you use to prove that the radius of the center circle is the golden ratio and so you can do that by creating a right triangle using some of the center points of the circles and you get that one side is 2 and one side is 1 and so you have to find the length of the hypotenuse using a squared plus b squared equals 2 squared which 2 squared plus 1 squared equals 5, you simplify it. The hypotenuse is the square root of 5 and so if you split the hypotenuse in half it's the square root of 5 divided by 2 and you have to subtract half because that is the radius of one of these small circles and so that gives you the radius of the center circle which this is equivalent to that which is one of the versions of the golden ratio and this is what it looks like once you put the proportionate circle into the squares. This is Judaism and it was very hard to find information on the architecture of Judaism because they have non-uniform architecture and they usually have more modern and simplistic designs because designated synagogues weren't really began to be created until the late 18th century and so there was an absence of defining Jewish culture around the arts and architecture and this is because throughout history Jews have been persecuted and targeted because of their religion and so they were continuously fleeing conflict in that persecution and so they ended up scattered throughout the globe and they were always minorities so they didn't have the funds or the popular votes to spend their time and money to create one this is the oldest synagogue to continuously be in use and it's in Prague and it was made in the third century so the simple geometric patterns and designs are one of the commonalities that you can usually find in different synagogues and the Star of David is the most common the Star of David is also known as the Seal of Solomon and so King David of Israel and his son Solomon which are typically here, use this symbol as one of the oil lines 44 seals there are 44 seals of King David and you can see that the Star of David is up there and so basic geometries used to inscribe equilateral triangles in circles to create the Star of David and so this shows some of the basic geometry we're using in a compass set to the radius of the outer circle you go around and you get six points that are equal distance apart and if you go and create triangles they create perfect equilateral triangles this is Christianity so I focus mostly on Catholic architecture which mostly focuses on ceiling designs and steeples and this is because interior and exterior designs of churches are designed to draw your eyes upwards towards heaven you can see this picture sort of draws your eyes all the way up to the top, up to the sky and this is pretty common for Catholic architecture and Catholic architecture is also more greatly focused on visuals and pictures of important historical or biblical moments than any other religion, they use lots of pictures and paintings and stained glass rather than geometric designs and so something is that for the basic buildings and structures Christianity typically uses ratios that are meaningful by using meaningful numbers to the religion and so some of these are seven which represents that the world was created in seven days according to the Bible every blessing will be returned seven fold repetitive biblical importance is just the number seven is used very often in the Bible and an example is in Joshua 6.3 which was the battle of Jericho which was the first battle that the Israelites had to do to defeat Canaan which was considered their promised land and so they were trying to conquer it and seven priests shall bear before the ark, seven trumpets of ram's horns and the seventh day ye shall compass the city seven times and the walls of Jericho will come tumbling down and you will defeat them and according to the Bible it happens and the number six is Good Friday which is the sixth day of the holy week the week leading up to Easter and the day Joshua was crucified and died six also represents the day of the creation of man that occurred on the sixth day out of the seven days of creation of the world and number three represents the Holy Trinity, the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit and the last one is number eight which represents most commonly the second coming of Yeshua Jesus to earth it's very incredibly important and anticipated day within Christianity but the timing of the event is unknown it's not like the ending of the world of other religions where it was so 2012 that's when the world will end and the only reference to the time given in the Bible is the eighth day and so what this means is that the world was created in seven days and we mark time with seven days a week and then we repeat it again so the symbolism of the eighth day is what happens after recorded time which means the destruction or the end of the world and it is said that at this time Yahweh and Yeshua will destroy the current world and they're sorted again to make a new one they will also raise the dead and the dead in the living will stand and speak before Yahweh and Yeshua Yahweh is the proper name for God and they will be judged and so all those who are good and worthy will be called into heaven and will live with Yahweh and all those who are bad, unjust, or faithful will be punished and denied this right and I think this is where the concept of going to heaven or hell after death really comes from because in the Bible it's not often specifically said that after a person's life you go to heaven or hell specifically I think it really comes from this in the second coming of Yahshua because it says very explicitly that you will be judged at that time and so these are some basic designs that they made that could be used in the interiors of any of the sections of the buildings that correspond to the religion here is a repeating Star of David symbol for Judaism and up there I used the crescent and star symbol which is also used to represent Islam it actually also has roots in Christianity from the Crusade times when it was used very often by the Roman Catholics when they invaded places where Islamic and Jewish culture were created and so it actually doesn't have roots in Hinduism at all but they adapted it and I used the Ruban Kees as the star and the star and crescent symbol this is mostly used in arts for doorways or windows for a Christian church where these extra lines outside of the main arts would be different layers of wood or engravings and I have a fractal which has three repetitions and eight parts for Hinduism that could be a wall designer really anything and then these are just some of the models which you can see here just up close where I made a Hindu temple which is actually the reverse almost of Hindu architecture because typically the levels start off taller and they get increasingly shorter as you reach the top and I did the reverse of that where it gets increasingly longer but it is proportional and I have this which is for Islam where from the top view it creates the Rubal Kees symbol and it also used numerical components of four and eight for the widths of the squares this is Christianity which I use the numbers three and seven to be my important numbers so everything has a ratio of three sevens these original side lengths are seven which means that these lengths are three and this length right here is actually three sevens of three and this is also for Judaism it has a more modern design with funky roof and the lowest part is three the tallest part is six and it's also using a partial hexagon which is created when you connect the lines created in the Sarb David and then the next slide is really just all of them together which you can see here, it's fine and so it just shows and connects back to my project statement about how you could create a design for one building to connect them all they were too big for me to try to transport with them all connected so I just put them together but that is for the population that has multiple religions and that's it that's it does anybody have any questions? yeah, if you have questions you can ask so many, so many but I'll let somebody else if you want to start I'd love to know what inspired you so what I want to major in in college and go into is I think going to have to do international different cultures and stuff but I've always been pretty inspired by religion and the different philosophies of each of them and kind of how they all connect together especially Judaism, Islam, and Christianity because they all believe in the same God but they have very different ideas of what that God expects of them and so I've always tried to just look more into it and so I learned a lot from doing the research for the project and so now I know more and so that makes me happy did you start from the math perspective or did you start from the religion perspective and did the math grow out of it? well carrying me this through a lot of planning for the math section so I always had an idea of what my math was going to be and the architecture it uses a lot of math I knew from the beginning just that I wanted to do religious something based on religion and then religious architecture came up because she had pre-planned ideas that people could use and one of them was architecture and I was like okay then I'll do religious architecture and so then the math components came in afterwards but yeah students could choose any topic they wanted and they're quite varied I had no idea where your topic was really going to end up so it was all there they generated it and that's kind of the philosophy of the STEM is that connecting it to they get this idea and they connect it to the mathematics after a lot of great work yeah it's really remarkable and there's so much that I'd love to ask you to talk about because it opens up into so many different things but that's part of what's so cool about it is that this is the sort of thing that the whole vision of a single building where four sometimes mutually hostile religious traditions can come together that whole concept of by itself is a fantastic thing and I can only just commend you for taking this on yeah and I hope that you you feel that it further inspires you that you're not just burnt out by all the work you've had to do but that you'll continue to be interested in and pursue it's really great Sarah, thank you very much I would say for Cary, is it tomorrow? Is it tomorrow or Friday? Tomorrow's a weird day so there are we did some presentations today and there's like four tomorrow I think we're going to have to do two next Wednesday but on Friday evening along with the art show all of the kids are going to be the students there's like seven groups and I think it's going to be more of a gallery than a presentation so they'll all be set up and the projects are so different that it's just fascinating I really, this is my first time doing this and I was nervous I didn't know where things were going and so for them it's the same but they're all over the world I got one about Lyme's disease a couple of rocker trees a pumpkin hurler one about the fashion industry and those are all topics that the students chose and not doing this one I might have missed one, sorry but you're welcome to come in they'll be here on Friday night Friday night and they're all very different this is different than some of the other ones very cool anyways, thank you for your time Sarah, thank you very much she's not listening that was very impressive and to come in front of all of us and do that took a lot of courage and it's one of our favorite things that we get to do as a school board member to hear that so thank you comments or are you guys all here for stuff that's on the agenda yeah okay welcome I'm just gonna go through the minutes and then we'll get right to you guys so a motion to approve the minutes of May 2nd silence Garry and Carl any questions or comments or changes about them Lisa you do a really nice job anybody find anything well please go ahead Shannon Lucy can you stay for the discussion okay so on page 4 the paragraph that starts some discussion followed around the criteria mainly offensive and disruptive it says Garry Bradley had drafted a policy around this I didn't actually get to the policy part so I think what we could say is they had drafted some possible criteria so we're on page 4 of the packet about halfway down there's a paragraph that starts some discussion followed so the second sentence if it just read Garry Bradley drafted some possible criteria and cut out all the other words anything else all those in favor say aye discussion agenda flag policy so I don't know what it was two or three weeks ago we had a meeting and Garry got to help him create a board statement maybe or something that the start of something for the board to think about when we consider things like flying the Black Lives Matter flag and so I hope everybody has a copy of what they seem to and Kari I'm going to let you so the audience we we had made a decision on the board to fly the flag the Black Lives Matter flag although we weren't specific on when how and but as we were following up on the next step we realized that this is actually a bigger issue and where the board and the school stands on diversity equity inclusion in a broader sense than just the flag something that we need to address to provide context for flag flying and other activities and so we really felt it was important to take a step back and think about the broader issue and so I volunteered Scott Guy and it's actually a big topic and that's obvious but it was really obvious when I tried to sit down and put some words to paper so what I thought of as a starting point rather than draft an actual policy it's almost inspired by core values and belief statements like we have on the wall here this step back and fundamentally what is it that we believe and then from that we can start thinking about policies and other things and so because it all starts with beliefs right what we believe will be eventually turned into action which will become beliefs actions for other people in the school so I really think that's a logical turning point for us and so I did my best and Scott helped cross the statements I would really like us to really think about them if you like this approach if you think we should be doing something else let's hear that too but you know that's kind of it and I'd like to give feedback and really kind of wrestle with these statements have you guys seen the statements with the copy so much no I'm not this is the fourth packet yeah it just I wonder should we make copies for these guys we can put it on the you can put it on the document camera that's a great idea yeah that's okay while you do that I'd just like to talk to this and how that came out of the letter that came from the attorney do you want to do that first before we do well I think it actually gives you a lot more leeway it's a separate but really doesn't matter I think your beliefs I couldn't agree more actually after sitting through chairs training for the past six hours today that boards should develop their policy based on their vision and beliefs so I think this is a great place so I commend you and you and Scott and thank you about that I had a conversation with Scott Cameron I gave you last time the letter from PHO Land about where the legal implications might be and I'm trying to look for both and I think there's leeway and so Scott and I actually had a long conversation and he said you're going to want to talk to my partner because we have a debate going just in our law firm so that's a good way of coming to the chase I was sold from this letter now you're telling me you're debating it's a great debate and the ACLU I asked them to come in from my ACLU they will not give us advice they will not do it they will not judge this which I was like okay guys is that unclear I want you to know as a board that you're in a place that is unclear cutting edge so I had a conversation with Bernie and I've worked with Bernie before so it was a school and I said and knowing because Scott and I talked about the gammon and he said why and so I said Bernie will you write us a letter about what your opinion is because I wanted to deliberately show you because as some lawyers say legal advice is what it is, legal advice you have to make your decision so I wanted you to see the gammon well I appreciate that we got what I also wanted to let you know that when the ACLU said to me we won't give you advice on this this is not a place we're going to get into that yeah so have people read Bernie's memo yes it gave me some comfort as opposed to kind of a oh you know I think what it'll before the question of what we can do with the flagpole I thought this letter very much strengthened my my own sort of take on this going into it the fact that the key piece of it being that we as an institution are putting this flag up the same way we might the same way we might message curricular you know this is a message from this institution to this institution not a message we're putting the flag up not a group from within the school does that make sense and then we're not obligated to allow other to then allow other groups to come to us if you did that this is a question of us stating are support support near the bottom of the first page it says as long as these actions are reasonably related to legitimate pedagogical pedagogical concerns so it seemed that we would have to articulate those as we have and I think with this policy I think you're getting there closer we would want to do that but just speaking for myself I'm comforted by this as well I feel like lawyers are usually paid to be very conservative and avoid the worst-case scenario and help you do that so now that we have sort of opposing views I feel like we can reasonably defend our actions and it fits with what I had thought of in terms of this issue and we had talked about this and Scott and I talked about this too is that we honestly have to have a flag policy at the school we can say that this issue is so important to us and so unique the Black Lives Matter movement these students at this particular time in our society we feel compelled to this flag should fly period and we're not going to consider other requests we don't want to but we feel this strongly that this is the time for this flag so let's take a step back for a second and Kari had two questions here what do you think about this approach and then what do you think about the beliefs so the approach let's just do that are people comfortable with working from beliefs and then maybe we go to a policy maybe we don't maybe we just have our beliefs here can I just for clarification Adrian this is on a separate track from the flag that's correct so our decision on the flag stands there's no revision of that okay this is part of it's related of course we wouldn't be doing this most likely sadly if the flag issue hadn't kind of prompted it but this is on a separate track before we confirm can we just hear from everyone are you comfortable with our flag decision at this stage I am absolutely so and that decision was remind us the flag will fly details to be determined details to be determined and the hope was that we would feel comfortable after doing something like this because the hope is that next week there was something going on and that was where we were in bed that something was going to happen next week maybe and in a minute we'll hear from you guys okay we'll be back to flags in a minute yeah so approach people okay with this approach we want to talk about beliefs and then maybe move into policy or other ideas I think beliefs could have strong sound beliefs there's also I don't know if this would enter in but the aspect of restorative the aspect of the flag as part of a kind of restorative practice on a much bigger scale than what we customarily do and I don't know where exactly that fits or if that's something else entirely so say more about that in the sense of if we look at the black lives matter at our decision to fly the black lives matter flag is an aspect of restorative justice in the sense that it's a recognition essentially historic injustice committed originally against Africans transported and enslaved in the Americas in what would become the United States of America the institution of slavery once the United States of America existed and everything that has happened historically since the constitutional abolition of slavery but from Jim Crow to lynchings to discrimination of various kinds all the way down to the present day that this is the injustice the historical injustice that we in our own very small but nonetheless committed way have are taking a step towards redressing through there's how does it go Jody there's like reparations restoration recognition reconciliation or something like that with community on one track and the violator supposedly participating on the other track what makes this difficult is that it's not a situation like the Kaiser used to taking to dealing with this is 400 years basically and the original perpetrators are all dead but we are all the heirs of that so we have to somehow make this work in such a way that essentially for you 32 we have we are taking steps towards a restorative practice recognizing that it's far bigger than just us but that we have to do what what it is within our power to do if we go to these belief statements group on because of technology maybe we should take principle but we can either pause and go do some we'll just read them alright so the first one says that all start the you 32 school board believes that all of our students staff and other stakeholders make a positive contribution to our community by bringing their own individual experiences and backgrounds to our schools thoughts about that absolutely thumbs up absolutely no argument all of our students should be valued and feel they belong I feel like I heard that all students have the right to an education free of the biases explicit and implicit historical and contemporary based on their identity here's where I'm trying to capture it's not just color of your skin but I like this a lot and I love identity politics it gets hard to condense into a sentence the biases explicit and implicit historical and contemporary this comes later again every every time we say biases we're saying it and I think it's important that we keep that piece of the message but I'm wondering if we could define biases prior to the text of the beliefs so that we can simply say the bias like a legal document you would define the terms prior to entering into the text of the policy it's clear that any time we refer to bias the biases it would be explicit implicit historical and contemporary because if the reader gets tripped up I love what Bill called Scott for his vocabulary at the last meeting this feels similar to that to me I think it's hard for somebody to get through this sentence because they get lost in the middle with the explicit implicit and they have to double I had to double back and cover it with my hand to get the intent of the initial sentence of course this was my favorite sentence absolutely beautiful but it's an 8th grader would struggle to read it it's really what it goes down to and if an 8th grader can't read it we need to find a way to make it more repeatable definition of bias so when we say biases we mean the explicit implicit historical okay good other thoughts on this one there are other qualities of bias that we should be pretty much got it yeah it's a nice way to do it different ways our schools must be committed to honoring student and staff diversity in all its forms I thought about other stakeholders too but then I asked them a few places and people see staff as everybody that's working here yes it was good alright we must try to provide true equity which means giving each student access to the resources they need to learn and thrive our programs will respond to the individual abilities and needs of each child okay so I don't feel as good about this sentence as the next basically what I'm trying to do is define equity and then define inclusive and I think what I mean is inclusive means everybody welcome equity means to each according to their needs does that make sense that's a huge statement as a board to support that second sentence here worries me a little bit I completely agree with it but it's huge you know it's what we're writing for but I don't and that's our programs will respond to the individual abilities and needs of each child and strive to respond to the and needs which is a very high standard to hold ourselves to so I'm trying to say this is your debate but I would change the word individual I would get to something to where we've been using language around personalization do we want to talk about abilities and needs we wouldn't use that either our programs will personalize to the needs of each child and just leave it like that because individualization means everyone has their own individualized program I think that's where I got that we will make sure we meet the needs and interests and people will find different ways to do that instead of you're almost ready okay so you can just eliminate individual no I said no I wouldn't just eliminate that I would say our programs will personalize to the needs of each child I would add stride though but something the abilities and I'm not trying to lessen it I'm trying to say what we are trying to do there's a board around personalized learning that's the road I'm trying to go okay but back to the definition of equity and inclusive do you think this is capturing it I like the phrase it's according to his needs has a nice ring to it okay when diversity is honored student development has enhanced positive social access our practices our practices must be inclusive yeah sorry so this is meaning that children of all abilities have equal access to school resources how about you use the abilities in its catch word in education so you might think about just saying the meaning that all children have equal access have equal access you sort of lose you don't need to say the ability you lose the equity when you start putting in different abilities you start getting into tracking yeah alright and tracking his phone is actually shown to decrease equity and diversity do the children have equal access to school and I might call them students instead of children that students have equal access especially in high school yep good okay so then second to last one is when diversity is honored student development has enhanced positive social attitudes are fostered and our student learning outcomes are supported so not only is it the right thing to do it has these benefits and everything else we're doing too yep and last one I think is really important so can I ask take out the word development and student learning student learning is enhanced I like development just because it seems broader to me like developing as a person as a human being is that I just I have a saying to Steven over there I'm right in the middle of sociocultural doctoral class right now so I'm reading this research like I read two books this weekend and there's clear research that shows when you have diversity and you have more inclusive diversity student learning is enhanced it grows and that's what's ringing in my head and it's fine I'm fine but isn't that what the student learning outcomes are supporting so student development is more of a personal growth as opposed to an academic growth I think that's what I was going for but now that I think about it I think it's important the learning outcomes are and there's personal growth built into those so we just dropped that first phrase and said positive social attitudes are fostered and supported I still like you like development I guess I don't feel strongly about development or learning but I like that clause in there the student learning or development yeah yeah once you get to the student learning outcomes it's sounding very administrative and it's not about the student education statement essentially I think you can leave that alright so what are we going to do you want development I'm fine if you don't take my suggestion I have some ideas to think about we'll leave it for now so last one I felt pretty strongly about that in order for this to meet something we have to monitor so our board and our staff must be accountable for providing an equitable and inclusive education system that kind of leads us to how do we do that we establish policies and if you go back to the fourth data that says the N says needs each child I would just change that to student health yeah I'll do that throughout yeah okay anything missing concepts no you did a remarkable job bringing it all together I will tell you whether you're going to listen to either Pietro or Bernie land back of Pietro land close attorneys that gave you opinions by setting up a lease statement or into a curriculum you will be stronger with the advice that you were taking or somewhere in between those two so in terms of next steps well I was just looking to see you know I would like to vote this in but it's not on that action agenda so we're meeting again in two weeks and we could put it on that action agenda as a to adopt do we want to grab the policy I'm going to stop for a second does anybody have any comments, feedback, concern sorry is that okay thank you it seems to touch all the points kind of it's inclusive of where everybody's trying to go and meet your needs and beliefs Sierra can you talk louder that one more is gone right there I was just saying for student development versus student learning or including both of them I was wondering I guess we're trying to stay away from the flag thing at the moment but when it comes to the race and identity and acceptance of those identities I think that is more specific to development of personal like personalities and beliefs versus student learning so I would just say that including the development or finding a word that also means the same thing I would consider important to include because I think that for the current case that we're dealing with now that that really relates to that phrase thank you anybody else so if we included on our June agenda to adopt it as a statement of beliefs okay we're going to just clean up so I don't think it'll be different enough that that's one next step that's my next question policy there's some options so this is really kind of coming out of thin air in some ways you know we didn't do the Montpelier route we didn't spend a year or two thinking about this and educating ourselves we could spend time we could learn about this topic pretty ignorant that's an option we could rather than keep this to ourselves we could bring this to the SU board because we're hoping that policies are adopted SUI as opposed to just you 32 if we can do some research as long as we promise to do it ourselves even if they try and mess it up and this is not to I think deliberate thought process is a good thing I've always thought every time I move fast something goes awry so I really like this police statement and we as the leadership team around the SU can really work with I don't know policies that would support this more than the police statement and I think the police statement is really strong adopted that doesn't I still think I really like you and I talk about this all the time I really like the last bullet in the sense we're going to hold ourselves accountable and so maybe that's the policy is that there's a monitoring system for this how do we monitor and I don't even know what that is same that's where I think this sort of begs a policy because it goes from we believe to thou shalt yeah right and then we ask for reports and evidence to actually be carried out and do we need a policy to ask for that or can we do that just from this the police statement could we say show us evidence that all of our students are valued and feel they belong so this is where I would just counter what I just said and as a good governance you need a policy because as a good governance you should be using policy to direct the system based on your beliefs and your vision go ahead a little bit louder are you guys saying that you are holding off on flying the flag or whether you guys are saying no the flag goes forward do we have like a day so we're going to get to that when we end this discussion I want to hear from all of you guys because it's not our job to tell you when to put it up we're going to be coming from you guys and you guys are going to be the ones to put it up we might be there so are you patient enough to wait for that yeah I'm just curious because we had talked and they kind of felt like it was a little bit of getting lip service by saying yes we're going to do it and it just doesn't happen so when we left the last meeting the understanding that we heard from Krista was here was that there was a week planned for next week where there were going to be some different activities and maybe a fair an event something that was going to talk about all of these things and part of that would be raising the flag and that's why we decided to meet tonight because we really wanted this in place before that happened does that help you yeah well okay hi Jean Knight I'm just wondering about moving forward with this and monitoring ourselves is there any way we can create another body of staff and students and school board members that are focused on this issue diversity and carrying it forward and it could be you guys could self nominate or whatever but something that's separate from what you're doing that could get together to talk about these issues and address things that come up and be proactive about what's happening around curriculum and that sort of thing this is do you guys they may have something I would say that group of students is our start with that committee they're the ones planning the work they're the ones who talk to our faculty today we had a two hour faculty meeting built around racism and what it means to be a student in our school if you're a student of color and you guys can you did more than I did on this we're putting that together now whether or not it's a committee with the board I think that's for you guys to kind of decide how you want to do that but we have to report to you on your policies that's our job so thanks I think that's a very interesting suggestion particularly as regards developing this policy or these policies that we're talking about it would be very unorthodox for us at least in my experience to have say students involved in drawing up a policy on in this case equity and inclusion but it would seem to make a tremendous amount of sense to me since I think those of us sitting around this table are we only we don't face the downside of equity and inclusion the way some of our students do perhaps or some of our parents do have that perspective incorporated so it's not just a bunch of old white guys getting together trying to imagine what it must be like to have to worry about equity and inclusion that we could have something that actually that people can relate to and can say either that's good or it's just off the wall makes no sense and this is how you should monitor maybe how you should watch out to make sure that things don't go wrong seems to me like your suggestion would be very helpful and certainly in that specific work and then possibly who knows maybe that would be the start of something more long standing so I would want to I'd like to see the partnership that was just asked I would ask not to make a committee because then you bring a lot of things in structural things to have good conversations and we are learning that we have learned that over the past six years we're learning that actually more and more that when the board steps in to take authority there's a lot of other things that come in by statute and I think you'll limit conversations that way instead of expand conversations by empowering almost saying to the leadership we're expecting you to include and be very inclusive in putting this together and that doesn't mean there won't be board members there but it means when you start to sanction a committee and this is something that we're learning very much from the public engagement folks that when you do that you really bring in some hand-brained ways of communication also it should be clear about the purpose I like the idea don't hear me wrong it's what we call that group it's important we have a group that does that I think I want to draw the distinction between what the board is generally focused on policy and that's really our job only we can do the policy I think we can probably set up a process to be inclusive about whatever we come up with but when it comes to programming you know I don't see us being involved with that I know if the staff wants to be inclusive I think you should say we would like you to be inclusive we would like you to be inclusive but you design how to do that but we're letting you go do that so I'm hearing that policy sounds like the way to go we're going to need it eventually I don't think we are either I'm thinking that a little time to live with these and see what they look like the more I think about the SU-wide the more that makes sense to me because we're only supposed to ultimately have one set of policies but we also before we develop the policy and finalize it it makes sense to have there by so what if we bring this to the SU board as a beginning step and see what their reactions are I can bring it to the executive committee yeah yeah I would just warn you that June 6th is we're about to send out a three hour meeting at SU board it's not that this isn't important maybe we say at the executive committee this is more important to get out there in front of the other things it needs we're trying to nail down three goals we haven't even done that and we're at it so that's the other discussion so then you know it needs to be like anything else it needs to be calendar now so let's do that as a first step bring it to the executive committee and we'll this is just that statement right now right it's just a it's a broad statement that just like we did the consents in government rule that could fall into policy we can develop more direct policy but this can fall into our harassment policy for example it can fall into keeping our students safe so we already have some policy in place that this can fall into so we don't need to I don't think that should be a hold up this can be because it's our responsibility to keep all our students safe just under that policy falls into mean to bullying, harassment we already have policies for that this is just more specific obviously it's a hard question you have to deal with but I personally fully support this but I was just wondering because I know there are a lot of students at this school who don't agree with this at all and I was wondering what you guys are going to do if they come forward asking for some sort of representation what do they not agree with well I mean I don't believe it so I can't really speak from their perspective so do they not believe these belief statements it's more around the flag people saying things like all lives matter like why can't we fly that flag this pretty clearly states that all lives matter I don't think there's any question there that anybody could complain I think one of the things that we heard today is that there was a teacher who had responded to the survey that went out in that same life but all lives matter and she needed to hear from the students what the flag meant to them to understand where the perspective to have that shift and she did and so I think that's the point of some of that callback work next week is to help students see what it means for the students here to raise that flag it's not about what ever is out anywhere else it's what it means for this group of students Sierra I just want to say that I know some of the more specific opinions of people that are against the raising of flag all lives matter is a very common one but another one that I've heard is that because it's specific to a group of people and I don't mean specific to a race I mean specific to an organization and people under the name of that organization have done things that they believe are morally wrong that have nothing to do with race but those in Black Lives Matter some small group of people under that name have done more extreme things around police brutality and some chance and other things that I've seen them show me videos of and some things where they're like I can't support this specific organization because under this name this organization has technically done this, this and this which is beyond just striving for equality of race but it's more specific to being what they consider disrespectful to police enforcement or government and stuff like that so just understanding that too to try to address that in the week where you explain what Black Lives Matter flag means I would see how explain how we're viewing it whether we're viewing it as the organization or as we're viewing that flag as just representing a race beyond that organization that when we have these debates and de-rutes and stuff that is really some people see it as equality for a race and some people see it as specific to our organization so I would talk about that and also because she was asking about what about people who want to raise other flags like if they were to advocate for the All Lives Matters flag you were saying that you kind of had a contradiction about whether it was about the students or not like you were just like let's as a board talk about what our beliefs are so we're not going to have to deal with other groups of people who are asking for it and like asking for other flags and have to review that but then you were saying that it was about the students and how they were viewing the flags I just have to can you explain what you're based on whether it has to do with freedom of speech and the student body we will get into problems with other people wanting to advocate for other flags that represent stuff and happy to address that good question absolutely right so we clearly need to we said this in the last meeting we need to have a statement about the flags specifically why we are authorizing this and to support going back to the memo what are the legitimate pedagogical concerns that are being addressed so we need to develop that as part of this we also need to think for ourselves and make a statement about flags in general are we going to consider other requests for flags we don't do this tonight but we will get some and we're going to have to have a way to respond you're right you know this is not one little thing this is huge and this is why we're where we are now instead of just saying we're going to let the flag fly we as a board have to look beyond just one flag going up on the flagpole and all the implications and all the different ways that we'll look at it and figure it out student beliefs and the student body because you represent one voice being specific to a group of students because of the whole biases problem like this statement that you just said you can't it would be difficult to deny the right under certain means for other groups of students with beliefs that may not match the board that was very articulate Sierra, thank you but I just want to point out that there is bias and there is racism and like there's a clear line between the two and I trust that we as an organization or institution can figure out what is a bias and what is racism is not equal I don't know if as articulate as Sierra but I just wanted to say that so in fact I mentioned a lot of reading lately there's quite a bit of case law on this and I'm not going to remember anything I wish I had a book I was reading last night called that gave a lot of history of education and race issues and freedom of speech freedom of speech that there's a place and this is Pietro with Pietro Lin and his letter to you was aligning this to kind of like there's three domains and if you can get into the curricular domain you're going to have a lot more directability than you are to limit the speech of students and actually some of this has been proven in K-12 and some of this has been proven in higher ed especially with student newspapers about what's the right for a student newspaper to have free speech so there's been and I don't I wish I had everything so a lot of it's in letter two so I think it's well we have to protect the rights of students to have free speech the board in doing a belief statement because you're getting to the place where curriculum comes from values and beliefs that's the work we've been doing for the past three or four years now as boards and saying what do we what do the communities value for students to know and be able to do hence the student learning outcomes and getting to this you're getting as you think about a flag as you were asking so how do we judge flags that we fly and actions that we take as a board and I'd rather go to that bigger special than just the narrow flagpole piece but actions we take as a board how does that directly relate back to that we have to allow all students to speak just as we had two different student demonstrations out of the flagpole in the past month if there were more we allow them to go you told us that in your mission you want students to learn to be active in their local and global communities you said that very loudly to us so I would say in your statement about the flag while we want our students leading the way they are you're going to be on stronger ground if you link it to what the board is thinking okay and I just want to be clear on what some of the opinions were that were being expressed that Sierra said so I'm going to make an outrageous statement that's not feasible so I realize that going on what if we were to raise a flag it said all black lives are important by raising a flag it says all black lives are important it's no longer affiliated with the organization black lives matter so it's no longer a direct affiliation to the organization it's a statement of belief then that statement of belief can't be opposed by those that have issues with that organization and the way they're dealing with police brutality now I know it's not feasible to create a whole new flag and go get it made and that's not a feasible solution but that's basically if that were to happen that would solve some of the issues this other group of students have just so that everyone kind of understands where that's going so it's not that they believe that the race that the black races don't matter per se in all those organizations now I'm not saying that's what we should do or that's feasible but this so it's not necessarily a racism piece to some of those students that have different beliefs and just for the record that's not my belief and it's not my daughter's belief she just happens to know that one and make sure everybody is represented if you guys look into the police brutality as people clump in black people with the black lives matter movement did not do that stuff like if you look into it they didn't do that stuff so I just want to clear that up so that would be great if we could bring that up during that week when you guys are talking about it because I think that would be really helpful can we help a little bit with this in terms of like we're planning I was going to say we're almost ready to go to the next so I think the next step for us is to bring this to the SU board executive committee first and then to the SU board and then from there think about policy it's almost June we're obviously not going to do policy by the end of the school year but that's sort of the goal for next year are people okay with that? okay Stephen so one of our request was just that we had time to put things together and so what we have together and I don't have every single detail we're getting that ready so starting with really last week the BLAM student group worked on they did a retreat and worked on their presentation to our faculty that occurred today and the work that they did there and it also started planning for for next week and we want to provide callbacks and we've partnered with other organizations and you're going to have to help me with some of those yeah right and we've also reached out to students at Mockillier who did some of this work as well and and so we're going to have series of callbacks and assemblies that are available for students so that we can learn more about what's happening and in fact some of the discussions were providing space for students to grapple with the issue not just be presented with something but to actually engage in some dialogue with that we wanted to culminate that with a flag raising we were looking for Friday but we already have other things booked on Friday and we're finding we have other things on Monday but we're still going to figure it out right so June the 4th is the date that we were going to raise the flag because it gives us time to have the conversations with our students our staff has started the conversations now I think we're becoming much more educated about what we're trying to do and more importantly the students in BLAM are having a greater opportunity to express the why and that's really the most important purpose here is the why we're doing this and why it matters and so I think that we're on track for our part we've been running two simultaneous courses the board is trying to figure out what it means and we're trying to make sure that everybody is educated because that's what we are as an educational institution and so I think we're at that spot there's been a tremendous amount of mind power put to this mostly by this group of students and their faculty advisors to get this going and so I think that for us we feel very confident we feel that the board has supported us in this matter the board is going to have to deal with future issues in this but that's for you guys and for us I think we're in a good spot can I get a head nod if I had not thought we'd be good and that woman who wanted to know left unfortunately she's just outside the door we'll talk to her that's not a problem Leticia might let her know so I think because we've had these two parallel things going it's felt like we're not saying yes to raising the flag because the board is trying to pursue their policy and their beliefs and all of those at the same time we're planning all this other stuff and so as I said to you guys we're on the board we're on track to do this and I think we've got everything in place and I hope you understand that we're fully supportive of this I hope that's clear we're trying to get our ducks in a row but I don't think anybody has ever backed down from what we believe to be really important for you guys to do What time? Yeah that's a good question We're letting that call back time we're looking at 5 is what we're looking at Will you email us? You will absolutely know the details of this because we're finalizing the week because I want you to know what's happening too so when we get those those callbacks finally to me I'm also thinking of writing an opportunity for school members to come in and participate in those dialogues just as community members without those school members in those discussions There just can't be more than all good I was going to restrict you to What did you say? The changes if you're not coming to do any business of the board you can be together in the same place Oh my social life come back You're so a board member and deputy secretary this is if 3 board members were together in one location it was considered a meeting so 4 came to hear you guys then it suddenly became a meeting for them Did you want to say something? I was just going to say one of the education parts that we're doing is we talked to one middle school core already and we had a cool open talk about racism and stuff and one more core has requested to have a little talk and meeting with us so we're starting the education with the younger kids earlier than when we started talking about it and I think one of the main things that we were trying to do with the flag raising is invite the feeder schools so the younger kids know that there's older kids doing this type of stuff because I know my little siblings go to school and I feel like they would all want to be part of it that's one of the main things we're doing with the education part and I want to say I was right in after you guys were in there with the middle schoolers they were listening to you guys they really they were so honest they didn't know I was coming I was in there probably 15 minutes later the conversation was still going so thank you are there two cores or three cores? so I was going to say you've done one you're going to do another one it would be great to do the third too it's definitely something we want to do just seeing how open and understanding one core was I feel like it would be really good to talk to all of them I'm curious Steven do you think it would be helpful to have a statement from the board explaining why we made this video I think you did it in your police statement and I would leave it at staff right now I think you did the hard work you needed to that we were talking about and the reason we moved the retreat for tonight to get to this I think you've got that and I would say this is where I think less is more stand behind the great statement you just made absolutely this is not final but we don't need it to be final we don't need it to be final before June 6 we don't need it again I didn't hear the end of what you said my only question was was it going to be ready in time for the flag raising on June 4 well we can certainly I don't I think we can put it out there without having to adopt it yeah I think you can and I think you can if we just if you clean it up clean the version and send it along send it along I don't think I could be here on the 4th I can't be here on the 4th someone could be here there we go it's a Monday Monday Monday coming to my house that day I think you're fine you've got a lot of this documented from the minutes of what your intentions are I think you're I mean for anything that way I feel pretty comfortable just to clarify does the 4th seem like a fair and feasible date for the flag okay the answer needs to come from right here because he's got the overall schedule everything that's going on and graduation and we're not we're not going to tell you when to do it that's not our job we're going to count on the administration through that we're supporting it we'll do everything we can to but they make those decisions okay everybody all set well I'm just wondering I don't know if we should tell you what they've been doing in the last two weeks we've heard a bunch Christa King two weeks ago and we've heard a lot of what they were doing super yes will the flag be again is it flying from now on nobody's tackled that one it's a good question it's constant work this is the constant kids aren't going to quiet down is the answer to that question the flag is not an answer I don't think but is that correct are you going to quiet down the kitchen well no but if you just put it up for the rest of the year it's like 12 days correct so we're going to need to see stuff when we get back do you want to say something say what do you want I just said it we should talk about it then we're going to talk about it there you go thank you very much and if I know I can't be there June 4th but I will be with you there it says to wait for the attachment sorry or do attach attach the first draft do you want to think attach the original draft to the minutes and then put a place in the minutes and say yeah no I want I don't want to go over that before I'm trying to fix the resolution I'm trying to fix the resolution issue so if you can put a note in the minutes right now that says attach the first draft Harry's first draft on editing tonight to the minutes that way Harry can go and edit it and get it to a 10 and we can use that and get that out to people but it at least gets this draft that was circulated here in a public meeting and Krista has it thank you for that thank you he's getting good at it I really appreciate that I just didn't want you guys to jump too deep into it I know you're excited but you'll put yourself in a place you don't want to be I really appreciate your position right now it's good to do would you like to do your student report and then you're free to go we'll report we don't have a lot to report well tomorrow we are starting I don't even really know what it is it's like some standardized science test right that's it you know exactly what it is but yeah 8th and 11th graders are doing that is that for like our district or for the state or what so we're doing that AP tests are over as of last week that means a lot of seniors are also feeling like things are totally over nothing added but yeah that's a whole stretch and then I guess like two music things you guys saw the middle schoolers coming in tonight they have a concert the high schoolers had a concert last night and then there was an all state music festival couple weeks ago not much to report because the year is kind of wrapped up just doing the final thing were you at the concert yesterday this evening no I wasn't it was so good I think it may well be the best one I've seen in a lot of years yeah I heard it was really good and the chorus, the singers usually are some of them anyway are uninspired seeming but I mean this is that was in the past this is now they were they just blew me away and Roger was very sad about saying goodbye to the seniors but I could understand because it seemed like a terrific group that really gelled and really energized everything we forgot about prom prom happened did it go well? extremely well Steven was out there on the dance floor that's Rimmer one thing I would comment on was going back to the I went to the in school concert and made it to the after school concert but one thing a lot of people were talking about was just noticing how small some of the groups were in comparison to previous years I was noticing when I first started at U32 especially the band things were much bigger and I was talking to some of my friends who were in the jazz band and it couldn't be because of scheduling conflicts in the past couple of years I know the jazz band specifically lost a large group of seniors who have been doing it since before they were really even at U32 U32 so that's just one thing I would bring to your attention is that a lot of people feel like the music department specifically is sort of struggling recently and trying to get students involved and a lot of that just has to do with scheduling so interesting is that something that's been brought to the attention of the guidance to come we deal with it at any time we do schedule we have over 40 classes that are single classes that conflict with each other in an eight class and so there's always conflict there's always conflict and I don't know if, I mean Stephen and Jody you've been in other high schools and I've been at every high school that I've ever compared to since my first day of teaching the singleton issue is always air and choices that make students on scheduling for high schools the number one topic of conversation is how do you deal with it school I previously worked at that's why music met at 7.30 in the morning before school I wonder Shannon if this may be sort of the flip side of that situation is that people who are there really really want to I mean that's part of it but I would also say that we saw some dips in our numbers of kids in middle school programs over the past several years as well and those numbers are starting to come back up and so I mean that's just, you know some of this is the ebb and flow of programs that happens but we are starting to see an increase in the number of middle school kids in the music programs band programs that kind of thing we kind of do things their natural cycle and schedule okay we ready to go here or just one other thing you better be quick Scott I would be my Austrian wife says that the music program is something that American schools are unparalleled at and all of her experience in Europe and elsewhere this is something that they're really really good at and she values someone who never had that though it's inclusive in the school but it's inclusive in the school boards aren't in, you're in high school either next one board goals so the executive committee the supervisory union board has come up with three goals let's see governance and operations thank you very much are we going to see you June 6? yeah otherwise that's it Shannon I think so it's a full board meeting so it'll be like it's 7 so otherwise you'll say goodbye now so you three goals, board governance and operations board monitoring of student learning and community engagement and they haven't really changed since we first started talking about them we've already had some discussion there were some final edits but there's nothing substantial I would say no I think we talked about it a lot last time and it's really we're trying to get it was just as Carter said or you said Adrienne we're trying to get to less as more so as to get deeper and asking so I guess the question is and the next thing here is the board retreat do we as the U32 board feel we need goals beyond these three are we willing to adopt these three do we need to have a retreat and talk about it? do we need to have a retreat in August after the looks like August 2 is happening and so would we want to do it that night or do we want to do it before that I don't know what time is the retreat on August 2nd we're looking for a day commitment a whole day ooh so that that night would be a lot of responding to the doodle poll I did the thought we're going to talk more about this on the 30th next Wednesday so I know Matthew's invited the chairs to be part of that meeting and to talk about the retreat is it would you five or six hours as an SU board thinking like you know something like 8 to 1 or 8 to 2 you were in this discussion so if I forgot something I would just represent something and then if boards it was suggested by one of the executive committee members well if boards wanted to keep going it would be a good way of having both retreats in the same day so that was what the suggestion there is Matthew and I were just talking about today as we were together a couple of ideas bringing together either around community engagement or common around these three goals for the retreat that would be common learning together for people and so we're talking with some of the different people from public access to maybe someone around structured schools to be set into achieve the student learning outcomes which is particle 2 and the monitor and I guess one question would be is how many of the U32 board can come and it might be that that's not a good time to do a U32 retreat it might be a better we might be better off picking a night so is that going to become official I think a lot of decisions are going to get made on the 30th and then go to the full board the supervisor union board on 6 to say do we all agree with this so why don't we just wait and we can put it on the June 6 agenda after the full board meets so let me just put that okay, update on 9th update on 9th grade chemistry request update on 9th grade I'm sorry I'm sorry we were just looking at calendars so the update on 9th grade chemistry request so we have all of our classes in place now and we can actually start looking at developing that course that we were looking to do part of ours was just making sure that we had everybody where they needed to be so we don't have anything firm yet on the course but that should be in the next few days and we'll start contacting families and kids and maybe I missed it what Sierra's presentation what course was that? that's the other two stem class I hate to call it an advanced out but it's more of an advanced out for two class for kids who are thinking about the stem fields more applied? it gives more application to the standard out of the two curriculum is what it does that was phenomenal it was phenomenal she's a special student she's no kidding I went to four years of college and never saw anyone I don't care so I'm thinking we might see her sitting over there in a couple years yeah maybe not a couple maybe next year so like I said we had to finish you're going to see we have our final hire in science that helps us sort it all out and so we should be pretty good here the next week and is that stem course going to be given at a time well yeah you might want to access it can actually schedule it in that will be our goal access for as many students as possible but it will be for more than just those kids there are the kids who may be interested than just those who are looking for the chemistry option but our chemistry classes they're packed we're still seeing that so we're going to try to give some other good options I just want to remind us that I think there were two requests that were rationales were asking for the access to chemistry one was rigor and you know these kids who are already on excel at path more science rigor the other was you know if the student can take chemistry now it clears room for it to take the other AP classes later in the curriculum that wasn't everyone that's not my family's view so much but offering this other class doesn't necessarily address that part of it our current curricular sequence allows for a student to take those AP courses it didn't need to be accelerated by another year so that that may be a perception but our current progression of courses allows for that and so I don't know that we need to change I just thought that was worth saying because if Michelle were here I'm sure she would say okay thank you very much and I hope that is a rigorous interesting engaging class that our current courses are rigorous I agree but this is one that you don't you know it's kind of a new it's a new topic that is kind of an important topic these days okay action agenda end of the year resignations we have one on page 9 he's the guidance council right and R.P. coach and leader in many different wells as well where is whatever that high school is is that main somewhere he's going back home happening for us that's too bad so a motion to accept the resignation of Scott Harris so moved and a second George any other comments have you posted this one in fact that's been gone for a while we have interviews that were occurring today in fact we're trying to get all this done a little faster all those in favor say aye aye that motion carries end of the year retirements we don't have any okay and then we've got three appointments and then a fourth appointment here so three of them are in our packet David Davis Mark Brown and Matthew I'm not even going to try it and then Jill Abair who's coming to from Calis oh wow she's stepping up she used to be a high school librarian was she full time at Calis yes and it's a lateral it's not a step up Calis is just as good as U32 certainly a lot smaller if you were moving pieces so a motion to accept all those appointments so moved in a second any comments on those all those in favor say aye aye that motion carries future agenda items do we want to talk more about flags and when we get under a class I think it's probably worth talking about I was going to advise you I think it's better to at least start having a conversation you may not get everything bold enough so you want to put that on the June 6th agenda so flag how would we so I was going to say it's flag policy and the question is do we adopt the flag policy or not I'm personally on the opinion that we may not so how about if we say um policies that come from this belief statement because wouldn't those policies hopefully address flag issues if we wrote them in the right way this is where Steven and I have a conversation flag issues are not easy as much as I don't want to do it I think we want to think narrowly about this not broadly what happens the next time we get a flag request I think you should think about the framework in which you might judge that not necessarily about raising a flag but when you get requests to display supports of things and you might reflect on the process you just went through and say how do we kind of this belief statement by what structured that for us so that when you when you're tackled with a small issue you can go right back to your vision mission beliefs that you have to say how does that work in there what are other kinds of requests that would be comparable to the flag to this to me to my mind there's only one and that would be Native Americans something related no that's what you were asking the school would take like newspaper articles or something or I don't know there might be more around displays displays a banner across say we raise two poles at the entrance public displays of I don't know what I'm going to call it of disaffection I wasn't going to say disaffection I was going to say expression of the school's mission and is that of the same caliber as putting something up on a flagpole raising it in the atrium it depends upon the perception but we're allowing this we're not allowing we're accepting this in direct relation to the lives of the students at the school correct we are not doing this or accepting this or raising this in relation to the bigger movement in the outside world correct correct so I think that that's just a mindset that has to be had when this next flag arises so a policy that addresses that issue that this is I think that we're supporting the students of the school that we're not we're not supporting a bigger movement outside the school but we're supporting the kids here does that make sense yeah we're responding with a very specific request from a specific group that was part of it I also heard Scott say something along the lines of we're actually taking a small step in a much bigger process so I don't know that we're exactly clear about that so let's have that discussion let's think about how you support displays of I just don't know the opinion or it's not even a opinion but I think let's just call it displays right now what would be your because I think about other boards when they have to face an issue I'm going to jump right to Act 46 in the state board the state board is trying to say before they go through everything they need to judge for individual districts that alternative plans are saying what's our process for making that determination not what is the determination what's the process and that's what I'm trying to get you to think about not just a flag and that's why I'm losing I don't have the words right now for you but what's the process you'll use in the future when you're at the same place again no matter what the the topic is so you can be topic generic about it but that's why I'm trying to have you reflect back on the process that you're thinking of here and what did you link it to to feel good about this well that's where I'm going with that statement we're linking it to these students and more so wouldn't it be cool if this wasn't even this was a non-issue and these kids were saying we don't have to fly this flag because this is our school and this doesn't exist that's the goal that's where we want to be and that was something that I wanted to say that that's almost the retort to the negative black lives matter you know so can we just call it um flag slash public display I don't know what to even call it policy discussion we know what we mean you'll get it better when thinking about it so everybody give us some thought so that we can figure out a process to do this okay, other future agenda items may I just warn you that Matthew and I the work we've been doing as the full board chair and myself as a superintendent and looking at June 6th and looking at the work we've been doing there's quite a full night and the executive committee chairs next Wednesday are going to be faced more with herring down because it could easily be a the executive committee as Harry saw were at least a three hour meeting that meeting alone to get ready for June 6th so there's a lot of stuff that everyone's saying is very important for June 6th and oh by the way I don't know if we would all have no idea, no insight we might hear because June 1st was the date where the secretary was going to hand and honestly back to us it's to the state board and I don't know how that would be released I have no inklings, I have no insight knowledge but I'm just saying it could be a long night and I'm not saying that to not do the work you need to do on June 6th I'm just forewarning you so yeah maybe as the U30 the board retreat which actually and the black policy I don't have to do what June 6th but I think having that conversation of the reflection and you can see how long you need to have I'm just giving you the point we'll set the meeting board communication we were going to hold off until this meeting to do that did you write the last one it's been a while I think since we did it I maybe wrote the last one I think you weren't even here was that work? you've done a lot of work I think I wrote the May one didn't I? I'm off off here it was Black Lives Matter I wrote for that one right? I would suggest that it would be good to draft something about why the board is coalescing on their beliefs about why this is important why don't we just put the beliefs the front porch forum update I don't want to put the beliefs out until they're finalized oh yeah why don't we wait we can do those in September yep we can do that in September just use the same thing in the front porch forum we could do that yes all set thank you very much see you in a few weeks oh are they not on here? they are not even on here so a motion to accept the board orders thank you in a second Carl 97 773 do you have all those in favor say aye oh sorry any questions all those in favor say aye the post thank you for that