Hello and welcome to People's Dispatch. The number of COVID-19 cases is about to touch 3 million and the number of deaths has crossed 130,000. Many states are seeing a fresh outbreak. There are some states which are not part of the huge outbreak earlier but which are now seeing a large number of cases. And to talk more about this, we have with us Dr. Hanee Sarag of the People's Health Movement who's also with the University of Texas Medical Center. Thank you so much Dr. Hanee for talking to us. Thank you very much. I really appreciate that opportunity and thank you for reaching out to me. Yes to begin with, so we did see a huge spike in cases a couple of months ago especially there was Washington state, there was New York where the numbers were in thousands every day and at least in some of those states the number seems to have decreased. Whereas in other states like for instance right now Texas is reporting a huge number, Arizona, California continues to do so. So could you talk about how the center has kind of shifted to the United States and which are the wave epicenter so to speak? Yeah there are two issues here when we're talking about numbers. One of them is numbers right now and it's not only for the US it's all over the world are concerning the positive cases from those who are tested. So the more you have testing the more you will find cases and this applies to the US and applies anywhere else. So when you increase the magnitude of testing like what happened in New York after the surge you find lots of cases and this has been happening in different states so when they scale up the testing the number of cases started to rise significantly but also there is kind of a shift in the spread of COVID-19 in the US slowly from the east and the far west to the south somehow. So right now Texas as you said correctly Texas and Florida and Atlanta are on the rise right now and to great extent I would say yes the US is having the has the highest number of cases right now and the highest number of deaths and unfortunately this is not surprising to me because the most important here is to look at what determines the what shapes the response to the pandemic and here in the US it's basically the interest of corporates. So this is one of the major issues so if you if you compare between the response in Europe for example at least some of the European countries and the US Europe had a complete lockdown. I'm not saying that this is the solution everywhere in the world because some countries cannot afford it but Europe afforded and they could do it and this resulted in significant reduction in cases in quite a short time and a good example for that was Italy, was Spain, was Germany, France and and so on and also they had very difficult measures that are somehow against the neoliberal notions. One of them like what happened in Spain is to put all private hospitals and facilities under the management of government. So in other words you say okay guys we're not going to take the hospitals from you from the private sector but we're gonna borrow it for a while. You will unfortunately stop profiting at least for a while. This didn't happen and will not happen in the US in the very near future actually the reverse actually the opposite happened that there is a huge push to open and they use the politicians here are using the term of opening the economy as if the economy it has only one definition so this is the economy this is all what we know and we cannot think of any other way so we need to open the restaurants and we need to open the markets we need to open even the bars and beaches and so on and the idea here when the government because I strongly believe that there is a culture in the US that people at least the majority have lots of confidence in the administration even if they disagree on the general direction of administration still when they say that it's time to open and let people go to work let people go to restaurants and markets this gives a message to the public that we are on top of it and we are in control and everything is going fine which is really a very wrong message so even if they say people try to be cautious and we're mask things like that this doesn't happen when they started I'm talking about Texas when they opened and people started to go to restaurants that a trip and see in the in the restaurants we're higher than needed no masks inside and in Galveston near to where I'm living people wear in bars and place like that without any masks without physical distancing and so on so we witnessed a huge rise during the last two weeks actually the status here in Texas is not very good some hospitals in Houston specifically became overloaded and they started to transfer cases to other hospitals so we hope that we will not see what happened in New York we will not see what happened in Italy in the beginning and it's not too late to take strict measures but we need to put people's health people's lives before the profits in the in the last like 10 or 12 weeks we we had 40 million people in the US lost to the jobs because of COVID-19 while two people made 63 billion dollars added to their wealth only two people the owner of Amazon and the owner of Facebook so again not everybody is harmed by the pandemic absolutely so those people have no reason to look everything down and it's not only these I mean those people are benefiting from people go to streets or not because they work virtually but this applies to corporates all of them it's not bad for them and this is the same like when we talk about wars when we talk about conflicts it's not bad for everybody there are people who are benefiting and making more money out of people's death and ill health and so on so this is what's going on so as a follow-up question I would actually like to talk a bit about how the crisis has been addressed in the United States itself so you're part of the public people's health movement and this movement across the world has been calling for a very different and radical way of addressing the crisis a way in which the crisis is not looked as a law and order problem it's not looked as a purely scientific problem but as a community health and a public health issue where the community is involved and it is a far more political way of looking at health so has there been any signs of that being shown is in anywhere in the United States or that being talked about that being discussed etc well as I said the main determinant of the response for COVID-19 was economic and political so there was huge fear from taking stricter measures that this will affect the economy so this affected to great extent the messages that are being given to the public so this also made people more relaxed while dealing with COVID-19 the sad story that the US is able to take very strict measures because they can afford it simply we can afford it here so we're not talking about emerging economy or you know you don't know it very well established economy that can afford something like that for at least for a while but the idea is there there was a tendency to distribute the associated cost with the pandemic so we know there is associated cost with the pandemic who's going to pay it corporate state or people so and I think the administration here took a decision no we will not pay it fully we will not let corporates pay it we will distribute on people as much as possible and this includes the lives illnesses and so on and finally so from a people's health perspective what would be the essential steps that need to be taken of course the United States is not a moralistic structure there are many levels of government but in terms of very basic steps right now what would be some of the things you would suggest well there are I think there are two two big categories here one during the pandemic we need kind of social solidarity we need kind of unity and we need kind of leaderships from activists to to promote the public health values before profits and struggle against these measures from governments to stop we need to slow down the spread till we have a vaccine or a treatment and here it comes the second stage hopefully we will have a vaccine or a vaccine let's say not not not not a treatment not a completely curative treatment but most likely we're going to have a vaccine at some point maybe available early next next year so who's going to exist and this is a big the very big question as as well so the the member states of the WTO refused a very legitimate suggestion from Costa Rica to have a public patent on any curative medicine or vaccines for COVID-19 and this was refused so the refusal means no we're still putting it in the marketplace and this is this is quite scary because we may find us in a situation that those who can afford paying for the vaccine will exit and actually this happened this is happening right now when Gilead had their treatment it's the price here the the the price per course here in the US is four thousand two hundred dollars and I know that it's not much cheaper in other countries so this means that it will be affordable by the elites and this is a treatment if this applies to a vaccine I hope that it will never happen but still I think it's not going to be an easy thing and it needs a lot of struggle a lot a lot of unity a lot of very high voice from health activists to stop that and also it will need some measures from progressive governments if there are to use flexibilities of trips to have compulsory licenses if this happened if they have the capacity to produce it because that we have like five five companies in the whole world and they have capacity for mega mass production so this means it's going to be more polite when applied somehow after covid I hope that things will not return back to where they are when people can be outside and they can be together again I think this needs activists not not only health activists but in general politically active people to continue struggling for different worlds absolutely we we knew the covid-19 exposed it nickered so we know exactly what capitalism means what neoliberalism means it's very clear right now and covid-19 was all what we have right now including the climate change including the the the natural disasters the increase in in magnitude and so on this is not the loss so we need to prepare ourselves as people in this world to be able to deal with this differently and to put people's lives health and livelihoods and so on in front of profits this is a long-term struggle but I think it's it's um it's needed more than ever right now thank you so much dr. honey for talking to us thank you very much I really appreciate it that's all we have time for today keep watching people's dispatch and you


President Muhammed-e-Buhari put a call across to his Turkish counterpart Recep Edoğan on Friday. In a statement on Saturday, spokesman Gaba Şehu said the duo had fruitful discussions. According to him, President Buhari expressed satisfaction with existing bilateral ties between the two countries and called for greater Turkish participation in the economy and the humanitarian efforts in the northeast. Şehu said the two leaders expressed their desire for peace and stability to reign in the world and for an end to all ongoing conflicts as well as the COVID-19 pandemic.


So let's get started so that we don't take too long in this beautiful day. So welcome, everybody. Thank you. This is the beginning of almost the school year and the end of the summer. It went by so fast. But thank you, everybody, for spending another evening. I hope you had a good time off in the month of July. We're going to start with the reception of our guests. And we're going to do our public comments. And they are going to be timed just like we did before. And Jim is going to help us with that. So if you could raise your hand so I can see you in the chat feature. And you can go in order. Please make sure everybody else is muted so we don't have any background noise. And I'll mute myself once you guys are talking too. I don't see any hands unless I'm missing hands. Well, thank you for coming to the meeting. So I'm just going to repeat again that we are in the public comments part in case somebody just joined and didn't hear that. If you would like to speak, please raise your hand. We would have public comments at the end too. I don't see anybody. So any agenda revisions? Can you guys hear me? Any agenda revisions? No. All right. So let's move right into board operations. The first item on our agenda today was board appointing new board members for the vacancies. So we're going to move into an executive session so that the board can discuss. We thought that we could do that within 20 minutes. So I could have a motion to go into executive session for appointing school board members. Move that we go into executive session to appoint new board members. I'll second it. Chris and Lindy seconds. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Hearing none, Jim, could you please move us? Yes. And just to be clear, we're going to move all the board members. Is there any other any other guests coming in besides the board members and the acting superintendent? Just the board members, actually, Jim. Just the board members. No problem. One second. Let me fix that up. And I will. Yeah. And Jim is helping us today because Mark is away on vacation flying back today. This will actually be my last board meeting. So it's good to see you all. It's a miracle, but we stayed on time. So it was a great discussion. And the board came to consensus. And I'm going to let Jonas read the three motions for our three towns, Callis, Middlesex, and Luster. So I move to appoint Maggie Weist as a member from Callis. Can I have a second, please? Chris, that was you? Yes, it was. OK. Any discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Hearing no, the motion carries unanimously. And I move that we appoint McHale and LaClaire as a member from Worcester. Second. A second. Chris, OK. Any discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Hearing none, the motion carries unanimously. And now Romney, Middlesex. I move that we appoint Ursula Stanley as a member from Middlesex. Second. Jonas moves, Chris seconds. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Hearing none, the motion carries unanimously. To thank you, everybody. I know that all of you are at this meeting. Like I said in my email, you were all great candidates. So whenever there's an open seat or not, please, we will welcome you and our board. So thank you and for your willingness to serve your communities. OK. Moving right on, notice of open meeting law violation in page three, our response, our public response. Jonas, do you have a motion? Fine. And I can read the motion and have one of you. You're muted if you're speaking, Jonas. Sorry. So I move that we move to deny the asserted violation of the Vermont open meeting law as the board properly posted its agenda for the June 23rd meeting in accordance with the requirements of one VSA paragraph 312D. And the posted agenda specifically referenced a school time proposal set forth in detail on page 172 of the published board packet, thereby providing full notice to the public of the agenda item to be discussed. Thank you, Jonas. Could I have a second on that? Second. Second by Kari. And now we can have discussion. Our lawyer, Bernie Lambic, I feel he I can see him. He just joined us too. Any discussion? Any questions from board members? Scott. I just am curious as to what we as a board may have learned from this episode and how we might be able to keep it from happening again, keep something similar from happening again. This evidently member, at least one member of the community, perhaps more felt blindsided by action that we took and that I know I was the one who moved in the first place. But perhaps there are there are steps that we can take to make this kind of thing less likely or to kind of identify issues of particular concern that are likely to cause controversy and that may touch a nerve here or there. I agree with you, Scott. In 3.3, we're going to address that part too. But like I say, my letter to Sorcha, we can do better. And we're working on that. We should have reached out to the community, especially students before. So they understood what was in for them and what this change meant for not just the community, but also for the student body. We know that this change is going to allow us to get better opportunities for the kids. And we also, as a board, we didn't fully understand. But we understood that we were taking a risk. But in COVID times, we knew that we need to move quickly. But this is just the first step. And we're going to need the community to make this a success. Jen, do you have something to share? I just see you're not muted. So I didn't know if you had a comment. No, I don't. Thank you. So Steven, look. To kind of respond to Scott's ask for reflection and how we move on forward. And we're not going to do it now. We're not going to do it right now. But I think we should establish a practice when a proposal comes forward along with that proposal is a discussion of how that information was shared, who was shared with people, what the support for it was and what the opposition for it was. So that we establish a clear expectation that might even need a policy. But we establish an expectation that there's a company documentation or explanation on opposition and support for whatever groups might be impacted. Thank you, Steven. That's a good idea. Chris. So I am not voting on this measure because I have a conflict of interest here. But my comment is in terms of for the future is having more detail in the agenda, especially if we're going to have a money item that is $241,000. Actually, specifically putting it in the agenda that this is what we anticipate cost will be because that will signal people. There'll be more information. So having a more detailed agenda so that it's clear what we are going to be voting on, I think would be helpful. Thank you. Thank you. So are you ready to vote? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? I've seen. Yeah, I've seen. Thank you, Chris. OK, so that satisfies the public notice. Bernie, since we're here, since you're here, I might as well ask for your counsel. But I think we didn't have any other questions. So that should satisfy respondent to the violation. OK, thank you for being with us, Bernie. Thanks. OK, so let's move on into. The student dismissal community student engagement plan for that. So on September 1st, we were thinking, and this is just a proposal, we were thinking of having a community engagement around this topic. So having a quick overview by Steven and on the purpose and to hear having a description from Steven of really the overview and from Jen, too, on what this means as a whole for the for U32. And then just very briefly, and then move moving immediately into a small group so that we can actually hear from members of the community. And what I want to do this class is we wanted to have guided questions in my experience and in the experience of all other board members, too, the conversation is easier when you have some guided questions. And the reason to moving to smaller groups would be so that people feel more comfortable expressing what they're thinking. So the overview would be, as a group as a whole, then we would immediately move to smaller groups. And the questions that we were proposing was three questions. What excites you about this change? What concerns do you have? And lastly, what questions do you have? That's what we were thinking, because we feel strongly that we're going to need the community in order to make this a success for extending the days. So I'm just putting that on the table and does the board feel comfortable with that? This community engagement, we were hoping to break it in two. So we want to talk about the board retreat, too. But I also want to use the September 1st for those two, the board retreat and community engagement. So we could talk about this part first because we ended up breaking it in our packet for you guys. Jonas? I look forward to that. I think it's a good, a decent structure. This is not something that we have been very good at recently in the last couple of years. So I look forward to doing this as one in what should be a whole lot more intentional sessions of engaging with different parts of the community. So maybe what I'll do is I'm going to bring the 3.5, the board retreat, and put it together. Because when Janet and I were brainstorming and I had a conversation with Carrie, too, I was trying to figure out the best way to do this. So the idea would be to use this the first Wednesday of the month for some type of community engagement. In this case, we're going to have a purpose for September 1st. We felt like we also wanted to do a quick retreat. So we could start at 5 o'clock with the retreat. So 5 to 6.15, the purpose of the retreat would be basically taking stock of where we are and either just reaffirming our goals so that we have some guidance before because we're going to move pretty quickly into budgeting, too. So we felt that we needed to have at least a touch-based conversation in the transition point where we are right now. So do that from 5.5 to 6.15. And then give the board a little break. And at 6.30 to 7.30, when people have got out of work, do the community engagement around two topics, which would be where we just talked about, extending the day at U32 and COVID. Because today, we don't have enough. The guidance is still a little not clear from the AOE. Everything is in flux today, especially there were other things coming out. So we are hoping that the kids will be back in school. We'll operate with what Jen just sent and then letter to families that I think you all got a copy to. Operate like that. And then we would do both of those topics on September 1st. And with the COVID part, we would do it as a whole. Then have that be the first part. And have Maria and Jen talk about it. And then we would move, have Stephen do the explanation of the extending the day. And then we will move into small groups. But the questions on COVID will be at large. With the board support, that plan, since September 1st was already marked in our calendar, so we'll make it easier than try to find a day. Stephen? I just, for the board retreat part, we only have an hour and 15 minutes. I'd like to see it be very focused with the specific one or two things we're going to cover. And it's shared with us ahead of time. So if we need to prep or we need to think about it. Great. Yeah. Thank you. OK, it sounds like Chris? In anticipation of the community forum around the early, the longer start times, we're going to have specific information about the buses in terms of what the time impact will be in terms of routes and when students are expected to get home. I think we may have experience with it by then. But we can have that type of specific information and are there kind of sending out also the plan if there are mingled elementary and high school students on the same bus? How are we going through that? Whether or not we're going to have a very specific fact information on how that is being handled in the district? Because I think those are the questions, at least in part, that will come up and we should have answers for those. Yes, I don't want to speak for both Steven and Jen, but yes, that would be the plan to have all of that information. Steven? Yeah, I was just going to say, we'll have that information. The buses are being finalized this week and so we'll have that information prior to that meeting so that you can review as well. Great. Thank you very much. Yeah, and we're also everybody. I'm going to count in you guys also to helping bring people, like person, bring people to the meeting so that we make sure that there's diverse opinions and thoughts so that we make sure that everybody's at the table when we have this conversation. Just, is it going to be live or Zoom? It's going to probably be Zoom. OK. Yeah, so for board clarity, this meeting today, some of us really wanted to do it in person and we thought hard about it. But after the change in guidance in the 10 days, it felt like if we did it in person, we really all needed to be masks and at school. So it would be hard to, we don't have the sound system good enough for us to be able to. So any unnecessary gathering really right now is, I feel it wouldn't be prudent, but we will be looking at Maria and Jen for guidance on that. Good. OK, so in 3.4 in meeting schedule, so this is a question for you, Chris, actually, and a policy committee. Because the policy committee, it's a little smaller. You have more people now. The finance committee and the quality committee in our board meetings, we have specific, you know, we're now saying community engagement the first of the month and that's also quality. We don't have a set date for policies. So it's something for you to think about with your policy committee. It would be nice for the public and for us to have whether it is the second Tuesday, whatever day of the week it is. Right now it varies, which makes it really hard to keep track. Right? So we'll pick a specific day and our norm has been to have a specific day. And I think it was Tuesday from like 4.30 to 6.30. But then I think toward the end of the year, when more meetings were being scheduled, we had to pick what we could when most people could attend. But we will pick a specific date, meeting time. OK, that'll be great. So then we can finalize the meeting schedule. OK. I just wanted a thumbs up from the board that using the first Monday for community engagement, the first Wednesday for community engagement, and possibly some board, if needed, some board meeting. And then using the third Wednesday for sure for our board meeting. It's still good for everybody. Lindy? I'm not on the policy committee, so I shouldn't be saying what I think they should do. But I'm wondering if they need to. Lindy, I heard you were voted on to the policy committee. I thought so, too. I thought it was on education quality. You went, you went, Scott. You went, Scott. OK, I'm on policy now. You're right, because there weren't enough people. All right, what I was going, so I can say, and you have to listen to me now, I was thinking if they were always on Wednesdays, it kind of helps me when people are making meetings to say Wednesday evenings are out for me, because I just save them in case we have an emergency meeting or we have things. So that's helpful for me, but I can make it work if I know in advance. Gary? I think this topic relates to the board goals and our work plan for the year. And so I think that we should revisit it at our retreat. And my main concern right now is the staff capacity to support the committee meetings. So I think that committee chairs should be thinking about, you know, what needs to happen in the next few months and have a conversation with Jen or other whoever you work with on the staff to really check and see is it appropriate for us to continue doing what we have been doing? I think from my point of view, Ed quality is kind of on pause right now until that we're all confident that Jen has the capacity and the staff has the capacity to support that work. Thank you, Gary. So Chris? Follow up on Kerry's suggestion or comment. Let's discuss at our retreat, if that's the proper place, about the board hiring a staff member either quarter time, half time that is dedicated to doing like forward work in terms of, and that would relieve some pressure, I think on the central office staff, which has other things to do other than like getting, you know, our packets together and getting them out and things like that. That actually might be a way to go without adding significantly to staff and freeing up time. Just a suggestion. We'll talk, Jen. I think what Kerry is trying to say is that the pressure always falls in the person that is in charge of the instruction, right? So if we're talking about quality, it would be Jen. So there's always ways there's going to be time because I think we have the capacity, Melissa is great and Renee and Michelle, they all like multitask to be able to put the packet together. But there's a lot of other people that need to be involved in the leadership team with some of that. So I think it's narrowing what we want to accomplish. So in those goals, it's what, but it is a good suggestion. So we'll see, depending on where the need is, we'll take it from there. I want to ask the board if it would be OK to move number eight up because we have been requested and families scared. So I would like to be able to move them up. So if we could have the executive session for the student matter now, instead of at the end, it would be really helpful. And since we've been staying on time, I think that. Do you need a motion for that? Yes, please. I need a motion to go into executive session for a student matter. OK, I'll move that we go into executives. That we first amend the agenda to move number eight to the tune and then move that we go into executive session for a student matter. A second. Sorry. That was you, Carrie. I miss who was. I thought it was Steven. Steven. OK, Steven. Sorry. There was some echo and I was looking down typing. So all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. OK. So please, I do have a question for who are the new board members again, just so I can make sure they're in the new in the room. No, we are not. They won't be joining the meeting until the next board meeting, Jim. And then we're going to go. I need to amend that motion to we're going to go into the executive session with Jen. Excellent. OK, I will add the family and floor. I would invite Steven as well. OK, I know. So Steven Dellinger, Payt and the family name, Jen. Yes, Bond, Bond. OK. OK, let me look that up. OK, I have have them here. I'm going to go ahead and open the room down. Thank you all. Thank you. So who would like to volunteer the motion to accept the recommendation from our superintendent? I I move to accept the recommendation of the acting superintendent in a student matter. Thank you, Jonas, a second. Second. Thank you, Scott. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Aye. You're opposing? No, no, it was I was behind. Yeah, you're sorry. Yeah, your audio is behind. Like what is that any abstain? Seeing none, the motion carries. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. OK, moving right along. So now we're going to move into the student report. Sorry, we had moved the agenda around too, because we thought we could have the oath for our new board members, so that's why it's a little moved out. But do we have I don't know that we have students.  Let me grab my notes. Thank you for looking at how my little report is, as we all know it this summer. So I don't have a whole lot to report. Personally, in my life, I'm upcoming senior, which is kind of a lot and kind of exciting. So this summer and coming into this next week, I'm going to be looking at colleges and a lot of people in my grade are going out and colleges starting to see what they're wanting to do with their life. This summer was a lot of working for me. So I've been working at Positive Pi and doing a lot of that. So that's a really big thing becoming 17 and 18 is you have a job and you're making money. Recently, we got our schedules for next year. And as a student, I'm really looking forward to knowing if we're going back full time, half time, and just how that's all going to work. We've had a lot of summer homework for me. I read a book called The Fine Balance for my English class. And for my stats class, I'm about to start a book, which will be really fun. And on August 26th, for the upcoming seventh third of this new year TA night. And I am grateful to be able to take part in that and help out with that. So that's about all I have for reporting if anyone has questions or hopefully I'll get the answers about school. Thank you, Anna. Questions for Anna, Jonas? Yeah, so first, Anna, a comment. Your internet connection is the best I think it's ever been. Congratulations on your upgraded bandwidth. That's great. And second, you know that we talked at the last meeting and earlier in this meeting, we've talked about the extension of the school day at U32. And as our student representative, I wondered if you had any comment or feedback or questions about that. So I did see it looks like 255, if I'm correct. Steven, I see a nod. Yeah, so I'm not particularly psyched about it just because I'm a senior and I want to, you know. But I think it's for the reading or having a little bit more time for something I think that's really productive to have. And to a certain extent, it'll be beneficial and help us have a little bit more classroom and learning time and maybe catch up from last year. So I mean, it's not the best thing, but I think it'll overall be a good thing for our school. Thank you, Anna. I think that's very honest and fair. Yes, very grown up. Thank you. And Steven? I just want to let the board know that we've already put out the call for a student rep to have our junior representative to the board. So we already have that going. And we've already got some students who are interested. I just wanted the board to know that we are on top of that. And Anna, I'll need you to help me do a couple of little interviews, too. And yes, we are going back full-time everybody. There's no hybrid schedule. Steven, we can also email about this later. Let me know about the interviews and anything else. Thank you both. Is that anything else for students? Any other questions for board members? Thank you so much for being here. And good luck in your senior year and have fun looking at colleges. It's an exciting time. I'm going to pass the baton to Jen and move to 4.2, Superintendent Reports, COVID-19 update. So last week, the Agency of Education released some guidance. So pretty short and vague around COVID-19, but we are using that guidance right now as we're preparing for welcoming our students and our staff back at school. I incorporated that guidance into the letter that I sent to staff and families regarding what to expect. And right now, the biggest thing is that we will all be masked and indoors until further notice. And we've started that practice now in our building. So when adults are together, they are wearing masks. That's true in our schools. And that's true at central office as well. We will reiterate the idea that people should always stay home when they're sick. And we'll be learning more and more about surveillance testing and contact tracing. All of that is still to be determined. The leadership team spent many hours last week with Maria Melakos, who is our new COVID-19 coordinator, who I want to introduce to you all in person in just a second. And the questions are starting to pour in. So I anticipate that Maria and I will be spending a lot of time together in consultation with a leadership team to answer questions and ensure that we're really clear and direct with families, that we're escalation concerns, and that we're enacting all of the health and safety protocols for also both of us year to the ground a lot at the state level as well. Maria will tell you with whom she is connected at the state so that you know that our eyes are wide open as we're doing that. So I think right now the important thing is for the community and for you all to put a name and a face together. So if we could ask Maria to introduce herself and tell us a little bit about where she'll be and how to reach out. So that would be great. You're muted, Maria. Got it. Don't double click.  Don't double click. My name is Maria. I'm the new COVID coordinator. And like Jen said, we're working with the information that we're getting from the state. We're going to assume that this year is going to be very similar to last year and that we are going to need to be super flexible and pivot when pivoting is called for. So we're spending a lot of time watching community transmission. We're watching transmission within the schools and what is happening in other parts of the country as well. So as the COVID coordinator, I work with the Vermont State Nurses Association. I work with the Department of Health very closely and I also am part of a group of all of the COVID coordinators from all of the districts across the state. We don't have to do everything the same, but we are all trying to make things as logical and as streamlined as possible while learning from each other about what worked last year, what didn't work last year. So I am both slightly daunted by the task ahead and also looking forward to all of the challenges. So I will be at central office. I don't have a number just yet, but you can reach me of course on email and I'm open to any questions or comments or suggestions that anybody may have. Thanks Maria. I think the other thing that we know for sure is that vaccinations, ventilation and masks are really important as is hand washing which has always been important and remains important. And so we are paying attention to that and encouraging all of those things at the same time. Our community has done an incredible job coming together to take care of each other and we are anticipating that same collective ethos going forward. Yep, just to build on that, we have the state has asked us to pick up three vaccination clinics. We'll be doing two of those at U32 on two different Saturdays, Saturday, August 28th and Saturday the 9th of October and we'll be doing a third clinic on Saturday the 18th of September at Berlin Elementary. Those will be open to the public and we'll make sure that we get all the information out. We're also working with the state to do surveillance testing throughout the year in all of the schools. At the end of the year last year the state had us only testing unvaccinated staff. This year the testing will be open to vaccinated or unvaccinated staff and students. So those logistics will be coming down the pike and they should be interesting but I suspect just like last year, it'll be a rough start and then we'll all get into a rhythm and I'd be really, really happy if this year we got the same results as we did last year which was that we really only had two positive cases found by those surveillance testing which showed us that all of the preventative measures and precautions that we were taking were really working well. So this year, knowing what we know about breakthrough cases with vaccinated individuals, it'll be very interesting to track what's happening within this. Any questions about the COVID-19 update? Oh, Anna has her hand up too. One of our board members, Anna. It's okay Anna, go ahead. I don't know if this is a question for you, Jen or more for Stephen or something. As a student, I'm curious if we're masked, is it still the same setup as last year where you're, do the teachers have their own classrooms or is it still the same thing as it was last year? Yeah, Stephen, you wanna answer Anna's question about the setup? Yes, so we are not going to be potting. So Jen mentioned the three major things that will help us keep COVID at bay, which is masking, ventilation, which we have excellent ventilation in the school and vaccinations, which we have a pretty high vaccination rate as we understand it, but we'll still be encouraging more. It will, because of those three things, we will not need to do pods and we will maintain physical distancing where possible, but for the most part, we will probably be a lot closer and we will have movement in the hallways as well. So we're not going to be quite as locked down as we were last year because we've learned a lot in the last year and science has told us a lot more in between, masking and vaccinations are two of the big ones. Thanks Stephen. Chris, did you, Chris had a question. You're muted. I had my mask. Is the masking going to be a permanent feature at U32 or I think I'd read somewhere where the AOE said after 10 days or so it could go away. And so I'm just kind of, which is, what are we going to be doing? We have indicated right now that we are masking until further notice. We're awaiting some guidelines and guidance around the 80% of students being vaccinated and how and when we can get that information along with ensuring that our nurses and our school personnel have all the information that they need beyond COVID-19 to safely welcome our students and take care of them in the buildings. So we've specified until further notice. Has there been any change in terms of outside visitors or is that still kind of locked down? At this point in time, we are expecting that we would have visitors and that they would be masked. That's our expectation right now. I think that honestly, we will be revisiting again and again and being flexible and nimble to pivot. But as of right now, we are expecting that visitors would come and they would be masked just like every other person in the building. Okay, thank you. Sure. Jonas and Steven. So Steven, if you want to go first, I've actually got a couple of questions and I don't want to monopolize before everyone's had an opportunity. I just, I think you've got a good explanation of the high school. What's going on at the elementary schools? So right now, similarly, we'll all be in masks at the elementary schools until further notice. We are looking at having the same practices and protocols in all of our buildings. So we'll have a homeroom classes like we typically would, but our kids will be attending their allied arts classes. They will be eating in ways that are safe. I think one thing that I could say to enhance this report is that again, to the extent possible, we want our practices to be universal in all of our schools. And in some cases, there are some nuances. One in particular is the cafeteria. And so Maria is in the process of consulting and visiting each of the principals in each of the buildings to figure out the health and safety protocols around eating breakfast and lunch. That's cool. So Steven, sorry, Jonah's now. Is that? Yeah. So can you guys tell me more about how the surveillance testing is going to happen? How often it'll be available to each kid, each staff member? Maria, can you share what you know so far? I can. I don't actually know how often it's going to happen. I don't know if it's going to be monthly, like it was previously. They are revamping their entire system of how they are doing it. So it's going to be very different from how it was done last year because we're talking about testing kids now. And they're talking about having dedicated software and scanners for barcodes, for labeling test tubes and kids five to seven need to be tested by an adult. So there's going to be logistically some very different ways that we're going to handle it. So they just this week, the AOE had us sign up if the districts were interested in being a part of it. So I don't have the full details. As soon as we do, I'll make sure that we get it to Jen and she can get it to Ford. That's great. I'd be particularly interested to know if this would be an opt-in, right? Or if it would be a random sample each, you know, okay. No, it's an opt-in. We'll be sending out electronic consent forms for parents because this is a medical procedure and these are minors. You will only need to sign up once for the year, I understand, and you will be automatically enrolled in the testing. So that will be interesting to find out if there are times that parents don't want their children tested, et cetera. But again, they just changed yesterday that they decided that they would test. It used to be only unvaccinated staff and students. So mainly they were focusing on the under 12 population, which is what concerns us with the Delta variant. But they just decided that because of the fact that there are so many breakthrough cases that it would actually make more sense to go ahead and spend the resources and take the time to test people whether they're vaccinated or not. So that will definitely change the game in terms of time requirements and the amount of equipment needed, especially for U32, that'll be an interesting morning whenever, once a month or however that works. So I'll let you know the details as soon as I get them. Okay, thank you, that's great to hear. You talked about discussions with the other COVID coordinators around the state and I wonder what that group is talking about in terms of vaccines and steps that might be taken to maximize vaccine uptake, particularly among staff. So right now, our big concern is how do we protect our three to 12 year olds when the state is not making it very easy for us, right? Without a state of emergency order and a government mandate, we're faced with a whole lot more pushback about what families would prefer for their own children. So honestly, adults have had the ability to be vaccinated. We will continue to talk to people about the benefits of vaccination, but right now we're really starting to focus on around the state, what can we do to try to maximize people who are willing to vaccinate there under 12s, right? So adults tend to say, I don't mind, I'll take a vaccine, I've never been hurt by one. And then the 12s and ups have an opinion about it. Younger children are more scared of needles in general and people are less likely to use anything that they perceive as experimental on smaller children. So I think we're all trying to work on how do we make that happen? It's also, we can't just have a vaccine clinic at school. No five year old is gonna get vaccinated without their parents present. Whereas a whole lot of the 12 and ups, we're happy to roll in and get a vaccination without parents present. So we've been focusing a little bit more on how to target that audience. I honestly, there hasn't been any discussion about staff. We're pretty well vaccinated at the staff level. Those aren't numbers that I can share for obvious reasons. And one of the things I wanna talk about is that there's a lot of what's gonna come up of HIPAA violations. So for me to disclose somebody else's vaccination status to you could potentially be a HIPAA vaccination, sorry, a HIPAA violation. But for me to ask another human, their vaccination status is not a HIPAA violation in any way, shape, or form. HIPAA is about healthcare professionals sharing medical knowledge unnecessarily with other people. So that's something that we're fighting a little bit. We do have a good bit of anti-vaxxers in our communities. And I think we're kind of hoping that the 80% will be enough. I don't know if that really answers your question. We don't have any right now sort of agenda about trying to talk to adults some more. To get back to the original question. I understood and I appreciate the depth of that answer. A couple of questions for Jen. First, how much are we gonna encourage outdoor learning until the weather turns? I thought that was a great success last year. I hope that that's gonna continue. And also, do you have a sort of break glass in case of emergency plan if there is an extended outbreak? Yeah, I think my answer to those questions in two ways. One is, I think that our students and our teachers derived a lot of joy and excitement from learning outdoors. There was a lot of investment in that. And I think we would encourage folks to be out when it is making sense, both in terms of health and safety and the educational outcomes for our students. We have some good setups from last year and things that folks are excited to try again. And do we have a threshold right now? No, but are we gonna think about exactly how we would respond to ensure the safety of our community? Yes, and I think that that's important. Marie and I are gonna be talking all the time in consultation with the schools. And again, keeping our ear to the ground so that we'll be ready to respond as swiftly as possible. Any other questions? Chris? Sorry, I'm muted, I just had one more. It was following up on your question about masking the 80% vaccination threshold for removing a mask mandate in the schools. I think the AOE and the state in general have done a really good job over the last 18 months, keeping the state safe. And following the AOE guidance has worked really well for us, but I've asked the last two people who sat in that chair the same question that I need to ask you. Can you see a scenario in which you would be prepared to take more extensive steps than provided for by the guidance? I think that I would have that conversation in consultation with Marie and the leadership team and we're gonna do take the measures we need to ensure that our kids are safe and healthy. So I won't say definitively yes or no, but I would say that our kids' health and safety is of the utmost importance along with our staff. Thanks, Jeff. Sure. Chris? So, Maria, how are you? This is a question to you, because I think in your conversation, you said that there were obstacles that I thought you said were coming from the state in terms of providing, making sure that our three to 12-year-olds are better protected. And I think you referenced the lack of a state of emergency now. Can you clarify what you meant by that? I can. So I spoke to somebody with the AOE recently to ask them to clarify one piece of their guidance. And I was told very clearly that that is not considered guidance any longer, that without a state of emergency, they cannot provide guidance and they're not willing to take any of the liability for making those decisions, that they're placing that pretty squarely on the districts to decide what ought to be better. So they're calling it a memo. We're calling it guidance, but they're calling it a memo only. The concern will be if we have family members that feel strongly enough that decide to take any kind of legal action against the district for forcing their children to mask without a government mandate. My preference, and I think everyone in the leadership's preference would be given very clear guidance by the state about what to do so that we can all share that burden of liability and the stress of trying to figure out if we're doing the right thing. One of the things that Jen and I talked about is that something I heard really early in 2020, when this started was if we do everything right, it will look like we overreacted. And if we don't do everything right, it's gonna be a mess. So I feel like people have fatigued to the point where people aren't willing to dig in anymore. Governor Scott just today said wearing a mask is a personal choice. I would prefer personally a lot more strength in the guidance that came in about keeping children safe, right? We were riding on our sort of our coattails of last year of saying, but we had very little, no school in school transmission in our district and very few cases comparatively. But now knowing that vaccinated people can both be symptomatic and carry this disease and that the rates of pediatric COVID are rising with the Delta variant, I as a nurse and as the COVID coordinator would really appreciate a whole lot stronger of a backup and a stance from the state. I don't believe it to be exactly an obstacle. I'm not sure if what I stated that sounded like that. I just think that they make it a little bit more difficult for us to really put everything in place that would be necessary to keep everybody as safe as possible. Does that make sense? It absolutely makes sense. And I have follow up for Jen for you and Maria, whether or not it would be helpful to you both to have the board take a very clear position for guidance that would support what you're trying to do in terms of relation with the community. I think I would answer that, Chris, by saying, I haven't heard from enough members of the community yet to know if that would be helpful or if we're feeling okay. We have the forum coming up on the 1st of September and I think that is a great opportunity to hear the concerns and questions and then figure out if there needs to be a response from the board that's different than what's happening right now. That's what I would think. Okay, thanks for that response. Scott? Thank you, Floor. Just to sort of play off what Chris was saying just now, I think that in the event the state does not step up and the people who know about these things in our district need to have the backup, I think that's exactly what the board is for to take the heat to make decisions that some people might not like but that are necessary to ensure the safety and the proper functioning in the school system. That's our entire function. So I hope we're there when that need arises. Thank you. I agree with that, Jen. And I think there is gonna be a letter coming out from different agencies today and I think as public officials is our duty of care to do exactly what Scott was just mentioning. And I personally will hope that we adopt the guidance from the Pediatrics Association from Vermont and just go with that. They're willing to support us. And when we get there after we hear from community, I think that that is what we should be doing. But that's just my personal opinion on that. Okay, so let's move right on because we are short on time but this was a very important conversation to have. So you're next, Jen. I think I've said already once tonight that we're moving forward and making plans and paying attention to the general landscape in terms of the virus. So I feel like I keep letting folks know these are our plans now and they are subject to change. We may need to pivot but we are getting so excited to welcome our kids and our staff back. Tomorrow we start restorative practices training, welcoming our new U32 staff members and other folks from around the district that want to take it. New teacher training begins next Monday. We have some paraeducator trainings coming up regarding handle with care and trauma informed practices. Our first in-service day is August 19th. We'll be in our buildings for that. And then August 20th is our district in-service day. As of right this moment, we're scheduled to come together and we're still considering whether we'll pivot to a virtual possibility or not. If you look at the district in-service site, we've marked it very clearly that folks should be checking in regularly for updates and for possible changes. I would invite you all regardless to join us to celebrate the opening of our schools on the morning of August 20th. We'll be celebrating our years of service as we have. We'll be recognizing our UVM teachers of the year and we'll be starting talking about integrating this experience that we've all had in looking forward to becoming an even stronger community together. We also have plans right now in place for an outdoor community celebration. I wanna give a big shout out to Amy Molina who has been spearheading this effort, working hard to engage our sports teams and community organizations with tables and having some fun activities and some food vendors and music. There have been some calls out to the community. You may have seen them on Front Forge Forum and the plans are coming together. Again, we'll continue to think and consult Maria to make sure that the conditions weren't the celebration that we can do it in a safe way. And the other thing I mentioned before and I just wanna reiterate again is that as part of our district and service plan, we're making sure we knew last year when our previous COVID-19 coordinator, Elizabeth, worth visited each school to talk to staff members directly and answer questions. That was incredibly important and well received and we are planning for that again as well. Amy, I see you've popped in. Do you wanna share anything more specifically about what's in store for August 23rd? Hi, Jen, thanks. Nothing really, just I'm really excited about it. I don't think Jen mentioned it. We've got about six or seven so far food trucks that will be coming, especially some local ones. So really just hoping they would attract all of our students and families and community members whether they have students in our schools or not to come and kind of celebrate the end of the summer and just really look forward to what we are hoping is gonna be an amazing school year. And if anybody has any suggestions or would like to volunteer to help, I, you know, where to reach me. Thanks, Amy. Any questions about the plans for the beginning of the year right now? Just thank you for doing all that. Do you wanna move to the next one, Jen, or is there more to share on the- No, I'm happy to move to 4.3. 4.3, yes, recovery plan because we're gonna talk about it into finance. I really wanna go over it right now. Yeah, I will provide just an overview for you all. And so you know that we had been engaged in what the state was calling recovery planning in the spring. A number of you were involved in that process with us where we gathered a lot of data and analyzed it, did some preliminary planning and then made a plan for going forward. We had the concept of recovery hadn't sat, didn't sit very well with us. We talked about sort of moving forward, recognizing the strength and resilience in this community, understanding that the school wasn't great for everybody before the pandemic and that those inequities in many ways had been exacerbated during the pandemic and thinking about how we can do even better, learning that, incorporating the lessons that we've learned. So the moving forward plan was programmatic in nature, talking really about those three pillars, social, emotional, health and well-being, engagement and truancy and academic achievement and success. So we put that together and now is the time to marry that with the ARP ESSER funds or the American Recovery Plan ESSER funds. Suzanne a little later, will share a little bit more information about the specifics about that plan, but essentially as part of ESSER sort of marrying the program and the finance, we are responsible and obligated to engage in what's called meaningful consultation. And so Michael Sherwin, huge shout out to Michael. Michael has put together a site that got posted and went live today. So on the right off the district website, you'll see an announcement about ESSER funds, what they are and you'll see our moving forward plan and there will be opportunities for community engagement. We can amend the plan along the way. Right now we've really incorporated student data, things that board members and community members have seen in the past in our continuous improvement plan and trying to move those things forward to think about those three pillars. I think the other thing that I would say is that the first sort of public opportunity right now that we're thinking about for meaningful consultation is at the community celebration night, we'll set up a table and we'll have copies of that plan available and we'll be able to answer people's questions, I'm sure it's not gonna be the main attraction at community fun night, but it will be a possibility for folks to connect. There are videos to sort of make the tech so a little bit more palatable and comprehensible on the ESSER site itself and there's a feedback form there as well. So we'll be monitoring the feedback form. We will also look for a date, at least one other date to really explain the plan with folks, but I would encourage you to check out that site, board members and the community at large and start to engage more thoroughly with what we're thinking about. And then we can talk a little later in tonight's meeting about some of the financial implications of that plan. That's... Thank you, Jen. Any questions? Seeing none, I think that was very clear. Let's move to 4.4, Central Vermont Career Center Governance Study Committee. This is really a first update from that. As you know, I'm your representative on the very the Career Center Board and then we are involved in this study. I sent you a pretty detailed update. So I was wondering if you had any questions or if you want me to give you a little background, however you want to do it. Are there any specific questions from my little update? Chris? Floor, is there anything in this potential governance change that would impact our district's governance? Not our district governance. Basically, what we're doing is think about it in simplistic ways because we all went through this. It's like the 706B of technical center. So we're creating a district for the technical, for the tech center and we're writing articles of agreement and this would help, you know, various taking the responsibility of all the decisions now and they for a while have been wanting to share that and it will give us more, say, into the quality of programs and hopefully be able to have a broader reach into getting kids from middle school into the program. This is all right now, I wish, right? We're working with Michael DeWeese. They would be put out to the voters. So you would have all of the details. But we are one of the districts that, this hasn't been done in 15 years. So we are kind of trailblazing through this, but we have a great committee. So it is, Michael DeWeese really is doing all the writing and we have Getrelene and Chris Leopold working with us. So when we have the actual report, which we've been going through and we just got some, we had our meeting yesterday. This is supposed to be done by the end of September. So we had a, you know, kind of a deadline. That's an self-imposed deadline by the committee. And so we will have more to share before it goes out to vote once we have the logistics of it. Thank you. Anybody else, Scott? Thanks Shular. I wonder if we can maybe have the Career Center as a recurring regular feature of our board meetings because it is, I think, an extremely important part of the, you know, the configuration. And it would be nice to try to, just as you were saying a moment ago, see how to better put the pieces together in order to get the most value for our students out of this resource. Sure. Yep. And Steven and Jen would be in, this is a separate group that you guys appointed me to, because I was already appointed to the meeting. So the other news there that I could send public is that Jodi is the new director. So our own Jodi is now the new director, which is great, right? So I also wanted to, you know, she's not in our meeting tonight, but for those that didn't know that, that's where Jodi is right now. So when we meet as all the representatives from the different high schools, she is the director. And this group is a similar group made out of that group that is working on the study. So yeah, I'm assuming everybody had a chance to read it. So I'm gonna move on to that. And when we have more details, I'll share it with you. Okay, let's move on into finance. So let me turn this off, my phone is ringing. So Suzanne is with us and this is her first meeting with us. So I'm gonna let her do the first part. We're gonna go quickly. So I'm gonna introduce Suzanne for those of you who haven't met Suzanne yet. We just welcome her. Good evening. Good evening. There you are. I let you do the celebrations because that was a great way to start our meeting. And go ahead. I'd love to take a minute to mark Lori Bebo's retirement and celebrate her 27 years of service with Washington Central. I feel really fortunate to have Lori as a mentor and fiscal advisor for the upcoming fiscal year and cannot thank her enough for her continued support of the district in this capacity. I think it'll help make the transition so much smoother. It already has. I've been incredibly impressed by the entire fiscal staff at Washington Central. They are all extremely knowledgeable, hardworking and committed to maintaining the highest level of fiscal integrity. Year-end procedures and NEMRIC were performed on June 30th this year. This is something that is not usually able to be completed so quickly by school districts, many times not completed until mid-July at the earliest. So I want to emphasize this was two weeks earlier than I'd ever seen it completed before. Preparation for a timely close begins in April and takes considerable effort at the building level and from the fiscal staff. So thank you to Lori, Virginia, Matt, Penny, Renee, Shannon and all the school building staff that helped accomplish this. Another shout out to the fiscal staff for our preparations made to complete the FY 2021 audit, which was last week. And when I say complete, they did their in-house work with us last week. So the audit isn't actually finalized, but the bulk of the work is done. Another thank you to Lori, Virginia, Matt, Penny and Shannon for their efforts in facilitating an incredibly smooth audit. With a special thank you to Matt Kittridge for taking the lead with the preparation this year. I believe it went really, really excellent. Thank you, Suzanne. So we went through, we had our finance meeting yesterday morning and I'm just getting my notes out of here. So I'm gonna go a little bit out of order from what our agenda says. And I'm gonna start with construction because that's where we started first in our finance meeting. So in the construction couple of projects, I know that Chris is here with us and I just wanna introduce him too so that everybody is facing to Chris O'Brien. Hi, Chris, do you wanna say hello? Hey, everybody. Do you want me to go through it, Chris or do you wanna share quickly? No, I can go through this floor. Yeah, thank you. So the projects that we've been working on, the capital projects we've been working on over the summer, sat down and conferred with Bill Ford, got an update, this was updated August 3rd. So the Berlin stormwater, Rumney indoor air quality and central office indoor air quality projects are scheduled to be substantially complete by 816 per the contracts. The Rumney gym floor is substantially complete at this time and is ready for the opening of school. Replacement of the sidewalk at U32 is complete and ready for use. The U32 stormwater design and permitting is in process and bidding is expected by February of 2022, followed by construction summer of 2022. Berlin parking and drive replacement, phase two paving is completed. That was done, was complete on 730, so July 30th. At this time, all projects are expected to be completed within the board approved budgets. The board will receive a financial update in October. And once the work is completed and the final invoices are paid. Substantially complete means available for its intended use, but not necessarily 100% complete. There may be final billing O and M manuals, balancing and other closeout items to complete. We will have the ability to operate the systems in manual until the controls are completed. Thank you, Chris. Are there any questions from board members and improvements? Okay, so I do wanna share with everybody that the big project in Berlin just so that you all are informed. We have this storm plan going on there, ended up being a teeny bit bigger than we originally said it was gonna be. So we had to remove some apple trees that had been planted by community members before. And we had to get maples that we were replacing too. I just wanna say publicly because I received a couple of emails and a couple of calls from the community members that our intent always was to take care of the trees. The trees were put in a trench. It's a difficult time to move trees and our weather has been not the best. So some of them didn't make it. A few of them are being picked up by Dave tomorrow at Berlin and he's gonna nourish them back to life and plant them somewhere else in within the community. But the contractor is replacing all of the trees that perished with new trees. And there would be two new maple trees that were already on our budget in the Berlin in the front by defense. And the last thing would be that the storm pond for a change is gonna be very beautiful because they've put so many plantings in which is making it really great. Let's move on into the end of the year, fund balance report. Suzanne, do you wanna give us a couple of highlights? I don't wanna go through the entire report unless the board has some specific questions. Our ESSER is the ESSER3 grant which is now called the American Recovery Plan, Elementary and Secondary Schools Emergency Relief Fund. The allocation for that grant is $2,480,120. The grants prior to that were ESSER1 and ESSER2. ESSER1 ending the year having spent $243,331 and ESSER2 $1,108,477, which was up from an original amount of $923,131. And the reason I highlight that that came up in our finance committee meeting with a question regarding the change and increase. And I did confirm with Lori that the grant actually changed and increased over the year. Due to the increase, Washington Central was able to utilize that grant money to pay the $1,000 one-time checks to the staff. And this was reviewed in more detail at the June 17th Finance Committee meeting if anyone wants to reference minutes from a meeting. So that was the ESSER fund. The final fund balance for the operating fund. If you look at page 22, which was also page 10 in your finance packet, you'll see the projected fund balance is $2,666,659. There are currently $596,203 and currently reserved funds. The available operating fund balance is $2,070,456. This is $1,361,846 over the fund balance reserve target of 2%. If you look at page 18, the final transactions recorded following the June financial report, those are indicated there and show the difference from the June 23rd meeting till now. The capital funds at the beginning of the fiscal year totaled $2,573,393. Projected ending fund balance is $3,817,377. And on page 23, you can see the accounting for this fund by school building. I know that's pretty important. So food service began the year with $214,208. The fund lost $87,712. The loss was intentional as the AOE notified the school district that the net cash resources for food service programs exceeded the amount allowed by law. So this year's budget allocation from the general fund of $149,115 was not transferred. The ending fund balance is $126,496, which brings us within the allowable amount. Pages 24 through 30 of the packet provide you with food service comparative information for actual meals served, revenues, and expenses over the past year and prior years. Other enterprise funds, community connections, ending fund balance, $80,834. Dental program, $107,213. Health reimbursement, $645,262. And then there are permanent funds that ended at $5,773. Scholarships and other miscellaneous, $82,276. And student activities, $150,467. Special revenue funds, these are miscellaneous grant funds, the total in and the total out equal each other because the expenses are actually run out of other funds. They totaled $3,093,241 for the year. And so the fund balance ends at zero. This fund did not include the CARES Relief Fund, the Efficiency Vermont Grants or the Food Service Grants, which are in other, are tracked in other funds. And that ends the end of your fund balance report. Thank you, Suzanne. So now let's move to SR3 update. So in a second, Suzanne gave an overview of all the funds that can be used at this time. And these items are included in the CDC guidelines for nursing, COVID-19 coordinator, and cleaning supplies, staff, take care, after school, school bus sanitation, administrative leave, and fiscal time, grant processing and their recovery and moving forward plan that Jen just talked to us. So we wanted to have that explanation so you could link the instructional part to the SR funds too. And we have two motions. And I'm wondering if Scott, if you are prepared, do you want me to read them? Do you have them right in front of you? Thank you. And then we can have discussion. Sure. I move that the board reserve fund balance subject to a reduction in grant funds for the following one year counselor positions. U32, 1.0 FTE, Calis, 0.6 FTE, Berlin, an estimated 1.0 FTE to be filled. Ysram Pelier, 0.4 FTE, Dodie, 0.2 FTE, and Rumney, 0.2 FTE for a total estimated cost of $365,000. Thank you, Scott. Can I have a second? I'll second it. Thank you, Lindy. Scott, Lindy, second. Any discussion? Any questions, Scott? Since we had the question that Chris posed yesterday at our meeting, the phrasing subject to a reduction in grant funds may throw one slightly off balance. My understanding is that what this means is the intention is for us to pay for these counselor positions with grant funds, but if for some reason those grant funds are reduced or become unavailable because of limitations, then the reserving of the fund balance is a backstop so that we'll get it done one way or the other. Is that correct, Suzanne? It is correct. And I did confirm that with Lori and she noted January 2021 meeting that the same exact language was used. She did say that the word from could be used instead of in, the intent is to say the grant funds will be used when they're available, but for now we have to reserve the fund balance. So yes. So yeah, so we had discussion at our finance committee and with the Gents Council and the members of the finance committee we decided to stay with the same language that we had used and that we were familiar with. And thank you, Scott for explaining in case there was any doubt on that. Any other questions or are we ready for a vote? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstain? Hearing none, the motion carries. Okay, second. I move that we reserve from the fund balance, again, subject to a reduction in grant funds for the following one year math interventionist position in Calis for 0.5 FTE for a total estimated cost of $51,000. Thank you, Scott. Can I have a second? Kari, I see you on, or John, Kari, okay. Scott and Kari, seconds. Any discussion? Hearing none. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstain? Hearing none, the motion carries. So the last part of our finance committee was the VSBA dues and there was a letter included in the packet. Most of you are familiar with what VSBA does. Could I have a motion and then we would have discussion. The board, Scott? I move that the board approve the dues for Vermont School Boards Association and the amount of $7,858 for 2021-2022. Can I have a second? I will second that in a little bit of surprise. I won't disappoint you, Jonas, I promise. This was not pushed, Jonas. This came up in the finance committee and he made it a foolhardly. It was his idea. So second by Jonas. Any discussion, any questions? Yeah, Kari, I did bring you up in the finance committee saying that you would have voted with me and I didn't even have to. It was good. Any questions? Scott, yes. Questions? Thank you. Well, I'll have to kind of inflect my voice at the end of this in order to make it sound like a question. But because Jonas has certain expectations that I cannot fail to meet and because I think believe very strongly in fact that complacency is the enemy of every organization that I will vote having made the motion, I will vote against it because I think that VSBA for all of the fine work that it does is in serious need of reform. From my perspective, it epitomizes the model of government by private club of insiders. And this I think is something that Chris's suit goes to the heart of. And I would hope that VSBA will take itself as not as a private organization, understand itself really as an important part of the constellation of public entities that are involved in school governance in Vermont and behave that way. Thank you for your opinion, Scott. Any other comments or questions? Now, Scott, I'll take your comments as the sitting vice president of the VSBA. It's hard to hear criticism. I understand where you come from. I think if you have a really big board that is trying to meet the needs of all the students in Vermont and we collaborate, we've spent this past three days trying to collaborate with the state to have better guidance for just COVID-19. And there's spent a lot of time in the legislature and we support multiple, at the end of the day we are all here for students. So I take your input seriously and I'll share it with the board. And I hope that everybody feels comfortable coming to trainings and participating on it. We're here, the board is here to serve you. So with that, I'll take a vote. All those in favor of the motion by Scott, second by Jonas, please say aye. Aye. All those opposed, please say no. No. Any abstain? So the motion carries with one no vote. Okay. Let's move on to the next. I just lost my, I moved all my stuff from the, okay, six to consent agenda. I moved to approve the minutes of June 23rd and July 26th. Second. You can be third, Scott. Okay. The two of you need to take a little break too, like let others speak. We're just trying to move it along, Laura. I know, I know. So Chris, Chris seconds. Okay. Any discussion? Sorry. Yeah, any discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Hearing none. The motion carries. But I guess I didn't ask for abstain, but I heard everybody's aye. So okay. Approve board orders. Lindy. I have them open. The first one I have open has two dates on it. That's 1721 for the general warrant and 517 for the capital. And there's a total amount of 157,363 dollars 69 cents. Thank you. Let's do the next one and do them all in a slate. Is that okay? We have three. Okay. The next one is June 24th. And I'll just give the total since it's the same date. The total is 10,000, wait a minute. That really 10 million? 10,725,178 dollars 98 cents. Right. All right. And the third one is July 1st. And general and capital. And the total is 524,307 dollars 94 cents. Thank you, Lindy. Lindy, can you tell me the days on the first one there? I wasn't prepared. It was two different dates. Yes. The general amount was 617,21. And then there was a capital amount on 517,21, but they were totaled together at the bottom. Okay. Could I have a second? Second. Thank you, Steven. Okay. Any discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor of approving the board orders and submit it. Please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any oppose? Any abstain? The motion carries. Personnel, let's move to page 48. Have that in front of me. Jonas, do you have them in front of you? I do. I move that we approve new teacher nominations for the 2021-2022 school year for Amadeus Dorfman, a special education teacher in the district at large, it looks like. Jake Plouffe, a school counselor at U32 to be paid for using ESSER funds. Justin Lectie, a school counselor at Calis, also to be paid for with ESSER funds. Amber Larrabee, a school nurse at U32. And Holly Taylor, a kindergarten, first grade teacher in Calis. Thank you. Could I have a second for that first part of teacher nominations? Second. Thank you, Scott. Jonas and Scott, any discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor of her, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any oppose? Any abstain? Seeing none, the motion carries. We didn't have any retirement resignations or leave of absence. So the change in FT time, Jonas? I move that, yep, I move that we approve the following changes in full-time equivalents for Mary Langevin, a school counselor at East Montpelier from 0.4 to 1.0 FTE to be paid for using ESSER funds. Sharon Spector, a school counselor at Rumney from 0.6 to 0.8 FTE to be paid for by ESSER funds. Maureen McDermott, school counselor at Dodie from 0.2 to 1.0 FTE for a paid for by ESSER funds. Michael Close as a music teacher at Rumney adding 0.1 FTE for a total of 0.4 for Mike Close. Samantha Mishkin, a Rumney music teacher from 0.4 to 1.0 FTE total. Jen, is there any changes on that? I see that you were, yeah. Do we need to end it? Hold on, yep, I've got to plug in quickly before I... I'm sorry, sometimes I don't get noticed.  Yeah, I believe that Maureen McDermott, that is the typo. It's a 0.2 FTE increase, but Maureen is currently 0.8. So that should be... Gotcha. Maureen, yeah. So I would amend the motion for Maureen McDermott to reflect a change from 0.8 to 1.0 FTE. Using ESSER funds? Yes, using ESSER funds. Thank you. Could I have a second? A second. Thank you, Chris. Any discussion? Steven. Why the big music increase at Rumney? When he had a vacancy to fill, we had a staff member who is not returning. And so folks that are coming back to, they're filling in at Rumney together to do that. Yeah, for those who don't know, Mike Close is also the music teacher at Doty. I'm just surprised we've got nearly a one and a half positions for music at an elementary school. No, sorry. I wasn't clear about that. Michael Close is part-time at Doty. He's going to do a 0.1 edition at Rumney to help fill that vacancy. Sam Mishkin teaches at East Montpelier part-time. She's going to do the 0.4 at Rumney. So it's a 0.5 FTE music position at Rumney that's filled by those two existing staff members. I'm fine. I get it. Any other questions? Seeing none, all of those in favor of the change in FTEs, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Hearing none, the motion carries unanimously. And that concludes that part. Unless I'm missing any, I'm looking at you, Jen. No, okay. I don't think we're missing anything. All right. So I was hoping for a 30, it's a 12. So even with that, we did pretty good. So any reflection? We didn't put it here, but since, yes, we did. So any reflection for the board and then we'll move into public comments. We have a long list of future agenda items. Jen. There were two other items for future agenda items for that I wanted to bring to the board's attention. You just talked tonight about the Central Vermont career center revisiting that more regularly. And we had gotten a request from a reminder from Tom Bedowski that we'll need to revisit the Berlin Newtown Center request at some point soon. Yeah. Yeah. And then we brought up at the finance committee to the looking at the food service. Right. Okay. All right. I'm glad that Jen talked about the Berlin Town Center. I think that's something we should attend to sooner rather than later, just so Berlin knows where we stand on this. And so with these future agenda items, do we end up putting them, I mean, can we target some that we're? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We'll prioritize. Jen has already, and Melissa had reached out to Dan Richardson, who was our attorney. I'm not sure he's will continue to say, somebody in his office will take what he was doing because he's taking a new job. So. Dan? Yeah. Yeah. Oh, you know that. Okay. So I'm assuming, but yeah, but at any event, he has some information for us. We didn't, you know, we didn't know if we would have everything for this meeting and we were trying to make sure that we wouldn't overdo, you know, sort of over try to accomplish for today. But we will, when we sit with the agenda committee, we will go through the, try to prioritize that. Any other board reflections? Carrie. Yeah. Just a few things. One is for that you did a good job facilitating tonight. Thank you. And I also appreciate the packet materials, especially the financial reports. Nice to see continuity. And that's really helpful. I had one request that the agenda show the page numbers of the packet materials, if possible, it makes it easier when we're toggling back and forth to find things. And then the last thing is really for the board. I suggest that we consider a practice of writing a short summary, say monthly after our major meeting and sending that out. I see Scott's reacting to this. U32 board used to do this. I think this might be a good time for us to take this practice up and sort of enhance our communication with the community. And I'll shut up, but I, first I'll volunteer to do the drafting on the first one unless somebody else would prefer to do it. So can I follow up on that? I'm in the dark here, so you may not be able to see me, but over the past two months, Joe Olson and I just staged a forum, like just basically come and talk with us for our community. And one of the things that they really wanted was some type of summary of our board meetings. And so with Lisa on the Zoom here, what we floated was whether or not just having Lisa, if she was willing, summarize what the meeting, you know, the highlights of the meeting, not the minutes, but a more condensed summary of that and just posting that on front porch forum. And also posting the agenda on front porch forum as well before the meeting occurred so that community members didn't have to go to the website and download it there just to be able to pick up the agenda off of the front porch forum sites. And those are just suggestions. Lisa, you know, if she wants to say no, you know, no, that's certainly up to her, but then just having some of the summary like that done, I think Kari, you've hit it right on the head that would be very helpful for community members. So Kari, just one sec Scott. So Kari had expressed this when we talked before the meeting and I think it's a good idea. I'm not opposed to having Lisa do it. I think it has to have the flavor of the board, right? And put it out by the board. I think that's what the community is looking for. I did want it to post the agenda. We didn't get the page numbers until this morning and then by the time we got it, I got it out to front porch. It was too late. So it was just, you know, last week everybody was in a retreat and then in Stowe, so I apologize for that. We were trying to do our best and there were some people on vacation. So we did change, send a revised packet today, but it was a little too late and it was too late to post it. But I would take the responsibility to post in the agenda on the, if Kari you would be willing to take the responsibility and maybe share it as we go along with other board members of doing the takeaway of the meeting for everybody. And then Scott and then Lindy. Thanks very much. I'm very happy that my thunder is being stolen right and left here. I wanted first of all to commend Chris and Joe and Ursula and Patrick and the Middlesex people who are making these monthly gatherings happen under the roof of the bandstand there next to Rumney. They were kind enough to let me sit in on the one that I was able to make back in July. And I hope to be able to make future ones if it's something that you continue, Chris. It's the practice that I think I would love to do something similar in Calis. Love to see it happen. There are opportunities I know in Worcester. It's harder with COVID 2.0 on the rise, but for the time that it can be done outdoors and masked if necessary, I think the physical presence of actually being with people is really powerful and as incredibly useful as Zoom is and accessible for people who are busy, who can maybe check in from home after work and they would not be able to go to a separate location. Nonetheless, for those who can go, I think it has a completely different quality that is really important and really useful to have. And Kari, I am grateful to you Beyond Measure for volunteering to write up. Remember that Marilyn and Dorothy used to kind of trade off doing write-ups in olden days. And you're right. It's something that we always would do in U32. And I will be happy to backstop you or trade off if you want. And I promise to write in my usual bland and colorless fashion. So... That's the hope, Scott. Anyway, I think all of this is really good. All of the summertime creativity is great. Lindy? I think we should probably each step up like Kari was saying, he'd take it this time. And I think asking Lisa too is a good idea since she's paid a flat fee to do our minutes. And so I think that maybe she's sitting there saying, oh, how do I say no? But I think we can just at the end of meetings and I think back when we were taking turns putting it on front porch forum, we did that a couple of times and then we got out of the habit. And I think in our reflection time, we just take time to say who was it and maybe we get the minutes quickly, not quickly but as soon as Lisa could get them to that person, they summarize it and get it up. However, we do that. That sounds great. Thank you. Those are all great ideas. Any public comments? Please raise your hand. I don't see any unless you guys see any. I don't see anybody. And if I don't see you, please just speak. I don't see any hands up. Well, hearing none, I would entertain a motion to adjourn. And there would be a few minutes before... I make a motion to adjourn. Thank you, Lindy. I have a second. Second. Thank you, Jonas. Before we adjourn, I think we should just wish our staff and our administrators the greatest of luck opening the school this year. We are just impressed with their effort and their dedication and they know that we're behind them 100%. You're here. Yeah, that was very well said. Thank you, Chris, and thank you, everybody. And yes, good luck. We'll see you after the opening of school. And hopefully a lot of us will be able to join us at the in-service if you do it in person or remote. Thank you. Thank you, Jim, for jumping in and to helping today. Okay. Good night, everybody. Good night, everybody. Thank you. Everybody, thank you. Have a nice day. Thanks.


Cool? Okay cool. So let's try this one. If a gas occupies 10 liters at 273 kelvin with doubling the temperature to 546 kelvin, what is the final volume? So what are the two variables that are changing? Can you guys figure that out already? Volume and temperature. Okay when that happens it's called Charles law. Charles was some balloonist. Okay like when hot air balloons were all the rage back in like France in the 1800s you know and he was like some pioneer balloonist okay so he figured out that if you heat up a gas your balloon gets bigger okay that's essentially what Charles law is okay. If you cool it down it gets smaller too okay so we can start with pv equals nrt alright and we'll get Charles law and I'll show you what Charles law is. So pv, p1, v1, n1, rt1, p2, v2, n2, rt2 right so let's write down what we know from the problem. So v1 do we know that? 10 point of 100 liters right because it says if the gas occupies 10 liters at 273 kelvin so what is 273 kelvin? T1 right so everybody cool with it being T1 that's the initial temperature of it right it says if the gas occupies 10 liters at this temperature that means that's what it initially is okay then it says doubling the temperature to 546 kelvin so what does that mean we've done? T2 right we changed that temperature so 546 and then it's asking what is the final volume so what is that going to be? V2. So V2 is the variable we want to isolate right so did p change? No. Could v change? Yes. Did n change? No. And r never changes right so this is another way to write Charles law v1 over v2 equals T1 over T2 but a lot of times you'll see it written v1 divided by T1 equals v2 divided by T2 so it's the same thing though right try to mix that up okay so let's just use what we got from the ideal gap this pv equals nrt by the way it's called the ideal gas law it's cool because you can get all the other gas laws from okay so you don't have to memorize blah blah blah blah blah you know you can only memorize one thing so let's use this one that we got from the ideal gas law that's Charles law so we want to isolate v2 right let's use that flipping thing because it's easier when we have things on both sides to flip okay there's a easier or it's easier to just why we're doing okay so we want to get v2 on the top so we'll flip them both over okay so what do we get what's our equation going to be then v2 over v1 equals what T2 over T1 is the variable we're looking for isolated no so we're gonna have to do what multiply both sides by v1 right so once our new so that cancels our new equation is v2 equals what T2 v1 over T1 like that right it's much easier to do it this way with it instead of with the numbers you know so now what we do plug and chug right plug and chug yes exactly so what's our temperature take T2 546 Kelvin remember units and v1 10.0 liters and then T1 273 Kelvin so is there units that we can cancel here Kelvin what are the units that we get out leaders is that what we're looking for volume as a leader volume is good in leaders right that's what we're looking for okay so what do we do we can get our calculators out if you can't do this in your head this is to 2 divided by 1 essentially but so let's just do this together 546 times 10 and then divide that by 273 right and then what do we get 20.0 right why do we need three box around it you know that makes me happy so I know that your final is there a question okay I mean if you need to I flip that you'll flip you'll need to flip it when the isolate the variable you want to isolate is in the bottom okay so like if you have this form of the equation and you're looking for T1 right or flip it or look for T2 flip it you're looking if you have this form you're looking for v2 flip it what is your quick question are you sure you sure okay cool any more no okay


Do you ever wonder what happens when the police leave? Crime scene cleaners are private companies that handle the cleanup after the police are gone. Spalling Decon is one of the nation's largest cleanup companies handling the aftermath of homicides, suicides, decompositions, hoarding and much more. These are our stories. He's been here about two, maybe three weeks. So if you look, he actually had fallen and passed away. It's kind of hard when you're cutting through the carpet and blood is kind of coming out as you're cutting through. Hey guys, we are here in Titusville on an emergency decomp I got. I got a call came in about 9.30 last night and he's been here about two, maybe three weeks. Family just, they haven't, they haven't been able to get a hold of him. So they decided to do a wellness check and the brother and the nephew actually were the ones to find him. So if you look, he actually had fallen and passed away. These ones are a little more difficult to handle for us as a crew because you can physically see where they were. Their job is too big so we're going to go ahead and get our gear ready, suit up and get this cleaned up for the family. So they can come in here and make arrangements and move on with their lives. It's not so bad. They graze with blood and the body was for two weeks in the floor so this is really so bad. I'm going to cut out the body at the moment and see what is underlying and how far it actually spreads. Trying to get it all up in one piece so that way there's not a lot left behind. This is different. My God. You can dunk out small bags. All right. There you go. Oh, it's tricky. Bag one. I need parking. I mean for two weeks though. I'm glad that AC was on. We left the office at like 5.30 this morning. This is just going to draw any leftover body fluid. There you go. I wasn't expecting that. I mean, I'm grateful that it didn't go into the wall. I'm super, super grateful that the trouser flooring was sealed. But it's kind of hard when you're cutting through the carpet and blood is kind of coming out as you're cutting through. So easy because that blood is not in the wall. So almost done. This job is almost done. I didn't think it would be wet like that. It's still watery. It was easy to come up. The carpet looked like it was a little bit hard to come up because it was soaking wet but it looks like a fairly easy job. We're getting ready to go into the room and we're going to use the HEPA vacuum, suck all the goodness up, try to indicate, make sure that there's nothing else left. At that point it didn't go into the walls so we're safe there. We can turn around, we can sanitize the floor, remove any remaining carpet, rearrange the furniture. I'm going to leave an ozone machine for a couple of hours just because it's so far away. We'll take a lunch break and we'll be good to go. Stay tuned. Totally lied. I underestimated. This is why you don't jump to conclusions. All under the base plate. He's coming, he's coming. There's a hazard. So we have to remove the base plate, which is aggravating. We can handle it. So what I just did is I actually just flushed the base plate rather than having to cut it like you've seen in another episode. That just means that the bio fluid didn't seep under enough to seep into the wood. That makes me super, super excited because that saves us like an hour and a half of work. Of course you would cough in the background. Thanks for watching season two. We hope you're enjoying it. Don't forget to like, share, and comment what you want to see more of. If you're subscribed to our YouTube channel, don't forget to ring the bell so that you're notified of new content every single Thursday. Thanks for watching.