adjustments to the agenda. Now, I have one question, Bruce. So I am on the sick bank committee. I think I'm the only board member on there. And I had something to come to me today. Does that go to executive session or do you want to talk about that separately, that request? I think we should go into non-public for that. Okay, but I don't know.  So I didn't know where we talked about it. Yeah. Okay. I'm on that committee too, apparently. I didn't know I was. Okay, so maybe we should have a long time or you get the committee together. If it's a grievance matter, then you, you know, you, um, it's not a really might talk about that. And I don't think you have a place in it yet. Okay. So Bruce, can you get, I think you're on that committee too, aren't you, Bruce? Well, yeah, it hasn't been very active. So am I adding an executive, just an executive session to discuss? No, no, I think Sarah's right. I think we need to have, it's something that's been long for a long time. So we need to take care of it quickly, Bruce. Okay. Yep. All right. So I'm hearing that there are no adjustments to the agenda. Okay. Moving forward, if everyone could just mute and then unmute if you wish to chime in, just so we reduce the amount of background noise in this call, that would be helpful. So I'm not seeing any public, but do we have any public for public comment? Right? I'm just scrolling down through my list. We have no public for public comment at this time. I'm also taking notes just so you're aware. Okay. I heard from Ray that he's agreed that there's no public in the comment area. So we got some minutes from April 27th and May 26th. Does anyone want to discuss those minutes or? I do. Okay. Great. I just, I put an email out to the board at least, I believe. I'm trying to pull them up now. So anyway, there's the comment, there's the notes on it that I think are inappropriate to be in it about our conversation around the FBUD grievance on reduction enforced. And I don't believe that it was appropriate to bring that to the to the SU board or executive board because it was at the superintendent level and that's where it stays until it goes to the board, which in this case would not be the SU board, but would be the FBUD board. Now, the reality is that we talked about it. And you know what? If I was a smart union member, I'd be making sure I read all the minutes because I think they have a grounds there for making for losing for the SU or the FBUD to lose the grievance on that. I think it's been resolved. So it might be a matter of a moot matter, but I think we need to take some. We need to be more cognizant of what we're doing and what we talk about. And where it's at, it's not our place to talk about grievances when it's at the superintendent or the principal level. Okay. And it's not our, it's not our, our place to talk about FBUD or Straford or any other grievance when it's at when it's a single district one. And I think we need to be careful of that because we lose, we risk hurting ourselves if we do that. So I don't know if we can take it out of the minutes, but boy, if I was Uniserv, I'd really like to know it existed in the minutes. I tell you that much. Bruce, you're muted. I agree with you that it ought to be taken out of the minutes. I, it is at the arbitration stage now. It's gone past the board and is at the final stage and that'll be heard in October, I believe. And I don't want that in the minutes either. So I mean, but that's just the status of, of where we are. I don't know how you take out of the minutes something that was talked about. I don't know. We have minutes until you approve them. Still, it was discussed in an open session or, you know, and it was inappropriate. Just want to remind everybody that we're recording right now. Right. So regardless of what the minutes reflect, we do also have a recording.  I think we have to be really cognizant of what we're doing from now on. Totally inappropriate to have done that. We are standing and agree with our standing being the district in this case. So what I put in the minutes is that we need to be mindful of points of order when discussing grievances and the concern. I'm going to leave it right there. If that makes sense to everybody. Yep. Okay. Thank you. The Stacey's message, she'll be on in a minute or two. Yes. Thank you. All right. So are there any motions related to these minutes or any discussion of the May 26th full board minutes? I make a motion to accept or to approve both sets of minutes. I will second that. All right. All in favor of approving the minutes of April 26th, I'm sorry, April 27th and May 26th, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Okay. Any opposed? Any abstentions? Okay. So they unanimously pass. All right. So that brings us to the superintendent's report. Yeah, I don't have a whole lot. I will be on the call tomorrow, the information meeting for our SUD to help in any way I can and also on Thursday to help the G-HUD board, Grandville and Hancock board with their information session. I will be in the office tomorrow and Wednesday and from there as needed, I guess, I was in today as well. So I'm trying to finish out anything that needs to be signed or whatever. I know it's not around for the next day or two. First, F-FUD has a meeting on Wednesday and we might want to use the office depending on who's going to be at that meeting. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'll be there if you want me to be. Absolutely. Okay. Yeah, F-FUD's. It's our regular meeting, but I'm sure we're going to talk a lot about budget. We can get down to this on the agenda later on, but we have three people we want to talk about for restorative classroom hires and Deb's on to be able to fill in some of the gaps around these three people. One of them is a current employee, but their role is expanding and the other two are new employees. So we want to talk about the three of them for the restorative program somewhere down on the agenda. And I guess that's all for me. Everybody else, Arizona, Ray's on, Mary Ellen's on and they all have reports. So now Stacy's here. Thank you. Well, sorry, it's so late. We got delayed at the bike track. So whoever's next on the agenda, unless you've got questions for me. All right. Thank you, Bruce. Business managers up next. So we in the business office are working on year end reconciliations for FY 20, and we got our audit checklist for FY 20 the other day and are starting to gather all the documentation to get that up. They're going to be doing it a little bit different this year. They're providing us with a secure drop box to upload all of our documents into rather than them coming to our office and doing the pre-audit process. So we're working to get all of that done. We're finishing up May bank reconciliations. And then once June closes out, we'll get those usually mid July. So those are a lot of projects. Jane's been working to get special education reconciled and the grants reconciled. We still have the submissions we need to do for the month of June for the grant reimbursement. And then we found out on I can't remember exactly what day it was last week. But we received our FY 19 special education additional reimbursement from the state finally after many, many months of waiting for it.  We're still trying to collect about $22,723 from them. We're going back and forth on that. So I'm hoping that they will stand behind it and give us that reimbursement as well. So now that we have that number, we can actually now finalize the FY 19 audit for the SQ. So I've been corresponding back and forth with Bill today and Rose and I and Jane on getting that wrapped up. So hopefully we'll see that final draft in the next day or so, so I can get that out to everybody. We have many reports that are due in the next couple of weeks for food service. So I am trying to get my head around what I need to do for. These are our renewal submissions for food service and trying to plan how we're going to do it with both in-person and then if we have to go back to summer meals. So trying to get an understanding and working with the food service program at the state to try and understand that and how we need to best objectively anticipate for that. And I think that's all I can think about. Think about the moment. Any questions? Oh, and I have all my budget books finally done for all the meetings that are coming out. Rochester Stockbridge did their own. And then I did with the boards, FBUD, G-HUD and Straffords. So we finalized G-HUD and that went out to all of their voters last week. So that was a big project that's now off our plates. So hopefully we have those two informational meetings this week and then they both go to vote, I believe, on the 30th. So and then obviously we talked about FBUD earlier. So back to the drawing board on the FBUD budget. I sent out the tan docs today to the Rudd board chair and clerk. I think I sent it to you. If not, no, I sent it to your treasurer. Sorry, so it's coming to you tomorrow because she needed to sign it first and Sharon, but Don's not here tonight.  So that's on my agenda to do tomorrow. And then I think that's it now. Sorry. All right. Thank you. I just like to thank Tara for all the work that she I mean, I think those report the Straford report that went out looked really, really good. I know it was a team effort, but she wanted to pull it all together and it looked really, really good and really helpful at the informational meeting for us. I think that just how you know the way you presented things was really reassuring to people and I really appreciate it. Thanks. Thank you, Sarah. Thank you, Stacy. Oh, thank you, Kathy. All right. Thank you. That brings us to Deb's report. Hello. So this is what's going on before next week with COVID-19. We finally have gotten some financial direction from the state as to how to look at expenses and usage. Fortunately, since March 13th, when we closed, we have kept a lot of had people keep a lot of documentation and what I'm doing this week is going through it all. Separating out, you know, there were there were a few paras that worked exclusively on food service. And so we have some things to be written off to COVID-19. For the most part, things things look good. We're also doing para assignments and switching kids that are transferring schools, switching caseload. So it should be all set for when Don comes in next week. Don and I have met consistently up until this past week when he's been on vacation and I'm not going anywhere. So if he has questions, he knows me. He'll call I'm trying to think. Oh, in terms of do you want me to talk about the personnel now in the restructuring of we're changing the structure of the restorative classroom a little bit. Bill Ketterer is only going to be with us one day a week instead of three days a week. And in that one day a week, what he's going to do is training and work with the staff around problem solving and kind of be there. And it's not necessarily going to be like Fridays, it'd be on site. It will be the trainings are every Friday afternoon, but then he will be on site during the week when he's needed. He'll try to schedule it divided between the three programs. So in order for him to do that, we are going to work, have Michelle Pringle, who was the team leader for the RC3. She is going to be the director of the RC program. So she will be going between all three programs and I've worked it out with Jamie and Dawn. She'll receive a stipend for doing that because she will not be an administrator, but she will basically we always basically be the problem solver and working with teams when she's come up. So it's an additional amount of time for her and she's currently working. And that's the reason for the stipend. Yes. How many more hours, Deb, did you say there was? Basically, we're looking at between five, on average, five to seven more hours a week, over 38 weeks. And basically, the stipend comes out to somewhere around ten thousand dollars for one hundred and ninety two. I think it's two hundred and ten hours or two hundred and fifteen hours. And what we're going to do is track it and see if that's realistic or not. What what we're doing is taking it's no new money. So we're taking the money that we would have spent for Bill's time and we're just staying well with budget yet. The duty. Can I say something about stipend positions in conversations I've had with Jamie around stipend positions just in the F, but stipend positions are not where he's wanted to go. So he wants the stipend position is what you're saying. He's more wanted to look at salaries or things like that, then have all these stipend positions, because we have a lot of them around the S.U. And I'm leery of adding another one without having input. Jamie was involved from the get go in this whole thing. And I met with him last week. Bruce and I met with him and went over these three positions. We had and so basically, Michelle, you know, Michelle is on a T contract. So and she's not an administrator. So in order to compensate her for the extra time, the only option is to do a stipend. She's more than willing to become an administrator eventually. And so the other option was to have her do a provisional for an administrator. But that's not really we don't we don't really feel we need another administrator. So that's kind of where we're at. But, you know, Jamie's been involved. And if they want to change it July 1st, they certainly can. You know, but he he and Don have they have the job descriptions. They they've been aware of this whole thing. And it was just last week that Bruce and I met with Jamie over this. Yeah, we would move forward if he wasn't interested in doing this. The Debs had a lot of conversations with him. I met to try to figure out salaries for these other two candidates. And we did talk about what we were talking about with Michelle at that meeting. So I'm not aware that he's opposed to any of these that we're talking about. And I know I know he's opposed to stipend positions. And the other two I knew were we're going to be on here, but I didn't know we were going to be adding a stipend position. And I I'm not confident that. I guess I'd like to have a conversation with him about that because maybe wires are crossed. And is there any reason we can't do if you're saying July 1, we can change it. But if we offer somebody money, we can't change it July 1 really. Well, and I'm also coming from that right at this very moment that I. We need to save money. Is this in the budget already or is it new money? No, it's in the budget already. So we've already stipend already. No, no, Bill Ketter is going from three days down to one day. So what. What does Bill Ketter?  I guess I'm wondering roughly. He has a independent contract depending on the work. So he and I, Lisa, I can't remember off the top of my head, but an hourly rate depending on what he's doing. There's three different. Three different. So he doesn't charge one rate for everything he does. Right. Because some of it's more specialized than other. And because he was there a lot, we couldn't afford it if we were going to just pay one rate. And the other had two resignations. Now, my mind is blanking on. On Alex, do you remember his last name, Bruce Alex? I remember his last name. He was the team leader in the RC one and he's going back to graduate school. So he honored that. Thank you, Alex Frauner. So he resigned and we were transferring on from the RC two to the RC one is team leader. And that does not change salary. It's just changing his title. And he has worked, had worked, worked with us for the past two years. And he had worked at DCF for many years, very confident. And he's going to be the team leader at RC. What we're doing is we need a team leader at RC three to replace Michelle. And so we have a potential candidate. He has not given a definite yes yet. His name is Christopher Smith. And he has a lot of experience in New York State. He worked at the new school in Montpelier. He worked in Middlebury and he's worked at in Bristol at Monday. And he's going to he has a master's in social work. He's going to be the team leader for RC three. And then we had to replace Sean, who was going to the RC one. And so we have a classroom counselor for the RC two and her name is Nara Moore. And she actually had law degree, but she had worked at DCF as kind of the liaison between schools and DCF. And she is coming in as a classroom counselor. So we're not going to force you on the we're going to ask you to approve the Michelle Pringle stipend. If you're not comfortable with it, the other two are just straight hires to replace people we've lost. And Nara Moore and Chris Smith. We have Devin, Don have interviewed them. I don't know about Don, but I know Deb has interviewed them. Yeah, Don was not able to interview. He's seen the resumes. He's he's seen he's talked to Bill and I. He was finishing up his job so he could not interview when we interviewed them. And Jamie's seen the resumes and talk to Bruce and I about all three of them. So I support the two new hires that I'd like to hold off and and see what Jamie's thoughts are on the stipend and maybe I'm off. But it's a totally different conversation about stipends than him and I had. So I don't think it hurts to wait until our next meeting with him. I think the new hires are one thing I think adding. I mean, I realize that it's an offset with what's his name going down three days, but one day from three days. But having just had our budget passed and being in a position if it hadn't passed, what the hell were we going to do and where were we going to cut? It seemed really hard to me to have us gone spending more money at the SU when the local district is feeling a big pinch. It's actually I'll just mention to all of you and remind all of you, this program saves you a ton of money in not having to place kids out at the district hundreds of thousands of dollars and all of you have used it at one point or another. So. And I'm not suggesting we don't do it. I just would like other feedback and I do not want I do not want to add more things right now because if this is a place that, you know, if I just. Is it is it possible because I also want to be sensitive to the fact that this person may want to start some work over the summer and some planning? So is it possible for us to come back next week and have a special meeting for just this one purpose? I mean, my evenings are not fully booked these days. So as far as I'm concerned, I'd like to work with some expediency if we are not going to approve this tonight. I'm surprised you're volunteering that you're not full. Can I just try it then? About ten thousand dollars. Can I can I make a comment, please? I want to be very clear that this does not add more money to the special ed budget. It actually saves money because the cost of Bill not working for us for two days is far more than a stipend. The other option just so you can have it in your head to think about it is to make it a administrative position. And and Jamie, Don and I spoke at the beginning of this, when we were talking about it, this was when he first started several months ago that he strongly felt that we do not need to be adding another administrative position. I'm on the same page there with that. So that's the other thing to consider.  So it's somewhere in the middle. And, you know, Jamie might have some great ideas. So, you know, I'm fine with with waiting and and you guys can figure it out. I just wouldn't want to wait too long. That's all. Yeah, Stacey, Carl, I haven't heard from either of you about this. I'm trying to remember I was looking back in notes. I was trying to remember what we've done in the past when we've had schools that have had a lead teacher in a role. And I want to say it was a stipend, but I also want to say that this was back when it was Windsor Northwest. And John Paul Jasek was the superintendent. And he had a lot of there. There were a lot of people that received stipend. So the stipends were kind of his philosophy of how to add some responsibility to lead teachers or to principals to compensate them for doing things at the SU level without having to put on put on put on staff at the level. So I'm curious if there if we have any history with with with things like like a lead teacher role or how it's handled because, you know, I understand that we want to be lean. I understand that we're trying to have responsibilities cross roles. But we're trying not to not to add new bodies or create responsibilities for other people to justify hiring them. But how what's another model besides the stipend? Carl, the only one that I'm aware of is an administrator. And I know that lead teachers were used for many, many years in lots of buildings, not just in the old Windsor Northwest, but in other SUs to add responsibilities to a teacher that, you know, was not called an administrator. Because what it what it means is that they don't have evaluation responsibilities. Yeah, I'm only aware of one other stipend did position that we have going right now. And it was a person who we were paying a stipend in order to try to pull all the MTSS people around the SU together so that they could plan together for student issues and student needs. And that's Shane Oaks. But he's he's not paid by the SU other than that stipend. The rest of his pay comes from his work in the Piper Valley Unified District. As an MTSS B person, he's been very, very valuable. He's looked up to by everybody else, guidance counselors and other behavioral people. So that's the only other one I know about. Or I don't know, Taylor, do you know of any? I lost my internet and just barely logged back in. So I have no idea what you've been discussing. If you want to bring me quickly up to speed, are you aware of any other stipend positions other than the Shane Oaks position for special ed? For anything. We pay a lot of stipends for mentor stipends and stipends for when people do special tasks. There's past stipends. Yeah, I know about the mentor stipends and that's been going on for years. Yeah, the big thing is that those are all kind of one time stipends or short short term.  So we're going to give you as the teacher that's organizing the move to bridge his math. We're going to give you a couple grand over the summer to do the work. And I remember our contract used to have language if it doesn't any more. But talked about how superintendent could force a stipend down someone's throat. Someone couldn't, you know, the stipend was offered. It had to be offered by, you know, via seniority, you know, so that whichever teacher was going to redo the math curriculum. The senior teachers got the shot at getting the stipend first. So I know I can certainly see there's a lot of, you know, there used to be a lot of of issues around it. I think that if, you know, I'm willing to fit in as long as it's after the 30th, I'd like to, you know, I'm willing to fit in a quick special meeting to address it once we've gotten, you know, I understand where where Kathy's coming from once we've gotten some feedback from Jamie and Clarity, you know, make sure that the way that we want to be going forward. Fine. And also having budgets passed, hopefully. I feel like if we can get back to that. Yeah. Yes, Stacey, there is that. So thank you. You have to get after there. I can give us your exciting news. I am so grateful that ours passed back in March. I can't tell you how grateful I am. I just thought our budget goes down. My reelection is going to go down, too. So either I'll have a budget and and things will be good or, you know, I'll be reading about this in the Herald. Oh, no. What you just said doesn't make Kathy feel any better. I'm so sorry. What does your shirt have? So what's your shirt? Good. Listen to mother.  Nice. Well, everybody should have listened to their mother and voted yes and my budget is on the top. All right. So it it sounds like there will not be a motion to move forward with stipend, the stipend position right now, but I'm hearing that maybe people are open to accepting those two new hires, Chris Smith and Nara Moore. I'll make a motion to hire Chris Smith and Mara Moore. Did I say that right? Is it Mara or Nara? Any or OK, I'll make that motion. Is there a second? OK, Carl. All right. All in favor say aye. Aye. OK, any opposed? Any abstentions? All right. And that was unanimously approved. Those two new hires for the restorative classroom. All right. Do you have anything more for us, Deb? I do not. All right. Thank you. You're welcome. And that brings us to our tech directors report. Hello, everybody. So working this week to start putting devices back out in students' hands for one planet tutoring, extended school year services and eventually advanced placement. I thought it was important to bring the devices back so that we know how many we get back, what condition they're in, and a certain set of devices would have a warranty that would be ending June 30th. So if a device comes back and needs service, we physically need it to evaluate it to send it out for repair. I'm going to say six weeks ago, I'm not exactly sure at one of the Thursday meetings I mentioned an issue with the National School Lunch Program reporting. And so the deadline for that report verification report was last Friday. It came to me the Thursday before that. And so the difference between what we reported back in November and what actually should have been reported. That's now much more accurate. And I don't deal with the grant side, but Cynthia told me the state had adjusted it as she expected. And those are the only two things I have at the moment. So that report was was completed and went as expected is what I should. After misquote, Cynthia. OK. All right. OK, as I think what she said, let me look. OK. And when you when you corralled back, all your devices was the breakage rate around where you thought it was, or we have a bunch of surprises or were we pleasantly surprised how good the kids were with their gear? I'll be honest with you, Carl. I don't have that answer yet, maybe in a week. How many are there, right? How many devices total? Yeah, I don't have that answer yet, either. I know that they were. Let's say 60 were looking to get back that I know of. And so that's a series of emails and phone call follow-ups. Thank you. So Cynthia is not on the call, correct? Correct. OK, and that would be our grant coordinator update. I feel like Ray shared a little bit of Cynthia's information. I can share that all the grants have been signed off on and we're up to date. They're all in and I do have to go in and tweak the tobacco grant. But other than that, everything else is been approved or is pending approval. And it's on the state's end, not ours. So. OK, all right. Thank you. And Mary Ellen, that brings us to your report. OK, so I've been working with the teachers in elementary. Amy Toth is going to be teaching a summer class about how to prepare for the first six weeks of school for the elementary and both literacy and math across the SU. We have the Tarrant Institute has offered to do a similar course with the middle level grades I've offered to do the course with the high school teachers. So that's what we have going right now to help them prepare and plan for the beginning of the school year. That's an optional course, but they would be able to get graduate credit for it if they continued completed all the action projects. And I'm also part of the covid task force group for the instruction. And we're coming up with recommendations about what do we think is needed to help open the school in the fall and the lines of instruction. So we are coming up with recommendations. We've already met twice. We've got two more meetings to go to go through to get that all finalized for the task force. So as soon as that comes out, we'll let you know. We've been also working on invoices, getting them all in for the business office as they finish up this fiscal year. And through the SU, we have several contracts that are across schools. And I usually look at them and renegotiate them or negotiate them with the contractor. So I've been in the process of doing that and correcting anything that I noticed that might be an error from last year and bringing that to the attention of the business office. So that's what I've been working on. Sounds like a lot. OK, thank you. Any questions for Mary Ellen? All right. Moving forward, negotiations update. I contacted Dina on Friday and we talked again today and I said, what am I to tell the board about what's going on? And she said, tell them that we will have an answer by the end of the month, which is the next four or five days from the union. I don't it's on the union's end, not our end. So we have a response we need to make to we need to have a meeting to respond to the letter that we received from the support staff that has not happened yet. Well, so we've got to have that meeting. Yeah, and you probably should schedule that maybe at the same time you're going to consider anything else. Maybe, you know, the first couple of days of the new new fiscal year. Dina said that we'll have an answer by next Tuesday from everybody so so a week from tomorrow. They may be waiting until I'm gone in order to deal with Jamie. That might be possible and I'm not offended by that at all. I just know we received that letter and we hadn't called the meeting yet. Yeah. Has COVID been responsible for the breakdown? I think a big part of it. We were we were meeting pretty regularly and then COVID happened and it was we seemed to stop meeting and then going back together has been pretty hard. Would you say Bruce? Well, we we did have a meeting with the union to try to see if we could reconcile some things and at the end of the meeting, they said they'd get back to us and didn't. I think I think COVID has been difficult for them as well as us. I don't think they want to do this work over video conference. But I don't know what they're thinking. We then as a board, you decided to give us final offer for support staff. And then that's what we've been on the track. We gave proposals to both of the support staff and the and the professional staff. They came back with questions and responses in a timely way. And now we have to consider those. I'm not I'm not sure that we know completely where we are with the professional staff, but we do have a response from the support staff. So this the professional staff sent us sent us the one response and we responded to their one response, the group got together. And then the same similar letter came back from with different questions, came back from support staff and we we need to answer that letter. So that we basically just did one final offer. And I'm hoping that that can answer your question. Everything's been hard. Everything's been hard. The board's association doing negotiations training for board members. Yes, they do, they do. Because I know NEA does and I know NEA Vermont does. And I know that they're going to go to a NEA Vermont. Well, on any other year, other than this would go to a three to three day to a four day retreat where they'd get a, you know, just a one session for five days would be negotiations and how to do it. So they're coming in really quite prepared. And I mean, I think that you could see that they're preparedness from their initial bargaining, just in the way it was presented to you. I didn't go over to see what the content of it, but what it looked like. And I think that we're missing a, I'm not, I don't mean that I'm not pointing anything out, but it would, the school board's association, I think has a responsibility to us to teach people how to counter proposal and, you know, the process of negotiations, especially if you're into, you know, regular, you know, negotiations and not, you know, collaborative or whatever. Well, sir, I've done the training. I'm not sure I did it a few years ago. It wouldn't hurt to be a refresher. But I think it's something that the SU team, when they, when we decide on who those people are next year, should take it. It should be part of a requirement because it's just I was when I took the training. So and I think, did you take it, Carl? I know Don Shaw took it too. I'm pretty sure. So yeah, it's been about a year ago. That all happened a year and a half ago. Since then, we've had some turnover on that negotiation group. How long does I mean, what is it? Afternoon, an evening, a three day or what? It was an evening. And applied to get more if we wanted to. I think I know some of the folks went for more. But I think we've got a requirement. I think it's really important, you know, it's it's a.   I know because I used to train them. You know, what it what what what they're trained in. And, you know, it's not an it's not an evening. It's not a three hour training. It's a five day whole day workshop that they go. So, you know. Not, I mean, I think we should have that for a future agenda item. I think we should go there and we should talk about it before we go into negotiations next fall or how do you do on that committee is also signing up to do the training. Well, I think it's a great idea. I didn't hear you, Lisa, what did you say? I said I noted that in the minutes that anyone who signs up to do negotiations should at least take that initial training. And I think the team can work together to, you know, and do some of their own thinking around, you know, what is this? What's our strategy?  How do we want to be what, you know, what? Because I, you know, I mean, the note taking is really, really incredibly important. And it's what supports you if you get into fact finding and, you know, arbitration and fact finding. It's what you bring, the materials that you bring and what I've seen. And granted, I hope I haven't seen everything because I haven't seen a whole lot. It looks pretty pathetic on our side, I got to say. And that's, you know, that's that's a problem. Once we get further down, if we go to fact finding, we don't really have a whole lot to stand on from what I could say. Hopefully, I have not seen everything. I think you have not seen everything. I don't want to help in that in any capacity that I can. Thank you. Perfect. All right. Thank you all. Next up, we have policies. Everything's been put through. There's one in Rochester and Stockbridge that still needs to come. We put through eleven of them and we pulled back four of them that we didn't. Dina kind of felt we weren't ready to do what they've been they've been moved through. Anything additional to that will have to be something that Jamie does. I felt like I felt pretty good about getting them through all the boards as a as a package. They were warned in public and that's been done. So thanks for the negative or thanks for the policy committee for their hard work this winter doing that. It was kind of one of the things that covid didn't interrupt. Well, we're at least you know, destroyed. Thank you for staying on top of it and making sure that that got done because it was not particularly fun work, but it was important and I'm glad we got through it. No, it wasn't fun work. And I'm thankful to those of you on this call that were on the committee because couldn't have done it without you. Thank you. Um, how issues will be reorganizing after annual meetings is up next? I have no idea. That's that's going to have to be, you know, Jamie's responsibility because we're not going to get this finished until the 30th. And in F bud was were people reelected or did you have some turnover? Sorry, all of our people. So our our board members are in force. They've been elected. They were on the floor the night of the vote. So, OK, that's done. We clear the 30th. OK, great. Now, being you're doing Australian ballot, Carl, if. Do the elections hold, even if the budget doesn't pass? So like if you get elected as a board member, is that that part of it done? Or does how does that? Yes, each article stands on its own. I believe so. I am the only balloted board member from Stockbridge in pain. The incumbent from Rochester is the only outed candidate from Rochester. Now, as I understand it, writing candidate could theoretically trump that. But I tend to believe that. You know, we will have we will see the board after whether we've had to pass a budget or not, I believe we'll see the board on the 30th. Great. Good luck, Carl. Carl, is this the first time you've done elections by Australian ballot? It is. It is. We Stockbridge, in particular, has always been a big old school floor meeting kind of town, as a matter of fact. One of the biggest issues that the town actually got all worked up about was we originally, back when the tuition didn't come out till February, after we started having a may vote, because we couldn't, you know, when we're tuitioning seven to twelve, we can't have any idea what our budget's going to be till we know what the tuition is are going to be from the receiving town. And once that got once those tuition announcements got moved to January a few years back, our town immediately was like move the meeting till town meeting. So we we ended up moving it to in Stockbridge Town Meeting Day for a while, and then we couldn't have it in Town Meeting Day because of the issues after the Rochester Stockbridge merger and getting the unified budget built by whichever business manager it was back in the day. So we went back to we were back at a May meeting, but. OK, well, good luck, Stacy and Carl, with your votes. Thanks a lot. Not that I want to be the only one without a vote. I'm still rooting very hard for you. We can either have it, we can either have a toast or a commiserating drink afterward, if anyone would like. Thank you. Covid 19 team and projects. I'm not aware of that. I think that's Jamie's. I think it's the task force, right? Mary Ellen's been attending those meetings, so I don't know. Mary Ellen, I know you are. I'm on the task force and have been attending the meetings. I think that I'm going really. I think at least I'm on the health and safety subcommittee of it. And I think that we're coming up with some really good stuff that will be really helpful. So I'm we're not there yet. It will be I think the ninth or the 12th of July, something like that. Mid July is when we want to have the report already. But I'm on the I'm like you, sir. I'm on the social, emotional and transportation group. And we've come up with some really good stuff, I think. And I think Jamie's going to keep you updated on a regular basis. The first letter went out recently. And I think it's going to be every two weeks. You're going to get a notice on the updates of what's happening from that committee. And I think Karen is in on there and also Ray, too. I'm on the building committee and we are working toward getting some consistency throughout the supervisory union, potentially on some bulk buying options to see if we can get a better response for some of the PPE and the cleaning products that we're going to need. And the last project that I was working on was reaching out to one of our extra teachers to try and get an idea of what it would take to move classroom to classroom rather than having students move the art room, the music room, what would they need for equipment, parts, that type of stuff to try and get some ideas and set up some guidelines around that. So that's what I'm working on. We also are working on setting up outside classroom and eating arrangements. So having some guidance around that as well. And that's all I can think of. It's great. All right. Anything else about that? OK, I feel like we've already discussed the restorative classroom new hires. Yep. So that is bringing us rapidly to the close of our meetings meeting our next meetings, I believe, is Monday, July 13th. I have not compared that against the email that I received from that we all received from Jamie about moving forward. But I suspect that's correct. Are there a few more meetings? What's that? That will be the reorg meeting on it. Yes. OK. So July 13th will be the reorganization meeting. And that's a part of our meeting, too. Right. I don't know if Jamie had mentioned having an executive board meeting sooner than that, so that may be coming just to give you a heads up. You mentioned it with him. Great. OK, so I'll look forward to hearing more about that. Would anyone like to make a motion to adjourn? Yes, make a motion to adjourn. That's seconded. Who made that first motion? Is that you, Kathy? Yes. All right. Thank you, Lisa, way to move it forward. Ruth, you'll set something up for the sixth bank committee. Yes. OK, thank you. Kathy, are you reading emails that came in just a little while ago on that? Yes.


This is how to hang your hammock. Take your first at least strap in your hands. Take the side with a lot of loops and thread it through the part with one loop. Pull tight to secure the knot above the notches sticking out of each pole. Now it's time to take your hammock out of the bag and clip the first carabiner to the highest loop on the strap. On the second pole, hook the other carabiner attached to the hammock to the highest loop on the strap. For undoing your hammock, unhook the carabiners from each strap.  When you're done putting the hammock away, it's time to untie the rope from both poles. Once you've untied both ropes, make sure to wrap them like so. And you're done!


Hello and welcome to the International Daily Roundup by People's Dispatch where we bring you major news developments from around the world, our headlines, protest segons the arrest of rapper Pablo Hacel continue across Spain, US withdraws Trump in our letters declaring re-imposition of sanctions in Iran, South Carolina passes a bill imposing near total ban on abortions, Israel is preparing a law prohibiting cooperation with the International Criminal Court, and in our video section we take a look at a new law approved by the French National Assembly which has been increasingly contentious. In our first story protest segons the arrest of rapper Pablo Hacel continued for the third consecutive night in Spain on February 18th. The protest has spread across several cities including Barcelona, Madrid and in Catalonia. Hacel was forcefully arrested by the police on February 16th and is now serving a ninth month prison sentence. He was convicted on charges related to glorifying terrorism and insulting the Spanish monarchy and state institutions. As reported by the Associated Press, Spanish authorities are now announced that Hacel has lost a recent appeal and might face an additional two and a half years in prison. The charges are related to assault and obstruction of justice in 2017. Protests broke out across different cities on Tuesday night after hours after he was imprisoned. Thousands gathered in Barcelona, Girona and Segria demanding his release. Police forces deployed tear gas, rubber bullets and beaten charges to disperse protesters in several areas. Over 100 people have been injured and nearly 80 have been arrested during the protests so far. The Spanish newspaper LPI reported that the Health Department had confirmed that the woman had lost an eye during the rally in Barcelona. United States group Iridia has stated that the injury was caused by a form-trip projectile. Pablo Hacel's arrest is the latest in a series of persecutions under Spain's 2015 public security law. The law, which was passed by the former conservative government, has been widely criticized for cracking down on dissent and restricting free assembly. In our next story, we go to the United States where the Biden administration has withdrawn three Trump-era letters claiming the re-imposition of international sanctions on Iran. The Trump administration had sent these letters to the UN Security Council in September 2020. The acting U.S. ambassador to the UN Richard Mills sent a letter to the Security Council withdrawing the previous letters on February 18. He stated that the sanctions against Iran, which had been terminated after the 2015 nuclear deal, will, to quote him, remain terminated. The U.S. is now also in favor of holding talks with Iran. State Department spokesperson Ned Price confirmed on February 18 that the U.S. would accept an invitation by the European Union to hold these talks. These measures have been welcomed as possible steps towards the U.S. rejoining the deal formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. Iran also announced the same deal that it would stop implementing the additional protocols of the International Atomic Energy Agency if the U.S. did not lift all its unilateral sanctions. Former President Trump had imposed these sanctions on Iran after withdrawing from the 2018, therefore the nuclear deal in 2018. The Trump administration then proceeded to unilaterally declare the re-imposition of UN sanctions against Iran as well. This was despite the fact that 13 out of the 15 Security Council members had voted against the action. A special aid to the president of the Iranian Parliament of International Affairs has now stated that the U.S. and U.S. signatories have four days to lift the sanctions. Iran has stated that its breach of provisions of the deal are reversible, provided all signatories return to full compliance. This also includes the U.S. rejoining the deal and lifting all sanctions. Continuing with the U.S., the state of South Carolina has passed a new bill which will implement a near total ban on abortion. Republican Governor Henry McMaster signed the South Carolina Fetal Heartbeat in Protection from Abortion Act on February 18. The bill was passed by the South Carolina General Assembly with a majority of 79 to 35 on February 17 and finalized on February 18. Once enforced, the bill will require doctors to perform ultrasounds to detect a heartbeat in the fetus. If a heartbeat is detected, an abortion will be allowed only in cases where there is a fetal anomaly or if the pregnancy is a result of rape or incest or if it poses threat to life. The law can also charge the person performing the abortion with a felony. If found guilty, they could face up to two years in prison and a fine of $10,000. Reproductive healthcare nonprofit Planned Parenthood announced on February 18 that it would file a lawsuit against the bill. The organization further stated that over 200 bills, banning or restricting abortions had been introduced by state politicians in less than two months. We now go to Israel, where a country is preparing a law which will prohibit any cooperation with the International Criminal Court. Israeli media channel 7 reported that any violations to this law will carry a five-year prison sentence. The law will include bans on handing over Israeli citizens to the ICC and the financing of legal defense. It will also sanction the court and the people employed there. This will include bans on entry and residence in Israel, as well as restrictions on foreign entities assisting the court. Israeli citizens and entities, including any company or authority, will be banned from cooperating with the ICC without a special permit. This includes any investigations conducted in the occupied Palestinian territories. The announcement comes days after the ICC ruled that it had jurisdiction to investigate the territories occupied by Israel. The decision, which was issued on February 5th, covers Gaza, the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. ICC chief prosecutor Fatah Ben-Sauda had stated in 2019 that there was reasonable basis to launch a war crimes investigation into Israel's military actions in Gaza and the occupied West Bank. Ben-Sauda had then appealed to the ICC to confirm if it had a territorial jurisdiction in these cases. Israel denounced the decision as being politically motivated. The ICC has denied this, stating that it provided a legal answer in accordance with the Rome Statue. The new law proposed in Israel is being seen as an attempt to protect its officers and the military from any potential investigation. For our final story, we go to France, where the National Assembly has approved a contentious new bill, supposedly aimed at reinforcing Republican values. The bill was passed on February 16th, following 135 hours of debate. The bill has been widely criticized by many who feel that it will further perpetuate stigma against the Muslim community. Here is a video feature on the bill. On Tuesday, February 16th, after 135 hours of debate, a new bill aimed at reinforcing Republican values was approved by the French National Assembly. The bill, officially named Respect for the Principles of the Republic, has been subject of fierce debate in civil society and among politicians. It will go to the Senate next month for final approval. The bill seeks oversight of mosques, schools and sports clubs, among other institutions perpetually to protect France from Islamists. Now, the bill does not mention Muslims or Islam. Critics point out that this legislation is against Muslims. The French Communist Party's deputies in the parliament said that the bill will allow the right and power right to develop Islamophobic theories. This bill gives the government the power to dissolve or ban associations as it sees fit. The bill also introduces stricter financial control over foreign money sent to religious organizations. The bill, according to the government, is expected to strengthen Lysite, the French idea of secularism, which calls for a strict separation of religion and state. The legislation will also tighten controls on homeschooling, online hate, and aims to combat misogyny rooted in religion. The bill also allows the state to close places of worship and religious schools as well as to ban extremist preachers. The bill has been put forward in the context of recent attacks by religious extremists in the last few years. The murder of Samuel Patti, a schoolteacher, is said to have been a major trigger. Hundreds of activists, academics, journalists, and religious figures gathered in Paris to protest the bill on February 12. Critics have said that the proposed law will stigmatize Muslims and that the existing laws are enough to cover the issues sought to be addressed by the new legislation. Emmanuel Macron has often been accused of catering to the sentiments of the far right and appeasing them by exaggerating the danger of Islamist groups.


All right guys, we'll get going just because we got three presentations and so we get out on time. So start off with, we'll have Dr. Becky Gincher talking about systemic vasculitis, the most common console. Yes, exactly. All right, so we'll get started. So I'm going to talk today about systemic vasculitis case with some uncommon ocular findings. And as Rhys mentioned, this definitely is our most popular consult and I'll get to a little bit about, you know, kind of why it's important to think about systemic vasculitis and the connections between the eye at the end of my talk. So this is a case, this was a 64-year-old gentleman who was initially seen at the VA and he was referred to the UVA Disclinic for possible Bichette's disease. Only when he presented to us he had sudden onset of red eye and some periorbital edema and a lot of pain at that time. He actually had a similar episode about four months prior, which occurred while he was on xarelto and he also had sudden vision loss at that time. He said that everything was white and he was seen by an ophthalmologist in Idaho at the time and underwent actually a vitreous tap and inject because they thought maybe he had endothelitis despite the fact that he didn't have any kind of eye surgery or anything that would have led them to think about endothelitis. You know, unsurprisingly the cultures were negative in that case and he was then subsequently diagnosed with a pan-UVitis and started on some steroids and also received some topical drops and he actually was doing a little bit better as he started on the steroids and continued down that steroid taper, which he actually completed prior to seeing us, but his vision was still poor and then he had this new onset of pain and redness. On review of systems the only thing really to note was that he did have a cough and no hemoptysis with the cough, no production with the cough and he also had a history of chronic rash on his nose that kind of hadn't really gone away and he had recurrent epistaxis kind of throughout his life, which had been getting worse. In terms of his medical history, notable for a series of DVTs, he's had a lot of DVTs, some while he was on anticoagulants and some while not and then he also had multiple PEs. He had a history of cardiac tamponade and then he also had this history of a nasoceptal perforation, which just was not healing. So that's kind of, you know, important on our list of things that we were asking him and then subsequently, you know, asked about the usual social exposure. There's nothing really remarkable there. In terms of his workup, so we were actually lucky that this patient had previously been followed by rheumatology at the VA and had a quite extensive workup that was already done over the past two years as rheumatology was kind of trying to piece together these little bits from his history with the DVTs and the bowel obstructions and the nasoceptal perforation. So in all of this workup, really the only thing that came back slightly notable was the lupus anticoagulant, which rheumatology didn't seem to be able to make a whole lot out of. So in terms of what he looked like on his exam, his vision in the left eye was quite poor. It was 2,500. Right eye vision was normal. Pressures were normal. His anterior segment exam was unremarkable. But his dilated fundus exam in the left eye revealed some large clumps of vitreous in the anterior vitreous and also significant amounts of organized retinal hemorrhage. And there were also some diffuse peripheral intraretinal hemorrhage as seen on his exam. So rather than describe those findings, I'll just show you some photos. So this is a color fundus photograph of the right eye in this patient, which you can see is unremarkable. But the left eye, when we look a little bit closer, we can start to see some of these diffuse hemorrhages. These were actually kind of scattered throughout the periphery. And then some of this dense vitreous hemorrhage, infratemporally. So we like to do FAs in UVitis. So we got a fluorescing angiogram for this patient. He had a normal arm to retina time. And as we get further down the line, you can start to see some areas of reduced perfusion, kind of infrotemporally. And then a little bit also super nasally in the early phases. And then as we move along, again, you can start to see these areas of intraretinal hemorrhage show up as hypoautofluorescent there. And then, again, some areas of just a little bit of leakage in the superior macula. And then, as you can see, the right eye was essentially unremarkable. So in summary, we have a 64-year-old gentleman who's got a history of recurrent venous thromboembolism, both PEs and DVTs. Lab's only notable for a positive anticoagulant, lupus anticoagulant. And he's got a history of multiple bowel obstructions and a nasal septal perforation. And he's coming in with a unilateral occlusive vasculopathy. So on our differential, we had a couple of things, such as a CRVO with a subsequent recanalization since the fluorescein angiogram was not all that remarkable. We also thought about systemic vasculitis. And in particular, if it were to be the antifospholipid variety based on his laboratory testing, we would expect that to be more of a bilateral presentation. Bechet's disease was, again, thrown out. That was the initial consulting request. But it didn't seem likely given that he didn't have any of the ulcerating mucosal lesions that you would expect to see with Bechet's. And then granulomatosis with polyangiitis was also out there. There is a high risk of thrombotic events in these patients. And we also discussed ocular schemic syndrome, sarcoids, syphilis, the usual entities, and some type of lymphoma. So he was referred back to rheumatology after seeing us. He underwent an initial PRP in the left eye about a week after we saw him that first time. And then he had some additional work up, again, to kind of try to parse through some of these differential diagnoses. And nothing was remarkable. However, in our discussions with rheumatology, they felt really strongly that this looked like an ANCA negative granulomatosis with polyangiitis. So the ANCA testing was not confirmatory in this case, but as we'll discuss a little bit more, there are about 10 to 20% of GPA cases that end up being ANCA negative. So in light of all these findings, we started him on some prednisone. He didn't have any recurrence of his eye symptoms for at least a few months. And based on our discussions with rheumatology, he was started on methotrexate. So I'd like to talk a little bit about GPA or granulomatosis with polyangiitis, formerly known as Wegener syndrome. And it was so named because Wegener identified several patients in the 1930s who came in with common cold symptoms that then progressed to a systemic inflammatory illness, also with uremia. And the clinical features were described, and this term was actually coined in the 1950s by Goldman and Churg. And those clinical features include different types of necrotizing granulomas. So we get necrotizing granulomas in the respiratory tract that includes the upper and lower respiratory tract. We also get systemic necrotizing basculitis. And then in the kidney, particularly tends to cause a segmental glomerular nephritis. However, there are also some incomplete or renal sparing forms which have been described. The peak incidence, our patient was primed for this in the 64 to 75-year-old age range. And then ocular findings are, you know, I've read probably about four or five different papers on this subject. They say it can present in 10% to up to 60% of patients. So the most common findings are a focal necrotizing scleritis and keratitis.  You can also see some episcleritis. You can see some retro bulbar masses. Those of you who have rotated on oculoplastics have probably seen some of these nasal acromole duct obstructions that can get pretty bad and sometimes require a DCR. But really, uveitis is a pretty rare presentation. It occurs in about 3% according to a couple of the studies that I read. And in particular, usually presents as an acute anterior uveitis. Pan-uveitis is even less rare, and then occlusive vasculitis is quite rare. So just to show a couple of the key findings, if you are suspecting a patient might have GPA or if you see these findings, you definitely want to think about it. This is the saddle nose deformity, which occurs because of perforation of the nasal septum and some underlying bony erosion. And you can see that pretty clearly when the patient is lying down. And then this is just an example of necrotizing scleritis, which if left untreated can lead to perforation of the sclerar. Pretty rare, but it definitely can cause some vision problems. So I wanted to make a couple of sort of brief points for discussion here. And in this patient, we had an initial presentation with multiple venous thromboembolisms, but really he didn't have the dramatic sinus disease that we would expect to see in GPA. So just in looking at the association between GPA and really any type of systemic vasculitis with venous thromboembolism, there are a couple of good studies summarized in this review by Tamaki et al. And they looked at one study from the French vasculitis study group where 8% of patients developed DVT or a PE by 60 months of follow-up. So that's pretty significant to consider. And then another point of note about the ANCA testing. So in this case, our patient was ANCA negative, but as I mentioned, about 80 to 90% of patients who carry a clinical diagnosis of GPA are actually ANCA positive. And that distribution occurs mostly in the serine protease 3, but about 20% of cases will be myeloperoxidase positive. So we still have 10 to 20% of cases that are ANCA negative. And then in terms of the associations between retinal vasculitis and systemic vasculitis, this is something that we get consulted for a lot. And there's a lot of common misconception outside of the ophthalmology community. I know you all know that the association is not as strong as people think, but it's often suspected and actually rarely linked between systemic vasculitis and retinal vasculitis. There was one study that looked at 207 patients with retinal vasculitis and found only 1.4% of those cases were associated directly responsible with a systemic vasculitis. In another study, again similar findings, actually they looked at about 1,300 patients with systemic vasculitis and retinal vasculitis and found that in 216 patients with systemic vasculitis, only about 16 of those actually had retinal vasculitis that was the cause of their blurred vision. And then lastly, in terms of treatment considerations for this patient, there was a hot off the press review article by Stephen Foster's group that looked at Rituximab and Methotrexate and steroids and they actually found the best induction of remission with Rituximab, with or without steroids. They found remission in 9 of 14 patients and these were all patients with an ANCA-associated systemic vasculitis. And then out of these 22 eyes that they looked at, good visual outcome in 17 of 22. So those are pretty good findings and a good suggestion that Rituximab might be appropriate for this patient. So just to summarize, this patient actually was initially seen about three years ago and just to summarize what's gone on since that time, he did have a drop in his vision back in July of 2016. We started him back on steroids and then in September of 2016, after a lot of discussions with the VA, we got him on Rituximab. He underwent two infusions and then subsequently developed a pneumonia, was taken off the Methotrexate and the Rituximab and developed a large new vitreous hemorrhage requiring a parisplane of atrectomy and endolaser and then eventually got him back on the Methotrexate. We started to do better. And then about a couple months later developed a decent cataract thanks to the various interventions that we did. And actually Eileen did his cataract surgery last May and his vision was pretty great afterwards, 2070, compared to 2500. Then later, this past summer, he developed a hypopian uveitis, so there's been some ups and downs, which responded pretty well to steroids. And then at that time, we started CellSept. And in November, he developed a low B cell count, so taken off the CellSept just to kind of illustrate all of the considerations when putting patients on these types of medications. And then lastly, we saw him in December and he actually developed a new anterior uveitis in the right eye, which was a little concerning and we strongly encouraged rheumatology to consider putting this patient back on Rituximab since he seemed to do pretty well while he was on it. Any questions? Yes, Dr. Harry. Just a question, did ENT folks ever do biopsies on these medications? Is this kind of long biopsies? That's a good question. They do and actually when he was seen by rheumatology, they referred him to ENT. ENT saw him and said, well, we're not going to do anything about that nasal septal perforation and he wasn't inflamed enough to get a good biopsy sample, so they opted not to biopsy, but certainly they can, especially if there's a large granuloma there, large amounts of sinus disease, they definitely can do a biopsy. And that would sort of be the most... I mean, typically we go after the lung to try to get a good biopsy, but if there are no lung lesions, then we can go for the sinus disease.


Hi everybody, it's Polyphonic here with a quick update. First of all I just want to thank you all so much for watching, liking, subscribing, commenting, and pledging to my Patreon. You guys make Polyphonic happen and I'm so grateful for that. And I'm also really grateful for the folks over at DFTBA. Thanks to them, I'm able to officially announce the launch of Polyphonic Merchandise.  If so, today's your lucky day. With help from DFTBA, I've been able to adapt 3 of my videos into these beautiful posters. Right now, I've got poster versions of my videos on Good Vibrations, Jack White, and the Thin White Duke. Head on over to dftba.com to check them out. I'm really proud of these posters and if you guys like them, I think that there's a lot more videos that I could adapt. Let me know what you think in the comments and let me know some of my videos that you'd like to see on your wall and I'll see what I can do about making that happen. If you don't want to splurge on a poster but you still want to support me, I've also got these nice laptop decals. Heading to the store is a great way to show your support for my channel and hopefully get something neat while you're at it. And if there's any other kind of merchandise that you'd like to see, please let me know in the comments and I'll see what I can do to make it happen. And one more thing, to celebrate the merch launch, I'll be releasing another Q&A video in 2 weeks, so leave any questions that you may have in the comments and I'll try to answer what I can. Once again, thank you all so much for watching, subscribing and helping Polyphonic continue to grow and continue to do cool stuff.


Hello everyone, welcome back to my channel. It is Drew here from Lone Fox. I hope you're having an amazing day so far. Today's video is going to be a little bit of a different one. I actually really wanted to dive into a very specific topic which I've kind of touched on in the past in videos before where I've talked about room makeovers and kind of talked about my process for how I design a room from start to finish, like the process that I personally use. I feel like everyone's a little bit different.  I wanted to share with you guys my process that I use for every single room and how I basically come up with my design and my ideas, my color palette, my story and just create a very cohesive and nicely designed space. I figured this video would come at the perfect time because as many of you guys know, I just moved into a brand new apartment and I'm going to be doing a ton of room makeovers in here. So yeah, I hope that this video is super helpful and I did want to also give a humongous shout out to Alexandra Gator because I saw her do this video and then I had already been planning on this for such a long time. I just never got around to doing it and I saw her do it and it really motivated me to do this video as well. I feel like everyone kind of does have a different way that they like to take on a room design. So if you guys would like to check out Alexandra Gator's video, I'm going to put it in a card up here and also link it below for you guys. Alrighty, so I guess we're jumping in to my first little step in my designing a room process and my first step always is to just kind of look at the space you're going to be designing and create a mood board. This is my biggest, biggest thing that I do for every single space. I'm a humongous Pinterest addict and I know that now you can also bookmark on Instagram as well, which has become super convenient. I save honestly anything from headboards to color palettes to maybe random pictures of textures that can be converted into some form of art print or redesigned into a DIY project. I save a ton of different inspiration images on my Pinterest boards, which I can then go back to and refer to later when I am going to design a space. I personally feel like creating a new board for the bedroom or whatever room it is you're going to design in your space and just titling at the name of that room and then going through Pinterest and just looking for images and pinning whatever sparks creativity. Like if you see something you like, go ahead and pin it. It doesn't have to be cohesive with anything else, but just pin all your thoughts and pin all of the things that you really do love into one board. Even though it might be a huge mismatch of randomness, that's great because it's an amazing starting point for you to go through and kind of edit your board. So you're able to go through and take away or even add to what you already have. I feel like a lot of people have a hard time with mood boards because maybe they start creating a mood board but it's leaning in a ton of different directions which kind of can create a very scattered space in the end. Like for example, if you're pinning a ton of modern images, then you're pinning a lot of rustic images and you're doing like farmhouse images and then you're doing classic images. Sometimes those styles don't mesh well if you're doing multiple. So I find it's best to pin everything you like onto your one board and then go through and edit and kind of take away maybe what is a little bit too much and try to refine the idea a little bit more. I find that just works a little bit better for me because I love seeing everything in one spot that I like and then going through and refining things I don't really like and adding to what I do like to create a more polished and then like cohesive aesthetic for the room I'm gonna be designing. Step number two kind of just goes back to exactly what I said and that is narrowing down and defining your board. So this comes to anything from furniture ideas, wall paint colors, wallpaper ideas, rug ideas, curtain ideas, decor ideas, whatever it might be. Even like layout ideas are great. There's just a ton of different home decor resources on Pinterest. I kind of like to find one image that I really, really wanna use for a space. So let's just say there's one image that really inspires me. I like a lot of the pieces in there. I like a lot of the woods. I like the textures. I like the furniture, the wall color, whatever it might be. I find one image and then once you click on that it's actually really nice cause Pinterest kind of recommends a ton of other options underneath that are a similar style. So I find that to be super helpful if you scroll down from the original photo you could find lots of other sort of images that look similar or add a similar vibe and I like to go off of that. And once you start clicking around you could find stuff in the same color palette, you could find curtains, you could find rug ideas, tons of different things and pin them all to your board, go back, edit your board and you should have a more consolidated and concise like look at what maybe you want your new space to look like. So I find that curtain and rugs are the hardest part of any room. I don't know if that's just me but personally curtains and rugs are just so challenging because they really are so focal. When you walk in a room the rug is honestly sometimes the first thing you see it's the largest thing that kind of covers the floor and curtains are just on the entire wall especially in a room like the one that I have right now and I get asked all the time how do I choose curtains and how do I choose rugs? Again guys, I am not an interior designer so this might not be the most perfect method but the method that I personally use which I find works pretty well is to see first of all for curtains how many windows are in the room. So for example, my bedroom has four windows which is quite a lot of windows to actually cover. There's actually five because there's one in the little nook area over there but I'm not gonna cover that one. So I'm doing four windows and I find that if you have more than two windows trying to stick to a solid color curtain just works a little bit better. I personally just always lean towards more like linen-y or gauzy materials. I'm not a huge fan of like blackout or like super heavy cotton fabrics or velvet. I don't know what it is. I just like a more lightweight airy feel when it comes to windows because I feel like that's what they portray anyways but let's just say you have one window in your bedroom like my last window. I think adding a really fun maybe statement curtain or a pop, let's say you have a white wall an easy way to add interest to that wall is just adding a more fun curtain to the space. So choosing from your color palette that you created in your mood board maybe drawing some of the key colors that you really like and then when you're out searching for curtains you can kind of pull from the color palette and see if there's any curtains that maybe have bits of those accent colors in them. And now for rugs, rugs are the most challenging for me. I don't know what it is but something I typically like to lean towards is something that is super subtle or super bold. Nothing in between. I don't know what it is. I just like one or the other. So for example, when I did Bretman's apartment makeover I ordered a couple different rugs because I wasn't exactly sure what I was gonna like and I ordered these from rugs USA. Actually the one I ended up using was from West Elm but the West Elm one was more of a bold choice that had colors of teal and like emerald and like a soft blue. So that one was a little bit more bold and I ended up going with that because the space overall was just bold to start with. It had the crazy wallpaper, a velvet couch. So that space was a little bit different than a traditional kind of space that I would design. But then for Bretman's bedroom I actually ended up opting for something a little bit more simple. It had a really, really basic kind of like pattern in it. That was a black pattern. Adding a little bit of detail but I pulled those colors from the more simplistic, calm color palette I was using in his bedroom. So I think if you are to do some form of rug either choose one that is super neutral I can kind of pair nicely with the color palette you have in terms of accent colors or if you really want to go bold choose one of those accent colors and make sure it's really implemented in the rug. At least 50% of the rug kind of incorporates that accent color in there to really make it shine and then you can find it in other places in the room as well. Something that I learned in high school that has kind of stuck with me is rules of thirds. And this is something that I now keep in mind when I design any space. And that is too, let's just say for example you had an accent rug that you got and you love it and it has a lot of different colors than it but one of the main colors in that rug is yellow. It's really prominent in the rug, let's say. Something that you can do is to place two other yellow accent pieces throughout the room to pull back to that rug. So maybe a art print on the wall and a vase on the shelf. I think if you're one that struggles with kind of creating a cohesive design using the rule of thirds method is kind of like a no-brainer easy way to do so. And this is not me saying that you are not allowed to have one pink face over there and nothing else pink the room. You could do that for sure but I feel like a no-brainer method for maybe somebody who doesn't know exactly how they wanna decorate their space or how to add accent colors. A rule of thirds is a great way just to kind of keep that in mind in the back of your head when you're shopping. Like you could find three pieces of similar colors, place them around the room and it just makes it feel a little bit more cohesive than if you just had one random off color thrown in the corner for example. You're able to pair it back with things and it just looks a little bit more finished and polished. Next up we're gonna talk about paint and wallpaper which can kind of lean important or not important depending on the space you wanna design. I know when I first started kind of decorating my room I always just loved white walls and I still do love white walls in my room right now all of the walls are white and I'm honestly not too sure if I'm gonna paint them in here I haven't decided yet. So that's definitely something I wanna think about in the future of course when I go to design this space but paint and wallpaper can change up a space so, so much. And if you think about it like this when you walk into someone's bedroom or you walk into someone's living room whatever it might be if you see a painted wall in their room like an accent wall or you see like a painted section in their room it just already looks like they added so much time and they tried to make it look a little bit more personalized and like their selves. Like to do when I'm choosing paint color for a space is really think about the overall vibe I want the room to portray. You can have a lot of different vibes. There can be a light and airy feeling you can have more of a moody dramatic feeling you could have like a warm and cozy feeling you can have a super modern and minimal feeling there's a ton of different aesthetics that you can go for. This is another great way to go back to your mood board and kind of look at the pictures and see what space you could imagine yourself living in. What vibe do you wanna feel every single day?  So there's a lot of different methods and with those methods is how you should choose your paint color because if you're wanting a super fresh and light and airy vibe you're not gonna wanna choose any super dark colors and vice versa.  So I feel like definitely pinpointing the vibe and like feeling internal feeling you wanna feel when you walk into a space is how you should choose your paint color and kind of go from there. And I feel like sometimes a lot of people struggle with this because they don't wanna paint but they want a specific vibe but the thing that they need to do to achieve that vibe is to add a painted wall because painted walls can really, really just enhance what you've already done to your space so, so much. Peel and stick wallpaper is also a great alternative for anybody who is wanting to be 100% renter friendly because you could stick it up on your wall and peel it off when you leave and you are good to go. And it comes in a ton of different patterns, colors, styles. It's really great to add visual interest to your space with wallpaper. I really, really love wallpaper. I'm even considering it for my own bedroom. Peel and stick for me is always a way to go. I'm never gonna like glue wallpaper on my wall. Like absolutely not, I'm sorry. So there are options of course so kind of consider which one ways out maybe fits your space the best. All right, so let's talk about furniture now. Now, furniture is something that is kind of a little bit challenging because there are so many different styles of furniture. There are so many different finishes of furniture, types of furniture, silhouettes of furniture and there's also so many different prices of furniture which everyone knows furniture is not always cheap. So I wanna give you guys kind of two methods for furniture and these are definitely more of like a beginner method. So if you're somebody that doesn't maybe have a super keen design eye for example which is not me saying that you don't, you watching right there. But let's just say for example, maybe you don't. You really don't have a great design eye. Something I think that you should keep in mind is for your space, if you are doing like a lot of different furniture pieces, try to keep them in the same tone or the same color family. For example, if you are doing a wooden bed with a wooden dresser with wooden nightstands, try to keep all those wood tones in the same family and don't do a light wood bed with a medium wood dresser with dark nightstands. Like it kind of makes it look like each piece was almost like a hand me down or just wasn't thought about. So something that you can do to fix this method is to upcycle your pieces. And I have a ton of tutorials on my channel on upcycling furniture from painting dressers to upcycling Ikea pieces, whatever it might be. There are a ton of different methods to either repaint furniture, refinish them, sand them, restain them. So for example, in my bedroom, in my past apartment something that I did was I tried to keep the wood tones very similar. So the wood tone of my bed was pretty similar to the wood tone of my dresser and then also kind of matched back to the wood tone of my second dresser, which I had to have for all my DIY supplies. And then the main accent color of metal was black.  And then I also made sure that my curtain rod and my mirror frame were black as well. So all of the metals kind of match and it just made the space feel a little bit more cohesive as opposed to having a silver mirror, a gold bar, a bronze toned leg desk, and then a silver clothing rack. Like having your metals kind of matching is a great way to kind of make sure your furniture looks more cohesive and then having your wood tones matching as well. And then of course, if it comes to painting your furniture pieces, maybe keep the paint color or the paint tones similar. That way they look a little bit more cohesive as well. The last step in finishing a room design is decorating. And this is my personal favorite part and something that I do when I'm decorating a space is again, go back to my original mood board and pick and choose things I like about those spaces. A lot of spaces of course are decorated on Pinterest because they wanna give you that inspiration and that vibe. So from those decorated spaces, you can pull direct pieces that you like, like let's just say to have a terracotta base there. You wanna get a terracotta base for your space as well because you're following that kind of design aesthetic of your mood board.  But when you do go out and purchase decorations, don't only consider purchasing decorations in your color palette, also consider purchasing decorations that have more of a natural element to them. I think mixing decor that has a natural vibe such as metal decor, wood decor, marble decor, mixed with your color palette decor is a great way to kind of mesh it and make it look like a thought out and well-designed space. All right guys, so that was kind of my video for today. I feel like I just jumbled off the most information ever and I'm actually scared for myself when it comes to editing this video because I just wanna make it as clear and concise and cohesive and simple as possible. So I hope that this might have helped any of you guys if you have struggled with designing a room or this maybe creates a little bit of an instruction manual or a to-go tips kind of a vibe to creating your next space in your home or apartment to make it just feel like something personalized and something that you truly wanna live in and that you love. So yeah, I hope that you enjoyed and if you are not already, make sure to subscribe to my channel. I post brand new videos on home decor and DIY every single week here on the channel and you can also follow me over on Instagram at lonefoxhome where I post more behind the scenes type stuff over there. Anyways guys, I hope that you have an amazing rest of your day.  Bye guys.


le have come to the table and Dan has risen to that occasion as an elected representative of Arlington and said hey All you elected representatives we got to put our heads together We got to pay attention and it has spoken to sort of the power of getting the attention of Elected delegates from each of the 16 communities to come together and Dan is really, you know Grappable by the horns and done a great job pulling it forward We'll see we're all praising them. We'll see though. I mean really I mean I'll be I'll be happy to accept it when the deal is done, but right until it's still a long way from done All those in favor of the motion by Dan please signify by saying aye Opposed correspondence receive we'll receive is there a second? second any further action on the In terms of the safety audit request At Appleton and Park This is something that we send to the town manager to officer I mean, why don't we do that? Yeah, I think that's reasonable. Okay. I'd like to make the motion on that that we refer this to the town manager to the Appropriate Department in the APD All those in favor please signify by saying I Do we need it does the town manager need a vote on the last piece of correspondence Thank you very much Unfortunately, I do have one piece of new business We've received word from our legislative delegation that we should expect mass housing to grant site approval on the new car property Without receiving their site approval letter, I can't say anything about what the substance of that would be But mr. Whitten our special counsel and I are We'll make sure we audit all of our options But I think at this point it's safe to say that at the very least the most one of the most important things we can do Or make sure that the zoning board of appeals and the conservation commission and other relevant boards that the 40b application will be in front of now that site approval has been granted have the resources that they need to Properly examine properly and fairly examine that application Okay, thank you, mr. Chairman a few pieces of new business first on a sad note I know the board is aware of this, but we want to make public comment in regards to the loss of ten employees Scott and right Young man lost a battle with terminal illness with cancer and the services are going to be held Thursday So very very sad to lose any anybody who's a ten employee But certainly to lose an employee really in the prime of their lives tough loss and I am you know My my heart goes out to the family and I'm sure the boys does as well On a different note I wanted to let the board know that just prior to the meeting tonight I was able to go and deliver some remarks to the food link annual meeting The board might be familiar with food link from the appearance before the board last year as a CDBG applicant They're really a blossoming organization I had the opportunity a couple weeks ago to volunteer for a couple hours in the morning and observe how they do Their business and that they really amazed me they go to the Whole Foods in Medford Whole Foods in Arlington Panera and Panera I believe in Lexington As well as a few other locations and they just have this masterful system of collecting food that would otherwise Just be going to a dumpster and they've got a whole plan to get it over to The Boys and Girls Club to the Thompson School to the senior center to the housing authority And it really and to the food pantry. They actually they they their base of locations in the food pantry and they supply the food pantry And until just a month ago, they were all volunteer and now through grants. They have a part-time operations manager It's just an amazing program and you know, I was very gratified. They asked me to come say a few words to their annual meeting also Mr. Kuros efforts Attending a meeting of the the 33 L are now the the Logan runway issue that this board has deliberated on a number of times in ascent letters To the FAA in regards to that I've been asked as the town manager to sign on to a letter of all the communities that are affected to go to Logan Airport to Tom Glenn the CEO of Massport Asking for help and to get on board with with the issues that are being facing I think Mr. Kuro will probably add a little bit more to that Topic for the meeting he attended Also want to mention that The MAPC has asked me on Wednesday as part of a contingent as well to go into the MBTA's fiscal management and control boards meeting to advocate for keeping the Green Line extension project On track. No pun intended There's apparently been rumor that the whole project is going to be considered being scrapped And Arlington's you know through tack and other groups have long been a supporter of getting that Green Line out to Route 16 Because really a large number of Arlington residents would be served by that living within a half a mile as well as a large number of Arlington Low-income residents that are that are underserved would be served by that So I'll be going in to deliver remarks to ask them to not You know not scrap that project and keep it keep it on in line and finally Today governor Baker rolled out a municipal modernization bill that is being lauded as the most comprehensive piece of municipal reform ever released Any of its individual parts are nothing Incredible or major, but it has just a number of Small and insignificant improvements to the way we do business as local government So it'll be interesting to see how it moves forward to the legislature I think that the one of note that the board probably be most interested in is Taking off the state-imposed cap on liquor licenses so that when the board and the town would like to Consider increasing the number of liquor licenses issued would need to go through a special act of the legislature Be able to do that on your own Through through the boards bones boys own action So more to come on that but I think it's just a continued statement of partnership from the current governor's administration in terms of working with local government And I think that that's all I have. Thank you Mr. Brown known business Sides a great Thanksgiving day game Series is split for for Arlington Catholic Arlington high school Trophy's been renamed the Bob Jerobo Memorial Thanksgiving Day trophy So thanks to Paul Cale and others doing that. I'm actually probably gonna See if mr. Cure will speak to a different facet of it. We did have the first meeting of the school enrollment task force It was agreed upon that the town manager lead the chair And God bless him because everybody we have assembled around the table from our colleagues in the school committee capital Planning finance, etc. It was very efficiently run meeting Lots of things were discussed as well as we got a lot of public input But I'll take it the way the committee has conducted itself at least at this first meeting the next one is December 9th And then December 22nd a Lot of people who did get up Basically said you've already covered what I had to say a few of them had extra things and I took the fact that you know I had anticipated everybody in the audience would be getting out But I think it really spoke to the way what was discussed how it was conducted and how we're moving forward in the future And I just want to thank the manager for doing that. It was something that I wanted to make sure Somehow didn't fall to anyone else besides he so thank you for that and I'm sure Joe will probably have more I was 20 minutes late, so he might have more to have not say. Thanks I'm gonna add a little bit of extra info on both things that Ms. Mon and the manager raised On the school enrollment task force Yes, it was an excellent discussion, and I agree the manager ran it extremely well. This is gonna be a difficult slog I think that the The tenor of the initial discussions was around trying to define First a short-term solution to some of the pressures at Thompson and there are a couple of options They're ranging from temperate portals permanent portables Permanent construction there each with different costs and timelines, which we're looking for more information about at the next Meeting to try to gain a little bit of breathing room for a more comprehensive solution for the school enrollment challenges, which are impacting Most the elementary schools as well as the the middle school in particular which was noted One thing that I I'm hoping we're going to discuss This week This Wednesday is the chair of the school committee's community relations subcommittee did get up and mentioned that she had booked town hall for January 7th for a public visioning session around this so around the school And and quite frankly the related community concerns also with with this issue She has engaged Stacy Smith who's a professional works for the Consensus Building Institute has done work for I believe for the master plan Adam is that She's working on a number of issues including the master including the master plan She's an Arlington resident and has offered her time for this to run this and I think that will be will be the Community relations subcommittee will be asking the school enrollment task force to actively Cosponsor this visioning session So it's something that I think might be of interest to other board members as well and others in in the community I'm not sure what time that's at but I assume it's probably seven. Yes, we're going to have to confirm that but I know it's January 7th So we're looking forward to further discussions On Wednesday and the 22nd as far as the air noise Discussions go I did travel to Milton last week. There was a major Meeting concerning this this topic that was assembled by congressman Lynch and state senator Joyce congresswoman Clark and congressman Capuano were also there they managed this is I think this is really the first time that they had managed to Pull together some of the top Regional FAA officials the deputy regional administrator for the FAA as well as some of the top Massport officials there were hundreds of people in this auditorium Obviously the the south shore gets hit by this problem also as east Arlington and Belmont and Watertown and Somerville our neighbors get hit Some of you probably saw the globe article last week that Arlington's number two in the number of complaints that this year number two in the number of complaints I think after Milton which is is quite rattled by this congresswoman Clark and congressman Lynch both leaders in in the quiet skies coalition within the Congress and and I think That really the the FAA and the mass port heard the message really loud and clear that they have to find a way to equitably spread the burdens of the the air traffic Routes, you know this this Boston's one of the first cities to come online with with this system But there are a lot of other cities that are looking at us and how this goes and I know that we've all gotten calls and and emails about this and and East Arlington has been impacted so I'm really happy that the the manager is signing on to this letter on behalf of the town I think it's It's timely to follow up quickly on on that meeting mr. Siano who's our representative to the The community advisory committee to represent us on these issues He said that he was at the meeting began at seven. He said he left at ten and it was still going so People heard it loud and clear and lastly. I just want to report that earlier this evening. I was asked to You may recall that Earlier in the year we approved a public art project in memory of a young Arlington high school Girl who had passed away and her parents had graciously endowed a public art project a banner project to incorporate artwork from Arlington high school Arlington Catholic Minuteman And I was invited to serve on the jury and we we met earlier this evening at Arlington high school And we did choose the the 30 Banners that will be part of that that that project and let me say they're phenomenal I think the target is April for them to be equally distributed 10 10 and 10 in the height center and and and the the east Mr. Ardido kind of headed up the initiative. So that's all I have to report Thank you. All minute man all the time Thank you for that nothing else So We've had quite a meeting The first light celebration I think went very well this past weekend the Lighting of the tree on Friday night. There was quite a crowd there. I really was impressed and Santa Claus riding around town Remind residents that that there is free parking in the Russell lot common lot on Saturdays to Encourage people to please vote. I mean shop local Local to Local and national this holiday season. So The next meeting of the board of selectmen will be at 6 p.m. On December 21st motion to adjourn is there a second second all those in favor please signify by saying aye We are adjourned