relatively new board. We just go around and introduce ourselves and let you folks also introduce yourselves so that everyone is familiar with who we have. Anne Howard, Braintree. Ashley Lincoln, Randolph Center. I'm just a note-taker. I'm Laura Rochelle from Brookfield. Anne Catelyn from Randolph. Paul Putney from Randolph. Lane Millington Superintendent from Randolph. Rachel Adlesbury. You guys want to introduce yourselves? I'm Zoe, you are going with the Harold. I'm Jay Hooper. I represent New Orleans Legislature. It's my second year. I'm Jack Link. I live in Randolph and represent Lake Tensis. Mark McDonnell, represent Orange County in the city. I'm Jeff Francis from Vermont Superintendent's Association. I'm Sue Siglowski from the Vermont School Board Association. I'm the Director of Legal and Policy Services. Brian Baker, resident of Brookfield. David White, Randolph. Thanks very much. Alright, so today really the focus of our meeting is to hear from the legislators and the School Boards Association and the Principals Association. So we've invited you guys to start and we know now we have a house rep on the Education Committee, which is great. This week we've taken up, these actually past several weeks we took up some of the other controversial items, namely Act 46. To delay or to not delay is the question. And for whom does that delay apply? It was a Sherman amendment basically asking for a blanket one year delay as the representative for STO. We voted on that. We got defeated by five votes and it was 69 to 74. I'll let Jeff Francis talk more about, but I'm going to say we were proud to pass H3, which was a bill to enact relating to ethnic and social equity study standards for public schools. Basically asking, we created an advisory committee to recommend to the Board of Education where curriculums ought to be amended to fill in the gaps in terms of how we teach history. So histories of marginalized groups. Tell the whole story. That was basically what we were. We're mandating a group to do the research as to what materials should be added to local curriculums. We can't say this is what we want in the curriculum in this state. It's not a top down. It's local control. They will make recommendations to the Board of Education and they'll consider those changes. Hopefully they'll take them seriously in the back two or three years. So we were trying to hurry that through so that those curriculums are changed sooner than later and we thought that was a pretty good bill. We were proud to pass that. That passed 140 to nothing. Jeff. Hi. You should take a look. Wow. So I'll tell you, education, there's a lot to learn and I've been drinking from a fire hose, as I said, but I'm certainly paying attention to a lot of new bill next year. What's a good way to approach this? I could just follow up Jay's comments and give you a little overview. When I sat down next to Senator McDonnell I said, I'm not sure whether it's a good year or bad year. This is the first time I think I've seen them since the General Assembly started and that's an indication that there are not really active money issues for education on the table yet. Normally, at this point in the session there's a fair amount of discussion around the education funding system and there may still be. But it's not where we have been spending our time in the representation that we do for school board members and superintendents. As Representative Cooper indicated, there's an interest this year in addressing what I'd refer to as the end of the Act 46 process. I'll talk a little bit more about that. There's a real interest in addressing through ethnic studies and cultural awareness efforts to strengthen the state in terms of how we respond to the diversity in the state. Sue Siklowski from the School Board Association has prepared to talk about that. And there's another major emphasis that Jay didn't refer to yet because the House hasn't taken any action on it and that has to do with environmental safety in schools. And there's a big initiative that emerged in the Senate and also in the administration around lead in drinking water in schools. And there's bills this week that the House Education Committee is going to hear from on raid on an environmental health of schools overall. I'll be pretty succinct about the H39 which is the Act 46 bill just as background in this school district you're aware of it. This was born Southwest Supervisory Union was one of the first Supervisory Unions to go through the Act 46 process. In fact, this system while it was a Supervisory Union was doing a lot in a unified manner. So in prior years when I'd come down here we would have conversations about how that was working in terms of the delivery of education for the Townsend and Uronow School District Formally Supervisory Union. The issue was the process that was outlined in Act 46 to bring the unification of school districts to conclusion involved the State Board order and an effort to have the places that were being asked to unified by July 1, 2019. The State Board issued its order on November the 28th. There were some communities that were very ready to assume merged operations on July 1, 2019 and there others were not. So if you consider the subset of places that were under State Board order there was a lot of difference of opinion not only in the General Assembly but also in the districts themselves about whether you should move forward. I would say Act 46 was a pretty well structured piece of legislation but if there was an aspect of it that was not as clean as other elements of it it was how you bring it to conclusion. And a lot of it had to do with what the State of Readiness was, political controversy, places that were hearing that perhaps we don't want to merge or unify and yet the intention of the bill was to see these places in a unified state. So what was fascinating to us in terms of our professional associations, we were told that Act 46 would not be the subject of any action in the General Assembly this year. And really there were two reasons, one it was regarded as settled law, in other words Act 46 was well established and the other was there were at least three or four cases that the General Assembly did not want to intervene on because the cases should be allowed to be settled on the respect of cases. Nevertheless, folks that were interested in more time and also potentially interested in never having to unify despite what the law said got a pretty strong foothold in the General Assembly and lo and behold within two weeks of the session there was this bill. So I thought that the navigation in the house was pretty good. Jay said that he was like drinking from a fire hose. I was in there to witness that. I would attest to that. There was a lot of information, a lot of disagreement, a fair amount of political elements to the conversation. I had not really seen in my experience working with the superintendent association that dynamic of a start to a session period because of the controversy associated with the law. Anyway, as he indicated the proposal to provide a blanket extension to every district that had not yet completed their merger work was defeated on a very, very close vote. And then an amendment passed that basically delineates the difference between districts that would move forward on July 1, 2019 and those who would have to July 1, 2020. And the main line of demarcation was how much work had been done and had been done in preparation for the merger. So if there was a 706 study committee, if there were articles of agreement, if there was a vote, that is evidence that the communities had actually worked toward the July 1, 2019 date. Those are the districts that were selected to move forward on July 1, 2019. For places that had not demonstrated that much work, they've been given under the house bill until July 1, 2020. One of the comments that was frequently heard in the state house was, well, you're penalizing the people that did the work and giving a break to those that did not. That's a perspective that I understand fully. My view has been that we need to be pragmatic in terms of getting the work done at the earliest possible phase because, and I'll pause after this. The places that have unified, this one included, are able to demonstrate attainment of the goals or toward the goals because the systems now operating at scale are working well in both places. So the goals, efficiency, student opportunity, transparency, and the processes and so on aren't that coming to pass in the places that are working as a single district. Vermont is a state where this kind of action will always be politically. And operationally controversial, there's no dispute about that. But there's also no dispute about dramatic declines in enrollment and the fact that while we live in an era of equity in places, there's a lot of disparity still on our education system, which is Act 46. Act 46 hasn't addressed that. The Senate now has to take the bill up. It's not clear, it's not apparent what action the Senate will take. I think that the early disposition that I heard from leaders in the Senate was that they wanted to see the law implemented too. So this bill is going to be taken up shortly in the Senate Education Committee where it goes, I'm not certain. We do know that there's a court hearing in St. Albans this coming Friday in the afternoon. The potential exists for an injunction that would say everybody's going to get that delay until July 1, 2020. There's potential for the judge to say there's not going to be any injunction. There's three cases, I think. Three cases, three cases. It could be different action on different cases because they're being argued in different ways. So summary statement. It continues to be dynamic. Our interest is in supporting schools to close the workout. The House has now moved it over to the Senate. Remained to be seen. I would say you should be happy that you went through it early and are benefiting from a district operation rather than an SU operation. So you're kind of a thought, and I may be way off the mark in terms of the thinking process here, but it seems like there should be some sort of carrot stick attached to the legislation as it goes through. The whole purpose of that reform, it seems, in Vermont is equity. So you have all these districts that have consolidated and in doing so have provided significant savings to the state as a whole and to all the other towns that subsidize each other because we all subsidize each other. Well, if these folks don't have to consolidate for another year or two, they're not providing any efficiencies to those systems. They are still spending well far and above and beyond those of us that have consolidated. And because of that, we're paying more because of that decision. So I would just throw that out there. I don't know if the logic is correct, but it seems to be. So Senator McDonald's going to get a chance to vote on this perhaps, and to Bill Lucian from the Senate Education Committee. He can speak for himself. You know, will you just... And I don't know if anybody brought that up this morning. No, it was brought up. It was brought up, yeah. It has nothing to do with whether they're ready or not. I'm not as concerned about that. It's just that some of the towns have benefited from the savings that some of us have provided. Have we? Sorry? See much savings.  Whether you see it in the overall growth in the Ed Fund, I think it's hard to ascertain until everybody's there. But, you know, there are supervisory unions that are now districts that are measuring savings in terms of millions of dollars. But one of the things that may prevent people from coming back when the time is up who still aren't prepared is, okay, you're going to pay, instead of, you know, getting a 33% subsidization, you know, you're going to get much less than that. I thought you're going to have to carry a lot more on the local level until you get this done. Just a suggestion. Yeah, I mean, that's... Those points were made in the testimony, yeah. So that's that. I don't know whether you want to go to the other two major pieces of the legislation and then circle back. I'll be more succinct with one of those and then Sue's going to talk about the other. I actually have a question. How confident are we that the 15th is our first court result? It's on the court docket in Franklin County for 1130 on Friday morning. So whether the judge rules from the bench, I think, is an open question. Whether the judge determines that because the General Assembly is now involved and one of the concerns about the General Assembly getting involved was that the court proceedings could be slowed as a result of that. So there was a lot of downside to the action that the House took. But, you know, it's a democratic process and people are entitled to propose what they proposed. And here we are. Lead in drinking water supplies. So there was a pilot that the state ran last year. Did you have any schools involved in that pilot? Not for the lead. We did a pilot that looked at some of the cleaning agents to see if they were leaking into the water. Yeah, the TFA. So I think that there were 16 schools. But I'm not positive about that in the testing of lead at the source within schools. So drinking fountains, sinks that are used for portable water and so on and so forth. And there was a percentage of school districts that had lead found above the EPA actionable level, which is 15 parts per billion. So with a heavy emphasis, appropriate heavy emphasis on environmental safety, there's a lot of momentum, as I said, both on the part of the administration and started in the Senate to get a lead testing program in schools. So I'll just give you the outline of the current proposal. The current proposal, which is reflected in Senate Bill 40, as it passed the Senate, would have every source of water that is outlet faucets and so on and so forth tested at the expense of the state. So either the state lab or certified labs by the state would do all the samples. There is, and that would be paid for by the state, that's the proposal. Where mitigation was required under the Senate proposal, the expectation would be that the state would pay 50% of the mitigation. Our association argued for 100% of the mitigation. We think it's a compelling public health need that's being initiated by the state when you consider the way education is funded in the state. It seems like it would make sense if you're going to test to identify and you want to get the job done quickly, then it might make sense for the state to pay the cost of mitigation, which they, the state, are estimating won't be that great. So the bill logistically calls for testing 50% of the mitigation and then a rulemaking process that would make determinations about subsequent actions like at what intervals you might test. So under the Senate proposal, it's not a one-shot deal. It's test, mitigate, retest, and then at some point in the future, test again. We're really paying attention to what the costs are because I think it would be easy to get the cost wrong. The American Pediatric Society says no discernible amount of lead is a safe amount of lead for children. So there was a big push from the environmental community and the public interest community to go to no detectable amount. The Senate compromised that three parts per billion, which by definition will increase presumably the number of sources that are identified and the cost of mitigation. I'm not a scientist. I don't know how to do a cost-benefit analysis on it. I think that given the interest in Vermont, I think that we're probably headed for a lower level and that seems appropriate when you consider health effects. It doesn't talk about what kids are drinking in their own homes. And it also doesn't reconcile an issue that I think is an issue with identified as not an education committee because given the testing protocols for water and municipal supplies in Vermont, there are some schools that are receiving water from the municipal system that are higher than three parts per billion. So there'll be questions about when that water enters the school, does the school have to mitigate it down to three parts per billion or is there some sharing associated with what the source is? So those are all things that are yet to be determined. I think the House will have interest in this because it is a compelling public policy issue with a real benefit that you need to delve into. And there are decisions that are going to need to be made about setting levels, who pays and so on and so forth. Our associations are pretty active in the conversation. Sometimes when we get active in the conversation, people construe us as objecting. We're not objecting. We have a program that first and foremost works well for kids but also can be administered reasonably well, recognizes comparative risk analysis around cost benefits and so on and so forth. So we have the right program and one that perhaps is not too expensive. The last thing I'll say on that is when all this starts up, school districts are going to have to be ready for what they may see and hear from the public because simply on the basis of this issue being introduced, I'm hearing from school superintendents who are saying our communities are becoming more activist around what's happening in our schools. So this will be a fascinating one. Jay, you're going to get a lot of experience in your first year on the administration. There's a lot of useful learning that goes on around these subjects for everybody, including me. So that's that one. Would you like me to do H3? Sure. If you're willing. Yeah, absolutely. So as representative Hooper said, the House unanimously passed H3, which is the Ethnic Studies Bill. And I can tell you in a little more detail what the bill contains. It has an advisory working group and that group has 18 members on it. As passed by the House, the Senate Education Committee spent a lot of time on the bill last week and voted it out of their committee with a few changes. And one of the changes was they added two more people to the working group. They added two student members to that group. So the duties of the group are to review standards for student performance that are adopted by the State Board of Education and recommend any updates or additional standards to the State Board so as to fully recognize the history, the contributions and perspectives of ethnic groups and social groups. And ethnic groups and social groups are defined in the bill. There's a, in our legislative report that just came out on Saturday, full explanation of the bill with the definition of ethnic groups and social groups. The other thing that the working group can do if they have time is review Vermont statutes, State Board rules and school district policies that concern or impact these performance standards for students and they may make some recommendations to the State Board and the State Board would recommend to the General Assembly propose statutory changes to those, to the statutes or statutes affecting policies. Another requirement in the bill is that the State Board of Education publish data on student performance and also on hazing, harassment and bullying. It has to be disaggregated by student groups and those student groups include ethnic, racial and religious groups, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, poverty status, disability status and English language learner status. So the next steps for the bill are because it has money to pay the people a per diem stipend that are on the working advisory group. It is headed to the Senate Appropriations Committee this week and so we'll be continuing to follow it and see if there are any other changes that are made. Do you have any questions on the bill? I did, I was just wondering was this, did this originate as a reaction to something that was going on in schools where they were finding a deficit in the kids or the community in our knowledge of ethnic and social groups? Well it started last year, it was in the miscellaneous ed bill last year which didn't end up getting passed so it had quite a lot of momentum because it was what was proposed I believe at the beginning of this year was pretty much what had been in the miscellaneous ed bill last year. I'm just wondering whether like it was sort of coming out of an educational deficit or like what was sort of the origination of it? Yeah so if you take a look at the, so if you went online and looked at H3 in the findings, the first finding makes reference to a 1999 report by the advisory committee to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, it was a Vermont advisory committee and basically what they found in that study was that schools were generally not adept at responding to principally incidents of racism that manifested themselves in the school. Then there was a fault report in 2003 or 2004 which indicated that progress was being made but not sufficient progress. Then the attorney general in Vermont did a study of systemic manifestations of systemic racism and bias identifying a bunch of, well, several institutions one of which was schools. Then if you take a look at sort of the prominence of acts of bias, discrimination, hate and so on and so forth that are manifesting themselves in the country over the last several years and I won't offer any comment other than to say that we're all familiar with that. It seemed to make sense to do with schools what you always do with schools and that is use them as the place to educate in an effort to respond to where you see deficiencies in society so there's really aspects of it that go to what transpires in the school itself as well as how do you make children and students through the educational process more adept at fitting into society so that's really the background of it. It's a very compelling issue and one that is difficult to tackle because all of the manifestations of people's belief, conduct, attitudes, etc. don't really have a basis in the schools per se but we look to the schools to address that and that's what H3 intends to do. As Sue pointed out it is intended to examine the standards as a way to better inform educators what they can do to address, you know, I'd say the full range of factors contribute to not having folks, I would say, aware, sensitive in response as they need to be. I would add that if you're interested in, as a board, educating yourselves more on the topic there's a very good film that the Vermont NEA arranged for. They have a racial justice task force which has a lot of different members that I serve on and the film is called I Am From Here and it's about Vermont schools and some of you may have seen it at a conference in the fall but it's available for me to be able to show at a board meeting if you want to do that. Great. There was probably from the same studies that came out in 1999 and early 2000 but there was a movement in a lot of the states you know when I was in Massachusetts they stepped in and the state required you to collect data especially discipline data on the students just like we're talking about here so that they could differentiate to see if certain members of the diverse classes were actually being punished more and more severely and they collected that data on an annual basis and the things were out of line or out of whack we had to address it as appropriately so it has been happening across the country that was Massachusetts probably about eight years ago That's going to be challenging It will be You guys got to get a data system that actually works Not us guys So since you brought that up there's a couple of other pieces you knew recently that you'll learn more about Elaine actually is more well versed on the latter than I am and maybe perhaps on the former too There was a provision in Act 11 which was the appropriations bill that was the subject of the veto last year that was passed in the veto session that established application and utilization of a uniform charter recounts in schools which is related to an interest in understanding the cost centers in public education So there's going to be another story in Vermont Digger coming up about an appropriation request from the Department of Mental Health for $18 million for success beyond six in order to support schools better in addressing mental health needs within the schools That's just something that you should have on your radar But as we talk about what schools do in terms of providing supports to children folks who like to raise concerns about how much is spent in school run up against folks who say well you're expanding the mission and one of the areas of mission expansion goes into what schools are doing to address the needs of children when they come to school and there's information that shows data that shows that kids are more stressed than they have been in other years increasingly because of the manifestation of societal ills So this charter account issue was intended in part to get to that cost center question Well, what the folks that I work with laying business managers and so on and so on are finding out is that that system's not ready to go despite the fact that the legislature said they wanted it in place by July 1, 2019 So there was a provision put in the budget adjustment act to delay the utilization and application of that charter account until July 1, 2020 But there's still concerns on the part of local school districts that overall the system's not going to be ready to go So that's going to be controversial because the local school officials are saying you know, the system's not ready They say that the AOE has not fulfilled its own duties and obligations So there's a lot of controversy around that I don't know how it's going to resolve I'm still trying to understand better what exactly is transpired there So that's an issue And then another issue which is I guess tangentially related Layne would know better than I do is the fact that the state's longitudinal data system doesn't have the information it needs to determine the distribution of title funds So there was an article in Vermont Digger today about trying to do some allocations on the basis of something other than the data that will have the folks that have higher needs student populations wondering why they're not getting more money than they otherwise would So those are things that may or may not come into the Well, they are going to come into the legislative session because when Jay looked at his schedule for the week what he saw was that the AOEs coming in to talk about the work that they've done on student counts and data overall and so on One of the, I'll make my comment here AOEs got to get its act together They're not functioning to provide us with the regular services that they should And now they're being passed They're doing all this extra work The financial system is one big piece of it There were two towns as my understanding that kind of modeled the system We're trying to get everything up and ready to go to go through all the steps so that other people could learn from it They've been at it for quite a while now and they're not up and ready to go And so there's been mandates on what stuff needs to be done There's a lot of difficulty in my finance department three of them that are spending two to eight hours a week doing webinars and then another 12 to 15 hours of homework a week to learn about the system that's not even up in operation So there's some issues there And again, I know there's a lot of transition but they've got to get to the regular house cleaning stuff up and running first Title funding, we weren't able to get our title funding until a little bit in fact that everything was in on time It sat there and it sat there and we would call and try to get it to move through the list and we can't serve kids without the money It put us in little events So it'd be nice to see them get those things straightened out and then make sure stuff is up and running before they expect books to use it But the longitudinal data system is a whole other one The reason it came up was because if they're going to collect assessment data in terms of how well these standards are being implemented in the schools they have no way of doing that because the system doesn't work it just doesn't communicate a lot with all the various different information systems So just another one I always called it consolidating the gains they move forward in some good things but they've got to consolidate the gains get them up early Pretty much that For what? The Senate Bill 9 that was the one requiring us to check on Do background checks in homeschool? That's been set aside I'm not sure whether it's been tabled permanently but it's been set aside and it should be set aside because homeschoolers have a direct connection with the AOE and the AOE licensed new educators So if the state has a matter of policy on it to run background checks on homeschool providers there's no reason to take the local school district central office and insert them into that process That's like adding steps when you don't need to add steps I was trying to figure out since we're not monitoring except for the letter that we get from AOE once a month we should be checking on it and how we should be checking on it So that one, I'm not sure what happened to that It was also a bill that was being taken up on dual enrollment eligibility for students in religious schools but there's a federal court case on that that's been leveled against the state of Vermont so the General Assembly is likely not to act on that also while they wait to see what the outcome of that court case is And then House 27 which was the smoking age Yeah, so that's an issue that I haven't paid attention to since I pulled superintendents on it there was a bill that would increase the age of procurement of tobacco and tobacco related products from 18 to 21 and there's a coalition tobacco 21 coalition which is largely comprised of the American Cancer Society and the American Heart Association and they pay to visit to two prospects where our organizations, along with the Principles Association are headquartered and they asked if we were inclined to support that Each of our associations I think has a somewhat different disposition on it The superintendents who uphold were largely in support of that because they see it as helpful in an era where utilization of nicotine related products is actually becoming harder to manage in schools because of vaping and so on and so forth So But that issue of increasing the age from 18 to 21 is not a simple issue for some people because other rights of citizenship that come with being 18 rather than 21 So I don't know what the status of that is I think that it's likely that it's going to get some attention but also a tobacco tax that was added in an effort to address that that seems to have more momentum to age 21 But I'm not, I haven't We usually we pay attention to those issues but that was one that was sort of an ancillary particularly given the time that we were forced to spend on age 39 over the last two weeks We did pass an increase in the tax on the staff So that would pass quickly That's always Yeah I'm not quite sure the vaping is huge in the schools right now because it's kind of stealthy And not only that, anything that the students can liquefy they can bake and we have a student that ODE here about too long ago so it's anything that folks can do to help support at least in the schools if not statewide that would be helpful One of the neat things that I saw of course I'm sure some of the principals and superintendents may not agree was in some of the states they actually, that had some pretty strict tobacco laws and paraphernalia laws swore in the principals and the superintendents' magistrates So if a kid violated the smoking of those tobacco policies or in this case of the vaping policies within the school they would meet with the magistrate and they would assign the mistake fine right down there and the state and the school would split the fine and the money would be used for anti-drug and anti-smoking legislation So just some ideas to throw out That was part of the discussion Mark, do you have anything to add? A bunch of stuff I'm on finance committee and we deal with money issues Last year the funding system was changed There's no longer a general fund transfer More money has been put into the Ed fund from the sales tax revenues than in Houston and this is the new regime going forward The administration's been in twice, one was on a bill that would collect sales taxes from mail orders and other things They started right out by saying they were going to divert It was a sales tax bill but it wasn't going to go into the Ed fund So the games will continue The administration was likely to try and not have to fund the Ed fund So that pressure will be there Last year we had a rookie governor a rookie leader of the senate We ran into June as everybody knows We got out of town without burning the place down and that was good for having three rookies to start with This year I think I read there was a charm offensive in Digger I think Jason Gibbs has been sentenced to eating lunch in the cafeteria with legislators and the governor himself has come in for breakfast and there seems to be a lot more communication The Ed fund funding is supposed to be about the same The tax rate is about the same which is good news One bizarre thing when I was campaigning last year I heard a lot about hardening the schools and protecting them from gun violence and I sat down with a piece of paper and I tried to remember how many doors that were in this building I counted garage doors and double doors and single doors Double doors is one and I came up with 29 and when I drove in tonight I forgot the garage door over here I still have to find out where my memory is The senate had a class and we did it during lunch last week implied bias trait and I was shocked at what we learned about ourselves and we're supposed to be sophisticated people and not carry any prejudices around with us and it was for me it was one of those things I thought I was better than I am I think it's a worthwhile thing in all folks of my generation or you were considered and I could answer any questions and I wanted to say the worst thing that's happened to me when we started was a phone call Saturday to say that my friend and the events that I and Dean Meltzer were eighth grade team for 20 some years that he had died Saturday morning after not having been retired for two years yeah that was sad news that was very sad news proud yeah these things my excuse for mentioning it was that when Dean first came here in the late 70s he embarked upon an ambitious plan to cut down on energy use in this building and everybody said who is this guy and when you look at the high school you see where the windows used to be you see one window is covered and the other window is still open and he did a lot of stuff with renewable energy in the buildings in the early 80s and I think we kind of people have been around a long time and I forgot that this building and it's the way it operated changed from eighth grade science teacher in his first couple years there in addition to his teaching does anyone else have something to add the only thing I would add it's been good to have Jay on education on healthcare so it's good to have somebody in this arena this session just one thing that I would add that I think is important going forward is as Jeff said it does seem to be a shift away from the ed financing conversation that we've seen for the last couple of years on to larger other issues we saw with the act 46 and I think as seen by the act 46 it becomes a lot more political process the political parties have a harder time structuring it in a way that they like that's a little bit more predictable so as we saw with the act 46 things can fly through unlikely coalitions can form and it is a little bit more of a vital time when it's not talking about the dollars and cents but larger issues that impact communities differently regardless of politics so that's my two cents that was really a free throw actually the democratic process took place any questions for us thank you thanks so much for coming we really appreciate it did you have a question or comment short? I have a couple of short questions on the e-cigarette issue I'm not sure if it's more education or health I like the ideas of the tax that I would just pass maybe raising an age I like Lane's idea is there anything against just doing a ban on flavor it seems like to youth that just seems silly and why can't we just ban flavor in general so the maple syrup producers of course I know there's efforts on the federal level that have started to ban some of the flavoring of it I know that there's a couple other bills and not an expert on this there's a couple other bills that was in the distribution of it and some more targeted measures that would be a good flavor and another question is this school has experienced some disruptions from threats made by students over the past three to five years and Lane had brought up an idea of something he had seen in Massachusetts where sometimes the bill is passed with a little more teeth for the penalties to kind of discourage future copycat events and I didn't know if your colleagues in other towns in Vermont are experiencing the same thing whether there's been any discussion for a bill similar yeah obviously in the Vermont legislature you're creating a new crime with a whole host of complications that you can carefully consider I did, and that was made in Lane this fall I'm about that same issue and I've started to discuss with a couple other colleagues who have dealt with these situations as well about a larger conversation about how we treat these situations whether through the legal system I have a question about just because when I talk with students sometimes they're talking about that kids are getting this stuff sometimes through eBay and I find that hard to believe like is there no regulation on can you just like get stuff on eBay that's regardless of anything you want I don't I was surprised but I think that the bill that the bill that we talked about that would increase the age of procurement to 21 also has that ban on online acquisition period because it you're absolutely right I mean we've heard, not this school we've heard of pyramid schemes in schools where there's actually distribution systems right down through the grades and so on so it's a I'm glad for multiple reasons that there's a focus on it right now and I hope that we the state addresses it in a way that actually curbs some of the conduct that you're talking about I believe the measure to limit distribution on the online channels is a separate measure than the 21 I think it's age 26 and move it to 21 so they're two different but I think people are now cognizant the average age in the legislature is over 60 still so it takes a little time for some of these trends that you know this wasn't happening when I was here in Randolph so I think the ball is rolling now on some of those efforts and people are recognizing the challenges you should be proud of your delegation you know they Ben and Jay are making a name in terms of the contributions they make Mark established his name a long time ago he continues to enjoy that but I like to come down just for this kind of an interaction because this is representative form of government and you've got people who are willing to I mean I don't need to tell you no but it's a pleasure to work with all three of them we're smart voters thanks so much for coming we really appreciate it Jeff, thanks for being so forgiving you didn't like my votes by the way, the agency of education acknowledges that the act is not together and they think that with the longitude of their system after they sort out the turbulence of this year coffee should be done if anybody wants coffee it's over there I hear you are fairly injured yeah, I'm sorry I don't think they should be on the flavors I think they should make them universally revolting like dog manure or you know you have to really want it but you can buy a prepaid at the store with you can buy a prepaid credit card it's yours you can get a debit card and they don't even have to be connected to a name a little chair to put your card on no, I'm okay we have public and our next after the meeting with the legislature the first thing we have is community engagement I think that perhaps we have some people who would like to say something let me go first well my opinion to the day we'll have a board look at something I feel that with the high school raising the black lives matter flag that the superintendent is in violation of policy 2.0 and I don't believe it is a commonly accepted educational practice to have a political and controversial display as that is on a public high school I'd like the board to look at it and remember that it is funded by taxpayers and not a lawyer but I don't think it's ethically good to have taxpayer money making a political statement without an actual vote and if the board would please look into it and have a opinion on it at least we'll discuss that as regards to policy 2.0 and the next meeting in March some students are going to come and present to us the first part of the March meeting about the black lives matter issue and from their perspective and so we'll see what that entails I'm not sure exactly what they're going to bring but we have a lot of them 20 minutes they requested and I know from the meeting that was here a week ago I know you and Anne were both here that if that was a cross section of the communities there's greatly divided opinions on it and there was quite a few voices that think it's a political statement and with the climate and politics today I think the district should strive to be politically neutral and not make a statement on one side or the other and if there's any question neutrality is where you want to end up and not in controversy thank you we second that also it was mentioned that the superintendent made comment to a school board member that Elijah's school and he can do what he wants I want to tell the superintendent it is not Elijah's school it is not your school it is Braintree, Brookfield and Randolph taxpayers and parents this is our school we pay your salaries so we think that we agree with Brian this is a problem and if Elijah would like to push his political or social agenda he should look into private school somewhere not public school so we feel that that should be looked into along the way okay thanks did you have something to add? it's not just the black lives matter this immediate incident that concerns me about the political statement that's being made out of this school it goes back to the beginning of the season where the very first assembly was presented to the entire student body and that's including a number of new students that just transitioned into this school from their schools closing down and the very first message that was entailed and spread on is that if you agree with the mascot in the school then it's a racist symbol so it's been an agenda since the very beginning of the school and so it's to say it's not a political statement is completely turning around and running away from the fact that it really is because it's something that's being driven it's being driven since last year when the student body tried to have this get passed and approved but what they needed to do is they needed to have more evidence based scenarios in order for the administration to say we'll jump on the van wagon with you if you talk to other students in this school and I coach here so I've had numerous conversations with students that are against this whole movement and coming out of that PBL the racial justice PBL students say that the students in that PBL are the ones that were running around the school putting up the homophobic slurs, the racial slurs that moved to have the administration back them on this Black Lives Matter flag so my concern is with a scenario that I had with another student reading an essay that they wrote for their college applications and hearing the message that he was trying to send but then questioning him on it having them state to me that it was a lie in the essay so my concern is this PBL teaching our students to create scenarios based on lies to insure response that allows them to get what they want and it's a movement that needs to be looked at seriously because when they state things publicly to the parents they state things falsely in the number of people that support that idea if you go on the website today and you read about one student that posted an essay about the march for lives movement it said the majority of the student body supported the movement when they all left class during the day it was a very small percentage of students that actually supported that movement that went out to list here the names read numbers as low as below 30 from what I heard it's not the majority of the student body so when messages are being presented to the parents and to the public on issues that are being brought up in this school they're being misconstrued with the amount of support that they actually have on those issues and I think that's a disjustice to anybody that's trying to learn by going to the website to get that information so I think we also need to is if they're going to have these movements and if they're going to have these issues they better truthfully and honestly state the facts about the issues and the facts about the amount of support that they have for these issues and that's just an addition to what they have on that movement Thank you One other comment I'd like to just make I know again at that same meeting which I think the rest of the board should really hear is there were two students here that made the comment that they were very household and they felt that the administration, the teachers and some of the students looked down upon them for having conservative values and that is just atrocious to even think that the school and the teachers would have that type of reaction to these students and if that's the way they feel it's alarming to have students actually state that out loud One more thing, did everybody see what they made? No Did anybody see what they did at the end of the assembly in the school? It was in the paper Yeah, so the message on the t-shirt and I said that I didn't stand behind that t-shirt because the closest symbol is a symbol to incite the very thing that they say that they're against That's what it means That's what it means Shake your head, no, but that's exactly what it means The message respect existence or expect resistance is a message that says we will act out if you don't agree with us What he just made the statement of is what students that haven't agreed with their message when they went into classrooms to present and they said that they gave a presentation to the entire student body the only presented to the seventh grade and the tenth grade classes not the entire student body When students talked back against them the very students in the PBL did bully and harass students because they didn't agree with their message I just sat up in the gymnasium and I watched a kid from an opposing team who had an incident involved in this school and when something happened in the game I watched everybody who was wearing those t-shirts and representing jump up in jeer at the kid as he was down on the floor something that we shouldn't be promoting in this school and we shouldn't promote anywhere it's a message that we send to everybody that comes into our school and then comes into our community about who and what we are we're a unified district in this school and there's anything but unity in this school right now that's students that's faculty administration it's a broken system right now and it doesn't flow and it doesn't function and it doesn't function in the benefit of the kids and it needs to be fixed and there's a majority of people in this community and there's more people and the problem I have for the most is that there'd be more people here today if they didn't feel like if they were here to speak up against some stuff that their kids wouldn't have retribution put down on them in the school and that's a problem there too if people feel that way and something that needs to be looked at and it needs to be discussed and the last thing I'm going to say before I go back to the basketball game is that along with what Jason just said there's faculty in this school that said the principal of T. Elijah Hawks took great pride in creating controversy and was happy that this was going on because of this happening at this school them raising the flag and they wanted to have a PBL and discuss something like that that's what they should have done is left it at the discussion not fostered them putting this on the whole school in that assembly and putting their fists in the air like hair, gotcha, not acceptable well thank you very much for your comments we appreciate them and we'll be open-minded and discuss and think about consideration all that you have said thank you already next well we have a budget informational meeting on Wednesday February 27 which will be right here in the RUHS media center I know it is late before the budget vote but that is mandate that has to be within a certain number of business days before the vote and so February 27 next, board maintenance management, I'm sorry board management and governance we've got negotiation with unions is that something you want to talk about? so there's the CBA we can see that in the top that is the teachers union negotiations with the teachers union that's the collective marketing agreement and the other chart here it's got a pretty little table on it it's a bigger negotiation that we're all going right now with some of the staff these are strategy sheets so in other words we've gone through, taken a look at what unions are asking for gone back down to data inspection and the data checking and then put together a strategy for this board to consider and recommendations for the board to consider that can start on either side that you want um um um that's not one that probably is for union no uh sorry not that it can't be open but some of it's our strategy sorry wrong so do we want to do this public session? there's things we can talk about okay so both so I think that the biggest thing right now in terms of the support staff is that um the negotiations group recognizes and it's clear the comparables that in most cases they are so by 10 to 13 percent so the strategy that was pulled together was an attempt to actually rise them up one of the problems that ensued at the last meeting was they were unwilling to negotiate on what they wanted for salary we came back with two different offers they refused so we've got to see how that goes in the future unfortunately what will most likely happen is that they are not willing to move and work with us to reach an agreement is it will go to arbitration and they will get significantly less than even we offered so I'm hoping that they're better moving so they're asking for more then they're asking for 10 percent across the board um which isn't unreasonable we started out at 4.5 one of the 4.75 and again that number could go up on what other language changes that they're looking for and are going to hold to just because of the expense that those may have so I do have my recommendations down there so I think that's the biggest kind of sticking point with them the concerns that I have a little bit and it's kind of worded in here over the course of time the paraprofessional members of the support staff their salaries have grown quite a bit whereas the custodians the cooks and the secretary those salaries have not kept case they're actually falling far behind what the other groups in there that are part of the support staff have and I think the reason for that is because they're not really representing people so one of the reasons that I put this in a grid hopefully the next offer the negotiations team approves it is so that we can address that it's one thing to say hey you get 6% and they divvied up the way they want in the grid that's not going to help us out because we cannot hire cooks and we cannot hire custodians it's just some thoughts and some pieces we can answer any questions that's the big piece right now the other thought on it too is they are pretty consistent in terms of the language changes outside of salaries as the teachers and so it's kind of nice to kind of work through and we're trying to get through this year jumping the salary up as much as we can for them and worry about the language changes that they're requesting next year we have to go back to the negotiating table in one year anyway just to see what the teachers come up with and try to get everything to match so any questions on support staff in terms of the CBA in terms of the teachers contract they asked for a pretty hefty increase as well the support staff were asking for a 10% increase across the board the teachers were asking for a 8% increase I am going to read through a little bit here just so folks know where they currently stand relative to the other districts out there because I think it's important for everyone around the table as well as the public to kind of see how we compare I looked at 11 other districts in our area including at least 4 that are out of our league in terms of size and tax peaks like Stowe Champlain Valley Supervisory Union Orange Northwest we had Cadet in there, we had Barry we had Twinfield, we had U32 which is another big one Craftsbury, Harwoods Montpelier and then we did get a version of the new contract from White River Valley Supervisory Union what I looked at was buying salary points I looked at steps 1, 7 and 5 in other words if you're a first year teacher 7 year teacher or excuse me in your 15th year which is where our salary scale ends and I looked at those 3 points and the bachelor the masters and the masters plus 30 states the average of the 11 districts that each of these salary points was compared with us in all cases we were above the average by at least 2.5% by as much as 7.6% in all cases even the big like Champlain wow at all 3 education levels and this is a little bit concerning the highest step in terms of years of service was also the highest above the comparable average in each case at all 3 education levels the lowest step in terms of years of service was the lowest above the comparable average now this is important in terms of considering because lots of times what you'll have is the union representation is typically the senior members and so they make sure that the higher end of the pay scale gets the biggest increases but what ends up happening is you lose out in being able to attract new employees because those salaries have a kept pace and that's kind of what's happening here over time so in terms of negotiating with them and working with them I think part of the strategy is when the money is going to the lower runs on the pay scale other districts looked at out of all the other districts that we looked at we offered the best benefits package there was only one district that came even close out of that 11 in terms of leave and that's looking to sick emergency and personal leave our employees receive 10 more days per year than the average of the other districts the average salary the teachers in our district these additional 10 days have a monetary value of $3,224 per teacher and one of the concerns and one of the discussions where we're at is those days because on average our teachers are missing 18 days of school a year so if you got 179 days with the kids and you're missing 18 days on average and you said that was above all those now interestingly in addition to those 10 days above and beyond each year it's actually written into the contract that the first two snow days that we have they do not have to make up what they paid for in most districts what happens if you have a snow day because the teachers are contracted for 185 days or whatever it may be if you have a snow day you come back that day on the end of the year so they've got a significant amount of time that's lost and it has a direct impact or at least it seems to when you look at the data in terms of the performance of our students I broke down on average how many teacher days are lost each year at each of the schools I think we kind of looked at that a little while ago obviously time with the teachers is important so the schools that have the highest number of teacher averages are the lowest performing highest number of teacher absences the lowest percent on average the other 11 districts pay 82% of the teachers health insurance we pay 85% we also pay the teachers long term disability dental insurance and life insurance most districts don't offer all three in the cases where they do they usually don't pay for the totality of all three and then our course reimbursement benefit is also one of the more robust out there overall class size we can look at the high school class sizes are larger they're at the elementary school overall class size on average at the high school is 12.6 students that's not including special education classes meaning that most teachers have a student load between 50 and 63 students in this high school that's half of the national average it's half of the highest performing schools in Massachusetts which are also the highest performing schools in the nation the overall class size for high school special education teachers is 2.8 and a total student load of 17 math and ELA teachers at the high school generally teach four classes five to six classes is the standard but what they do with that fifth class is they run a structured study hall instead and so the reason I'm bringing this up is there was a lot of data that was not right in terms of claims that teachers are overworked they can go off to other districts and have a much easier time they've got the best of the best here not just in compensations but in terms of their work level they also had mentioned turnover I took a look the average time and position of our faculty is 11 years at the high school 10 years at the elementary level 10 years in special education and 12 years at RTCC and that's given that we have a 15 step pay scale so we have a very adventurous on average teachers have been here about 11 years so in terms of the salary piece we didn't talk about it I don't think there's going to be agreement on it our initial offer was 2.5% their initial request was 8% but again they wanted to be able to divvy up that 8% giving some steps on the pay scale more than others in some cases I think the one year salary jump the way they were giving it up for some of the folks would be about $6,000 and in other cases on the lower end would be about $4,000 put things in perspective I love the teachers don't get me wrong at all I think they do a fabulous job I think it's figures a year if we couldn't people were agreeable to it and that's what I would recommend but I think there's a disconnect between how good they really have it and what they believe that they have and I think it's because a lot of them have been here for a while and don't have anything to compare to that's one thing I think they're coming in from another district the thing that we did talk about in principle was sick bank and the suggestion was in terms of the sick bank if you want to give up 10 of those leave days a year maybe we'll consider a sick bank that's kind of where the discussion's at but a lot of that is the focus of getting the teachers in the classroom which is possible if they gave up 10 days they'd still have 18 days that would take every year which is what most of us which is what the higher yeah I mean we're never going to get those benefits back you know the union we'll just never get them back so those are kind of where things are in the state but again this conversation I'm having is not meant to be derogatory whatsoever these teachers do a darn good job but they have the top benefits packages around as well as they've got a pretty good working conditions in terms of they do like a lot of the folks in the state you know they are a bit stressed dealing with the trauma based issues with the students and we're all feeling that but part of the budget work that's been going on this year so far is to hopefully get programs in a place that they're going to settle down at least here in the coming years to make their work life a bit better if there's a question and again that process the negotiations team works with the works with the union anything that they come up with is potential agreements nothing is a done deal this whole board works on it and decides as a board that that's what they want to do the same thing is true with the teachers union they have to take whatever potential agreements or they'll go back to their membership and then their membership has to go on just because they're negotiating mm-hmm we have two more negotiations before and the next ones are at the end of this month or are they in March? 221 for the CBA for the teachers for next week and the 19th for next week for the support staff and those are open anybody is welcome to come and see the negotiations they're at Randolph elementary school they'll start at 5 p.m. they're in the media center there I have a quick question I don't know if it's legal to sort of like ask people like why are you absent so often but I just I mean it sounds like you're sort of assessing that some of that may be just stress I mean you know which schools where the absenteeism I shouldn't say it's absenteeism but you know they have young children and having to take time because their kid is sick is there something going on are you looking at I just wonder if that's data that you look at to also try and figure out is there a climate issue is there you know what's going on that maybe teachers are not doing well we did the climate survey which was fairly positive we did the data a few months back I think it's just again not in every case so I don't want to say that this is true but I think in general there's a lot of absenteeism going on and I think when you got 28 days to look at it makes it easier to make the decision that hey I'm going to take a mental health day and teaching by the same token teaching is tough it's rigorous it's not like a lot of private jobs where you know I worked in private industry you'd work your tail off for three months on a project you'd get a month or two of downtime until the next project came and then you're planning you're delivering you're assessing your planning and it never stops for the whole 185 days so yeah you get tired so there should be a reasonable amount of absenteeism that goes along with it that's reasonable my experience seven to nine days unless you got something bigger else that's going on so you're looking at that as the management group to sort of assess what's going on with my employees that they're taking so much time and is there things that you can do to help reason for suggesting the change just to try to this still gives you the opportunity if you've got that sick bank if you give up those 10 days and if you really need it it's there for you unless the post is just believable because we don't really if a person says they're out sick unless we see a pattern there hey you're out every Friday after a Bruins game you can actually see sometimes unless that's going on it's not our call it's their time most of the days are actually personal days they're not even sick days I'm not in a position to even approve them they just they can do whatever they want I don't want to be in a position to have to approve them right well I'm sure there's probably some legalities there I heard you I heard you asking something different than I think Lane is there another is it a climate issue within the school that is making you know lending towards people not wanting to be at work or choosing you know not to be at work there's no doubt that that could contribute I'm happy to kind of research it but like I said we did do the climate survey those results were not bad at all that's a good question that's a good question that's a good question the data is still sitting in there I was told at a parent-teacher conference that their brain-trakers all get along really well they really like each other it's a very collegial atmosphere and that's the school that goes one of the comments that you'll get right so you wonder whether that leads to less absenteeism one of the comments that you'll get is the teachers do feel it's a very family-like atmosphere in the district because they take care of each other the administration takes care of them so but I can find out I'll see that data can be segregated it'll be interesting to look at break it down by elementary and high school as well doesn't hurt to know yeah I mean it's concerning than usual teachers twice as much and that definitely should you would hope it leads to they have twice as much decline in learning part of that is the benefit is twice as much some of these teachers are just taking care of a benefit taking advantage of a benefit you're allowed to miss 10 days why would you not miss 10 days it's a vacation day probably every two weeks I take a vacation day or something it may not have anything to do with the school district performance in the sense that they're not feeling like I want to be here I had this benefit why would I not use it that's why I was asking can you even ask that when I say when I say 18 on average that doesn't mean that every teacher is taking 18 it's another thing so some are some are much lower than that but it averages it out out of a staff of 109 full time teachers about 2,000 days a year that's awful that's costly for our kids like I said there is clear data that shows that there's a pretty direct impact on learning are you sure on that is that really causal do we know research will tell you the most important thing in terms of learning for kids it's time with a teacher quality quality so that would can't prove anything 100% some philosophers will say there's nothing that's causal but it's a pretty good indication and it kind of mimics what the research tells you right and if we're seeing that district so some of that give and take is an attempt they really believe in the sick bank and there are times when it would be really good for a teacher if you've got somebody at home that's incredibly ill then you need that caretaker you need the caretaker plus just the fact to spend time with somebody who may not be around so that's well and we do have a number of younger teachers at least that I don't know in the elementary schools if we've had a number with small children but you know you can't take your child to work when they're throwing up everywhere so that's the other piece I think we need to be careful that we're making sure we're understanding what people are breaking any laws I can't ask you for anyone but myself that I have never turned down a request except for once and that was because okay let's move on to EL monitoring we have three reports this month we want to walk us through them so this is the first presentation correct for 2.8% yes and 2.8% was it's an update we were given his report in August and we asked that he give us an update because there were certain things not in compliance and it was there was some controversy around it so I would think that these are all first reads in the next month we will approve them I can point out if it's worth there were a couple of like little highlights 2.3% 2.3% is really kind of focused on ensuring that we're using proper procedures to protect the monies that are entrusted by the town and while making sure that we remain liquid we can still are using the money where it should be we're not running out and unable to meet the board's end most of the evidence in terms of compliance with EL 2.3 comes from your that comes in same thing with 2.6 plus it from the monthly financial reports that you get from the board with the facilities one of the things because it's been mentioned lately is the surpluses so provision number 2 you know we have not overspent our accounts the fact is there because we have a $529,000 surplus right it's in the warrant of the town for the low to March 5 the important thing is recognizing where those surpluses come from and talking with Robin and doing a little investigation the majority of those surpluses comes from people going out high retiring people getting higher and what's interesting is our surplus amounts have been the same when I was looking back pretty much the same for the last 4 or 5 years well that's because our attrition rate in terms of how many people are retiring has been about the same for those years so I'm not 100% sure but that data seems to indicate that it's probably where it's coming from the other piece the smaller portion of it is the reimbursement system in the state in some cases we have to plan ahead of time for costs especially in special education we have to get them in the budget charge the towns folks for them even though we know we're going to reimburse for them after the fact sometimes they don't reimburse until the end of the year so that's a smaller portion of where the surplus is coming from last year's surplus was 1 million but that was not all surplus it was about 450 to 500,000 just like this year's was the remainder of it was because of the consolidation there had been money in an OSSD account because you had all the separate little boards at the time that have been building up for years and years and years the real surplus is for us it's just it comes out to be in the 450,000 provision number nine this is a provision that says that the superintendent's basically not allowed to leave any money that's owed to us un-pursued and the one issue that we had with that you guys actually talked about at a board meeting I think in January we had the one student whose family was unable to pay the quarter of years tuition 2.6 is asset protection it's pretty much the same thing it's protecting assets assets are more than money they are facilities and pretty much anything that the district owns of value which you can include information provision three kind of point this out a little bit one of the things in this executive limitation requires the superintendent to make sure that we're taking care of our facilities so that we're not losing value for anything that's going on or maintaining the value and usability of those facilities in order to protect this we are requesting another $217,000 in the budget which you guys have already posted to go specifically to facilities the maintenance line and one of the reasons is because there was a lot of maintenance that wasn't done in previous years in some cases what wasn't done required us to actually replace equipment in parts of facilities and then in other cases some things haven't been done in a long time that should have been they're not critical yet but if we don't kind of accelerate our work to get it done we're going to have some serious problems so I have a question about that so the whole time that I was on the board with the prior superintendent we were getting the similar sheets showing us priority this is what we're doing this is why we're doing it we're on schedule everything's fine so I'm kind of curious how all of a sudden now is again we look at your reports and we are like okay everything's hunky-dory and it's not so there's too many actually addresses to this so it might be worth taking a look and just so you know I remember Paul and I brought this up in a board meeting three years ago and I was challenging Angelo with this exact thing how do we know and it got shot down yes I did because how do we know we're just relying on the word of our superintendent to report to us and we're supposed to be hands off so there's really quite a disconnect about what we can verify and I'm not an HVAC expert so I'm not going to be able to go in there I haven't been working in a building for five years and people have been complaining about it for five years and it hasn't been addressed you know there's something wrong with it and those are the situations that we were right but we as a board didn't know about it and so this might be worth reading the two paragraphs here so the two provisions were provisions 2 and 5 of Executive Limitation 2.8 and this really kind of gets to the heart of you know kind of what I discovered and what I'm worried about on behalf of the board because you guys are where the buck's got you're the ones that are going to be able to count all aside from me if you're not getting the information you need so there is a need for the board to consider further provisions to protect itself from two possible scenarios first a superintendent who intentionally fails to report significant issues happening within the district as part of the EL reporting process second the actions of the superintendent or board member to prevent this pertinent information from becoming known to the board right and you know I I think you know probably well this is my proposal is that we ask Val at our mandatory training in March you know how exactly do we plug this gap in information you're never going to know and so that's one of the recommendations right and really we need to revisit these and you know have some better way to keep to have tabs on what the superintendent is reporting to us you know so that there aren't those gaps in our knowledge and you know because we are really under policy governance supposed to be we're not supposed to be talking to the teachers and the right mechanics and the facilities people right but I wonder what I've been wondering about is maybe what it is is a matter of making sure you know because I'm surprised sometimes when I speak with teachers they don't even understand policy governance and I'm wondering if you're governing a system under a specific set of policies that have the outline of sort of that's like you know the U.S. Constitution that tells us as citizens how we go about to make new laws or to have a voice in what's going on or to be heard and you've got all of these folks down here have no idea how the system works and I think that's maybe part of the problem I don't know because they don't know when to come to us the board even the general public which is more understandable don't know when to come to the board when things rise to the level of a board issue there were again the two issues that need to be addressed are if if I don't put something in a report you're never going to know I didn't put it in a report you're always able to challenge the veracity of what I physically put in there because it's right there it's in front of you it's in writing so you've got to have a way of identifying what's not in there the easiest way what's going on in the community you guys had quite a bit happening in terms of community outcries in terms not about the building about our facilities director we had about the facilities director but that was more of a personality issue it was more than a personality issue my suggestion my recommendation on that is when you hear the outcries and it's been supposedly addressed and you still hear the outcries going into four and five years it's time for you to take a look that's my recommendation Val may come up with a better one than I the other piece and that's sort of you know that's going on too long if it's reached that sort of four or five years right but the point is you've got to find a balance between at what point are we crossing the line and stepping on toes versus just doing our diligence and the diligence piece the other piece is making sure that everybody gets to speak at the board meetings when things are brought up one person doesn't bully the others into silence and that happened quite frequently I was a little bit shocked my first two times on the board that I saw it and of course I didn't know I just thought that was you know being new and whatnot that was just how things operated but that wasn't the case now that I know some of the things that I know but it's making sure that folks on this board no information is ever withheld from the full board and the folks on this board if they want to say their piece they get an opportunity just like with the community members doesn't mean that they get an hour to do it sometimes you know you go back to your Roberts rules and okay everybody gets their three to five minutes but they get to say their piece at least everybody on the board gets to hear it consider it there were a number of times leading up to August where the board was intentionally kept out of the loop or forcefully kept out of the loop in terms of important information and I'll leave it at that I have a question thinking about both the financial and your age of plant would that not be divulged in the audit when we meet with the auditors and this is you know I'm happy to help out with Val because she's I don't have the best answers to things I'm recognizing and communicating to the board that you've got some serious gaps in your ability to oversee what I do let's fix them but I don't have the best recommendations ask the question so in my experience when we have auditors come in they work with every auditor appropriately and then they present to our board then there's executive session without the staff where they can ask about everything you're talking about right now and part of that is your age of plant it is the technology you know the quality of the technology of course it's a hospital but so I'm curious with our auditors do they get deep into the weeds and do we have that chance without you present to actually go through and meet with them and ask them about the ease of information access to information and what they discovered while they were here you haven't but you should the problem that I see with these auditors and I actually expressed it to them when I met with them they kind of come in they question me at the beginning of the year is that they match paper to paper this paper over here says that you know $1500 was spent on this piece of equipment and there's another piece of paper you know an invoice that says it was purchased everything looks good but at some point in time what would have fixed the problem was when the $15,000 purchase request came in on this piece of paper instead of depending upon the other piece of paper going out and actually seeing if the piece of equipment actually exists so there's not a master ledger that is maintained with all that information on it there was but unless somebody goes out and actually looks to see that that physical piece is there the maintenance was done the piece was replaced that they paid the $15,000 for you're not going to know so somebody actually has to take that piece of paper and say oh it says that they purchased 30 new desks let's go and see if there are actually 30 new desks in that class I don't know if it's supposed to it shouldn't have to happen but I'm telling you right now it's a blind spot that the board you have and it's something that it doesn't have to be everything but you know what it might not hurt that any time you spend more than $60,000 on something somebody goes out and takes a look and makes sure the darn thing is actually happening well wouldn't that be your responsibility we're delegating to you to manage you're right but again we go back to the other possible issues if I don't report it to you I think there has to be a second set of eyes I mean you have to have your checks and balances and you're coming out of a unique unique situation I'll leave it at that again none of this stuff because again I'm going back to what we were told previously as board members that there are several sets of eyes that are looking at things that come through in that district office but they have to have the eyes of integrity well and I'm assuming that you're hiring and you're evaluating your employees for those very things that's a good assumption doesn't mean it's correct in all cases I'm talking in general you can hire a stinker and who's not going to do any of that stuff or who's going to purposely mislead you have to be protected in that case you have to protect yourself how do you need to change those executive limitations to take that into account I give them a couple of recommendations in there but I'm not the expert in policy governance that's why Val the best thing to do is to go in with these two scenarios that I presented to Val and say hey how do we protect ourselves how do we change the limitations of our other policies in these cases should they I have one more question sorry stuck on the audit do you go out every so often to do an RFP to get a different audit firm in here so it's not the same audit firm time and time again yes we did we used the same one for the last couple of years we had one for maybe 10 years and then we have he actually retired and now we have a new firm and I think this is going to be a second year just a second year but is there a policy around that to say every two I mean I don't think it had to be every year but every three years or whatever you go out to bid again I think what you're pointing out Lane are a lot of people made assumptions assuming confidence and clearly those assumptions were made in error so I think an external agency coming in appropriately is going to be able to uncover those quickly and for me sitting in this position I want you to be doing those checks I mean I'm not worried about me whatsoever doesn't mean I can't make an honest mistake but in case I'm not here and you get somebody else coming in or you know you get three superintendents down the line at some day there's always a chance you're going to get somebody who's not and that's you've got to be prepared for that I've got to be prepared for that I think Ashley and you'll be a great one to be here I think next month we have the manager report so we can quiz them I think that would be helpful for us yeah but my limitation I saw with them like I said is they were making sure the papers matched but in the case where we're making big purchases folks didn't go out and actually check the maintenance on RAS the reason the heat was bad when I started up is because no maintenance had been done up they hadn't even replaced the filters when the heat kicked on they were so clogged up the filters got sucked into the machine when you were damaging the machine there were valves and vents that should have been replaced every five to six years that had never been touched and they couldn't the valves wouldn't turn when they were supposed to and send the heat to where it was needed you had a that was the reason the high school so I'm going to go back to I think we have Brent managing this system so hopefully we have a setup you're the manager of this huge organization you have your director of maintenance was there no was there no evaluation of him was there no sort of I mean that is your responsibility as the manager of the system to be managing your people there's a reason why the past director didn't last more than two weeks with me it was that apparent coming in hmm ok well this is this is some interesting news weren't you here? no I haven't been on the board well you guys tried to actually talk about it in a meeting in the board meeting it was either my first board meeting every second it was actually brought up how come we didn't know right folks were shut down yes let's move on yes no no you got some areas of liability can I ask that I mean in terms of an audit I mean usually I think of an audit as a financial analysis right looking at accounts right this is more a management issue I think we're thinking that in that direction but I just want to flag that to say I think this is more than the traditional kind of audit right this is but I already have a client ledger your client ledger is on that and we have to go through and we have to actually say you know is that desk still in service so our accounting office manages all of that because that is an asset to the organization which is on your balance sheet and so they have to either take stuff off the ledger or add it to and then your auditors come in and they could very well spot check it but same for like donors they randomly choose 10 donors and they send them a letter and say did you really make this donation you know is this legit so they're checking all those records so for me if I no longer have that computer they know it because it's all managed which I would assume an organization of the size with that type of money you'd have those same yeah in place and I mean it's our accounting office it's our it's all the other offices as well not just one person who's saying this is legitimately happy because that those are your assets of your organization which are mentioned in here that's why I would assume that that all would be noted in an audit that I could then question an external auditor on one of the things that I was and again it may have to do like the policy governance piece coming in was the first time that people wanted to dispose of the whole department they came in and I ran around and I was asking people geez don't you have to claim it as surplus and have the board vote on the disposal of it I'm like no we don't do that we had to remove it right from your but the purpose behind that isn't you know in thinking about what you're saying the purpose behind that happening in other districts that I've been in wasn't to micromanage it was part of tracking what came in and what was going in so that everybody knew you know if it was no longer here where the heck to go well yeah on this date should be thrown away or should be donated to this school or you know but they're your assets that's what you own I mean that's what makes you just have I seen schools that keep that detail the list of no but doesn't mean it couldn't be done or in this case again it's you know appropriate I don't know but that's part of the you know I mean you guys have a blind spot right now my recommendation is that I told you what I think you know really have a conversation now about it yeah thank you so it goes without saying that it's important that everyone review these reports carefully before our next meeting there are background materials in the OSSD office just go ahead you can make an appointment with with Lane too if you want to chat about any of these things in more detail please do that before our next meeting now I have in terms of the exception of these two reports the other reports we were trying to actually put the evidence in there at any time you can go hey even if it's not something I've quoted as evidence say hey I'd like to see a copy of as long as you give me a data pull it out if it's not something we've got right on the file you are welcome to review any of that stuff anytime and don't ever be afraid to do that it requires due diligence on all of our parts to you know be reading these things and hoping around in that right exactly so this is our job Laura can I ask I'm wondering with the communication and support of the board was wasn't there some conversations around communication and you know as the role of the superintendent and superintendent's office and supporting the board and communicating out to the general public whether it's meetings or you know other information that we want to get out would an amendment to any of the policies be appropriate to consider at the next board meeting or we're just looking at the report right now so you're suggesting sort of adding an additional I feel like there's been a lot of conversation around communication out to the owners and to the public and so I'm wondering if that review process and I don't have the language right now in order to have a proposal on the table but I'm wondering in terms of that conversation is that something that would be amended as a part of the review process of this report well it seems to me although I could be wrong but it seems to me that would better fit under communication with the parents and community I think it's like two point I can't remember but there is another one where it's communication to the school and parents community so something like that I mean it's certainly worth considering I think probably and we've talked about it for years that we'd like the superintendent's office to be doing some of that so how can we flag that for as a board you have the right to adjust those limitations of those policies so I don't do we have a proposal when we want to add that maybe we want to again have that conversation with Val yeah I was going to say why don't we look at April March 23 March 26 to 9 the next one we've been talking about literally for years so why don't we make that the first one we tackle so make it April and so March we can maybe talk about some good ideas while it's still fresh in our mind and come back the next month and try to tackle it and it might be a multi-month process it might not get done April but we can start it and then see what we're able to do one thing I ask is just don't beat me up for the whatever happened in the past I would call the accountable I want you to know anything that you want to know and see anything that I'm doing but just don't make the job so untenable of course right okay are you ready to move on alright next we need to we need to approve the minutes from the OSSD meeting on January 14 those are enclosed are there any additions or changes to those minutes secondly we have the professional staff contracts there's those just what you want to need to sign okay so can I have a motion to pass to move the consent agenda I'll move to pass the consent agenda a second all those in favor aye any opposed okay next is superintendent's report comment on add or clarify a couple of incidentals and other questions the the Brookfield budget meeting the schedules for Wednesday depending upon what the weather is just give you the heads up I'll make the call tomorrow if we can move that date right now it's 15 inches of snow and 15 miles an hour so try to make that call by early afternoon tomorrow so people can my favorite well at least it's going to be snow but then it's going to rain I guess later on yeah in terms of the financial piece talking with Robin today her exact words were in very good shape and I said we'll mix you think that and she said well because we can actually compare this year's budget to last year's because both under the consolidated system she said you know we spent a little bit more in terms of facilities than we did last year but by the same time more than made up with it in terms of the new revenues from the tuition from all the students how's the meal plan probably is that any better than what it was where they were off every month it's still off every month we actually made it into the made it into the lack of last year like you predicted I was talking about that today I think it's down negative 79,000 that's because there's a month missing winners are slow but it's actually not as well as it was this time last year okay we're on par it's certainly not going to be worse but it'll probably be better because you know when you look at negative 79,000 that's concerning but if it's a historical if it's a historical trend and it's not concerning because it comes out in the end yeah I've got to tell you for the first year of truce and some of the numbers you know we made the last payment other incidentals the lead update we actually replaced all the faucets that were the sinks in the classrooms they went in and they did further testing no issues so it looks like it was definitely faucets in the classrooms the lead spikes they picked up a faucet in the kitchen which ended up showing some lead we don't think that's the faucet because that faucet was replaced so the issue may be the pipes there may be older piping in the building this is Brookfield right this is Brookfield so the plan is we've got some folks coming out to give us the best estimate what the cause is cheapest solution is actually just to run a new set of piping now are you going to just go for it and then see if the state will given this whole building because we're already supplying all the water for Brookfield that was one of the pieces when we talked about why wasn't that done nine years ago but only that one we're already supplying all the water for Brookfield so I may wait the other thing that's kind of interesting is they're talking and I should have brought up tonight about lifting the moratorium on matching funds for middle school building talking about the range of the gradient so you know if we can get the shell up at least and get those folks into the warehouse by the school as a temporary thing once the potential matching funds come in from the state if they remove that moratorium then we can complete the work on the shell of the building so we're kind of bouncing that around with the architects kind of revamping what they're looking at in terms of the building what will it take to bring the kids into the warehouse by the by the OSSD office and just build the shell out there for storage and then what we can do is they said the thing you could do even if we don't get the matching funds as you get the shell up you get the thing it's all nice and insulated you use it for your storage and then every year you take a chunk of the surplus fund or a project for that could they do that work on the warehouse and to house the kids could they do that work over the summer I've told them I want the kids moved before next year because they've got big concerns about the building that they're able to do that should be easy enough and that's one of the reasons we're focusing in on that building is because it's pretty much ready made gotta put in the classroom space it's not as big as we'd hope but you know what it'll do those are the incidentals one interesting thing that happened at the RTCC meeting of which it has like a 12 member board and I was the only one who went so that was interesting yes but we are going to Jason and Lane are really rethinking how that board is set up and how are we going to get input from these sending schools so we're required to have four meetings a year the last meeting only had two or three and it's been a nagging problem and it just keeps on getting worse so they're going to it's never had any real true attendance well it's gotten worse yeah it sounds like usually like one person from Williamstown maybe someplace else yeah it's really pathetic they don't really feel like they have they need a voice in the running of RTCC and so something we need to we were talking about how to change it so that was a more meaningful input that we're asking people to give makes sense so that's a work in progress are they appointed by their boards from the sending town they never show up and then there are a few other people like someone from what's Kate it's not VSAC that Kate represents is it VSAC? okay Kate's from CCD is it Kate Hughes? Kate Hughes comes all the way up here oh wow she almost always comes and then there's some business people and things like that and of course the school reps yeah so anyway it's um it's mostly the sending school boards the only one I remember showing up on a regular basis was Williamstown and then all the other school boards Northfield I've never seen well Williamstown and Northfield are now one so whoever's showing up from north from Williamstown is supposed to represent both now presumably so anyway anything else any other incidental information other potential big things coming up in terms of facilities the water supply to this building here they may still need to do that water upgrade even though we're not potentially going to do the full raven recreation over there because the water supply the actual pipes that supply the water to this building were designed for before it was added on to I don't know what year that was probably 67 68 somewhere and it just it's not it's not sufficient supply so that may be something that's coming as I know a little bit more I don't know if that work absolutely has to be done on the cost what's about it alright we didn't do a board evaluation tonight and do we need an executive session alright well look at this 840 840 thank you everybody


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