We're good? All right. Thank you. So opening the meeting of the Marlboro Roxbury Board of School Directors at 436 got a long agenda. I just want to welcome Marianne O'Law to the board and to a new school year. I welcome everyone to a new school year. This thing has got up to a great start. I'm very excited to have both of you on the board and this will be a marathon in documentation because our meetings are even not this long and we've got some some meaty stuff. So I'm excited to have everyone on the board and excited to have your participation and your thoughts and perspectives. So thank you for for doing this. I know it's a big commitment and I'm sure you'll be a great job. I'm here with your students because that's really important to all of our decisions and it's a super important role. So thank you both for stepping up and then Scott I just want to make sure we have your needs taken care of. Are you planning to come in and just on remotely or should we be checking with you remotely for the whole meeting because I know sometimes you get lost in space. I'm driving to Boston right now and could think of no better way to keep my eyes open than participate virtually. All right perfect. I will check in on you every now and then to make sure that you're not getting lost from the conversation. Excellent. So first order of business is public comment. Public comment is for the purpose of providing the public an opportunity to bring the issues to the board to comment on matters that are either on the agenda or not on the agenda and we do not respond in real time but the information you bring us is very very important and we also recognize that it can be difficult to come before the board a lot of times people come with matters that are you know involve their kids or themselves and we really appreciate you know the perspective and some of that the courage it takes to come up and speak to the board and if we do not respond in real time that is just our procedure but we do listen and it does have a big impact on our decision making. So with that I will open up to public comment if you wish to speak please come to the front of the room. Obviously I have two I will yes the person who's already up and then Lisa. Hi there. My heart is really racing right now. My name is Stephanie Dolina and recently I submitted my resignation. Before August 18 it was the most unprofessional thing that I could imagine doing. The other unprofessional thing would be the abuse of power by leadership and I hope that people who also want to speak will give me the time to read my letter of resignation and that is to say my colleagues and my community I've worked with and loved and served for 30 years. Here's my 30-year pin I was given in June. They don't know why I resigned and I want them to understand why I resigned. So thank you for indulging me. Gated August 18th. Dear school board chairman Jim Murphy I am Stephanie Dolina. I began my career in education in the state of Vermont in 1987 teaching grade seven and eight language arts at Castleton Village School in Castleton Vermont. What a wonderful new teacher adventure one in which I learned along with my students and that is a theme. In 1993 with a desire to return to central Vermont where my family lived I applied for and was chosen from an application pool of over 100 to assume the position of eighth grade language arts at Main Street Middle School. I thrived in my new role in this progressive always on the cutting edge setting and learned along with my students. In 2003 when I felt a tug for professional change I earned my master's degree in education through St. Michael's College. My thesis was about how to teach math at the middle school level in developmentally responsive ways and I transitioned to a decade long position as sixth grade math and language arts teacher. I learned along with my students. When again the desire to remain fresh and engaged in my work pulled at me I transferred to Montpillar High School assuming what was my current role as flexible pathways advisor. The passing of Act 77 and personalization relevant meaningful learning inspired me in new ways working to connect students with non-traditional educational opportunities beyond the walls of a classroom I learned along with my students. As I write this a not typical resignation letter please know that I'm very very proud of the teaching and learning accomplished during my career and I am as stunned as anyone regarding its sudden closure. Having now introduced myself to you join me in a review of my last several months as a veteran teacher in this district. On April 21st I completed my discretionary days form in hard copy. Discretionary days for anyone who doesn't know are two days we teachers must work outside of the other calendar days. Every teacher I know and love and myself work far more than two work days beyond the calendar. I used the MRPS current calendar hanging on my classroom bulletin board for reference. The form was due by April 30th and with joint replacement surgery scheduled in the last month of school I put no tasks off. I delivered the form to Val Belanger. I emphasize here due to the nature of my work I very often work outside of the school day schedule a Monday through Friday framework and I definitely must work over vacations. I get to know monitor support communicate with and about dual enrollment and early college students. I do the same for high school level online learners. Colleges and our online course providers academic calendars do not align with our schools and it has been my pleasure and my privilege to not miss a beat along with my students. The patterns of my work are well known by me. The form is not complicated to complete. I considered this professional responsibility taken care of and I even shared the relief of this with a colleague sweating to get his done on June 14th when he asked me if I needed to do the same. I'm so glad I did that a long time ago I reflected so I can just stay focused on my work. On the last day of school June 15th Superintendent Bohn-Steel presented me with my 30-year MRPS pin. It's a service award. I was in the auditorium with my peers. I admit the standing ovation was the result of timing my award coming on the heels of another celebrant of a milestone that afternoon but it was humbling nonetheless. I took a photo of my pin and the monetary gift notice and I sent it to my husband and my daughter who is now in this profession. Despite the blessing of an early day released to all by the superintendent that day I stayed in my classroom until approximately four o'clock. I share this specifically so you will know that if either Superintendent Bohn-Steel or Principal Gingold had wanted to talk with me I was on site. No one stopped by and when finished I closed my classroom door behind me anticipating the restoration relaxation and rejuvenation the summer months would bring. The following week when I received my first summer payroll receipt I noticed that the $500 service award was on it. Also right below that $738.20 had been deducted from my pay. I had no idea why. I lost nearly the whole day chasing down what this was why this was how this was essentially with no prior communication or conversation with me. Superintendent Bohn-Steel directed our payroll employee to dock my pay for the two discretionary days in a response an email response to me Principal Gingold feigned ignorance and empathy saying I understand the situation could be very stressful I'm sorry and I appreciate your patience there was no ownership on Principal Gingold's part. I was told that Val was on vacation for two weeks Libby for three weeks. I was sent by Mr. Gingold on a goose chase to talk with Anna Hipko Superintendent Bohn-Steel's administrative assistant when I did catch Anna in her office because I was here on Friday procuring an adult online learner's final exam the day after school got out I was here. Anna turned to me and she sent me right back in the direction of those responsible the superintendent my building principal his administrative assistant being treated mistreated in this way by people in leadership positions and in the case of Val by a person I have trusted cared about and worked for for almost 10 years caused mental and emotional anguish I cannot adequately adequately describe digging in my perennial garden riding my horse walking my dogs in the woods swimming in my pond lying in bed at night no matter where I was or what I was doing the pain gripped my mind and my heart and my passion for teaching was stolen one day at a time Superintendent Bohn-Steel met with the union representatives on August 10th 2023 nearly two months after the action was taken I was informed of the following agreed upon outcomes of that meeting they are enumerated here as they were shared by me shared with me one Libby acknowledged that you were not on the reminder email sent to all his discretionary day forms were missing on June 14th and that it is possible that your form that you recall delivering to Val was misplaced two given the discrepancy around number one your pay will be restored if you submit a new discretionary decorum three she agreed to implement a more streamlined system for documenting discretionary days that will allow for more ownership by the faculty member for submission purposes for in the future she will schedule a face-to-face meeting with folks with a union representative present to inform them that they are subject to disciplinary action if they do not submit the paperwork in closing I reiterate that I am very very proud of the many ways in which I touched the lives of Montpellier's children and they mine I was not ready to retire I did not do so when eligible in June of 2022 did not accept the buyout offer from a little less than a year ago and I look forward to another year of service however I believe and I believe this district believes that who we are reveals itself when no one is watching superintendent bone steel principal gang old val Belange a harmed me badly in a situation where one question would have made all the difference step we don't have your discretionary day form can you tell me about that I will not work for or with those who operate in secret and fail to communicate knowing another human being will be crushed as a result take care of yourself take care of each other take care of the place three imperative sentences printed on most high school Montpellier high school related items administrators use them in letters and assemblies that open school years or to address the school community in challenging times a plaque with them is set in stone between the parking lot and the main entrance for me the hypocrisy is overwhelming who took care of me time is a very very special thing those who devalued me disrespected me underappreciated me hurt me and acknowledged my 30 year commitment to this district and 36 years in the state of Vermont as a public school teacher publicly with a smile while slyly directing payroll to slap me with a never before experienced deduction for professional responsibility I had in fact fulfilled they will not be benefactors of one more minute of my time my time will now be spent at my discretion period I have discussed my immediate retirement with the Vermont state retirement system and I am considering legal counsel on this matter respectfully Stephanie J. Delina formerly flexible pathways advisor Montpellier high school and I thank you for your time thank you Stephanie I thank you for your 30 years sorry to be my name is Lisa Berger and I want to thank Stephanie she is the only reason my daughter survived COVID at this high school and you got my member internal gratitude and I'm very sorry what just happened I came here to speak today because there are two new school board members here and you have a lot of responsibility and a lot of potential and there will be amongst I think some of these people sitting here and another school board member that will be joining me today and I would like to ask you specifically to take this job very seriously because the adults in the room all of us myself included have failed you we have told you this school board has told you that you suffered no academic loss from the year and a half where your education was impacted by COVID and by doing that they absolved themselves of the responsibility of addressing your academic loss they have said that your decreased scores on all standardized tests are because you don't try anymore and actually they suggest that it is throughout the grades from second grade through 12th that students do not care about formalized testing and therefore the results are suboptimal and this board has spent its summer discussing how they can address this and search for ways other metrics other things they can judge to why you all unlike the 78 other school districts in Vermont not one of them I researched this I could not find a single other school district that claimed their students suffered no academic loss nor is there any other of the 78 school districts that continues to say there was no loss that is one thing that they will be discussing that you will be discussing in this meeting later today please keep that in mind you deserve better another thing they will be discussing are the facilities here and their request for a proposal to get a committee or a group a consultant to help them look into our facilities and once again the adults in the room have failed you because we have brought us to this point of climate crisis and I think you all know your generation your people your fellow students know that we have failed you and this idea of placing the track anywhere on this area or maintaining and putting money into a building that is in a floodplain is ridiculous additionally they have finally as long as they have been working at this which is over three years come to the point of coming up with a non-binding net zero resolution at the same time that they wanted to spend two million dollars on a track so I would say you need to be very cautious with what they are telling you and stand up you as representatives of not just the high school but all the students can do better than what they tell you as a division three soccer finalist or champion your leadership can do better than reinstituting pep rallies and organizing uh school-wide social events stand up it's hard work and it's so sad that I have to ask you to do this but these people desperately need your help and ask your fellow students to help you to help them thank you hey folks do you like a man of a track student athlete a little surprised to be here again I don't follow Front Forge Forum so I didn't know that there was all sorts of pubs out there in the world probably so I'll try to try to be pithy here so first off I'm grateful for the excellent facilities that we have and I feel like all the meetings I've attended the past year show a really great focus on our community on maintaining excellent facilities here at the school I'm very impressed with Andrew La Rosa and all the hard work that he puts in especially with the facilities and energy committee I haven't seen anything track related on the facilities energy committee so that's why I was a little surprised track stuff came up the track is the exception in maintaining excellent facilities at the school we all know it's been neglected for uh decades and the you know board unanimously approved not that long ago to dedicate some funds to make up for that to get us in a great space um so I hope that we stay on track with that and don't forget all of the people that came and testified in support of that which is a very significant portion of our community two speaking of flood plains I'll tell my credentials a little bit I'm a natural resource professional I deal with permitting and flood plains on an annual basis and have for the past 10 years when you're in a FEMA flood plain or FEMA floodway a lot of things depend on what is your current use and then what our anticipated uses and the main thing engineers care about and FEMA cares about is if you're going to cause a greater than one foot increase in the uh base flood elevation within a floodway and so maintaining a track as a current use and as a slightly improved facility isn't going to be like building a Walmart there that could have an impact on downstream communities and their flooding so I see it as a very appropriate use as a flood in a flood plain where it's already a current allowed use as with the existing fields it's the kind of thing that could withstand flooding it's the reality of where we are there's a lot of embedded energy in all of our facilities here and there are ways to do better work to floodproof them I believe it is unrealistic to move our facilities and I think it makes sense to invest in them and to make them more resilient to future climate change challenges uh three there's talks out there about a you know potential merger with U32 and everything like that there's been talks about that for decades there could be talks in the future I'd say if we manage it merge with U32 tomorrow it still would make sense to have a track here for the middle school who would likely use it for the PE classes for the community I see great benefit in having a track improved at this facility hasn't changed as I've shared prior testimony I was almost in tears at times with the track teams coming in here they have U32 track supporting them the sheer number of students who support this who want this who know that it will benefit them is significant and I spoke to my son and I asked him why do you think it would be good to have a track and he went right to social emotional learning which is where the current metrics that you have available show that we have had deficits since COVID and social emotional learning a lot of benefits to be shared the principal gave a good talk last meeting that I was at talking about all the benefits of that I think that is just as valid as it was before um and big picture I think is you know there's a lot of discussion these days about intention and impact but I understand there could be lots of great intentions for unassigning the funds setting them aside for more rainy day stuff but I think the impact of that will be significant to our students I think all the testimony you heard from students especially is still valid and I would like you to hold on to that into your minds as you have this discussion today um and thanks again for your service okay good looks like we have someone on oh james hello uh james ray um I want to first welcome join jim and welcome you to the school board what an inspiration to have to from the high school community on the board um and I wouldn't normally have directed it to you all specifically but since that that can has been opened I want to perhaps warm up the environment a little for you um you join a public service tradition in the state that is phenomenal um my father served in the indian estate legislature and his proudest moments in that legislature were when he would come home and say you fight the idea never the person and he was a republican I I'm I fell democrat doesn't matter his point was we would argue in the well of the senate all day long and then we would go have a drink together we would have dinner together and that's how we got things done because we did not cross the line of attacking people and attacking and you have here and I'll come back to Vermont we have here in Vermont that same wonderful tradition we have a governor who will have no problems in today's political climate standing shoulder to shoulder with Bernie Sanders or Patrick Leahy or Peter Welch and giving them all due credit for things that they've accomplished at the at the national level for our state and vice versa you have Bernie Sanders and Peter Welch standing arm in arm with with our republican governor doing the exact same thing um I have seen that I think that filters down to this board you have a we have a superintendent who I think is like an incredible hard-working fair honest person and a school board that is very much the same um and so I welcome you to that this incredible tradition in Vermont um that that's beyond Vermont but I think it's special here and I've really noticed over the years and I hope you enjoy that um and I hope you know and now to the to the whole school board I hope you know that um you know we to be certain we face a lot of issues now before the flood before climate change got ratcheted up a few notches in our in our um in our view scope here um not that it shouldn't have before but it has now and and we face some really tough issues um but I I dearly hope that our community respects that tradition of challenging the issue and never the people that hasn't always been obvious in recent history um and and I call on the community to to respect that tradition and to respect the people who have shown up here to serve yourselves include all of you um and I call of what was my next excuse me um oh just to know that as these discussions continue and this is I'm for you and everyone here um you know the the silent majority it's it's not everyone who is going to be on on Front porch Forum and other other social media sites or elsewhere uh turning up the heat boiling the water and and making noise um and and that's everyone's right to do that but there are many many many other people for any number of reasons who aren't doing that who we don't know where they stand and I think to make assumptions on where people stand and assign numbers to supportive things without knowing where those people stand is is unfortunate and so I guess my point to the school board and to you too as as as these issues come forward please know that that the noise that you are most likely to hear probably doesn't represent the bulk of the community and please know that speaking as a parent we as parents of students in the school have your back and and we have the back of you students who whatever changes may need to come shorter long term um that we will ensure that you all get to enjoy quality facilities wonderful facilities and an incredible learning environment throughout I apologize for going on so long um but there it is thank you for your time thank you anyone else in the room and we've got looks like at least one person on phone and if you want to raise your hand either yeah I see I see these Jones and anyone else wants to raise their hand they can do it virtually but um it's like divorce Jones take yourself off mute please looks like looks like you're muted on your end okay now you can hear me yep we can hear you now thank you okay great so I'm just this is the first time I'm at a school oh divorce Jonas Mount failure Moomba street if that matters um so this is the first time I'm at a school board meeting and I've been reading the things on front page forum but also I'm living in a city that's been devastated by a flood and I'm confused about why we would want to spend two million dollars on a track when there seems to me there are a lot more urgent things that we need to do like maybe fixing the water pressure or so that our streets aren't constantly clogged things of that sort I'm yeah I mean not that it wouldn't be nice to have a new track but it feels to me like there's things that are more critical right now that's all great thank you and I do just want to clarify because I was confused now the district money is not city money so um so even if money from the district gets repurposed it can't get repurposed for for instance the city infrastructure project um figure that looks like that is all for public comment um next we have consent agenda do I have a motion to approve the consent agenda do I have a second I start all those oh any discussion on there it says that's September 6th of the day that we are setting budget priorities and guidelines but that's not really what we're doing today is it well we're setting priorities goals goals that we could use for the budget but I think that's how Christina interpreted it okay okay um we can revamp that language but I think that's just how she interpreted today's agenda got a goal plan with the goals okay can you hear me yes okay apparently I told I said to me that I'm assuming that's how Christina can you hear me well I'm assuming that's how Christina interpreted tonight's with goals with her business manager mindset that she's thinking goals and priorities are the same thing yeah I know thank you for the reminder that's right I think we'll try to I know I turn it off but my voice projects pretty well but I'll make sure to I think it's this fan I think it's a fan right behind us yeah thank you um okay thank you for that clarification uh well I had an idea that maybe there's a public forum on the 3rd of January I think in the timeline and I wondered if maybe we could bump that earlier so that we could get our get community feedback on the initial budget and then we wouldn't maybe have the forum on the on January 3rd that's in statute the forum on the 3rd is in statute I see yeah okay so that's a requirement by law okay could we also do one that is a little bit earlier in the process to get some feedback on an initial budget because I know in years past by the time we have that forum it's we're pretty well finished I mean what we've done in the past is kind of in part of the planning to try to actually go out to groups and get feedback and then try to get as many people to come into the yeah because the meetings are basically public forums on the budget right so remember what's not in to interrupt you um December 6th is the initial budget presentation right then the board hears a presentation of the budget until you vote to approve it so you have two more presentations okay of the budget which of course are public meetings right right yep um and that's just not written on this page but you'll have because we present the initial one right you ask questions of us we go back and revise we continue to get numbers to come in like real numbers not um the number right right so those you have three opportunities in public meeting okay so look at that and and what we could do is we could either like maybe move one or two of those meetings like a little earlier or maybe schedule a slightly different time to give different windows for people to come in we could move one of them into the cafeteria so we have more space so I think we'd probably play with our our board meetings and they did more like the public forum I think that's a good idea you can also move public inside it and you know guys you can also move public comment after the presentation so people can comment on the budget I think we should yeah let's let's keep all that in mind okay I agree with me though it might be nice to like actually put it as a date here because this is the public-facing document um that people in the community are seeing so we may understand that there's going to be two public meetings in which the public can come and speak to us about the proposed budget but without it being like listed here as one of the options I mean I suggest doing that on the 15 to have the initial presentation to us so we can kind of digest it then we can maybe kind of communicate out like the top three or four things it's doing to you know let the public know a little more about what the budget is and then maybe have the 15th be kind of advertised as a you know a meeting slash public forum on the budget well where we'll get the second presentation with some of our initial feedback folded in we'll have some time to communicate out what we've seen and then we can you know get feedback then does that make sense yeah should be the 20th the 20th okay heard to put something there too like post hosting public forums you know because we yeah we will go out to the senior center or to the parents groups and neighborhood neighborhood gatherings like I'm looking at our 23-24 year-to-glance calendar and Christina did it just slightly differently this year than what Grant has typically done it in the past so on the 23-24 year-to-glance board calendar Jill can you hear me over there I'm gonna talk about them yeah all right we have a public budget forum on the third of January but right you can certainly move that to the 20th of December instead it's so it's okay to move it it just has to happen that's the thing that's in statute no oh oh I see what you're saying I'm sorry I totally told you the wrong information I was thinking about the right before Tom meeting is in statute that's sorry okay okay yeah I'm sorry no that's okay that's okay so yeah the the third would be the public forum I totally and what we could do and what we could do is have that on the fifth the 20th instead yeah yeah and we could say we're doing like Jim said after the initial budget presentation on the sixth we could open up public comment after that presentation I say we have public comment after all the presentation could is there a reason why we wouldn't sort of list it also on you mentioned November 15th Jim what was the reason not there's not a meeting on yeah no I misread that that's the that's a different state but we have a school board meeting on the 15th no that's six in the 20th no I mean November oh sorry I was looking at December November we won't be doing public budget presentation we won't have the budget but could we get illicit feedback on priorities you know earlier so that it could potentially impact the budget on the 23-24 year at a glance the on the 20th of September I just kind of roll this over from year to year yeah and on the 20th of September that that board meeting that typical board meeting this planning community outreach for budget presentations yeah yeah I mean this isn't an official document your calendar is it no I just want to tell you what we have done in years past yeah so I mean I don't know that it necessarily has to be changed or anything but just for future reference it might be nice to plug in some dates for community feedback so that the public knows when to be paying attention further comments or questions we can adjust the schedule accordingly I'm that's all I've got thank you no um so with those suggestions concluded the motion to approve the consensus or not a motion but I everyone in favor sorry it's been a while uh I know what opposed great um so next is new board candidates and we have uh three and there's only one I'm recognized by face so um so now just uh we all got your letters of interest for one thanks to everyone for being interested uh yeah we really appreciate the people who are willing to kind of step up and and take responsibility it's it's uh you know it's it's a fair amount of time and um not a lot of compensation for it but it's definitely very important work uh and we appreciate everyone who's willing to to put themselves in the role of of decision maker it's as you've seen probably with some recent decision they have a lot of people have very different opinions and and it's it's tough to model through and it's uh um yeah it takes a little courage to put yourself in a position of responsibility and service and we really appreciate all three of you for being willing to step up um and and express interest uh and unfortunately we're only going to be able to choose one of you and all three of you look fantastic uh and I also just at the beginning uh for anyone who who doesn't get it we have we have elections every march and we're always looking for uh community members who are are willing to to step up and and serve and put themselves in in this role uh so so thank you and and uh uh you know unfortunately we'll only be able to take one of you uh with that uh I don't know which order you want to go in we have uh two tims and a jake uh so um uh whoever wants to step up first just you know come up um you know let us let us know your interest and uh yeah we might ask a few questions and then then we'll go into executive session and make a decision uh you're you're willing to stick around for the rest of the meeting uh you won't be able to formally serve even after appointed until you get sworn in uh at city hall by uh john odham or and you can do that by phone too um but you're certainly welcome to participate in the rest of the meeting and once you're appointed once you get sworn in you you will have uh you will be official um may I just add city hall is on the second floor of the senior center yes it's not at city hall that's right oh yeah so my phone might be easiest uh um why don't we just go front to back thanks everybody uh jake Feldman uh resident of Montpelier and um I sent you guys a letter today expressing my interest um and you know there's some wonky stuff in there um but before I talk about that um I should mention that um I did my internship here in this building um I taught with sue beam um advanced placement statistics advanced algebra to and an entry level uh high school math class um it was wonderful that was in 2010 I sat in this very room with principal peter evans um giving us lots of great information um so I was a teacher um after that I taught in in hardwick at haze and union for two years it was super challenging um the you know I I I have like an insane amount of respect for teachers and they bring so much value to the community um that you know I think that they're strangely undervalued to be honest um I think a great teacher is an incredible thing and we should do everything we can to to make them comfortable and happy um so that's that's some of my teaching experience um I've lived in Montpelier for 18 years um before that I lived in the northeast kingdom before that I went to middlebury college um major in economics I have a master's degree in statistics from uvm um at the tax department I uh it was just where I work with chill um I work on education funding so um I'm I know a lot about from budget to people's bills um I have that down pretty solid but I don't know much about budget development I don't really know much about the work of a school board I'm very interested in learning and and so this shorter term through march would be I think a really good way for me to get some exposure um and I think that there's some value that I could add um based on what I know from my job um I have a six-year-old son who goes to union he loves it um it's a great school we're so fortunate to have the teachers that we've had um and um yeah I appreciate the work that you guys do I know it's incredibly hard um and um yeah that's my that's my spiel I'm curious to know what you estimate to be the time commitment like what's your understanding of it not what not what can you do but you know just what what do you think it is um I did look at your your um your board meeting schedule is it a couple times a month um and our board meetings usually two hours long but this one is four hours yeah um and so I think that's probably the baseline and then there are special committees that form and they probably have work outside of that so um I think it should be fine and you know I do with my son now older I have a little bit more time you know some of you probably know with a very young kid you know time can get really super squeezed but um he's in a space now where where we have a little bit more availability we're getting more sleep amazingly so so yeah um so I do have the time and um yeah great thank you really appreciate your interest um hello everyone um thanks for having me here again uh for those of you who don't know me I'm Tim favorite I've been a resident of Montpelier since 2014 or so um I've also been a member of the Montpelier Energy Advisory Committee since 2021 and I've you know had the pleasure of working with the facilities and energy committee um uh for about a year now uh working on the net zero resolution um got it drafted a couple of months ago currently working on implementing it bit by bit um Christa and Emma Seiji have been a great great group of people to work with they've helped help me feel like a real member of the team um so I look forward to working with them one way or another um yeah I've also gotten to sort of witness firsthand the issues you are grappling with um I feel like uh you know yeah I'd be in a pretty good position to kind of hit the ground running uh as you know yeah as as we go or as after I get started um other things about me I'm a parent of a third grader and a first grader uh at Unilmetry um so yeah obviously pretty well vested in in the success of you know not only their success but their classmates and the community at large so um yeah very interested in you know learning how to measure that success uh I know that's one of the issues you're you're trying to grapple with uh tonight I believe so um yeah and and other challenges uh other besides net zero resolution I know facilities is uh you know feature of facilities is a big hot button topic um looking forward to tackling that um and yeah I think just engaging with the community um how can we you know make sure they they feel on the loop uh they like the like real stakeholders uh and and the decisions the school district makes the school board makes so uh yeah I think I'm excited about the work that you do I think um I really appreciate everything you've done uh and appreciate your consideration thank you there's a um like questions for Mia and same question oh uh so yeah I know you mean to uh twice twice a month uh the full board um the facilities and energy committee I can speak to that experience it's about about once a month and I I believe there's two or three committees everybody gets assigned to so yeah probably like 10 10-ish hours a month um I think I can manage that thank you appreciate it again thanks for your interest all right good evening Tim number two Tim Duggan um I sent you a letter uh and my resume so I think you have a fair idea of my background uh interested in serving because I have a elementary school student and a middle school student here I feel I've become more involved in and more sort of engaged in their academic adventure and so I thought I'd uh I'd give it a shot um but fortunately I agree with Jim I think you have three great candidates or at least two and um I'm happy to answer any questions two to four hours a week Mia is the answer to your question um and yeah I work with a lot of boards professionally so I'm very comfortable uh in that framework um and enjoy sort of working in forge consensus so thank you for the opportunity um thank you um again thanks to all of you for your interest to serve we are now going to go into executive session for the purpose of considering a new board candidate uh Anna has wonderfully put in the wording for that motion so if someone wants to make that motion uh it's on the agenda um and I can pass it to someone if they don't have it handy uh then we can can break for executive session I move that we enter the second session for the purpose of discussing the appointment of a candidate for the vacant board number position under the provisions of final one section three one three a subsection three of the Vermont statues the appointment of a public officer do I have second second any discussion all those in favor hi any opposed great we'll be back reassembled so we're coming back into order um before I have a vote I just want to say this was a a super hard decision in that all three of you really are about as equally qualified and amazingly qualified as we've had to fill an appointment and um I think we would have been thrilled to have any of you uh and I think that was a consensus of the whole board like everyone was so pleased all three of you applied and and again would have been super thrilled to have any of you serve at the board I think for the two that we decided not to pick I really encourage you to reapply when the next board member decides to open a bar or um run in in March uh yeah when yeah either contested or as as an open seat we really admire your service I know um all three of you are have fantastic backgrounds and and would be fantastic candidates but unfortunately we had to make one so entertain a motion to appoint that one person to the board I don't know who wants to make it to this interposition until mark do I have a second I'll second any discussion all those in favor hi hi so again thank you to both tims we really hope to see your continued involvement um you may feel lucky uh but yeah thank you we we hope to to see you um you know as you know we've got a lot of tough issues coming up as you'll see with the rest of the meeting um so definitely want your involvement as community members and again we do have vacancies that occur relatively periodically just because people have other things come up with their lives and sometimes can't serve at their term so um we will probably call on you again if we do have a vacancy and definitely consider it in March uh and Jake you're welcome you're welcome to stay um you're welcome to to go home I don't know your your plans for the evening work uh you can kind of join as a community member you're not official I mean you could come sit in scot-seed if you want to um uh yeah um uh but don't feel obligated um because I know you you didn't know the outcome and may have had dinner plans or otherwise uh and the only thing just will assign you a mentor uh and um you know get get sworn in uh before the next meeting so you can you can vote next time so but thank you thanks to all three it was uh you know we really appreciate the service and or the willingness to serve and uh and thank you for being willing to to stack up and and take a take a big job with a lot of responsible work so thank you so now we are on to uh board business facilities um I want to start this off with just kind of an update um Libby and I met with uh Megan Roy and uh Florida Smith uh to talk about uh kind of where our two districts are at um as you know they are also embarking upon a strategic planning uh and uh reorganization process that they're very invested in uh I think a question they will be asking as part of that is what their district might look like as part of a larger district uh oh so Megan Roy is the superintendent of I know who they are but there's people that may not be listening and they're not there thank you on that that's important uh Megan Roy is the superintendent of the Washington Central Unified Union District okay um which everyone refers to as U32 but it also involves you know the elementary schools there of Burleigh and Calist, Dodie, Romney, and West Middlesons, Calis, East Montevilliers. Yeah so it's our surrounding towns um plus the schools within those surrounding towns uh and Lynn once served on Calis board right and the U32 board and uh Florida Smith is the chair of the Washington Central um and as you know you know as was mentioned earlier tonight uh you know topics you know either closer coordination or emergency has been a conversation for decades uh so we visited informally to kind of do a check-in on where their district was we know they're facing uh you know facilities questions we know they're facing questions around equalized people and declining enrollment um where it came out of that conversation is uh they are going through a reorganization and uh strategic planning process that they plan to emerge in spring uh they feel that there is interest potentially after that process in having a broader conversation about where our two districts are at and where the future of our two districts might be uh they do not feel the time for that conversation is now they want to go through their process first uh we are also you know in the wake of the flood and some other things you know looking I think to to answer some facilities and other questions as well uh so what we decided to do is that that you know I would continue to stay in touch with floor Libby and Megan talk regularly and when we emerge from kind of the two processes that we have going on one of what we're going to discuss tonight uh we would meet as two boards in the spring and check in and see where we're at and see what potential next steps if any are so I just wanted to praise people of that I know that's a potentially you know big step uh you know and so that's kind of where we're looking I'd love to to get input for thoughts now and obviously as we move forward so um any any reactions or or questions the chocolate's still down there it hasn't migrated yet we're not discussing right you're not asking if we have questions around the RFP we're just talking about conversations yeah give an update uh we're just been yes that in the community uh and I think our two processes you know with the equity waiting study and I know you know Wash Central is facing some some financial issues and we are also yeah one thing that that Megan Libby floor and I agreed on is we want our districts to both be able to grow and meet the the needs of our students and and you know progressively move forward on education both from an educational perspective and also a facilities perspective to continue to be able to invest in our kids education invest in their learning but also invest in top-notch facilities that provide you know the extracurricular and daily at you know facilities and and and uh grounds if they need yeah I really appreciate thank you for just keeping relationships good with our neighboring district and you know keeping open discussions and open minds about um what the future holds for both districts and and having you know being um forward thinking around how do we support each other uh if one or the other or both districts finds themselves in a situation where they're struggling in some way and so I've always appreciated you know the sort of like sister schools um and as my kids have gone through the district I've learned more about how um you know opportunities are available at U 32 for Montpelier students and vice versa so it it does feel like there's a real collaborative nature there between the two districts and so I really appreciate um you know making sure that that relationship is taken care of and fostered and so thank you for having those forward thinking conversations with them Hi you're welcome and kind of on that I just want to you know kind of mention how wonderful it is to have great neighbors like War Central because you know one of the you know you know both Floor and Megan I think reach out to Libby and I with the flood and and you know mention the possibility of if we weren't able to get to high school often running um you know we might be able to do something with U 32 for temporary you know fostering so you know it's great to have two communities open up for each other. Also thank you for having that conversation I'm the Montpelier Roxbury representative on the Center Vermont Career Center board so Floor and I serve on that board together and it serves 18,000 Center Vermont and we're all serving the same students and very much our one community and and they're very much also going to be needing a new facility for the career center and for those students including Montpelier students and Roxbury students who go to the career center um and there's challenges right with having physical location demands and so I think it's great to like keep that conversation open because I do think there's some really exciting things that could be coming in the future for Center Vermont and serving all of those kids and more we're all talking the less we're operating in silos yeah. Brett does it describe the the structure of that district briefly is it possible to do it briefly are there multiple boards in my misunderstanding yeah and I can do it very briefly they they merged as part of Act 46 they were U 32 was a supervisor reunion with its own board and Lynn probably knows it's better than I do and then each of the elementary schools had their own separate board and board members from each board ended up on the U 32 board yeah so it wasn't like a totally separate board it was just representatives from the other boards yeah there are five other schools that go up to sixth grade and then they go into seventh grade at U 32 I'll also say that I share it sounds like the sentiment of Megan and Floor that this would be something like a potential actual like to merge two districts is not something that just happens overnight that it would be a years-long conversation that needs to be done thoughtfully and with a lot of community input and that there would be no pending immediate action by either school district to sort of seek that out in the next couple of years at least yeah no I mean I think the idea is to get it going to check in where we're at see if it makes sense to have further conversations exploratory conversations you know and then you know it's a very complicated process it's going to require community input from every community involved which is you know all five towns around us Mount Pilger Rocksbury and you know there's questions about what the facilities look like what the education looks like and then there's a lot of questions about how the town feel yeah because there you know yeah it's a lot of a lot of tough questions and it would be a long involved community community driven process with with a lot of information needed to be put out there and a lot of very hard things needed to be considered and it's not a new conversation it's not a new idea so the the conversation has been held by these communities you know in the past and so I as an individual board member would be happy to hold to host a new you know thoughtful process to gather community input on that topic and to explore it as a possibility but I just want to I just want to manage expectations around sort of like a potential you know there's there's been people that are emailing and interested in that idea and I just want to make sure that people understand the complexity of the process and that it's not something that we would just form a committee and do next school year yeah absolutely it's right yeah it's it's going to be very complex it requires again like all seven towns I think to be on board it requires both districts to be on board it requires a lot of things to work out and a lot of things to work out that people have very big feelings about and you know it has there's a reason it's been talked about for decades and has not happened it's it's complicated and not easy and potentially doesn't doesn't make sense so yeah but you know that's that's where we felt that worth worth exploring we're above that and you will see where that exploration needs but it's not going to be it's not going to be easy for a snap of the fingers thing at all nor should any any further comments or questions on that and then I can tee up our facilities options so yeah as you know and we haven't really had time I think to dig into this deeply as a board yet we had a significant flood on July 10th and 11th that I think you know exposed what we all knew was was a possibility which was that we have a high school that was you know built probably not super wise at the time in a flood plain we have a warming world that is upon us where flooding events are going to be more and more frequent and you know well you know the school sustained a fair amount of of expense and damage as a result of that fortunately it was covered by insurance and we had a fantastic team that was able to get the school up and running so we could could open if either the timing was different or quite frankly the water was a few inches higher we might be in a very different boat and yeah we need to kind of explore options going forward because I think I share everyone's sentiment that we want a high school that's going to be safe and sustainable for our students we want a high school that we can invest confidently you know we certainly don't want to be in a position where we just leave the high school as it is and say let's not build anything because it's in a flood zone because that's a huge disservice to our students it's a huge disservice to our community but we also want to be prudent about making sure that the investments we make going forward are the right ones and are sustainable in light of you know what what climate change has in store for us in the store for the site so kind of what you know Mia Libby and I and you know with some of you I know Kristen you and I've talked about it as facilities the committee had is you know we need to take some time to look at what the options for the site are and make some intelligent decisions going forward and a lot of ideas have been put out there you know obviously moving this building or moving to high school location is not going to be cheap at all I mean we're probably you know if we really want to move the high school we're talking about probably a 25 to 40 million dollar bond kind of based on what we've seen in in Burlington and other places that's not cheap and then there's questions of do we even have land for that in in Waukesha where would that be my players pretty small and pretty built and and if we keep the high school here how do we make sure that we can invest confidently in it and that it will be a building that if you know floods are more frequent five to ten years each flood is not going to shut the school down or cause millions of dollars of damage so these are like these are tough questions or questions that obviously the whole city is asking and you know we need to be you know part of that discussion so what we've come up with is to have put up an RFP to have professional consultants that are able to drive a process and crunch numbers and do research help lead a community led process because ultimately this needs to be a process that's informed by the community where ideas come from the community it can't just be a community led process because we don't we need the expertise and we need someone to synthesize it so to put up an RFP to a consultant to come in to lead that community led process to take the ideas that come in to pencil those out to sketch them out and to put together a report that we can have hopefully sooner rather than later to start informing some of the big questions we have to answer about you know the future of our facilities and you know how we invest in those facilities you know moving forward so that is a discussion around process obviously the track has become part of that my suggestion is that we put that project up what our options are I think you know we all voted unanimously for that project because we felt it was a needed investment for our students but I also feel that you know given its location you know building that that track as we proposed it without taking a good look at whether that makes sense in light of what happened in July 11 probably is unwise so I'll leave it at that and let folks dig in and then I think you know we have probably two motions which is whether to to you know suspend the track until that process takes place and then also whether we give approval to living to put the RFP out and start getting bits and all that so no that was a lot Phil I see the language that's in the agenda says unassigned and it sounds like what we really would like to do is put on hold or defer action can we simply do that because if we re unassigned fun balance I feel like that creates uncertainty and that feels like a little bit of a knee jerk reaction whereas if we are deferring action until such time as we have more information we can absolutely go ahead yeah I want to sorry Jill we've done no yes yeah I want to second that I had asked a question in an email today that I didn't expect to get a response for for this afternoon but yeah just do we can't can we put the project project on pause without unassigning the money just thinking about the immersive process that was over weeks and months to kind of arrive at a yes for the earmarking of that funding that involved a lot of student boys and a lot of community input so just not wanting to lose sight of that and seeing the value I know in that process personally I became very convinced about the value of the track program in terms of its broad accessibility to so many kids and so many abilities and so many mindsets and so I just want to keep that in mind that I personally still very much value the track program the idea of an improved track but it seems to make a lot of sense to to kind of let the strategic planning process run its course before we take action on that and I think currently as it stands and the last update from Andrew LaRosa of facilities and energy the thinking was the RFP would go out in December so we would be like pausing that process letting this process run its course and I would just also like to see it's not unassigned the funds yeah so that that makes more of it other thoughts? Brett? I think the word I assigned is too strong a word as Jill and Kristen were just saying I also think that drainage I mean I think that it's the prospect of building a school somewhere is an interesting idea it may be a 10-year project if it were to come to that and it would probably be four years before we started the 10 you know it might be 10 years before ground was broken and there may very well be other events I think the outcome in this event was for the school district pretty like we kind of made it by the skin of our teeth in a way I don't want to count on that happening again but I certainly think that facilities are going to want access to whatever fund balance is there whether that is drainage for other practice fields current fields anything around this area and I would love to see a track I'm 100% in favor of the track program and the idea of a modern track I think our kids deserve it I think the community deserves it but there may be a lot of engineering work that comes along with drainage across the entire site that may sort of you know be a different way of looking at how the fund are actually used ultimately. Yeah process point for tonight are we taking each of these questions separately? Yes. Yeah okay I don't have anything to add on the track question I had more questions on the RFP. Any other questions on the track and then we can have have the vote on the track and look at the RFP. Yeah I'm just going to sort of like add my voice to the chorus here but I just you know I don't feel any need to be I don't understand any decision that the decision needs to be went without saying that we were going to pause the track and and all other capital improvements of our facilities in light of what we learned about the flood so I didn't feel like that maybe needed to be and maybe that was like a miscalculation on the board's part based on the feedback that we've been receiving from the public but in my heart it felt like of course we're going to like sort of take inventory of what happened during the flood and then see how to proceed forward and so I did not have any conversations just for the record with anybody on the board who was ready to plow forward with any capital improvement projects and in particular nothing around the track was discussed so I just want to make sure that that's said for public record that the school board had almost no meetings through the summer because of the flood we came back for a very brief meeting it was not you know we weren't in any headspace or emotional space to be making any firm decisions I don't think it would be appropriate for any of us to be trying to make any firm decisions anytime soon and I appreciate sort of the breathing room and the time to step back and be thoughtful and reflective and learn from the professionals who know about engineering and field design and draining and you know what makes sense for us moving forward our basement I mean I was impressed to I only walked on the track today for the first time since the flood and I was really impressed to see the condition of the track there wasn't any silt it seems to be it looks almost exactly the same as it did when I last saw it in the spring so I just want to be you know I just feel like it's a good time to step back take inventory I'm fully supportive of hiring a consultant to sort of move us through what does what does the future look like with these and just wanted to say for the record that I don't think anybody on the board was ready to plow ahead with any capital improvement plans including the track I agree with what's already been said around I I'm not sure that a vote really needs to be I wonder if a vote an official vote needs to be taken tonight on the track or if the funds can just remain earmarked while we learn more since it's on the agenda you would just vote no with the direction that I would that you suspend the track project yeah yeah but would we have to make a motion and a second just because it's on the agenda my understanding of action but I would look towards our parliamentarian I don't think we I don't think it doesn't carry can it well and it also says but it doesn't say a vote will be held yeah direction here yeah I just want to agree I was definitely wondering about how it would make sense to have any discussion about the track before we pursue the decision making process about the high school this seems like the most logical course of action I definitely still support the track project I also run track so I might not be the most unbiased person but this seems logical oh yeah sorry Scott I saw you earlier and then Scott you've got air time if you if you want to use it I don't know if you under your driving yeah this would work can you guys hear me yep I can hear you live in prayer fantastic um yeah I I'm I appreciate that we're having the conversation about both of these issues but but I I I think we are unnecessarily complicating the discussion I think um the they're they're not the same question right the question about the RFP I I believe we will vote on that um I don't know that we need to nor do I think we should vote on the track at this point um it makes sense to get the information from the um from as a result of the RFP um and Mike I I guess I just don't know enough about the fund balance at what point does the board need to take action on that um and would it be prudent to wait until March um to to get the results of the um of the um study and then make decisions about any capital improvement including the track thanks yeah those are good questions out we can definitely wait till March we are not under any statutory or other obligation to uh move on the fund balance in any sort of time-sensitive manner so so it sounds like what I'm hearing is there is a consensus of the board to give kind of verbal direction that we want to pause the track project while we do this RFP and then revisit it when we have more information so you know no bids no RFP is going out on the track and so we discuss it again and give indication otherwise but the commitment to the to building to track remains we just have to see if it makes sense where it is now and if there's other priorities that come up in this process that causes us to think differently and maintaining the 1.9 million dollars in a bar yeah so I've heard a couple people say it doesn't make sense to do any capital and projects but we do have some going on like the auditorium at UES has happened so I just want to make sure we're not like making too many blanket statements to confuse our administrators I'm not confused yeah I think it's in the floodplain yeah I think it's big big improvements at this school I'm gonna have to see routine maintenance we're gonna keep going the law and then we're gonna keep well that's not a capital project yeah we do have a significant number of capital projects that our community has been waiting for and we've been talking about like window replacement and the playground at UES and and if there is reason to shift those we should have that discussion but that's those are not wrapped into this kind of yeah I think right now the the existing projects at our non-floodplain schools are are still great thank you for that yes yeah thank you so I just think I think Jamie you said this at the last meeting um I think it's really important we remember that four years of high school while it went by fast is a lifetime when you're in high school and every year that we continue to have uncertainty or have challenging conversations that leave a sense of uncertainty when we've come out of three years of a pandemic then we've had a flood the locusts will be here soon I'm sure I just think it's really important for our students to know yeah we had a fire I knew I was forgetting another we had a fire too um I just you know it's it's heartbreaking to have to sort of continue to put off some of these pieces and I'm pretty sure I have on pretty good authority that the theater department also lost a lot of stuff in the flood it was in the basement like I think right but that we wouldn't not have plays this year because we've lost our theater stuff so I just think it's really important we still have students who are very actively experiencing high school and we do have a responsibility to like provide we can't just put off everything because the adults are like you know we are thinking big picture which we should but I also want to make sure that we are um still providing our students what they need and we're not just short changing everybody's experience indefinitely while we make these decisions I hope that's clear but I wanted to say that thank you and absolutely I think that's one of the reasons we want to get this process moving quickly so we can can have those answers because I don't think any of us want to put investments in our kids on hold for any longer than they have to be on hold because it's because you're right Jill I think yeah high school is a super formative experience and uh we don't want kids waiting on things to that end in more immediate way so can we just hear so is the track currently safe and in use like at capacity by the middle school and high school call track program no cross country sorry cross country cross country knows the track they don't use the track so the track is not in use for the track program currently but it could be like it's in is it able to be used in access to its current condition create it and add the gravel back I mean it's not unsafe right now now I've walked on it yeah I'm not a runner so yeah I don't run on it yeah but people I've seen people when I pull up at 630 in the morning running on it so wrapping caution right yeah okay there's no need for that if you wanted a question so the answer about people running back there go ahead okay if you're not going to track these there this spring because the facility really wasn't safe to run all of the events that you would want to do safely for a track stand point and the sheer amount of volunteer energy it takes from an army of about 50 folks to try to get it ready so you could get a track link there is really untenable so we were able to partner with you 32 a couple of times to run weeks there but that also was brought with all sorts of decisions yeah so yeah just that's pretty fun yeah the track events that were hosted by mhs and msms were at you 32 which is which was very nice of them to do so but you only want to you only want to borrow your neighbor sam works on these songs but we don't need to we can use the bike that it's not urgent also I want to thank Jill for that comment because I mean it definitely feels really long to me right now and the lack of surety around these things is definitely a little scary I mean it's less scary being here and seeing the process but I think there's definitely a sense of we don't know where our high school is going to be in a couple years and that is scary that's that's scarier than we don't know if the track's going to get redone or not but I mean it would be nice but another thing I want to add to the I think Kristen was may have been one of your questions but it certainly has come from from porch forum as well this idea that the track is a permeable surface as it is right now it's not a permeable surface in any way shape or form and we have engineering designs to tell us that so the idea that the board eventually would be making taking an impure permeable surface where water can flow through ideally and making it a no I'm sorry a permeable surface where the water can flow through and if we were to redesign it to make it that makes it infer that's just not accurate it's it is impervious not right now to water so I just wanted to put that out there because it's been a topic of consternation I think amongst the public and you can see where I you can see why you I had that same thought with my driveway when we did that was like well it's gravel driveway it's it's permeable but no no not the way not the way it's made I just wanted I don't I don't know because I didn't prepare to answer your your statement that you just said about being scared about the future of the school but um but I'll try to just I think that the future of whatever the future holds for the students of this district I think it will be you know thoughtful a thoughtful process with only the best interest of all of the students in mind and with student input and so I don't think anything would happen that the students weren't you know supportive of and welcoming of and if something were to happen with some sort of future merger with U32 um you know first of all it would take a long time and then second of all and there would be plenty of time for student input on that process um to for us to understand for the board to understand how students really feel about the future of like a potential merger um so I would only see it as like maybe try to keep an open mind of like if there's any conversations in the future about merging that it would only be an opportunity to sort of explore options and not you know something that would be done against the will of the students I hope I understand I think we should Alara and I can definitely work on continuing to communicate that with the students because I think that would be valuable for people to understand that decisions aren't being made behind closed doors by big powerful people that it's going to be a long process and that people haven't but and I feel like there has been some transparency about that like in um Mr. Gingel's like principal updates in the so-and-so moves up especially at the beginning of the year which I actually kind of like to read sometimes when I'm bored yeah so I do feel like it is being communicated with the students but maybe not as much as for people who don't actively seek out resources for communication but we can we can work on that together it might be a good first assignment for us together to host like a student forum to discuss some of the stuff that's been bubbling up in the community now and I just want to reiterate like whatever the outcome of the process is we will ensure that you know for each school year they you know the students are in a building that is functional and meets their needs so if we merge with U32 it would be done in a way where there'd be like a smooth transition from you know one year here to you know moving to that high school if we build a new high school this high school will stay functioning and up to date and usable until that new high school is ready to be to be built we won't you know we will make sure that there's not you know a temporary situation I mean obviously if if there's an event and you know the bill is not usable but in terms of like planning we'll do it so it's it's smooth and students are getting what they need all the every step of the way. So moving on to the are we ready to discuss the RFP? I'm assuming you've all read it if not I mean it just basically asks for a community led process as I stated with you know the consultant holding forums collecting information getting public input and then putting a report that we would distribute to the community and also use as a discussion point to you know discuss what our options are and my guess is depending on what the options are we'd probably have a community process around you know betting that option and making a decision around it. You just get darker in here. Yeah, this one probably one. I was like fading. So any any any questions about the RFP I think the desire is to approve it so Libby can get it started but if there is edits, amendments, general discussion points we can do that and we can have it hopefully approve it with kind of those those line items indicated so that way Libby can hopefully send it out at each month. I just wanted to confirm that what we're looking for at the end of the process is the like recommendations from people who are have done the research on the like geographical and geological have collected the community input and and it'll be about all of our facilities all of our buildings it's not just focused on the high school because it's in a blood plane and so we could have information that we could use for another question that's come up many times which is how do we what should we do if anything about Roxbury Village School when we would potentially have information that would help us answer that question as well. Yeah and I think it's structured. I think it's structured it's written that way right now so it would be a holistic look I mean obviously I think the high school would be a large focus of it because it's gone a problem that schools don't but it would look holistically at those other buildings. And would it also look at some of the I guess maybe this is what we come through in the community input is that ideas that are generated from from the community like like merging with U32 or building a high school where the Old Elks Club was they would maybe investigate those and say here's the benefits of those and here's the downsides of those ideas. They would not have the authority necessarily to talk about merger because they're not working with U30. Right that's a good point. That's a good point. Yeah but but I think they could I think they could explore it as a hypothetical. Yeah from our lens. From our lens. Right. From our lens. What would be benefits and downsides to Montpelier Roxbury of doing that and other ideas like buying any of the college buildings that are left or yeah okay that's great that's what we need. It would be everything like looking what is there about the land Montpelier. Yeah. If so how much would it cost. Where is it. Yeah those types of. Who can do all of that. Architecture firms do that. They do. Okay yeah especially those who specialize in school buildings and the community input process. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Truex Collins just did a huge community input process with Manuski to get there. They renovated renovated a building but got it. It was huge and also like contractors do it too. I think we'd be veering more towards architects but got it. Okay. I have one more question about that. Maybe it's just in percent and maybe architecture firms development firms kind of you know have somebody in-house to lead that part of the work but that part of the work does feel really significant in terms like we're talking about students and staff and community members we're talking about many different groups of people and I know right now I think it says like up to three community sessions. Community engagement sessions and I would wonder if we want to expand on that so that we can capture kind of all of the groups that we are intending. Again it's sort of like a managing expectations piece like if we're saying via this process we are going to substantively and actively engage these groups can that feasibly be accomplished in three community engagement sessions. And maybe that's a question we ask them in some of the interviewing we do but I would wonder if increasing that number would make sense given the breadth of engagement we're hoping to get. Thank you. So that's a question I have and that could be and I wonder too just in the qualifications piece could we specifically mention you know that we're seeking a firm that is has a just strong history and experience of of doing that community engagement work and specifically naming that because it feels like it's going to be a big part of what we're hoping to get out of it. The one thing that if more are required that we use real room for for that right. That's your first question. Do we have more? Yeah. So that at least three of these right. For your second question around should we add things for qualifications if I channel my inner Andrew LaRosa. Exactly what he would say. Yeah. He would say that people who haven't haven't had experience with this work will apply for this work or that will come out in their application. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. So and again so the process will be you know if this gets improvement goes out it'll also come back to like facilities and energy committee folks can participate in interviews such that we can kind of ask those questions about the community engagement work. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Were we going to think about the timing. It's not in there. It says the final report should be presented to the school board at their public meeting on arrows. Oh. Yeah. The last. Oh I thought that was part of our discussion. Got it. Sorry. I just missed those arrows. Those arrows should read March 20. Are making the decision on hiring the firm into the board who will vote to approve based on a recommendation from you and Andrew or was it good for facilities committee. So if we follow the same process as the equity audit it would make sense that the facilities committee would do interviews with myself and Andrew. Great. And then with Andrew and I doing most of the reference checks and that kind of thing and then we'd come to the board with a nomination. Yeah. That sounds good. So I was able to get a quick glance at this during the last facilities and energy committee meeting last week but I still haven't been able to really give it enough time to do like a really close read of it. So that's my sort of first overarching concern is that this was this was provided to board members on Friday on a long weekend. I'm not sure that we've had enough time to really be thoughtful about the wording or or you know how we want to present this how we want to move forward. I I feel like I would feel better if we could postpone the vote until the next meeting.  I have two other questions. The first is just sort of something that we had discussed at facilities and energy that the piece in this proposal or request for proposals are fee the piece in here that that mentions or Rocksbury Village School and like a process around Rocksbury Village School. I worry and I'm happy to be convinced you know otherwise but I do have a little bit of a concern that there we might be in a position of sort of over promising and under delivering for that process the way that our constituents might imagine it. So there's people on you know there's people that live in Rocksbury where this is their community school if when they see this I would imagine that there would be a flood of emotions around well here here it is here's the signal that they're going to consider closing our school and so like is that really the question in this RFP and if not I think we need to be very clear that that's not really the question or if it is one of the questions on the table then are we able to hold a process with Fidelity with the Rocksbury community around what their future holds if one of the options that this company proposes is to close that school. So it feels I just feel like sort of nervous around what it might mean to people when they read this and I want to clarify that as much as possible in the language of the RFP so that people understand like what this process will hold for the future of Rocksbury Village School there's also we've heard from constituents on the other side where it's like you know it costs more money to educate an individual student at Rocksbury Village it's an additional tax burden that should be explored so will those constituents read this and think okay great we're finally having the conversation and are we actually having the conversation so that's I just want to make sure that we're clarifying in the document that piece and um or at least at these open meetings clarifying that piece. I have a question I know I'm supposed to direct things to you but I have a question for Emma is it is it a separate conversation or could it be a conversation that is part of the holistic conversation of what is the future of our district? It could be I just know how committees have gone in the past around emotionally heated topics and I just am not sure that this timeframe is enough to hold that conversation with fidelity and I also want to make sure that you know that the Rocksbury community is able to you know maybe there's a concurrent process that's happening so that when this architecture firm goes to the Rocksbury community for feedback that they have already been having a process of community input and that they can present that community input to the architectural firm I'm not sure I just I mean basically my overarching thing is that I haven't had enough time to really understand what it means that the Rocksbury Village School is included in this RFP and I mean all schools are included in the RFP but it is sort of pulled out as a topic of discussion in the RFP so I just want to have more time to sort of sit with what that actually means and then if there's anything that we can do to the wording of the RFP to make sure that we're clarifying what the process what we're hoping to get out of the process if we're gonna if we're gonna call out Rocksbury Village School and the future of Rocksbury Village School in the RFP I think it might lend itself to like a couple I know Andrew wants us to be simple and to the point but I think it could use one or two more bill of points about what we're actually asking to happen around that question because it is a pretty big question and it's been brought up over the years by both sides of it and then my other question is around funding so I'm guessing that the money for this will come from fund balance and I just want to get clear on sort of the numbers where we're at right now and how much discretionary funding we have in there but we had also discussed potentially removing that you're much fun that was part of our conversation yeah thanks um yeah I guess I have a quick question and comment um I'm wondering so the timeline as it's written in this draft RFP right now if I I'm not reading it um but if I remember correctly and someone mentioned that the report would be back to the board sometime in March um and if that's correct I don't see a cost associated with holding off for at least for at least another board meeting because any recommendations that would come in March would not be acted upon um by the board right and so and so I am I'm I agree with what Emma was saying I do think getting an opportunity to be a little bit more intentional about the wording um and give us give the board a chance to to take a quick look to make sure um I also agree about the I don't see why I don't see the benefit to specifically mentioning the future of Roxbury schools in the RFP um I think the RFP is clear in fact the section right above it says looking at all the facilities um which includes the high school and the Roxbury Village school and so and so I think we would unnecessarily be stirring emotions by by calling out um the Roxbury school um I think if if there's a decision to be made that that process would be separate and not led by an architectural firm probably led by um you know someone more adapted in community engagement um but but yeah I I just don't think that we should be conflating uh those two issues um in this RFP yeah this was to basically piggyback both Scott and Emma at this point but I do think you know I think the language does feel charged it feels like a bit of a quick hanger feels like the um state of the school kind of hangs in the balance of this process and I think that you know a historical retrospective on kind of how RVS has also been thought about I mean there's been um you know kind of alternative complimentary potential uses of RVS considered I under this is before my tenure on the board but including like an immersion language school outdoor education because the school has also been seen as an asset it's a solid building it's a rural it's a kind of rural campus so you know I think any of this also right like there's no foregone conclusions the reason we're engaging in this process is to like throw it all at the wall get community input um to be kind of having these sort of deeper exploratory conversations you know at the board um and so I do agree that I feel like that wording needs to be finessed because it does feel like limited because I feel like what we're talking about is like future use and potential educational you know opportunities at RVS so it's not like I guess future of just feels really binary like open closed and I feel like that's how it's oftentimes experienced out in our community and it is very triggering um and assumptions or you know assuming things it's never a great you know response but it certainly does happen and I certainly want to be prepared to kind of respond to like if somebody when somebody watches this here's you know this conversation um you know to provide a response and be able to frame it for them you know I think the other historical piece you know and I'm not sure where this fits in necessarily but in terms of the board's awareness of kind of what the I call it the marriage contract but the merger document how it talks about in 2018 uh sorry 25 five years into the merger that you know there could be a process to consider use of RVS and any closure of the school would be would be determined by a vote of the school board so I understand that the that timing has now arrived and so that's why it's feeling like that you know this this question um is appropriate to have at this time um but I I agree in that finessing the language and getting I think I'm also most concerned with the capacity of this process um to hold that conversation uh have adequate community engagement and input because it's really really big for our community that school is like the heart soul and hub of our town it's where the family connections are currently happening such that when our kids do come to the middle school in the high school folks can figure out carpooling you know just the the connections are being forged at RVS and it's it's it's really essential and there are the very real pieces of of the cost and there's the real pieces I know it was it was a close call this year and stopping the school you know at the end of um you know this fiscal year and moving into this school year so there are things I just I do have concerns that this process is going to be able to adequately hold that like that conversation and I do wonder if another couple weeks of kind of finessing and ruminating and getting feedback um would be advantageous to make sure that we're getting it right so don't have the same concerns that were just voiced by Emma Scott and Kristen largely because what we would get at the end of this process is a recommendation from the consultant and then the board would have more work to do so the board would have would get a lot of different pros and cons is what I'm imagining for many different scenarios in a in this report and recommendation and then we would have to decide which path are we going to go down first with more conversations and more community engagement so that's why I feel like it's it's okay to put it this out there and then interview the firms and get started on the process because there is going to be a lot more work to do even after we get even after it ends yeah with that I mean I I understand the concerns hugely and I mean I was you know part of the merger committee and one of that I've you know very sensitive to how much that school means for Roxbury and I mean I think part of the reason I feel it needs to be included and you know maybe we can do some put us around language is I think it's really important to get the information so the board can working with both communities make an intelligent choice so I think what I see this is something that's going to give us a lot of information both you know kind of hard information you have numbers you know the real estate situation you know also you know what climate change is going to look like for this building and also a lot of community input in terms of you know how people feel about the buildings what people's needs are and then I think any decision based on you know the future of Roxbury I would hope would be informed by that not decided by that and then we you know we parking by another process I mean what I don't want to do is not get any information about the Roxbury Village School because you know as you stated you know we almost had a staffing crisis this summer we do not want to be in a situation with Roxbury either due to like a budget crunch or you know staffing situation where we make a quick decision that has a longer term interact on that community I think the sooner we make knowledge gaining knowledge and gaining information about how best to use that facility both for the district and the community the better and this seems like a great opportunity to get that information and and inform future actions and future decisions. Really quickly Jim it is I absolutely agree with you and that's why I really appreciate getting this RFP out there I guess the question I have is isn't it the same reason um the rationale is the same for the high school right yes absolutely the high schools the high schools is not mentioned in the RFP right the section right above where Roxbury is called out it says all of the facilities so so I just I guess I don't I don't write RFPs and I don't read them but I question the benefit of calling out one school in the RFP and I can see some real potential costs and so I if you took it out Roxbury school would still be a part of the the study as a result of the RFP and so that's the only I guess that's the only the point that I'm trying to make is that is that all of the schools inclusive of Roxbury would be included in the RFP even if that one sentence was struck from the RFP. Yeah the the high school is specific I mean one thing we could do is in if you're looking at the the document is one D we could say district configuration including the future of all facilities. Yeah including the yeah you know potential future uses of all facilities. Exactly yeah make sense yeah I'm hoping that need street middle school I mean I'm not to not just throw another log on the fire but we've definitely been very aware that that has we have like kept it running and it is not providing what our staff and our students need for that really important time as much as it could because it's aging and it's bursting and there are very real like traffic and safety challenges so I like the idea of every building as part of this holistic look because I we couldn't we wouldn't be able to look at one without looking at the overall and it's sort of this I'm happy to list the schools so that people really know that we're like is that address the feelings that it's being singled out if we took it out I'm just still under prepared to make a vote I mean I don't know how much money we have in the fund balance right now exactly I know that it's probably fine but I would like to know the answers that question and I just would like more time to read do a very careful read of this document personally if others are ready to move forward then I can just vote my will I mean the expected potential range is $50 to $75,000 as long as I think we should we have it coming to the autobare we have a $200,000 surplus from last year after two million that was earmarked for the track I think at least this price range I mean it can be done for that much money in this much time that's it's a tall ask this is a major ask it's a huge ask I mean nothing drove home the dangers more than being days away from not having a 3-4 teacher at that school before a decision would need to be made to potentially send the 3-4 classroom to UES that would have been our shock that would have demanded action and it would have been all kind of behind closed doors and so that that that scared the whatever out of me I really think that the extra $50,000 in a 28 and a half million dollar budget is I don't know I mean that's us not a real issue it is challenging to do classes there to teach well I think and I would like to know what our potential future out you know what are the possibilities and and I'm but I'm also we're this is the process right now you know I don't know I'm thinking of Jill's comments and like this is a big ask of some firm to do this and the longer we delay the less time they have to do it well the less time we have to get strong proposals the less time they have to do the work I I don't know a lot I don't know that we need to wait two weeks to change the language that we can't just do it now I'm I don't I feel like we're reasonable it's not overly rushed but that's kind of my personality which has its drawbacks and I totally fully recognize that I'm just going to make a motion so I'm deciding the way I move to approve the RFP as amended tonight in the meeting that and as a message and it is in one be it will be jade redistrict configuration kind of comma including the potential future uses of all facilities all right um do you have a second I think any further discussion all those in favor hi hi any opposed I'm just going to stay do you want to I was going to I was going to ask many obstructions I'm supportive of the RFP yeah I am and and I will I will I will vote as a well um so 70 days and then the extension but no very fair am I I don't understand that may I ask no I think your points well taken that I mean we're all busy people and the board is a lot of work we get a lot of paperwork and it would be good to have enough lead time to really consider things before we have to vote on them I I do hear what you're saying yeah no absolutely no it's a very fair um I think we have a retreat now we're ready for a two-hour meeting all right should we take uh two or three minutes let's take five okay we'll start at seven all right well then let's dive in and we're keeping that in mind and we're trying to bear eye on the screen um we'll start with just a quick recap and a kind of overview of how the rest of tonight's going to go um so as most of the folks in the room know we at our august 9th board meeting was uh four hour part half day retreat where we used all of the had continued the work that came out of the um visioning work and the definition of what our vision is and how we accomplish the mission of the district to clearly articulate what we mean by our top three priorities of closing the academic gaps safety belonging and wellness and community engagement and what we mean by those including what we believe to be indicators of success within those three priorities and tonight the rest of tonight is a continuation of that conversation where we will set goals within those priorities which as we talked about in on august 9th the priority definition and the indicators of success are very are broad and the goals are where we start to get very specific um and that's what tonight is all about so I thought it would be good to start by just saying out loud for the benefit of folks who maybe haven't been keeping up with the um conversation with at every step of the way what those three priorities are and the indicators of success within them and so I was hoping to get three volunteers to read one each read one great christen can you do the first one please um so the priority is to close the academic achievement gap and the indicators would be every student has the confidence and skills to achieve excellence and to support continuous growth along their learning journey and systems are in place to measure monitor and support students on their unique path towards meeting or exceeding grade level expectations any barriers based on identity and socioeconomic status of students shall not predict academic success at mrps all students have the access they need to opportunities that will help them succeed and our graduates envision a limitless path to their future and chosen pursuits as continued learning that benefits themselves in their communities number two for us I can do that um thanks Jill belonging safety and wellness all students staff and families caregivers feel welcomed in our schools and valued for the unique history identity and beliefs that they bring to the school community the environments systems and opportunities that foster student and staff wellness are present successful and thriving in our schools students staff and families caregivers can expect to feel safe and have a strong sense of belonging and healthy connections to our school district when circumstances arise that jeopardize the feeling of belonging safety and wellness the district provides structures and systems to build resiliency resources are available to staff students families caregivers that enable them to access their education and school community members feel those resources are accessible for them you can read number three for us our students are more likely to be successful when our whole school community is engaged in their education mrps communicates effectively in a manner that honors and recognizes families backgrounds and connects family engagement to student learning to foster inviting collaborative relationships our families are valued collaborators partners monitors advocates and decision makers and their children's education success looks like a broad and diverse group of stakeholders who contribute to the school community and decisions that are transparent and accountable set the goals within each of those three priorities we're going to follow the same flow as we did the last meeting which is we'll break up into small groups one for each of those um priorities and each of those groups will have 20 minutes to start to draft the goals within their priority that they're responsible for then we'll come back together as a big group to share and offer each other feedback then we'll break up into slightly different small groups so that who will take what was initially started and the feedback that came in the bigger session and continue to work through the um the draft goals come back together as a big group to do similar report out and share feedback and then break up into small groups one more time to revise and set the goals any questions on how that's going to go all right and for anybody following along at home the documents that we're using for this are up on the um board webpage as part of the materials for this meeting in case you want to check them out okay so then let's dive into the small first round a small group work um tackling closing the achievement gap will be myself and Jill belonging safety and wellness will be Emma and Kristen and community engagement will be Lynn Jim and Rhett so why don't I come over to you Jill and Kristen you're gonna come over to Emma and Libby we would love you to float yep like you did last time and the third group you can maybe gather at the table the central table and Jake if you want to join any of the groups so 20 minutes in these first conversations okay great yep yeah and as soon as you do that then that's for me okay yeah oh good thank you all right right oh sorry so yeah so what we're doing is we're writing out our check whether we have sort of our vision our focus you know our approach our values and then these are the priorities and indicators for the next like three years I think it's sort of the timeline we're trying to go by so these are like evergreen measures and then goals for 2023 to 2025 so like being more specific about how we would measure those things yeah yeah yes it's the first time we are doing it as the board for Montpelier Roxbury but um right the ideally the things that our indicators of success would like always be true and then every every two years or so we would come back to the goals and say are these still the things we are putting like more specific focus on like for example the first one of our first draft goals is that 90 percent of all third graders regardless of identity or socioeconomic status end of the year able to read at or about about grade level and one of the reasons that we've named that is that it's an important milestone in any child's education journey is that you know by that third grade point and because it's one of the things that we've identified is actually could use more focus in our school community is literacy especially at the elementary school levels so the question is should that be a goal that like by 2025 or we've gotten to 90 percent is that actually is that realistic in addition to being ambitious it's certainly ambitious so it's one of the questions we're going to ask Libby when she comes back is like we really like the idea of that milestone and setting some kind of goal for that milestone but is 90 percent the right number is 2025 the right deadline right now it's a little hard to tell I went back and looked at our data it's a little hard to tell because right now it's presented as school-wide for the most part but if I could it looks like maybe it's around six like two-thirds to three-quarters to maybe somewhere in there all right so last great question no keep going that's one action we could take yeah and it's another another way we would use this goal is accountability of our superintendent and her team like all right what are you doing about this and do you need more resources to be able to get to this goal yeah right and we just started like a new data tracking piece and we have a new position who is actually like ready he's like a family so he actually is it's taken on this chronically absent yeah and so we're going to be like he literally will like go talk to families who will reach out to kids he will like arrange rides for them if it's a kids are absent they're not here to eat or to get anything so like this is pretty high especially for students in low system that brings us lunch that's something um they tend to be much more it's pretty high right now we're at 30 30 34 across the board not just with it but I think it's 34 percent we want to bring there electronically absent what is it 18 days or 11 days and it depends where you are or what part of the school it's 10 percent of the school year thus far so yeah as well so there are things we can now start to measure right so like if students are just closing their gap and they can actually move out of special education services that would be a success right so whatever we think that percentage should be so I think I would love to hear from you Libby your feedback on some of the ones that are drafted already I think the chronically absent goes in the third yeah okay that goes in a different that goes in a different shirt that's where we put that bucket so that would be one thought about the context absent oh I don't have edit access should give you access to that I think you have that access are you in this one Kristen are you in this one so some things that we know matter for academic right ninth grade matters quite a bit so there should be something in there yes I can yeah this is like a holding place for what that would be I don't know what it would be but yeah I think it should be something around proficiency so our goal internally is that all students will be proficient in priority standards well in grade level priority standards for fishing or above that's how we're defining high levels of learning so ninth grade would be article one right which might be an indicator English one general science integrative science integrative science are the you know and then I think it's like a global studies kind of course would be the four four content areas right well oh language arts is what this one I'm missing here yeah it's just English nine English yeah those are the core content for four content courses for you know I'd probably focus in mostly on the English in the math specifically so that's an indicator another indicator for high school is the number of students who take AP courses right so currently our data indicates that a tremendous amount with 42 kids taking AP coursework now they may not be 42 separate kids but we have we have 40 we have 42 kids who are taking AP they may be taking multiple AP classes when I try to say Christina Kimball's son takes seven AP classes open across this year because he's wearing a wicked smile wow um so however I can look at the data on my computer I don't have it absolutely memorized but um 17 of those students qualify for and reduced out of the 42 right so you might want to think of an indicator of increasing high level academic coursework like identifying factors should not something around identifying factors should not be an indicator of whether or not they take high level coursework that's actually a higher proportion than I would have thought yeah 72 17 yeah out of 42 out of 42 but it really it's out of 35 it's one kids taking seven well other kids are taking it so we'll do um so I would just encourage us to look across the grades yes right like the third grade indicator of course is an important one right there's ample research to suggest that we want third graders reading at proficient levels grade levels we don't um except we can and we can't ignore what's happened what needs to happen here as well it's interesting it's changing so because of the universal lunch there's gonna be a longer answer to be a simple question but you're a finance guy right because of the universal lunches we have the state has to come up with a different way to qualify that so now they're using direct certs and it actually increased our percentage of qualified oh yeah so now we were like 18 percent across the district 18 to 20 percent as a general thing that I usually use now we're more towards 30 across the district because of the direct cert I don't think we're quite at 30 percent but we're around 25 30 will that help us in the waiting it will hopefully yeah quite a lot okay and the 18 percent 1742 is higher than the 13 percent right that's like the proportion of pretty remarkable indicator like that percent you can see a professor who earned his lunch is higher than the only population yeah yeah yeah another thing you could think about for the high schools is community-based learning and flexible pathways we're taking that right I can share some data with you right now if you want to just have that at your fingertips for that kind of stuff yeah I guess I wonder if we're not we're doing pretty good on percentage of kids do taking AP AP then we don't necessarily need to set that as a goal but if it shouldn't we set goals around things that we want to like improve on what about passing the assessment yeah so that's why that data so fresh my head because Jason asked me to pay for the assessment for students who qualify so we reduce any barrier yeah so that and so we're paying it's a significant chunk of change okay for those assessments so we're putting 25,000 out of one ounce towards paying the AP tests this year and then next year Jason's going to work that into his purchase so those are just some thoughts to think for you all to consider I'd say the big ones are third grade literacy and math are ninth grade literacy and math the other thing to just grow in there is that height we say all kids will have any choice available so for your college should be a choice and in order to do for your college to have that choice then you need it you need proficiency in algebra too so that might be the measure instead of algebra one just as that but maybe not the ninth grade more just that yeah high schoolers graduate yeah proficient in algebra too yeah uh-huh and you're the ninth grade indicator may go better with belonging safety and you know that they feel like they belong to you know high schoolers who are or ninth graders who are attached to the building and Natalie right super attached to building doing lots of things lots of friends lots of extracurricular extracurricular like we're not worried about Natalie right right it's the kid who's engaged from anything right so it may be a better indicator for social learning people and what what was your thought about the one that I had seen in that article that I read that was like one school board somewhere who was looking at growth and I was thinking also about Mike's comment in the June meeting that really an indicator success is like how are our students progressing so this was just a an example um to do a hundred percent of students in our district would begin making one and a half years worth of growth in reading and math each year those numbers seem very large to me like every single student and a hundred and a half a year and a half's worth of growth seems like a lot of growth in one year I mean yeah I can this school district was way far behind when I yeah what I struggle with and Mike and I have good debates over this as you can imagine two lucky people going after each other on this kind of stuff not going after each other but we get a good debate Mike's our director of curriculum instructions to make sure we're being driving here um I think growth is a good indicator for students who are behind uh-huh I think proficiency is a good indicator for the board level okay it's grander right uh-huh and so a kid who's reading behind right they need to make more growth right than a kid who's reading on level yeah right and we sure we want big growth for kids reading on level it's more of an urgent factor for the kid I don't know how you write that as a goal because all kids growing a year and a half what if it's a second grader oh yeah at an end and moving them to a queue yeah is inappropriate text for that second grade right like I wouldn't want them the the themes are too much for a eight-year-old you know like it just it grows in a weird way right so that that's my critique about that yep or my worry about that and I wonder is for the school board which is should be way up here yeah if it's more about proficiency and then we have to say then we have to get this number of kids growing a year and a half right in order to meet this goal and then how does that address the students who you know who are at proficiency but we but could use an extra challenge so yeah it's the RTI stuff the enrichment stuff right that when you remember the four questions what do we want students to be able to know be able to know and be able to do so what are our prior students uh huh how do we know if they know them right for informative assessments what do we do when they don't when they're not proficient uh how do we react what do we do when they already know them yeah the pre-assessment we're not great at that last question but it's a question we were asking in our collaborative teams and should we set a goal at the board slash broad district level about that or should our goals focus more on proficiency I think our goal should focus on grade level or above proficiency okay okay simple and that's the wording we use with the teachers we're defining high levels of learning of all students being proficient and grade level or above grade level above proficiency in our priority standards okay I think it's the board's discretion and I would encourage you to focus in on the core contents of literacy and math for academic achievement so then what we're saying here this is one we still have a lot of goals under yeah achievement um but this is one that I really liked a lot we thought of this when Jill Scott and I had our small group back in the end of June this was one that you brought in from the career center that I thought was really cool which um Jake the way it reads is that 90 percent of students regardless of identity or socioeconomic status report that their teachers and administrators have high expectations of them and that we would we would do that through more formal student surveys I think is how we would learn that but I'm wondering what you think of that as a goal I think you can take out F that closed their gap and move out of special education I mean the yes that happens occasionally but right when we're identifying a student with a disability that's not something that we can that goes away right right okay and I think you tell me if I'm not if I'm wrong about this but I'm not a special ed students are included in our identify actor 90 percent of all third graders so we wouldn't you know they yeah yeah so the rule of thumb generally with students with disability or when people are like the yeah buts for for this the question I ask people is when that student graduates will they be expected to live independently and pay rent on their own yeah yeah that is 98 percent of our students yeah we have a very small that's two percent of our students will not you know they will never be be able to do that on their own or be expected to do that on their own and they will have plans and support for the rest of their life right mm-hmm but if they're expected to pay rent at some point in their world then they are included mm-hmm and it's not to say the kids who don't pay rent aren't included it's to say they have incredibly specialized plans and they will for the rest of their lives yeah yeah cool and should we so what numbers would you put in here if we're going to have a goal of a percentage of students taking classes regardless of do we should we say would do we want it to be higher than 42 or is 42 so we roughly over our we have around 400 students so that's 10 around 10 but except some of them take more a little less than 10 and that's not included of early college classes yeah like that number I would include oh sure which I don't have that number yeah right now I think they're taking AP and or early college I mean I think if we're up to I mean if we're 10 out as we were to say 25 percent still significant John yep yes one of them yeah maybe higher because there are kids who are taking right maybe 30 percent you know like I'd have to get that number from that to see I don't think a full lot of kids do early college but certainly do uh-huh and how about flexible pathways and career what would be a challenging but also realistic goal I think for that it's not the number of students it's the number it's the one that concerns me is which students are doing that you got it we have around 40 students doing flexible pathways as well but so around 10 okay so flexible pathways means that's not the same as the career center right no it's not it's something like so that was our that was our time or time to wrap up these initial thoughts more work to be done don't worry or more time for the work to be done I should say it sounds like what we would be setting for the goals here and then we'll wrap up and present to the group the flexible path yeah yeah well let's let's start there and I think the way then we would word this one is the there's like little to no difference between the percentages of our demographics and the percentages of kids taking using taking advantage of flexible pathways and the career center so like you were saying you know 30 percent of our kids right now qualify for free and reduced lunch well then 30 percent of the kids in flexible pathways in the career center should be kids who qualify so we have 30 kids going to the career center right now and six of them are qualified for free reduced lunch which is 20 percent one all right well we're gonna no we're just gonna put this here no mom not in the slightest it doesn't why would you encourage her to do oh my god well it's not 1960 anymore she's not going to go well in the school she's watching grease 120 okay i'm just gonna write this and get it out there so okay ready too bad just kidding there's a water all right gang we are we've got the first set of priorities so why don't we go ahead and go first we did some refining of some goals that had worked their way into the conversation in previous retreat spaces and also moved a few that had we had thought maybe meant we're appropriate for academics um into belonging safety and wellness um to try them out there so what we've got so far are that 90 percent of all third graders regardless of identity or socioeconomic status end of the year able to read at or above grade level um our ninth graders we need a percentage there are proficient in algebra one integrative science and global studies and english nine though we're trying um considering the idea of putting a little bit of a higher priority on the core concepts of math and um and english or you know literacy at the high school level which is why those are in bold right now that 30 percent of our high school students are taking ap classes and or early college edge classes college classes regardless of identity and socioeconomic status that there's no difference in our demographics of students taking flexible pathways and um career center options um the options for students to pursue experience will prepare them for whatever choice they make after graduation i think we didn't really discuss that one in my opinion i don't think we need that one anymore if we've got these others that address ap classes and flexible pathways um and we yeah we didn't really talk about f and g yet so they're still there for the next small group to discuss initial thoughts feedback for the next group to tackle on these are there how far are we away from uh map goal for third graders um it's hard to answer that question the cognate results are still embargoed for and it's a new assessment right so one of the things we'd want to talk about as a group is what assessments are we looking at multiple assessments our ren star data shows that work closer yeah our um and we're working on getting a better diagnostic than our screener which is red star um which is called the pnoa and we just simply don't have that at the moment but we're working on getting that diagnostic which would give us a really good indicator of where our math students are so we want that to go up and in here when we feel I guess I don't know if we put that in or leave it out just flag it in our minds obviously it's not going to be laid out whatever it is it also depends on what the how long the board is looking to work on these goals right those are yeah like that's pretty high bar but depends on how long you're looking at it right about three minutes for each yeah that's sorry I mean that's my big question you know setting setting targets like that just knowing knowing that around a number like what are we assessing it against yeah do the assessments make sense is 90 percent a realistic number yeah because if it's like a rigorous test if 80 percent of the rigorous tests actually says that we're doing better than 95 percent of the kind of less rigorous or yeah yeah I think I think knowing what's behind her data but at some point we need to measure yeah exactly is that something that's happening and is that in your continuous improvement plan isn't that aren't those repangulating the data I think I'd just be up to our team to show you what where we are with multiple measures and and educating the board on what each of those measures actually measure we're using a word too many times in one sentence or you can say oh I just I like the goals that are very specific with the like the x percent of ninth graders are proficient in algebra one I'm guessing that's going to be reported out based on like actual classroom grades so I like that those sorts of goals that are their ninth graders are awesome the last year they take the cognitive exam okay except for science but yeah Kristen printed up smarty again so just like bringing it back to that you know and that one that one seems to be a smarty goal s is strategic m is measurable a is ambitious or aggressive aspirational r is realistic t is time bound so that it has a deadline i is inclusive and e is equitable so it's a way it's like a way of being like oh does it kind of meet all of these things great then it's a solid goal to set yeah on the realistic component like you know for achievement gap there's how is my pillar compared to other school districts you know obviously you would want to be close or better than other school districts and then also an achievement gap it could refer to within our district our different groups of students you know performing in similar ways yeah um so like you you probably have studied the data so when you say like 90 percent of all third graders that sounds you know in terms of it being realistic like I used to told me 64 at 65 percent and that's hard to tell right well the way that the data is organized right now so like in my mind I think well how are other districts third graders doing are they at 90 percent because if they're at 90 percent and we're at 65 percent that's sort of an issue but are they at 50 percent well we're at 65 percent and that makes that 90 percent seem stratospheric yeah we generally support higher security then the state averages on statewide testing that's really the only measure we can we know how others are doing is statewide testing because will the other smaller assessments that are district decisions they're district decisions so people use different assessment measures we can't compare apples to oranges but the statewide assessment you can certainly do that but I do wonder about adding something here um about like a certain percentage of our students who qualify for free and reduced lunch etc etc since that seems to be the real identifying easily identifiable factor for scoring lower um and that if there would be uh some sort of you know obviously it's already happening but like something put into place to be like we want to see growth with this population of kids what was on but not English as a second language so the share of students taking AP classes who run free and reduced lunch is actually higher than the overall share of students on free and reduced lunch which means pretty remarkable and you know as a as a major achievement this is good feedback from the next group who will be tackling the goals I've made it a comment on the in the documents you can see it there those these different um pieces of feedback who had belonging safety and wellness was that the two of you all right where are you at so we made our notes up above if you scroll up to our section sorry about that and we kind of tried to tackle like each bullet point and we did take the notes Mia that you had sent and sort of started with that so we only got I think really two bullet points in but we did flesh out that first goal so we were and in the conversation we started to wonder like well how many surveys do we really want to ask the administrators to do or you know the schools to do in one year or like is this for this school year or next school year so I think that should be discussed but um we have that for the 2023 2024 school year that we establish a baseline that data is collected both quantitative and qualitative from our three main stakeholder groups student staff and families slash caregivers with 75 participation across all demographics of our community and a particular effort to collect feedback from historically marginalized groups 90 of families report feeling and I guess that was sorry I would I would want to edit that but because the indicator is for student staff and families caregivers so 90 percent of stakeholders report feeling welcome and a part of our school what's an average response rate on a survey and it's a and a good response rate is 30 percent right we do not get 75 percent response rate um from surveys yeah and we discussed that too in terms of just like qualitative responses quantitative knowing that you know quantitative when it comes to surveys you probably hear from that same 30 percent over and over and over again and where this you know priority is really talking about wanting to hear the perspectives of folks that maybe don't participate in the process in surveys nearly as much so that's where kind of the qualitative gathering could be more effective in in um and gathering that information like the work that Nick Connor does like the work that you know some of our like guidance counselors may do they may be able to provide some more of that um perspective um so yeah we kind of wrangled with the qualitative quantitative but it does still even though qualitative or quantitative we're still asking for in this wording 75 participation across all the demographics so another way we could do it is sort of narrow in and ask for 75 percent of participation for marginalized groups but then we started talking about like are we going to be defining these marginalized groups like which groups are we collecting from it also says across all demographics um and so that mean made me start to do like a spin out of like okay so is it every language that is spoken you know like or every religion that is practiced that we're wanting reporting out of every different potential demographic so it right yeah we also can't ask people's religious preferences so so it just it gets very sticky and it's sort of so I'm open to reducing that number or finding a different you know maybe we're most interested in knowing historically marginalized groups um and so maybe we focus in on that for the first year the other tricky thing is is demographic is the n size so we can share demographic data generally across all horses yeah I think that would be okay across district right yeah we'll have to share that out yeah um one thing I wondered about was if you wanted to involve in add community members to this too because you know a lot more people who don't have kids in the school pay taxes so I think we want to have people feel welcome even I think it's uh could I just the way that this particular um bullet point is worded you know it's welcomed in our schools valued for for their unique history in within the school so like I'm not sure how much community members in general like sort of interface with the schools they come to board meetings sometimes but or sports events or you know that kind of thing you'll get grandparents and folks who like sports right and don't have kids in school anymore or that sort of thing I mean I think you want everybody to feel welcome coming in and safe to be here it goes back to the question about like how big of an ask you know with the with data collection and once we go across all of the indicators um I wonder if it just becomes too broad but yeah that was time's up I'll think we really mostly talked about that first one and that and that sort of is like the can of worms like we did start fleshing out the second one there and then with the third one we just copied and