Okay, let's get started. It's 603. Welcome everybody to our board, small board meeting and retreat is the main reason we gather here today and we have a few items of business today. So I'm going to call the meeting to our 603. And I have a small change to the agenda and I don't know if anybody else has any others. I'm going to add public comments at the end of the meeting, because I see a lot of people, different people today in the meeting and we didn't have any public comments in our agenda. So, I'm going to put that after, after we come out of our retreat. Okay. So that we don't have to compromise in the length of time. Thank you. So let's, could I have a motion to move into executive session. So move or move. Second, second. Okay, Scott moves in his seconds. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed. Hearing none. Motion carries. Let's move to executive session, please. Brian, are you in charge of opening. I'm doing it right this second. Yep. Okay, thank you. Yeah, I don't know if Jim was here. Let's see here. Okay. And I just opened the rooms for the board. The board members. Are there any other board members that I missed out there in the public? Am I supposed to do something? Yeah, Dorothy, let's make sure I hit the right button here. That might be hold on, let's see. Yeah. And all right, now I got you right here. Hold on. Yep. Now you go to a breakout room. It just opened for you. I just say join. Okay. Yeah. Thank you, Dorothy. I think I got everyone else. Great. Rebecca, could I have a motion please. Yes, I'll make a motion to approve the superintendent's recommendation. About a student's placement for the rest of the year. Second. Second by Caroline. Oh, those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed. Hearing none. The motion carries. Okay. So moving right into personnel. Okay. Okay. Thank you. And. Wendy. Just looking for my unmute there. I make a, do I need to do for each heading? I think I do. Okay. I make a motion to accept the new teacher nominations. For Matthew Palki as a Romney math interventionist and Carrie fits for Eastmont Piliar math interventionist math teacher. Okay. Thank you. Cindy moves. Caroline seconds. Although any discussion. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Okay. Any opposed. Having known the motion carries. Next one. I'll make a motion for a retirement. For chip headler at Romney as the math technology person. A second. Second. Okay. Can I, can I just say something about chip? I didn't, I, it's been very difficult to get to know everyone. This year in the zoom world during a pandemic. But I did have a pleasure of working with chip very closely at the start of the year. He was on the communications. Task force with a number of teachers and administrators. And I really got enjoyed my time with him. And I wish him nothing but the best in his future. In the future endeavors and his retirement. Jonas, do you have your hand up? Yeah, I've been able to work with chip in the negotiations the last couple of years. And he's just a lovely guy. Great to work with. He'll be missed. I see Chris McVay also has his hand up. You're muted Chris. Sorry. Chip headler has been. The guardian angel of the room, the school. For. At least a decade. He has been just the wonderful. He was our original enrichment. The staff member. Taking math students into provide them with advanced learning. He is a gentle soul. Who has a soothing effect on the school and the staff as a whole. He is utterly dependable. And the staff member to whom other staff members would look. In times of crisis. And run the school has had them over the past couple of years over the past decade. So he is. He has been an important. Someone that is not easily replaced in terms of the talents and skills that he brings, as well as just the influence on the, on the building as a whole. And including students. I don't mean to leave the students out, but he's been an important. Influence influencer. Even though he's not an influencer in the modern sense of that word. But well, maybe he is. I just, I just don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. The tribute is he is the Mark Chaplin of the Romney school. So we will miss him. Are we ready? Thank you, Chris. That was great. Everybody. So. Everybody ready? Any more discussion or can we move? Yeah. Okay. All those in favor of approving. Chips retirement. Please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed. Opposed. Motion carries. We have one more. The resignation. I moved to approve the resignation of. Ilaria. Dome. I'm not sure I'm pronouncing it right. From the music teacher. Do you have a second? Second. Chris seconds. Any disc, any question, any discussion? Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Any opposed. Opposed. The motion carries. Thank you. All right. So we're going to move on into our retreat. Brian, I'm wondering if that, if you have Susan in the waiting room. I actually do not have anyone in the waiting room. I don't know. Where's Nick? Nick is here. Nick's here. Oh, I see you. Okay. I can try to make a quick call while you're. Yeah. I'll give her a call while Nick gets us started with the next, with the next part of our retreat. So. Hi, everyone. Glad to see you. I think we've got. Essentially. Two. Two major issues we're dealing with tonight. And this is not to say that there is a. This is the final discussion of them. I think it's going to be a continuing discussion. And a really vital one for the board. In Washington central. One is what is the essential work of the board. And to what extent do members. Of the board agree on that. And I think that the second piece is the critical issues. And I think that the critical issues of the board. And disagreeing is fine, but. Trying to find common ground. I think is really essential. The second piece is. To focus on the goals. Of the board. And. I think one of the critical issues about goals is. If you have them, how do you know? One that you've accomplished them. And two. If you've accomplished them. What difference does it make? And I'd like to suggest that. The board consider. That. A mission statement. In moving forward, which is. That the mission of any public school system is to provide the skills and knowledge. That students need. To. Need to have so that they have choices. And what I mean by having choices. Once they leave public education. When they leave public education. When they leave public education. Whether they choose to. Get involved in a relationship. Go to community college, go to. Locational school going to the military. Go to college wherever they choose to go. That they have the skills to have those choices. And don't feel that they're making those choices by default. For example, some. Students feel that they're really good. Good at English, but they don't necessarily like math. They don't like it. They don't like it. So that means that. They should know math well enough to decide. What they like to do and what they don't like to do. I'd also like to suggest. A three part focus. As we move forward into the retreat and to. Ongoing discussions. One is. A focus on learning. Meaning. Is the district in your view. Focused on student learning. Is the district in your view. Is the district in your view. Is the district in your view. Is the district in your view. Is the district in your view. Is the district in your view. And is a focus on results. There were concerns expressed at the last retreat. About results in certain areas. And one of the questions I think the board has to face. Is. What are your expectations about student results. What do you expect students to know and be able to do. What do you expect students to know and be able to do. What do you.  What did you learn that you found was helpful. And what do you wish you would learn. What do you think the answers are going to be to that. Not very many school. School districts actually do that. Incidentally, but. It's a very useful kind of thing to do. The three. Issues that I'd like to recommend to the board are. As we talked about the last. Retreat one being hard on the issues, but soft on people. You know, it's very easy. When you're disagreeing with somebody to get very critical of the person as opposed to focusing on.  And in that vein to the extent that board members can focus on. The kind of active listening that we talked about the last retreat. I think that would be very helpful. Third piece is purely mechanical. If you're sitting in a room where there's TV or kids or dogs running around. If you can kind of keep their presence limited. It may help you. Same kind of thing with cell phones. So other than that. That's my introduction. I'm going to have to go get some people. Off. To reduce this and horses. And. So that we make sure that everybody. Now. You. I think. Sorry, Brian, you were just going to do it. Yeah, you got it. To have everybody introduce themselves because we do have. New board members. I think that's what she was trying to do. So. That's better. I'm going to have to go get some people. Off. Introduces and horses. So that we make sure that everybody. Now. You. I think. She was breaking up. I think. Sorry, Brian, you were just going to do it. Yeah, you got it. Yeah. I think we do have. New board members. I think that's what she was trying to say. Is that, do you agree, Brian? Yes. And I think we have that. Then I have Susan Holson introduce herself. And then I think turn it over to Susan. Thank you. I thought, I thought I heard her mumbling my name in there. For those of you whom I don't know, my name is Susan Holson. I am the director of education services at the Vermont school board. And I'm the director of education services at the Vermont school board. And I think the floor on behalf of your board has invited me to kick off the retreat. Working. In concert with Nick. Really to focus on the question of the board's role, the superintendent's role, how they mesh, how they. Separate. Where those lines are. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. Okay. Let's certainly start with that. Do we want to start off with. Just every board member just introducing themselves real quick. Is that the plan? Sure. Okay. So I don't know. The first time this board has been seated together. No. Okay. Yeah. Do we want to start? My name is Chris McBae. How are you, Susan? Thank you for coming. Thanks, Chris. Hi, I'm Linda Johnson. I live in East Montpelier. And I've been on the board for quite a while. Hi. Jill. I live in middle. So that's okay. Jill Olson. Thanks. Jill Olson for middle sex. As you can see, I'm in a car that I am not driving. But I am listening on the phone. Okay. Be careful. Caroline may also for middle sex. Yeah. I was on the board at the time. I was a little bit uncomfortable. With the COVID and so forth as I'm very, I'm in my 80s and my husband's almost 90. So we were being very protective. Don't blame you at all. Hi, I'm Christina Pollard. I live in Worcester. And I have been on the board since March. So I'm fairly new. I think we'll call that new. Okay. Good evening. My, my name is Kari Bradley. I live in callous Vermont. And I think this is my eighth year on one of these Washington central boards. Excellent. I'm Scott Thompson. Also from callous. And I've been rattling around one board or another for 13 years now. Thanks. How are you, Scott? This is Steve look. I'm from East Montpelier. And I have some board experience as well. Hi, I'm Diane Nichols Fleming. I live in Berlin. I've been on the board about a year. And I might have to have my camera off because my internet's a little spotty. Get it. I'm John, I've seen a van fleet. I'm from Worcester. I was also remote during the, during the, the retreat over the summer. This is approaching the end of my second full year on the board, but the, I'm in the third year of my term. This is the only school board experience I have. Nice to see you. I'm sorry. One more thing, one more thing. My outgoing video is here to be working, but my incoming video is not working. So at some point I'm going to take the opportunity and just restart my browser and enter back in. I can't floor left floor. I think we all know for, but. Can you hear me now? Yes, much better. So much better now. We lost you again. A little spotty. I think we have also Vera Frazier here as well. Can you hear me? Yes. Yes. So my name is Vera Frazier and I live in Berlin. I've been on the board for, well, I was on the board for 12 years, took a year off and now I'm back on. Welcome back. Thank you. Welcome Vera. Nice to meet you. You too. Thanks. I hope that you can hear me now. Not great. Out first. I do get it. And it's to say, you know me and floor. I, this is my 11th year. We're excited about our future. And excited that we're holding this retreat. Is that the board? Yeah. Yeah. There's so many people on the call. I'm not quite sure who's bored and who isn't. Right. One of the interesting pieces of zoom. Zoom land. But it is very nice to meet those of you. I haven't met and I look forward to being able to actually meet you in person. Hopefully someday soon. And thank you all for being here. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. You're welcome. So what I wanted to do tonight is just sort of go through quickly. A little bit of background on. The genesis of school boards in Vermont. We are. We are creatures actually invented by the, by the National School Board of Education. And we have been working on this for a long time. And the existence is laid out in statute. And as such, there are certain parameters that we must follow. And others that. We at VSBA have. Identified over time as being best practices. Based on. What is the role of the state of Vermont. And what the state of Vermont has done in the past. And what the state of Vermont has done with the state of state associations and what the national school boards association has also researched. And been able to identify throughout. Sort of threads throughout. So recognizing that Vermont is its own. Yes, Brian.  That either way. I'm not waiting to get in. Shall I admit them? Yes, please. Who it is. Well, I suppose that probably does, doesn't it? But you should have, I may do the co-host Susan. Okay. Okay. Let's see. I can do this. That's not what I want to share. There we go. Okay, we're getting there. Okay. So with your indulgence, I'm going to run through some of this and then we'll. Have an opportunity to really open up and have, have a discussion about what your expectations were. Whenever it was that you first joined a board, what your expectations have been as you've lived through. Two years now of a merger. No, one year. One complete year. Thank you. And, and whether that's changed your ideas at all about what a board. What a board's role is. Because it does seem to take on a slightly different. Texture when you're dealing with a larger district. And so we'll go from there. So we're going to talk about the board's roles and responsibilities and the superintendent's roles and response responsibilities. And I will be leaning on the Vermont school boards association. Platform that we've developed called the essential work of Vermont school boards, which again, borrows from the national school boards association, but really tailors everything to Vermont's education system and our laws and our, our local control issues with local boards that still have to answer to the state. And of course our state funding system is. Truly unique. I will skip through this introductions portion because you've just done the introduction. So the powers of school boards, as I mentioned, are laid out in statute. I know that the type on this slide is too small to read. And it's really okay because that my intent here was not so much to show what the individual responsibilities are, but rather to show that they're pretty, there's a long list here. Right. And so when I distill it down, there are 32 powers of the boards and the things that are really salient to that list for all boards under any circumstances are the board determines educational policies for your district, your unified district, you're responsible for sound fiscal management and accountability, which means making sure once you have an approved budget that the spending, the actual spending of the school district is in line with the budget. And finally, preparing and distribution of a budget, which you do collaboratively with the superintendent and the central office staff. But ultimately, of course, the board has to sign off on the budget. And then it goes to your voters. The, as a school board, because you're elected, you are a public body. So you have to abide by certain laws that are granted or required of public bodies, including the open meeting law, which we could do a couple of hours just on that alone. In fact, I did that last night. And Robert's rules of order is actually laid out in the, in the statute as being the protocol for running a board meeting. And finally, you establish established policies and procedures specifically about board member conflict of interest. And that's not just actual conflict of interest, but also, and it says here clearly the appearance of board member conflict of interest. And in Vermont with our small towns, sometimes that appearance is more of a factor than the actual reality. And yet it's so important to remember that if it looks like there's a conflict of interest, it doesn't matter whether there's a conflict or not, because it looks like there is. And so people believe that there's a problem. So what is the role of the board? Well, it's really pretty fundamental. You're responsible for ensuring that the tools are in place to have a high quality education for every student. And that's every student that the public gets a good return on the board. And I think that's important in other words, that you're monitoring the progress of your students and the outcomes of your system. And that your system is operating efficiently, effectively, ethically. And my colleagues always like me to add in there legally. And so what does that mean? Well, think of it as the board going first and last. I think in the sense that you're setting the vision, you're setting the policies, the parameters and the priorities on how the board, how the district will, will utilize its resources. Last, because you're going to monitor the, what's actually going on to make sure that it's aligned with that vision that you've established with those policies that you've established with the budget that you've established. You check in at the beginning, you check in at the end. In between times is where the superintendent is actually managing the system. So I mentioned that Vermont school boards association has developed this platform that we call the essential work of school boards. This is the landing page actually from the essential work tool kit from our website. And there are six different pieces to this.  And they're all critical components of boards work, but the one we're going to focus on today is that relationship with the superintendent because at the core, that's really where, you know, where the rubber meets the rope, right? Because that's where the broad thinking of the board, the visionary thinking of the board and the policies of the board make that transition into the operations. And that's like, as I said, where the superintendent pretty much takes over. So the board's job is really governance. And that's a term we throw around a lot where school board work is concerned. And I think, especially for those of you who are new to the board, that's not a word that's in most people's everyday vernacular. And so I want to break it down a little bit. So I went to Miriam Webster, my favorite source for these things, and they broke their own rules and used the word governing right in the definition. So they define governance as the act or process of governing or overseeing the control and direction of something. Governing, they say, is to exercise continuous sovereign authority over, especially to control and direct the making of policy, excuse me, making an administration of policy. And I got that cut off there and I apologize for that. But the point is this is at the policy level. You are overseeing the control, but you're not actually controlling or directing the school district. You're overseeing that. What does that mean? Well, one of the biggest and most important things a school board does is you hire your superintendent to lead and manage the district. And here he is. Nice picture, Brian. So why did you choose Brian when you were hiring your superintendent last year? Because he has the experience and the credentials and the educational expertise to manage your school district. Right? I can't speak to your board, but most school board members around the state are not educators. They can't be experts therefore in the curriculum and the classroom practices and the whole management of what goes on in the school and therefore that's why we have a superintendent because in this case he is the expert. The state also defines the superintendent as being the CEO of your school district. So if you want to take that and compare it to a corporate structure, right? Where you have a hired president and then a board of directors. The board of directors doesn't run the business on a day-to-day basis. The board of directors gets a report from the president usually quarterly about how it's going, meaning in a case of a corporation usually it's a profit statement and then if there are ancillary issues that they need to address, they certainly do so with the board. And the board provides oversight and high level reflection on the actual day-to-day as the superintendent, as the CEO chooses to share that. So the superintendent is really accountable for all of the operations of the entire school system. And he's accountable to you, to the board.  So according to, I'm back to the law book, the superintendent has a list of duties that are stipulated also. And it's, you'll notice a shorter list. Now that doesn't mean that it's less work, right? Because each of these is pretty complicated. But they have specific duties that are assigned to them as that CEO, that top educator, and you have your duties. So when we compare them side by side, the board is accountable to the voters and the superintendent is accountable to the board.  The board then adopts the goals for the districts, approves the continuous improvement plans, employs and evaluates the superintendent, holds the superintendent accountable for developing a strategy and a work plan and reviews and provides feedback to the superintendent annually to make sure that you're all on the same path. And at the risk of reading this slide to you, the superintendent makes sure that, that everything that he's doing operationally is consistent with the vision and the bigger goals and the strategic goals that the board is establishing. So that's his job is to deliver on the goals that the board has established. And I know you're going to be working on goals later on this evening with Nick. And this is where you need to make sure you have buy-in from the superintendent. But at the end of the day, it's the board that gets, has a voice in identifying what it is you want to see as, as the finished product, if you will. So the, the, this is a real distillation of that, four or five page document that I had sent out ahead of time prepared by the agency of education on the respective roles of the players in the educational leadership. But the board sets the goals. You make sure that there's good, clear communication between board and administration. And then you have your process for monitoring. Whereas the superintendent, as the chief executive officer is responsible for the operations of the district and also educational leadership to the edgy professional educators. And is accountable to, in your case, a district board, a unified district board. The principles, meanwhile, are at the building level and they, they're sort of a microcosm. They manage what goes on in the building. They are instructional leaders. They are in, they, they work with the faculty to ensure that everybody is being effective at their job. So professional development at an evaluative. Setting is part of that job. And the principles are accountable to the superintendent. And everything that goes on at each school has to be consistent with what's going on at the unified. Unified level in terms of moving towards common goals. And you've probably seen this chart before. This is in order to make sure that you have a really qualified and capable superintendent. You need to stress the mutual accountability. So the board is accountable to the superintendent to make sure that the policies are appropriate. And, um, relevant and that the resources that are necessary to accomplish the vision that the boards established are in place to do the job. And then they also have some accountability, not formally to the superintendent, but to make sure that the superintendent has the tools that he needs to do his job. And the superintendent is accountable to the board.  He's the only, the only employee of the board. And then the principles are accountable to the superintendent. And similarly, the teachers are accountable to the principal, you know, and so it goes. So that's sort of the basic structure. And I'm going to stop sharing here. Oh, there you all are. And I want to really open this conversation. I want to open this up now. So the first question I want to ask you is, as you read through the document that I circulated from the agency, were there any surprises? And please feel free to do this informally and jump in with your answers. Anybody see anything in there that struck you as. Unlikely or different from what you're doing currently. Okay. And how did that. Did you like the way that those jobs were laid out? Was that consistent with what you think a board's job is and what you think a superintendent's job is? Yes, I'm sorry. I don't have a Carl. I can. Kari. Yeah, I take a shot at it. I didn't find it surprising. I, it's fairly typical. I think structure for, you know, sort of management theory governance theory. I do, you asked a question, is it different? And I do think, I do think that we're still finding our way towards that model and how to really implement it. So for example, I think we have some clarity about. What we expect from Brian and from the system. But I don't think we have a lot of clarity around how we measure that, how we monitor it, or even how we plan for it and provide all the supports that Brian's ultimately going to need. And, you know, I, to some extent, that's understandable. Since we're new and Brian's new to working with us, but I, you know, I think the structure makes sense to me. Okay. Thanks.  So did you say that the CEO superintendent only needs to share what information with the board that they decide to share? No, sorry. If I said that I misspoke what they. So first of all, you want to have open channels with the superintendent. So there's not a sense of. Concealing anything, but the responsibility of the superintendent is to show the board progress towards achieving the goals. So whatever you, the board and the superintendent collectively agree on as good sources of evidence of that progress are the things that are important for the board to see. So I think the structures that are laid out here are probably more rigid than what the way we've operated as a board over time. I think we encourage more of a mutual give and take. In terms of decision making and things like that. Certainly the superintendent is our CEO, but. And so, you know, I think this the way that did you say this came from the agency of education. Yes. Okay. And I see you said the statutory parts, but so I think it's probably more but should be laid out than what we have been in the practice of. And I also don't believe that the superintendent is the only employee of the board. I think the entire, all the employees in the districts are the employees in the district are the employees of the district, not the employees of the superintendent. I think the superintendent certainly has powers of discharge, but not a higher. Higher for non license. For non license, correct, but not for my position. So, you know, there's, there's, you know, it's going to take I think. And there enough. Yeah. And I just to clarify for those of you who may be newer and not as familiar, the superintendent's obligation when it comes to hiring licensed employees is to bring to put forth to the board only one candidate for each licensed position, which means that he or his designees have gone through a process to, to narrow field to one. Candidate that they that he would like to have as the to fill the position. And I want to come back to that Chris. I want to come back to your, your notion of give and take, but let's hear from Scott. Thank you very much. I guess. I can't say that it surprises me. But I think with all of the detail in this, some of which is very useful. I think the core has, has somehow been obscured. And that is that that we have been really dramatically transformed compared to what we were before. And if I were to boil it down, all of this into sort of two observations. We, the board have no ability to accomplish anything significant without the superintendent. And the superintendent has no authority to accomplish anything significant without the board. I mean, essentially, we have been remade into a single functional unit in a, in kind of a symbiotic association where we have complimentary sub functions that form a working entity, but we are joined not just at the hip, but in the hippocampus in the head. And this is, this is completely different from our previous practice where essentially the superintendent was our, was every board's best front of me. Where we would, we would police the frontier between, you know, our local board and school authority and scope of action and guard it pretty jealously against intrusions from the central office. It was, you know, there was a lot of that dynamic going on, making sure that, that, you know, the central office can find its, its ambitions to what it needed to do and left the schools and the boards to, in their semi autonomous way to function as we used to function. That is completely gone now. And we cannot, I think for me, I know, and perhaps for others of us on the board, I don't want to speak for anybody but myself. It's taken a real effort to, to get to that awareness that essentially the superintendent is to the new board, to the new consolidated board, as say the principal used to be to the, to the old board where the superintendent is no longer, the dynamic is no longer sort of kind of creative tension, I guess would be the nicest way to put it between board and superintendent. The dynamic is really board and superintendent working together and sorting things out among each other the same way board members sort things out among ourselves, you know, through deliberation, debate, discussion, asking questions, you know, just holding people's feet to the fire. Brian's soles of his shoes are undoubtedly nicely singed by now, but, but it's not where we're trying to hobble the superintendent or, or rein him in. He is the only way that we as a board can get anything done. And it takes, I think, for me anyway, it has taken a while to arrive at this understanding, which I think is the only way that we can actually make great things happen for our, for our school system. How did the rest of you feel about what Scott just said? What are your reactions to that? Let's hear from Jonas first. I saw his hand first and then Steven and then Chris. And then if I see more hands, I'll let you know. I can't see anyone, but I want to thank Scott for that really, really eloquent description of the difference between, you know, now and, and, you know, the before time. I'd never heard it sort of articulated like that. And it makes a lot of sense to me having come on, you know, right at that inflection point. That relationship between superintendent and board has seemed natural and self-evident to me from day one. So Scott, I really appreciate you. I appreciate your perspective on that. That really fills in a lot of gaps for me. Steven. So I can't be 100% sure this is directly in response to what Scott said. I've always felt. That are. We had separate districts. We had different districts. We had different districts. Whatever full alignment. Or. Commonality of practice from one board to another. Each board. Each district. Town districts. Building. Building district was unique. Of itself. It functioned differently. It had different expectations. There were some common threads, but it was different. And that was frequently seen at the supervisory board level. But in the past, I think it was a. No harm, no foul kind of a. Attitude that. Yes, you do things differently than we do things, but. You know, we can all get along and accept our differences. But I think it's a good sign that Scott was alluding to. That doesn't exist anymore. There's just one. And it's coming. I think coming to a common alignment. A common language. Common expectations. And it could be a good sign from what Jonas added to the conversation. I don't think it's a. It's not difficult. It's just a conversation. It needs to be had. And common understanding needs to be developed. And I think we're moving in that direction. Thanks. Chris. I would agree that superintendent has a primary role, but I also think it's not the soul primary role. I see. Our, our district is having more diffuse. Responsibilities amongst primarily amongst principles. Leadership team. And I just, I think. Saying that the superintendent is. Who makes it go or doesn't. Doesn't give enough credit to all the other. That move us along on the goals that we are trying. To. The. Superintendent is the primary manager of that. I don't think superintendent is the expert in all the educational areas because that's probably impossible. And that's why we have a director curriculum at peace. He's the primary manager of making the whole. Organization move. But the. Motivational responsibilities are more diffuse than just the superintendent. To me. Good point. And of course, like in any management structure. The manager delegates responsibilities to. Others who have been selected to be in their roles for their expertise. Right. And, and so. That gives the superintendent the opportunity to fill those gaps of his own. No, I mean, we all have our strengths and our weaknesses, right? So you want to make sure. You know, the best educator in the world may be a really terrible bookkeeper. And ultimately the superintendent needs to have a really good grasp on the finances. So, you know, those kinds of partnerships internally are critical. And I don't mean to sell them short. It's, but from your seat at the board table, your contact is through the superintendent. He then has the responsibility of keeping all of the rest of the team. Motivated and moving towards. Progress on the board's stated goals. Right. So I think we're not disagreeing here. We're just sort of different vantage points. Susan. Yes. I'd like to suggest in line with what you've already been doing that we go around. And do as you have been just asking each board member. Yep. To respond to what you've been saying, because I think it's a very important set of conversations. Well, I've got two hands up now from people we've not heard from. So why don't we start there and then we'll continue. Thanks for that suggestion, Nick. I see floors hand, but I don't see floor. So I'm not sure are you really there for. I am here. Can you guys hear me now? Yes. Yes. The internet test that even though it's still saying unstable, but so I want to say, I, I first want to thank Scott for saying what he said is really powerful coming from, from Scott to all of us. Cause I think we all, like Stephen was saying, we all have been operating in different districts in, and I always, you know, felt like we got a lot of student outcomes and a lot of other things done when we operated as a whole. And I'm excited for the progress that we've made so that we can make sure that we can really monitor now. And I think that's the one thing that I could add is that I think what we're confusing, it just listening to Chris talk to, I think is a, I completely agree with what you're saying. Our point of contact is the superintendent. And when it comes to monitoring a, and creating the, the culture, we were counter superintendent to have a collaborative culture in, you know, I've said this to Brian all the time, not a bottom up, not a top down. And that's more about creating culture. When it comes to monitoring it, that is when we as a, as a board hearing from different key stakeholders and getting reports from different, that's where we, when we can hear from this other people to make sure that we're getting a information from the people on the ground and, and, and feel more empowered to feel more empowered, but also understand what's going on on the ground. So, but that comes to me in the monitoring part. So not for micromanaging the superintendent, but to properly create a system that is a collaborative. So similar to what we do in the quality committee, right? Jen comes and she reports to us. And that's when it, by the superintendent creating those partnerships, it allows us to have that, that I think Chris is allowing too. But there were no surprises, but thank you Scott for those comments. Thanks floor. Vera. Hi. Yeah. So I agree with. What Scott statement was. I think the, the part for me was serving on a board. For 13 years. I've seen a lot change. Change can be good. But I think our individual towns still have, I mean, each individual town wants its individuality. And I think it's hard when, as one board, we're trying to approach everything in a cookie cutter way. And. We, I know for when working through the act 46. One of the difficult. Parts that we always ran into is every town still wanted its individuality. So how do we do that as a full board? And I'll work together for common goals. But still keep the towns. You know, some of the individuality that you should have. Whether it's. Choices in classes that they take or different budgetary needs, different ways of school events happening. You know, it's the list can go on and on, but it's, it's working together as one board, but still keeping the individual individuality of each school. Okay. Okay. And at the end of the day, though, my question to you about that, and you don't have to answer this, just think on it. Okay. Is. Do you think that the residents of different towns within the district want different things for their kids? Ultimately. Yes, I do. Okay. I'll think about that some more to come back with some more on that. But yeah, at the end of the day, I do think there are differences. Okay. I'm eager to hear. More. Okay. So thank you. Is it Caroline? Do I have your pronunciation right? Caroline. Caroline, I'm sorry. That's okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And then. I feel like I. I agree with everything that's been said. I had watched a lot of this when I was deciding if I would come back onto the board. And the part that stood out for me. Tonight was. Again, that piece of the superintendent being our only employee, our only employee. And the other employees are accountable to the superintendent. And our only employee are accountable to the community. And all other employees are accountable to the superintendent. I think that's huge. And I think that that stresses the importance. Of accountability. And how essential. That piece of our role and our relationship with the superintendent really is. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I don't want to be calling on people and embarrassing you, but I do want to hear from everybody. So if you're not going to step up and volunteer, I will call you out, but I'd rather not have to. I would go. Thank you. So sure. So what's coming up for me is that I, you know, I think that these kinds of delineations of roles and responsibilities are really important. And I think that's really the foundation of it. And as soon as any of that falls apart, then it's impossible to maintain your own position, particularly, I think, as Caroline was talking about, we have an obligation to our communities. And so we need to be able to speak to the communities with, you know, clear understanding of what's actually happening. That's our oversight role. And so that's the pressure that I think we as board members feel. And I think that when the superintendent really understands that's our pressure and our reality, we actually have it's easier to maintain the sort of lanes that, that you're describing. And back to Chris's earlier point. These are lanes, but they're not different highways, right? They're all going to the same place. They're just splitting out the responsibilities perhaps differently than you've looked at it some somewhat in the past. And, and occasionally you drift into the other lane and, and usually somebody honks at you if you're interfering, right? And so while that document may appear to be rigid, I think is what you are alluding to Chris.  But if you have a basic common understanding of what that, what your lane is, I think it means that you're going to self monitor and, and as a board, I don't mean individually, but I mean as a board, if somebody's crossing way into an operational zone, it's coming on the rest of the board to say, Hey, that's not ours. You know, that's not our work. Let's make sure that we're clear with, with Brian, what it is we hope to see as an end result. And then he'll tell us how he's going to get, get us there. And, and that, that may be a dialogue. Right. But I just want to appreciate the high, the highway analogy while I'm in my car. So thank you for that. You might have just sparked that in me. Because I could see out your window there. I'm not driving. I just want everybody to know I'm not. Who have we not heard from yet? I know there are a few of you. You have Lindy there with her hand up. Yeah, I'm sorry, Lindy. You popped to a different corner on my screen. Thank you for. Yeah, I think when you put your hand up, it pops you into another position because that's when I move. I think what Joe was saying about trust. It doesn't really matter who is the boss or who is the, not the boss trust is so important. And building that as we've become one board from. Six or seven boards. There were a lot of boards for such a small number of students who actually go through our system. And I say that an awful lot. I know. But we are not a huge corporation. So when I hear CEO, I think we're not a huge corporation and the communication should feel. Comfortable and trusting and I'm not sure that's been built yet, but. I think that's been built. I think that's been built. I think that's been built. And we're still building that culture and communication. And we've had some bumps, but I, I see that. On this form where it says school boards are accountable to voters. Well, I think we are accountable to voters. We're about accountable to the staff. To make sure that our schools are safe. Our places of learning. And that's been built. And that's been built. And that's been built. And that's been built. There's been some outcomes necessarily. And I think that's an area. That. Maybe we need some work. I've been one of the ones who is not happy with. Public comment at the end of meetings. And it doesn't, hasn't changed yet, but we're working on it. So. There's just some bumps. And I think building that trust is really important for. And I think that's a focus. I think that's a focus. And, and you really are dealing with two different trust issues. Right.  To Scott's earlier point, you had to come together. Against. What a lot of your wishes were. And it was hard to trust that you all. Wanted to be moving in the same direction. Right. So you had to build trust. Among yourselves and that's a long building trust is an ongoing process. Right. And then on top of that, you've got a new superintendent. So there's another trust relationship. And, and these things are hard enough when they're isolated, but when you've got them stacked on top of each other, it can be a really challenging. Challenging process. I'm really enthusiastic about what I'm hearing tonight, because it seems as though. You're really all being very reflective about the process, which means you're, you're recognizing that it's worth that energy. Christina. So being brand new to the board. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know what it was like when it was six or seven separate boards, which I think can be both a blessing and a curse. But I do want to say that, you know, this is a total like learning curve for me and something brand new. But I think the way that everything was laid out in the document has really helped me understand kind of what our position is. Here on the board. And I'm excited to learn more as we continue. Great. I'm going to put in a selfless plug for the first year journey training that the SBA is doing in May in two parts. I hope I'll see you there. Yes, definitely. Great. Diane. Yeah. So it, this has been very helpful. So it's helpful to have it later. But I think as what's been said already, communication trust and also that accountability is how we develop that accountability. So I think that's what we're, we're working through and trying to come with that common vision of what that means and what the culture is that we want to create across the board. So I think it helps each part of the board. I hear each part differently each time I hear it. So it's good to have it repeated. And to have the opportunity to explore it too as a group. Great. Thank you. Dorothy. Yes. Well, this has been very interesting listening to the various things which has made me. Think of how it's all fit together. I was on the callous elementary board. Before I moved into the larger board. And one thing came to mind. With what Scott had to say and how things are moving forward. And when Scott described. The five elements of what Scott said. And when Scott described. The five small boards for six, the five elementary schools in the high school. He indicated quite rightly. That it was the local board and the principles who had a really strong relationship. And the. Local board kind of looked. At the central office. Or didn't really want to trust them that they felt they and the principal were. The most important things. So I'm wondering if. One of the things we haven't figured out how to do. Is to transfer that trust from the principal. To the superintendent. And maybe that's something that our board needs to. Be aware of that. We need to. To show Brian more trust than we have. The other thing that struck me was. A couple of people said that. They're responsible to their community. And I'm thinking. Most people. The way I read what people are saying is. That they're really still thinking of their community. Of the town where they come from. Rather than. That nice outline of the five towns. That is really your community, our community. And before. COVID set in and the first year. I had a. I had a goal. Of going and visiting the schools when they were in session, like having going to the morning. Opening stuff in middle sex or. Something in the East Montpelier. Or those things I wanted to go. To the various schools. Just to see them in operation and to feel. Part of their building. I would recommend that all our board members. I know. I am retired. I have a lot to do at home as most of you know, but I was hoping I could do that. And I'm hoping that some of you can find the time. To go to the other buildings. I. Worcester. I wanted to go to all of them. And I didn't get that done. And I'm hoping some of you can. Find the time to do that. Because I really don't think. All of us. Really think in terms of. Representing all five towns. Possibly people who at school were on the U32 board do. Because you then were representing all five towns. But I, I think those of us who run the elementary school board.  And we need to work very hard. At trusting the superintendent once we give them something to do. I really appreciate what you were just saying. When I served on a board, I served on an elementary school board and later on the high school board within the same supervisory union. And I was in the high school. High school. And what I learned when I got to the union high school board. Fascinated me because. The ninth grade teachers. Could pretty well tell within the first week of classes, which of the elementary schools. The student came from any given student came from. What we call sending schools all had different strengths and weaknesses. And while the goal. Of the unification was not to homogenize and turn them into cookie cutters. It was to make sure that your students are all getting. The best they can get. And. You know, when my kids showed up at high school and.  And the. The teacher just sort of shrugged his shoulders in the science class and said, Oh, I don't expect any of you to know it. You all come from that school. And they just accepted that as the way it was. And my kids ended up going through high school. Dragging their feet in science. Because they never had that foundation. So. I would be happy to know. I would be happy to know that as the way that they were thinking in that bigger picture. That that kind of transition is, is remedy. That's not to say I want all the schools to be exactly the same, but I want the students to have similar opportunities. That which may translate differently. And into what the specifics are, but they still have the same developmental and educational you said, Dorothy, because this is very interesting to me also. As I look around the state at the practices of the unified districts, the ones that have been unified in the last six, seven years with Act 46, most have the format that you do where your town's elect representatives either based on the student population or the census population, or however it's decided what the three from each town, whatever the composition of the board is. But there are actually some unified boards, newly unified boards, where all board members are elected at large by the voters of all the communities. That's the way our boards run. So you're all elected. We all have to be elected on the ballot for every community. Oh, that's wonderful. Thank you for clearing that over. With the caveat that each town has a certain number of representatives. Okay. So it's not. So you get both. It can't be all. You get the best of both worlds. But to Dorothy's point then you really are then representing the broader community. Oh, yeah. And that's a huge leap as you're transitioning through all of this. Have we heard from all the board members? I think so. Brian, can I pick on you? I mean, you've got skin in this game, but do you have anything you'd like to contribute to this conversation? Well, it's very, I'm sitting here and I'm extremely excited about having you here and Nick here in talking about this conversation. And I'm hearing what the board is saying. And I do think that building trust is a big thing, right? And I think, and I have, and I heard a lot of different things. I first heard, here's what I've heard folks have said. A lot of us, thanks to Scott for his comment to start off, launched this. Coming to an alignment across our communities needs to happen. There's differences of opinion around the superintendent role as someone who is the only employee of the board versus someone who is a manager, but is not an expert in everything. I've heard that we need to create a collaborative system and superintendent needs to work on creating a partnership. I've heard about our individual towns want their individuality. And one board should approach it not in a cookie cutter way. I know that there's more conversation about the superintendent being its only employee. And I talk about the, a lot of folks talked about this idea of trust and how do we build trust? And I thought it was very interesting where someone said the old model of the SU model and the actual district model and how different they are. And, you know, I thought it was a very interesting comment about how to build trust and lots of folks who have worked under the SU model have a strong relationship of trust with the principals and how that, how some folks believe, and I'm hoping that that happens as well, that we can build more trust with the superintendent. And I think that's what the school district, a unified district will require. So I thought it was a very productive conversation, but I do think that the trust piece is a huge piece. And I'm so sorry that you're not able to have this retreat in person because there is opportunity when you get outside of your regular business and we get into these kinds of conversations that are about how you operate as a board and also the goal setting, portion of it, to have the opportunity to really be sharing in that experience is hard to replace. And I would say that in my experience I've been here nine months, 10 months, and I thought my experience is we have really a lot of really great things here at Washington Central. We have outstanding teachers. We're one of the only districts that have reopened throughout the state since the beginning of the year. I can't talk about how proud I am of our teachers and staff. I think the leadership team has a lot of intelligent, really hardworking people. I think our board really cares a lot about their communities and the district. So I just feel like there's a lot of things there. I think one of the challenges for my leadership is the trust piece. How do I get trust and how do I also, but I also think trust works both ways. I came in here with the mentality of that we're a unified school district and trying to work in that realm. And I think there are some folks across the system and I'm not pointing fingers, it's not a blame game or anything like that at all. I just think that some folks are operating in the older model that isn't here anymore, but it's still in our minds and maybe in some people's hearts. It's a pretty seismic shift as we're all hearing from board members of all different tenures tonight. And so people make those adjustments in their own time, right? And that's just part of the reality. Nick, you're muted. Yeah, it's been a really terrific discussion, obviously starting out with what Scott said, but I think what everybody has said is extremely important because it's not about everybody agreeing. It's about knowing where we're starting. And Susan, I think you've done a great job at facilitating that. And leading into the second part of this conversation, I think one of the ongoing issues for the board is going to be really getting into specifics about what does a high quality education for each student look like? Meaning, what do you expect students to know and be able to do when they leave each level of schooling, elementary, middle, and high? And what do you expect them to be able to do once they leave the system? Because it's, you know, in other states, for example, I have frequently heard community college people saying, well, these kids don't know how to write. Well, do we think that's important? Do we think that the skill level is important? Susan, when I was listening to what you were saying, I have two daughters who are in science and engineering. And I know they weren't exactly encouraged to pursue those areas. So I think an issue is, to what extent are we opening up those options for people? But I think the issue that Brian was just talking about, and that several other board members alluded to is does there need to be a conversation over time about, one, what trust looks like in practice when you actually trust each other? And if you feel there's been a breach of it, how do you address that? How do you talk it through? Who gets involved? What kind of resolution do you try to come to? The second is, you know, which I think is extremely important. What does safety look like? You know, in this era of increased awareness of the impact of bullying, in this era of increased awareness of the impact of discrimination and people not exactly having great feelings towards one another. You can use the abstraction of safety, but until you talk about what safety looks like in the hallways, in the classroom, when kids are out on the playground or they're at a game, it stays a very general thing. And the third piece is accountability. Accountability has, for some people, become kind of like you've got measles. And one of the important issues to talk about is, for this board, what does accountability look like? For whom and at what levels? People have kind of test phobia. They think the only kind of accountability is, well, it's how you do on a test. Well, it's a lot more than that. And as we move into the second part of this conversation, I think each of those issues needs to be considered as we're talking about the goals of the district. And what I'd like to encourage the board to think about is, if you achieve a goal, what difference does it make to you? What difference does it make to the school district? And to what extent do your goals lead into a place where you think they're useful? What I'd like to suggest is, given that everybody's been sitting now for close to an hour and a half, that perhaps we take about a 10-minute break and then come back at about 20 minutes of eight. Does that work? Yes. Yeah. Okay. So we'll break for 10 minutes. And then when we come back, let's start talking about goals and to what extent are the goals that the board has identified before still feel useful or where do we want to move forward on them? But Susan, I think you've done an outstanding job of framing the issues. And I think that's really important. Well, I just want to thank the board for having me. I'm going to tool off now. Enjoy your 10-minute break. And as I hope you all know, if you've got anything further that you want to ask or talk to me about or questions or anything, please don't hesitate to get involved. Just give me a call, shoot me an email. I'm easy to find. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Susan. Thank you, Susan. Unless there is time and still allow for some public comments. Sure. I'd like you, if you would, to take a look at the board goals that were defined back in August of perhaps earlier than that, of 2020. And does everybody have those? Yeah. Okay. I'd like to pose a couple of questions for you to think about. And then I'd like to go around to each board member and see what your thoughts are about keeping the current goals or refining them or whatever you're comfortable dealing with. And the couple of questions I'd like to ask you to frame the conversation in are these. If you accomplish what you set out to do in the goal, what's it going to look like? Particularly, what will success look like? For example, there's a difference between saying that your goal is to have a meeting based or saying that the outcome of the meeting that you want is, for example, to agree on what level of literacy all students should have in the school district, which as I remember was an issue that Stephen talked about at the last retreat. There, a second issue is what kind of data or information points do you want to use as a board? What's going to tell you that you're making progress? Is it, for example, having a meeting? Is it doing the report? Or is it looking for specific progress in that meeting from time one to time two? Do you want scores to go up? Do you want certain kinds of learning activities to occur? And these are just examples. Do you want performance to be looked at? I was intrigued by what Susan was saying earlier about expectations. To what extent, for example, in the schools across the district, is there a core of expectations that you think every student should meet? And just to take one example and not to be exclusive about it, do you think every student should be able to write a whole sentence and understand that there needs to be a noun and a verb in it with good punctuation and good spelling, no matter what your grade level is? Not saying that has to be something, but that's a very definable kind of goal. Do you think that students should be able to add, subtract, multiply, and divide? And how do you want to manage getting feedback on that process from Brian and through Brian, the staff, about what kind of progress you're making in the district?  And just ask you to identify what you think the most important goals are, meaning do you just think you need to stick with what you have? Do you think you need to clarify and modify and understand that this is not a one-act drama? You're going to be continuously looking at your goals and looking at whether you feel they're really helping to get you where you want to go, which is I heard several people kind of responding positively to the idea of a high-quality education. Well, what does a high quality education look like in the Washington district, in the Washington Central District? So why don't I start out with Dorothy? Can you kind of share with us your... Nick, could I interrupt you for a minute? Just in our conversation, could we go goal by goal just to see if the board members want to keep it instead of putting them all together? You mean you want each board member to respond to whether they want to keep that goal? Yes, because we at the end ended up with just two last year. We moved, so we had board governors and student achievement, so it would allow us to have a richer conversation in one of them and we were worried that we want to have an outcome at the end of this meeting. We talked about that, so it would allow us to, if we don't achieve both, then we'd at least have one that we have to find. Okay, so if I'm hearing you correctly, you're asking each board member to respond to whether they want to keep those two goals? Yes, yeah, but let's start with each individual goal. So I think if we ask the board governance goal, it's still good. Let's just concentrate on that one goal right now and go around, and then we'll go into the... because each one is a little bit different and... Sure, absolutely. Yes, you can pick one if you want to start, but I think, you know, board governors might be a little bit easier and then we can stay online with board roles and responsibilities and thank you. Okay, so are you reframing the question now to say, do I want to keep the board governance goal? Yes. Yes, I do. I think that a lot of board members were very supportive of Act 46 from the beginning, and for your information, I was not. I actually was one of the plaintiffs. Because they looked at the Act 46 goals, they did not look at the fine print, and I think they really don't have... as I tried to talk earlier about the fact that we don't just represent one town, we represent five towns. I think they also don't truly understand that when we're looking at staff, and especially the non-classroom staff, the interventionists and coaches and so forth can now be more easily distributed where they're needed in the five towns in high school, rather than each school having their own interventionists, coaches, whatever, and that if they get moved because the students that were needing that are no longer there or have quote-unquote graduated, if those non-classroom teachers get moved to another building, they somehow feel like they've been shorted, that they have lost something that they already had. And I think that's something that we need to really work hard in always thinking of that it's the five towns that when you work for Washington Central, you work for Washington Central, you do not have a contract with Calis or Romney or Doty or any of them. You may be stationed there, but any good leader knows that it's the best of their ability to keep a well-functioning group of say classroom teachers or even interventionists and coaches that the principal knows that they're functioning well and doesn't really want to break it up, but there are times when they may have to, for instance, I really don't know how it's going to sugar off, but Calis had a classroom teacher retire. I don't think they're going to replace that classroom teacher because our numbers have shrunk in Calis, but if they were to, it could be that another school has shrunk enough so that they would have an extra classroom teacher and would send him or to Calis if Calis had the numbers. I'm just saying we need to be more flexible in where the staff work and give Brian more trust in those decisions. Very helpful. Diane? So definitely within the board governance, we've been making progress toward it, and I think in order to model that we don't jump from initiative to initiative until we've completed it successfully, it makes sense to stick to that. And to me, what it would look like, if I know that we're successful, is that basically we understand what those roles are. We're able to give that elevator talk about what it means, all of those different parts of it, what my role is, what my duties are, and that. So that's how I would know if I've achieved success in that area. Great. Christina? I agree with what Diane said. I'm just looking now. I don't have a copy. I don't think of the goals. I was just looking to see if I could find them, so I don't know if somebody could send them to me. Do you have the agenda? Let me see, because if you have the agenda, if you scroll all the way down. Is it the very last page? I think it's the last, it's, well, they're in there. Yeah. Okay. Okay. I do see them. Okay. Yes. Thank you. Christina, are you comfortable with board governance or governance in general being a priority? I am, yes. Great. Any other comments you'd want to make about that? No, I, no, not really. Okay. Lindy? I think I'm comfortable with those. With governance? Yep. Okay. Viro? I'm comfortable with board governance. Okay. Scott? I'm fine with board, building board governance. I tend to think that the way to build board governance is by actually governing as a board. So I would be okay with building in actual substantive sub-goals in that, and especially if they can be aligned or at least consistent with what we set for Brian as his goals. Okay. Do you think there maybe needs to be a subgroup of the board that comes up with some proposals with a larger board to consider around that? I'm open to that for sure. Yeah. Okay. I'm not trying to dictate, I'm just trying to propose a way for accomplishing what you're talking about. Okay. Caroline? I agree with the board governance goal remaining as a goal. Yeah. Do you have any particular thoughts about things that may need to be addressed after that heading? No, but thank you. Okay. All right. Carrie? Governance. We're not hearing you, Carrie. How about that? Are you hearing me now? Much better. Okay. Thank you. I definitely think that governance should remain a top priority when you should set goals around it. And specifically, I think that we should be developing systems around key functions, and I'll list the ones that come to mind for me. Recruitment. We have a problem with recruiting new board members. An orientation system, not super difficult, but very important. A board calendar, which I think Floor and others have in mind, so I think that's good, that would include a system of reporting throughout the year, and that reporting would include some of the student achievement, so there's an overlap there, but also finance and other key functions that we as a board need to hear how things are going in order to fulfill our accountability function. And related to that, a superintendent evaluation. I think that we did give us, what do you think, a B minus C plus, something like that for our work there. We definitely have room for improvement, and that is something that ought to be systematized and written down and perpetuated, so that Brian knows what to expect. And the last one, and this could be, we could maybe carve this off as a separate goal, but something around communication and community engagement, and the idea of how are we communicating with the community, how do folks like who are on this meeting, what can they expect in terms of communicating with us. We might consider that part of governance, maybe it's too big and needs to be its own system, own goal, but to answer your question about what difference does this make in my mind is about meeting our responsibilities that we just talked about, what are the things that the board is responsible for, but also by systematizing it, setting up future boards. So Albus and I, what about the next year's board, and the year after that, so that they can build on our success. Very good. I'll stop. Joe. Oh, I'm so happy I get to go after Kari, because I loved everything he said. And I want to, I guess, emphasize the communication piece. I think that's the thing we need to add to this goal. So I'm a yes on keeping a governance goal, but I do feel like we need to go to the sub-goals, as Scott was saying, and really reduce the refinement. So that would be, and I like the idea of a subcommittee that you suggested. I actually think that's the only way. It's pretty hard when we're not in person to do the kind of exercises you have to do to do the brainstorming. So I would support that. Yeah. And in that vein, if I could suggest to you, one of the most challenging areas for any board, frankly, for any organization is to define what communication looks like. And for example, when you have differences of opinion, how do you address them? It's not that everybody's always going to agree or should agree. It's how do you deal with it when you're trying to be a part of a governing group. But I think you're raising outstanding points there. Steven. So I'm more harsh than Kari was on our performance. I would say we did not in reality make this a goal. I think this was an aspiration. Okay. And we didn't set clear expectations of what we wanted. And where we did set clear expectations of what we wanted, we failed to do that. So if we want to keep this as a goal, we need to hold ourselves accountable. How would you do that, Steven? One, we would have to agree as a group that it is a priority and as Kari listed several areas. I'll use the superintendent evaluation as, and that's one of the, that was the number one thing, a sub goal in the board governance goal. And as a board, I'll be frank, we didn't care about it. Shuffled it off to two or three people to come up with some kind of solution. And we would talk about it at some board meetings, but I don't feel like we made it a priority. We spent time doing other things. We have a finite amount of time. If we've got goals and they're a priority, we make time for what our goals are. And we don't have time to do other things. You need to manage your time more effectively. Coming back to what you're talking about in terms of, are you referring to the superintendent's evaluation? Correct. Okay. Something you may want to consider is to say, as a part of that evaluation process, who is responsible for what? What is the superintendent's responsibility in a particular area? What is a principal's responsibility? What is a teacher's responsibility? What is a student's responsibility? And just to give you an example, frequently, if people have people ask me about, well, who's accountable in a student testing situation? Something many people don't like to talk about. And my notion is the students are the one who takes the test that ultimately as educators, we're responsible at different levels for making sure that the student's been exposed to what they need to be exposed to, engaging whether they've acquired that skills and that set, or those sets of skills and knowledge. So it may be important in terms of fine-tuning what you're asking for to be able to define those things. I don't think we're at the point of fine-tuning yet. Okay. That's fine. We haven't mastered the gross general requirements. We're not at the stage where we can fine-tune. It may be helpful over time just to kind of, if you can come up with some clarification for the board about your perceptions of what that fine-tuning might look like, that might be very helpful. Jonas. So my recollection of these goals is that we intentionally tried to keep them limited to things that we thought that we could actually accomplish. I think Stephen's right that we have a mixed track record to be generous. I have some disjointed thoughts here. I also, I'll pick and choose from what people said. I agree with Kari about a communicating, a goal around communications inside the district organization and in the larger community. Scott said a lot of things that I agree with, particularly that the best way to govern better is to govern. A lot of this comes from practice and repetition, but over the last two years we've gotten sidetracked and sidelined so often and by so many different things that I personally, I have to grade us on a curve. I would be more charitable than Stephen a little bit. I would also note that there's, you know, when Kari talks about more subgroups and more working groups. The list of things that we want to accomplish gets longer and longer and I know that there's a tension between wanting to really formalize and professionalize the systems that we use. There's tension between that and the more folksy model that I think people in Vermont are used to. I think we also need, as we have trouble with recruitment, I also think that at some point we're going to have trouble with retention and we kind of have already. We've lost some good people who just couldn't do it anymore. The lift is getting bigger and the ask is getting larger and I think that that's something that we just have to keep in mind. Okay, Chris, Chris McVeigh. I think we should keep the governance goal and have a subgroup to work on it. Specifically, we spent about a year or more reading this book by Patrick Rice and I think we should come to a conclusion as a board whether or not we want to engage that book anymore and take parts out of it to employ it as a governance model or just be done with it because we engaged not only the board as a whole but staff members going through that book on a at least every other board meeting time and it seems like we spent a lot of time on it and we should either engage it or not but I think we should come up with a governance model that is different or tweak what we have now but just be deliberate about that. Okay, floor. I agree with what Carrie said and what many of you have said. I think we have to create a structure and systems so that it doesn't matter if we are around five years from now or who the superintendent is so creating that culture is really important for me and the systems so I want to keep the board governance. I can pledge to have the second part. We have that goal. We were able to put some goals so thanks to jail we have board norms and not necessarily developed by November 18 but we got board norms. I would pledge to create the board rules description after our meeting with collaboration with others but do it by the end of May but I think this is one of the most important things we do and how to achieve it for me is getting that long-term planning and includes a calendar right so that so that we can stay on task and know what's coming know when we're expecting reports just it's not a calendar that will bring single detail but it will keep us focused and I agree with what Jonas was saying I don't want people to feel overwhelmed you know we're already over task and you know the idea of having one board meeting a month was to allow us to maybe do some of this work time of the month so I'm hoping that we can create to meet three things the board calendar a system of reporting like Cary was saying and more you know for quality education but a system of clear communication between superintendent and board and that we want the good the bad and you know we want full transparency and last I think I already said long-term planning and you asked what difference would this make or at the beginning we it won't matter who's in the board if we create the systems you know we we would be setting the the district for success in years to come and and the last thing would be as we create those goals or do that board goal that if we keep responsibility to a committee because I agree with everybody we had a minus C on superintendent evaluation and here with the chart we have a clear charge make sure that they have the resources they need and by a charge I don't mean a formal charge but expectation and the resources they need and hopefully you could hear me yes okay the next go around is going to be about do you still want to keep the student achievement goal and what do you think that looks like for you I'm not looking for you to share everybody else I mean you know I'm not looking for a shared opinion here but just what you perceive that student achievement goal to look like for you and how will that frame for you that goal making a difference Dorothy you're on mute Dorothy I would keep that goal I would like to find a way to maybe focus it more since we're going through this this audit of our of what we teach that we need to take the information that we get from that and see how it will fit into our goal for improving student achievement okay Diane so I think we're we're working toward it again with ed quality we've talked about how right now we're kind of skimming the top as we're getting familiar with what the tools look like but we're beginning to build that system of how do we dig deep into what it's telling us and as we're working through it it's that building that plane as you're flying it you know we're identifying who are the missing voices and so I think it's it's critical because that's what we're responsible for is to be sure that all learners have access and ability to learn so unless we're analyzing it and so and then also making the move to one board meeting a month is my hope that that allowing extra time then for us to spend more than an hour a month looking at the ed quality and the different parts that we do okay Christina yeah I think it's a goal that we should keep and I would I would like to see if the board could move towards spending more time each month working towards that goal and working towards it as a goal of a whole district instead of the individual schools to kind of get everybody on the same page okay lindy I I have no problem with these two goals I would like for the number two where we're improving learning for all students to have more discussion or input from the leadership team at our meetings so they quite often attend but we don't hear from them and just to get their input on how it's looking at the various schools um I don't know I just think I think that would be valuable for us okay Vera um I I need some clarification because um so my term ended in March of 2020 and I was just um elected as of March as a write-in of 2021 so right so establish a board process for review and analysis of student achievement of our student learning outcomes what is the status of that glory now can anybody answer that question I can take a step but that this is this is kari um so we over the past year have been um looking at each one of the student learning outcomes um one per month and um using uh information from our director of curriculum um trying to get a better understanding of what are the expectations the standards what are what are some insights into our curriculum and our instruction and then what is the achievement data look like and then having discussion about about you know okay what do we think about that what questions do we have um what are the implications and so on and we and we're about two-thirds of the way through the outcomes at this point and um um but that's my that that's my description of the system that we've developed and one building on what of what kari was saying one issue to look at over time is whether you believe as a board that the outcomes you're looking at are worthwhile meaning are you focusing in the right places are there things you need to be considering in addition that you may not be looking at yet scott so the process is i'm sorry vira yeah can you hear me yes okay so the process right now is reporting out to the board a different um i'm going to say subject area monthly uh-huh um it would be not i guess for my i agree with the two goals that are here i guess for my to hold us accountable to make sure that we're doing something with these goals is to have a living document of the status of the monthly um analysis and reviews so under our goal here each month we would somebody would be assigned to type in there what was analyzed what was reported out and where we're at as a district whether it be math science whatever subject area it might be so then like for me the coming in and for any other new board members we would know kind of what has happened over the last well since 10 21 of 2020 when this was approved uh-huh other than that i agree with the two goals but i i think there needs to be more depth to this i mean we're all here for student out for student achievement and me looking at this i can't tell you where we're at right now so that's hard not knowing that the there's any sub categories underneath one and two as to where we're at and what has been reported out there is something you may want to consider doing um is i'm sure you've got plenty on your plate is kind of laying out a a draft if you will of what that specificity would look like to be helpful to you and then sharing it with the board okay sure just you know i'm it this is not homework that you have to do by extended but i think it just would help to clarify for other board members what you're thinking is sure i can do that great scott thanks um based on that conversation just now between vera and kari i might just suggest um because i think a board process has actually been established through kari's committee the education quality committee to um just as vera was sort of looking for um using that process to show on a broad range of indicators are things getting better or are they getting worse and where and why if we can if we can say that um as a way of deepening what vera was just talking about the um making more meaningful that part one and part two i think um that is uh well on track is my understanding um we're we're aimed in that direction and we're going forward okay caroline thanks so i agree that we definitely keep the student achievement goal i feel like the specifics underneath i feel like they need to be tweaked i'm just not sure how i would tweak them i don't want to lose what's there but for example um um when we hear about the content areas each month i'm always left wanting more and it's like we just get this this little piece like like we had this amazing presentation i think it was in march on math it was fantastic but then i wanted to follow up with it and and and you know have more questions and get a little more specific and it's just not possible so i don't know if i don't know if having fewer content areas so we can go deeper or i don't i don't necessarily know what i want i just feel like it's been tricky to feel like we are deep enough that we can actually analyze the student achievement on our student learning outcomes or you know in some of the presentations we've heard that we know it's an area where where we really need to grow and so then and maybe it's not appropriate for our role as a board but sometimes it's like i really want to know a couple months down the road after that so what is being done right now what can we expect um as opposed to waiting until next march to hear again about um so i'm not sure if that totally makes sense because i don't feel like i have an answer to what i want i just feel like i don't know i feel like it's it's not perfect yet if that makes sense caroline if i'm hearing you correctly would it be helpful to you if for a particular subject that you wanted more clarification on and i'm not trying to say this specific time but you propose let's say a 45 minute meeting one morning over coffee where you talked about that subject only for board members who are interested in coming and you didn't talk about anything else because i think sometimes given all the responsibilities that the board has a board meeting can become a challenge for addressing a lot of specifics in the areas you're concerned about well i would always love to talk about math over coffee for 45 minutes so i would say i would say yes to that but yeah and i think then and you know and there's also something about just an opportunity for the board members who are interested in it having that time and access to get to the conversation to have it a little less formal but still of our role i think that would be i think it would be great if it was appropriate and if all board members agreed it it is appropriate and leading us toward the goal of analysis of student achievement on the student learning outcomes so yeah so we certainly still need this goal i i guess as a member of the education quality committee one of the things that i think we've been talking about is not just looking at our performance but asking ourselves and what do we do about the performance so i think that's what others are probably getting at and the piece that i still feel like i don't know how to get my arms around is where the curriculum audit work fits into this goal i think it does and that perhaps some of the specificity and sort of wishiness that people are describing those dots may get connected with that if i would defer to brian on that um but that's that's what i was hoping that that that process is going to help us deepen this and turn it into the you know more of the strategic plan that's described if i could suggest some of you can consider jill it would be that sometimes it's helpful to what take what people normally define as curriculum and think of it in three parts one is what are you teaching the second is how are you teaching it and the third is what kind of results are you getting from it to see if the first two the what and the how are leading to the kind of results that you really want that's one way of doing it yeah that's really helpful way to think about it thank okay steven um and definitely needs to stay as a goal i think the ed quality committee has done an exceptionally good job on establishing review and analysis of student performance and uh having that information posted um i think this goal is an area where we as a board do not do not function as we're supposed to so the great review and analysis that's done by the ed quality committee has no context so what would you what would you like that context i think that the board responsibility is overall and visionary and i'm not suggesting where it should be anywhere but for example we want to see uh our proficient the proficiency level of our students in math outcomes as measured by whatever we want to measure it by um are 70 percent and we're currently at 50 percent so then when there's a review and analysis of where we're at and how we're doing it has context right it's nice if everyone feels good about it it's nice if this review and analysis is presented to the board and thank you leadership team and and thank you teachers for assembling this information that's all nice but is it getting us to our goals and we currently don't have any goals none we have no student achievement goals if i could suggest you consider something i'm sorry i didn't want to interrupt you um sometimes it's helpful to look a couple of years out like four or five years out and ask students who've gone to college or community college or vortex school given what you accomplished while you were here in our district what did you learn that was helpful and what do you wish you would learn which i think can sometimes help frame what kinds of achievement goals you want that's one way of doing it well i i would say there's a million ways of doing it and there's a million potential goals we just haven't said any of them and we haven't said any way to measure okay jonas uh we definitely need uh you know student achievement goals um you know i haven't been able to pay as much uh you know attention or attend any of the ed quality committee meetings um i also you know i i hear what steven is saying right that statistics are only valuable if you know you know if you can really see what the change is over time and and you can you know you know normalize it um in some ways i think that's you know really really hard to do um you know i think our goal should be you know can you know improvement um you know and i i think the ed quality committee is doing a good job i hope they're doing a good job of figuring out how to measure that um i think that when the curriculum management review uh is delivered to us i think that that has to be an opportunity for us to work with the superintendent to uh you know first of all for us to learn you know how he intends to use that information to make changes and we need to be able to you know we need to be in a place where we can measure the effects of of those changes i think that you know i get the sense that that you know that they're um that there are going to be a lot of conversations about this and you know this is going to be another one of those inflection points of sort of you know before and and after so i think that our goals should be um you know we should be looking toward you know making sure that we're prepared for that after okay christopher um hi there um we should definitely keep this as a goal and since um so nick you you said two different times that we should be searching out students um and asking them what did they learn and what did they wish they had learned and i think the first time you said you should do it when they're graduating high school and then the second time i think you said it um you said a few years out so presumably either in college or into some type of other work environment um so why wouldn't why wouldn't we be doing that like at the end of every year that's a great idea and it also speaks to articulation across grade levels that sometimes we assume that teachers talk with each other across grade levels and sometimes they do and sometimes they don't but setting up an articulation process where at the end of each year teachers from let's say second grade talk to teachers in third grade and say what did you expect kids to know and what did they know and what did you and kind of promote that kind of articulation so that we really understand how kids what kids are learning and what we wish they had learned and have you seen that in in other districts you did you didn't require it okay um and so let me let me continue on is the the curriculum review audit that we are waiting for um i think Jonas is right it's going to be an important point um but what i also um hope that we do is that we look back in time um because i think we have had previous audits um and i'm thinking i'm thinking particularly of our um literary and literature um had a literary literature or audit i don't know if we've ever had a math one and just see what came of those what actions were taken if any in response to the audit and see if those reactions had a positive effect on student achievement or not uh so that we don't take the same reaction potentially to this audit if it if it generates one but sounds like it would thank you now also kudos to the um um carers committee they really do a very nice job in presenting a lot of information every board meeting thank you kari well this is um actually been really helpful i really appreciate hearing all these comments it gives me a lot of thoughts i've been thinking about this and i haven't had a chance to talk with the committee yet we're planning to do a review of the past year but here's here's a few thoughts um in the near term what i'd like to do is have us finish up all of the student learning outcomes so we we've had spent some focused on time on each one of them and then two threads to the what comes next one is is this idea of working with the information that we get from the curriculum management review and then all of this is informing the strategic planning right and i don't know exactly what the planning process is going to be i'm not sure how how the board is involved are we just one stakeholder or are we going to be um you know driving the bus i'm not sure exactly how that's going to work but um the goal of having a strategic strategic plan is that we have alignment on how we're going to um you know do better in terms of student achievement over the next five years and that hopefully ultimately take the form of some kind of policy or target benchmark so we can get at what steven's talking about we need to have you know defined you know measures of success and then aim for that and keep and keep pushing in that direction so that's one part of it and the other part of it is what is our system for measuring success and so i think we've been working on that by looking at the data over this next year and i think we should continue continue we were talking earlier about how we're getting a little more proficient we're getting more comfortable with some of the data that we've been because it's um you know some repetition so ultimately out of this we want to have a good sense of what are our standards and what is the evidence that we use and what is what do the reports look like and there's a definitely should be a component where we're looking at equity amongst different students and so this is this is our our way of um understanding performance and achievement within the system and i and i also think and then we have that's part of like a calendar that we can count on over the year and some part of that is updates on instruction and curriculum as well some of the content not just the outcomes and the difference that this makes i think this is really about making student achievement central to the board's work i really want i'd like to see that be a focus of almost every meeting if possible and you know because it's all about our mission to to serve our students very important points one thing you may want to consider over time is who are you talking to when you're reporting on data and who do you want to understand and i'm not looking for an answer but it's an ongoing issue um in many school districts that there are these phenomenal presentations of data that come out and then sometimes people say at the end of the meeting what was that all about so one of the issues is to take some target groups and say what would you like to know about how kids are doing and how would you like to know it meaning what kind of language do we need to use to convey to people what kids are learning and where we want them to improve and where they're doing very well it's just something to consider let's do a quick go around here because i know that floor once takes some time toward the end for the public comment period and i'd like each of you and i'm going to pick where we start to tell me in only one or two sentences what you've learned in this session scott why don't you start come on one or two sentences only one or two you can write an essay afterwards um can can i interrupt you guys nick do do i get a chance to go forward i'm very sorry i apologize scott i'm going to have to defer to the chair well done scott go ahead floor yeah i just wanted to have a chance to go to the student learning outcomes yes i i support that that goal and i agree with what has been said that we need to be more specific and we were talking about setting goals for improvement that we have done in the past in math or in literacy so that we can truly analyze that i so i'm i'm always curious we i think measuring achievement is super important but i also think as our duty to also a monitor a how do we measure our creating but are we fostering lifelong learners a how do we measure that our kids are engaged in and the comment that was made about how are they doing four years past graduation right we we don't have a way to collect that data and i think that that is super important and how do we ensure equity across our schools should be me the biggest umbrella over arching umbrella on this on this on this goal equity across and then last the strategic plan is probably going to be to me the most important thing that we are going to do you know we're going to do this monitoring which we're not very good at yet but we're working towards it parallel to doing the strategic plan and we're not doing the strategic plan but we're part of the strategic plan and that's going to be the roadmap or highway for the next five five years with combination of the curriculum assessment data that we're going to get so how do we involve the community it's going to be crucial in that strategic plan to make sure that we're reflecting the values of our community and what they want to see as what we used to call the portrait of a graduate it so and why would this make a difference is because it would just to say what chris was saying that it would bring equity from the board to the classroom and I think that's why it's important so that Scott you get hold it before Scott goes one way you can uh too often I think the reason that strategic plans end up gathering dust and not a whole lot more is that we don't go out on a regular basis maybe annually and ask let's say focus groups in different parts of the community what do you think this is about what do you think this specific goal or activity is about and what what does it mean to you do you think we should keep doing it the way a strategic plan continues to take on meaning or in some people use the term remains organic is when you ask people what they think and what their understanding is of what you're trying to do so that's something you could consider as a part of the strategic planning process Scott thanks I appreciate the chance to collect my thoughts um it sometimes seems to me that as a board we're like a fussy old man who drives his car with one foot on the accelerator and the other foot on the brake at the same time and um worries that the the help is trying to pull a fast one on us and um generally tends to look at the world with a bit of a sour attitude whereas in fact in many ways things are are going pretty well there are problems but we seem to we recognize them and are are doing a lot of things right it seems to me so I'm trying to focus on those times when we've really been at our most effective as a board and and do that more good Caroline what did you learn from this session I was not expecting to go so soon um but I've learned that we actually have a lot of similarities in our beliefs um hearing from from everyone I would say more similarities in our beliefs than I expected and I think we are in agreement about the what and it's more the how that we need to have more discussion about and likely we'll need to come to a compromise okay that's well said Jill um I uh you know at our in-person retreat I actually said that I heard a lot of um consensus and that I thought we were largely on the same page and I would say I feel even more so that way um listening to this conversation I think Caroline's point about how we've got some differences in the how is right um but I think that's pretty surmountable actually because we have a lot of such so much share goal terrific Steven I would say I've learned that I continue to be outlier in my thoughts among the board members but you get people to think Steven there you go Jonas um what have I learned um I've learned that that Scott Scott is very good with an analogy um I would push back a little um against uh Scott's characterization um of us as the fussy old man who thinks that the help is trying to pull one over on us you know I think that we've we we I think we have generally been remarkably deferential and and we have tried to be disciplined in the way that we you know that we interact with you know other people and other things sort of outside of the of the board and when we have not done that there has been reflection and you know attempts to uh you know you know to moderate that um you know that there is a lot of consensus on the board um but I think quite quite often um I think we temper ourselves and I think that the essential uh you know fault lines you know on whatever it may be you know often remain hidden in and deep underground Christopher um I think there is a hunger for measurable specifics in what we do I think we're looking for measures that we can say this is achieved or that was achieved and if not why not okay Kari I agree there seems to be um pretty good alignment about the things that we should be focused on and I think that um we're set up pretty well if we can do at least two things one is define these a little more specifically um what these goals are what what success looks like and then two have the discipline to stay focused on them throughout the year when we have so many other responsibilities and there are so many unknowns that are going to come our way can we continue to come back to these if if so I think the next year or two could be really impactful as a board I think the challenge always is there is there's always new things that come up and part of the challenge is sorting out what's really important to you as you move forward and that's not something for which there's only a one time answer but it's a constant challenge for any organization and in particular school districts Christina I've learned that the goal of student achievement is really deep and has a lot of different complex parts and can look a little bit different to everybody but that you know I think we all have the same end goal we all want to see what's best for our district and so I look forward to working together to obtain these goals Diane so I learned it was helpful to be reminded of what those goals were and the fact that the work we've been doing is is you know slogging forward to do it it reminds me of mud season and we're really stuck in the muck right now and then you know we're going to hit some dry patches where we'll catch some traction and get going um but then we have to expect we'll get slogged down again and we're right as we're digging deeper we need to identify what those things are that are measurable so that then we know are we on the same page or not as to what when we're using the same words so um it was helpful to review it and I almost wonder if those should be put below our norms so that it's a constant reminder of what we said we're working on um so thanks for this opportunity to review Dorothy um all I learned that most of us want to stay with the original goals but fine tune them a little bit um many people have made some good comments about how we should go about doing that and I think they're all be a positive outcome with some of those ideas great Vera so um did oh to what Diane said I the only thing I would add is um a little deeper because of the longevity that I've had on the board um I we definitely get stuck in the mud when we talk about goals yearly um I do agree that adding them to the norms page would be a great idea and doing um a mid-year check in which maybe that was done last year I'm not sure but it would be nice to have a mid-year check in on the status of where we're at with the goals great Lindy um I learned that the goals are still uh we value them still but we want more specificity for measuring or checking in with them do you feel you can make a contribution in giving input to the quality committee around what you're looking for I hope so because I'm on the committee this is a good thing floor so I well first of all I I guess I want to say that I appreciate all of the comments that it was valuable to have the revision of the struggle with that question and we felt that it was important to you know revisit and not try to reinvent and and I was hoping to go a little as far as this is I I think that I'm encouraged to see how much we have grown as a board a and it hasn't been easy all the time but I think like they have a lot in in common and a lot to build on uh so I I truthfully I'm just excited a little deeper in and committed to doing that a board calendar in and I think it's a great suggestion to add the goals to the big arms so this is not the last retreat so we you know if this is the work that we value we have to come back to this quickly that's it okay floor I am now going to turn the meeting over to you because I know you wanted to have time for public comment so and I appreciate everything that people have brought to the meeting because I think there's a really strong commitment here to try to come to a shared uh perspective on what's important for kids and parents in this district which in my view is fundamentally what schools public schools are about so floor it's all yours thank you and I want to thank you nick for facilitating and for working this thing this retreat to the board uh thank you sure so I want to I want to open it up I know we have uh members of the public here and teachers with us we did not have a um today but I want to respect that we have a lot of people here there won't be any comments from the board but we want to hear from please if you could raise your hand and please forgive me if I don't see you all at the same time and hopefully you can hear me clearly I don't see any hands raised quite yet so I see Roger now and if there's anybody else that wants to speak um so Roger thank you very much um I would like to read the letter that um the music teachers wrote this past week to the board so that everyone else and the people that are here um can hear it um I would really like to sing it but I won't do that for you I'll just read it um members of the wc usd school board this was written April 5th we the collective k through 12 music department of washington central would like to ask you for clarification on the fte cuts that our department has recently incurred when the state of vermont issued the return to learn guidelines last summer it was very clear that the music department would be the hardest hit with curricular restrictions we were being asked to deliver a comprehensive music education to all k 12 students without being able to sing dance or play instruments our elementary and middle level teachers were asked to translate it all to a cart and our high school courses have been 100 virtual since regardless of the restrictions we persevered to still provide for all of our students every year we face the harsh reality of part time positions decades of budget cuts and under supported elementary programs have left our department with a skeleton structure requiring teachers to put in more of their personal time to ensure students still had the same experiences despite these decades of cuts when the district found themselves without a music teacher in callus mid 2019 sam mishkin stepped up to help out only to be cut back more in east montpelier this year when our remote academy students were not given access to allied arts classes it was the music department that stepped up to teach those students all without taking the offer of compensation coming into this academic school year tensions were higher than they've ever been our yearly worries of rifts seemed to be staring at us through holes in our schedules through state-manded guidelines to keep students safe we were stripped of our ability to teach band instrumental lessons and chorus after many elementary music teachers approached their administrators with their respective worries they were all told the same thing that fte would not be impacted this school year or in future school years because of gaps due to coven we finally could take a deep breath and focus on our work with the recent rifts in fte our elementary program has suffered a cut of 0.7 fte each time a cut is given to the program it is communicated that there will not be a cut in programming but we don't know how this is possible when asked what are the must haves at wcu usd what programs need to be supported parents responded that their top choice of programs to be supported were the arts this comes from the superintendent's recent mailing this survey highlights a clear desk disconnect between what parents want to see for their children's learning experience and where resources are being allocated it's time we start listening to our communities our parents our teachers and most importantly our students they are begging for more arts and yet we continue to cut them back here comes the time sensitive question what is going to give with 0.5 of cuts to our elementary music department happening just this year and 0.7 happening over the last two years what is being let go please do not let administrators show you schedules for this year with all of their required covert gaps and assume that there is time being wasted a cut this year is a cut to programming no matter how you spin it and these cuts are being decided without open transparent conversation with the music education team our k-12 program has a long way to go before it becomes what students deserve even before these cuts we were underserving students with their access to general music instrumental music and choral music students need at least two opportunities within a week to receive instrumental instruction and one 30 minute small group lesson on their specific instrument the cuts incurred this year no longer allow for a beginning instrumental program across all five of our elementary schools if we cannot provide the bare minimum it takes to learn a beginning instrument then we need to eliminate beginning instruction from all of our elementary schools and provide a consistent and acceptable start in seventh grade however starting instrumental instruction in the seventh grade is not what any of our music educators want to see a start in seventh grade would mean that our program would be the latest starting program in the state and possibly in the country any student starting an instrument in seventh grade would be at a disadvantage of attending an all-state music festival which we did have the joy of hosting two years ago the new england music festival or beyond students would be behind when accessing musical expression with students beyond our school district but if we cannot provide them a strong foundation we are essentially strangling those opportunities from the bottom up as members of the school community we urge you to talk to your town members and ask them if they're okay with the elimination of an elementary elementary instrumental music program despite some growing concerns and worry over fte we love it here we love working with our students and their families we love the communities we work for and the people we work with we show up every day eager and willing to make a difference but we need guidance from you our school board we are willing to do the work it takes to be the best program program in the state but we cannot do that work if we keep incurring the cuts thank you for your collective responses respectfully signed the wcuusd collective k-12 music department which includes kate liptak roger grow and decker sam mishkin david powelson michael close alaria don and meta bravos thank you very much for allowing us to read this and share our concerns and our thoughts about this thank you so much roger is there anybody else oh i see kate's hand up kate mckin are you there kate can everybody here as my yeah yeah so okay so it's not like kate can't hear me so i don't know if she's there it lin hello um my name is lin spencer and i'm the art teacher at berlin elementary school i have been an art teacher for 28 years in central vermont for the last 15 i have been had the privilege to be the art teacher here at berlin and i've also been a voter in the town of berlin for the last 28 as well so i have strong ties in this community listening to the um the conversation that the board had earlier it struck me that the one of the themes that was consistent through the conversation was the idea of trust and communication and so i wanted to share what a shock it was in just a little over a week ago that i was informed that cuts and changes would be happening in the arts program at berlin and that my first reaction was the budget passed how did this why don't i know and it was um it was disappointing to not have had an opportunity to have a clear discussion and conversation as a community member as a staff member um with um all interested parties on what will happen what would like to happen um how what is going to be best for um our students and our learn and our overall learning community with these changes it's about time looking at a schedule formal schedule printed out it is uh on any teacher schedule it if it's printed and uh listed it sometimes uh doesn't look as if it is full like it might appear that at the board uh the only time you are doing anything at the board is at a meeting and you know that that is certainly not the case and neither is it the case um for any teacher i am very concerned that with these cuts the changes will make turn yeses into noes for a student and we know that the most successful one of the ways to success for students is that uh strong content or contact with a caring adult and i'm very concerned is this time is condensed that when a student comes into me to my room and says can i work on my project no i don't have time when a student comes in to say can we have lunch together because of what i will need to do it will be oh i'd like to but i don't have time when a math teacher at the third grade said my students are trying to really learn how to create a queue do you have time i want to be able to say you bet come on in i have time in my schedule let's work together when a first and second grade teachers are working in literacy i have time in my schedule to say yes let's work together team teach and we can make these things happen it's student contact time is not always what it appears on a formally printed schedule i encourage the board to embrace that open communication as it has been historically in our community where we sit down we talk about it we listen respectfully and that all interested parties have an opportunity to share what needs to be what they need to convey to administration and that's all i have to say so thank you for taking the time to listen thank you so much lin for your input i don't see any other hands up daniel thank you i know you all like cringe when you see my name come up for talking so i'll be brief the the letter that was written was uh superb and covered a lot of the topics um but i'd like to read a few more um quotes from the release that came out to us with this beautiful print and the dashing man and the kilt in the back i want to point out um i'm going to read a few quotes here uh our graduation rate while steady over a number of years dipped below the vermont average our sat mass scores dipped below the vermont state average our sat critical reading scores dipped below the vermont state average our enrollment numbers have been steady have been in steady decline over the past four years our cost per pupil is the highest in vermont at 19 408 dollars are we investing in the right areas to improve our students educational and life outcomes uh this is significant in the understanding that when you look at the growing body of knowledge in education there is a clear correlation between music music education and academic success there are high-level colleges at this point requiring students to have musical studies but yet somehow with our numbers clear as they are this was a choice made somewhere above uh and i think when we look at the uh questions that are being asked in the publications that we're producing there is a disconnect and a dishonesty with our actions and our words and so i would just like to to motion to the board that we reconsider and truly seek success which was one of the main conversation pieces i heard today at the board meeting how do we find success and how do we create community i know few better systems to create community than music and arts thank you thank you thank you you're back and you had up before yes can you hear me now yes we can hear you now okay great i'm kate mccann 2017 vermont state teacher of the year and a teacher of mathematics at u32 first i want to say that i'm so proud of my colleagues for turning out and tuning in for tonight's meeting we started the meeting with 50 participants and six voices have been silenced over the course of three hours thank you lindy for continuing to push for public comments earlier in the evening than at the end we've given all day and now an additional three hours what christ said early on resonated with me that licensed professionals are employees of the district and not the superintendent my being here tonight is trifled one i stand with my colleagues in the music department that are enduring riffs after a community survey put the arts at highest priority two and referring back to something dorthy said earlier this evening that relationship the smaller boards had with their building principles should not be lost as you move towards a governance model the model incorporates ethics integrity and a responsible code of conduct for all leaders and workers in our learning community at the moment we have a rising level of mistrust as voices are being suppressed three i would advocate for the full transparency that flor highlighted just after 8 p.m. tonight steven educational goals are vital and i'm available if you'd welcome my input a curriculum review in the middle of a pandemic isn't the answer ps as a stats teacher i appreciate the outlier and caroline i'd love to talk math with you you can find me at u32 math over coffee yes thank you kate i'm trying to see if there's alison uh we would just like to um share our support for the things that we've missed this last year in music you like come back um our students really really enjoy the music that they have in berlin and they're looking forward to getting back to that and that would be a very big shame if that was not possible thank you thank you alison thank you for being with us today and and i don't do it i don't see any more hands it right now so i i would encourage you to jessica hinds is waving her hand oh oh there sorry jessica i didn't i didn't see you and you're just i couldn't find my hand um i'm going to turn my camera off just because i know my audio is probably not very good um can everyone hear me hi um so i just had a little statement that i wanted to read um so i'm a school counselor at berlin i've been there for about 16 years now um and this year um we have two teachers that have been told that they're going to work both at berlin and callus next year for the same fte um they'll teach the same number of classes at berlin as they do now and add on more classes from callus as well as travel time we're not 100 clear on the exacts as the has the district and the board hasn't really been transparent on the details of things um i'd like to post some questions regarding this issue has the board asked how this change will affect the teachers with more classes and less prep time has the board asked how this change will affect the quality of lessons how can these teachers provide the same high quality lessons now when they're teaching more and prepping less um has the board asked how this change will affect band and chorus at berlin um have you thought about how this will affect the u 32 band and chorus for for incoming students um when you know berlin has minimal or no band or chorus to seventh grade if it's not able to happen um has the board thought about how these changes will affect the whole child perspective at berlin and their general education um and i just you know really wondering where was the community voice the involvement and communication and making this decision and where was transparency is um what i want to know because i'm finding out in april that you're being um moved to potentially moved to a different school and your position being cut a little bit is a bit disrespectful and um really unnecessary when i know the discussion has been happening since january maybe even before so um just think about those questions and um you know it's just something that's really difficult right now um to to understand thank you thank you everybody i think everybody's been hurt please raise your hand if somebody else is missing i i really want to thank you for for waiting and for indirectly participating in our retreat and seeing our i know our our system is going to go through a lot of growth and pain you know growing pains through the next few years and and it's going to take a community to support it so i appreciate everybody's come we the board appreciates everybody's come in and your willingness to to wait until we were done we will close the meeting right now and really thank you we we heard what you had to say we hear your questions and and and we take your input so coming tonight i want to respect that members this has been the fourth hour of the meeting too and i would encourage you guys to reach out to the to your building principles and to the superintendent too with more questions in the mean so thank you again to everybody thank you for the at the board thank you especially to all the teachers it's nice to see so many of you here and we'll we'll see you at the next meeting to the rest of the board so coming today thank you nick for facilitating today and susana already left and thank you brian everybody and i think we need a motion to adjourn or we just say goodbye but i'll take a motion to adjourn so moved second thank you chris thank you jonas all those in favor please leave the meeting say aye thank you everybody have a good night everyone you too every good night bye