and board members here so far, is that correct? Okay, great. So let's get started. I have to confess that I need to change things a little bit around. Carrie, I just tried to call you. So I wanna change a couple of things on this schedule. We will go into a regular board meeting and I would like to elect a vice chair first to change the meeting. I'll go into executive session with you guys and we'll start with just the board for personal reasons. I'm gonna have to leave. So we'll do just the first part at the executive session that I have all of the materials. And then Carrie, I'm sorry to put this at the last minute with you, I just sent you some information but that is in the hospital, so I need to go. Oh, sorry. Yes. All right, so if we could, we call the meeting to order at 502. And we're gonna move the agenda a little bit and bring the governance part up and elect a vice chair. Could have a nomination. Is Jonas with us? I'll nominate Carrie Bradley. Thank you. I'll second. Thank you, Scott. Thank you, Jonas. So Scott nominates and Chris seconds. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Thank you, Carrie, for your willing to serve. And now could I have a motion to go into executive session, please? So moved. I'll second. Second and the executive session is legal matter negotiations and superintendent evaluation. Brian, we're gonna start just the board together and then you and Carla can go in. Please, thank you. Okay. Floor. Yes. All those in favor of going to executive session, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. I'm sorry, but can everybody hear me now? Yes. Now we can join us. All right. Welcome everybody. I'm gonna start the meeting. Our chair floor, you know, Smith had to leave. So I is your newly elected vice chair. We'll be facilitating tonight and please bear with me. I wasn't prepared to do this. So 3.1 reception of guests. Welcome everybody, thank you for being here. We're gonna move right into 3.2 public comments. We have 15 minutes allocated for this and we're gonna really try to stick to that. We've got a very busy agenda. And so will someone remind us what are our expectations around public comments? What do we allocate per person? Hi, Carrie. I can speak to that. I just wanted to confirm we're doing public comment before we're doing the social justice. I'm not, I moved my agenda. I thought Laura had said the Black Lives Matter was first and we had some people to speak to us on that. I'm just checking. You know, she sent me some emails but I haven't had a chance to look at them. I just walked into this. Does anybody else have that understanding? Yes, she said the students would be ready at six o'clock at U-32. Yeah, and that, and just to be clear that we've invited them to speak to us. So that's not part of public comment. And so then we can, then we'll move into public comment more generally is how I understood it. Okay, thank you. I apologize, Stephen. Then I would request that we make no decision until after public comments. Okay, so this would just be the presentation portion of the question and answer. That's what I would ask. Allow them to present now to be mindful of their time but we won't make a decision until after we've, I have no idea if anyone wants to say anything in public comments or not, but I don't want to have a presentation us make a decision and then have people waiting in public comments that wanted to say something. It would be inappropriate. I think we have a good idea. Anybody concerned about that? No, completely agree. Jonas? Good. Okay, so we'll do that. We're going to rearrange the agenda and start with 4.2.1 presentation. Black Lives Matter flag raising request. Brian, are you introducing this? Yes. So basically what's happened is we've had a student group Black and Asian and many more and they've applied for a display of the Black Lives Matter flag, which is currently being flown at U32 middle and high school. The request is be on the end of the school year and to what everyone know in the public, according to our policy, which is included in this packet, the school board is to make it big, is to consider and make a decision regarding this application. I have checked with legal counsel and to review the application and all of the requirements for our policy from the student group that submitted this application have been met. And it's also students, the other group that's also, it's been two groups actually. It's also the student seeking justice group as well that has helped put this application together. I also understand that if you look at the flag policy, if you look on page eight of your packet and you look at bullet point one, bullet point five, it says the flag shall remain on the school flag pole through the end of the school year and it shall then be removed unless the board elects a different timeframe. So I think the application from these two student groups for what I've been told has been timely because I think even though the U32 board had made this decision three years ago, close to three years ago and the U32 board is no longer a governing body, the question comes down to is, this board has not been officially asked. And I think that the other piece of it is the timeframe that the student groups want, I think they want to make sure it's not removed. And if you look at the application and speaking with the U32 administration, if the board does grant it, I think they would also be very open to having an opportunity to do a flag raising ceremony at the start of next school year. Okay, thank you. So I take it we have some guests that are prepared to speak to us about their proposal. Krista, would you like to go? I would, thank you. And then I'm really excited. I have a couple of students here. Some of our original members are back. So I just want to say hi, my name is Krista D and I'm a teacher. I'm an art teacher at U32. And I'm also one of the diversity advisors for our middle school and high school BLAMs. I want to say that I'm so honored to be here and have this moment to reflect on and celebrate all the work that has happened since BLAM first attended a school board meeting, which was over three years ago when we first requested to raise the Black Lives Matter flag. So much progress has happened to our community since that day. I'm excited to see that some of the school board members we originally worked with are here. You engaged in thoughtful dialogue with our students and supported raising the flag. You are part of the celebration. Your support in raising the Black Lives Matter flag told our students that they are valued. And so much good came from that. I'd like to share just a few things that happened since then. First off, every single one of the original six members of BLAM became strong leaders in our school when previously they felt harassed, silenced or ignored. These students led hard conversations with large groups of students and showed up over and over to help students understand why Black Lives Matter and in turn why they matter. They worked with teachers at U32 and went into the elementary schools so that the that teachers could understand why teaching diversity is important. And how they can make students of color feel like valued members of the school community. They worked with students at Doty and successfully taught kids how to be upstanders. Some of the members of BLAM presented to every superintendent in the state of Vermont about their experience and on the importance of supporting Black Lives Matter. And most importantly they left a legacy at U32. New members are joining teachers are involved and are excited to teach diversity. We are endlessly supported by our administrators to make space for this hard work. And the students of color feel like they have a voice. I'm very thankful to everyone at U32 and for everyone's support. And I am proud to say that two of our original BLAM members leaders are here. And they're going to explain to you why they think that the Black Lives Matter flag should remain up at U32 and why it's important to them. We're going to start with Letitia and then that will be followed by Gabby. Letitia are you here. Yes. Can you hear me. Yes. Okay. Hi I'm Letitia Montgomery and three years ago I and other members from BLAM stood in front of the school board requesting to put the Black Lives Matter flag up to show the school and the community that U32 is an accepting and safe place for students of colors to come in and to feel welcome. We stood in front of not just the school board but also our peers and many of them were against us. I don't think people understand how hard the process was and how much work went into it. You all may think that it ended or it got better just because the flag got put up. But the sad reality is that it just got more hidden. Not even a week ago my little sister who was a student here going into ninth grade received a video of two boys who were calling a girl and word lover with the hard art. This is why it's so important to have the flag up because it is a reminder to every student when they walk into the school that racism isn't welcome or tolerated at U32. And that's all. Awesome. And now Gabby are you here. Yeah. I'm here. Can you hear me. Yes. Okay. Was a part of an original member like Leticia on March 28th 2018 I stood before the school board and spoke as to why the Black Lives Matter flag should fly at U32. Now a little over three years later I'm here again speaking as to why it should remain at my now alma mater. When I spoke the first time it was a call for action. It was a call for attention to minorities and racial injustices they face not only in the world but within the walls of U32. The Black Lives Matter flag meant to me and my fellow BLAM members acceptance and steps towards the right direction of educating others on biases. When the flag was raised raised a sense of hope came a hope that conversations would begin. Learning would be encouraged and minority voices would be heard. Now more than ever the U32 community needs this flag to remain. The conviction of George Floyd's killer in the implementation of Juneteenth as a federal holiday we as a society need to keep pushing forward. The flag staying up not only is a reminder of how far we have come but most importantly how far we still have to go. The Black Lives Matter flag is about human rights. It is not political.  It means you stand with those who face injustices every day those who are judged solely based on the color of their skin. Without the flag U32 remains silent to what is going on today and how student lives are being impacted. The flag is a voice of your students one that should not be taken away. Thank you. So great to hear your voices. The Meg Allison is going to take it from here. Thanks Chris. Leticia Gabby you have definitely created a legacy amongst the students that U32 and it lives on. Hello board I'm very honored to be here tonight with Chris and our students. I'm at U32 and I am the co-founder and co-creator of a space called Seeking Social Justice. And I want to give a shout out to all the students who have been showing up all year both in middle school BLAM and SSJ because we've had to create spaces outside of the school day to do this work and they've been showing up. I have three students who are unable to make it tonight but I have short statements to read from them. Eva Goodwin is a rising 12th grader and an active member of SSJ. She writes, the Black Lives Matter flag is important to have flying at U32 because it is the way to acknowledge the racial injustices and inequality that have occurred. While it is not a solution to these problems of racial injustice, it is a visible sign that we as a school community are committed to equality. Having the Black Lives Matter flag flying on our campus can help spur further conversations and activism surrounding the problems of racial justice in our country. From AJ Moore, who is a rising 11th grader. AJ writes, I think that the Black Lives Matter flag is much more than politics. It represents spreading love and power to a group of people who have been in a society where their values, safety and wellbeing have been disregarded and violated continuously over a long period of time. Putting up the Black Lives Matter flag brought nothing but positivity to our school and the BIPOC community within it. Having this flag flown promotes nothing but inclusiveness and support for the people who have not had either of those things. And it is the bare minimum our school should be doing to give that to them. And lastly, Jack Thompson, rising 11th grader. He writes, although the raising of the flag will constitute the school board endorsing its message, I ask of you not to think of this as the school board raising a flag, but as the students raising a flag. It was the students who advocated for it, the students who gathered support for it, the students who have made the case for committing to a future where no one is left out. As a school district that holds global citizenship as a necessity for graduation, I hope you will recognize and support your students participating in a direct democracy and standing up for what they believe in. Thank you for your time. Okay. Well, thank you, Krista, Letitia, Gabby and Meg. Are there any questions from the school board for our presenters? If not, I think we will end there and return back to this for discussion and a vote after we've done the public comments. Okay, so thank you very much and stay tuned. All right, so we're gonna go back to 3.2 and public comments. Can someone remind the group what our expectations are around individual commenters and their limits? Yes, Ari, I can do that. Hi, everybody. So the steering committee met last week and you'll note on the agenda that we are gonna be timing public comments tonight. So everyone will have one and a half minutes and we will go for 15 minutes. So that will mean 10 people will be able to speak at the beginning of the meeting if there are more people who wanna speak will additional public comment at the end of the meeting. We are gonna be really strict about that time and microphones are actually gonna get muted when one and a half minutes is up. So it's gonna be pretty disciplined. I wanna remind people that there are lots of ways to seek our attention and we welcome your emails, we welcome letters from you. We are many of us doing meetings in our communities. So there are lots of ways for us to engage with you but we are gonna be disciplined about this particular mode of communication. Jim, Garrity, who does all the technology for our meetings is gonna be, I believe, displaying the timer so that you can see how much time you have and so that you'll have some morning when your time is up. And then the last thing I would say is, given the limits, I would really urge you not to read a long statement because I don't think this is just my advice. I don't think you'll make it through. And so I really urge you to give us the highlight of what brought you to provide some public comment today and what action you're hoping that this board will take or perhaps not take. Okay, so that's my understanding of what's happening. I can see some hands raised. Kara, do you want me to call on people or are you gonna do that? How do you wanna handle it? I can no longer see you. Yeah, so I've got a list going. I'm just gonna go in the order that I saw them come up. The first up is Ellen and then Amy. So Ellen, please. Thank you. For those of you who don't know me, my name is Ellen Dorsey and I was drawn to this district in 2001, fresh from graduate school and brimming with idealism. This dynamic, innovative and caring educational community became a conductor and ground for what was then boundless energy. I started out as a middle school and high school math teacher before becoming an instructional coach in 2014. In this capacity, it's been my privilege to collaborate with dedicated educators from across our six schools. To me, in this work, we have always been one district and promoting voice in agency has always been central to who we are and how we do things, embedded in our roots.  So instead of voicing my concerns, I would like to use my voice now to share my hopes for this district to which I remain utterly devoted. I hope we see that if we value growth, we need to tend to the health of our roots. That if we value equity, we need to distribute and at times disrupt power. That if we want real improvements for our students, we need to base our planning on a fully collaborative process and not bullet points from an ill-conceived audit. I urge the board to organize a community forum to begin to restore the trust that has been lost within our educational community this year and help us move forward because we are better together. Thank you. Thank you, Ellen. So Amy's up and Anne will be next. My name is Amy Young and I work at Berlin Elementary School as a librarian and tech integration specialist. I want to express my concern about moving forward with the adoption of the new technology policies. I agree that we need the policies, but I want to put time for more stakeholders, specifically community members, teachers and tech committee members to have input. The tech committee has not been active in this past year and the policies were a surprise to myself and to most of our staff. I would also like us to consider consulting the Vermont School Board Association, the sample policies and consulting our new tech director, Art Klein, before moving forward. I also want to take this time to celebrate the work of Washington Central staff members in the last three days of our curriculum camp. Jen Miller-Arsonel designed a very valuable agenda which allowed participants to embrace some very powerful curriculum work. Thank you. Thank you, Amy. So, Anne, you're up and then Madeline, you'll be next. Having just completed the two and a half days of curriculum camp, it continues to be an energizing opportunity for district teachers and administrators to work collaboratively on improving district-wide instruction. I'm incredibly appreciative of being able to spend the last two and a half days working with a group that consisted of 50% administrators and 50% teachers. We thrived by practicing and modeling how we know students learn best. I would hate to see this collaborative process disappear just because we received the curriculum on it with recommendations that are prior to rise, prior to rise, sorry, by just one person. All right, thank you, Anne. Madeline, then Daniel. Daniel. Thank you. So, for those of you who don't know me, I am Madeline Doherty. I teach special education at U32. Like to start off quickly by saying Black Lives Matter. Heck yes, I really hope that you continue to let that flag fly at U32. I firmly support my black students, my black friends and chosen family and hope that that flag stays up until racial justice is achieved and it is no longer redone and the flag is redundant. But even just as importantly, not more importantly, just as importantly, I would like to join in solidarity with my colleagues and other community members who are calling for a public forum to discuss the results of the curriculum management review, even with the report being included in the packet today and with the presentation we got at the last board meeting. I am fairly certain that most of us have way more questions than we do answers, even as a career-long educator. I found that presentation full of a lot of jargon and hard to wrap my mind around. So I am certain that there's a lot of people who would like to be able to discuss this, not to mention the many concerns you've heard about the validity of the data and the appropriateness of this review during a pandemic. I think that those concerns are valid and I would not want us to take anything from this report at face value. I hope that you allow the public to weigh in through those many forums that Jill mentioned before any change. Okay, thank you, Madeleine. Danielle, you're next and then Daniel will be after. Hi, this is Danielle. First, I want to say that as a white parent of two black children in the district, the Black Lives Matter flag means so much to us in terms of welcoming potential safety, willingness and commitment to social justice. It means something to us. And so please, please keep it. And I want to say thank you to the students who have advocated and made this progress, made it happen so far. Switching to the curriculum review, I also would like the idea of a community forum. I feel greatly concerned that our educators may not be involved in the curriculum management considerations and I'd like to open that up. Thank you. Thank you. So, Daniel followed by Elsa. Hey, thank you. I want to start off with the word educate. In case you folks don't know, educate comes from X means out and the duker means to weed people out to be open. And it's recently come to my attention that there's an interest in limiting access to the internet at school. As somebody who tends to work many hours past the school closing time, I've noticed members of the community who come up to the school for 10, 20 minutes at a time and use the internet. If we are truly leaders in the outwardness, the community, we need to leave that internet open. It's an act of equity and it's also an act of education. Many members in our community don't have access to self-service or internet service. Second of all, using hard and fast rules to create a system is one which creates ignorance and an inability to critically think for themselves about what is right. And I believe that does go against our mission as educators and a school district. It leads us away from American principles of freedom and it leads us towards on a slippery slope, despotism, when we can no longer make critical choices. While guidelines are helpful, education is about access. I just wanted to toss it out there in terms of a moral standpoint. Thank you for the time. Thank you. Elsa and up next will be Christine. Hi there. I'm Elsa Engpen. I am a parent of four children in the district and one of them graduated this year. I'm also the school health director in a neighboring school district. I attended this meeting tonight because I was intrigued and slightly concerned that the superintendent put out notice to parents in more than one message. I'm honestly not sure. I know one was email. I think I saw another one on a school-supported social media account encouraging parents and community members to come to this meeting specifically because of the issue of the Black Lives Matter flag. And it's curious and concerning to me that there was such an unusual effort to ask people to come for that issue while there was no comment of the fact that this meeting would also be addressing a massive curriculum review and potential changes in our children's instruction. I hope that the board and the superintendent can address why this issue of the Black Lives Matter flag was felt to be so different and unique from other issues that are raised at board meetings on a regular basis. I've been a parent in this district for 12 years and that doesn't happen very often. That said, I'm in full support of the Black Lives Matter flag continuing to fly and certainly hope that that is continued without any further fuss or need for best community input. Thank you. Christine and then Holly, you'll be next. Hi, I am Christine Chartrand. I am a, I've been a teacher at U32 for the past nine years. I also am part of the callous community. I am on here and I don't usually talk up about things but I did want to mention that the upcoming change to the schedule at U32 feels incomplete to me. Right now you'll see that point 10 states that the change, this last minute change to our schedule will most likely impact many of our teachers who have children in childcare. Across the state, childcare have been having a trouble securing employees and are therefore closing at 3 p.m. And there hasn't been a solution proposed in this proposal for a new change of a schedule. And I want you to consider before approving something like that to consider the impact it will have on our teachers. I currently have a contract with a school to send my children there and I will be losing out on a lot of money if I have to get them out of that school and will most likely cause a lot of trauma to my children who are planning on going where they're going. And to consider potentially waiting another year and giving families and teachers enough time to prepare for this change in the schedule. Thanks. Thank you. Holly and then Meg please. Good evening. Thank you to the board. My name is Holly Lane. My husband Dan and I live in East Montpelier. We have four children, one who has already graduated and three others who are still in the district. My husband sent a letter earlier today and I'm just gonna read an excerpt from it. This went to the board earlier and I will try to keep it brief. Tonight, we asked the school board to facilitate a community forum as suggested in your board norms appended to the agenda to gather community input about the direction and that the district seems to be headed in under the current leadership. Although the board services widely appreciated there's growing concern that the school board is failing to responsibly shepherd district resources by continuing to support a superintendent who has lost the confidence of a majority of educators and alienated many community members. For instance, it's our understanding that the superintendent has formally reprimanded some administrators who have respectfully disagreed with him. If this is the case, it seems to violate the spirit if not the exact language of the district's B40 policy on non-retribution and retaliation. Why are these experienced, highly valued voices being retaliated against? The district is hemorrhaging talent across all levels and losing its distinctive identity as a desirable district with well-rounded values. We also suggest that the board rejects accepting today's curriculum review reports and so few educators in the district seem to trust the process used or even value the review since it's premised on a faulty deficit review during the COVID. Okay, thank you, Holly. We did receive that email from you earlier. Meg, you're next. Thank you for this opportunity. I have served six years in our district as a teacher librarian at U32 and I'm here to speak directly about the eight technology policies currently in the process of getting read, reviewed and approved by the board. I have served on our district's technology committee for my entire tenure, except for this year because there wasn't a committee and I served on the hiring committee for our new director of technology this spring for the request of my building principal. I'll get right to the point. I'm very uncomfortable with the process of passing any IT policies, never mind eight of them under the leadership of an interim IT director and without the input of a district technology committee. We have a new director starting July 1st and I would like to urge the board to put the brakes on these policies until Mark Klein begins his work here, selected unanimously after a competitive but inexplicably long drawn out process. I would hope that our shared understanding of an interim role should maintain and support systems already in place and not lead changes in policy. I have serious concerns about the process and urge the board to hit pause until after July 1st to ensure that our new director of technology has been given the chance to weigh in. I appreciate the work the policy committee has done to advance these policies. Hitting pause will only ensure that the work reflects the expertise of all our districts, technology leaders, all hired through a competitive process. Hitting pause supports our district's purported goal to create a culture of openness, trust and integrity. Thank you. Thank you. So that's 10. I see three more hands up. I think we saved a little bit of time at the risk of running a foul of the steering committee. I'm inclined to let the last three go and just. I agree, Kari, and I think we did save some time. Some people were short. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, so Jessica followed by Kyle and then Adam. Hi there, can you hear me? Yes. Great, thank you. My name is Jessica Cobb. I am the literacy specialist at Remney Memorial School. I am also a resident of Eastmont-Pillier and therefore a resident of the district. I'm speaking today specifically to the technology policy and my concern that teachers would be in violation of the policy to conduct any personal business while at school. It is my understanding that I under contract get a half hour for lunch and during that time I get to do what I need to do for myself, including eat. I have been battling through a life altering injury over this past two years and I need to from time to time be in touch with caregivers and if I am unable to make any phone call during my personal time, during lunchtime, it absolutely gets in the way of me taking care of myself. We have a district that has been a lot for self-care and now we were being told that we are in unable to do anything personal during a personal time or day. This feels like it's meant to intimidate and to not be treated as a professional. Thank you. Thank you, Jessica. Kyle and then Adam. All right, can you hear me? Yeah, we can hear you. Okay. First of all, thank you for taking up the student initiative to continue to find the Black Lives Matter flag. I think that's an important thing to do and I hope you'll support it. I also just wanted to talk to the curriculum review issue and I spoke to this in depth a few weeks ago but that was late in the meeting after the superintendent already dropped off with the call. So I hope he's listening now. I have three children in the Washington Central District, one at U32, two at Romney and everything I've seen about this curriculum review indicates to me that it was poorly timed, it was not done well and it did not take into account teacher viewpoints, staff viewpoints or the members of the community. So it's time to take a pause. We do not need to get the superintendent's response to this. We have that, he filed a letter to the editor, to the Times Argus that clearly indicates he thinks he knows better than everyone else. The viewpoints you, the board need to hear right now are from community members and most importantly teachers and staff. They're the ones who know how to take care of our kids. Thank you, Kyle and Adam, you get their final word. Board members, I encourage you not to accept the curriculum review. It should not have been conducted during a pandemic. It doesn't contain an accurate picture of instruction. No online lessons or socially distanced lessons should be judged by previous standards of engagement. We are all novices at this modality. I encourage you to limit the power of the superintendent to terminate programs. The programs that could be the responsive classroom, instruction of a foreign language or an artist in residency. Each school has unique characteristics and we need to preserve individual programs. The superintendent can determine programs for instruction in math, language arts and science. I suggest the board mandate a committee approach to these decisions. Strategic initiatives come and go and often little of them remains after a few years. I invite you all to study the three-year literacy initiative from 2008 to 2011 with a truly comprehensive literacy audit free coursework embedded coaching and mandatory professional development for all administrators. This initiative was empirically sound and well supportive. Before undertaking a major overhaul, why not examine the goals of this outstanding initiative and build on those strengths? Thank you. Thank you Adam and thank you everybody for your comments, really appreciate it. And keep in mind we have those other channels that Joe listed off before if you wanna get in touch with us. All right, let's move on to 3.3 agenda revisions. I have a couple. One is under the personnel section we're gonna add motion to authorize the superintendent to enter a letter of agreement. And then we're also at the after the regular meeting we're gonna return to executive session to conduct the superintendent evaluation. Does anybody else have any other agenda revisions? Okay, let's move on then. 4.1 student reports, are our students here? Hey, Kari, Kari. Yes, Kari. I'd just like to make a statement and I couldn't get in before because I was in driving mode even though I'm at home. To all the public comments on the technology policies. My name is Chris McBaye and I'm the chair of the policy committee. We have as a policy committee the other night decided not to forward the policies, the technology policies to the board for approval with the hope that this extended invitation to the public to join us in our next policy committee will be accepted. We're happy to have a discussion. Unfortunately, the public forum or the public comment section doesn't provide for the dialogue that developing policies can benefit from. So I will send out a notice so that folks know when the next policy committee is and invite you all to attend because we value your input. Thank you very much. Thank you, Kari. I appreciate it. Okay, so just to confirm neither Towns or Anna is here. That's too bad. I wanted to thank them both for their service this last year and congratulate Towns on graduation and wish him well in the future. It was great working with him over this past year. All right, let's move on to 4.2 superintendent and we'll resume 4.2.1, the Black Lives Matter flag raising request. I think we've heard the presentation. Brian, do you have anything else to say before we start deliberating? No, I just wanted to thank the student groups that are here today and the teacher advisors for working so expeditiously to get the application out to the school board for your consideration. And I had a member of one of the members from the public had asked why a letter was sent out well to ask people to come to tonight's meeting. It's actually our last bullet point of our policy is the board may invite comment from the community including students and that's what we were doing was inviting comment from the community regarding this application. Okay, let's hear from board members. What do you say before we take a vote and please just raise your hand, Scott, you go first. May I make a motion, Kari? No, please, that's very appropriate. Thank you. Okay, thank you. I move that we approve maintaining the flag of the Black Lives Matter flag without interruption and then understanding that there will be a re-raising ceremony to be organized in the fall of the upcoming school year. I will second that. Can we do a friendly amendment though to extend the term of it that they don't have to come back next year again? Hold on, hold on, is that a friendly amendment? I would like to hold off accepting the friendly amendment until Chris has something to say because of the policy. Right, I would offer friendly amendment that the board's vote is an expression of the board's public position on Black Lives Matter. Is that accepted? So, yes, but that doesn't really, that wasn't a comment on what Diane was saying. No, it was not. I actually, I'm inclined to think it's not a bad thing to revisit this every year. It's a reminder, it doesn't, we have to kind of focus on the issue anew and it doesn't get stale or old hat. I completely agree with Scott. I do too. And it would be consistent with our policy to have it renewed on an annual basis. All right, can we just, Lisa, could you read back the motion, please? Sorry. So Scott moved to approve maintaining the flying of the Black Lives Matter flag without interruption, understanding that there will be a re-raising ceremony in the fall of the upcoming school year. And then Chris had suggested in the amendment, noting that the board's vote is an expression of the board's support of the Black Lives Matter movement. And then Diane's suggestion to amend it to not require the board to reconsider it next year is what's being discussed right now and sounds like that's not going to be part of the motion. That has not been accepted as a friendly amendment. So now we've got a motion on the table, Diane and then Jonas. My concern is that, I mean, we put people through a lot of stress following this policy and concern that we were potentially a hostile group of hearing this. And to me, it also feels like that performing poverty that it's your responsibility to remind me as a board member of what this issue is. And I mean, our students just spoke so incredibly powerfully about this that to me it is a strong statement that you don't have to bring it back to us. I would love for us to bring this to talk about this issue and its impact every day that we see without it being tied to students having to come forward and ask again, please may I have some more, sir? And so that's why I would request it. And so. Thank you, Diane. Jonas. So I completely hear you, Diane. I think my take is more in line with Scott that the nature of this community, I think makes it the demographic nature of this community makes it important that we are confronted with this issue every year, that we have to wrestle with it, that we have to identify why this is important. I also think it's important that we have a policy that requires any flag to be re-approved every year. And I think the, Diane, maybe you're entirely right that this is, that this is an onerous requirement for students to do every year. I also wonder if there is value in it, both for the presenters and for, you know, the board and the community as the audience. But what I raised my hand to, you know, and if the motion is to, you know, to extend the term, I will absolutely support that. But my, I originally raised my hand to ask Chris to explain the change in board policy from a couple of months ago and to make it because what the friendly amendment that was proposed to make it clear that this is the board speaking, that is embedded in the policy. So I wonder if Chris, if you could briefly describe what that change was. So that change came about based on legal counsel and having the flag will not become a public forum. And it's the board expressing its sentiments using the flagpole. We're certainly having rise up to the student population, but it's really to prevent the flagpole from becoming a public forum in which it from a first amendment standpoint could be challenged that others could want to raise flags there. So Chris, would it be fair to say that in making sure that the policy says that this is the board expressing its values, it gives the board the opportunity to both approve and disapprove of speech. Therefore it would reflect the values of the board and by extension the values of the community. Yes. Thank you. Okay. Let's have other comments. Jill, did I see your hand up? No, Steven. I'm not gonna go into a historical explanation of my background. And I will support the flag being raised again, but I want the teachers in the student group to hear what I have to say. This is personal. The first paragraph in the third page of the presentation, tying a symbol being displayed or not to what I feel I find very offensive. The background that I share is I work daily in an environment where people are pressured to wear an American flag on their lapel. And if you don't wear an American flag on your lapel, your viewed as being unpatriotic. I'm not unpatriotic, but I do not wear a flag on my lapel because a symbol doesn't reflect what I feel. I think it's very appropriate in something I support wholly in the second paragraph to say the flying of the flag to this group of students means this. And I have no doubt that that's what it means. And I agree and support it. But I would respectfully request that you'd not tie a symbol to what my beliefs are. I do not need to display a symbol to confirm what my beliefs are. So I would just ask that you look at the language that you used in that paragraph, the second sentence in that first paragraph. And that's all that I was saying on it. Thank you. Thank you, Steven. Any other board comments? I think we're ready to vote. Does anybody need Scott? Go ahead. Sorry, Kari, I don't mean to slow us down, but I did want to just address at least one community member's email that I saw regarding the whole All Lives Matter. And it relates also to one of the advantages of revisiting the issue every year because this year, thinking about it has revealed new aspects of it to me. But one reason I think that's very important for those who are listening or watching and thinking all lives matter is so much better. The Black Lives Matter is, it doesn't bother me because for the same reason that taking care of the widow and the orphan doesn't bother me in the Bible. Basically it's a matter of focusing on that segment of the population that is most apt to be or to get a raw deal and have that be the litmus test for a just society, the proper treatment of that segment of the population. And there's really so much more even than that that the symbolic power of the flag and its connection to some of the higher voltage transmission lines of history and religion, but don't need to hear all that. I think though that it's important to understand that we're not disregarding others in this. Thank you, Scott, Jonathan. Yeah, just very briefly, I just wanted to add that I was proud to be on the board for the U32, you know, the U32 school board when the social first came forward and we approved it. And I'm certainly very proud to be in support of it now. And I think that even in the fall, if there is to be another raising ceremony, so to speak, I think that's a way of really doing two things at once, which is remain consistent with our policy, but also to remain consistent and to show support. And I think it's a ceremonial way for the students to really show that we support them. Great, Diane. I'll make this quick. Of course I'm gonna vote to support it. I am frustrated that we are saying again that we'll bring up this topic again in a year when we talk about this. But what I'll do is I'll just make sure we keep putting it on our agenda so that we make sure that we're dealing with the issues that are right in front of us. And again, it isn't up to others to bring it up. It's not the responsibility of others to be educating me. It's my work to make sure that I am doing what is right in my community for all. And especially for those that we have oppressed and harmed for so many years. Thank you, Diane. I think we hear you. All right, I think we're ready to vote. Does anybody need to hear the motion one more time? If so, raise your hand. Okay. All those in favor, please say aye or raise your hand. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstention? So that passes. Thank you very much. Let's move on to 4.2.2, the social justice statement. Brian. Yes, later in late May, we reached the board. Our leadership team and I received a document written by some of our staff members who have been taking advantage of a class entitled racial equity, intersectional justice and confronting bias at school. It was a course for educators. And it was the opportunity for educators to get together and take this course. And what they've been doing this year is to, they wrote a statement that they've asked the board to adopt, it's a commitment to humanity and justice. The equity scholar in residence has been teaching this course to our educators. And I believe that the hope of the participants in this course and in future courses is to continue to push the envelope in this area of equity and making sure that we are advancing the cause of racial equity, social justice and confronting bias. And so the wanted to, I can read it if you'd like, just so everyone can hear, but they were asking the board to adopt the following statement. And the statement reads as follows. The Washington Central Unified Union School District is dedicated to taking concrete actions that provide a safer and more supportive learning environment that is free of barriers. One that affirms the identity of each of us and acknowledges and celebrates the differences to create a sense of belonging for each person connected to our schools. The school district is committed to creating inclusive educational opportunities that are relevant both historically and culturally addressing the impacts of bias, prejudice and discrimination while building more opportunity for us to thrive rather than merely survive. This statement represents a commitment within our school district to acknowledge and end oppression and oppressive systems to center our full humanity of all in our community and to keep broadening our perspectives.  Our commitment is to the development of cultural humility and personal growth that is best supported in a climate that respects differences and provides a sense of belonging and inclusion. And the folks listed themselves on the letter which are on pages 11 and 12 of your board packet and they're asking the board to adopt this statement. Okay, thank you. So would a board member like to make a motion in support of this? Scott? About a second. Actually, would I like to move something a little bit different if possible? My understanding is that this is to be a board statement. Correct? My motion and Chris may not want to second it because he'll find out in a sec. My motion is that we refer this draft statement to the policy committee for its vetting before approval but with the intent of eventually approving. Okay, so that's a motion. Is there a second? I would second that. Even though you're on the policy committee? That's great. Well, maybe I'll let someone else second it then. I'll second. If that's a conflict. No, no, no. I'm just teasing you. I know. Scott motion, Chris second. Let's discuss. I think Scott has gotten at the question I was going to ask but I think Scott maybe the reason you want to put this into a policy is that I was having this very sort of concrete question about where would this live with? How would we like what does it mean to adopt a statement? Like where would we write it down? Where would anyone be able to find it again? So that was my regardless of the content. I was a little confused about the process of where the statement would be. So I think that may be why you're suggesting policy as the vehicle. So I heard the proposal as the policy committee would consider it not necessarily me. Yes. But this would be something we've asked the committee to do as far as this. All right. Scott, did you want to respond to that? Sure. Yeah. Thank you, Joe. You articulated it better than I could. I'm also noticing that the group of authors who did this who did this draft consider it a working document. So I figured, ah, let's work on it. It may, I think what we'd like to do is to plug into some of what the educators have been doing in order to get a better sense. And I would hope that in keeping with Chris's invitation to have more people join the policy committee that we would be able to lure some new faces and voices into that. Great. Thank you. Jonas, did I see your hand up? Are you ready to? Yeah, so Mike, I was going to ask Scott why he wanted to refer this to policy. We've made statements before and approved letters to various bodies, adding our support to various things. I see no reason why we shouldn't approve this tonight. And so I would just like to hear if there are any other formal reasons why we should not adopt what looks like a very carefully crafted and well vetted statement that I think represents where the board is. Scott, I think you have responded to that, but do you have more to say? I would just maybe, I mean, it's a very good statement. It's clearly written by educators, and that has a lot to speak for it. I'm thinking that if it's a statement by the board, we may want to, this is completely at this point speculative. But because the board speaks for the people and to the people, maybe we want to have it be perhaps pitched in a slightly different way or just approach it in a slightly different way. So I would say respectfully, the letter that was crafted by you and Dorothy about the refactoring of the education funding system, we approved. I think that that addresses the values of the board and of the community. And I think this one does it as well. I don't think that letter needed to go to the policy committee or needed further vetting, and I don't think this does either. OK, thanks. Chris, you're next. With the policy committee, and then the board as a whole could do though, is tie these statements of value to concrete action. And so I heard Diane earlier saying how she was going to keep bringing up the Black Lives Matter so that it's constantly on our plate and bringing it up to ourselves. The policy committee can look at it and with the help of the drafters, perhaps propose concrete action so that it just isn't passed as a statement and go somewhere else. And someone brought up a question of the resolutions. I'm wondering where they do go. Where do the resolutions do they is there a repository of the resolutions that we have? I don't know that they go with the policy all the time, but. OK, Chris, I'd rather defer that question. OK, that's fine. That's for you to work on it. That's that's my response. OK, thanks. Any other comments from the board? Steven. So whether it goes to the policy or committee or somewhere else, I would like to have an opportunity for the board to speak to and discuss this before we vote on it. In Jonas, in my mind, it's different for me to support a letter requesting action is different than affirming a statement of our board that our board hasn't been involved with the writing of. OK, thanks, Steven. I wasn't quite clear what you said initially. You would like more discussion of this, are you saying, or? Whether it's at the policy committee or not, I would like to have board discussion. OK, OK, I have some questions and input it. And if it needs to be here, it can be. But if there's going to be, the board's going to decide to take action. So we have Scott's motion on the table, seconded by Chris, to send this to committee. And we would see it again if that passes. Any other comments about that motion? Jonas. Sorry, Jonathan, go ahead. No, Jonathan. Yeah, I just I just wanted to add that if I would support the motion to the extent to send it to the policy committee, I mean, I'd be happy to support it passing a resolution or approving the statement as it is. But if sending it to, and I guess it's sort of conditional, but if sending it to the policy committee and then later for further board discussion, does then with the intent of concrete action changes to the curriculum that include more reading about diversity, equity, all of those things, if it then leads to real concrete action within the school, then I'm all for sending it to the policy committee. Absolutely. Yeah, I'll absolutely second that. I just hope that this isn't seen as the board being skeptical of the intent or the language. Any last comments? So all those in favor of the motion to send us to committee, please say aye or raise your hand. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstention? That passes. Thank you. Thank you, Chris. Next item is 4.2.3 COVID update. Brian, is this informational? Is there going to be an action? No, there's no action here. It's just informational. Just I think the big piece of it is the results of our work are basically asking Elizabeth Worth one of her last actions this year was to put this together for you as kind of a summary of the year in a total. And ultimately, I think the results, the last four bullet points are worth mentioning on page 13, talking about how our schools were open for in-person learning for the entire year. There were no cases that we know about from our communities that required hospitalization. There were 10 cases that required contact tracing in our schools from November 21st through April 13th. And there was no evidence of any transmission of COVID-19 in our schools as a result of these cases. We did have, we are aware of at least 30 members of our community who did test positive for COVID-19. However, again, this did not impact our schools and it did not, there was no evidence that anything like any transmissions happened. So just letting you know, it was a very successful year with the pandemic given everything. And I thought I really wanted to also just publicly acknowledge Elizabeth Worth, our COVID-19 coordinator who was just amazing to work with this year. Thank you. Any questions or comments? Yeah, I'd like to express the appreciation for Elizabeth too and for Brian and everyone in the district for helping to keep everyone safe. It's remarkable that there were no cases of transmission in the schools. Thank you everybody. Jonathan? Yeah, just briefly, I would second completely what was just shared by Jonas. I mean, absolutely remarkable what the teachers did, what the administrators, everybody did to keep all the kids safe and each other safe. So thanks to all of you for that. Thank you. Before we move on, Chris, there's a request to publicize the policy committee meeting time. Do you happen to know that now when the committee meets next? I don't, I do not know it now but what I would do is I will public when it's established public, put it on front porch form and make sure that it gets on all of the towns from porch forms twice. Great, thank you. Okay, you're welcome. Okay, so let's move on then 4.2.4 curriculum management review report. This is a requested action item. Brian, would you like to present? Yes, this is the memo on page 14 of your packet just gives a base, it basically talks about the curriculum management findings. I know Jeff Thunberg, the lead reviewer presented at our last meeting. There is a way to read the report. It is quite a lengthy report and document. It takes a while to really chew on it and understand it. And I did give some guidance on where to start and how to read it because it's not a straight cover to cover read. I do have two recommendations tonight. The first one is to have the Washington Central Unified Union School District receive the report and entitled CMSI curriculum review of Washington Central Unified Union School District date May, May 2021. The key word in this is to receive it. It's not asking the board to accept it. I still, as your superintendent, still need time to review it. And there may be things in there that I do not accept either. This is, again, a review. It's a document, but I can also, I can officially begin this process by having the board receive it. And once you receive it, the second motion is to direct me to prepare a response to include the following information, prioritizing the areas needing attention, identify which conditions most adversely affect students, identify which findings most adversely affect the system and develop a plan to address the recommendations. I've heard several teachers in the audience tonight from the public comments. And I just want to address them here. The first thing is, how do we go about developing a superintendent response? And my intention is to engage with teachers and staff. I intend to hold office hours this summer. I want to meet with teachers and community members to get their input. But I also want to remind the board that the curriculum review is only one artifact of many art of different pieces that we're going to have to consider in any strategic planning process. So there should be community engagement in a strategic planning process. There should be, I hear folks want to have community forums. I would suggest having a community forum after the superintendent prepares the response because I will be doing my own process in developing the response to the full report. And at that point, again, that'll be one of several items for the school board to consider. The school board is going to ultimately have to own and adopt a strategic planning process when we're ready to go into that. And I would like to think that this curriculum review document is utilized, obviously with community input and getting engagement from our teachers and staff. I think the teachers and staff are going to play a major role in anything that arises out of this report and any other actions that come from a strategic planning process and they should be included. The big thing is, again, to be for you to direct me to prepare the response. And I will be working to answer these questions and also engage with our teachers and staff in this area. All right, thank you, Brian. So we have a recommendation for two recommendations. They're independent. Let's take them one at a time. Does anyone want to move to support the first one, the acceptance of the review? I'll move that we receive it, not that we accept it. Sorry, sorry. That's okay. To spell it out, I'll move that the board receive the report entitled CMSI curriculum review of Washington Central, et cetera, dated May, 2021. Thanks, Scott. Any second? Dorothy seconds, okay. That's the motion. So Diane and then Lindy. Yeah, so my questions were more about clarifying a couple of things on motion too. So I can just, before it went into a motion, I want to clarify so I can just wait. So if you can hang tight on that, Lindy. Mine's also about that, but just the pragmatist in me, I have it in my hands. Why am I voting to receive it? I received it, it's in my hands. So I guess that's just me being, I don't understand that part, but I'll comment on the second part in a minute. I don't know that there's a great answer to that other than that's sort of a perfunctory. Let's let the attorney speak, Chris. Well, I was going to say, I don't know what that means. And I wonder, Brian, do you know, does the word receive have any particular function in considering the curriculum review? From what I understand, you receive it to let the public know that you're aware that you received the report. That's really what it comes down to. It's not about accepting it. You're not saying that you accept it, you agree with it, you approve it or anything like that. It's just really acknowledging that to the public that we've done this, you've authorized this review. The review has taken place. You've now received the report and basically that's it. It does sound, yeah, okay. Other comments on the motion? No questions, Steven? I would just make a comment and I won't, this is multiple years ago and I'm getting old. So forgive me if I don't get it quite right. But when the report was done several years ago, oh, the report on economies, if that helps explain it to people is when Bill Kimball was the superintendent and it was economies and administration, economies and savings. There was a whole range of things. I believe this is the same language we used with that, that we received the report and I think it is a technicality but it's a technicality that's been embraced previously. So I think we just acknowledged that we've received it. Well, there's some precedent for this. Probably doesn't have a lot of value but probably not a lot of downside either. Any other comments on this motion? Okay, so all those in favor of listening to the report, please say aye. Anybody opposed? Abstain? Okay, so that's received. All right, the second recommendation is more substantive. Would anybody like to make a motion about directing the superintendent to respond? So I guess that's where I have a couple of questions, sorry, before a motion even happens. So one is the response. Who is the response to and what is it? You know what I mean? And then I wondered if there was a reason why it wouldn't include the curriculum person, also that it's a team of talking through it and providing the response. So those were the two questions. Just more clarity around what is the response, more detail about prepare a response, what kind of response or what, and is it a response that goes to the board for action or is it a response that's going out? And then we, so just clarity. Yeah, yeah, I can answer it. I mean, typically it's a response that would go to the board because ultimately the next step is, I think the board's gonna wanna decide at some point what it is that we wanna do with what we've learned from this report. So again, it's 157 pages. There's a lot of pages in here. And so ultimately the response would be going to the board and it's my understanding that the board is considering doing a strategic plan, a three to five year plan in the future. And this could be an opportunity to look at what are some things here that we would wanna do. Do you recall that this curriculum management review is really, we were measured against ourselves. So the idea here is to engage with folks such as the curriculum director, the teachers, community members and getting their input. And I, as your superintendent, my goal is to look at those areas, right? Look at these four letters here, but also going about there and talking to different folks about, here it is, if you read the report, that's talking about having office hours, meeting with teachers and community members to get their input. I think those are the things that we would be looking at. But again, the response would be to the board and it would just be one artifact of many different artifacts that we have for the strategic planning process. Okay, thank you. Diana, that good, you're good with that? I guess I just think context-wise, to me it would be helpful if it was a response that came from the superintendent in tandem with the curriculum. I see. You know, director. Thank you. Lindy? Mine's very similar. I, instead of a direct the superintendent to prepare, I think it should be a committee that includes input from not just the curriculum director, but some other educators across the spectrum, because I would not expect one person to have that breadth of knowledge across the grade levels and across the content areas. So to have input, since this one, you know, when we did our review many years ago, it wasn't that many years ago, but it was literacy. This one is about everything. And I just think to have direct the superintendent to prepare the response doesn't include those voices. And I clearly heard from people that there should be more of a committee that's working on these and different voices as that's being read. So that was my concern. Okay, so a couple comments in favor of more inclusive response process. Scott, you're next. Thanks, Scott. My understanding of this, when we direct the superintendent to do something, we do that because he is accountable to us and answerable to us for what we ask. And then he does, he organizes it in order to give us the product that we need. And I would assume that that would include delegating a lot of aspects of this to the people who are best able to answer those questions. Maybe let Brian answer that, but that would be my expectation anyway. Yeah, I would second what you're saying, Scott. It's important to have it from the superintendent because I am accountable to you, the board. The leadership team is accountable to me. And so ultimately the leadership team members, we're having a retreat the next few days. We're gonna be meeting again and from August 2nd to August 6th. I'm also trying to get everyone some time to go away this summer on vacation to just get a break that we've been working around the clock in July. But one of the big things we're doing this upcoming, at some point in the next two days, we're meeting as a leadership team. And one of the things that we're gonna be looking at is I'm gonna be asking the input in the leadership team what process would be helpful for me to support me in writing this response. And so I do plan on making it collaborative and being a collaborative, but I think it's very important that it comes from me as your only employee. Chris and then Jonas. So, Brian is not our only employee. All of the staff members are our employees. And I think that we can direct the superintendent to draft the response, but we can also direct the superintendent to include certain segments of our community in helping draft the response. And to that end, I would want us to direct that teaching staff from across the disciplines be included that the leadership team be included in that a committee of those participants be created and that the committee create and attend at least two, if not three public forums before the response is finalized because we've heard a lot of community interest in this curriculum review and it's soliciting input from our communities and what they expect and hope for their students and our students would be very valuable and to have that at the front end of the process as opposed to the back end of the process when the results are already finalized. So I think the board has the power to direct the basic parameters of how the response should be prepared and how it should, what individuals should be involved in creating the response. Thank you. Thanks, Chris, Jonas. Now that it's the summer, I wonder how are we going to engage the teachers during the summer? I can... Just to clarify, how is Brian going to engage the teachers in crafting a response, Brian? Well, I mean, one of the first things I was going to do is open up office hours during the summer, I make myself available to meet with teachers who wish to discuss with me and talk to me and meet with me. I plan a meeting with the leadership team the next two days and to get their input about the process and then re-engaging the leadership team and when we come back, because some people will be coming and going on different vacations during the month of July. However, so that first week in August, we would also start thinking about how else we can look at that, look at this report. Because again, it's 158 pages, it's going to take some time to read. I plan on reading it on the beach at some point in the summer. I had not had a chance to read everything from cover to cover with this report. So, which is why I'm happy that the board is only receiving the report and not accepting the report. There's a lot to it here. I think that it's important that folks realize it comes from the superintendent, not from the leadership team, not from the teachers. I think the superintendent should have the wherewithal to include folks and make it an inclusive process. And I think coming up with ideas about how to do that and making it more inclusive, in addition to reaching out to the leadership team, we can also send out email blasts and letters to the community to get them also to let them know about my office hours and to come by and invite folks to talk to me about the report. So I have a question. Chris, can you hold it for a second? Sure, absolutely. Mine's a timing question. It's really how important is it that you get this direction from the board tonight? And in my way of context, I have the same thoughts as you, Brian. This is a lengthy and substantive report and I haven't had any time to dig into it. I don't, other than the presentation we got three weeks ago, I don't really have much to go on yet. And we've heard some concerns. I'd really like to dig into it for myself and sort of assess what we would direct you to do. And I'm looking at the recommended motion. There's four elements to it. Two of them have question marks by them. So I think to me, I'd prefer to have some time to think about what we'd like to direct you to do. So I guess that's my question to you. How important is it to have this direction tonight? And part of that question is what's stopping you, if you don't have the direction from us, what's stopping you from working on this in the interim? Well, and I think the idea is that you're authorizing me to prepare a response as your employee of the district. And then I can find a way to work with my, the folks that work directly for me to look at these areas. And I think it'll start rich discussions. Without directing me to do it, I would be doing it without authorization from the board. And I get my power from you. So the request is for the board to give me the authorization to prepare the response and letting everyone know that I've been authorized to prepare a response. I'll be looking at these areas. I would like to hear what your thoughts are and it would allow me to get to work on this sooner rather than later. Because I do know that we do have a lot of work to do in our district with your strategic planning. We're looking at preparing student achievement. We're looking at trying to improve our student achievement outcomes for our children. And this would be a good authorization for me to begin the work. Okay, thanks. Chris, you're next. So my focus on the committee process is that there's cross-pollination when committees meet together and discuss as opposed to having a single repository of the different sources of information. I also think that there's no rush here. We're not gonna have a program for adoption by September. And it's a 158 page report and it needs time. And there's a lot of community interest in this process. There's a lot of staffing interest in this process. I imagine a lot of staff is gonna be reading this report and grappling with the same type of length that we all are. So I don't see, have a sense of urgency about getting the response out and engaging our community, which is already pretty engaged as we heard tonight through a lot of comments in the process as part of the process I think can only benefit the final product. And ensuring that the staff members, and in terms of the teachers' notice, you mentioned the teachers being engaged over the summer. Maybe that happens in the fall. Maybe the committee is constituted over the summer, but then does their work in the fall? Just because rushing it will not serve us, I do not believe. Thank you. Okay, Jill. I'm wondering if it might make more sense to authorize the superintendent to prepare the process by which all of this work is gonna get done so that we can actually really understand the public engagement piece of it and the teacher engagement, all the stakeholder piece. I think that's what we're all, I'm hearing a lot of that. I'd certainly what I'm interested in is how do we do this as a community, understanding that it would be the superintendent, ultimately presenting the report. But I would feel more comfortable if we must authorize something tonight. And I'm not sure we do need to do that that we'd be authorizing the superintendent to develop the process by which this work would take place so that we could, I think then also really see it written down how, you know, some of the strategies that might be used to create that engagement. That's not a motion, right? You're just floating that out. No, I'm floating to see how, if it resonates. Okay, Scott. I'm resonating. I think it's a good idea, Jill. Especially because referring back to what we heard before, people need a break. I was chair, remember, when we made this decision and I was happy to do it because we could take potentially a major step towards dealing with some of our fundamental goals, our foundational goals and get it paid for through grants so that it wouldn't affect the budget at all. And I figured that, you know, a stress test would be even more revealing than the kind of, you know, if everybody were able to prepare for it and, you know, be ready for everything. But I think I miscalculated on that one by a long shot. And there's so much tension and stress in the system at this point. I think a little bit of relaxation, a little bit of time laying out the process so that people have some expectation of where this is going. I think your idea, Jill, sounds really good to me. Okay, Lindy, and then I'm really hoping to get to some resolution here. I just, I agree with Jill and I also feel like we paid thousands of dollars for this. So I expect it's going to be read. I expect there will be a response to it, whether from us as well as the superintendent, it's our, if we approved these many thousands of dollars to have this done, I don't think I need to tell somebody they need to read it and respond to it. So I think that's a little bit of my concern. I just am expecting that there will be something and I'm hoping it's through a committee. And when it happens during the school year is fine with me. You know, I'll just say, I like Jill's suggestion, especially if it can incorporate, how is this actually going to fit in with strategic planning? Because I feel like that's kind of murky and people want to know at this point, what is the process? Steven. Just give me a second to get on that screen. So hopefully to help you, Kari, I would like to make a motion. And the motion would be to direct the superintendent of schools to prepare a response to submit to the board in its October 2021 school board meeting, identifying the areas needing attention, utilizing direct input from public forum, leadership team and staff. I'll second that. Okay. Discussion? Could Steven just read it one more time? Yeah. So a motion to direct a superintendent of schools to prepare a response. Let me see if we have a response to the report to be presented to the school board in its October 2021 meeting that identifies the areas needing attention and utilizes direct input from public forum, leadership team and staff. More discussion, Jonathan. Yeah. I guess my only suggestion would be instead of the word utilizes includes or place with includes input from community members or that demonstrates or that something that essentially makes it a requirement that those groups have in fact provided input to the superintendent and their input is included in the report, whatever subsequent report he writes. Thank you. Other comments? Chris. I will oppose this motion because it's not specific enough in terms of how the various community members and constituencies, including staff and administrators, administration will be included. I think we should have that. I think we should be concrete about that. In the entry plan, I think in the very last page, there's various representations about including the community members, participate in the planning process and the staff and the administration and to say we're going to wait until the very end and the product is presented before we know the mechanisms of that inclusion, I think is backward. I think we should insist on a committee process and on a public forum process for community members to voice their opinions and share their views and what their hope for their kids and have a mechanism with those constituencies are certainly included in the process before the result is developed. Thank you. Chris would like us to be much more specific in the parameters of the process. Other comments? Scott. Thanks, Kari. I understand what you're trying to get at, Chris, but I worry that we're just, we're getting way too micro in our approach. I think we might be able to accomplish the same end if we just, you know, ask the superintendent to report on what essentially what Joe was talking about earlier, what process he has been following so that we can then consult and offer suggestions if we think that he hasn't been open enough or if he's missing a group or if there's anything that we think he should do that it appears that he's not doing. I think we can accomplish that just in the course of monitoring the, between now and October. So you're suggesting an agenda item, say, and then a lot of different ways. Thank you. Very good, Jonas. Yeah, it's going to be a habit for me tonight, but I agree with Scott. I don't think we need to get that granular. Careful. If we ask for a layout of the process, we will have the opportunity to have input into that process when it's presented to us. Okay, other comments? Okay, so we've got Stephen's motion and we've got some suggestions about how that could be improved. Stephen's motion's on the table. Lisa, can we hear it back please? It takes me a while to find all the buttons. Okay, so he moved to direct the superintendent of schools to prepare a response to their curriculum review report to submit to the board at its October, 2021 board meeting identifying the areas needing attention, utilizing direct input from public forum, leadership team and staff. And then there was some discussion about using demonstrating or including versus utilizing. All right, any final comments before we vote? Just to be clear. One final comment, sorry. Now go ahead, Jill. Well, I was just going to say, I just wanted to note for others, something that I'm observing, which is that Stephen's motion only actually addresses the very first item, which is identifying the areas that need improvement. It's not all three things. So I actually think it might accomplish something substantially similar to what I was suggesting is to have a process. He's talking about having, there's the public comment or the public input. I'm not sure we need to get that much more granular if we're just identifying the areas for improvement. It's the very first of those four items. So just wanted to note that. Yeah, thank you. Jonas? Yeah, just to be clear, Stephen's motion is to have the superintendent prepare the response for us, not Jill's suggestion that we asked the superintendent to present us with a plan for, and a process for putting that together. Okay. And then I will not support this and I will hope that we will do another motion after this. It's not a request for a process. It's a request for a response to a specific part. Brian's recommendation with some stipulations about how that process, what that process should include. So I read it. Okay. I think we're ready to vote. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Raise your hands. Aye. Aye. Aye. All those opposed? Nay. No. No. Nay. Okay. I think we need to do roll call. That was too close to the comfort.  No. Vera? No. Bevan? Yes.  Scott? Yes. Jonathan? No. Lindy? No. Diane? Yes. Dorothy? Dorothy, you look friend. Yes. Move, I miss Jill. Yes. And did I miss anybody? Yourself. Break the tie. Yeah. Come on. Do you have a coin? Oh no, is it really a tie? Oh no. It is a tie. I'm gonna vote no. All right. Any further action on this one tonight? Any more comments? I would ask Jill to remove her suggestion, which I think it had a fair amount of support in terms of advising the process. Let me try. I was trying to write something. It's hard on the fly. So I would move that we authorize the superintendent to develop a process by which he will seek input from stakeholders to do the four items that are listed in the memo. I didn't write them all down. Do you mean do the items or prepare a response of? I'm saying we're gonna authorize him to develop the process by which he will seek the public input to develop a response doing the four things. I'm basically saying let's move the whole thing to process development with public input. What he would, the work we're asking him to do is the process, not the work is what I'm suggesting. Sorry, maybe the words don't quite work. I would take a friendly amendment. I would say we would direct the superintendent to present the board with a plan and a process for collecting public input and input from stakeholders in the district that would lead to a report including the following information and those four points. And that we would ask that that be delivered I think by that date in October sounded good to me. Let's let it breathe. Okay. I would second that. I don't think my motion was ever seconded. So I would second Jonas's motion. Okay. So we have the motion second. Lisa, do you need that stated again or do you have it? Move to direct the superintendent to present the board with a plan and a process for collecting public input. And input from stakeholders in the district that would lead to the preparation of a report including the following information and then those points A through D to be and that plan and that process would be delivered to the board at the what is it October 21st board meeting. Can I offer a friendly amendment? Of course. That we ask the superintendent to deliver the process at our next board meeting because I don't think you can deliver the plan and the process at the same point there. That's fair. I would strike plan from the motion. And so we would get the process at our next board meeting and go from there. Okay. Now, Lisa, do you have clarity now? So process is taken out of it and it's just directing. Plan is taken out process is left and instead of October 21st it's the next regularly scheduled board meeting. Oh, okay. And Jill, would you still second that? Yes. Sorry. Lisa, can you please read it? Mm-hmm. No. Okay. Oh, gosh. Okay, so let's see. Jonas moved to direct the superintendent to present the board with a process for collecting public input and input from stakeholders in the district that would lead to the preparation of a report including the following four bullets to be delivered by the next regular board meeting. Okay. Can I just, can I just ask, are we talking about the next regular one when we start the year in August or September? That's where I'm trying to figure out. As the one who made the motion I don't think we're gonna have a meeting in July. So I would say the first, the meeting in August. Looking for the process, proposed process by the August meeting. Is that clear? Yeah. Okay, comments on Jonas's proposal? Motion? Not? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Extension? That passes. Okay, thank you. All right. What if we take a break? I was just gonna ask that we have five minutes. I really hope we could get through 4.2 but it's not gonna happen. So let's take a 10 minute break. We'll be back at 7.55. Thank you. Thank you. I would really like us to get going again here. How many people are back? I'm gonna start, just doing a time check here. I'm sorry that I left us so far behind in our schedule. Next up, we've got the school time proposal which is substantive and timely. Then we're gonna go into financial reports and information. I'm not sure how much, I think this is all informational if I understand correctly. So perhaps we can save some time there. Chris, are you back? How are you feeling about the policy based on the comments we've heard tonight? The policy committee, I do see that there are more policies here than we intended to have come up because we were going to not forward the technology policies to the board just so we could solicit input from folks who were interested. And so I would move that we just table those because they all deal with the policy committee with the technology aspects of the policy committee. So I've moved that we table that. All of them. All of them. The second and third reading. Okay, great, that'll save some time there. Thank you. And then we'll have the interviews. Are we actually interviewing potential new board members tonight? Or are we talking about interviewing them? I believe we are actually interviewing them. I think we're actually interviewing them. There's an email from floor. I'll take a closer look at it before we get to that part of the agenda. Okay. And the letters of introduction from them are in the packet. Yeah, all that. Okay. I believe it's an interview without a decision process though is how I understood it. So. Okay. Yeah, if you wouldn't mind taking a closer look that would be great. I will. And then the rest should move through pretty quickly but then we'll have to go into executive session. So. All right. Are we ready to take up 4.2.5 school time proposal? Brian? Yes. This is an idea that we've been talking about with U32 administration. And I'll turn it right over to Steven to let him talk more about it. Good evening everybody. So thank you for hanging on for this. We've been looking for several years as being able to extend our school day and one of the biggest issues that we've encountered during this time is certainly busing issues. And so towards the second half of this year we started working on, could we do this? Could we extend the student school day by 20 minutes? It was the busing possible. And so what you see in the proposal is that it is possible if we add four buses or up to four buses, we could extend the school day at U32 for students by 20 minutes. And so the motion that I think that we would be asking you in all of this would be to approve up to $241,000 from the fund balance for the busing that would be necessary to extend that school day. Now there are a lot of other considerations that went into this, not just the busing. So we did look at other things like how did this affect athletics? How does this affect students getting home in time or if they had younger siblings? We addressed a lot of other issues. You heard the concern around childcare that some of our teachers may face. And so we certainly will take that into consideration as we look at this extending the school day time for students but it does not require us to make any changes to the collective bargaining agreement for either the teachers or the ESPs. And so you see the proposal that we had there. What it really does is it extends us from 235 to 255 adding 20 minutes, which for our middle school means that they can have a silent sustained reading time that will not interfere with their core time. And it adds five minutes to every class at the high school. Now I know I threw in some calculations to show you what the totals add up to over time but we won't say that it just means that kids are going 40 more days over six years but it is a significant amount of time when you start to add it all up. And so we really hope that the board will approve this. And if there's certainly any questions, I'll be happy to take those. Thank you, Steven. So let's go with questions then. And I can't see people's faces at this point. My bandwidth is so poor. So please raise your hand electronically, Jonas. Steven, can you address the concerns about childcare that were brought on? And to be clear, are you looking for a, do you need a motion to extend the school day or do you just need a motion for the funding for additional transportation? And how would we address? I mean, I hear the concern, right? This is that this is sort of coming at the very end of the school year. There's not a whole lot of time to plan. Would there be a way to delay this? Because it sounds like a great idea but is there a way to delay this until childcare facilities are back running full-time? So several questions there. So the first one, let me just get the first easy one. I do not think that the board has to approve a longer student day because it is still within the contractual ability of the teachers. And we can set a new, we have the ability within the contract to change start and end times, although we're not changing those for teachers. And so we don't think that there's any issue there. The need for funds in order to get busing would be what we need the board to approve. As for childcare, there has been a limited number of teachers who have expressed this to me. One of the things that we're exploring is can community connections support us because of where these students might be located? So we are looking at that. I can't say that I can wait until childcare fully reopens because I don't know when that will be. I would hope that with the governor rescinding all of the emergency orders, they could. The issue that many childcare facilities have is that they don't have adequate staffing to run later in the day. And that is not something that I can affect. And so I think we just have to make a decision and then work with those few teachers that we have possibly having to work with their schedules to make sure that if there is a major issue that we can address that in the short term so that they can get to the childcare. And that would be my first choice for us. Okay, thanks, Lindy. What is the current teacher work daytime? Is it the same, the 745 to 315? Yes, and it would not change. Okay, that's what I read in your memo. So I was, I just wanted to clarify that. Thank you. And Diane. Do we know if buses are readily available or are they any of the shortages that we might encounter? So the only reason I'm bringing this to you is because we've had those conversations with the bus company to make that all that they could said that they can make this work. And so I would not even be bringing this to you if we couldn't do it with the bus company because they're really the limiting factor in all of this. So they've assured us that they can make this work. There may be some other ways that busing could be used. So there is a possibility that we could eventually have high school, middle school, and some elementary school kids on buses together. But that's something that we have to discuss a little bit more with families before we make that firm decision on that. And then the other thing that I would say about busing is that we underutilize some of our buses at U32 and this is a real attempt to make sure that we don't. We have as few as eight kids on some of our buses which is if we can change some of our bus routes we might be able to better utilize the buses that we have and we may not even need four more. Okay, thanks Chris. Okay. Hi Stephen, thanks for presenting this proposal. I have two questions. One is the teaching day won't change but what within the teaching day does change in order to get those extra 20 minutes? That's my first question. And the second is we need to address the potential for elementary students and U32 students sharing the same bus. Is that a certainty or a likelihood? So starting with the second one it's a likelihood but not a certainty. And it certainly depends on which routes as we look at what routes do students will students be taking. We're going to ask for people to opt in to busing. That's a really important thing. We've got some buses that because we do an open kind of enrollment we'll say that we have 75 kids on a bus in some cases and there really aren't there's only like 20 because we haven't asked families to opt into the busing to use it regularly. And so we just assume that people are going to use it. And so that's something that we're gonna to do this summer is to ask people to say that they're gonna ride the bus and then do some better bus counts. So that's not a certainty that we will do it but certainly it's a likelihood. Okay. The other question you asked about what would change within the teacher day? So for most teachers it would mean that they have an additional 20 minutes of instructional time but all of the time that teachers are going to be asked will fall within contract. So they will still have the contractual amount of planning time, their duty-free lunch, they're all of that. So it all fits within the contractual time. And in fact, we're not quite pushing up, we're not even pushing really close to the maximum amount of instructional time that we could require under the contract. So something must be changing though because you're reallocating or 20 minutes are being used for instructional time that weren't performed just so we know what's coming down the pike essentially. Okay, so while our student day ended at 235 in the past, from 235 to 315 was still teacher time. And so that time was really given over to planning. We asked teachers to do office hours at least once a week before or after school so that they were there for an hour. Those office hours are not attended very well at all. There are some students with good advantage of it. But we also added last, the previous pandemic year, we added 15 minutes to callback so that callbacks were longer so that students could access teachers, they could spend that time. And that's where students really get their time in with teachers when they need them, not before or after school. And so essentially before teachers had the time from 235 to 315 that could have been counted as planning time or something like that. But it's still, it gave them more planning time than contractually necessary. Okay, thank you. That's helpful. You're next. Thanks, Kari. Just so it's not to the side of the business at hand, I would like to make a motion that the board approve earmarking $241,000 from the fund balance for fiscal year 21-22. I'll second that. Okay, thank you. We have a straightforward motion and a second. Comments? Kari, can I ask the question? Please. Does this have complete support of the leadership team? Maybe not necessarily for the elementary school students but U32, the administration from U32? Yes, it does. Okay, thank you. Can I have a question? We have any sense of how families will react to this permission or what they think? So to be fair, no, I'm not 100% sure but one of the things that we wanted to make sure when we made this change that we didn't swap the elementary kids arriving home prior to the middle and high school kids arriving home so that if that was a concern at worse, they should end up at home at the same time but in all likelihood, it looks like the high school and middle school kids will arrive home before elementary students because we knew that that would be a major concern if it were a childcare issue for like the any of our latchkey kids or things like that. I've heard that concern before. Okay, thank you. Brian, I know you can't see Brian. I think he is. Go ahead, Brian. I was just making sure we got the motion. The motion I heard was to approve up to 241,000 from the fund balance for physical year 22 or 2122 for additional buses needed to extend the school day from eight o'clock a.m. to 235 p.m. to eight o'clock a.m. to 255 p.m. That's what I meant to say. That's for you 32. For you 32, thank you, Jonas. Yes. More discussion. Okay. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Abstention. Okay, the aye has had it. Great, thank you very much. Thank you, board. All right, so we're gonna move on to 4.3 Finance Committee. We've got a mix of discussion and action. We've got a financial report and ESSA report. Who is going to need us on that, Brian? Well, I will turn this over to Lori. Lori, it's your show. Since she left, I decided to do a quick recap so that I could be brief. On page 174, the financial report begins. It includes a two-page narrative and some of the highlights we discussed with the Finance Committee were with regard to the answer grants. As a quick recap, due to the pandemic, this past year we received over $5 million in grants. Some were allocated back to fiscal year 2020 and some most were for this fiscal year. We reviewed these grants in great detail throughout the year because we had spent them by December 31st. So the two in the report that we focused on at the Finance Committee were ESSA one and ESSA two. Those grants spanned from January 1st to June 30 and we will completely spend them this year. So the ESSA one grant was 243,000 and the ESSA two grant increased from 923,000 to 1.1 million because the agency of education had an allocation change. So having said that, the good news is that the ESSA two grant allowed us to charge off staffing that we had previously included in our budget and by doing so the fund balance has increased. As you recall, the Washington Central voters authorized the school board at town meeting to control and direct the use of the fund balance for operations. So by charging off these budgeted items to the grant it allowed us to free up fund balance and put the money now at the local control of the school board instead of any other rigid requirements from the federal government. So that's great news. The other great news is ESSA three grant. We received the allocation and it's close to $2.5 million. And the ESSA three grant is going to be, it's in the process of being developed on what we can use it for. We've completed the initial work by submitting the recovery and moving forward grant. And that was a team led by Jen Miller Arsenal as well as there were other board members and staff on that committee. We submitted the initial application and we received approval that our application is set to begin. But we're still awaiting guidance on what are the allowable uses for this money from the federal government through the state. So having said that, and since I knew that this would be the last time I could review this with you, I wanted to let you know that I sent the preliminary list to the agency of education and received authorization that the items on our list that we've been compiling for several months now are all eligible and they're considered allowable. But what we haven't done is really put together a finite budget for those items. We're still in the initial stages of the S or three. There's a lot more planning involved. The board had previously approved additional nurses and a COVID coordinator from fund balance in the hopes that we could charge that to S or three and we can. The board has also continued to review and approve any staffing needs when they're identified. And so as soon as we can get a little bit more instruction from the agency of Ed, we can bring those other ideas forward as the staffing needs are considered. So an example is guidance counselors. One of the things that the moving forward plan did was it recommended that we have full-time guidance counselors for one year and that we add a full-time middle school guidance counselor for U32 to support students. So we did post those positions but they aren't approved yet by the board until we find candidates and until staffing recommendation is brought forward. So that's the latest idea and concern that has arisen about S or. And I wanted to talk to you a little bit more about how the year's closing down. So in April, you had an update and since April the fund balance projections have increased by $280,000. We're still closing next Wednesday is the last day of the year but the numbers seem very close. And so having said that, if you turn to page 175, the highlights are that we would have a $3.3 million fund balance and there are some items that the board has already reserved and you just are reserving now a little bit more for busing but before tonight's transaction, there was still $2.8 million available in the fund balance of which 2.2 is over the target amount. So the finance committee determined a couple of things. One is that the capital fund needs money and one of the recommendations for board action tonight was to move another million dollars to the capital fund from this reserve. Another is that at the last meeting, the board authorized an additional 0.86 pair educator at Dodie but we hadn't approved reserving the fund balance.  I guess that's it for that part. And then the other highlights where we reviewed in detail the food service programs, I put in quite a few pages of how the local programs have been trending over time. We also learned that this year with the universal meals, we were surprised at how few students participated. We had a low of 7% of the population eating breakfast at U32 to a high of 36% eating breakfast at Rumney. And I think we were surprised at why people wouldn't accept or take place with the free food that's being offered and the federal government was paying for that. For lunch, we had a low of 24% of the students at U32 participating to a high of 72% eating at Berlin. So one of the things we talked about was a lot of different ideas and possibly putting together a nutrition committee made up of a lot of stakeholders to review what is going on and perhaps that group could develop a survey and collect feedback from students and families. Because we're just not knowing why students aren't choosing to eat with our school meals being free. So it was a shock to me. It's been monitored throughout the year. I think it was a shock to a lot of people when I provided that information. But on a good note, 72% of the Berlin students ate lunch. So other than that, our committee reviewed some comparative information for education spending for equalized pupil. And that is on page 188 in this packet. We are the highest cost per equalized pupil in the area in our neighboring districts at Washington Central. And then I also identified where we rank compared to others, let me just find that one page. There are 114 districts in the statewide cohort sample that are received from the agency of education. And in the state, with one being the highest, Washington Central ranked 11 out of the 114 districts for cost per equalized pupil. And that was using the FY 21 information. So something to consider might be, why is that? Obviously there needs to be further analysis and we didn't have time to collect information from other school districts in that region to determine why. So we're looking into that and it's just another idea to consider as you develop the next budget. And then last but not least, I was asked to put together more comparative information for special education. A note is that we basically have nothing on the agency of education website since 2018. So it was basically unheard of. We could not compare ourselves to other schools. But what we could do is just kind of do more of a trending. And so some of the highlights in the trending was that for direct services and direct staffing, we have one staff member for every 2.6 students. And there is a weighted caseload factor that Washington Central uses, which shows one staff member of a professional nature for 26 students. If you don't consider the weighting, it's 10 students per each special educator. There is an 11% decline in the IEP students. And because of that and due to the increases, it amounted to a 28% increase in special ed spending per IEP student over a two year period. So the thing we talked about at finance was that coming up in the near future, Act 173 will be kicking in, which means that any time we make a change in special education, it is paid for 100% by the district instead of currently reimbursed at 56%. And so I just wanted to make you aware of that. That's on page 191. That as you develop future budgets, it needs to, probably we need a program review to determine if the services, staffing, and spending are in line with the student needs and the declining number of IEP students. Because as Act 173 kicks in, you get reimbursed based on student counts and not on spending. I covered that very fast, Kari, and I'm available for questions. And thank you for your time. Actually, if we could deal with it. Thank you, Lori. If we could deal with the two recommendations first on the bottom of page 178, there's two very specific requests with someone care to make a motion regarding the support for Kira. I'll authorize, I moved to authorize Reserving Fund Balance for the DODI.86 FTE pair educator position for a cost of $31,368, less projected reimbursements of $17,566 for a net amount of $13,802. Second. Any discussion? All in favor say aye please. If that passes. Jonas, do you care to make another motion? I sure would. I moved to authorize a transfer to the capital fund in the amount of $1 million. Second. Thank you. Any discussion? Hearing none. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Extension. Okay, so that passes. Any questions for Lori? Not a question, but can we have a round of applause for Lori? That was right. Thank you so much, Lori. I had the last point on the board. Yay. That's what we did at finance. Oh, and I wanted to welcome Suzanne. She's here tonight. I don't know if you want her to say hello for us just a sec. Sure, that'd be great. And hopefully she has good internet up there in hard way. I hope so. There she is. Yay, Suzanne. Welcome. Thank you. Lori, you're fantastic. That was, again, so impressive. So thank you. I'm glad to be here. Welcome, Suzanne. Welcome, and Lori, congratulations, and thank you so much for all your years. Okay, why don't we move on? Sorry, sorry, even. I have my hand up. It's on, look, I have my hand up. I would just like to make a request of the, I don't know what the group is called, the Agenda Planning Committee. But both of those presentations tonight on equalize per pupil spending and special ed spending. I think are great reports in warrant more discussion from the board. So, and I'm not suggesting any particular time, but I think there's a lot of really important information that we would be good use of our time to go over and digest and understand not tonight, of course, but so if there could be time-funded future agendas to fit them in, I think it would be very beneficial. Okay, thank you, Steven. All right, so we had decided to not take up the policy committee. We'll set that aside for another day. So we'll move on to 5.1 and interviewing our potential new board members. Jill, did you have a chance to look at the email and get the framing on this? I did. It looks to me as though what Floor had outlined is that each person would have three and a half minutes to answer some questions that Floor had shared with all of them ahead of time. And then our process will be to consider the applications in an executive session, not tonight at the next meeting and, or I think actually at the beginning of August so that we can seat new board members by our August meeting is the idea. So we're listening tonight and then we're gonna actually discuss and vote at a later time. So I understand it. And I've let the applicants, if they think I got that wrong, please tell me, but that's how I understood the email, okay? Three and a half minutes per candidate. Yeah. Total, okay. All right, so why don't we just go in order then? The first one I'm seeing is Ainsley Burroughs. Are you here? I am. Hi, that's me.  Okay, good. Well, I will keep this brief as I believe that's a quality I would bring to this board is being quite timely, but I have recently moved, my partner and I bought a home in Middlesex. Actually his childhood home last year and we are slowly growing a family farm which has been quite an adventure, but we are all very excited that our son Knox will be embarking on his educational career this fall as a kindergartener at Rummy. I would love to be more involved in the school system and feel that becoming a school board member would be a great way to advocate for our schools and our students. I was raised in a long line of educators and as a teacher myself for the past seven years at Berrytown Elementary School, I feel very passionate about giving every student the best education possible. I've seen and experienced many changes in public education over my time as an educator and would really like to be a part of a system that promotes positive changes. Through my experiences working with children and families as an educator, I have researched, collaborated, advocated and negotiated for student needs. I believe that access to a good public education is the best gift that we can give our youth and would love to be able to continue this work by joining this school board. I am skilled at communication and understand the value in asking questions and listening to the perspective of others. I'm organized, an innovative and creative thinker and a quick learner. Additionally, as an educator, I am well-versed in elementary curriculums and have had experience as a teacher on the negotiation committee. I am a fresh face in this arena, both in terms of serving on a board and in terms of being fairly new to the middle sex community. However, I feel that this is really a strength in that I would bring a new energy and the perspective of younger families to this board. I will be having a baby in November, which will bog down my skeptical stomach. However, when I commit to something, I really tend to go all in and would devote as much time to being on the board as possible and as required of me. As I previously mentioned, my son is just embarking on his educational journey, which would hopefully leave me on this board for many years to come if elected. And in terms of answering the last question, I would certainly be happy to attend any workshops or trainings to better serve as a school board member. And that's all I have for you guys. Thank you for your time. Very nice to meet you. Thank you for the line. Okay, so next, Chris Catarat, are you here please? I am, hi. Thank you everybody for allowing us to come and chat with you folks. So my name is Chris Catarat. I'm a resident of Calis. I've lived in Calis for most of my life, aside from a few years when I moved to Lindenville to work at Linden Institute as a dorm parent. I'm interested in being on the school board because I really believe that the school board is the most important conduit to effect change on the entire community. I'm very big into the community aspect of working and being involved in the school district. So currently I'm a football coach at U32. Up until the end of this school year, for the last two years, I was the athletic director for Calis, Berlin, Doty and Rumney. And I've been involved in Calis for as long as I can remember. I went to Calis Elementary School. I went to U32 and graduated from U32. I was a member of the PTNO at Calis for many years and then a board position opened up for the CES board before the merger. And I was selected to fill that position. I was then elected to fill the Calis board position prior to the merger, was not able to serve in that position because the merger occurred. And then I ran against Dot actually in the first election and she prevailed in that. So I wish her the best in retirement and from the board and hope that I will be able to adequately fill her seat if selected. I believe that everybody needs to have a voice. I believe that every student, teacher, parent, all their voices are important and everybody needs to be heard. And I think that I can help bring that to the school board. I'm not afraid to speak up and speak my mind. I'm not afraid to disagree with folks and I'm not afraid to learn new things and to have my mind changed as well. I currently serve in my full-time capacity as the assistant superintendent of the Northeast Correctional Complex. Essentially why I bring that up is to say that I am part of an administration. Now I understand management and leadership. I understand what it takes to have a successful organization and to have a successful program. I also understand what it means to serve others. I look forward to having an opportunity to speak with you more if selected. And I look forward to joining the board if I'm given the opportunity to do so. As it relates to training for us, if we could speak a little bit about that. When I was so elected to build a seat in Calis, I did take the online trainings that are required of the board members. I'm certainly willing to do that and whatever else it takes to become up to date on the new policies and up to the new guidelines. And I think that that's what I have for you folks tonight unless there's anybody else that has a question. I don't know if that's appropriate or not, but I'm certainly open to fielding any questions that have come up or people are thinking about. Thank you, Chris. Much appreciated. I think we won't do questions tonight. On to Maggie Weiss, please. Hi, took a moment there. So in response to Flores questions and also just, I appreciate hearing Chris speak. I think we're the only town with any competition for our students. And I have a great deal of respect for Chris. I just want to say that first off. So motivating me to pursue school board membership. I've had a lifelong commitment to volunteerism.  I'm a one board or one volunteer commitment individual. It's the only way I can really afford to volunteer and fulfill my professional and personal commitments. I'm invested in the vitality of our school system. I'd like to volunteer to support the needs of our youth across the age spectrum in the school system with the sensitivity to the fact that kids in our special ed programs are often continuing beyond that typical age range. I feel that our public school system is an integral piece in maintaining a vibrant local community in our individual towns and collectively at our middle school and high school level. You know, you're 32 has a very positive reputation on the regional level. And I think that's important on so many levels and I'm proud to be a resident in the school district. I'd also like to contribute in efforts to foster an educational and work environment that's transparent, equitable, inclusive and diverse. I think we have a lot of work to do on that front. The skills and experiences that qualify me to pursue school board membership, prior board membership with good beginnings of central Vermont and the Vermont Speech and Hearing Association. I'm a licensed speech language pathologist with a level one education licensure with educational SLP endorsement, although I work primarily in home health as a medical speech language pathologist. I was employed by the district when I was in graduate school. So I have the experience of working at the elementary level for a year, had participated on numerous hiring committees at the elementary level. I was also involved in a curriculum review about a decade ago under Jen Arsenault's direction. I come with both learned experience and academic study and varying educational pedagogical models. So I'm particularly interested in personalized learning plans and contemporary educational models. Personally, I routinely engage with other community members, both folks who have kids in schools and people that don't as a home health provider. I am serving the population of people. Children often have long been out of school and their concerns are largely around the cost of education and cost control. So I have a sensitivity to that. One of these questions is how long have you lived in the school district, which as a flat lander strikes me as a particularly kind of biased position. I've been here 16 years. We moved to Calis as renters in 2005 and our then first grader promptly asked us if we could stay so that he could attend Calis Elementary. We worked really hard to buy into this district, which is an expensive school district to purchase in. And we did achieve that. And we have two sons who've attended Calis and then went on to U32, one who's still at U32. The next question was how much time will you, can you offer to board service? And I would say on average, I can commit about 10 hours of my time on a monthly basis with the combination of the committee and board requirements. And I'd be more than happy to attend any workshops or trainings in order to be effective board member. I did note that a fair number of the board members currently are educators. And I think that that perspective is really an important one for representing both the needs of the students and the professionals serving our kids. Great. Well, thank you, Maggie. That was great. So next up we have, forgive me if I mispronounce this, but Macklin? It's McKaylin. Sorry about that. That's okay. You're not the only one. Thank you. I'm McKaylin McClare. Before I launch into my little spiel, I just want to say that my letter of interest that was published with tonight's document has a typo in it. I left the S out of the initials of the board of the district. I had noticed this and had immediately sent for another version, but I see the wrong one was included. So don't take that to think I am not detailed oriented. I am. Anyway, so as I said, I'm McKaylin McClare. I'm a resident of Worcester. I've lived in this district for, I think about 20 years. Humilatively, I moved here from, I moved to Worcester from Woodbury when I was nine. And although I've lived elsewhere at times during my adult years, I've lived back in Worcester for over five years now. Why do I want to join the school board? I'm saying I've honestly asked myself many times and debated with my husband many times. But as the daughter of a teacher and as a former teacher myself, I'm extremely passionate about education. Additionally, I'm now a family doctor in Hardwick and I see on a near daily basis how critical schools are, the mental health and well-being of our children and our adolescents. I'm particularly invested, of course, in this district given that I'm a graduate of both U32 and U32. And I now have two children at Doty, kindergarten and fifth grader. Because of this, I care deeply about the well-being and excellence of the school districts and the students, staff and teachers. I personally feel that I receive an outstanding holistic, unique education at both Doty and U32 and I want to ensure that my children can have just as rich an experience as I did. I believe that my experience as a student and now parent in the district as well as my professional experience as a former teacher and in medicine, I think I could bring an important perspective to this role as a school board member. And if granted a seat on the board, I'm certainly willing to attend any workshops or training to learn how to become an effective board member and to improve the overall functioning of the school board. I've never served on a school board before so I certainly would welcome any coaching that was available. And I question the time that's up so hard as a as a mother with two young children in a busy career. You know I don't have abundant free time but you know I think as any working parent knows we make time for what's important in life and I feel this work is extremely important so I would find whatever time is necessary to do it justice. So thank you for considering me as an essential board member. Thank you, McKellen. That was great. So why don't we move to Ursula Stanley please. I wanted to take a moment to say thank you to all of the board members. I'm really grateful to be here tonight and to have the opportunity to speak to you. I am Ursula Stanley. I've currently been in middle sex but I've been in the school district for about 10 years both in Berlin and in middle sex. I have had children in the district for about nine years. We have a rising ninth grader who has attended Berlin, Romney and U32 and we also have a rising third grader at Romney. I'm interested in serving on the board because I believe in the importance of a quality education for all of our district students. And I believe I have qualities and perspectives that will contribute to the board's work. I'm a bachelor's degree in engineering from Clarkson University in 12 years of past work experience as an engineer, which leads me to look at situations in problem solving very analytically. I have the ability to look at situations, determine what data already exists, what data we need and then to be able to analyze the data and make informed decisions. I've also had opportunities to participate in community meetings to communicate and engage with affected communities. I've served my communities by volunteering with the PTO and PTNA groups. I've also led the local Girl Scout troop for the last five years. Recently I've been working to improve my communication skills through mindfulness and interpersonal skills to stress tolerance and reflective listening. I also have a perspective that I bring as the parent of a child who's in the special ed community and I feel that I can give some of those families a voice. I don't have a set number of hours that I identified to give this role but I've gone through and reviewed like the average general meeting times and the policy meeting times that have been happening and when they kind of increase and where they're more regular. And I find myself lucky to be a stay-at-home mom and my kids are slightly older. So I have the capacity in my schedule now to take on the work needed to contribute to the board. And I would be very happy to take on any training and workshops available to help me better serve. I am a very eager learner. Thank you. Thank you Ursula. Very nice to meet you. Thank you for applying. And finally we have Patrick. Hello can you hear me. That's great. I'm Patrick Welley I'm a resident of Middlesex and I'm happy to be here today as a candidate for a student school board for us. And the first thing that makes me certainly is my two young boys pre-schooler and kindergartener at London. But also I want to be part of the board to encourage a board to direct the school to be in an equitable place and an inclusive place. And one that takes care of the input seriously. I think that the input can be in scheduled ways but also in capital ways. So I think that being on board can help with that aspect. Ticketer skills. I'm a geologist and a research scientist. So I'm going to read the reports with that kind of technical eye. I'm going to ask questions about the methods. I'm going to ask questions about the data. But also my parents work in public schools and all my full education occurred in public schools. And so I'm passionate about public schools. My father was the school psychologist for the district that grew up in. My mother was the school nurse for the neighborhood and school districts when I was a kid as part of her career. I lived in Middlesex for about three years. But in that time I've been endeavored to get more involved in the community and particularly in serving the school district in as many ways as I can. How much time can I give? I'm a busy person but I do work out of my home. So I don't have much of a team in my state of mind. But I'm committed to bringing in as much time as necessary to be an effective member of the board wherever that might be. And I'm certainly willing to do any trainings or workshops. I do that regularly with my actual job and find that those kinds of things are really fulfilling. Part of the work that I do is I'm on field campaigns for groups of scientists and we develop trainings for people coming out into the company, doing jobs in fieldwork for the first time. So I know the value of that kind of thing. And so I'm happy to bring that into the teach to the board as well. So thank you for the consideration and also thank you to the other members of Middlesex for your time as candidates as you were an investment group. Thank you for that team. Thank you Patrick and thank you to all our candidates. It's what an amazing group. We are so fortunate. And I hope that you all will get a chance to serve someday. So I guess our process is we're going to not be able to make a decision until our August meetings. So I apologize that there's a delay here in taking action but we'll just need some more time and we need for our chair to join back up. So I think that's it for now is Jill or anybody else? Is there anything else that we need to do tonight? No, I think that's it as far as I can tell. Well, thanks again and we'll certainly be in touch in a little while. Okay, so moving on with our agenda, we have already dispensed with 5.2. So now we're going to move into 5.3 policy committee members. And Chris, would that be you introducing? Chris, are you still with us? If Chris isn't here, here he comes. I think I just let him in. Okay, thank you. Kari? Chris, are you there? Yeah, I'm sorry, I fell off the system. I don't think that is me, although we're the last policy committee meeting, we had a three surprise guests, including Scott and Floor. And I don't remember who else, but we're looking for members on the policy committee because Dorothy will resign soon. And it was she and I, and a quorum of one really doesn't work very well. Or it can work really well, but it doesn't work, it's not cross-pollinating anyway. So I'm looking for other members. Got it, Scott. You've found one, whether it's one you want to find is another matter, but I'll be happy to join you, Chris. Are you talking about Kari? No, I'm talking about you. I mean, I'm talking about me. Who am I talking about? Scott, very happy to have you, as always. Thank you, Chris. Thank you. It'll be great, thank you. And Chris, I'm the one you forgot. Oh, Mindy, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, but you know what? I won't forget again, of course. I used to be on the policy committee. So when I heard that you needed people, I was there and if we still need me there, I will continue. Please come, that would be great. Thank you. Negotiations feel spurned, Mindy. Sorry about that, but no. We can work out a loaner program, Donis, if we need to. Do we need a motion? I think we might. I move to appoint Scott Thompson to the policy committee. I second. What about Mindy? She'll get her own motion, Scott. Okay, okay, great. Just thought I was forgotten again. It didn't take long, wow, it was like 25 seconds. Okay, all those in favor of appointing Scott to the policy committee, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Extension. Okay, so that passes and. That we appoint she will not be forgotten again. Mindy to the policy committee. Second. All those in favor of appointing Lindy, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Extension. That passes. Okay. Thank you both. Thank you very much. You've got, you've got critical mass here and hopefully we'll get some additional members maybe out of our, our new group that's joining. Yeah, this is great. Thank you. Great. And can I just, since you're talking about committee members, I just want to also put a plug in probably in the August meeting, we'll start. We'll also have to start thinking about appointing a transportation subcommittee for negotiations with the transportation bus company. All right. Next up we've got consent agenda. Can we get a motion to approve the minutes from May 19th, June 2nd, June 8th and June 16th, please. I will move to approve the minutes of May 19, June, June 8th and June 16, 2021. Second. Second. Any discussion before, before we vote, I would just like to give special appreciation to Lisa, whose minutes are unbelievably comprehensive. Go look at other districts, see what their minutes look like. We are very fortunate to have Lisa. Amen. Agreed. Agreed. I'm saying that for years. Any other comments? Okay. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. All right. So that passes. How about board orders? Anybody able to make a motion? Yeah, I have them open. I make a motion to accept the board orders. In the total amount of 835,000. We have a motion to approve the minutes of May 19, June 8th, June 8th, June 20, 2021. Second. Second. Any discussion? Hearing none. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. So there was a new email that went out earlier today. Yeah, please. Then make sure I have the right one open. I make a motion to approve the new teacher nomination of Jeremy Avoli, U32 physical ed and health teacher for the 21-22 school year. Second. Any discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed or abstains? OK, so that passes. The other one I have on here is the long-term substitute. Maxwell-Sagala, U32 English long-term substitute for the 21-22 school year. Second. Second. Thanks, Jonas. Any discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed or abstain? That passes. Now, if I have the most recent, those are the only two on it. But I'm worried I opened the wrong packet. That's all I have. That's all of them? OK. So now, moving on to the collective bargaining agreem