your perspective and and taking advantage of your experience as a former board member. Appreciate that. 1.2 any agenda revisions or board comments? I'll just note that maybe we should think about I don't know what you and what the board's pleasure is but doing board goals without Vera or Eric we could choose to simply adopt the goals as the supervisor union board and the executive committee have recommended but previous discussions were around doing something more specific to Berlin. So we could either do that tonight or table for a future date when perhaps Vera and Eric will be participating. That's our agenda for under 3.1. What is the next scheduled meeting? The next scheduled meeting would be August I believe so August 13th. Is that our own meeting? That is our own meeting at BDS yes. The future meetings are listed on the agenda under 1.4 the next two meetings anyway. Yep any any thoughts on that or we can discuss when we get to board goals? I kind of like the idea of tabling it as far as getting Vera's and Eric's input. I kind of toyed for a moment in my mind well could we could we vote in acceptance of these with potentially like adding on but I don't know if that's really the cleanest way to do it. Yep and Pete you're just walking right into this. I think it would be good to delay it. I'm certainly not in a position to vote knowledgably about it. I would suggest that we table 3.1 board goals for our next meeting in August and be prepared to look at the SU goals that were adopted tonight and think about whether or not we want to add any additional specific Berlin goals to that. So 3.1 will be tabled. Any other agenda revisions? Any public comments or correspondence anyone wants to mention? Okay we'll note the future meetings knowing that we'll probably have a special meeting this month to just to discuss act 46 at the SU board level. 2.0 the consent agenda approving the minutes of May 14th those are on page 2 of your packet. On page 4 Peter's last name needs to be corrected. Schober's S-C-H-O-B-E-R and that's it. It ends with R? Yes. Okay thank you. Any other revisions to the minutes comments? I'd entertain a motion to approve the minutes with the one correction that Corinne noted. Is there a second? Yes that's me. That's you. I'll take your word for it. Alright since you weren't there for that that's that's fine. Any further discussion? Those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. And opposed no. The ayes have it and we've approved the minutes. Under the discussion agenda we have 3.1 board goals and as we just stated we'll be tabling those to the next meeting. Hopefully Vera and Eric would be able to be there for that. Do we want to have any sort of a discussion at all about what you heard just now tonight as far as board goals while it's fresh in your minds to capture in the minutes? Peter you don't have the history of course but when I first joined the board and I guess that's been I can't remember if it was in three or four years now one of the first things we did with and there were four of us that were new to the board all at once so four out of five were brand new members. First thing we did was try to lay out some some board goals and you'll see those in previous packets. Excuse it in this packet I don't think it is previous agenda packets where we tried to give some guidance to the administration about what we wanted to see happening in Berlin and we didn't didn't make many changes to those first for probably the whole time you were there Carol as have been here as principal and they really needed to be updated and as we went about trying starting to update those that's when the executive committee started looking at it supervisor union wide board goals and urged us to hold off and as part of our response to act 46 and everything else trying to align the schools and get all the schools to work together all the districts to work together very important to revisit those we didn't didn't do that or we would look at them and say it's still close enough we're still doing these things a lot of things did change and did happen based on those goals and Carol did a lot of nice work based on those goals and met some of those goals and so they really do need to be to be updated so as we went about it again that's when they asked us to hold off while the executive committee and the Supervisory Union board came up with some common goals they wanted us to consider so that's where we are now and so we have those three major goals that I think encompass most of everything not with the same level of detail but encompass I think the goals that we had set out and there may be a few specific ones that don't quite fit so that's where we left it off was with looking at the the district wide goals and thinking about whether or not there are any Berlin specific goals that we wanted to maybe add to that so I was you know personally I was fairly pleased with what we saw tonight and think those are really good three really great areas to focus on and encompass a lot of what we were trying to get done through our own board goals but I'd like to hear how I think looking back at the ones that he's referring to some of them weren't really measurable at all and that was a conversation that we had gotten into and that was that was one thing we had been talking about was just trying to shrink the number of them too because it was a lot to yeah yeah these were what what Vera and I had both been saying at the last meeting was that there were some kind of specific Berlin items which not to say that they aren't specific at other schools but that we felt were important for Berlin yeah so if if neither or either beer or Eric wouldn't be able to make the next meeting it would be great if we could ask them to put any thoughts down least get the delay any any more than that okay so let's plan on making a final decision in August Carol's or anything you'd like to add as far as how helpful those goals have been to you or not helpful and what you what you would in your opinion what we could add or what we should take away beyond the three broad goals yeah I think we're in it you know we want it would be great to submit goals that are measurable that the data could be presented on like we were trying to do with the CIP when we were putting information last year to the board where we showed the CIP and we could indicate how we are moving towards that goal having something that's measurable that data can be collected on yeah the evidence can be shown and then Aaron when he comes in if you present them as you all presented that you wanted certain things specifically done when you interviewed me so long ago and I knew that those were those focused and you know what we added into the CIP and you adopted that yeah and I use the CIP more at that time but it would be great then to ask Aaron if he could report out you know I know they're board goals but what's happening to move those forward or report out occasionally what you could contribute to help those goals but for him exactly they really should be right thank you all right so there's no further discussion on 3.1 we can move to 3.2 and I'll say that I did some work on this today I'm gonna hand out something that's a little more detailed than what's in the packet so this was something again for the historical benefit here when we went through the renovation process there were a number of things that we uncovered either later in the process and we're part of the project or we're specifically cut out of the project because we didn't have the budget for it but our our goal in this respect was to make sure that we kept tabs on everything in the building that needs work or would need work eventually and start planning for it and set aside money in a capital fund and keep up with the maintenance so we wouldn't be in this position again 20 years from now or who knows maybe even sooner than that saying oh we need another bond we'd rather keep up with it rather than go out for a bond ever again so that's the thought behind all this so we started putting putting together this list of what's what the current needs are and the price tag that goes along with that the roof is actually gonna start in a couple of weeks we were lucky enough to have some space in the bond to go after the roof when we initially had cut it out of the project the driveway is another big ticket item and these are these are very rough guesses I'll say on some of these prices you know some of the some of them came from contractors and some of them came from somewhere along the way in the project a number was was thrown out there as a just to give us an idea of what the what these things cost so the roofing is underway the paving the drive would be a big project in his priority in a number of people's minds I think given some of the holes we have there I'll say that the sinkhole which was a I think it was an old septic system that was out on the playground that's that's been done so you can scratch that one some other things that were identified in the renovation process were some masonry issues outside just the the masonry between the bricks and some of the areas of the school is worn away some painting and sealing the exterior metal louvers at the unit ventilators reviewing the cracked brick veneer at the southeast corner of the kitchen it was something that that came up and that's that's to review it and that's not to fix it at this point the storage shed has some issues and that was a number that was thrown out there on that we created ADA compliant access at the front entrance but did not do that for the back entrances off to the playground and again that was a conscious decision of trying to keep our renovation bond under three million dollars there were certain items that came back off the list upgrading the exterior soffit lights painting the front gate the shades for interior miscellaneous areas Carol was that that was done okay good and a smart board for the conference room they we found money in the budget for that kindergarten cubbies have been ordered or they done their order oh it's done all right well excellent so no further monies need it correct correct does that mean it's been taken out of the budget what happened was that we had put aside some funding for some furniture for the library which was not used not needed and to the extent and so we did we looked at and said what would be the best way to allocate these funds so yes the operating budget yeah that's the question yes we get to the painting item on the list here that was part of the bond money yeah it just hadn't been done yet because we didn't use a contract or we just we didn't you go through our general contractor we just did it our ourselves okay our cubbies accessible restroom was part of the project that was a kind of a nice to have or a want to have but not necessarily a need to have just adding up off the library up in that corner of the building to add an accessible restroom which when we were first talking about it one of my issues was we're losing space and doing it yeah like we were talking about a classroom and it's how do you write how do you decide whose class is going to go into the smaller classroom yeah that was just one of the things on the list that doesn't necessarily have to go back on the list cleaning up the boiler room and chip debris and removing the wood chip boiler so there's that inoperable wood chip boiler that's still there underground over in the corner off the gym I believe it's all still in there and there's yeah and all that stuff is in there and the architects said probably something we should take care of at some point do we have to take care of it right now probably not that's true too the kitchen work so as we got through the project I think we had an inspection and there were a number of potential code violations noted and so we've got to have this hanging over our heads that at any time we could have a code violation in the kitchen which would be a real a real issue and but at the moment we don't but at the moment we don't there is nothing that imminently needs to be done if I recall from our last meeting I think I think that's right Corinne although the grease trap is something that keeps keeps coming up yeah so I don't have a dollar figure to give you on that but Jesse who was part of the Black River design architects who worked on this kind of shot me an email late in the day today his recollection was that the kitchen items were to remove the redundant water conditioner in the kitchen which would also solve our lack of an air gap issue do the outdoor grease trap work it's less straightforward as there are some questions regarding the ruling about whether this is a code violation or not and also remove the interior grease trap that the washing machine is drained to us this is not by code supposed to be drained through a grease trap based on hot temperatures and detergents so they're three or four redundant thing I kind of missed that that was remove the redundant water conditioner in the kitchen which I believe solves the lack of an air gap issue they were afraid that there would be a calcium buildup in the dishwasher cause of making problems so we had to at that time purchase something to condition that water so we wouldn't lose our dishwasher so is it redundant because there's a blue one in the whole one or redundant because you don't need it with the new water system I believe that what they're saying is when they did some rebound of the kitchen that it's taken care of now and there is water coming in from Berlin it doesn't need to happen it isn't necessary so no treatment is necessary now with the new water that's my understanding I can clarify that further so that gives you a general sense of the things going on in the kitchen and I think the painting is also the person that got back to you as far as the redundant and the two tracks was there any dollar figure with they did not give us any dollar figures with that piece of it so that's still to be done to understand what that what that cost is well I think one of the architects said it would be expensive so extensive and expensive extensive was there were a lot of lot of items in there to be taken care of and then I got further clarification doesn't sound like as many items as I thought and then as far as expense I really don't know so no no real good information to give you there but I think gives us a good indication of the priority if there's a possible code violation when the original construction was going on and of course if you remember every time we went to a meeting that grease trap was a discussion yeah it was hard to remove it was in an area that was causing major problems because of the plumbing yeah there's some things that are buried under the cement in there yeah and they didn't even feel we needed it they felt it was not necessary well from the sons of what does it Jesse Jesse there were actually there's actually two different grease traps yes talking about it isn't just one that's what it sounded like yeah yeah so several issues I want to say is Kohler and Lewis yeah and I'm trying to remember I think it was there were so many bills on the project I think it was one of the bills I go back to the exterior H we had a child yeah I had an injury and was in a wheelchair and we found that not having some kind of right out of that back entrance we have a drill it was a drill that was not planned because it was something that Chuck was doing in an area because of the lack of a grade going out yeah it was it was very good good to know you know they had to kind of lift it and drop down yeah all right was not easy so okay just be aware that we and those are two actual two exit entrances on one on either side there's one on either side at least getting one done but you really need both because you don't know where somebody would be coming from it would seem any ADA thing on here needs to be bumped up as far as priorities just because you never know how many things could be I mean a student a teacher anybody at any moment could end up in a wheelchairs or or crutches or anything so yeah right but it was very glaring to me when the teacher came and said oh my gosh that was really awful okay thanks for that feedback so two of those under age if we go there so we talked about the code items in the kitchen work the painting if you've been into the kitchen you know that it could use a good fresh coat of paint and we've got a quote of roughly $2,500 for that there was the has been discussion in past meetings where where Chuck has said I want to go ahead and do this can I just do this and I think you and Bill have both said let's prioritize Chuck's work elsewhere and let's hire this out if there's any way possible to do that the painting in the building it's labor-intensive the whole idea is to make sure that whatever is taken off so whatever's put up sticks some pretty bad peeling yeah yep and that leads us to the other painting and Carol was nice enough to put this together today on short notice thank you Carol the painting needs for the building and so I was trying to rough some of this out myself and then Carol provided the detail but we did the painting we did in the classrooms was one accent wall so there were three walls in any given classroom right that did not get painted right you know shelving we took off containers that had you know paper towels dispenser some things like that and they filled the holes and that was it yeah and then behind some of those things are the original paint and then you got other layers of paint yeah and then you've got these holes and dirty so that is that just the two classrooms that are listed here no they're in every classroom I put basically every classroom needs some painting the only areas that are falling I've listed there the ones that need the painting the most are rooms that have four colors in it career four colors in a room it's very distracting I think Jane Couchet has four different walls with four colors and there are some that are peeling worse than others and notice you put it down the floor of the walk-in cooler also has some yeah so we were quoted we were quoted a rough $1500 per classroom and that involves a very labor-intensive scraping to make sure that it adheres properly and so I put down the other 15 classrooms is that about right something like that around the outside and then there are a few in the conference room the some of the areas in the inside center of the building there are a few and then the little bathrooms in each classroom we got a quote of $300 each to do those and there about a dozen of those and then you had provided more detail Carol so I guess my question would be is there actually I should know the answer but I don't is there actually money in the budget to be doing not all the painting but to do whatever it might be there's like five rooms here plus some doors to do some kind of chunk of it so I don't know you know maybe it's the next couple of summers that someone's done or are we looking at needing to take money from the capital budget or whatever for something like painting and it's a different question as far as something like paving painting I don't see as being unless we want to take it all on I don't see this being extravagant I'd like to add to that question and maybe you can clarify because tonight you said that all schools have a surplus but some schools including Berlin have a surplus because they've allocated remaining funds from the construction project because there's a lot of different pieces we have a lot of different funds can I just go through these last four in the mechanical and then then we'll go to that that sounds good so under mechanical and there it is color and Lewis was the firm I see the note there just a couple of small things and one big thing cleaning the transfer grill in the kitchen installing a pressure tank and there was a loose sink in one of the bathrooms and then pressure tank where would that be is that kitchen related I guess it's my question I think it's for the building if I remember correctly and we removed what was there and then they recommended we put something back but what we had removed was something that was older and then installing a alternate heating source was another thing that we considered at one time just to who knows if oil prices went sky high then it might make some sense so that's the list our thought was to prioritize this and see if there are a few things we can pick off a bit at a time and then maybe some big items we want to prioritize saving for but maybe it's be a good time for Lori to do the financial report savings that will help bring up the fund balance so what typically happens is we don't close the books today and this is June we close the books after the end of June so we've given it our best shot for your school you had asked also how much savings have we had this year in utilities plowing everything so where you'll see the revenues haven't changed since last month and Peter if you need a quick tutorial at another time I'm happy the revenues are currently 65,000 above the budget so that that's pretty good projection and I don't see a lot of swing there when you go down to the expenses you'll see we put in under June 2018 in the middle column those are the changes since last month so we have all of the bills in and except for the final like electric bill we're projecting to save almost 34,000 dollars in the plowing electricity everything oil center so we've had a very good year Carol have mentioned she paid for some of those costs out of her line item budget for equipment but she has left 12,800 that will carry into this fund balance for next year so you could consider that for this list if you decide to transfer money to the capital funder okay use fund balance next year to pay for that some of these things when we close down all the instructional programs your school saved about 7,700 I think you heard me talk about the bus CD that came in and it's an expense because it passes through the supervised reading it now as an assessment so we reduced your assessment the busing by fifty four hundred dollars and that's cash in the bank so again that's a solid number so when you draw a line there that total is around fifty seven fifty thousand dollars of savings so that's what we came up with the next line is technology and what we have is a multi-year plan for technology equipment now so we budget for a level in amount and then some years we're not going to spend it all so we save it have the board reserve it it's on the action item tonight and then there'll be a year when all the servers and things need to be done so it's coming but this is why you would not consider that for purposes other than technology because it has its own multi-year plan capital just for technology yeah so when you look at the end of the day I mean it looks like you're a hundred and four thousand over the 4% recommendation down at the keep going yeah so that would be after you reserve the equipment for technology and just in case you forgot last year you reserved 6400 for technology so the total is 22,000 for technology which is a few steps up sorry I'm not following where's that there's two reservations for is this healthcare recapture that you already voted on back in September you voted to use 9700 for next year's budget instead of asking the voters to come up with that okay of the 22,000 I've assumed that you are going to move the 16,000 from this year that's in that total and you had 6400 from last year already reserved so the grand total be 22,000 it's a combination of the two years so long story short you have 104,000 here is our best guest today when we close the books Bill was saying it would be kind of premature to move any more money to capital tonight yeah books are finally closed what if it's a little bit more you might want to move more to the capital fund so that's a hundred thousand that you could transfer is our best guess for the capital funding for this list and then if you turn the page you'll see the real capital fund it started the year with 16,000 this board did move in a total of 85,000 to 20,000 of it was in the budget and the other 65 was the transfer from last year's carryover fund amounts that you guys did transfer that transfer to February so right now your capital fund has 97,000 so if you look at the two together you have close to two hundred thousand dollars if that's what we're doing which is great news and so I don't want to just wrap it up with the capital with the construction project so the water project is only on here because the state had a forgiveness this year for your loan so that doesn't that's not a carryover that just shows you your final loan amount of 56,000 okay but the actual construction project you'll see a change order estimate in balance available we believe between five and thirty thousand should be left from the bond and from the the proceeds from the revenue generating fight yeah so it does become available for future capital projects good so if you total it all up I said okay you have 97,000 in capital sorry I asked you to do this the construction project between five and thirty thousand we have up this potential in September for the fund now is transfer of a hundred and then you have in next year's budget another 20 so you've got like 225 or more yeah is what we believe you'll end up with all the dust cells that answer all the questions you guys had before not well before yes but but so the last one you said and I wrote it down real quick okay don't forget it was did you have money in the school budget right and I think from looking at what happened the construction project is we had a lot of repairs I had done because you guys just repaired it right so based on what we've been doing this year maybe about six thousand bucks that you could use for the payment because that that's my basic question is if we want to say let's do X number of rooms or however we want to look at it as far as the painting this summer is is there money like the six thousand dollars that can be used does it really need to come out of the capital money and therefore could something actually happen this summer you know are we waiting to see how much there is to plan it all out so this summer Berlin Elmish schools and quite a bit of use yeah so doing any workouts off except for the roof is not really do you have to look at not that you couldn't get the work done they wanted to be done I just want you to know I don't want there to be any expectations of the buildings and use almost every week yeah all the classrooms everything the specific ones that I was wondering about are the rooms where it says they're in most need of painting I understand that we were holding this the extended school year program there I really so that there's and I just met with all the custodians and we're moving custodians around as we did for East Montpelier and for when they hosted the past two years to to move custodians there for the two and a half weeks when there aren't kids in the building to get the building ready for the next school we improved the schools yeah because yeah because where we have to we did this with East Montpelier and now East Montpelier they're doing some they're doing some painting they're doing some other things that you know we just can't keep the extended school year in one building continuously we need to move around and so that's okay I had read about that I wasn't thinking I mean so it's not a can't be done current I just want you to understand that there's just tiny don't don't hear me as I'm trying to pay I'm all favor painting and getting some of those rooms up to place right right and I had read about what's happening at school this summer and that was one of the reasons why I was thinking not only cost wise but just how many rooms can you have the time to to do anything with well right now and I would say that set to paint the rooms in East in Berlin because of the scraping we have to contract it out right oh yeah right now I can tell you we actually just rejected a bid for Romney because we're not getting good bids because people are booked for the summer you're getting already higher costs we're getting premium cost to do anything for the summer yeah because people were already booked you know all the construction trades are booked and I go for just say does we and Roy Swain worked for Berlin he's a boiler person help with the boys are trying to do the same thing at rock from me right now sitting get done their construction yeah and he's like you got premium bids because you went out to bid in May is that something where maybe during one of the school breaks because it's not the painting it's the taking the room apart and putting it back together for a teacher that's that's that's the issue it's not the getting the painting done right well I mean it's a trade-off between that and having to wait another whole year so for the week if you know for me for not being in the loop here with the extended school year program as we're committed in Berlin for this year and it's been done before in East Montpelier for two years before that it was in this building for three or four years in this building we need to be in there are three there's basically three schools one size-wise and two we transport the students from the other town so we try to bring them to the central location so we have East Montpelier like it's about 90 to 100 kids typically you know it's standard school because we have all we can do to do what needs to be done during the course of a standard summer yeah that's yeah and I think East Montpelier is probably comparable to Berlin facility-wise yeah so you know that it can be done with sharing yeah in a couple of weeks yeah some of that is we know the wing the primary wing and we're going to close that off to a student school year but Chuck is you know he's planning on like I'm going to be getting those rooms ready so during the weeks the kids are there so they're not going to be down there but those other the rest of two-thirds of the building from basically that the cutoff right there by the that goes up the three four classroom that parallel that goes up paralleling the library that whole section including no gym they're all going to be in use that may change some I want to say that some of fluid that's the best information I have today I would love to be able to get a few of those done over the summer if that's in any way possible but you're saying summer is I'm saying I'm telling you right now you I'm gonna say I'm gonna push the custodial staff and to get a bid and to go out we're not we're not going to get good prices right now premium price for getting a painting crew and yeah and it's the scraping it's not the painting literally it's hand scraping those walls because poor paint was put on prior yeah and so do we have any projection as far as if the summer program would be at Berlin next summer so in other words if a vacation time wasn't a viable time is next summer I think talking about this now the answer is yes it could be a viable time we need to talk about everything we're balancing out because what we're balancing out is building taking care of the buildings across the SU we have become you know we've got things going on every month right but this stuff is just as important to so somehow we do need to make money over two consecutive years is it likely that you would want to do a second year and Peter I haven't given any thought and that's where I'm saying I want to balance everything that needs to get done and take a look at that I'm just I'm not going to commit right now because I don't know what I don't know okay so if we prioritize our list and we put at least some painting at the top of that list you'll figure out how you work we usually pretty good at doing that so I'm not trying to I don't hear this as a no it's just I don't know sitting here tonight Chris was there anything else that rose up to the top of worst I know we've said about the ADA right and that should be pretty high yeah so in the kitchen called by a lot of kitchen could be some of this painting of monkey color rules could be done in the spring break what the longest vacation is so weak isn't it yeah so it's the February I would think I'm meeting time it's on contractor they may they may sometimes they may say yeah we can do that and we can and what we usually do with ourselves because of the amount of there are the lack of personnel power that we have is you know help us move stuff you know help us move stuff to the center of the world because what it is today is you know you know that one that thing's mounted you know we have to mount all by by all the safety standards we've got to mount anything is it over three feet or four feet not yeah they know but they have to scare it to the wall it can be a lot of work to get all that yeah it's not doing it's not doing my house okay yeah I think those are good I would agree with those three in the conference room it seems like the conference room or make dock in small room those are easier than a classroom because there's just less stuff yeah yeah yeah yeah well the kitchen I mean that's what you were bringing you were bringing that up yes the kitchen will be used by Chris you were bringing that up about and that's what we heard in the construction project it's the kitchen give you one that we could be we need some repairs I think that's a composite I need to read I don't know so you've talked to John recently a little bit and Jesse sent me a little more information today repairs and painting and painting yeah but I don't think we don't need an answer tonight either no not on I don't I don't think so we want plan for districts are for limited painting in something like the entrance work even if the school is being used would not having one of those entrances usable be okay with what was going on yeah I think fire code we lose it we would go to have the occupancy the occupancy in our buildings required for the doors we have yeah I would check and I would have any address yeah I have to ask thinking even if one was done this year and one next year or something I mean you know somehow so this is why I would say it would help and Chris tell me if this would help you to I'd like to know the batting order we can work on the details and when to do it and how to get it done and come back to you with a proposal about this is what we can do yeah but if I if I know from the board like what are your priorities on this list that helps get into the planning mode and solving that yeah before we set the batting order do you want to have any input on any of these that you feel are our priority and also how we potentially spend the capital fund knowing we have some very big ticket items and a bunch of small ticket items here's what I need to know because talked about it so much what's the level of that because that's a big ticket item there but I've heard a lot of talk about that being important yeah so if it were like hey we got to get the driveway done then fill stuff in around that and you give a prior list we can do that but if it's like we want it in the sink hole I thought we had it's done yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah because they're in the bond yeah to see so I would say you know for me it's tell me the importance of the driveway because we're we can put a skim code on the driver in five years maybe back to what we have right now so it's going to mean a rear it's 180 that's there so it's going to mean going down deep in that to drive route 12 and drive it every day twice a day and the places where it was tilled they're getting bad but they've lasted a lot longer than the plate because they have a test I don't know if you know this but you need to have transportation as a test strips on route 12 to see what's the best way to repair this stuff the ones that are holding the longest are the ones they went down to the subsurface we're not real certain on that 180 no we're not we thought they could even be higher but I need to know I get Chris when you ask me that's my biggest question figure out that big ticket and the level of importance because a lot of small stuff with a price per we can figure that out because that's going to tell us how much we need to save in the capital fund or if you said hey in the next five years we want that that driveway taken care okay we go out kind of we say okay is it the 180 to 250 whatever it is and then we make a plan that we say this is how much either we leave in there or we can spend so much and we're plummage so that that's money management that that that we can figure out and got our wizard bread to my left here so she'll figure that out well when we were just discussing going going to bond one of the things that had been discussed in those meetings were simply making sure that some of the small stuff got done so it didn't become big stuff so to me you can't just say do you want to do the driveway or not you can't lose track of some of the small stuff and because that's a I mean the driveway is important but you also don't want staff and community to think well you did the bond and now you're not going to take care of any of that we have a little stuff you want them to see some continual so you so well hold on and so what I was trying to figure out is how many of these little things are things that really that may not be so little that they need to rise up that we should be considering it doesn't mean we can't really go for the driveway at the moment the kitchen's the unknown right the kitchen's the unknown me to the rest of it you know we're he's my player five years we're out five years from that being done there's some little things like Todd says I got to get to some pain there's some repainting just the use of the building anything else no not and they did a lot of mechanical same as you did they did a lot of other stuff too but they did a lot of mechanical you the floors I think you're going to from talking about a lot of life expectancy of systems and flooring and all that grand I'm trying to answer your aunt I think you're you know we're gonna start seeing maintenance costs eight ten years you know as Lori said there's some maintenance money in our budget and we can start to use some of that I you're right I agree with your current it's that you got it you don't want to lose track of it just let it be because that's what got us into the hole in which way right which is why we're having the conversation that we are as far as looking at the whole list so I think we all recognize that paving the driveway is important yeah but that does take the majority of the money that would be available and that's why I was asking you of your words about and I'd like your feedback on that for a price right and there are still I would think that they're still still fairly fresh in their minds what's going on with the kitchen what's going on with the drive yeah the kitchen what we were worried about was that grease area black river come up with better pricing and pay them to do it they won't right they're busy I know they're busy well it's cold it's cold right yeah you don't want to but it's cold issues when it comes up it'll be up yeah well some of its grandfather too and so the kitchen's a little different than some of the other building parts of the building with code the kitchen we have health inspections so they tend to turn over faster and be like what you're just saying Peter it's if we come and get a kitchen inspection they say do it it's you don't say can we do that a couple years like no that's why it would be good to have a harder number for the kitchen work we can get them so we can realistically prioritize that we can get that is there anything outside of this capital discussion I can do for you the second board that I see no I don't think so I think it kind of in our minds the big issues and Pete and Korean correct me if I'm wrong it's the driveway it's the ADA access to the secondary entrances it's the code items in the kitchen and it's getting some painting done there are a lot of other things that are smaller things on here but are obviously also important but those are the four that jump out to me that helps a lot you know that's great the maybe we'll just identify those four is the things we want to gather more information on to get a firmer price on the do ability and knowing that bidding bidding right now is that's John Hemmelgarten did get back to me and say he's seeing higher bids than he has in a long time right now okay thank you Bill thank you Laurie sorry I'm taking good care I'm sorry one more time what was the what was the final capital fund balance that you were looking at and then we have a budget of around 20 I think next year so that puts it 170 then if the project ends with between five and 30,000 from the roof you know from the final bond that could put you say 122 and then and then another hundred possible transfer from the school budget so that puts you at 222 roughly that's case okay yep thank you definitely the number person all right thank you item 3.3 is the overview on walkthroughs Carol if you want it more in depth so walkthroughs are done frequently I do about 45 per individual and then can we reach up and hit some button that's gonna say at home we reach up and push a button on ours but so if you are new to the school the first year you have a more extensive there is a walk through done but then there is also a more extensive time whereas the full observation of a lesson that they have to show their planning they have to show what work they have done and how they are trying to accomplish that work then I go in and we meet ahead of time we pre-meet if you want to scooch a little bit I'll try to show you all what I mean and I apologize for you over there so I'm going to use myself so this is what the teach point looks like this is what I have all this the teachers here we don't you do it with the paras teachers then can look and see I can pull up any one of these walkthroughs and what I showed you in the screenshots is this walkthrough right here so I go in I can start the timing I can share this document with myself I can select the area that I am math whatever and this document even though it aligns with Danielson it was created mostly by Stephen Dellinger paint to also correspond with what we are working on with the SLOs and transferable skills and such so some of the evidence that you see you would not necessarily see in a Danielson type format so for example it are there clear learning targets available I can look and see or hear them talking about it I can hit yes then this area is where after I've observed for a while see what the lesson is about understand what's going on I might walk over to Lori and say so what are you doing and they might ask you know say well we're doing this well why do you think you're doing it because the teacher thinks it's fun you know kind of thing if that is the case student has a very unclear is very unclear about the learning target and I can hit unsatisfactory then for each one of these I can go through and I can grab some evidence for that what I tend to do is just type it all out as fast as I can and then I go back through and I try to hit the evidence so that is one walk through form that you can use Carol could ask question when you say type it all out do you mean things that you're hearing or your interpretations of what you're hearing what I am here actually what you're here yeah so there is also a walk through with where is the one since this isn't being screened and if I can just pull one up here and please don't use any names but so for example I hear when I was in there I started typing as quickly as I could I started typing everything that was said it shows minute by minute what is being said so that the teacher can then reflect back on and I can when meeting for them say you you wanted to give time for students to work together but if you look you only gave two minutes how much can they accomplish in that two minutes so you might want to have more time there in this time you asked like five questions but how depth and depth are those questions are they really pulling out information that you want so when you're saying what it's doing I am typing as quickly as I can so that I can see you know students started right away to and with excitement so why are you doing this the teacher is saying for the students are both teacher teacher teacher teacher and if I put t and then s and then t and then s and it goes back and forth so we can do you can look at that yeah this can also do it for let me pull up another one like this teacher here and we won't use any names and if I have just like let's see pull pull this one up if this is one you can see t and then s and then t in the student and I try to go back and forth and here's the questioning if we need tape or string yes you only get what you have in the bucket can we trade no only what you have in the bucket but how do we get your stick show transition you know and that so here is a lot of back and forth and here are some students talking to each other so that's a very strong showing that students are really working together guys what if we need to move the dinosaur using the noodles do we have set boundaries first try the Nerf ball you know that kind of thing so you can really clearly go through I saw that there were learning targets and so I went through and I started to I didn't get a chance to ask a question but then I went through and with that I scored we scored we talked about it communicating with students and I sat down with him and we worked on different areas so you do this observation and then a given day and then how how long before you go back and you both go through this together and talk about we can go through it together or I send it they know that they have it we can write back and forth it might not necessarily be a physical meeting okay I would meet with this individual more because they're still in that first two-year time and then so we close that with him he has an observation I do twice a year a full observation he fills out a pre-observation form he shows what the lesson is going to be about what I am going to see what I am going to look at we meet for this we discuss this so when I go in I know and then again I can go through and he evaluates you know that then I can also go through and and look at any of the lessons and so you just show up or is it a plan time there are plan times for student teachers give me students I'm sorry for teachers who are in the first two years there are planned the other ones I just walk through unless for example so this is another one with the script back and forth back and forth I have had teachers say to me you know I'm trying this new lesson or is this is something connected to a strong goal that I have this year could you come in and do a walk-through and just watch for this and we've done I've done that so that is how it looks for the teachers they don't have all of this then you can go through and there are a whole bunch of reports you can take a look at any reports you can look at detailed reports it's really great I've used this to we as an admin team filter all of this into because we can look at all authors we can pull it up and we can say in domain three student engagement is and we did that it is lower and it needs help and then we look at individual annual summaries of people reflecting and it's showing that student engagement is an area that's why we created modules then to help the with student engagement when you see the learning targets we were seeing that based on this data we were not seeing enough of those learning a target so we felt that we needed to put it right in those learning targets were new this year because last year we just we weren't seeing any place to document in the first place and then second we were talking about we weren't seeing it being used effectively so this actual these documents are fluid as well based on what we're seeing we can then create like this year Stephen and I was part of that team sat down and said you know we just don't think we're hitting you know this area strong enough let's put it into a new document and the scripting is new too and that is really phenomenal I love that part of it so they can you know as fast as I can type which sometimes you know they're talking really fast but I can put it in and they can see it one right after another we use this data in our admin team Stephen Dellinger paid is the guru of this so he is teaching us more and more to work with it and every time we see something that we're like you know we're not getting enough information in this area he said a little let me add it to one of the documents we want it to be streamlined enough so it's not you know oh gosh the teachers are like overwhelmed and they've got to read all this stuff so that it's easy you can see it's easy it's quick you can move it through but it's giving them information and they reflect they can reflect back and forth we could either meet in person or it can be back and forth through the document that we can and once we both feel comfortable we sign off on it once it's signed it can't be changed so I tell them is that the formal evaluation or is that tie into like a formal evaluations are done in here and once they're signed and then of course right now all of the teachers are working on so for example Jane this individual just told me that they've done their end of the year summary we haven't checked off on it yet she's done it I'm reading it I'm going to reflect on it it's really great because so for example this individual just told me she just completed hers she's setting up a meeting we do meet together at the end to go over their annual goals their summary end of the year summary setting goals for next year reflecting this is really a neat thing so she is reflecting on some of the in she can add it so I can actually see what yeah so she can show me and add to document and specifically give evidence so if you're not in that room and she's talking about something that is connected to that domain that specifically like student engagement or student self-assessment or student working or classroom management she can show it to you and you can look at it right there they can upload lessons they can upload pictures I've had people upload work or letters that they've gotten from parents and things and it's all there and then it just collects year after year so next year when Aaron is looking through this and he is wondering you know so am I seeing what Carol saw you know last year da da da he could go up and he could win that he could change it so that he could put a different year that he could grab it right that's great good transfer that know exactly as well besides you going through and doing walk-throughs our teachers not necessarily on there but our teachers able to visit each other's classrooms as far as learning from each other like if they if they are doing a new program or you know went to a conference and you know are trying out stuff are they able to share also I've opened it up to allow people to do that not many people have taken advantage of it and it's a great Korean I think that is excellent they don't take advantage of it but only so many hours in the day yes through work that they've been doing with Ellen our math coach she has set that up but it's hard you have to get subs for different individuals she has people who do a lesson and what she does then afterwards like a team will come in like three or four teachers from different schools in that area like fourth-grade teachers teaching math and a teacher teaches a lesson which is you know really going out on a limb because you're teaching in front of people and you know you make mistakes and everybody sees it but then Ellen brings them back and they all reflect they talk they work together and they learn from it and I think that's the biggest thing they learned from it it's not you know oh my gosh Laura you really blew that or something like that it's so this is what we're doing what what could we strengthen what would we pull from this that the teachers have been saying it are this very very beneficial thank you Carol all right it seems like it's just going to get better and better and as you build that database it's like an important evolution of any educators career will be right there all right thank you I want to do our best to get out of here at 9 o'clock so this is that's a challenge for all of us we have item 3.4 local meetings versus supervisory meetings and I think this was something that Corinne was really interested in and we had a few brief discussions about it I'll try to summarize those discussions which were we'd love to have more time to do maybe have some demonstrations from students or teachers more time to do some of the fun stuff and not just the day-to-day stuff at our board meetings and then we had your superintendent pushing in and maybe your principal a little bit pushing back on that a little bit saying you know we have meetings we should make time and our regular meetings maybe have a little bit longer regular meetings rather than an additional night when they are stretched very thin and might not have the bandwidth for additional meetings I think the other thing you were talking about Corinne is having something locally and in Berlin where people might be more likely to come out in Berlin rather than come up to you 32 and it is an earlier meeting and it's an earlier meeting too and so I'd like for us to kind of make a decision once and for all whether we really do want to try to squeeze in some additional meetings or just say let's let's stick to what we've got and do our best to fit it into our existing meetings. I made the comment last time the four years I've done here I think one of the number one reasons that I've heard for board members to have to step away and it's really sad because the board team they did so much momentum is the number of meetings because not only do you have the school board meetings you have to volunteer for negotiation executive policies at 46 it's a lot of meetings welcome Pete well I think I think that's been an age old as far as the number of meetings but yet in the past we've been fortunate enough to have people like Peter and Mike and Linda and Amy Burr and I mean the list goes on who really stayed with the school board for many years so there might be some people that have gotten on that didn't realize that's the type of commitment that happens but I don't think we've had a bunch of turnover in recent years which has not been standard over the years. Yeah. That and I think the only other thing that you didn't mention Chris is that there usually are at least a couple of occasions I think during the year when we want to end up having some kind of more of like a public hearing or something on a particular matter whether it's the budget or something that might end up being at 46 or something this time around where if that could actually be set. You know during the standard time rather than being an odd time or something added in that would be bad. Okay. Any thoughts on that. Peter. I think if when you can incorporate special presentations into a regular meeting it is good for everyone. As you said Chris it means maybe a little longer if you if you're having a I don't know we're talking about like a primary unit presentation. Yeah. Yeah. Student presentation or maybe a teacher presentation on something they're they're proud of. Yeah. Rather than than additional meetings scheduling additional meetings and I have to say having spent eight years at Berlin on the board before I do think that some of the committee commitments now sound like they are more time consuming than perhaps they were 20 years ago. Yeah. My perception at the moment is that that's the case anyway. Okay. Steven. Sure. I'm just here waiting for you. Yeah. Absolutely. We'll recognize Steven. Look who's waiting for our audio visual to wrap up where we're doing that a lot of each month to your board now and and do it while we incorporate stuff into our regular local board meetings and we do it by adjusting the time like you were talking about. So we had a presentation by students. So typically we start our board meetings at five thirty. We started our board meeting later so that the students didn't have to be there as long or if we want community budget stuff. We'll start our meeting at five thirty but then we'll maybe take we'll stop our meeting at six thirty. I'm making times up because that's a better time for the community to come and we'll dedicate an hour for budget presentation then at seven thirty we'll go back to the regular board stuff. So that's how we've addressed it and even play with when we do certain things in the meeting or might break up our meeting to try to and be fine but it does it also gets more people to our meetings because they'll come for some other reason and then they're there anyway so it might actually stay. No thank you that's that's helpful and that's I think that's the approach that that I would prefer and sounds like. Peter might agree with that current are you would you be OK with the attempting some. Maybe creative scheduling. To work some of those things into our meetings. Yeah I think the more that can be. Figured out in advance the better as far as people being given the heads up if we're doing something yeah special yeah I mean I think sometimes when you let people know just you know a week or two you know part of that getting out usually within the week of the meeting right where that's kind of hard to plan if you are doing something in particular that the community might be interested in right. Right that's good point all right. 4.0 is reports to the board. We had our finance report. Lori do you have anything Carol for administration. Any questions on. Anybody. Thank you for that report Carol from the packet. Our action agenda 5.0 5.1 is to approve a blanket authorization for check orders for F. Y. 18 and 19 and that's tied to page 6 of our packet. We do have the hard copy and if you could explain that to us one more time. I guess my only question was it had sounded like it was all about the summer but yet that isn't how it's written it's just written kind of in general it will remain in effect until further notice from the board. So I just. So if we decided not to meet in August or something so it would just. Yeah. So it really is in effect for the school year unless we say otherwise true. Okay. Okay and so the real one is where. Right here. Do we need a motion on that or do we just need to sign off on a motion to approve it and then just sign that. Okay. Is there a motion to make a motion to approve the 2018 19 blanket authorization to have checks. How do I say it checks signed approved whatever the right wording is when the board is not able to meet in a month is that. I guess you could just reference the document. The document that you're going to sign. I have a lot more words on it than that. It's not like this has a title though. Immediately. There we go. Do you have that captured somehow for the minutes. Good. I made that motion. Second. Any further discussion. Those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. All right. I've done that. I'm going to do 5.2 before I pass this to you because that's also inside the folder. Okay. 5.2 is to award revenue anticipation note. And that's also on page 7. Oh that's the. And Lori can you give us a in a nutshell. The words for the motion. Yeah please. I wrote it right there to award revenue anticipation note. Oh you did. I did to community bank and any for the time period of July 2nd 2018 through June 28th 2019 and the amount of the loan for the school is 1 million. Sorry you don't have a copy. So 1,484,580 dollars at the rate of 2.7 percent. Okay so moved. is there a second? Any discussion? Those in favor of the motion signify by saying aye. Aye. I suppose no. I do have one question that I didn't need an answer to have this done but in the lower of the two sections there where it says overall spread combined bid, can you explain that line to me? Sure. You are borrowing money at 2.7% and the investment rate is 3.71 so that's where you would generate 1% profit. I guess that's the way we were discussing that. Okay. Okay. Yep. Thank you. So the second motion is written right there as well. And that's the investment bid? To award the investment bid to community bank handling for the time period of July 1st, 2018 through June 30, 2019 for the following interest rates and I would say 3.71% yield. All right. Is there a motion to that? Yes, sir. And a second. And any further discussion? Motion. Those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. And then the last on our action item list is regarding the technology fund and that's to approve reserving $16,370 for technology. It was a previous reserve, Laura, you mentioned earlier. Does that mean that we don't need to reserve this much or? We need both. We need both. Okay. So I'll move. Okay. Karen, is there a second? Yeah. And any further discussion? Those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. All right. Did I just mess this up where you, wasn't it you that handed these, no, Carol, had handed these forms when you said that I needed to also send them to clerk? Wasn't that actually supposed to be Rosemary that signed it back? No. Which clerk? Some are board clerks and some are count clerks. So we check it with the bank. So if it has your name? It didn't. It said clerk, but Carol, you had said that I needed to sign it there. But so I'm just wondering, can my signature be in both places? You're signing as a board member and as the board clerk. Yes. All right. And the treasurer's done. Yeah. All right. And then once those are signed, I take those back. Oh, wait, you said second, right? Sorry. No, we were done with that. We're fine. Yep. We're on to item 6.0 unless you have other comments, questions. 6.0 is approving the board orders, which Pete now has. We have a question. Okay. It's because I probably not have to speak, but there's an item on here for Vermont Correctional Industries. Oh, is that some of the furniture? Double the case coming in table. Yeah. So that's not the project, the construction project. That's something else. There was money set aside for the items for the library out of the regular budget that actually went in. We weren't sure how it was going to be paid. So we set it aside just to make sure that the library, because it's a focal point of the school, had what it needed. That when all of the dust settled, we realized that that section had actually gone through the budget, or through the bond. So we still had that funding set aside. So Lori said if there's anything else for the library, and those items were made through the correctional. So I went to Amy and said, is there anything else? And she said, yes, as a matter of fact, we need more bookshelves because we're moving some books out of the intervention space because that has to be used as a classroom next year. So we needed more bookshelves for that, a couple other things. So that's what she said. And it's all made through the correctional. Yes, I'm familiar with them. I just caught my eye. Thank you. Do you need any more time with that, Peter? No, I'm doing some signatures here. She's right on it and said they make a motion on that. On the board orders? The board orders, that's right. So now I would entertain a motion to approve the board orders. And if you could say in the amount of, Peter, you want to make a motion to have it in front of you? Go back to the top. It might be on the first page. For the board orders for construction of 29,425 dollars and 14 cents, you know what, that's backwards. The warrant is 29,425,14. And construction is $1,242.50 cents. Ken, I'm sorry, can you say that for me one more time, 142? 1,242.50. Okay, is there a second? Second. Any further discussion? Those in favor of the motion signified by saying aye. Aye. And future agenda items? Can I ask a question to bring up something? I didn't think of this one when we were asking about additions and it could be saved for another meeting potentially, but I'm wondering as far as we've had conversations before about website work that we'd like to see more done and I know everybody's time is stretched. And so I guess my question is, do we have monies available? Could we be hiring anybody out to do some of the work? Can we put that on a future agenda item and let Bill speak to that? Yeah. I just think I feel like we've resolved it in any way. I mean we all know how busy everybody is, but yet it's something that I think we've all agreed that we'd like to see more work done with and to me it's part of the community outreach. I was going to say that you might see that come up in the community engagement discussion. It's just a way that we tell people, well you can find it on the website and all and so to have that be a priority I think it's important. Good question. Any, I know we have board goals set for our next agenda because we tabled that tonight. Anything else for a future agenda item? Did we have any other old things still? It seems like we might have worked through most of them. Yeah, school safety is also on there. Yeah, to get some information about that. If anything comes up, we're not going to have another board meeting until August, Berlin board meeting until August. So if anything comes up in between, please feel free to let me know. Let Bill know. Don't let Aaron know. And we have our school picnic coming up next week. Yes, I always put on a four-week school picnic. Say Tuesday? I don't know. Wednesday, 13th? Wednesday? Wednesday, I believe. Oh, I shut myself down. Yep, great. Tuesday is school day and 19th is graduation. We hope you all come. What time is graduation? Starting at six. Great. Oh, I guess I will. I've never done that before. That's exciting. Sounds good. All right, if there's nothing else. The school start time committee, we haven't voted on having a... We haven't. Good catch. I'm going to ask if either of you would be interested in doing that. If not, I'm the school start time committee because Carl Parton was the primary and I am the alternative. I'm now listed as the primary there, although I haven't attended one of those meetings yet. I haven't been able to, but is that anything either of you has a burning desire? I appreciate you so much already. So then I'll make a motion that Peter would want to point it to the school start time committee. And how will I be informed or do you need the open summer? Yes, it sounds like it would. There was some question about whether they would be doing any work over the summer, but it sounds like from our discussion today that they will. Krista, I'll let Krista know that I'm off and you're on it. I would still be the alternative, so if you couldn't make a meeting, just let me know. But I'll let Krista know to start sending all that to you and if you look at the WCSU website, they've done a really great job of getting all the materials up there that they've been working with. I think we need to have that be an official motion though. Yes. And so I made that motion. I'll second it. There we go. And all those in favor say hi. Hi. I've gone to a couple. They really are quite interesting. Congratulations. We will adjourn at 9.07. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Look.


To find out whether a treatment works in a human, you have to ultimately test it in a human. Our current medical treatments for many diseases such as heart disease, cancer, HIV, have all been tested, first of all, in clinical trials. At Kaiser Permanente, we're proud to offer a wide array of clinical trials in many common disease conditions, such as adult and childhood cancers, infectious diseases like HIV, cardiovascular diseases, neuromuscular disorders, and many other medical conditions. One of the advantages to participating in a clinical trial at Kaiser Permanente is you don't have to go anywhere to enroll in this study. Your physician will frequently be the investigator in the study, and all your records are already here at Kaiser Permanente as a part of our medical record system, so we will know right off the bat if you qualify for this study or not. When I first began with Kaiser Permanente, HIV was largely an untreatable disease. To the advent of clinical trials, more and more effective disease therapies were developed. Now, flash forward to today, we are now able to treat HIV with one pill taken once a day, which seldomly has any side effects for most patients. That's an amazing thing to say. Hepatitis C is another disease where clinical trials have really driven medicine forward. For years, hepatitis C was a very debilitating disease for patients, and oftentimes resulted in liver transplantation or death. Through the use of clinical trials, new medications were developed that can actually cure hepatitis C. Clinical trials really have driven medicine forward here, and I'm proud that Kaiser Permanente could be a part of those clinical trials.


Tech Talk Music. Today we're going to talk about music, mainly in the digital world. We're going to talk about different parts of it and what does it mean when we talk about these certain things. So we're going to compare music in the digital world to music in the real world because basically anything that's done on a computer usually is just a mirror image of something that's done in the real world. So there's three main parts of music when you're creating it both in the real world and the digital world. And the first part of course is the music itself, the notes. So you have a composer who writes down the notes, the notes tell you what note to play, what octave, how long to hold those notes for. And in the digital world, although there's different options, one of the most common options is MIDI files and MIDI controllers. So a lot of people when they hear the word MIDI they think electronic-sounding digital music. And although it is digital, it doesn't necessarily have to sound electronic. In fact, it doesn't sound like anything. As I just said, MIDI is just the music notes. Just like you can have music sheets sitting on a desk, they don't make any noise by themselves. You need instruments and people to play them. MIDI files are the same way. MIDI files just contain what notes are to be played, how fast they are to be played, how long they're to be held, how loud and how hard they should be played. It's all that information. It's basically, if you can rate it on music sheets, it's pretty much going to be done in a MIDI file. So again, MIDI files are just the music notes. Don't make any sound themselves. So to make sounds, just like with music sheets, you need instruments and people to play them. In this case, when it comes to the digital world, usually the player is either software or someone using a MIDI controller, such as my keyboard back here, which is just sending out the MIDI information. But you need instruments to make the sound. And when it comes to the digital world, you mainly have two options. You have synthesized sounds and you have samples. First we'll look at synthesized sounds. As we all probably know, sound is just waves that move back and forth. The farther spread apart they are, the lower pitch it is. The closer they are, the higher pitch they are, and the wider or the length of them has to do with the volume. And when you're working with a synthesizer, basically it's a program, or it's going to be software or hardware, but basically you adjust a bunch of knobs and settings to make a wave that sounds a certain way. And they can be round, smooth waves, or they can be solid waves that are very triangular in shape. But depending on how you put those together, you can make pretty much any sound. And nowadays, there's a lot of great synthesizers out there that there's some synthesizers that sound just like the real instruments, and then there's some that don't, and not that one is better than the other. All depends on what you're going for when it comes to the sound of your music. If you're trying to make techno or electronic music, you probably want that electronic sound. But if you're doing rock and roll, you may not want too much of an electronic sound. So the synthesizers, depending on how they're designed, can sound like different things. And although I use synthesizers, I am not one who designs instruments for them. So I can't go into detail on that, but I believe it takes pretty good talent artistically to make a good sounding synthesizer. And again, the second option is sampling. Sampling is definitely done a lot with drums. It's probably the easiest thing to sample. Basically, you have someone hit drum, you record it, and then anytime someone hits a key on the keyboard, it makes that sound and just plays that recording back. Samples can also be changed in pitch. So I can play a single note on a keyboard or on a piano, like a C note, and then link it to a virtual keyboard where I can bend the pitch of it and to make different notes out of it, which you get more and more distortion further and further away you get from the original note. But sampling can also be done very precision where you actually record each note on a piano. So when you're playing on a MIDI keyboard or putting the notes into a program, it's not adjusting the sound to make that note. It's actually playing a recording of each note for a different note for each key, different sample, different recording for each key. It's very time-consuming, very hard to do, get good recordings. And when it comes to putting samples into a program, you have some programs like LMMS, which is also similar to Fruity Loops on the Windows system, but there's lots of programs like that where you can just bring in a wave file. As far as drums, you can do that in LMMS or there's Hydrogen, where each track, each note is a different recording, where LMMS will adjust the recording to put it into a different note by bending the sound. But another option that's common that is widely used amongst a lot of programs are called sound font files, which swammy, I believe is the name of the program I've used to create those. And like I said, you can record a note or a group of notes from any instrument and link them to certain notes when they're played on a MIDI device. And again, when it comes to sound font files or sampling when you're using programs like that, they can be real recordings of real instruments or they can be recordings of synthesized sounds, in which case you're probably better off using the actual synthesizer because you're going to get less distortion when you're moving out in a range of notes. So that's where it comes in. The instruments again can be synthesized or samples. And I'm going to get in here in coming weeks a little bit more about sound fonts because I get asked a lot, especially when it comes to LMMS, how can you make a drum kit, which is a very vague term, which is a package of recordings of drums to where each note is playing a different recording such as you do in in hydrogen. And the answer, depending on what you're doing in LMMS, probably one of the simplest options would be to use sound font files, which is lots of great sound font files out there. And finally, the last of the main three parts of music is effects. These are, you know, echoes and reverbs and other types of distortions. And there's lots of great programs that a lot of music programs have built in effects. One of my favorite programs that's kind of external that you plug other programs into is I rack a rack. I believe is how you say it has lots of great presets makes it very easy to mix different effects. And especially in the digital world, it is even if you're using very good samples, the music will sound very mechanical unless you add some effects and definitely things like reverbs and echoes. And another portion of that that I think would fall under effects is humanization or humanizing where you can add swing and other stuff to the music. Basically what this is is they say in the digital world when it comes to audio or if you're making imagery in like blender and you're trying to make a scene is that imperfection is perfection because in the real world there is no such thing as perfection when it comes to replicating something. So if I lay out a bunch of pennies on a table, they're all going to look a little different where if I'm in blender and I make one model of a penny and I make a hundred copies of it, it's going to look at a place that they all look exactly the same even if the one penny looks perfect. Same with music. And again it depends on the type of music you're making if you're looking for a very regimented digital type of music you may want it to be sound very mechanical but a lot of music people feel that it doesn't have any heart or soul if it's very mechanical like that. So especially if you look at programs like hydrogen drum kits or hydrogen drum machine there are humanization knobs where you can turn and you can put a swing and it basically makes everything slightly not perfect as far as the timing or other aspects of the music. And you can do the same sort of thing with LMMS using controllers where really it's still using timing and stuff but you can make it sound a little more random by using those effects. But again three main portions of music both in the real world and the digital world is the music itself, the notes, the instruments that are being played and then the effects which in the real world could be how somebody plays the notes because you have notes written out and you have the instrument but you can add your own little touch to it but it could also be like using a mute on a trumpet or trombone, something like that. So I thought that I'd just talk about that a little bit because I'll be getting a little bit into a little more stuff on music applications. I used to do a lot more music software. I don't do that as much anymore just because it takes a lot of setup to get the sound sounding right where my voice and the music aren't overpowering each other plus just so many topics I want to go over but I'm going to touch on a few things in the coming weeks. I hope you enjoyed this tech talk and as always please visit filmsbychrist.com. That's Chris of the K. There should be a link in the description and as always I hope that you have a great day.