to to focus on the board and this really is these are some of the guidelines and rules that public schools of vermont really probably for the next decade are going to need to add into their curriculum and into their programming and into the framework of their schools few things i wanted to highlight for folks one was the professional learning plans which we went over pretty extensively that we're really getting away from the carnegie units and moving towards proficiency base graduation so when you're able to meet the requirements of java geometry you move on to tell job or two might be in the middle of the year you might be year and a half and what the school's doing right now is they're trying to figure out how they're going to do that in an effective education in vermont for quite a while in addition to that flexible pathways which includes a lot of different ways for students to earn graduation credits and show their proficiency in intertwined also cost money that we're going to have to pay for in the near future the tune of probably around fifty sixty seventy thousand dollars and one of the things that  even though i think we're all supportive of it that's what it is unfunded and i think that right now it looks like school districts are going to have to pick up those costs and what typically has happened you would think that if students are taking additional courses then they might take certain courses at the high school and then you you did might have a reduction staff but that's not the what happens to the students that are taking these enrollment classes are also taking you know as many credits as they can and then classes at the school so even though they're taking some additional courses at the college level they're still taking really a full load at the high school as well so you can't necessarily reduce teachers but it has been an addition that a lot of students are taking it in the school which is a good thing a couple other pieces i wanted to highl t were there have been some changes minor changes to things like class size and teacher student teacher ratios and things such as the number of students per nurses the amount of p the students have to have per week and the amount of physical activity also on what these quality standards are requiring schools to do make sure they have a school leadership team and then on that team it's not just the ministers but staff in the building that there are professional learning groups that are working  in meeting during the school day to look at programming and the needs of students and that and there has to be a local comprehensive assessment system which we're fortunate we have one and have for the a few years and then a continuous improvement plan this is really taking the place of used to be action plans that schools follow the the multi year action plans and they are most so it's a pretty dense document but if you do get a chance i would recommend that shoe at least browse it and i like the annotated version because it shows the comparison between what's coming and what's in place now and what we had before that right now but it's not it's not necessarily super cost effective because the school is still charging for the credits and we're paying for the teacher it's something i think that will evolve has people start to see some of the opportunities like that and then we'll be able to hopefully partner with some institution at a reasonable rate because we do have some qualified people that can do it as a technical center that would translate for those those programs charged back to the school districts the same way they are under this no in those there are still those programs are doesn't say there way i'm just going to add on to that comment i know that for the center for technology in the graphic design my daughter who took that kind of three credits through linden state college while being a graphic design at c t b so are you saying that there is a cost cost of the credits i was i was a little confused about that i understand a cost if you're going out to a school but when you're having the class here where's that cost piece can you go over that again say you v m they're going to church you for the credit yeah yeah but if you go to you yeah but i mean if you're taking a class in the school killed in in our high school that's taught by a regular teacher has to be e budget matches what the requirements are there is a law in here about curriculum and they have to follow all these standards but i like the other version that clearly gives all the bullets about you need this you need this you need this now so i think that'll help us with our strategic plan it's also really clear for the budgeting part of it how many students would be on a guidance counsellors caseload details like that that you want to know moving forward in terms of making our strategic plan and there were some references in there to policy have already been taking a look at it like ok i know we may have to do something here we may have to add a policy there so guidelines that are going sure that we're meeting the standards so why not one other place that does mention school board is in the development of a continuous improvement plan it talks about who should be on the committee to develop that plane and talks about parents students teachers and staff but it also does say school board and the board has to approve that plan as well so there's  l quite a bit of an involvement many connections having been reading the follett's trilogy i have to say that i think we're fortunate to live in an area where everyone can express his or her own views and vote without feeling that there's going to be repercussion in that it went to views are whether you were for the merger or they were against the merger everyone had the opportunity to have a voice in the conversation so i think more than anything i want to try to take questions and we have represented here tonight that we're on the voluntary merger committee  i did want to just share the results because i think in a lot of ways it wasn't just a vote but it was a mandate when you look at it that this is for a lot of the communities that make nice this was something that they clearly were supportive of and wanted to happen to come to fruition and so what i think that does i think it gives the new board really optimize all the opportunities that we have that may come from this they're i have worked really for the last since the merger vote really working on planning  and trying to figure out some of the legal pieces to this and make sure that we do it right so huge amount of my time right now is focused on making sure that we do this right get this right and  so i've been preparing details for new board members and plan and you know from policy to budgets to transportation so that we can do this  and as efficient and effective manner is probably possible but i thought folks might have questions and so i was hoping that we'd have an opportunity to hear any of those and be able to address those and talk about them to hear what you had to say the role now the board is in my opinion and this is based on some discussion focus is to make sure that we're  and pay your bills and really thinking about winding down the school district and what that looks like and some of the tasks that my steps and my being right it's what i see the role of the board i agree but i guess i'd add one more thought and that is that it's a transition and there's there's a lot of  there's a lot of wisdom and can and and and history and knowledge in this sport and not everybody's going to new board and so to the extent we can individually and collectively contribute to that transition by when they replace it here in this meeting and say please bring this to the new boards attention or whether we come to the new board meetings i think that from things like negotiations that budget policy you know a number of things that people worked on for years that are going to help with this new board transition effectively and have it be in the best the five that voted for the merger they're in the process of preparing a school based budget school but district based budget that we're hoping that we're going to be able to merge with them out mansfield budget and then be able to recommend a unified budget to the new board and anyway sometime in january so right now the finance committee has been following a process  the normal process that we have for the last couple of years around preparing a budget for the two middle schools and the high school and elementary districts have been doing the same thing you know taking a look at things like class size needs programming you know use our strategic priorities again this year to really how why and some of the the reasons why we need items in the budget and why we're doing some of the work that we're  why not i would hope that would because i think that if it that high intent is an important part of our district the voters have opted to govern govern their elementary school with their own board but hunting residence huntington students there's to to my mind there are still critical parts of our of our district so i hope we will be so we would hold the board meeting there and they would hold their own board meeting at some point it will be up to us is a new board that you know thanks to you and the committee for the hard work and trying to pave the way for some other districts around the state that was really the contents of the communication and then i've talked to some folks from the to what they they will be they won't really be making decisions moving forward for the new school district because what happened when with the merger is that  patches the statue were we need to have an organizational meeting to really officially form this new entity and the secretary of education or her designee will preside over this  and new board members will be sworn in and at the end we'll have a brand new school district and the school board and they will be there will be some parallel work going on and hopefully a lot of this much communication is we can't around recommendations and guidance moving forward but this new board in the near term one of their primary just the real estate it will has to be done prior to the two july war so it's going to happen sometime between  to the idea that continue now will continue but in the near term unless unless something is advanced through the legist your local legislators to the greater suggestions or any power at all other than the school board the school board is and i've also the prevention committee which is a quasi i sort of select board i guess you're not in the same function but they  they're part of the town governance and the only really function is they collect taxes property taxes and that's how they fund the school system but so that might it but it has to change legislatively the it has to remain a municipality until the legislature dissolves and how does that take place i believe it has to be creature of state law the school board by virtue of the way the merger statutes are or are set up the school board ceases to function as such so we would still have it and that's the same for all of the elementary districts they still have they would still have a quorum of the party to be able to  they'd have to make a decision soon whether whether these whether there needs to be elections in the towns if if there need to be elections then they need to be posted and will see if people actually run for if there don't need to be elections and there's a very simple and elegant solution which issue we just go through the equipment process for vacancies people be appointed to complete their terms that's what we so we just have to understand if we have to have elections just basically simply signing the words right and and so one of the things that we're going to have to be diligent on is to say to ourselves what we really need to go to these meetings if we can't we can't but i will report back to you is i know i actually asked that question to will have our long advisory which is basically we have two classes very short classes in the morning two very short class in the afternoon and then in the middle of that we have almost three hour long advisory where you with your advisory can either stay at school and do fun stuff like watch movies or play games or we have advisories going and i think playing paint ball we have some going to the regal gym we have some rock climbing we have i think we have a group going to montreal cherished and that's going work and then we have we have a very large you will see the staying at the school to play bubble soccer which is really cool and such should be really fun are all looking forward to that are most of our high school seniors have sent in their college applications so kind of all that is happening in that section of the school we just got kind of a new lunch program going to school until like the lunch got redone so instead of just having the excited about that and so on halloween we have a halloween costume for all the advisories in front of the school and different advisors can she said dress up and one advisory for example they all w like milk are in costumes and that teacher was the milkman and one was like the chocolate milk so that was funny and then there's also the student section were students can dress up and perform something from the school like and brought it to the school and so we had kind of a pumpkin chunkin in the back lot just kind of launching pumpkins into the woods so i was a good time we also and we also right now the library is looking at doing some changes to the formatting and how it looks and kind of what's going on there and so the librarian to put together an idea a contest where students can submit ideas and the winning idea that student will receive a fifty dollars gift card it was our and just ones and so they said thirty of them right now and they're like you know what we'll do is will rent them out to people and make money that way and so for free right now he's just kind of seeing how it works and so there's actually a test drive for the goal is this spring he wants to have a big soccer tournament at our school where students like students can have teams of the sports teams or clubs could form a bubble soccer team and get a sponsor from the community to come and play with them and help them to front the cost to follow up questions that one is do you have a proper videographer for this you know i don't know are you interested in the second is do you have appropriate insurance and helmets it's a chance to fall in with your advisory and do something fun and that in the spring each advisory sign up for a three hour block of service and so it can range from going to the animal shelter and helping out with the puppies which i guess was a really fun last year or doing cleanup in the parks or helping out with the fire department and just doing a multitude of things so and you know i don't know  my kids were in on the beginning advisory and so it was kind of like a kind of thing that's over a successor now yeah they're definitely there now and so i'm just trying to gain some perspective as to how if you've done it all four years you know what's it really feeling like is it really doing what you thought it was going to do in terms of the bonding in terms of being connected to an adult in terms of finding new opportunities to connect with different kinds of kids that you wouldn't normally connect with is it supporting like they're in trouble i think in terms so our advising has actually changed down a little bit to the pas which i talked a little bit earlier this year so just straight up advisory which is to say friday i have  advisor for the last three years just because of my freshman year my teacher retired this year and so it's been really nice i get to kind of be with people that i don't necessarily see and i also get to talk to the underclassmen or the people that were older than me so this year i you know as a senior i see the freshmen and sophomores and juniors and it's been a real fun experience for me to see everyone and especially each of the freshmen they're really the start have planned advisory work session and so basically what that means is on monday i go in and my advisor his name sister price i go in and i said to mr price i have no idea what's going on in physics can i go to mr mr craig room on  monday and he goes yep and he signs me up on the computer and then on wednesday instead of going to my advisor i go to my physics teacher and i'm sitting for this as an example and i can go and i can get help with what i need help with or   who's there so what do you guys usually are sometimes you guys sometimes we just sit and talk or a lot of the time we have a new teacher this year who actually came from the middle school so she doesn't really get advisory yet so we just like it's normally fun advisory which is very like play games or just do whatever is twice a week for half an hour and then you have the pas period which is three times a week for half an hour which can be used to meet with teachers hop class a student is offering these are all student run and so it's just it's a very fun way to see what other what your peers can do and and to learn new skills we started the process as we always have with the principals looking and sharing information about what's going on right now what what they might like in the future what's it look like for this coming year we asked them since the original look at it was i think a three point two one percent increase over the previous year we said we'd like you to come back with some prior to see what it would look like with a two point five percent increase in the one percent increase and so they did that work as a leadership team and came back with some priorities it's not a pretty list i don't think there's anyone on the finance committee that wants to go there right now so there were a couple of things that are going to happen regardless so right now we're at a two point nine again on december fourth is the new committee to look at those numbers one more time and then on december ninth meet with representatives from each of the elementary schools and start to look at what  we have to do so we don't want to make any steps right now until we get the bigger picture i guess this summer and as you all  are a lot of numbers that we won't know until after the beginning of december some more sense on some of those numbers by them that's where we are right now we do have that suggeste know what the tax commissioner is recommendation is by the beginning of december in a war with that probably a recommendation on the base at least some idea  president budgets that are coming from the elementary school board schools were designed in conjunction with the school boards in subsequent years those are just come from elementary schools will be designed in conjunction with who were the finance committee years from the new war the entire bias committee will work with each of the elementary schools to help them develop their budget are transportation that aren't bricks and mortars but they're obviously discrete programs so you still have to have those building blocks and you've got to start there and it's it's the hope in thinking about those that merge budget one of the things that's come up the last couple years for discussion with the m m u budget is been foreign language in the middle schools and so certainly and i'll speak just for myself my old peers that with a merge board and everyone working together that becomes more of a k to twelve discussion over what would language look like and how should we presented and how we fund it k to twelve rather than looking at it piecemeal reports were in some preliminary discussions to get ready to reactivate the c s u policy committee which had been on hiatus and so the plan is that they will we have a lot of work related to policy for the transition so be c s u wide policy committee is going to have to do their chunk of work first and then we will move on to what would be taken on by the executive committee while they're still it's mostly we've got to we've got to get a logo or something for that so there's going to be a lot of work to do around that plus we have to make sure that we have are in the works with any policies that are required by the articles that don't currently exist right now and there may be a few things such as school choice comes to mind immediately you know how we'll have to have a policy and a procedure for dealing with school choice requests so that's going to be a group that's going to have a lot of work and jen and i are on it so far and then i get the committee got to to get to a beverage in thinking that the executive committee will also be disbanded with this new committee with with a new board so there will be nothing like we recognize now on july onto th it went on to be kind of confusing so the comment i'll just read it and then i'll give it to you i believe the best education happens when there is a cooperative effort in communication between students parents and teachers sometimes parents also can use guidance about such things as developmental stages of children and the teachers can be more effective if they have a better understanding of the parent's values and or challenges it gives an opportunity to build notices one of the objectives if you will the school boards association is for candidates from school boards who felt that their boards did a particularly good job or rewarding experiences that they would like to share that they send them in and because i think that we do do a of being respectful toward another and initiating things such as our strategic plan and our capital plans and that we had students on the school board and now we have students on our functioning committees understand i think i understand about the fifteen member school board but there there's been some mention of a twenty one member committee like three for this is that what used what we didn't calling the executive committee what is that i don't know where that comes from the i don't either i yeah i've seen it have you seen it no i haven't seen it but it's i don't know or stay where it comes from cause the structure of the new board is it has fifteen members the new board will be responsible for all students grades five through twelve and all students preach a through grade fo throughout the system with the exception of huntington which has voted to have it have its own elementary school board covering the students the new school the new school board will also constitute the supervisory the only addition to that school board for supervisory new members is that huntington huntington's elementary would be allowed to designate an additional person to service the representative of the huntington elementary school board on supervisory new mentors however the huntington representatives including this designated person will still have to vote in supervisory matters so they will allocate has a whole wall will have to focus and there is no contract in which there's twenty one people that's just doesn't exist so if people are asking that question i think you know now we're all in a position to clarify  will has two people who are elected and elected representatives of the unified school where the huntington school huntington elementary school board will point another person voting units in the supervisory unit and three three persons who will each have two thirds  ok there were some articles and i think in the newspaper and perhaps on print for form that alluded to different committees one when we talked about a sixty six member committee and in all the time that i'd been a board member i was never aware of any sixty six member committee called a nice to about that but evidently it was the reference to and even that didn't add up to sixty six people or sixty six members in the spring meeting when the budgets have to be approved even after the fact and each school board was allowed three votes and but there was a lot of misinformation that was being bandied about the time that other announcements were business yes a clever so in their annual meeting so each school board gets three votes even though there might be five heads there but we only get three nominees i v we're from the school board might be a night on meeting right yeah that's right it's like it's like this board when it went nominate we would identify three people who could vote legitimately ratso each person would have a whole book but not here were saying in the new school board that each of the three of the people could have a two thirds of a vote on the jet on the matters of which there is general jurisdiction of the school board there are team members each with one but if we deal with a supervisory manner such as a special education there will be fifteen yes topic but we'll talk about it you know i would guess that probably one of the biggest challenges for the new new floors will be communicating with the public to keep yeah that'll be major challenge i believe that's true although i would point out having served on this board now for seven years having to explain complicated things has always been part of our job because we live in a complicated but do we have a f a q on connected to your blog or something about these issues you keep coming up that we could point people to about the two dirt road and the dissolution and  house think you're recommending to us is new board member says that we carefully read and review the articles as a as a necessary first step on our servers if something going out hopefully tomorrow yeah