read comments from community in my office one day and say hey what do you think and we were lucky enough for them to join up us so they are here to explain for us for thank you when you come up here and then university partnerships to enhance resilience so essentially what that means is that we really work with we bring together at the university of the university of vermont the school system here in the district and also the community too with an evidence based delivery model for evidence based programs that is a mouthful that's confusing i know but so this evidence based delivery model comes out of iowa state there's twenty plus years of research in bringing the evidence based programs to six and seventh graders our main goal is to some of our overarching goals for helping two programs so there is for sixth graders there is a family feel this program called strengthening families for the just turned fourteen we meet for seven weeks and last year was our first run of that program we reached ten proven results so we're just excited to have the support of the community the support of the district we're going to learn a little bit more about the about strengthening families program here which is one of the two programs  and i have an impact statement here for you which you've already received if you can you can take a look at that actually as your it shows you some of the outcomes that we've already seen obviously we haven't been doing this for very long so name may sound complex the idea is fairly simple it's to teach children and their parents the skills to help support the youth with decision making and communication and use their legs to prepare for their teen years alcohol but you know how to how to say no but this time keeping your friends the program was developed at iowa state extension and its event to the end limited by a team that includes the university the school and the already learn as the parents of the child with the communication he's and putting it all together with stuff on the world playing in some games and some activities and just some one on one and some group that's well with our parents talked a lot about peer pressure areas well what will happen when we start getting older and our friends are a pain to us for stuff and the choices that we make  horses get their parents skills to the resources margo i'll stand is one of the instructors for the course she lives in richmond and teaches drug and alcohol prevention and is all students preparing them a bigger challenge is obviously bigger decisions and given the skills before they get into a situation where they need to use them it's proven to underplay the onset of us and see this youth so they can look whole that's not just speculation and prosper that's been tested and evaluated for years and there is scientific evidence that if it is implemented correctly it will work see that there's an individual the student too would benefit from this program do you actively seek to register that family we can i think that's part of the benefit to having such a strong partnership with the school and members of the  so that's part of i think why we're here and what the community team is involved and that is help ensue raise awareness about these opportunities in the community help families and neighbors and other people that you know recognize that sign ups happening now and then they should participate in this program of neighbors things that might be a benefit because oftentimes you know word of mouth is their best bet to get people to participate in a program and so if you know somebody and trust that person chances are that they will give it a try and so that's that's the benefits of the community and why we have  a diverse representation on the team when we left real sea families participate from each of the three communities huntington richmond where this model has been used more historically than here iowa state and pennsylvania state i think the longest running yet those are the two original states and then it's been a long process here in vermont for us to get to where we prosper addresses and we along with i think maybe amended and seven other states at that time were identified as go states which meant that we met the criteria we had the capacity and we needed to look internally and we were received a small amount of money to do some ground work and see if we wanted to continue and really make this continue and so i believe there's three other states now that have gotten to this point where we are new york is one of them that's for sure georgians one program actually sort of gained in popularity where they're over capacity or i mean have they gotten sued to such demand that you know they've really had to increase the capacity it's almost a competitive program to get into  expanded communities so they are in many different communities in in iowa and they are running multiple multiple programs into those sites whether they're active passy i don't know but i do know that you know families have come to thank you for your time maybe you know i also have maybe i'll leave them here and there i think they're down there so that if you know of any families i have a flyer that gives more information about strengthening families the next session as well as  wanted to introduce and welcome can your candidate and he is a guy who you like the four member and was appointed to the m m u board is doing double duty and we really appreciate it so kind of thank operations and save money so we've got a couple of slides that we wanted to share tonight around this to teach you cry already and then take some questions from the board and any feedback that you have so the principals  prepared some information they're going to walk us through it i told them when they're done that they're they've been pulling a lot over time so i tell them when they're finished that they're welcome to leave and we appreciate them coming and sharing what's going on receive last year but i want to assure you that we are working hard in this strategic area in terms of energy reduction efforts and greed efforts we do have a green team that we've established in our school and it's true driven by what's called the whole school energy challenge this challenge is looking at our usage trying to reduce the usage of electricity mainly within our building and also looking at green different and initiatives including composting polluting recycling three ring binders doing collections for those at the end of the year using those so it's reducing reusing and recycling that we're really focusing on so i'm go reducing usage in our school we don't have solid numbers because last year was our first year of zero we were working with a group and there they got to me that we saved about a thousand dollars in electricity last year just through so those are where the one of the events that we're doing they're also working really hard on getting awareness within the school and just really making a group a grassroots or after it within our school with our kids and with our adults and the kids are really pushing the adults i'm going to share a little video you know with our power down ok so you can check that out on a website julie parker's web page there's more initiatives that are going on there you can look at they've invented some of the this into the curriculum in terms of writing their summer reading pieces with this as well  so so there's a lot of work going on with both staff and students this year before operates we're going to take that last house half hour and dedicate that before breaks that shut everything down so we're going to go on the speakers are going to go around the building and we're going to do with the intercom and make sure that everything shut down and make it more of a really school wide event that's really going to happen even more so than we did last year we call this something first up of then so we're going to push harder on this year so how can you do that they  interested in looking at the solar we do not have solar out our school we would love to do that so this group is putting that on their list of things to look into and work with me to look into the future for the world for some solar cells on the roof and p again this is a an activity report that you can find on the web site and this stuff just basically about the activities of the green team did throughout the school year some of the pictures some of the writings that he got a tour of the  one of the terms of the green but also money saving hopefully this will come up here is the lotus cleaning system i'm not sure if you're familiar with it but basically we've gone away from chemicals within our building this is to basically  create ozone within the water i mean you take tap water it's a charge it kills all bacteria that's a cleaning system we have it's about fifteen hundred dollar investment for the return of the best man in terms of not using chemicals throughout the school year  is it should pay for itself within a year and so we are not using chemicals in the building to clean our bathrooms to clean any of our tables or anything like this this goes all the protect bacteria got some information on that if you'd like to have a little information or oil or as you know last year was a really cold year so it was a tough time for us in terms of using the gas we've had a lot better use of our which it boiled over the last couple of years we just had some of vents that really difficult for so we've had some things that were beyond our control with which a boiler but it has been working really well and patrick has had a great job maintaining it it's just some things that have happened we had a four o'clock in the morning call for call on one of those really hydrogen stations i think many of the schools have these now you can see there's a little green l e d s spot in the corner there a count how many bottles of the students have saved by using a reusable box so our students have saved instead of using the water bottles to make you feel guilty the water bottles are your tables here they saved over forty thousand forty seven thousand water bottles over the last year purchasing water bottles and reusing water bottles so that's just in about a year and a half's time that they've saved time not you know that he was considering a career more efficient form of energy when we started i mean it must have been i came on the board after we already sort of inherited the wood chips but i very so that's my understanding of it it's a different process of burning as opposed to  twenty seven square foot so it's a you know four times more efficient and cost effective last year we we burn know that but the same things happened at brown at mt mansell i just don't know the exact numbers and so every single lighting fixture in the building was removed new ballasts were put in all these lighting fixtures used to have four walls they all went down to two and there was a fixtures here in the building part of design in one nine hundred seventy two when the building was built was that you put in extra light fixtures because electricity was three cents a kilowatt hour and you could keep the snow off the roof even if the roof a little bit with  the lights on i mean that that's actually you know that was part of when we went through this the other piece of that was in both buildings and you can sometimes five transformers because the building was electric eat there was five transformers transformers for no other reason than to keep them running but they serve no purpose so those during the lighting retrofit those were pulled out you can see so as we move through this five year history here camel you can see that we went in zero seven we were using six hundred eighty one thousand kilowatts last year we used two hundred fifteen thousand in mt mansfield was over a million and they're down to seven hundred thousand so and you can see the costs over time and how those have dropped and you can see the significant change from the zero zero ten to eleven is another one one of the solar panels came on board and i talked to a number of times about you know this how much the solar panels have saved countless homes and you can see that precipitous drop in there and that's part of that reason reasoning so over the last six years you know our electric bill here comes someone from eighty six thousand dollars or you're down to forty five thousand and i think that we can get under forty as we move forward and the other piece is around both mansfield and campbell south is you know we do have a biomass heating system the heating and ventilating system has been computerized over the last five years so everything out we used to have everything come on all at once and therefore the electric demand we would get  there is a surcharge because your peak is is then higher so by computerizing the system everything it now is staggered by five ten fifteen minutes so there is no peak anymore and everything comes on real slowly the other pieces you know we put everything on sensors so that thing shut down when they're not in use and i'll talk about that a little bit more the green cleaning you know as we move replace carpeting here in the building we've gone to the carpet square which is ninety six percent recyclable camel's hump you know we've put all the automatic flushers in in the building which you know is really exciting and we've also converted to low flow so we're down to about a little under three gallons per flush with the low flow conversion we do have school of recycling in composting and locally sourced food and all those things are similar at me until the nets so that was the bas s in terms of what we've done efficiency wise to earn us that energy star award and questions about that above but here are some other things that we are recognized for in terms of our energy efficiency in our lean the movement we reduce remove a fifteen hundred hot water gallon tank that was here in the building  the sensors and in the ventilation system so now you know so the gymnasium is an area where we put the old two sensors in you know prior to this you know those three huge beech c h v units and in the gym they would just run constantly and now if it's in when you the otu in that room is needed then the vents turn on the fans come on and they come on and appropriated right depending on the  room and we've done that throughout the building as we've moved along in upgrade the system so a classroom you have a certain amount of airflow during the winter if you think about you know before we would just be dumping a lot of cold air into the room that would go through those the system and try to get heated so the heating system is working much more harder to because the room says we need fresh air in here now that's on a sensor so we can temper that based on the options to see if the room so when kids are in the classroom we're not going to change the clothes photo sensors so that they are all now you know mechanically come on and off based on what it's outside it's kind of weird because you're driving on a cloudy saturday and the lights may be on kids and i think that was most days with kids and bringing in cooking being readings that we have here in the garden one thing for the national green school a word that was a source of kind of being pointed out as one of the reasons we were recognized i think the big the biggest piece for me that why we were recognized is this integrated curriculum and in community partnerships and you've heard me talk about that over the years but it is getting kids out in the community  and i always talk about in terms of real real science but it is you know that green curriculum in the understanding of how we impact our environment and all those are community groups that we have strong actions within our kids are involved with on a weekly basis here in the building which i know most of for i'm really proud of that that is a picture of what the roof looks like with all the solar panels on it so  there is snow on one then they don't work is that correct they tell that me that you know if there's a ton of snow on them they don't you know you have less efficiency  snow comes off relatively quickly i don't understand that they do because any any glimmer of black heats up relatively quickly you know when we talked about this when the they installed them that was and it is come out to be true you will get a six inch snow storm here  and been two days after that if it's a sunny day you can see the production it's really well stellar it's like a it's a line graph a bar graph and a line graph and on the top of that on the top side of that bar graph is a green nine shaded in that you shows you are energy production  on the bottom side of that graph is in red is our energy demand and if you look at it right now you can see so you can see how it looks like an upside down square if it  were so it's like this in a you know level a clock at ten thirty in the building from ten thirty to one o'clock is our peak demand and it gets the cafeteria the dishwasher is running so and you can see our energy consumption is huge during that time and as you look at that more closely and not from a mile away if you are right now you can see where the solar array picks up and so our demand you can see our demand in those this shadow where the solar panels are meeting that demand that makes sense so in that graphic design this flight every single day here in the building for kids in history how have the roof repairs been impacted by all these panels we have had no roof repairs to date when you know that was part of the study that we did in the engineering piece those are handles are for clipsal down a panel and and five cinder blocks so when we redid the roof had just been done so we have twenty four years or twenty five years to the point when we put the solar panels on that the roof needs to be done so we have a twenty five year window before we have touched the roof so i just wanted to share how important it has been for these things that you can place on the things that had to to happen and one was a lot of leadership from  the committee and the willingness to listen to the administration and for us to investigate some ways for us to save money be good stewards of the environment so kudos to the facilities committee you know way back for having the foresight to invest in these initiatives and they've come out to save the community a lot of money and save the environment as well so in addition to that none of this is possible without the custodial and maintenance staff at school they are absolutely pivotal in critical in making sure this equipment runs right and understanding the systems and they have really embraced saving energy being more efficient saving money and being good stewards of the environment so one more pat on the back would go to the principals  and the ministry of hers for really again embracing the fact that it's important to save money it's important to be of fish and it's also important to make sure that we're taking care of the environment and integrating that into what kids are learning so you know kudos to all those folks for making this possible because it would certainly would not have been without i think a lot of discussion a lot of communication and and a lot of foresight very similar at ground zero because we did all of the same retrofit and i believe brown's or her would have gotten her star award as well but some of the breakdowns which were you know really nobody's fault they thank you mark thank you kevin strategic plan and strategic priorities and this is one of them and so this is another way for us to provide some real tangible indicators you know here's where we're working  where the savings are here's are here's the results yes this is it is a statutory body annually we appoint truant officers it's typically the principals and assistant principals i wouldn't say typically it's i'm for this new proposed district what the terms would be and when individuals who are interested in serving on the board when they need to get their petitions into their respective clerks committee you know what the report looks like and the articles of agreement on when it was sent to the state board of it and when it was approved and when the vote will be  for this potential unification couple other places where i am sending this assented to our local papers it's been posted on pro or for of it's on all the school district blogs and we're going to try to get it and it's going to all the school newsletters we're trying to cast as wide a net as we can and inform as many people around what the status is of the committee and the work of the committee we met on monday night community and michael's here is the chair the committee and talked about a community engagement plan but there's a direct link also to that schedule and that was on the website for the merger we have think nine or maybe moment probably eleven community forums that we're going to be holding across the su including three regional forums one  about the unification miko's prepared an informational presentation which will be that the framework or some of the talking points for the community and then it's going to be another plan is to have a really open and to make a recommendation on whether these this proposal should be adopted i think it's important that each of the school boards debate and decide whether they support this particular recommendation so that voters can understand the perspective and viewpoint of the folks who have been most involved in our current governance struct and so i would ask that this board take up this matter and decide whether it whether or not it wishes to recommend the approval of this unification to voters  whom we represent up i believe it is i think it i think it is an appropriate time to bring that discussion up i would be happy to make a motion so we could have the discussion question being  or approve i would suggest support the approval i move that the amount mansfield union school board goes on record as supporting the approval of the unification of our districts and the articles of agreement yes second thank you discussion was presented on the website as yes we approve or will be yes we approve because of a list of things maybe even too much but there's been a lot written as to explaining why the merger committee supports the going merger and of course a lot of it's been submitted and reviewed by this board as well i don't contemplate the drafting of a separate majority for approval how do you want to present it to the public if there is there are one or more individuals who don't approve you want to see five proven two against or i would agree what's the what's what's the we think you'd be appropriate to present this i think if it's voted on the vote is of course a matter of public record and part of four minutes i'm not sure whether we'll break down the vote every time for each board but we might i haven't gotten that far in meeting was a group discussion around the merger taking questions and providing them a status report and they posted something on the website saying they support this action but our position is a bit different to because we are it's of them basically we are as individuals and as we're involved with the towns that we represent but as a board we really don't have a voice as a board but i think the intent is just to indicate because we are representing various sports a minor that do we as a unit you know i went through the merger report and initially when the you know if you remember correctly when i talked about you know there was a statement made about you know the the whole process of the merger and and i had pointed out that the statement you know didn't really include you know the concert only we could have the pros for doing it and i was really dismayed to see the report that you know the repeat the supporting of the report her you know the majority opinion was right up near the front of the report and the dissenting opinion was buried on page thirty six through page forty two of the report i thought that was an equal presentation you know and i was really dismayed to see that given that i had stated before that you know that the you know they should be presented you know equally so people could see the pros and the cons and the likelihood of the majority of people getting down to page thirty six is is slim  the other issue is you know i worked in state government for thirty five years and i worked for a department that was had two separate units at one time that being s r s and social welfare and then so i had the idea of putting them together you know let's you know they thought they were going to have this overriding governance and it was going to be more going to fishel for the clients in the long run and that happened about eight years ago that they merged into one apartment d c s and it hasn't worked and if you ask almost anyone there are no those say there isn't any collaboration that occurs between the departments of the units the divisions and and it's just created this large government structure which i found the larger the government structure the less efficient things are that is one reason that you know i don't support this it take it removes people from their connection with the school boards because you're going from you know a school board for a real a mentor a school plus the school board down to one so the number of people contacts or or potential contacts into the education system is diminished significantly because you're going from what fifty something school board members down to fifteen  that reason you know and i know that i'm just sort of don quixote here fighting against the windmills because the vast majority of the people on this board support this but i i don't and those are just some of the reasons that i don't support it think i really you know sort of i'm on the disconnect that's going to occur you know in you know in terms of people having a connection and people say well the avenues of of communication are still open but the  reality is that with fewer people on school boards the amount of communication that occurs between the public and school boards is going to be diminished that  so you know i know that the way most of you have made up your minds and you're going to vote you know the way you feel is is right and i just feel that this isn't the appropriate avenue and the monetary gain isn't significant the inducement only last for four years and then there's a one time savings in your one so i've said my  response around putting individuals kind of at the forefront and potentially politicizing some of that that process for school employees and i wonder not that this is not a political board but does that create a similar dynamic and really what we're trying to do here with this conversation i mean this one i mean the larger conversation is present as many  and layered viewpoints around this perspective about about this merger i wonder if this is a if this is it this is really serving the purpose of pushing the agenda forward of voluntary merger or if it's really about getting in line so that we're presenting a unified front regardless of personal opinions so i i don't think i feel comfortable articulating where i stand on this on this this issue one because i'm new to the board two because  well i certainly respect the viewpoints i've just heard expressed and i consider them legitimate points there is another another viewpoint though on what was raised first i want to address the placement of the minority report when a minority report was drafted and read it was clear that most of it was an extensive critique of not only the first three pages majority report but the articles themselves supporting attachments and if one read the minority report without reading those it was literally nonsensical and that was a big part of the reason that the committee and i don't recall the senate that in my correct the committee agreed to to place it where it was placed secondly it's obviously a broad conversation whether or not this proposal is in the best interest of the school district however a summary fashion i would say that what what we concluded as a as a majority of the committee and it was a fourteen to one majority was that this was a proposal that best serve the interests of students tax payers and we do disagree with your assertion as to something that's erupted oval the community and community access and control we reached conclusion because we thought fundamentally the education of children requires a coherent approach to their constant progression from the moment they enter the system to the moment they leave the system and that having discrete boards with separate authority over separate grades at best frustrates our ability to assure that the students make that progression we looked at the economic advantages of this for tax payers and we came to the conclusion that this was not simply a matter of the tax benefits that the state would provide although there are substantial and they need to be considered but the only way we could provide an efficient system one in which we could rationally allocate resources make choices among all the competing priorities and and assure that we have been as efficient as possible with tax dollars is to merge all of our governance and avoid the problems we have now in which there are eight separate budgets and when it comes to the question of whether this governance model will serve the interests of community members wanting to hold their boards accountable and have access to board members who hold who can be held accountable we again felt this was a clear advantage for a merger under our current system of governance if a community member has a concern with something that is in the school system at times they will be directed to their elementary school board at times they will be directed to this board and at times they will be elected directed to an supervisory union which does not have proportional representation in which it is not one person one vote but it is three votes for each school district regardless of s that labyrinth prevents citizens from having the ability to hold their school school representatives accountable we did consider whether our community was capable of being fully represented on a unified board and we observe that our district for fifty years has educated its children in middle and high school through a single school board we have a history of working together we are only fifteen thousand people we have twenty six hundred students and when we look at the data we see that as a school system that is viable that can be accountable to the community and that that and that voters can understand who to go to and who to turn to when they require input so when we looked at all of these we came to the conclusion that there was a pretty strong case for this now we recognize that there are strong opinions about this and and we certainly want there to be a full and thorough debate on that but part of that debate we believe involves those who are most familiar with school governance namely the board members themselves weighing in and letting voters know what their opinions are so that voters will have that information and so while i understand your viewpoints and i respect them i don't see this as an effort to simply simply advance a political agenda i see this as an effort to address a very important issue in a thoughtful manner by letting voters know what we as a board think should happen so i appreciate your patience with that and and your consideration district in the eight or nine years that i've been on the board never has the underhill so full board got in touch with me and asked me to report on anything expressed a view to me or otherwise none of you know me they know i'm here but in terms of input i'm on my own as it were and i appreciate your remarks you're a lawyer i'm a lawyer your sense always come at the end otherwise you don't know what the districts you've got underhill central has a population groups population reviewed eighteen hundred of the three thousand people and that's a really small town  will it's interesting to me the whole i think people know where i stand but in for twenty five years i worked in small elementary school i worked in two different states and i worked under three different systems one but the interesting thing is all three systems had between twenty five hundred and three thousand students total k twelve and one system had five member school board one member one system had a fifteen member school board and one system had a fifty three large school and i've i've heard the critics of the merger talk about well you need to share the negatives you need to share the negatives not just the positives and having worked under different school governance situations there are negatives to be small boards which also don't get much into much in the report or in any of the discussion and unfortunately i know it's not in your town to solve small school board but sometimes what's referenced is participation by the community is unfortunately micromanagement and i've also seen cases where small boards where it goes beyond micromanagement to actual harassment and so there are some negatives to have notes for and that's one of the reasons as i say i worked on a system with five members and were they in every school all the time no they weren't but they were never a cue stick not knowing what a keda twelve education was what kids needed throughout their educational career so i also disagree with the critics that say well those board members won't know about elementary education forty nine other states work with governance system is where people regularly kind of whole system so i think it's a real slap in the face to say that people don't understand elementary education yes they will and so they say it's just f my own personal experience in seeing a lot of different things from a lot of different sides of the education system that i do favor this proposal sometimes i feel like a broken record and sometimes i've been speaking on this topic for a while but it occurs to me that the single most important input to a school is the community and that comes from the parents not from the board members active parents don't always access don't even need to access a school board member to get to their principal to get to their teachers to gather a group together to change we saw that at the c s u annual meeting when we honored all the volunteers people who just come of themselves and give and have made effective changes in the school i've also witness that i grew up in maryland we had a county system so what they developed was an incredibly political and very powerful p t a they were in front of the people making the decisions and advocating for children there's always a way to do that it doesn't need to be a board member to do it and i would say that from my experience either as an elementary school parent and then watching other board members parents don't go through them to get what they want that's not how they access their information or advocating for their children or for their school or their program they go right to the source i can go on a lot of directions but that's that's one that just struck me now when we start talking about this i do think that we need to look again at what we're doing for kids we have a mandate to improve education to increase equity to increase opportunity to engage more learners just the fact that we don't like the no child left behind and we still have our twenty to thirty percent of kids that are not proficiency that still bugs us regardless of whether it's from no child left behind or not we need to fix the problems that are in front of us i think this model of governance gives us the best chance to get everybody at the table pre k through twelve and take a look at our resources and make those decisions and when we  you can you can say that you're doing it for political reasons but the other thing is that it's a conversation starter so people will come to you maybe maybe they will actually call me up and say hey why does and you support this why do you support this i would love that i would love to be able to have those conversations or now i'm going out and getting them but they're not walking in the door to me to cl the this is not a judicial court b maybe it's true that in other elementary schools or whatever that you know the the avenue  for parents or community members is not through the school board in huntington it is one of the primary methods that people get give input to the education system is contacting their local school board members they also contact people in the school as well but that you know they contact school board members so when i was saying that it was irrefutable when you have fifty whatever people down  fifteen you may not know the two people or the three people or the one person in your community who is on that fifteen member board so there's a certain comfort level associated where there was someone who wants to contact the school board member and if they in fact know so you know you're going from in huntington from seven down to two you know a lot of people know me i'm not sure how many people  and certainly a lot of people know the five members on the elementary board in honey so i stand by my meet my statements and i'd like i said i realize that it's not going to affect the outcome and it probably won't change anyone's mind but there are considerations to be made and i still think that those th opinion should have come immediately after the majority opinion in the report were regarded you know saying that the committee didn't agree with the reporter thought that it was illogical to me that's not the point the point is you present them side by side and that wasn't done all of this for me comes back to there was a chit in the spring meeting a few years ago could have been many years ago i've been doing this to her and the tables we were split up from not sitting with our usual board members and we were asked to have the discussion what would happen if it went to one school board and the thing that keeps coming into my head with this is we represent recorders of the students in our district the each elementary school has a board that represents a much smaller proportion do you feel and i'm pointing to you dave because a i feel dissent there and i'm willing to ask this question do you feel like you represent the fifth through twelfth grade students in your district as well as any one of your elementary board members does for the students in their school ok so why the fear and that's a fear dislike this not knowing why do you feel that's go change so much if we have this board we've represented this many students and we seem to do it fairly effective how does that change the elementary board because a lot of the people that contact the people members of the elementary board don't know me right but they so know you if you were if you were the one of the two board members that came here how many calls do you get from the the five hundred twelve the only time i've ever gotten a call was negotiations and i've been doing it for thirteen years so i somehow think if people have an issue whether it's a unified board or an elementary board in a modified unified district people are still represented in there if they've got something they want to say they'll find out who to say it to so i go back to that spring meeting when they said people were just they were really rockin and scared about the whole concept and all i could think of was that's the kind of board i sit on now do i know all the parents in jericho they have kids going through our district to our schools no but they can look my name and number up on the the website and call me if they choose to and they would on a modified district as well so that's where i come back to that that meeting going why why are people so afraid of that because i don't think you you represent more students in your district right now than any of the the elementary board members so i think there's a disconnect there between the representation and the numbers the concept of a console edition of power to me is never good and that's basically what it and what's really really frustrating to me right now and i know that i'm the new guy on the table but there has not been a lot of articulation about why this board should vote to support in this merger discussion you're hashing out issues around the merger so if i'm going to walk away from that but just say that we need to be focusing on should we be voting to support this merger i think the motion has been was made to support it and i think the conversations that we're having are generally letting people discuss or mention why or why why they do support or why they don't we didn't vote on supporting it or not we have not we have a seconded motion and this is that we're just discussing at this point that's all sense of local control with the current configuration because i served  idea that people have local control because we have more boards i think we probably have more control more local control with one point i don't really know how to put that into other words  time there's a money issue you guys push it down to small schools our budgets affect that we have to fire teachers that's a story our budgets control this much affects the i d it does but there are so many constraints that are imposed upon us that we struggle to make it work but it would be a lot easier to make it work with one board as opposed to six say to people who are looking at this they supported it you can you can call it what you want but i'd better find out why other discussion i think and i don't have the thirteen or twenty years experience on the board to fall back on but in listening to the conversations and talking to people like to get the sense that we're missing the point in terms of it's about the student it's student centered and everything ultimately and i know this is part of the sky but should come down to what's best for the student the student being somebody who's require special education the student who the gifted student who is not challenged in the in the current curriculum the whatever the student and i'm hearing  discussion about board members i'm hearing representation i'm here to represent the students i have to say representing richmond but i don't differentiate between richmond students and huntington doesn't happen elsewhere and i don't i think we need to remember that is that all the sudden the structure changes it's not going to change who shows up to these meetings why don't you show up today you care and because you're willing to give your opinion and and and if so be the only person dissenting because you feel that's right instead at least that opinion has to be represented that's the beauty of the board you can have a moribund fifty six people structure it's the it's not the structure it's the system with the people that you're attracted to members  board the right to be wrong calling the question you by us which therefore those in favor of the motion as expressed by indicate by saying i write those opposed abstention people who are absent allison well she isn't here i mean i know that she has she's very vocal and she has strong opinions but members like to be in the record ok are there any committee report  go ahead so ok i just wanted to make an announcement a lot of you know that the s b a regional meetings occur at this time of year and this year we are hosting or the secretary of education has expressed a desire to reach out to as many school board members as possible so we've consolidated the regional meetings into six meetings as opposed to having like eleven meetings and the secretary of education will do a presentation about a half an hour and there will be also a forum slash interactive component to these regional meetings so that we can engage board members in discussion in small group the interesting thing about it is that we are having that opportunity to interact and secretary of education along with the business meeting and we are also noticing that because our region is going to be meeting in milton there is another meeting for the orange memorial washington group that's in montpelier and the v s p i believe is going to allow us to go to either one of the meetings you just can't vote on anything that's related to our region so if you see on the v a website the september twenty fourth when it might appear here is more convenient for you for location or for a date i would encourage you to go because then you since still have the opportunity to hear the secretary speak and be part of the you know interactive piece instead of having to go to bilton which is on october first which is our first forum for bolton so i understand that there's a conflict there but right so i'm just encouraging that you know anybody who wants to hear a sort of state wide unfortunately john usually goes for the merger and you know it's a really good time to interact with the board member that's right talk about some regional issues and i'm up for reelection to be the regional representative again so that was just too good a straight line which one so that it's the classic woody allen ship the foods the foods bed and the portions are so small for the last couple of years i don't remember use been in the forefront and i spoke with jennifer about the middle schools well and so we're working together well the high school been really helpful in drafting a framework that we think is going to work for it out to middle schools as well so that's exciting and we talk about student voice this is the number one place i think that students will get to articulate their perspective on their education and hopefully families to what happens in fifth grade to this do they have their own notebooks in fifth grader but i don't think you know you ids given every student across every fourth grade or you know not to bring home to my knowledge they can't bring home but they're signed to their own they used t what their age was you know they may not bring it home but they would be able to take it in and get to work in what i've visited a lot of schools since the beginning of the year and they're really they're using those chrome books in a pretty i think innovative and thoughtful way so it's not just your word and powerpoint but it's you know how are we going to access some different ways of learning and experience kids view of the world through technology weather thing that was and i don't know if everyone noticed it i believe was in the paper this morning that we had three students means field who were national merit finalists and of all the schools that were listed i think i think essex had four and we had we had three so that was that's remarkable hundred twenty five which is way smaller than essex was just pointing that out also speaker of cougar house which is our school senate so i act as kind of a dual role but kicking off the school year i do want to backtrack to the summer we had a lot of students participating governors institute  which was very incredible experience for them as well as we had an incredible time for em you have the respect of voicing girl state with four out of five boys state from boys from  teams are seeing a little bit of a struggle this season but both had a lot of support on that front and as well our fall theater production tons of money which is a british farce is in full swing right now with that they have just started really getting into their herself schedule we are preparing for our very first pep rally of the school year which is going to be next friday which is going to be in tandem with our homecoming events on the front of student government we have student council is starting up and they're going to be running the ninth grade elections