right so one two three four seven and then you school board meeting now in order  k i be clerk will be chairing until we have him vice chair judy is away in florida for the month and george hill our current vice chair is not on the floor so the first order of business is the oath of office given to newly elected school directors and i'm just going to read it out loud so we know the content of this and and just to have one person read it and then everybody will sign it and witnesses that give the t our oath and reads i do solemnly swear that i will faithfully execute the office of mt mansfield school board director for the town district to the best of my judgment and abilities according to the law and that's all we have to say so  business is the reorganization of the board and as i said judy our venerable chair is not here she's in florida but she has conveyed to me that she is interested in staying on as our leader for another year  and so we can go ahead and open up the floor i will start by nominating judy jones in former chair are there any other nomination george is not here any longer with us vice chair is the position that stands in for duty in doing the chairperson fonts abilities when she's not available and also would be involved in negotiations and on the executive committee i would be happy to university of arizona and policy that's been my big claim to fame i'm linda wilma i've been on the board first fourteen years now i have two kids that went through the system i and next on the agenda is some reporting on strategic priorities state and national assessment results of who's going first mark evening the first way that we're looking at we're looking at the class of two thousand and thirteen right now our current eighth graders and if you look at the bottom it's their scores from two thousand and nine and then two thousand and ten two thousand and eleven two thousand and twelve so it's fifth graders sixth graders seventh graders and eighth graders they're all fall two thousand and nine we're looking at what's called the raw score for these you're used to the one two three or four within the rot within the those proficiency scores are the raw scores and there's a range for a in reading and i believe it's a fifty two and that this year so there's a range for that three so this gives us a little better indication of where our students are performing so if a student gets a three we really want to look at these raw scores and see where they're at on that three range we could have a ski student that's out of three that's barely barely getting by in terms of the proficiency level where they could be at fifty eight and close to a four so there's a wide range there and this really gives us a little better w are doing really well you know they're pushing the four as an average for our kids in terms of their proficiency reading their they're scoring well we're seeing as you can see there's a pretty significant improvement  a significant but it's there's some good improvement reading our math you know there's a kind of curve there but i've been in reality that's kind of a flat line if you look at it starting at forty eight for want to as an average in fifth grade and remember that's measuring their fourth grade work and then a forty eight five seven all way into eighth grade and remember that the standards are changing as they go through so they're basically if they're keeping the same score they're basically having a year of growth within that is basically how you can understand it so they're growing each year and you can see we grew we jumped up a little bit in math that kind of came down a little bit and then again came down a little bit but still little bit higher than where they came in  in terms of that raw score so they're doing really well and we're real positive about that and what i can do is go to the next slide and that kind of gives you the proficiency we did of this a little bit with the report cards last the last time reported out we kind of had a straight line across tennessee as you can if you can remember and that was that we looked at our eighth grade score so that three point two one is where they were at and make great in math in terms of our proficiency of kids that are reaching that are professional math or professional and distinction and those are the averages for that or the need that so that's what we're looking at you know in the end there's some growth going on there where you are very positive about that you can see there's a little drop off in math but if you look at it's a three point two two to three point two one on the scale on the left you know i can play with that and make it look really good and make it you know make it look a lot of different ways but just to kind of say that you know we started out that they started at three point one three and they want all  three point two one this past fall remember it's measuring the year before so that last one is measuring their seventh grade year in terms of their scores now we're looking at the percentage reading for her fission see so we're looking at our kids this is not the same cohort this is a different cohort each year this is our whole school as as a whole how we did  reading over time ok so in two thousand and eight it's now it's really reality measuring our sixth graders or seventh graders and eighth graders because the fifth grade score goes to the to the elementary school so we're comparing this against the state the blue being the pretty close to ninety percent i should say we're pretty solid in that we're again very positive about that overlook taking these numbers and we're looking at those kids that are are not making that that three and those are the ones that we're really targeting in our  and our instruction and giving some extra boost to and i'll go over that if yeah so this is how we compare to the state and you know looks like you are right around ten percent to sixteen percent higher than the state average thousand and twelve of our students that are meeting being profession or profession with distinction and again about you know seventeen points higher than than the state average at this point in time we didn't have scores no one in the state had scores that year so i guess you know what we're about nine percent higher in in two thousand and eight jump up to about eighteen percent we had a pretty good drop in two thousand and eleven but the state did as well and you know there's about fourteen percent there and then we had a pretty pretty significant jump about ten percent there and i think that has a lot to do with a lot of the writing that we're doing within our our school within the the entire curriculum across the board all the writing that we do after school and the there's a couple programs that we have going that are outside of school after school in writing really has become a really big instruction we look at this you know so we looked at the whole school and we looked at that one coworker we really dig into each individual students we really target those students that are you know very you know that are heading forty a little bit up already a little below forty who are really looking at those students and how we can keep them above forty and that raw score and how we can pull those ones up that are right on that border there and also the kids that are that are significantly lower where there's interventions going on but we're really targeting a lot of those kids that are right on what we call the cost on and there's a good group of those kids that are good size amount of group of those kids so when kids of forty or forty two we're still doing intervention with those kids because we feel that they can possibly fall down professions so w  listener math specialist elaine archambault myself and a couple other teachers that are on that committee and we are really digging into the data and finding those kids and really targeting those kids we tie that into our i block what you've heard that's a supplemental program that happens in the day it's not a pullout every kid's going to having i block that's one hundred fifty minutes of extra instruction going on in the areas of math and reading and so we each trimester we look at those scores and not only the scores on the kneecaps but also the scores on their i stations with their reading of on line assessment their report card grades a lot of direct teacher import we use that into two different categories within the math and reading as well so like reading it maybe a comprehension reading walk or maybe a fluency reading i block so there's a couple different ways that we break that out really target instructional support team is our grade level meetings with and our teams they also look at this that out they really again look for that that you know the timeline doesn't that mean you kept out it isn't always the greatest because it's measuring you know the previous year's work and we don't get the final of those results until until january of their or their following year so it's a little late but i began it gives us a window into where they're getting and so we just take it as a piece of the of the whole there so we don't write law completely on or use it as a as a tool to kind of that intervention plans again we use the kneecaps as a part to look at these intervention plans where we target kids within the classroom so these are classroom targeted best practices that we help with kids in terms of do they need a little extra time do they have some other interventions that we can do within the classroom the i blacked out side the classroom the regular classroom intervention plans happen within the classroom of those like three hundred minutes of math that they get that every kid i betting writing into instruction is another piece all instruction math language arts side social studies the exploratory as well after school writing programs all those type of things the writing is happening across the board again those are things that we're doing to  writing in richmond opportunities going to class we're talking little bit about that already and using web based technology young writers project i think as a big indication of how we have seen some improvement in our writings students are able to give feedback to each other they're able to look at each other's work there's a lot of collaboration going on there's a lot of really nice work going on with that and i think that also kind of goes to i think you remember the slide that we looked at a couple weeks ago where our assessments on our report cards were  really want to look at see how the impact of that is attract those kids that have the interventions and then take a look at you know how effective they've been you know anecdotally we can say that yeah it's really true good but you don't have those  we're working on transportation schedules so we can get also get all the high school students out on time stilts and i think we've always got it so you know they've been clearing for fifteen twenty more minutes so if you might be able to do level i broke it out a little bit differently so this is a tough you know three year running scale score for my curtis graders in math you know again forty  few slices blue and green the green is the state and it's you know two columns is above proficiency or a little deficiency so you know the blue on the right hand side you always want that smaller than the green and you want the blue on the left to be taller than the green so those are the numbers so in math you know my myself my fifth graders are more proficient or from the state average reading scale score the same you know again ok so that's their third grade fourth grade and fifth grade schoolers and that's all elementary school the fifth graders are all those you know that's fourth grade instruction your academic gains across the board for kids you get this is an average for the ball an entire grade in math in comparison to the state you know we're doing much better there  in reading again you know sixteen percentage points better than seventh grade so this is fifth six and sixth grade kneecaps scores again the even though the blue line is career seventh grade comparison to the state when you're twelve points and then you're reading the same in eighth grade math and reading here would really nice job in reading this group of kids you have to scale to score points is significant so you're looking at this point gain there  d then the math you know basically a flat line for the their four years here math eighth grade in comparison to the state much closer in terms of the other grades in terms of the the distance between camel's hump and the state average reading  and so this is the last four years of our eighth grade so it's a little different way to look at it so that the in terms of comparison comparing our eighth grade to the state average eighth grade over the last four years the last year's group you know ninety two percent of them were more proficient or above this year you know eighty six percent of the eighth graders through intuition or above still above the state average the math version the proficiency that can see the difference between this year's eighth grade and last year's eighth grade and that continue  is the same for man over time we have now you know our math growth is flat you know we started in a few years ago in the sixty's if i went back to more years of you know we were at sixty to sixty four percent we made some gains and over the last three or four years we have not really been able to move that twenty four percent of our kids on into that next  into the proficiency range or are being making significant gains there so what we're looking at that i'll talk about that in a minute and what are we doing really proficiency you know getting you know we're at that eighty from eighty to eighty five percent across the board in terms of kids meet the standard  in writing so this is only eighth grade takes the writing kneecaps so this is the last three years for michael and for each grade that takes the writing again you can see my current eighth grade there is a  decline in terms of the previous years where we were in writing reading five practices five instruction math practices getting the name of the book on and and it's really the focus for this year is around those five practices those five practices are aligned to that i of eighty twentieth's struction including the classroom so teachers are doing less calm talking and kids are doing more in conversation so you know one of the strategies is around the discussion techniques and you know so that's know the strategies question and what is a good beating question in math math in mathematics to force a kid to to think mathematically and to to move the learning forward but not skipping them the answer  every classroom and once a month that in terms of math you know every other week five five six or seven eight they're meeting on a regular basis to talk about those strategies at the grade level and what's caring seeing in there after her observation and and how we're carrying out those practices and having those professional conversations in terms of instructional time in town how that impacts kids so we're you know we spent a lot of time with the b m i for math math initiative over the last five years in implementing the recommendations that they've made you know some you know i didn't the slides of our numbers in operations and our functions in algebra which is two areas in math that we've been focusing on over the last four or five years there are a strong growth in those two areas you know the research is that functions in algebra numbers and operations if you're solid in those that will float all math votes so we're hoping that that is true we're seeing growth in those in those two areas obviously going you know where you're stuck at that twenty four percent number in terms of kids not meeting the standard we're we're hoping for a little better for both floating around that twenty percent so we've got to go back and look at that so that that really is the focus around mathematics and we've been working with the national writing project around the writing piece much more prompt writing you know no we have of the six trades rubric that we've been focusing on and we've done a lot of this year we're we're doing a lot of p d around giving kids feedback around their writing and being and again that eighty twenty kind of instruction that kids talking in being more specific in their language when they talk to each other about their writing and what is needed in the common core language o i think over time writing judges we've seen growth in writing my current eighth grade is you know has struggled with working with those young people around grades five and six isn't really then dad supplemental service program in real more specific an intentional instruction around comprehension that which is you know an admission to what's going on within the  classroom we have a system in place and i can talk about that if you want but that's really where we're at with the reading piece school wide we have identified you'll see posters up around that academic vocabulary of focus this year five of those verbs school wide that everyone was supposed to really be focusing on so in the next few weeks we will be back in our or grade level learning communities talking about that  those those five terms you know like compare and contrast how do you do that what does it mean how do you work through that what do you use for information you need to highlight how do then you put that information together in either or an oral or written piece  forward and that's focused on a specific point of content or you know today we're talking to john about there's the skillful teacher curriculum and you know a few years ago can hope to sup with keeping learning on track and so you know we did a weeklong thing here at the end of june and i had seventeen teachers here i'm keeping learning on track so having that really focus professional development that's really specific on something you know that we can control and we can manage that you know and teachers can see the correlation between their classroom practice what we're asking them to do was not make sense yet now that makes sense i had a follow up question it occurred to me and i know kevin's gone to is is this a year of that we will be getting parent feedback on how you're doing as a school and do we sort of a list at their opinions somehow in their satisfaction of these interventions that we're doing just to get that piece of it the data speaks for itself as we're improving the crew but if there are people who are exposed still of not getting things or are not feeling like that their students needs are met you know sort of capturing that know more specifically you know we have a question for you i always wonder about those kids that aren't improving like where you know sometimes you have a subjective sensory or or even objective sense you know who they are and you know what's going on but all the options that are out there aren't working you know so if you're a young person and i can't will some who's not who's not meeting the standard of their peers for different options that we will plug you into to so you anywhere you know a young person can go anywhere between one hundred and three hundred minutes the week of the actual instructional time we've been math or reading and then we have homework club and saturday school depending new depending on the option that you choose that varies so i think there's a i think parents feel like we're  want to move forward  were given once we give them an eleventh grade you know so marking cabin have this nice data that they can show growth from year to year for us they truly are a snapshot so we're going to be looking at is different cohorts you know we're going to be seeing a moving in from two thousand and eight to two thousand and twelve in our scores compared to state averages in reading where the the brown the top color  significant dip seven percent not one hundred percent sure why it was the first year we did the test online but we were back online this year and we we popped back up so reading is something we're strong at i guess is that when i think about it we we were usually top five school in the state but the states pretty high you know with with the above seventy four percent almost seventy five percent of the students number one school three times however this year we took a drop in that not so much i'm sixty three it's the comparison to two other schools we were eleventh this year and it's caused us to look at look at our destruction in particular word we're sort of digging into our tenth grade curriculum my tenth grade reading curriculum and and taking a look at are we continuing to get all the  maybe a style of writing that we don't necessarily focus i wish i could say that the two thousand and twelve prompt was an informational or a procedural it wasn't it was a literary analysis we should have had that one o and it is the tenth grade english curriculum and one we're going to be examining next year i'm proposing changes to for more than just this reason but this is something we're going to be looking at so  math if i could take away the numbers on the left it's not a bad story eleventh grade you know the state average of students who are meeting proficiency is below forty percent we're above that but we're still even though we have eleven point jump this year we're still at fifty five percent of our students meaning proficiency in math in where this really whiteboard marker three or four years ago the of the last up there i know is row in the the corner of the whiteboard at central office eighty percent of all freshmen will be successfully completing algebra one to do that mark and kevin have had to do a lot of work the pressure on the high school is this test in eleventh grade if that is composed is composed of algebra one geometry in the beginning of algebra two so we have to have our p and that student didn't take it to the class with if they took it online or because there are student that took the test and they're considered m m u students the you asked the students just you know we have our student representative here or for most  f students in the building we are getting a better understanding of math the math teacher able to do things to both to a to depending on the course they're able to go slower and deeper and more individual or they're able to build up the excitement within some courses and go in a tangential area that they didn't have time to do before and that keeps the engagement in the motivation  the university of vermont will not even put a line on their application that says kneecaps score even if they don't look at it they won't do that we have asked them we've encountered will have asked them to put that line because that helps with motivation for students that sit down they sit down during the same week or junior sit down in the same two week window that they take their p s a t s and they sit down to take these tests and yes we offer them exemptions if you do well enough on your af and you do well enough on your your course you don't have to take the final year junior year and that's that's something but it's not something that is tangible something you know really working with kids is try to motivate them to look ahead and and what is your career going to head and these assessments for juniors right now are not are not meeting that even the spring exams not a great time a spring science exam this year actually fall from the day of the u s a u s history a p t s so we're going to have to all those kids are going to have to move in take the later exam for u s history so there isn't the doesn't seem to be much thought to what they're doing to the students who are taking these tests we are a good now some people ask what about the students maybe an exemption is not possible we can you know we have different different set of problems with them i don't want to write it because some people say food is not a great incentive to use but one of my one of my groups of students that school is not their first choice most days we made a deal where if they matched their proficiency level that they had made grade when they took eleventh grade test i would cook them breakfast i have cooked them breakfast now you know we're doing a lot better than than most we can do better and we're going to keep working at it we have one more year with him then we'll move on to the yes back so question if the eleventh grade kneecapped this testing algebra one algebra two in geometry are those students in tenth grade in the first half of eleventh grade getting those types of instruction they need to can to do as well on the test as as the kids that are planning to to do the college classes and the a p classes the students that mommies were trying to do that the students that leave us and go elsewhere so i guess i wouldn't put as much stock in that eleventh grade math number as principals are forced to so that's my point john i'm just curious about the instruction in his or in the sense that the success you've had is due to the actual extra minutes versus the frequency you know just having math every single day versus literally just having more math instruction i think it's probably both of those plus it also allows i think it allows teachers that the more time allows teachers to give more individual time to students who need it sure try different approaches to almost every exam is a formative exam you may be in the unit test and you give it in a lot of your kids don't do well on it there's not the pressure to move ahead because you're not up against that calendar  doing discussions or work for you know research that is lousy kids to really go deep think about it and process it in that time you can do more in that ninety minutes so it's this allows a little bit of the past the both least one hour of math every day not ninety minutes i mean and i know that's not always possible but that's you know that was one of the drivers for us to to try to get kids to have math every single day and at least an hour and i  d mike and sharon for being able to work their magic to me to make it possible right i mean it wouldn't be possible because i actually like that idea they did every day versus i mean it just seems to be but i mean it's probably not  to work stuff like that in the schedule all the time for everything well it's just if there's limited times if you think of science class really there's many in that really do enjoy the ninety minutes you know lab so if i have a ninety minute lab every day then but we continue to reflect on our practice and what we do and if a change is necessary we will you will change honor and then i was going to kind of put a student perspective on the math every day it's working and the big i'm the frequency is huge but the heat the other big factor for me is you're not in math class for the entire what a normal class would be a short and nap especially if i acknowledge my bias i want to be a high school math teacher and major in mathematics and college but from what i've seen appears there is there's a wall in math and once that time is hit you're done you can but you might listen and take notes but you're not learning after a  and the math classes actually seem like a very nice amount of time where you don't really hit that wall and it's giving mr davis is a math teacher and he's very vocal about him self as a teacher and like where we are in schedules and he said as a calculus teacher which i'm not in but he said it's incredible we have so much time he's even like contemplating teaching more than what is expected he said we've gone slower we've covered everything everyone really has a pretty solid understanding we have like a month of class time and he said if i were to give advice calculus teacher ask if they may want to try the baby calculus which is the next step up he said because with this new schedule you have the ability we have kids that would be able to succeed so the math of it is giving the math teachers enough time to really focus when it's needed kids aren't hitting that wall and also we have a study hall built into your schedule every day where it's most kids i know do math homework and it's i mean it sounds obvious but doing math homework right before even reviewing notes if it's before your class is huge especially if you have quizzes or tests you can have a refresher and if it's after the math is still in your head and you can go to a teacher because they then have a free period for a little bit the only drawback to the math every day is scheduled because the math takes up two walks and it can hurt it limits some students and again bias i'm trying to take to math just as next year and it takes up half my schedule that's the only drawback that i see as a student but the positives that i see in the classroom vastly outweigh that very they meet once every two weeks to review not just you know maybe common assessment but to talk about what worked what didn't work what's coming up in that that allows us there's a ministry here of just about everyone who meeting so that allows us to because reading on the screen is not the same as reading  about eighty local high school who were actually talking about giving as a teacher in the school and trying to explore ways to do that for every student who would it would fall during the day that would happen in the fall of their think the the idea of a junior being that different vial exams which are typically not does really fire them are going to give you know give them a chance the interesting thing for me is going to be that first the first crack of the yes and the other thing that you as a minister can think about is with the introduction of a junior a p language class there is zero incentive for juniors to do well if they're in a all the questions for my one thing i know people are aware but the motivation piece around the eleventh grade certainly there were times i school principals who pushed for the s a t to be the standardized thousand and marcia levin you can see that we had a decrease in the budget and that had the highest percentage of yes folks and the range has gone from fifty nine percent to sixty  two percent this year and sixty six and sixty seven in between so there's strong i would say that strong support for the budget and i think a lot of the credit has to go to the finance committee and to the board for reaching out to the community really doing a lot of work around presenting the budget and we presented it probably five times and tr include as many people as we could in addition put out a flyer that i get a lot of feedback from individuals in the community that really like it and we tried to summarize on and support language that everybody can understand so i thought these numbers were important for the board to see and and think about and if there are things that we can do next year before we begin the budget process you know let us know or or if you have questions now or comments now you know we're always looking to change and we're always looking to get better but i sure you're probably pleased with the results question again if you have comments for the finance committee we're going to be passing out a little bit later committees for individuals on the board or any of the if you have comments suggestions and we  has a revoke coming out just to let you know there was a petition that was filed with the town clerk's office on tuesday that had at least five percent of the registered electorate and they were going to be doing april eleventh of the same budget that was on march fourth and there was another petition circulated and signed that another question during the meeting the it well mine and my understanding is that because there was no move to amend it on the floor it has to be for that amount can't be amended that's right the it wasn't the they moved on to another article before making that amendment so as to the order that this is because it's on them not to get too technical but i've been reading you know voter law at law for the last five days don't you if it's a floor vote it doesn't have to be two thirds of the original now if it was an australian ballot it would have to be so they are just out of curiosity so what happened was is that there was a screening for a movie called race to nowhere it's a documentary that mother put on and it out it showed the stress that can occur in middle school and high school students and how it can negatively affect them and it interviewed a lot of very intelligent people asking how we can change our education system the movie it was originally brought in to an a p language class that i'm a part of and the m m use which is a literary magazine the site it to host it me show the community after the movie there was a panel of myself and three other students different types of teachers with english science and latin and kristen barker was on the panel we fielded a lot of questions we had a great community turn out and i think it was a very positive night with the movie showing and i think it the great thing about the movie is it promotes a lot of discussion and i'm sure there were talks with students once the parents went home and i think it was a very positive event we recently just had our blood drive  day actually yesterday that was extremely successful we didn't reach our goal of eighty five pints it was three seventy three which i mean that's still that's a pretty good  and that went on throughout the entire day are very dedicated student council members were at the high school at six am wow spring sports are coming up in two weeks the is the official start date pre season workouts have kind of been trickling in with all sports our software class recently went to st michaels to kind of have a taste of a lot of different careers that they might go into and it was just  opportunity to kind of get your foot in the door and see really what people in careers are actually doing so it's taking the learning from what you're learning in school and seeing this actually is application this we're not just reading a textbook  in april the sociology class at mount mansfield will be going to dannemora state prison in northern new york for our unit on crime and its effect on society i'm in that class i'm really excited  our cougar house which is a type of student government it's i was called the little brother of student council and it's pooled with representatives from advisory and for those who are familiar advisory is a class that happens tuesdays and fridays for about half an hour and you have students from all grades meet with a teacher that is i'm not sure how they assign it but it's not like you don't have to have the teacher i'm with a shop teacher and i haven't taken a shop and each advisory sends a student to cougar house and this year cougar house has had a very different feel to it and i think it's been a very positive change we started out the year just making a list of stuff that we feel about the high school ranging from having a mural to better food every a magical thing was brought up and we made a list and now we have a bunch of goals that we're trying to reach and offers officers and haley kessler is the head of carouse and work out a introduce a how to be actually very productive within cougar house which has been maybe one of the downfalls of cougar house in the past years recently there's been a big push from one of the big issues that kids brought up was homework over school vacations and cougar housemate a committee which has had some very dedicated students julia is kind of  spearheading it with mr knox and other involved and they put out surveys with all the students with teachers just trying to get out idea of what it feels like and they've actually drafted a document which is a proposed a proposal for what a policy the guidelines for a policy that we would like to see does not have the power to draft a policy on a school board on the school board and the guidelines is pretty much to say let's treat vacation as a break from school let's treat it as a weekend so those teachers can still assign some work but the goal is just not to overload students  that's now kind of going back and forth as with a p classes they offer a very interesting take on vacation in the sense that it's not a high school schedule it's called schedule the a p test is in may so there's less time and normally more content so if i were to put my two cents and i think that a p classes will kind of be the other group that might not have to play by the same rules as the other classes for this policy but it's been it's really cool to see how the students have actually had more motivation this year from include grabs and we're actually trying to make some changes to our school and that's a really positive step and student voice is just it's really improved within the student government in which we have our show chicago is i have many friends are actors and they're freaking out now it's coming closer and closer and our school is really excited for it chicago's a great show and our actors are fantastic so the school from what i can tell it's really excited for opening night yet on april fourth and i knew that before you showed that i was pretty sure of it actually a little fourth fifth and sixth are night shows and the seventh is a matinee please come support the theater department they work so hard it's a de class in the sense that different subjects it's different ranges but honors is some from what we've pulled with students that honors classes should follow the same guidelines as the regular classes in the sense that there is a lot of time in school year and to limit stress on certain vacations and they don't have to follow the same rigorous schedule as an a p where you might and the thing that we've heard with a p teachers and we've heard less with honors teachers as if we can assign homework over breaks you're just making it harder on yourself in school yes you can definitely jump in on that conflict i mean the a p curriculum we don't make grooms given to us we have a task that we have to have the students ready for honors curriculum as a curriculum that that our teacher prepare and have a more rigorous pace and a more rigorous depth but it is one that we have control of and also has an additional month legislation one of the i tried to connect the legislation to the five point agenda that i shared with you at the last meeting on tuesday yes a education agenda and a bill  s one thirty it's questionable pathways initiative and some of the key parts of that legislation are doing rollman this is where students can take up to two publicly funded courses they can first secondary in post secondary credit the program for two years is going to be funded by a new generation an issue did grant and after that it would be split fifty fifty between the state and the school district there's also legislation in the bill for early college entrance and that's important to let me see if i can remember the raster because i had it on the computer early entrance that's the only these from our colleges are developing programs right now there's something called the bass program and it's who long those lines were but there's a small number of students can can take advantage of that program so this is legislation that would provide some funds so other pieces of personal learning plans on its plans that would follow kids from k through twelve and look at not only academic but social transitional career goals and family  preschool which is another item that we talked about it in the last meeting and what they're talking about doing is really expanding preschool for students at kids of students not yet with ages three through five  and two have less impact on property taxes they're going to raise the weighting of preschool students from point four six two point five and they're going to let schools use anticipated rollman so that you're not star it's a two year average when you're looking at your equalize pupils so be able to anticipate a number and work at endor the average instead of starting from zero and say twenty four and so that will have less impact on on property taxes however you know it is going to increase the cost of education i'm assuming some of those dollars are going to come out of the ed fund the early college legislation to be allocated to really study the teacher preparation programs in vermont and do an analysis of those and come up with some findings to see make sure that they match what were the teacher preparation programs or matching what schools need and what some of the expectations are at school as well as legislation around fees for non support staff and non teacher  individuals these are people who they choose not to join the group the union these would be duty fees agency fees so basically these people would for the way they're estimating approximately eighty five percent of what the dues are now regardless of whether or not they're in the union or not so those are without my screen those that i think i hit most of the key points that some legislation i thought you'd be interested in and there is a one other piece of legislation that is looking to get rid of teachers ability to strike the school boards millipede to impose and to have binding arbitration so lizards and diane took feedback last night i'm sure she'd love to hear your thoughts on any of those pieces of legislation and bring that back to to her boards and hopefully advocate on our behalf because there's a lot of action going on among people your lot so we did  a celebration of public education on wednesday down in my period which had a lot of student presentations it was actually fabulous the stuff that we saw again from the cabin school was great but during that time the s b a put on an ice cream social and met at my pier high school walk together kind of entered into the state house as a unit which was pretty good it garnered a lot of attention people kind of filtered into the different conference rooms to listen in on the testimony that was going on about independent schools pre k so it was exciting in that sense to be part of that and then to be able to talk with the legislators and also be there to just celebrate public education one of the things that had come up in the meeting the other night is that people were kind of startled that this is agency fee was going on and i think that the everyone receives the v s b a legislative updates you know definitely don't into those you only get them for  months of the year anyway when you get those updates but that one is pretty much going to sail through unless there is a lot of community outcry and it's already passed the senate so it's going into the house and the people made a very you know a good comment as to why is this even so legislatures business how did this come up and obviously it's being advocated by the union side and i will not say teacher side because not every teachers in the union not every teacher is really invested in that piece at all but it definitely it comes from the point of the more people that don't join the union the less money they get to sponsor the political efforts you know on a national level so i suggest to you if you are passionate about this you know i certainly think that choice is choice and if people want to say that they don't want to be in part of a union they should have that choice they say that the eighty five percent is is taking out the amount that would be going to the national political effort but i don't know how we have that data i don't think we have anything hard on that so i would say write to your senators and your representatives if you're concerned about that particular one there are an awful lot of areas that the legislation legislature is delving into education some of them are very much into what should be curriculum drives me crazy in a sense because i think curriculum should be part of the agency but that's another whole long story as to why it's some of that may not be coming out from there right now but again if you feel like anything looks a mess definitely do your best to write or tell me i can i can bring back what i can bring back to you know be as v a we're really pushing  hard to have our executive director and our members as visible as the n e a if not more so in the state house as much as we can be a lot of big action on independent school funding and that will be very very interesting to see where that one goes in terms of using public funds for independent schools and they have a very very strong will be there they can be very able to come out get to the and they were very vocal you know one of our members was in there and testified yesterday and was talking about how much how it's hurting the public schools and it's good and the the part that is that is inequitable if it's not equity if the independent schools aren't being held to the same test standards you know it's it's not fair when you're talking about we don't have an open admissions policy so if we're using public funds or some of our kids to go there you know maybe there should be some changes so that bill may end up coming out very positive for public education and for the boards and for funding right and i think it's both to deal i just was curious on the wording not having seen right and they would have to look at the wording but i had heard that independent schools that were primarily intended for  attended by general education schools so it's not and receive public funding for those tuitions payments of greater than one third of their students on average so they wanted them to comply with some rules so in other words if you have like a third of their body as is public they funded education students that from his town that probably does not have a high school let's say because it's usually on that level that they be held to some of these standards does not include union contracts or anything like that but licensure was up for there no one's really sure about that piece of it having the blind admissions policy  possibly even offering you know lunch for you know free and reduced lunch or actually free lunch that type of thing and also the the actual the assessments because when we look at where we come out on our on our kneecaps or on our scores if you're not testing you know a school that's got a you know like a really high amount of the free and reduced or socioeconomic need and then down the road is a school that has none of that because it's a private school an independent school and we're not getting those that data so that's not really an assessment of so we have not gotten into that entity and i asked that question the other day at another meeting and was told that when people go nationwide to the school board so ca sions that everyone admires the fact that we didn't jump onto the charter school bandwagon because of the an interest paid to problems they've had but i'm curious too because i mean choice is choice it's choice you know and if you take away choice and you have a system that's driven by one way of doing things and your kids don't fit in that way you know it through i mean just a couple sentences could you tell me the difference between would an independent school that we're calling the independent schools they get some public money some of them and then the other parts of the their role might have to pay tuition but a lot of their criteria is similar you know they do they have a lot more autonomy you know they don't have to legislation about putting charter school and we use the bill as well it's a constantly changing landscape and it's really really busy if so but i i find it very interesting a couple of weird ones that have come up  had to do with teaching the history of the union what was that ago and again we're talking about others you know minimum course of study and actually they think the teaching of history of organized labor and collective bargaining process process i don't know i think my daughter's been talking about it since like eighth or ninth grade with the industrial revolution and so forth so i don't know why that's even there but there's all kinds of different things yes i do see the charter school one right here in creation of charter schools so there's all kinds of different things out there the know the second part of the session began to write and not all of field if you're interested in the independent school funding and if you're interested in the flexible pathways and that personalized learning plans piece which that looks like that wins the are really valuable so answer them but we have to have the we have also required policy by law and we we have to have guidelines and these are these are guidelines are really based out of school quality standard i don't have been an issue with awarding a golden apple to board members but i also feel like if you were to give it to one and not the other there's a little sting there so i guess i would like to say if we're going to nominate previous board members that i would like to see all previous board members nominated as  soon activities strategic planning which is ad hoc committee were you know we're still meeting and then policy so i can if you want the paper form i'll give it to you if you want want me to send it out electronically alternate so it's not it's not something that with me as just a never knew board i just like to clarify that because it used to be different different so i just wanted to make sure you knew about that obviously finance  you know personnel is the history on personnel is that it's it's involved with the big personnel not with teacher hiring so there might be a teacher issue that might come out but it would not be about each individual teacher that gets hired at all and so would be right right the principals and yes to teach it planning as they do you can tell us facilities is a mainstay it's nuts and bolts we deal with groups we're looking at a roof bond potential bonding the next year the fields projects anything facilities dealing a lot with transportation right now and then my other question is do they all need the same amount of time or if they're all very different or then how does that part of the current summer ad hoc budget is a very committee strategic priorities was for you know most of the committees meet on thursday and we're we're doing now the first two thursday of the month is a full board meeting the second thursday of the month is committees  you policy which is out once a month on mondays generally and we skip in the summertime in the wintertime so anybody who's down in the richmond area probably likes it better because it needs a central office are or might some have their administrator who knows more about curriculum than we do because i'm not going to pretend to have control over any curriculum and also the other component of that is student activities the most recent activity we had was giving our club approval to a rugby team so something new pops up in the school that kind of needs to go through our channel then they'll one million seven hundred fifty thousand three hundred twenty seven dollars forty seven thank you really it's a piece of propaganda mike wisely introduced it as having a viewpoint but if you pick off the web curriculum for a school on how to teach propaganda in almost all points sophisticated much more nuanced in their approach to things and generally dramatically elevated the tone from what the movie was to the movie was really awful it had some of the usual canards bill gates didn't finish college so why should you you know that kind of nonsense but perhaps the worst of it was using as their prime example a thirteen year old girl who committed suicide allegedly because she got an f on a math  and students to sit down and have a conversation are you know do you want to take two three four on or a p courses in place for b in a play and b that other club outside of school the family needs to sit down and talk about what you put on your plate and i agree with what cliff said and the students in the teachers talked about ways that with balance with that with they balance their plates but they thought about it and  that's what i was hoping we would get from from last night and it's this time of year actually it stars probably in february that the school nurse's office does see a lot of very stressed out kids and they're stressed some of them can isolate why they're stressed and some can't  but it's not unusual to hear everybody wants so much from me you know i can't do it all i can't be this and you get physical symptoms and it's not unusual to you know call up parents  do think this might be an anxiety attack if we can't get it under control you may end up you know needing to take the student somewhere so we do see a lot of stress it's not always focused as much on just the academics it's balancing out all of those other pieces of life and how do you become successful and what other people are thinking and saying about you but so i'm just glad to hear that that ended up being the focus that everyone was talking about is you know the was no discussion afterwards people just left in john if you want to learn about charter schools with the film with the with the biases that was the word you would you can see wait for superman y know i think the best thing about last night was just hoping that most of the parents went home and have a conversation with your challenge check in with them are you feeling the stress because i know that's what i did and i'm