all right welcome everyone and i'm going to call the chicken and the supervisor union governing board meeting to order and as we always start off with a community comments regarding the governing c s u governing board and there any community over from last may that continue to free her and away from membership that it would be cleaner if the old board did the petition to move the government and sad we want to change the district making up the supervisory union has three members to their c e o to the supervisory board and i have a board that has no school and no teacher can only have one member if someone with the drill moved from the modified union like say if i was jericho then they would have to teach me each of their five members with volume of work that we've been processing and some of the steps that we've gotten to today with the triple whammy this sort of got pushed down a little bit on my desk and there is a i would say a substantial adjustment for recommendation to the school calendar but first i want to for those of you who haven't reviewed the school year calendar as i want to just give you a little bit of a summary of what they actually are their regions are really centered around tech centers and every region has to have a hundred seventy five  superintendents discuss these in the fall and early winter and they are required to approve those hundred seventy five common days by april first for that so that's a little bit about what the law says basically the law says you have to have one hundred seventy five common days so that students can reason to reasonably and have access or professional days total of one hundred eighty six work days for teachers and this is in the contract so these are stipulated in our dreams so if you take a look at the calendar that i shared with you does everybody have one so the blue i just want to explain the key a little bit the blue is school recess  the yellow is half student day there's one of those and the big is teacher professional development day or an in service day and then you'll see that every month we have an a two hour late start so that's that's the significant change that i was talking about and there are areas in vermont this it's become somewhat come practice to have a late start or to have an early release to get some of the work that needs to get done without increasing costs we're staffing so why do we need more professional development time with a new quality standards quality standards require that the school systems embed professional learning in the school day that's a brand new requirement that came out april two thousand and fourteen there are some other  mandates implementing personal learning plans which we talked a little bit about the middle in the high school this is brand new this is a is a state mandate implementing proficiency based graduation requirements and assessment  this is in the air quality standards it's also a state mandate a law and then implementing common core which was standards were adopted by the state few years ago and  say universally that our ministry of team unanimously supports some additional time within the school year those hundred and eighty six days and particularly the one seventy eight we maximize our professional development time and our honor in service time so we're looking to extend some of that time and get some of the work that we need to be done without raising staffing costs now i recognize that this is this is a change and that it could be a stressor on families i recognize that i have three children and almost every month my kids get a half release day and i understand that it isn't it's not easy and there's some challenges around there but for us i think to effectively get some of the work that no more looking for the actual time we were we were really from our thinking we thought this might have a bit of a lesser impact on some families particularly some of our most vulnerable kids who on those half  i'll just ask him all our other supervisory unions trying to implement this type of change how other supervisory unions implemented this in the past what successive they had and then the third question is are there if you were to do a half release day is that more than two hours so you could have fewer days of change that might be easier to adjust to prevent much so yes there's a number of school districts  address some of the the work that has to get you know anecdotally feedback from superintendents is that it's been successful hell for them getting some of the work that they need to done am getting school not only their ys time or whatever kind of daycare type or additional program they have but what happens to athletics and what happens to inner merrill's and what happens to the whole bussing around so it would be great if the whole you know county you know agreed on it since we are and doing games even as you know the seventh and eighth grade fifth and sixth with different schools and so forth but i think you really have to take into consideration the impact on that after school part a lot of times parents may be able to find someone to bring someone late to school but that whole piece that happens until five or six and all of the after school activities in the latics i don't know those are some of the challenges that we've discussed with the team you know we have to make some adjustments but those are the challenges for sure you know it almost seems like other than asking parents what their preference would be and it may come out if they're almost seems like the issues for the younger ones are going to be different than the issues the older ones you know the sports and what have you middle and high school those kids are old enough to be more on their own for a couple hours in the morning but their little ones who might be more likely to go to daycare after some they would just go earlier so but we probably would have to do it all the same w something that i would recommand but i'm sure i could some were so poor because there's so there's loss of several hours throughout the year of teaching time and it wasn't your teachers feel that i think i can save a lot of confidence in that based on some some real data that they are eager and really begging for some additional professional development time to try to implement some of the work that we need to do in fact there was a survey put out a couple of years ago where that was they felt the number one issue was not or one of the tough issues certainly the top three was not having enough time to effectively implement some of the changes that are you know coming from the state and you know through central office as we have these requirements that we need to me as well as the expectations for education education standards up to speed and then we go back to regular schedule are we thinking this is how might look from here and i think it's a multi year but i think we should annually address it and take a look at it and discuss it  want to carve out time and have it be consistent then we'd have to hire staff you know system wide to be able to do that and that's just something that didn't seem in the cards so this was a you know our way our proposal to get some of the work that we need to done have as minimal an influence and impact on families as possible and get the work done affectively without raising costs one more level quickly i think in the is implemented a summary of accomplishments on the way certainly yeah but we can definitely we've already we've mapped out of twenty and what we would do is we would share with the results of that with the there's just a massive amount of work to get done over the next five years to do it effectively without raising costs or we've got to think of that and some concerns might come up in the community and one question that i would anticipate would be are we taking children out of school couple hours to give teachers time to learn how to me requirements that are about testing as opposed to and recording as opposed to to learn how to be better teachers and to teach more i'm not saying it's one way or another but i think that that would be a valid question that people would ask are we asking teachers to do more in terms of assessment and therefore teaching taking teachers out of the classroom for that purpose or are we taking the teachers out  and one of the things we're looking at now is our calendar to be defective and officials are ministries of look at this calendar based on that another information and they've come up with what they i feel this is a calendar th meets those requirements as well as meeting the needs of the students in the community and that and also there's the financial side of this and that and again the ministration has gone what we've asked them to do they've looked at the financial matters and that and this is a cost saving measure and that what we want to be careful of is every time we have an issue or an action item or something that we in the no disrespect to the community but we want to get their feedback on this that's why we're elected officials here we are representatives of our community it's our role in stuff to be making those be comfortable in our roles and be making these decisions knowing what's best for our community in mind as well as hearing from or from our administrators as to what their needs are and that so be careful of sending something out and trying to get community feedback out because you're going to get a wide variety of feedback when change or curse and that so that's my  forward but i'd also like an opportunity to come to to you know it's a little bit think about you know possible ramifications because yes we are representatives of public however and i think we need to do our due diligence and think about like committees and special mentoring and projects knowing that that would be a consistent time every month would be a big benefit i think for our teachers and i think that would actually be the style that they would prefer versus a whole one day slam which you really can't begin to build up those relationships that allow you to learn from a master teacher to make changes in your practice and it gives you more opportunities to pull in let's say extra speakers and so forth and i think the most valuable asset we have i started teaching staff and we have that mandate that we need to include it during the day and we have an idea that's been presented by our its educational leadership undoubtedly in consultation with some teachers or master teachers or a lot of people so i think that while i understand that if you're not if you're not ready and you want to give it some thought i can i can appreciate that but i think this is a sound plan that works best for moving our education in the right direction for our whole district and to i think that this plan balances a lot of the needs i think it's worth trying and i also think that as much resistance as there may be to change that folks will probably find ways for it to work if it turns out that it's horrible and i'm completely wrong then we'll do something different this unlike the the big issue of when to school me when is there vacation if we had to make a change to switch to after noons or to drop it altogether because it was so horrible that that could happen so i don't i don't think it's as big of an issue as the gut reaction might be to the change  workday with all the mandates and the changes that have come down so i'm going to take two more and then we're going to i'm going to call the question so make home you may have already ok all right so i want to call the question because we do have engendered we do have the other one and so there is a motion out there who a really go above and beyond the call of duty do extra things that really support the culture of the school and the fabric of the school it's a standing tradition that goes back i think probably twenty years and well done in passed and the process  recommendations here typically what we like to do is have a nice and endorse those nominations and then we present those that are you either i have copies of those what i'd like to do is  have you take a look at them see if you have questions and so i don't like to say the names because we try to keep it a surprise in there and that's what we've done for the last many many years so i have coffees that are just going to pass around generally pretty clear when somebody has gone above and beyond and and either put in a lot of time or a lot of effort had had some pretty good success and there are other ones where you know evident that person is doing the job that they're paid to do which is not what this award is particularly about so i think we were pretty unanimous in our as we were looking through the list of folks who'd been nominated that these stood out as the ones that had made a dislike being given something and told i have to act on it i think that's disrespectful to the board members and i really would like in the future we're going to have something that we're going to have to consider and we that will be given the opportunity to look at this matter if they committee heard ok ok so mine is we have to trust with these people have done they're done their job now and that and and and and that so so there's no love to me there's no use having that committee if this board is going to sit here and and scrutinize the work that that committee done because that we're never going to get anything accomplished because conflict here so we have to put our trust and faith and and that these people did what we asked them that's i there's nothing wrong wrong with that but at the same sense i don't want what i'm trying to avoid is that we don't scrutinize ourselves here at the board all the work that people have already done that's why we ask these people to be on the committee and to scrutinizing though some of these people did that what i don't want to start is well i'm not sure tell me more about this person tell me more about this nomination and that that's what i want to be careful that we're not going to go down that road john respectfully i think well we will be better at avoiding the practice or open to avoid if we have material right ahead of time right i agree with you i agree with that and so i just don't see this as a as a crucial item that needs us to spend fifteen or twenty minutes tonight discussing when one that works already been done that's what i'm saying there so i think i now the administration is now dealing with an extra school board none of the other school boards and i mean the other work has gone anywhere yet ok and we have a whole new board that they're dealing with ok on top of what already goes on and on and then their regular workday and regular school day and that none of that other stuff gone away this is in addition to what the what's going on they're doing their best ok they really are john and principal there's a lot of change going on with them as well regarding this and that he i think john said early on he apologized for not getting this out if you had a time he disrespects no it's just sometimes it doesn't i don't know when the nominations for golden apple came through as well we're trying they're trying and that but there's still nothing has gone away a central office and we put a whole new motherboard on top of it and so i just ask you be respectful to understand sometimes it's not going to be the perfect scenario it's noted tonight by john and by by myself that one of the things we're going to make sure that happens is that we don't this board now is set up because they don't want they want material at a time and that and every effort will be made made to make that happen so so the motion this is out there to approve the see issue go than after the war twenty fourteen fifteen nominations as presented so all those in favor signify by saying i oppose yeah may with chris leopold an attorney in this for us through the merger then with the hale we to put together a draft of bylaws that are consistent with the articles of agreement that get those draft it's a draft with a capital b to you in the next two days and for you to review over the next month can ask me questions please try to do it individually so that we don't break open meeting law and i will try to find the answers for you we can then have a discussion around those on april sex or have to have another governing board meeting on april sixth if we do are able to approve them on april sixth then we could forward them on april seventh to the state board of ed they like a two week window to review and then they would consider on people twenty first the likelihood of them approving the waiver proposed very good since almost all of the or most of the parameters that are in the bylaws would be consistent with the articles of the agreement which they proved in august so i can't claim to understand all of what andrea was suggesting but am i right understanding that the legal counsel you've received differs from what andrea said we needed to do in terms of reconstituting the former c e o s the now and top dissolved c s u board i didn't present her question so to be fair i didn't say should we do this or that i said what should we do and they said this board should approve the bylaws and that you should send a petition to the state board of that that's not to say there wouldn't be a legitimate approach but this is the approach that they shared my interest is in having the most streamlined approach you know people approach what are your thoughts on asking the question  have questions on this so that in the next couple of days i'm going to get that to everybody and you can take your time and review it over the next month and ask questions we're looking at is a bunch of health related policies that encompass good tire c p s u so it's for hunting to me and for the preempt and what we wanted to do is we are proving a new school health services policy and we are we sending a couple of policies that it is believed by the nurses the administrative the administrators and the policy committee would be better served under guidelines this is the current health services counseling that's up on the screen right now and what we would like to replace it with is what you can find on your can you go to the new have a policy development we will fin the health service policy and what's nice about this one i'm just going to read it out loud and i want to i want to look at this one first and then i want to look at the resending once and then we'll make the motions so i want to go in that order so it's the policy of c s u to recognize the school health services strengthen to facilitate the educational process by improving in protecting the health status of students and school personnel in order to ensure the health and safety of all students and members of the school community you should comply with all the federal or state law governing student health and safety of students including the state of vermont standards of practice vermont school health services manual or much program health regulations the grant agency of education's regulations the state board of education school quality standards the superintendent for his or her designees still developing specific administrative procedures to comply with the requirements of any federal or state laws and regulations governing school health and safety usually we don't make a policy that says we're going to comply with state law but when we were talking about why school health services policy is and what it means to the community people had said that you know ok we want to get rid of some of these old policies that may not make any sense but how are we going to communicate with the public as to what our thoughts are and where they can go to find more information out about was school health services does and what kind of regulations they do have to comply with so this policy by itself says kind of what our mission is but it also directs people to where to go if they were looking for what is the school nurse supposed to do so that's the piece of that that i do like that and that and we all did approve it and did say that this was a more superior policy than the one we had so that's the reason why it talks about where you can find further information about what the school health service does what your school nurses do so administrative procedures the reason we're referring to this because we have other policies that are in existence and we're going to look at them the ones we want to rescind related to medications related to immunizations and related to hiv status and confidentiality and the thing about health and you'll probably know this is that is a constantly changing body of knowledge and what we're doing this year we're going to be doing something different next year and so when you put something in a policy and you say we're going to do this this and this and then the regulations change next year that we all have to meet and discuss and approve that but if we can have those things under administrative guidelines procedures those can be changed between the nurses and the administration to meet what the vermont department of health has required us to do which basically is school nurses or a branch of the department of health and a branch of the part of the education department so i'd like to show you those policies that we're going to rescind so that you can feel comfortable when you pass this policy and a rescinding the other ones that there will be  so it's as we're going to comply with statement regarding immunization of students and so that really can be under the guidelines because we have to comply with the federal law and state law and we don't really need to have that as a specific policy but people need to know where to go to find the information so the guidelines will still be available on our website and there will be more to those guidelines because there are already are guidelines that go along with these immunizations that talk about how you do waivers what the process is how you'll be notified who would be excluded and all of those things are details that could change  any given moment from the department of health and so putting them in guidelines makes more sense than having a separate stand alone policy on it the other one was hiv that is over ten ten year old policy and since the time that they had that they had a specific policy of the it has been noted that blood and body fluid precautions i mean that's the general rule every everybody is a potential source of contamination there could be a new majorly fatal disease that could come up at any given time how do you treat people that have any specific disease is covered by discrimination and harassment policies in terms of adults and in terms of the students everyone is just simply prepared that anyone could be that potential person so having a stand alone policy the polls one disease out and makes that a focus i think is is history now that's not the current way of doing things within medicine so blood and body fluid precautions but not having something that pulls out  anything related to blood body fluid precautions could be under guidelines in other words if the nurses felt that that was something necessary to have but our our committee felt that we did not need to have a policy for any longer then the one on medication and again most of the stuff on medication i don't think we need a stand alone policy to say we're going to do none of us felt like we needed a standalone policy to talk about medication when the process around getting medications to students as cool really should be part of the guidelines that should be easily accessible from every school's website page on health services so th parents can easily find that information again there is a science and practices of rapidly changing room in relationship to medications for some of the chronic conditions and for the allergy and a full access which will be a whole nother separate thing which will get to at a later date so again all of these things are making a statement about medication and having it as a policy and she didn't seem like it was as helpful to us as saying your school health services will function under these rules everything is spelled out in these particular manuals a practice and having the rest of it be under guidelines so that the nurses can update it as science  practice dictates so that's why we have proposed to rescind three policies and to pass a new health services policy do you have any questions before we do any motion kind of it is you you know we're because it's not like there is going to be another policy we're going to do that's just going to be for the three on board and this is one of those policies that's for the less you more so in terms of how should we write it out john what's your thought there on the number twelve part and then we would probably say shouldn't of these three member go for that what does it mean every supervisory and has a number of worst number twelve remove the external links from the official policy and that's fine yes max so just to be clear if someone wants to look up the guidelines change will the guidelines be on the website or do you have to these links may or may not work to get the well tell you we have improved the policy web page and it now has the guidelines and the date they were last updated on right there on our grid which is awesome and so the obviously the upkeep of that will be central office and you know our our computer gurus another thing that i wanted to say are we have we don't have any other principles here today is that  school health service the health services for the c e o s you website should also this is my opinion but i'm hoping that everyone will support me that as soon as they have time and the resources to do it should have those active links so that from any school you should be able to click on health services for the district that should take you to a place where it should have a nice welcoming thing and then you should have links to important documents like forms and important guidelines and i think that you know our nurses we don't have a dedicated person to just do that so i think they have been working on that but i think that that would be a goal to attain that would allow the most information for parents who may need to know stuff well for instance a big thing in the news right now is immunization so i can see if there could be any number of new parents coming into the system and asking what's the they they guide them through it and tell them what they have and what they need to all of that is also available on the from out department of health website under school school health has a link to everything that's required there to right we would look to the guidelines to have the most updated information and how we do deal with a ministrations and that they should call their school nurse and have a conversation as well just ke law yeah that's the policy but if we go back to the guidelines and then you go over to guidelines so there you go so that will change i'm sure still exist rarest of the  changes the school nurses can go in and change that piece and yeah we don't need a current update that they've changed something that isn't like earth shattering but that complies with the department help but it will all still be there anything that was in the policy before that was essential would move over to guidelines but right now we already had good guidelines in that area you got a question on this piece specifically talks about  more yes the process will actually come from the department of health the department of health will create new forms new guidelines and they will dictate those to the school nurses that's how it happens now so all of our current forms come directly from the department of health we don't create and we don't make them up and so they will give us that guidance and then the nurses community us and we change the stand again and we should be on the website for something new as i was just going to ask so many other business operations so it's a bit pedantic but i do think it's important for the last month i've heard a few times having to be referred to as an independent district i think it's important to note the honey can not an independent district technically we're not on merged elementary district and independent districts have a completely different legal relationship to a supervisory union so i guess what i'm doing is issuing a friendly reminder for all of us to be disciplined in our language and talk about one in ten either i just as huntington or as a non merged elementary district independence is not something  that i'm in favor of or support and it actually got a fair amount of air time at our town meeting but it also was one hundred ten was talked about as an independent district when people weren't talking about becoming an independent school district so opposed to wanting to be referred to in any particular way so i think that's that's very helpful because there wasn't anything any guide specifically get sure given what in the article it was agreed that and hearing now we will move on to item eight here in your meeting in budget vote results so and we had only the community engagement process and kevin i did a great job and i really appreciate all the effort that he put in because you know behind the scenes he really devoted a lot of his own time and spent a whole lot of time also really understanding every part of the budget so think you can i think that made a big impression on people and it supported the budget  but one of the things kevin and i are going to do is we're going to me over the next couple of weeks and just talk about what we learned and what we might want to change in what we might do differently or what we might enhance so we're planning on doing that in the next couple of weeks but more to provide this opportunity to folks to have a discussion around what you thought worked we're going to need to really keep an eye on next year or be thinking about because before we know it it's going to be september and we're going to be starting this process again really discussion time if people have comments or thoughts that we can break down and hopefully use next year so you dad on the fire as much as i liked it felt like we almost went too far on the friendly and not enough on the date like that was the fact that i got the numbers person in my household this isn't telling and so there are people out there who really appreciate  everybody in terms of one large district and so we didn't have much to compare it to or that you know big budget so next year it will be interesting when you look at trend information from one year to an generally comments were about i was being presented first what it was i think a lot of that had to do with you know first year with the tax rate incentives you know if you look at the number of votes being cast was not very high compared to the last few years and you know the large majority of people looked at the fire and saw that their tax rate this year was not jumping eight percent cost per people compared to other schools doesn't help that much because of all the different kind of programs that should go as we get a couple of years under felt that would be more informative but we definitely look at that not next year that whoever was doing that that they had least have two machines so we can quickly get a quicker result on on on the bike it's a small thing but i wanted to mention that ultimate goal is it is because goals will be different but you want to have a governing structure to give you the best opportunities the best chance to meet with the strategic plans are what the primaries are what the goals are of the system so i try to do in this little primary to give years some summary of information around policy governance a traditional approach yeah and really start a conversation here i don't obviously today i wouldn't think there would be making any decisions on how the board wants to govern itself but would like give us some guidance around what additional information you need  next steps so this is really just to to defer in the water and to try to glean some details from folks about where we want to go from here so i'm i'm not trying to drive you in any  direction but just be able to give you the information that you need take to make an educated decision so first i thought there was a board just review some of the things that have happened today and we were really right now using a governance structure or work or structure that we we use for most of our districts over the last several years to accomplish this but we proposed to approve the proposed budget to go to the voters and senior a fair and then from january to february we engage the community around that budget and it was approved mergers there so that's a l squeeze then to a pretty sure maritime so i would say i think all of you for your commitment and willingness to be flexible change is messy sometimes it's ugly it's not there's a policy governance model oh dear this was established by john carver it really presented to boards not just school boards but corporate boards and nonprofit boards  hundred ninety seven until now in the two thousands it really started to take root particularly in the midwest and the southwest and so a lot of school boards in that area of the country are using a policy governments model for their school system so this is relatively new this is the traditional model has probably been around for fifty to one hundred years corporate governance models a very  look at several of them certainly can bring back some of those models to share with you but it really depended on the size of the organization they're working by into the commerce  so traditional board model or it sets the goals for the district they also approve the policies that help guy or how he get to attaining the goals and they match the vision of the board really evaluate progress based on the administrative reports that typically come from the superintendent when policies need to be modified based on strategic plans or a change in the vision or a change  so that's a traditional model just a visual the way that i'd like ninety above ninety three this this is the the policy or the governance for governance domain and below ninety three is really the ministry of or the superintendent domain so these are some of the functions of the system that the board does and the functions and operations that the superintendent and the ministry need greed of team and staff to follow and follow through on and so i just have some explanations for different parts of this team and the of regulations and procedures that are developed by the admin team or the superintendent support and she think the goals so they are the means to get to the goals so policy governance this is this is a law is different it's really saying that the board is setting goals for policies that stipulates how they're going to govern i sent a bunch of information to folks trying not to overwhelm you and i tried to pick documents and information that i thought did a good job of summarizing what policy governance is but there is a lot of information out there i don't profess to be an expert on policy governance i'd say we do have some local experts and of the s b a and you know we would i think want to tap into some of those resources to help us this is something that we wanted to do one key point in this too is that in a policy of governance there is executive limitations and these really specify what the authority of the superintendent is and what they can do and then those are measured through reports that the superintendent provides really so a little bit blurry i apologize at how they govern and how they're doing governing what their relationship is with the superintendent now that it is progressing and looking at the end policy which are really specific are supposed to be a pretty not a priority the goals are a little bit broader but not a vast number of policies that really look at what people want to see in the system what are the student assessment goals that you have what are the student achievement goals and what are the performance goals of the system which could be in a financial sense and then the executive limitations through reports from the superintendent is he going outside of those boundaries if it is he meeting the goals of the system and there's not really a whole lot of resources out there that i've seen to do that so that's that's a summary information on a traditional model and is there is there other information that you'd like me to try to garner yes   throughout vermont and i think they could give you better information than i could i haven't seen any empirical empirical data that's been put together that would say whether it's working or not but more aligns with some of the comments that peer made during or a tree you can really be in for a recession information poor so you have so much data you're in these reports from the superintendent that it's hard to figure out if you're meeting the goals and so you get really caught in the minutia of some of the data and so what what you really need to do is make sure that you're on your ends which that's the term they use for the goals are specific enough and measurable i have seen some examples of really like most of them come that i've seen that thought were specific and really measurable have come from some charter schools that they really they set these ends policies that are specific you can say look you  matter where i think some of the challenges with policy governance in vermont has been these superintendent reports these reports of the border are so lame that you just you get  e it's not really telling you anything or it's hard to determine what it's so i think that's the that's the challenge and did talk to here about that and he shared that is the essence of the challenge is is really putting together the ends of policies that you can measure and have a discussion or are you point me to a body of these policies i don't know a district that does this well that might not be policies that we would necessarily want to some i am having trouble getting my head around exactly what they would look like so is there a good example yeah some are yes south burlington has some oh  that i'll send to folks if you're interested but i can get you what i didn't want to do is just flood you with a bunch of information that you might think was really superfluous so i wanted to have this myself having a really strong reaction against policy governments and playing why in our schools we're trying to move to personalize learning plans and to do things that are a little less to me feels like that's a little looser and in policy governance you're looking at more hard data fields like me like it feels like we're kind of moving into directions at this point as we develop this board and so i'm not feel like and i feel like also maybe stepping back too much as we're creating a new system might not be the right time so that's just a quick gut reaction but i just felt i think the one thing that attracts me to what they say about policy is that emphasis on spending so much time looking towards the future what you want for your district what you want for the students and really being able to spend your time in the board meetings focusing on that so i like that aspect of it and that's the part of it that i want to see attain but i just that i don't know about that whole thing about the reports you know  that the evidence the superintendent is doing their job kind of thing you're going to have to weigh those two pieces so i'm looking for more information also but my goal my thought as this what would be most exciting for this board is that we're spending all most of our time ninety percent of our time or more focusing on what kids should be learning where we want to bring our our district or we want to bring our schools and not being bogged down on other things that  really aren't our purview and somehow being able to separate that out so maybe there's a hybrid maybe there's a different option you want to face up in the media oh no i was just saying i appreciate the comments i mean that's the kind of sustenance i was hoping for that we'd be talking about with some of our views are a little and then i would give me some direction of what people want next steps at my garnering at the board's support of of us continuing down th of its foreign policy governance it seems to be the what i'm understanding so next meeting we continue the discussion of of learning about this process and stuff is that what  option but it's a timely for the board to talk about a fair how do i want to organize ourselves structure ourselves so that we can you know meet the goals of the system and hopefully some of the strategic priorities whatever it is when we decide to visit seemed like it was we're forming all these other structural ins that this is the time to do that like you said it's going to be bessie and a little disconcerting but i feel the more i read the more i see i'd like to know more and see how it's actually applied and see the strengths and weaknesses of that system before i make any decision so i'm willing to continue to  certain amount of homework that's all always incumbent on us to do the research that we don't want to spend all of our meetings sort of going over that and that there should be a time when we do have some of that information and make that decision but in the meanwhile even if you continue to search on their website links and that you find out a lot more information about it and they may even have the information of what but boards within the state of learn and all that and i think it would be great when when those of you that do attend the conference on the twenty seventh that you come back with and share your thoughts from that conference with us as well as john will be there and  a good point i like to follow up on this i think we are interested in learning more about it we should invite the b s p a to come in and share the information that they have because they've got a wealth of  it you can ask your questions and they can really say here is for based on our experience here invalid support of a lot of districts here's what we've learned about the pros with long spears some of it falls through things you going to want to consider here's some students signed up for our musical is coming up i think it's in the last weekend of march and so the students have been practicing the musical and then our fall sports are starting pre season is ready next weekend leverage or springs runs you then just last week on friday the national honor society hosted a dodgeball german and so we had our bracket set for wednesday in tears after schools and so you just kind of like went through and then on friday during our advisory the whole school went into the gym and the two winning teams played each other and then whatever team won that game played like a faculty team from the school that was pretty fun and it was a good fundraiser for h s because to play it paid three dollars to sign up so that money is just going to go back into the community for whatever fundraiser that we decide to do next i think that is pretty much can you can i just there was that article in the paper the service the competition with essex oh yeah so we had our winter carnival before the outbreak and that week before winter everybody we had a lot we in sixteen different teams and then i'm going to my email from the other schools browns river we contacted a great student named macy and she told us we asked her what she was studying herself studies class and they're really setting civil rights in slavery in the government and she said that recently the whole schooled in the activity calls i did a run which is where you  and all the greys are mixed up into different groups she was working with a range of ages and they made it sleds they got to engineer it and they worked with different they worked the skis in wood and other tools and then  all the and they were able to go outside in like test out the slides and just hang out for the day it was like oh winter it was their fun snow field day to be to go outside in like just their slugs and they drink hot chocolate i i contacted a student smiley school in lucas and she i said much we're doing their english class and i guess they all have an english class they were writing or reading class and they're working on superpower pieces and he said if you are in the superspeed and he said that they had done this actually called smiley reads recently and our theme was we've got reading down to a science he said that our school read two thousand and sixty nine books books or chapters in three weeks and another thing that they have done is called smiley days and bill i think i don't know he left out a word after a but i'm assuming the whole school or maybe the whole grade goes to bill in valley to ski and we also and he said that they also have school ski lessons once a week that people can do and then next week he said the c c is coming bullets the first is a cap on and spending and it does really and spending per pupil which is basically the same as the two percent above or a one point five percent increase on overall education spending so that's where they're different one look at the per pupil spending and one looks at the overall education spending  from here it will go back to the house and they'll look at the amendment and they'll study it and they'll see if they can agree to something and then i'll go to the full house people those are the next step exist you have to go back to the voters you know if you know you're not going to get your spending revenue anything that we might be considering especially in our case as to how we would spend money to effect change down the road possibly requiring a one time work your investment say i'm hypothetically we make a one time larger investment to show improvement down the road and the subsequent savings this will militants anything other than you've got one way of doing it and i'm saying do they consider anything other than cost containment governance i mean i guess to the so for now i mean there's not it's a hurry cap so there are supposedly no exemptions in it constituents around the state are really pushing their representatives to do something about property over and over and over that's a lot of the comments that i've heard from the representatives that's what i've read like that i didn't think so and although weeks i spent sitting in the house education committee room there are a number of things that got said over and over again one of them is we need to reduce the spending on education in the state phrase different ways the other thing that is often said is that as a state we spend it what local districts approve it and that might seem like kind of a weird thing to look at but but but a lot of times the legislatures would say why do we spend all this money the answer is simple it's what the voters have voted for the oedipal school budget you put them together and that's the number that's what the state spends and so i think that the legislators are sort of wrestling with we're spending too much and we're deciding to spend too much so to me this isn't surprising because any other solution would require a little more detailed thought about where you're raising money and whether or not it makes sense and i don't think they have the time or the expertise to get into that that's a more of a blunt instrument right where and you know we have i mean i and number of legislators are said we have to find a way to spend less money education because property taxes are up because they're relying more on property taxes the price decision of the legislatures over the last few years of made and so you know for them to go to the general fund and said gee we've you know w we need to put more of the balance back on the general fund you know there's this hundred thirteen million dollar shortfall in next year's budget already yeah there isn't the courage to have a comprehensive well thought out plan i agree i'm you know it i found it very frustrating that there doesn't seem to be i don't know if the political will is the right way to put it or the agreement to figure out what makes sense we had a high rate that i'm sure there was a connection i mean there is a connection to the per pupil expenditures but you know i've seen a couple of different figures thoughts on this asking you to contact your house representatives regarding some they are strongly opposed to the spending cap and they outlined the was that everyone was pretty disappointed in how this bill has turned out it's making any of the three from last year look good and i think people have just gotten to the point where the idea of unification merger consolidation was beginning to look promising that a lot of towns were beginning to really high that option for figuring out how to do it and this bill gives them no hammer it gives them no absolutes and doesn't push that one thing that people were just beginning to think hey maybe that has a shot and instead comes out of from the other point of view of let's just slam on the spending but let's make sure you could wiggle out of any kind of consolidation i was talking to people from saying all the actually yes that's really important to senators think and you guys there's different representatives for the group that's going to definitely do them all because ways and means georgetown i'm not so he government structure the way it is and it also has to get approved by the electorate if you just read doesn't complete this process then the state secretary of state will develop a plan to integrate them into a school district the tax incentives are still out there for districts the first prior to november thirtieth two thousand and seventeen this is a one of the title one that we have a comparable policy that speaks to how all of the schools within our district you know we have multiple schools that we need to make sure that all of them are comparable to each other in terms of what they offer in a in a substantial equally no way that no school is being disadvantaged no school is being super advantaged songs they're getting title one it's important to understand schedules for professional and professional staff so i don't want i did a little bit of research because i wanted to make sure that i was fully understanding this and the title one was supposed to help close the achievement gap so interesting that fifty years later we're talking about the same thing but still what we're doing out because we have had separate district it was responsible for dealing with the title situation on their own now the phone call with industry we have to maintain this comparability the guidelines will be in conjunction with what federal regulations require to meet the comparability so far we have been doing our best with our title one funds the big thing that came out for me when i was reviewing this policy is that this is going to be something to watch now that we are going to have a comparability and now that we're you know being aware of the title we should be asking as a board for information on how we're doing you know our title one school knowing that if a good program is discovered at one school or something is really working they're being able to take that and move it to other schools so that we can be looking forward hopefully to raising the testing scores the can you maybe explain that to me differently i mean if i understand this correctly a school gets title one funds because they have kids that need extra yes but then this policy seems to be saying that we're not going to give anybody extra  we all have to be the same and i am i reading that wrong yeah no i think it's a little different than that what they're trying to make sure schools in a district that the title one schools are woefully underfunded and that there is a big disparities between the two i think it's more the purpose of this is to make sure that schools are qualified for title one and schools that other states that are that had a history of having schools at one end of the it would have all of the more experienced teachers at a higher salary level and then the title one schools couldn't attract the same type teachers they're trying to fix problems that we don't really have in our district in the same way because we've been on one salary schedule already we just we just haven't had as much of that disparity that economic disparity even though the rates or you know title one a very differently within our elementary schools so this is to ensure that the federal assistance is providing additional resources in high schools and  understanding how many total one schools we have in our district what you know the overall rate is i think that's it's very interesting and i do think that in terms of keeping track of what we do with these i don't know how we are really supplementing we should be seeing something for this box and if we're not how can we help support in terms of either more funding more ideas whatever it is is needed to help move it it will come back to you next month if you have something that's a burning issue any other questions any other e you look at the alert one of the things is that he has been pushing hard on binding arbitration changes dividing her patients and that's different from the potential bill out there that would strike and  you know we have we have very little room to maneuver you know possibly can at least get some changes in our fact finding last we can at least get some changes some other areas that give us some room to maneuver whether it's what health care or what to implement universal preschool based on the discussions that we had during the budget process so that's what we're trying to achieve right now oh we have school based programs a richmond's filing all currently over the past several years because we didn't really have enough spaces in private providers of other providers is that we have been having a triple the program in the north and that basically only serves to poli students and then have more of an itinerant services for the students or specialist gaiters support folks will be working with them in these with private preschool  obligated to contracts and then come august twenty sixth we have four students in the class so this positions us to better serve students better than we alr span high quality preschool for all students and not her self in a position where we could be offering school these programs that are connected to our shiri responsibility basically how do we protect money in this district and what's the process is we use to ensure that the money is spent the way it's supposed to be and i thought that we came out of that meeting saying ok that's something that we would press sometime in the future kind of busy back then i'd like to see a presentation from john on that guess what the processes are in the safety page form and that day i encourage our community members anybody out there if you have a question or comment or thoughts that you want to ask i respectfully ask that they first call myself or call the superintendent call your principal whatever and ask that question that way posting it on the front page form or any other it's not a way to get to the correct or the appropriate response when that's needed and that so you know and i think that's what it's certainly and that's that's we've responded to them as as well and information has been sent out to the parents read both camel stop middle school and richmond elementary school regarding what's going on with the food service programs  decisions have been made at this time it was just unfortunate that some misguided information got out there and people chose to use that form to respond to it again instead of they picked up the phone and that the accurate information gets out there and that but if you feel there's something out there that we haven't addressed are you aware of contact us and let us know so so just a simple enough he shot the scene this would take care of  necessary john i don't know if you want to chime in on this no it's really it's really challenging to try to address common sometimes to come out on from short form because they have no context so what is helpful is if when you see something that's starting to brew there we address it and that's what we try to do we got out some information i think very timely with their day saying look we're just we're investigating this we are going to move merge the food service programs because it makes complete sense but we want to build on the assets in the towns and the expertise of the people that are in there not dismantle it and then we've received some all of comments from them were john and i just responded to one today were able to say look here is the goal of doing the merger and then contact the principals if you have questions the initial  certainly don't want things to go in the wrong direction the question of the governance issue and who speaks and what situations just in my brief reading of the policy difference information he talks about the responsibilities of the board in da operations or lack thereof as opposed to the role of the superintendent then before we go too far down the road as to who's going to respond and want to know which situations are appropriate it seems to me that that discussion about policy governance first street issue or governance versus whatever other alternative has to be evaluated and the decision really is that's going to dictate whether you're involved or not or what because one of the makes that issue even more important and it's important to remember we have a public complaint guidelines pretty clearly outlines the depth the public has a concern where they go to and the boring just after the superintendent so that again is one thing that you can direct people who are asking you without a concern how are you going up this chain of command in terms of that so i just wanted to remind people that that's an option for you when you're having discussions with people who are concerned about stuff and as we move along and we're doing these changes and things are perceived as as cuts or as cost savings or whatever they are we have to keep our focus and i think we all have what's best for the