people want to revive that they passed a business association if they would sponsor them in this the boy scouts don't want to do it anymore because the group of families got too small and since the boy scouts can actually vote then you know if you don't sell to the parents or different feedback from different places people said what about the chicks on the scene where there is no alcohol for any circumstance where ever so what i'd like is clarification and people meet the guidelines if they have a licensed bartender if they have security canceling for this year but we like to plan for next february we're going to move into march this year but there's not enough time to make money you have to have second option and that takes a lot of the time to get up i mean really want to be able to help this be a nice moneymaker as well as a fun event for the community so my question is if is it if you meet the guidelines now understands that it's pretty much a given that it will be approved or structured if you do in fact leave the guard lines having a license bartender having security which removes at least some of the liability from the school district itself that there wouldn't be children present all of those things are taken into consideration so i without being able to give you a definitive answer i would say that yes we would look at it objective people you're trying to raise money one of the things many years ago this quit the question of alcohol came up in some of the schools in the district do prohibit alcohol for any reason or in their buildings p he felt that it was the core of the community and that some of the demographics enabled people to have celebration wedding celebrations in averse release reunions what have you that wouldn't be able to where there wouldn't be other and you know there wasn't the money to go to the share your going to the holiday inn or wherever so he was  he was he was very vocal about saying that as far as he was concerned he was a principal in refer to as a speaking for any of the other schools that that that was an important capacity well even when he was a principal it had to come before the board but i had but you know he would he would he would promote that harry so yeah we will be happy to consider him free checking i need to get your name please marie thomas marie it's purpose is to limited schools districts a liability for loss or injury to occurring you know during such a youth these kind of public use things might you could you might just want to follow it there might be something that might happen with that bill that might either make working again and it was right and they're all really sweet  in to lower the number of even apps so what you're looking at here the percentage of students who earn a direct and it started back in two thousand and seven two thousand and eight and it runs up to press so you see you know back in two thousand and seven the what's going on it's a long way away for me to really be the number but i believe semester one there was thirty six point five percent of students who learned to read and semester two we had forty two points and you know that was back in general the do what we do about this our first step was to bring into our our faculty and we said folks this is there's too many in the first step that good for them is it they begin to think in one was learning lab after hours so we opened up learning lab after hours so it's open from three o'clock to four fifteen or so for students to stay in complete homework with with this system many times teachers are going there to help them the other thing we did is we put a real focus on the common courses at the high school we might have three teachers who are each teaching three sections of environmental or science or us science or biology they need once every two weeks what jen and i ask them to do is a part of that hour long meeting should be examining your student data how did our students do on the comics that's me how do we improve our struction to get better results in this column so we even drilled a little bit deeper we looked at it more specifically with ninth graders two thousand nine two thousand and ten that's the year we're talking about over sixty percent of our ninth graders in the second semester under dear enough so we returned to our co ops we talked about it we talked to our cause about how what's going on we pushed teachers to focus on not the up river factors not their that they don't know how to do this there's nothing we can do we begin to incorporate more strategies into the classroom and i don't care how many there are just too many students are in the finesse but you know if you if you overall number semester one we're down to twenty percent if you look at the ninth graders you know we're between twenty and thirty percent we're beginning to get some traction i just carried older further percentage a tenth and eleventh graders because we weren't regularly looking at this data in this way we missed that spike but you see it forty five percent semester to the year before we noticed it were not a regularly examining of data but you know i do want to show that  what seniors had this i've seen your privileges so they don't have a study hall during that with they don't have a class they used to be allowed to oh it's an open campus when they can go they can stay do they want to however if any senior has a d tried to tie some things to it the other thing i want to point out is this if you break up the last six years into two year chunks and you know these are the top classes fail now right off the bat i wan for the camera that's my teachers don't have that these classes also are the class that the most students take so these numbers should be high but really what i want to point out to you is this if you look into it from two thousand seven hundred two thousand nine of the top three courses you see math courses two or three two thousand and nine to two thousand and eleven you see math courses two of the three what switch why is there no math now we've got a math every day it's having an impact students are not putting up these an ass with with any of the regularity i also do want to point out that even if you look at semester one which i have to use with the data the total numbers much lower it over two years in the first master we have eleven so it's something we take seriously but these are this is the data that we look at and the trend you know the trend we see for students trend down is that it is an indication i hope of our interventions i could've ran up the data of how many days we have a data doesn't drive interventions nearly as much  by class i may go into a group of of teachers i'm not going to pick a subject and see if you know that last year year more students failed your class than any other class why do you think that is and it gets them thinking and talking because no one wants to their students to fail and sometimes you lose that he said well you know i have for i did know someone outside for someone else at six and suddenly forty students or so i don't know if anyone has questions but this is sort of some of the data that we use from our grades be on the gaps which are and which are important that help drive our our interventions in and are built just curious  this very nice cline how do you control changes in grading standards i since we are constantly working with our curriculum and our expectations you know information differently so i don't know and there's no one hundred percent way i can guarantee it i think we're trying to take steps to to to not just lower the bar i do think the structure helps and having a dutch the riggers there that would bring it to the fore that was going to be one of my questions was how to deflect the correlation there do we see that the test scores are getting better the way these numbers are getting better on that was one question the other question was about how if there was any particular socioeconomic group of people or community or area of  people that seemed to have more challenges in not getting decent house if there were any other kinds of correlations that you have or whether you even i mean maybe you're not looking when i was curious  component sort of gives us a good rule we were very surprised that our score when down so we need to look at the release tax and look at how our students did even more than just the two of the three and see if there's instructional dreams are really dreams for that we needed to help them see that one of the things we're doing in a couple weeks is we're taking every sophomore over to say mike's for a career day in conjunction with what he learned in the life in st michael's college something that they've done with some of the area high here in this for all of them but also for but that group of students giving them a goal to help them to to work through some of the tough the tough parts i also think getting technology out to  and this could be addressed by all the principals is is there a poor needed effort or desire to share best practices  you know if for example a teacher that was just in here has a lot to influence on the the outcome because of what she's doing or how she's doing it for whatever is there any sort of  standardized way to say let's discuss this move we're going to make a special effort to discuss what's working what's not working when you've got score scores in there that are having you know seem to me to be very significantly high obviously that the numbers have come down but with the core curriculum changes and you know using different techniques different learning and teaching styles i mean that almost seems like that should be part parcel of i mean how do we how do we encourage that because if people are having success give one area you want to replicate that if it means teaching it to ways stead of single teaching stuff then you do your best to make sure that everybody peace teaching that subject matter has at least exposure to it if not it's actually you doing that in the classroom and then development focusing on us and studies today math teachers the playschool all got together and looked at some student work and talked about strategies that they were using the kids and individual kids who were hearing it from the ones that were and talking about what was working and saying you know would you try this in critiquing one another we've been doing that across the board in all of our schools including you know some cross pollination with camels something brown river  that's really where we've been putting our focus is trying to see what's working and what's not and focusing on what is and trying to to use a cross of the word i think that's great i just want to make sure that there's a follow up that's actually happening if one of the presentations that we had about the core curriculum included an example where you know a math teacher was using a different style something that had a bit been introduced during training and and that person came out and had a different result a book quicker absorption of the material by the students and  and this this person obviously is a is a veteran teacher so it's making sure that that is making sure it happens i'm not questioning that is that this structure is there it's just making sure that that is built in and people are teaching in we do it in groups of course we do individuals but we do it within schools and you just talk about some teachers today with the how to group that get together but we also have science teachers who might get together seven through twelve  by subject but i think what's most encouraging is to see the culture where across the board you know they did it will get training grounds river which is training around math and their camels home you know they've done a ton of work around with b m i from our math institute and the culture is you know we want to learn from one another we're all about kids and are were real serious about our professional practice the other part of that as we evaluate teachers and we settles and we look at how kids are doing and we try to generate the goals and guide teachers to form goals that are focused on things that may not be where they want two groups and there was one one committee that with was talking about how do we structure our transition for for ninth graders so we're looking at maybe piloting a couple things next year we are one of the things we are seriously looking with getting the word in on time the perseverance that the big projects are breaking it up so what the teachers are doing is coming up with those skills and now our next step is going to be to embed them in the the ninth grade curriculum so  this is hard for teachers it means we're not going to get to suck all the content you know in it in that's it did also coming up with support for that we what we do outside of the day what can we do outside of the school year even to  met with the leader after the two half hour tour over we talked about their next steps and things are you know so much coming in and i believe will be a pilot some of it next year and i you know i hope to be in front of you all minimized the amount of effect that scheduling has on the effectiveness of learning there and and it's the effectiveness i think is very different for different kinds of learning it's really interesting that that you're doing so much better with the man with everybody having them everything you can because in general and and and i think i love math a lot of math all the way through college and graduate school but you can only do about so much moments before that it just kind of stops sinking in i mean if you're a regular student i'm a violinist i make a lot more progress if i practice for forty five minutes to an hour every day or almost every day then if i practiced for five hours once a week i and yet there are certain other kinds of subjects where you might need a five hour  really follow through with a certain kind of project and i don't envy the person who does scheduling i think it's a nightmare but but i just want to say that that i think that that maybe there in in your symposium to work with each other on effective practices i think would be great to deal with that subject and to let each person who's an expert in their own field say well how long a class works best what is the structure of the class because that truly has a lot to do  we talk a lot and i really appreciate the fact that using a lot of care and hard drives and the decisions in terms of what to do you know whatever kind of courses to take one of the other pieces is the soft data how willing kids are to work for a certain teacher based on sort of the leadership that the teacher shows that's outside of the actual curriculum it's hard to get at that but i don't want us to lose that in the examination of best practices because often best practices have to do with a charismatic individual or the kind of one on one they can just communicate well with that age group and get them to sign on so i'm hoping that they will also be as the national center for the teachers of mathematics and science on their own say it's more than a recommendation they said clearly based on some of the studies that they have looked at  so i really feel that way the blue line and those are they're trying to esther one two three grades you know on average for the one hundred kids on the series based report card three is meeting the standard so and then the red line on between all teachers of writing in the building were to do the national writing project or work with the district have a common rubric it's based on the six three to six trades that come out of the national writing project you know so in the organizational piece and that extended response is not a strong you know in the in the school day we're there is multiple opportunities over extended period of time to shape that piece there see that there is conferencing with your peers there's conferences with the adults you know you provide a lot more organizational support you know graphic organizers outlining things like got some kids kids have those supports and i don't necessarily think that they're using those during the kneecap assessment you know fairly complex operations over time in that one hundred percent in that is you know sometimes or kind of maybe sort of it's always  really strong over the standard so that there's more work to be done so we've talked about the algebra readiness program you know four years ago we added the last question list in our title one per teacher in the building is focused on math remediation if you're a kid that's not meeting the standard in math in the building again you're getting anywhere between one hundred and one hundred fifty minutes a week ago x your math that's above and beyond your opportunities that the kids are having this week we have an all school right a seven minute proctor young writers project so we're just focusing on writing at a holistic way throughout the school so that's the story that's  on those kids that are the not meeting those standards and then putting them into our i box which is an additional one hundred fifty minutes a week of either reading or math those kids that are meeting standards are getting rich i mean at the same time so a lot of things going on that i not teachers not for the whole day today all of them across the the grades from fifth grade grade looking at fractions looking at how we instruct that talking to each other communicate with each other what we're doing for fifth grade through eighth grade so we're going to have so like it because they're out of the classroom but that the opportunity is it's great for them we also use our monday beatings to get our math teachers together once a month to look at data so they're working with her or district four six or the school you know we're doing pretty well oh but you know we're continuing to focus on our continuing look at those kids that are not meet the standards you know you look at montgomery school up in northern robot and one hundred percent of the kids but the standard  but i think i understand how it is that if there is something noticed in the high school that there's a there's a fairly easy and simple way to to work with a middle school to address some well i mean look kevin marks people i think it's a little bit there for you to geographically it's a little bit challenged more challenging to get together the districts have different levels of support and you know there isn't a unanimity in programming across the board so there are you from jericho for example has a somebody there's almost every day that is really coaching teachers almost every day  creating these data teams where they are analyzing exactly what kids are doing and then being able to make really almost immediate adjustments to their struction and so other schools they don't have that  so i think the communication is good and mark in heaven have done a great job saying this is what we need but i wouldn't say that the programs and the resources are the same so the thank you so i want to just start receiving thank you to the three administrators for being sole thoughtful in their approach to trying to report out on these strategic priorities and take them really seriously and i also want to thank the board and the strategic priority committee because it's been it's been really helpful for us it's guided some of the work that we've done and it helps us share with you the things that we're doing it also i hope helps you see that we're keeping yourself accountable this is really important to us to take a very very seriously and we want every single solitary student in our billings to be successful and that's our goal i would say i don't think it would be  genuine for me to say that every student is going to meet the new cat standard that's just not going to happen statistically it's probably won't but we take a look at a broader look at what quality is and one of the pieces on this i haven't seen it to this degree and i have to tell you i am very excited and i have a lot of support for the priorities that they put out this year and where they want education to go i think our ministry toure's our teachers and i would say our communities do as well so they have a really a five point janda i tried to tonight put it in some cont here tonight she's our regional representative and they do a lot of work on trying to shape what education looks like in vermont through the association in the seat association work with their lives because that's where a lot of the action is happening it really just is they're talking about things like universal preschool school choice and i think those are big issues that that are going to take and has access to high quality education but specifically the first car is access to preschool there is a lot of very very reputable solid  research out there that says that your investment in preschool your return is big in a lot of different ways if you google the piri study you know you can take a look at that that was done i think it might be in the sixty's and people are fifty years old now and they looked at what their income levels are and what they were doing from work and what their life has looked like and what they found was that the this the  individuals that had a high quality preschool were vastly doing better than the individuals who did and so and they've done a lot of work out in chicago a well where they've had a community project in the track of the students so launched today only and so there's big groups and little groups and i can't tell you how important i think this is you know i know that  we're five twelve organization but this is really critical because it affects us down down the road and the way the legislation is set up right now  really the luck of the draw for some students and i think i would really like to see that eliminated and the like to see it so that it didn't have a negative impact on the ed spending per pupil for schools that there is an immediate effect by  right now smiley and brewster peers they have a couple students that go they have two private providers last so they're able to comedy i think almost everybody that wants to have preschool experience but richmond has you know they've got a waiting list and it's and that you know it i've had a lot of calls saying you know why didn't my child get in this is unfair this is discriminatory and i basically said don't  learning a lot of this really talks about trying to foster a culture of positive culture a rigorous culture that attracts and retains the best people that we have and really look at how we're going about collective bargaining and and teacher contracts in are there some different ways that we can look at this and if somebody asked me would i love to see teachers take white teachers contract i would say absolutely yes could it do i think it can be done yes i do i think there are ways that we could take a look at demographic here years and regional areas and say you know this is the cost of living and we're going to have some sort of a scale i think we could do it maybe as you can see a lot of the licensure requirements endorsements the way we look at them they haven't changed for a long time so you know i think that's a good area for us to focus on as well mike mike and i were just talking about this tonight and in some of the endorsements that are pre k to twelve and how you know that they had it's not realistic and it's probably and it's not in the best interests to do so in gauging families in communities through effective connections we're trying to do it in multiple forums in person but also using technology to get out and connect with people and communicate what's going on in our schools and if you get a chance please take a look at the chinese blog and our website as well we're trying to infuse twitter and some other ways so that when important things are going or learning is going on that we're excited about that we're sharing that with people so that and connecting in trying to forge relationships with three human services they think that's something that is a real challenge and there's a divide there and we you know it all comes down to money and i think that everybody's competing for dollars and there's there's a way to streamline that i think that would really be in the best interests of families  students drill delivering a world class education you know we still have spots in vermont i think john was talking about this in one of our meetings that they don't have high speed internet so expecting families to access some of the communication that we're trying to provide or kids to do work at home that they need to have access to high speed internet or if they want to take a virtual class it really restricts what they can do and so i think this is really important that cap broadband access across the state that's good for kids it's good for families it's good for the economy as well and and really promoting investing in padded professional development and and looking at a coaching model not an autocratic while we're going to show one showing teachers working with teachers on what's best practice and working with them and encouraging them and engaging them that's where we really should and he's we are putting our money there we are putting our focus there and we're putting a lot of our energy towards that because we're good that's where we're getting the most i think we're in a crisis in this in this way we really are i've been in i've been either facilitator or been involved in leadership searches for almost ten years and really over debt last decade the pools have gotten smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller and i think there's a lot of reasons for that but we have to cull try to cultivate from within and make sure that we are really nurturing and treating our administrator and not burning them out one of the things i told our principals is that you know i really i'm the conduit with the board that's my responsibility and if they have a purpose to be a board meeting they should be here but if they don't they should they're out and they've got a lot going on and i really want to make sure that they're not burnout and they're focusing on their school and on their kids and then i'm that i'm the one that's responsible for supporting the board and keeping you people forward and making sure that you understand the we're accountable for  results so you may see them get up and you may see them walk out please you know it's not because they're trying to be disrespectful but it's because that i have told them to do that i didn't even ask him i said you need to do this sure that we understand our roles and working effectively together i really do believe some of the best work that i've seen is that that strategic planning and priority work we're we're going to be meeting in march and we're going to be looking at the student surveys and saying hey based on this information do we need to change something and that's a great place i think for the principals to be involved because they know these what's going on in their their schools and i think they can advice us with that and that that is that's what i wanted to share with you tonight about the five points i wanted to give you some sort of a frame and share with you my support and the connections that i see and some of the things that we're trying to do here questions comments anything for her dying and to bring back to the regional group if you have read through the document you know i do encourage you to read through and  understand what was written in here was really developed before the first of the year and all of the suggestions have very specific legislative request actions and these are being taken very seriously we had the press conference in january and some of these were already governor shumlin plate of things that he wanted to do but last night we had a meeting with legislators from the senate and house education committee and discussed this document in roundtable discussions had a lot of fantastic open and frank discussions and the one thing that they asked at the end of it was when you write up the notes from this meeting have them in this format so this document is now being used sort of in a very very specific way it's now being being looked at as the as the template is the framework for where we're going to move from not only this legislative session but maybe beyond so there's some interesting things in here and i am always willing to talk about more we will be having follow up meetings and as usual i'm keeping tabs on some of the legislation and will try to go down and testify whenever i can or stand there is the whole section there on the collective bargaining which is a very interesting  one and there is the discussion around that is is talking about teachers statewide teachers contract just for the pay and benefits and trying to have a dual system so that the working conditions as we would know them or the specifics would actually be done at the local level and even though there's nothing in here about consolidation last night i did hear a lot of talk about it from the legislators so money is a big issue and one of the things they're looking at again even though it hasn't come up in any current legislation is consolidation it's not a dead issue it's not gone and  we've asked in certainly at my table that we all look really hard at the details doing a real cost benefit analysis and making sure that it's not a you feel that this is the right thing to do but that you have data so it'll be interesting to see where it goes but i wouldn't be surprised if we see more stuff about consolidation coming down  taking a look at some maine who did a pretty huge consolidation what happened in massachusetts when they consolidated they did one telling as well montana arkan sa new jersey new york did consolidation you know not not recently but they did so hopefully in two years i might have those you know on my desk that's wonderful that you're working on that because the governor or the former governor of maine at the time and and that he seemed to feel that it had a pretty positive with that and i said what you know what was driving this in the first place and what jim douglas said that i thought  kind of interesting was that the mine had more superintendents poor her student or fewer students per superintendent than any other state i guess in the country and and he thought they knew their basic thinking was well if you know if it's a question of more superintendents or more teachers let's have not so many superintendents it seemed sort of simplistic and you know kind of simply obvious  but at any rate and i have and i look at this whole business with how we can communicate through the internet and some of these things that have changed a lot but i do think that along with this goal of keeping people in the community in touch with the school that the more functions that we can have for the school building block the small local friendly school the more with reasons that people have to enter that building like books for the library for sports for music art all of these things this gives people a real physical contact in a real  involvement with the school that just isn't the same over the internet it just it you know that there's a there's a a person to person contact there and that if we disenfranchise ourselves too much from  that it will disenfranchise the public which will actually work against some of what you're talking about here but i've done a lot of reading and work on this too i'd love to come and talk with you and for you and i do i think that basically these goals are are very good and so i will stay in touch for years but we're representing you with these goals to legislature that's the way it's working this is the s b a b s a is goals so if you have opinions and thoughts about them that's the way the conduit is you know let us know but at this point that's the agenda that will be advance to take a look yeah well i think you all know that i have some grave concerns about the specific language of the current law that's another issue that consolidation i understand that all right so i do i would i as part of my report i would ask the mass of the board tonight to consider subsidizing reduced  lunch first students who qualify so if a student in a family fall far more reduced lunch they would get free lunch we i brought this to all of our  boards this is the last one and they have approved it what would happen is now mansfield would subsidize the cost it would be from now to the end of the year be about eleven hundred dollars it i think it would could really benefit students i know this is something that the legislature has talked about we started this you know prior to we didn't even know that the legislature was interested in doing this just came out of the executive committee i think in september so what i think it really does a sports families are really tenuous income level   and it's these are people that are really living on the edge i'm in a very difficult economy and it provides to provide students with a nutritious breakfast and lunch five days a week i think it's not a significant amount of money oh my did take a look at where the food service what we're estimating levy at the end of the air looks like we have a surplus of two thousand dollars and we are certainly not running or at least our estimates are that we're going to be running close to a deficit in the m m u district so this doesn't put us in any jeopardy of running a deficit or overspent the budget  what's happened in some districts that have done is it's increased participation as well and that's good for the food service program it's good for students so if we if it doesn't pass through the legislature it would cost us through about approximately three thousand dollars and for thirteen fourteen a very tight take income don't really comes in well we don't even use a card or do we know that it's a pin number so we don't even have occurred so but there is if when you do have reduced you do have to send in an amount of lunches have just saved their nutritional value quality has been elevated a lot in our breakfast to just you know i eat them yeah i would say from the till the end of this year if the board wants to extend it into thirteen fourteen then you know the that's their their prerogative but i do think i'm pretty sure this probably will pass to anybody and that's the indications i've received right it was interesting because they have they had some division right along party lines so i passed seven vote i don't know if this is going to do but we try to get a handle on how this change fast the number of kids who participate yes it seems i mean one of the critical problems you looking at is that some students are who are eligible for reduced lunch are not just supporting which is affecting the nutrition they're getting yes and that's really one of the big things you're trying to address absolutely so if it's not to cover some or to do that if you can have some information on that so that if we do have to make that decision we can we you know we have that information for people you know we'll send a letter out to parents that obviously confidential and just let them know the and then we'll try to well try to advertise a coordinated way also so that people that might know about it but will really probably see it because we're in the mid year we'd see probably a bigger impact if we started it just the beginning of oh yeah yeah i just want to say that i've seen it firsthand kids who come in to the health office and are hungry and you find out that they didn't have any money on their account and there you can you know that they're in that class and he couldn't last very long so i thought if there's a high five yes they went into the water so that was that was my participation this year i think it was about forty students addition to this year we fell short of the hundred thousand dollars that we wanted to get do have to go first one is an apology and as sincere already the the annual report we had several always take a look at this and including me and i never caught this we're not going to leave it on the printer i also asked marian to send this to you today you know this is our flyer that talks about her budget and so i just want to make sure you knew have really good schools that's not to say there isn't work that we need to do we realize that we talk about that tonight but we've got a lot of really good oh we've got great students we've got great faculty support staff we've got great community members and a great board so there's a lot of really good things happening and we want to share with people about how much information in the report about the for better the in your report and how to make a possibly more user friendly bigger prayer maybe that and how much of this the information it actually has to be there or could be easily accessed says access order on a website or you know so we would at least until we have the approval it's a very difficult task it's also last year we had interesting group a lot of the kids who were in that class were except in the colleges who were not going to give them any credit for that  do it is that something we're working with the physics teacher you know how do we get that there to do better on it we're going to keep trying but it was last year with an interesting group for us when it came to that physics group i know that you know we probably had  i find that to be sure to be very very helpful and so if you few come to our meeting so in conjunction with our our budget mailing if people go to a website now it might be helpful if they could see that obviously i would find it