jr about mansfield i went to california middle school and i was approached my sophomore year about joining school board and i've thought to be a wonderful opportunity to give back to the school district that has given me so much  i've been extremely thankful that every teacher i've had every counselor i've had every administrator i've had has been very supportive of me and what where i wanted to go and i think that the school board was helping guide these teachers and administrators to do that to help students so the idea of being able to give back and maybe help future students get what i've received would be very good and i i'm a junior mansfield i'm currently heavy my schedule in math and science i'd like to be a high school math teacher so the other aspect of the school board is i was really looking to see how besides the teaching aspect of being involved in a school is but also the more business standpoint so i thought school board would be a wonderful opportunity for me to give back to the community and also kind of get a little bit of a taste of what goes on to make schools run again you all have a have a link through through me to the on school board association board of directors so it's wrong wouldn't you think of the meeting i thought it was an excellent chance to find out what law school board association is pushing for again trying to get a lot of input from all the individual school boards that are looking to promote some some changes they are looking to also involve teachers and mentors unions in this whole process of reinventing education which is what they feel is going to be necessary for the twenty first century so you get with it's a very very useful meeting there were some stuff that we hadn't heard before but again it was the great thing is also networking with people who are from the region but not necessarily from your district and i was able to talk at my table with people who are part of a policy governance board from south burlington and so that was interesting as well  and i think that you know drone pretty much summed it up i followed up after that meeting by going to the vermont school board association board of directors meeting last night and there are some very interesting resolutions that will be coming up at the  annual meeting the late maury october meeting so if anybody's interested in attending those but again one of the things that the school board directors and the school board association does is  they're your voice in here i mean they're really have a presence in the legislature and that's going to be even stronger discussion with how they'll be interacting more with the new configuration for the state board  of education so and i'm really excited i love working with a group of people and working so closely with legislation and where where the trends are headed so i do think there is definitely people are looking at collective bargaining and they're looking at supervision and evaluation one of the resolutions which came out of montpellier is urging the legislature to use evaluations as well as seniority and reduction in force so i mean there's a lot of different ideas being thrown out think it's important cause it's a symptom of something things are working for people so there's a whole lot of work going on with how that's happening so i'm just excited to to be part of it and to chat with these people from all over from bennington and north country and you know find out what they're thinking and what their boards are doing or not doing and well it works in a variety of ways i guess there was a big issue and i think it was i can remember for this bennington they came before the state board and they had a plan basically  to close their public school and reopen it as a private school but what was found to be the problem that we were being presented with it at this meeting was that the existing school board was running both operations amount was considered a conflict of interest and if the townspeople want to close their school and reopen it again this board needs to step back and allow that process to happen so that there's no there's no forcing one way or another just present maybe present their position and then allow a new school board to to emerge so that it can be truly the will of the people and not being something that's being forced on one side or another so there was that aspect of there's a lot of variety as of of ways that people are doing it out there you know the biggest advantage they're looking at is dealing with unions being able to direct the education being able to possibly better handle the funding but there's a variety of ways that it's worked already some of been successful and some haven't ordered from successful successful isn't economically successful first of all because you don't have i'm not sure how the whole reporting goes in terms of if you're a private school you're not included in the same way probably with all the standardized testing you know you have to know for the results right so some of them are finding that there were more kids coming in straining their budgets some were finding that other kids were now going out if you become a choice district you know if you have a private school so it just was there a whole different configurations all over the state well i mean it's between public and private schools it's not a valid comparison because you don't have before age in the private schools therefore any comparison is invalid because you're not dealing with the same demographics except the public but if you're going to close a public school and make it private and your community has to support it and certainly in the case of bennington what they had to do they decided to do was handle their own special and within themselves they did not exclude anyone but they don't have any of the federal requirements associated with special ed you and i don't know all of the details about their requirements but as a community as a community as the only school in the community there was a need to do it in this particular case to meet the needs of all students and so they were planning to do it they had proposed a plan i think that they brought to the state board to how they were going to handle it and i don't know all of the requirements i just think that that is in terms of the trend to more schools we see doing this for towns we see doing this is a symptom of something and so whether it's then economics that the way we fund education just isn't working for the quality of education something in there it's just a symptom of something so i just kind of watch it in lisbon but i don't at this point i can't really tell you all the details of it i mean teachers and private schools or to put paid less you can do a number of other th really hard in school you know we've got all those academies all over the you know are open in the various areas that ferd and you know st johnsbury the public private rooms there's all kinds of configurations out there and some of them are doing an excellent job and you've got people coming from all over and tuitions students and then they've grown into you know overnight and boarding students and you know i remember being at an airport and meeting a kid coming from california to go to like the st john's cademy i mean it's just kind of wild when you think about that but it's it's all about options and i mean we've talked before about school choice and having options and that's what the communities are asking for different options than what's in front of them and i don't i'm not sure how much of it is financial at any given time cell but the debate continues and they'll they'll be more and more of that going on i'm sure  ask about what was said about collective party guests and i'm hoping that i will hold this together correctly because i've heard it a couple of times collective bargaining for one is that for months who were association wants to have a closer association and more frequent better dialogue with the n e a overall that's a position that they would like to have but there is a new trend towards putting putting statements and putting items in the in the master agreement that have to do with quality of education to livered that have to do more with teaching than with the human resource undocument part of it instead of the shouts and no more than it would have more statements that had to do with how they were going to add to quality of education i haven't seen any of those documents yet i had heard from our one of our legal leaders all people nicole mason from vermont school boards that there was an agreement i'll be there and she didn't get back to me to tell me which one that was adding in some language talking about increasing increasing the words to to actually give more of a professional tone to the teaching profession through this master agreement talking about more of the more of how we're all going to work together to improve education and more flexibility and less time less of the items on wh can't do so i'm looking forward to seeing who's going to have that type of agreement first and and see what that looks like and see where we can go working together with the union better instead of using our time going to fact finding you know mediation etc and sort of hitting the same walls over and over again it's interesting to see how you know and then the n e a how much how much of a presence they have in the legislature and then getting the d s p a on an equal footing making sure that the bargaining table also is on a level  so i'll be happy to keep you up to date with anything that i hear on that in particular yeah yeah i'm going to i was trying to find the actual article that said what what was going to be voted on because it's just really in the resolution i should say so and there's going to be like out for collective bargaining there's a weapon are that they do do they really feel like that change of language or change of tone on the real sort of bearing on bottom line i don't know the proposed resolution which we passed that will go forward  being resolved that the be able to promote legislation and collaborative action with the n e a and other education or partners which will promote collective bargaining create cream and switch facilitate and do not interfere with transforming education in the role of the teacher promote a more collaborative promote more collaborative approaches to collective bargaining at this time right now it says radical the change that we're in at this time of change so that is the proposed resolution which would be voted on at the yearly an meeting so i think that one is interesting the one number for which did not which will still go to the full board is considerations for reduction in force given the changing dynamics created by declining enrollment and to ensure that school boards are able to retain the highest quality teachers be it resolved that the v s p a urges that vermont legislature to pass legislation that would enable school boards to use teacher performance qualifications and the needs of the district as as seniority in determining what positions will be eliminated due to a reduction in force resolution committee declined this resolution because they believe that this could be covered under number two which i had mentioned i did the same thing with my face when i heard that but it's still going to go for the annual meeting so i think it's interesting this was proposed from a pure school board i think is very interesting because it's a symptom then of what's happening   also just the whole changes at the state wide education governance and i think it's going to strengthen the way school boards are being represented down in montpellier and i think that should happen so the truant officer for kill some middle school and came up to kevin hamilton the truant officer of the branch for middle school increase over the for three years of everybody's going to get a staff some move down the salary schedule and the hourly rate that are zonal schedules will increase by one and a half  percent for insurance over three years the employee's contribution of the premium on will increase in two thousand twelve thirteen by half percent which is this year  two thousand and thirteen fourteen another half percent and a four percent in the year two thousand and fourteen fifteen so it was a very collegial professional i saw this language around people being transferred from one building to another and they're going to get two weeks notice when that occurs is that something that happens on a regular basis or not it doesn't happen a lot but it might happen once twice a year though you're talking about an employee pool of there are about two hundred people and kids move in and help sometimes they move to other schools in the district yes people need to move out of the building or the student may move on to a different district you know and we have a need in another building in the person feels it so that's when it happens but it's it's it's rare can they request not to be moved they can it's not not always possible but they certainly can request  every wednesday or i or six weeks after school they can load up a truck with all the mountain bikes head out of here the mountain bike for a couple hours meet back to school and kids get picked up and this year we got a second day of it to learn how community and the profits from that we get fifty percent of the profits back to the schools through the standard fundraising things that are problems all go back to the classrooms of the terms that raise that money for the students from now all those back in the classroom and that phrase the cost and we're really asking families to pay when they go on activities or field trips and really try to pack costs down for families and i had a lot of experiences outside of the  you have any questions for kevin no no that was a statement that wasn't  individual assisted intensive and specialized this assistance be all see issue employees currently we have him individuals in the peer professional categories that east and some are looking school districts and some are both and it causes it causes some some significant issues and  further number of years central office has been talking about bringing this forward and talking with boards about potentially making this change and it was really brought out during the merger of this committee  one of the potential advantages to doing to becoming a merge school district so this would be somewhat of a governance change but currently if you're an employee that works for your shit any state and for a local school district you don't qualify for municipal law even though you may work thirty hours a week those are the guidelines we have to we have to follow those guidelines and it's become even much more such strict since you know pensions are  under stress vary and so they're really being serious ago making sure that school districts pay attention to the guidelines that they have employees often switch from from c s u special lead to local districts this requires the employees to get a new insurance card a new certificate number in a newsgroup number it's often confusing for the employee and there's some additional work obviously goes to that as well and it increases the potential or the possibility of accounting errors because you have several several different people participating in this reconciliation name people handling contracts so it would be much more streamlined currently now you could have three or four people involved in one person's contract instead of one i know the longevity statement is something that has come up as a question for people that would be off the table the question is you can have somebody that works for ten years up a few issues that we have what it would do is it would increase the nice budget but it would obviously be offset by revenue because he is you would build back a portion of the salary and benefits of benefits not included under special education and that would be assessed quarterly so that's what i'm going to be proposing to the executive committee this is an opt in very confusing for the employee they they generally think of themselves as chin in east employees in and i think it would be good for the employee in certainly good for streamlining some of our business operations which has been a goal of ours last few years is it is in for the insurance and benefits and the potential for errors and the fact that now we do look at seniority su wide regardless of what the who the again we are so i'm going to follow through with that with the executive committee on monday and then be rolling that out to other boards after monday i do have the second but the piece i have is i have a draft of the strategic priorities reporting for this coming year so passout have people take a look at that here are put in the indicators in the categories that we have outlined in our strategic plan and that's what we'll be reporting out on the purpose of this is to hopefully show progress but if there isn't then be talking about that as well so these have every category that we have an after t g plan and there are different indicators under each category the the  you'll see that the programming skills and knowledge show up several times because that is the biggest category with the most statements in our strategic plan that that's wh t and we can modify this as we need to but i felt like last year the discussions that we had around programming leadership and mentoring pulling in our teacher report cards some of our assessments results what we were doing in world geography world cultures and civics was important for the board to know and we tried to link in here's how we're doing and i think we want to continue that discussion over this year would say i feel like i always say something and i do just a suggestion as we move forward on this when we get to a lot of the programming skills and knowledge i just want to throw it out there that it would be good to to have hear more than to hear more than a recitation of the activities that we're doing but to really delve in and get an idea of feedback either from parents and students but it took sort of wrap around it versus just talking about the various courses that we have i think we started to do that before we had the foreign language presentation but it just sometimes we stop it here's how we're meaning the standard here's what we're doing and then we kind of stop and i think it needs to just be deeper than that w kids are doing here is how we know an example is the looking really at the percentage of students that are taking co curricular activities because there's a ton of research around that the says the kids  participate in afterschool activities they do better in school there are more successful in there there's a huge body of research about that so we talk to a lot about that agree with you it should be more than just restating what we're doing but saying here's how we're doing how it links to the research how links to where the future is going what shape you know suggestions for changes the kind of whole you know the the blemishes as well as the good stuff kind of thing y what it says technology integration is that mostly talking about teachers using technology to teach the subjects or is that also students using the technology to learn the use both both that's a good question  we've done a lot we've been we've been trying to provide a lot of professional development for teachers to say how here's how we can use this tool to better engage kids and help them extend their in their own learning expanded new bands but part of new ways that they can be using the technology not only help kids progress and bath and reading writing but how can they get how they can engage kids and individualize some of the structures there those students who was not chosen was also invited to participate in a committee or committees if they chose to do so and those that we talked to seemed at least at the time to be very interested they were many were several of them were especially interested in the economics and of it the the financial and how schools were financed what how were budgets decided  how what influenced by tip decisions and felt strongly that students that that would be one of the things that they would take back to the students to explain budgets and you  boys soccer team for varsity still undefeated our homecoming for sporting events was very successful and our city football team actually did you know win over rutland which was huge our school's football program is very well supported even success has been down especially from last year with academics i think this kids are starting to get back into the swing of that actual academic academics and the full school weeks are kind of a wake up out there is still some interest and i've been assured by everyone who is the staff there that once progress reports come out there is a fluctuation of students entering and i agree with what you say about the economic aspect of students interest and for me because i see the applications of the decisions that are made on the upper part of the ladder and it's really easy for us to kind of critique the decisions and say well why can't they just bring this back or make the funding larger for this because it seems so simple when all you see the effects so i think maybe having a way to report back to the student body either through the cougar house program which is similar to student coun and just kind of express like things are more complicated than they might seem to the normal high school student that's definitely one god like that maybe outbrain is report back to the student body because i'm sure there are students that don't know that there is a student representative meeting hearing there will approve this written and the words warrants are one million six hundred eighty nine thousand eight hundred forty six dollars seventy nine so interested and understands the process and is moving forward and we've got two more policies that are coming up in new york really should take a look at them on the website because it's firearms and weapons which every in and participation of home study students and these are just people said to me i said these are going to be big topics when we discuss them and they looked at me funny and i said well at least you know they really should be people should understand the laws and should understand how it affects us because certainly you know and then you we have experience with things like you know expulsion policies and our weapons and stuff comes comes and goes in that area and the participation of home study students so take a look at them if you have anything to say to your representatives on the policy committee please let us know give us some feedback  approved the educational support team one that would go to the executive committee and we had to have a presentation specialist to fully understand it so that was good questions yes none of the students but the different committees were and how they were how i was how they want to do finance i'm very thrilled that we do have a need for an executive session to cover two topics teacher