[Pledge of Allegiance]

HalladayThanks for everyone coming out this evening. First of all, the board wishes to recognize, welcome and thanks those who are providing language interpretation of the board proceedings. The board's commitment that all children receive equitable academic services must ensure that new American parents are welcome and can attend meetings, understand the process and be actively engaged.

Interpretation of proceedings honors, respects and values our new American parents and students. The board asks the public and media to respect and understand the importance of this [unintelligible].

I skipped over the roll call. You're lucky, Commissioner Kirk. It’s in your hand. Do you mind reading it out?

KirkAbsolutely not. Brian Cina? Liz Curry?

CurryHere.

KirkKyle Dodson?

DodsonHere.

KirkKevin Garrison?

GarrisonHere.

KirkCharlie Giannoni? Patrick Halladay?

HalladayHere.

KirkDavid Kirk, here. Kat Kleman? Alan Matson? Mark Porter?

PorterHere.

KirkStephanie Seguino?

SeguinoHere.

KirkScott Shumski?

ShumskiHere.

KirkMiriam Stoll?

StollYeah.

KirkBen Truman.

TrumanHere.

KirkXander Long? And Georgia [unintelligible]? Thank you.

And Charlie is now here.

HalladayOkay. Commissioner Curry is going to be getting Commissioner Matson on the line. He's going to phone in from out of town. Can I get a motion to approve the agenda?

DodsonSo moved.

HalladayCommissioner Dodson, seconded by... Commissioner Garrison. Any alterations, amendments to the agenda? Hearing none, all in favor of the proposed agenda, please say aye.

VariousAye.

HalladayAny opposition? Right, we have an agenda. I do want to make a real quick note that we have a eight o'clock time certain executive session, we have a couple different issues that need to be discussed in executive session this evening. We are going to go ahead and move through the agenda as far as we get until executive session. We may get through public comment, we may get through public comment plus.

But we'll get as far as we can. At eight o'clock we are going to stop simply because executive session have in the past been taking place at very very late hours, when there are very important decisions that are being made, and we think it’s best to do those while fresh and making smarter choices at that point.

So at this point we have time for public comment. Is there a sign-in there? Could you pass that around over here? There'll be time to...

I want to remind people that we have 20 minutes set aside for public comment, three minutes per person. At the end of public comment, or at the end of that 20 minutes, if we would like to extend, a board member's welcome to make a motion, and we can extend that public comment if we would like.

Commissioner Porter?

PorterMotion to limit it to two minutes [unintelligible] people in the room.

HalladayDo we have a second for the motion? Commissioner Kirk. Any discussion? Just as a note, this would take a two-thirds majority, just because it’s changing our rules. I'm not questioning it, I just want to make sure that that's clear. All in favor of the motion from Commissioner Porter to limit to two minutes, due to the number of people here, please say aye.

VariousAye.

HalladayAny opposition? Two minutes, we will move it to. I'm gonna leave my computer up here, hopefully where people will be able to see it as it’s counting down. Up first is Helen [Housley], Becca — I'm sorry, I'm having a hard time reading that, is it Parros? Padnos. Oh, I'm sorry.

And Heather Rheimer will be third. Helen?

HousleyGood evening. I'm Helen Housley, I live in Ward Seven. In regards to the superintendent search, we have hired Ray and Associates for $14,200 to do a nationwide search. Although I do really appreciate the frugality of the board, I question what we're getting for our money. One would anticipate that a nationwide search would cost close to $30,000 or more.

But that said, how does it tie in with the interim superintendent? Apparently there are many candidates that have magically appeared in the last few weeks that weren't available in June. The job description for the interim superintendent is quite extensive for an eight-month temporary position. If the interim is selected by a subgroup of commissioners, what was the process that was followed?

How does it fit with the current process that's going on for a permanent superintendent? What assurances do we have, the public, that the interim superintendent won't be named to the permanent position and bypass the selection process altogether? Ignoring processes and policies tend to be a habit of this particular board. In regards to the recommendations that came out of the Ray and Associates survey, I'm sure that will be discussed later this evening.

Recommendation number two speaks directly to the ability for us to relate — us meaning the board and the superintendent — relate to our culturally diverse community. And yet when there's a board training from a highly respected trainer on the specific topic of cultural competence, several members of this board did not attend.

That's not only disappointing, especially since Ward Seven wasn't represented at all during this training, but demonstrates a lack of commitment, an air of arrogance, and that this board isn't committed to working with the administration to advance the goals of the district. I'll submit my notes for public comment. Thank you.

HalladayThank you. Rebecca Padnos, Heather Rheimer, and Robin, is it Gillian?

PadnosHi, everybody. Thanks for having us. I wanted to thank the board and CCTA and the administration for working with us on the bussing. We've got more buses, they're less crowded. It’s been terrific, and it didn’t take that long since the last time we spoke up. Unfortunately, since then we've gotten notice that we have to pay $150 per student per year now.

And I really worry what that's going to do to the availability of buses, and people's ability to pay for it. I'd really love to see this put away for this year, as Miriam Stoll and Scott Shumski suggested in the financial committee meeting.

And only reinstate it after you have a special meeting for public input, as they said, and adding an economic hardship clause to the request that people pay. I also just don't think it’s right that families have to pay based on where they live. We all pay school taxes. I think we all need to share the expenses of getting kids to and from the schools.

I worry about the kids with the passes, I worry about loss, bullying, theft, and parents being able to pay. We don't know what’s going on in any individual's home, whether they can make it or not, which is why we should definitely have an economic hardship waiver.

We made our current budget under really dire straits last year. We thought we were over $1 million in the hole. It’s my understanding that is not the case anymore, and with the lease of the Taft Building for $1.6 million, I think we should be able to take some money for this year's, drop the fees for the buses, and then revisit it in a more thoughtful way that's not under panic.

I know we're panicked. People did the best they could with that information. So in the couple weeks since we found out we were going to have to pay a lot of money to send our kids to school, we put up a really quick informal —

HalladayI need you to wrap up here real quickly.

PadnosOkay. A petition on Facebook, and one Front Porch Forum had almost 400 signatures here. I have people lining up to sign it, because I was outside, and college kids were like, "We had to pay, it was really awful," and they went and got their friends at the farmer's market, "Come here!" So it wasn't as scary to get petitions in person. A lot of them were on the internet.

HalladayThank you.

PadnosSo we will submit them.

HalladayThank you.

PadnosOkay, thank you.

HalladayHeather, Robin and Vince Brennan?

RheimerSo, Heather Rheimer. I live in the Old North End. I have a student at Hunt Middle School and a student at the high school. So I came out to speak out against charging students to ride the bus to school. Before kids can learn, they have to get to school in the first place. And there's three reasons why I think this policy is misguided. One, it’s a fee based on geography.

Look, we were fortunate enough to be able to walk our kids to school every day during elementary school. At one point the school board decided we should be redistricted to Champlain School. We fought that, we were able to maintain a neighborhood school. But the point, kids are, especially kids from the Old North End, all districted to Hunt now, not walkable. And also the high school.

So I don't like it because it’s a fee based on geography. Two, it encourages people to drive and not take the bus. I did the calculation. If I was willing to put gas in my car, sunk cost of having a car, it’s way cheaper for me to drive my kids to school every single day and pick them up. I'm not gonna do it.

But it will encourage other folks, because it’s cheaper to do that. And I hope I don't have to say in this day in age that that's a problem in many ways to have more cars on the road instead of a bus that's going by. And the third reason, it actually is gonna mean that kids don't get to school. So we have been contacted by many parents — some, you talked about new American families — don't qualify for free and reduced lunch, and now they're worried about their kids being able to get to and from school.

And even with a pass, if you lose your pass, if you don't have it, then you gotta be — "Do I have the 60 cents?" And kids with more resources can probably go home and get a ride with their parents, but not everybody can. And so I think it will mean that we'll get kids who don't get to school. It’s going to be hard to get home. So I think the board should go back to the policy of providing transportation for all students who need a bus to school. Thank you. [applause]

HalladayRobin Vince, and then Richard Lisch.

VinceHi, my name is Robin Gillian, and I echo the sentiments that have brought the concerned members of this community to talk here tonight about the fee scale, and payments of a ride to school. I was gonna talk, but instead of listening to me, I'm going to give voice to my son, who wrote a letter. He is a junior at BHS, and he said, "My name is Zachary Gillian, I'm a junior at BHS. I use the CCTA bus system, organized and managed with help from the school.

"After riding the bus for over three years now, I have witnessed some of the flaws that go along with relying on the bus as a source of transportation. But also, the amazing help it is in getting me to school. Soon the free service that delivers students to BHS and back home at the end of the day will finally end. In its place, an unaffordable $150 will be charged to all students, with the exception of those who receive free lunch, in order to ride CCTA buses.

"We near the impending end to a free transportation systems for students in the area, but it seems that aside from the outrageous price, CCTA may not have ever been the right choice as a means for kids to get to school in the morning. During my experience with CCTA, I have seen a number of occasions kids and adults alike being declined service — not for reasons of overcapacity or lack of bus pass, but for seemingly no reason at all.

"These people are left running alongside the bus, attempting to get the driver's attention as he completely ignores not only the person running, but also the several people yelling at him to stop the bus, to let the person on. Above all of this, the Burlington Bus Network is public, and not explicitly bound to transporting school students.

"For this reason it makes moving kids and servicing bus users simultaneously very difficult. As you may realize, there are roughly 1,000 students at Burlington High School. Although there are multiple buses dropping students off, each bus still gets very full, leaving little space for other people in need of the bus to make it on. It is vital to understand this issue in preparation for the year-end studies program held for two weeks at the end of each school year.

"During this time period the school day is slightly shortened, leaving one bus arriving every half hour or more for all the students to utilize to get home. As you can imagine or may have already noticed, this is not a very effective system. You may be thinking the money we're charging isn't that much in the grand scheme. But it’s a lot for a service that is already overtaxed."

Thank you very much for your time.

HalladayThank you, Robin. Vince, then Richard.

BrennanHello, board. Vince Brennan, Ward Three city councilor, and I'm here speaking tonight on part from some of my constituents who are gonna be faced with this unintended tax. Many of the things that were echoed before, I totally concur with. Heather had indicated, new Americans in the Old North End having to pay this tax.

There have been many people that have contacted me, and one in particular who is a custodian with the same employer as me, who does not conform with the free and reduced lunch. Makes too much money between her and her partner as a custodian, does not qualify for free and reduced lunch, but has to have three children to make it to the high school and one to the middle school. It’s $450 on a custodial wage.

She works days, her husband works second shift. This is an inequity. The words that you spoke at the beginning are just words, unless you put 'em into action. The action that you're doing today is creating inequity. This inequity needs to change, and you have the power to make that change. And I encourage you to right the wrong.

I understand that this decision was made at a point where the budget was in flux. You have the ability to change and make this right. I encourage you to do that. And I would just take a step back and think for a minute of what I just said there. You know, free and reduced lunch, 185% of the poverty level, is where we're talking about.

There's people that are working at the lower end of the scale at the University of Vermont, and they do not qualify for free and reduced lunch. Although your intentions were good at the time, you have the ability to make that inequity right. And I encourage you to do so. Thank you.

HalladayThank you, Vince. Richard?

GleischGood evening. Richard Gleisch, a parent of three children who greatly benefited from the Burlington School System. My youngest, he's currently junior at high school. Some nine years ago we were — we live in the South End, and at the time there was only a very early bus that dropped the kids off at the high school somewhere around 7:10 in the morning. So we fought to get a bus at a more workable hour.

Once it got accepted, we almost freaked out that no kid would show up. Kids showed up, took that bus, was very successful. Five years later our youngest starts high school, we realize the bus is gone because there were so many kids on that route that CCTA decided to reroute it through Shelburne Road. So it got reinstated back.

So kids take the bus if the bus is available. And if it’s affordable. Everyone talked about that. I have another issue, it’s very philosophical: Public school means that the community pays for educating the children. Once we decide transportation is not part of education anymore, and we start charging people individually to attend public school, it’s a very dangerous precedent in my opinion, in terms of basically what’s next?

After school programs — you want to participate, need to pay? The iPad at the high school? Incrementally, [unintelligible] turned into privatization of public school, meaning that you pay to attend. I think philosophically the community has to really think about, is that the route we want to go? And this is, in my view, it’s much of a first step.

It creates a dangerous precedence. When this becomes accepted, every incremental step after that can be justified. And next thing we know, the community stops paying and individual students pay for attending public school. Thank you. I count on you to do the right thing. Thank you very much.

HalladayThank you, Richard. [applause]

That's the end of the list, for people who signed up in advance. Is there anyone else who would like to comment? Please come forward and please state your name so we can record it.

SebastianoMy name is Paul Sebastiano. Nice to meet you tonight. I really don't have a whole lot that I can add to what a lot of people have said tonight. I agree with a lot of things that people have been talking about. I do agree that making some people pay and others not pay is divisive in the community; it doesn’t unify us. It’s wrong.

It seems like the decision to go ahead and start charging was a knee jerk type of reaction. And, uh, what I really do is exhort you to look for other ways to save money. I don't know if an exhaustive review has been done of business processes to look for efficiencies, duplication of efforts. But my gut feeling is that if people do look fairly hard, you're going to find some money, and it’s gonna take some time.

And it’s gonna take a while because it took 10, 11 years to get here to where we are, and it was a perfect storm. So it’s gonna take a little while to get out. So what I'm asking you to do is not rush to judgment. This is the sort of thing that people have become accustomed to. We just had our taxes raised, and to ask us to come along and start paying a bus fare on top of that is basically adding insult to injury.

A lot of people are just budgeting for the new tax increase, and people aren't getting raises like they used to. I mean they're getting one percent, two percent, 50 cents an hour. You know, this sort of thing is a little bit here, a little bit there, it all adds up.

So if you could take another look at this, and at least delay the decision past next, I believe, Monday, so that you'll have more time to look at this, and then if you really need to have people pay bus fares, perhaps in the next school year would be a time to do it and bring it up to the voters in March.

Thank you. [applause]

HalladayIs there anyone further who'd like to comment? Yeah, please, come on up. What’s your name?

PadnoseHenry Padnose.

HalladayGo ahead, Henry.

PadnoseI'm a sixth grader at Hunt, and I don't have really much to say, but of what I've heard, the money you pay is $1.20 every day, which is for two bus rides, and I have two after-school programs, which is two bus rides, that, if we were to pay, I'm paying for a bus ride and my parents are that I haven't taken. And if someone misses the bus, then they're paying for a bus ride that nobody's taking.

HalladayThank you, Henry. Appreciate it. [applause] Any further public comment?

All right. Seeing none, we'll go ahead and move forward with our agenda. Next is a time for board reflection. Are there any board members who would like to reflect on public comment? Seeing none, we'll move down to number six. Oh, I'm sorry.

KlemanI just wanted to make a really brief comment, is all. Mostly, at the last meeting I spoke out very strongly against the bus, or paying for the bus, which I still disagree with. But I felt that it kind of came across that I was criticizing your hard work and decision, Paul, and I wanted to make sure that that was clear that I really support the work you've done, and want to apologize if it came across as doubting you guys.

So, and the fact that the board did decide. So... thank you. I'll sign that.

HalladayAny further...? Commissioner Stoll.

StollI try and keep my mouth shut, but it’s really hard. So I want to thank all of you for coming, and it’s really quite poignant, the story, particularly the actual numbers, when you hear what Vince said. And I would like to say that at the finance committee meeting this last week, we did — a reflection for everyone, so you know — we did put forward a motion to delay the bus change, and it did not go out of the finance committee.

So it was not voted to go forward, and that's why it’s not coming here tonight. I would like to just say that part of the discussion that we had, that was had there, was that at this point the decision to change is really something that the administration could choose to do if they determine they can find other funds to make up the difference in the budget. So the board has been very clear that if we overspend in one area, we need to underspend in another.

So if the decision were made by the administration and brought to the board — actually, they don't even have to bring it to the board — if the decision was made by the administration that change that, and instead change the policy that's going to go, was supposed to go into effect, and could find alternate savings somewhere else, that would be sufficient.

So I want to thank all of you for coming and talking, but I also want to tell you that you're not just speaking to the board here; you're also speaking to the administration. So I thank you, and I hope that it gets heard. Thank you very much.

HalladayCommissioner Dodson.

DodsonI just had a quick, what I see as a process conversation. I too appreciate everyone coming, and it got me thinking about moving forward — we're moving into budget planning for budget 2015-2016. And if you remember what occurred last March, and you're reading what’s happening at the state level, money's going to be tight.

We're going to be forced to be disciplined, and so I encourage everyone to follow that process, to come to all public opportunities, and to share your input and to share your creative ideas. We, the 14 here, we work really hard to be creative, but we're going to need some real creativity in the days ahead, so I encourage everyone to stay engaged and to support us in doing what’s going to be difficult work to get the budget to a place where the community can support it.

HalladayCommissioner Seguino?

SeguinoSo I'd like to add to that and echo Miriam and Kyle, Commissioner Dodson and Stoll's comments about thanking you all for being here. I want to say that I had just joined the board when this decision was made. And I think it just might help to have some context for this, so that we can understand what to do going forward.

I don't think there's a person on this board who feels good about what’s happening with bus fares, but we faced other choices that were more costly and more painful than that one. And let me just give you a little bit of context: When the budget failed in March, the finance committee, I wasn't a member at that time, but requested that the superintendent go back and see what areas could be cut.

And one of the areas that she proposed was transportation cost. And here are some of the considerations we faced: We could've increased classroom sizes, we could've laid off more teachers. We wanted to do whatever we could not to lose the teachers we had, and also not to increase class sizes.

So we were really constrained in terms of what could be cut that would protect classrooms. So I hear you, how painful this is. I really get that. But we are still facing a community that does not have the appetite, and many don't have the means for the property tax increases that have happened over the last number of years.

I personally think that in the next year or two, with the new finance director, with the new administration in the district, that we will be able to look at the budget more carefully and find efficiencies that won't force us to make such painful cuts.

But I think we need a little bit of time to do that. And I just want you to see this from the perspective of where we sit that we're facing competing pressures, and we really are laser-focused on kids K-3 and, in general, classroom instruction. And so although this is not at all a palatable cut that was made, that was at least our reasoning behind it.

And hopefully that will help us in the discussions. Because you know, as Commissioner Dodson said, we're trying be creative and we want to hear your input as well. But anything that we want to add money for in the budget, we have to cut someplace else, and the question is where is that, right? So... thanks.

HalladayCommissioner Curry.

CurryI just want to add that the local funds and the local property tax are the only ones we have control over. And they are fewer and fewer every year, and next year it’s another $1.54 million cut. So we're up against the wall. I also want to ask and invite you to please participate in the legislature this year, because we have been slaughtered by the cuts — in federal funding and state funding.

And it isn't over. It’s just getting worse. Government doesn’t have any more money. And so the strategy is to put the costs on the local taxpayer and the local municipalities. And the only way that that's gonna change is if voices are louder at the state and the federal level. That's all we've got.

We don't have any more money here. We went through the budget with fine-tooth comb. We looked to the administration to make recommendations. We asked them what the cuts would be. We had an audit for the first time from fiscal year '13 that showed us having a $1.2 million deficit.

That was — we just had a consultant put a report up on budget docs that showed the district overspent every year for the past seven years. So we don't feel good about this. We don't feel like we can do anything else, as Miriam said. The administration, if they can find the savings, we've invited them to try.

So we know this is difficult. But at this point that's what we're left with.

HalladayAny further reflection? I'd like to real quickly just have a couple points of clarification. Absolutely, if the administration has another place to find these cuts, that's great. But I also want to make sure that the board isn't faulting the administration. The board came and asked the administration to come up with a plan to institute the cuts that originated with the board. Whether we agree with them or think it was a good thing or not, the administration really was following a directive from the board in doing that.

And as others said, I don't think anyone on the board thinks that this is a fantastic idea, but in a pool of marginal ideas, you sometimes pick out the one that's maybe the least onerous or has the... And that was the decision that we had.

Also, I've heard a couple things — I think it’s important to understand that this is not an increase in revenue. This isn't the schools getting more money from this. It’s a decrease in expense. This isn't a way for the schools to line its coffers. The money that comes in goes to CCTA for their service, just like any other bus service that would be going on right now.

Kids, when your child gets on the bus, CCTA rings a 60-cent bell, and bills the schools for that. Instead, the payment would be going more directly to CCTA. It’s not more money coming into the schools. I just want to make sure, that $150 is not just the schools collecting it and putting it in their pocket. It’s going directly to paying for the pass for CCTA.

And finally, just as a point of clarification, there's been a lot of talk about the $150 — I do want to make sure that everyone recognizes — it’s certainly come home, the letters to our own house — that buying the year-long pass is not the only option. Not that the other ones are necessarily great. But you can buy a ten-punch pass, you can pay 60 cents a time as you go.

You can buy a monthly pass. I'll use my own family as an example: While the weather's nice, my son who's at BHS rides his bike up to school. Come February, that's not gonna be such a good option. So our own family is not gonna be purchasing that $150 pass. Instead, we're gonna be buying a punch card so that the days that he needs to ride the bus...

I know this isn't the same for everyone, but I just want to make sure that folks understand that the $150 unlimited ride is not the only option for folks who are saying, "Well, I have after school programs so many days a week, and I'm not even gonna be using that." There are additional options that exist out there.

Hearing no further reflection from the board, we're going to move down to number six on our agenda until we hop back up for board development. I'm sorry, for the board report. Thank you guys for coming.

I don't have a need to go into this in great detail. I shared with board members some draft thinking around a plan moving forward for more efficiencies for... There's a commitment that we all made at our board meeting two weeks ago Sunday, the special board meeting, to have a plan moving forward for better board functioning.

I do have some, more than just drafty ideas, but some ideas I would welcome response from anyone regarding those. Very quickly, I just want to say that those ideas are broken into two separate spheres — the first one is logistical, kind of the functioning of our meetings, the functioning of our committees. And I've asked Commissioners Truman, Curry and Giannoni, who make up the policy committee, to develop some plans around better logistics.

And secondly, I've laid out a handful of suggestions, including some individual reflections, some reflections of our board as a group. And then I've been in contact, without specifics at this point, in contact with a couple of additional people who do some development work — board development work — who will be coming to us with some proposals as to what they might be able to bring forward to help us further build those relationships.

And then a commitment toward moving, as we've had conversations over the course of the last year, actually before most of us have been on the board, but really openly adopting a policy governance model, which is really the model that most boards are using, and suggesting some training through the Vermont School Boards Association to fully understand what policy governance means, and the steps that we'd need to take towards that.

Happy to entertain any questions. This isn't a motion that I'm bringing forward; it’s more information that I said I would [unintelligible] this back.

All right. Hearing none, the board members will hear more from me in days to come. I just got back myself. Last Tuesday through Friday I was outside of Boston, in a basement, for four days, for the Partnership For Change Conference, a fantastic conference — several people I see out in the audience who were down there as well.

And we'll be sharing more thinking about our learning from that conference as time goes forward. Gonna talk to Hal Colston in the future about bringing forward the logic model so that the board better understands the logic model that they're working under.

However, we have Beth Brody from the middle school today who's going to do a brief presentation for us on the advisory that's being proposed to be instituted in the high school for the next school year.

BrodyI'm gonna do a very... I want to start... First of all, good evening, everybody. But I'd like to start with finding out a little bit about what you know and what your questions are for advisory. So if you can just write down something you know about advisory and a question you might have — and I know your time is really limited today. You've got some very important decisions to make.

And so I'll be brief. But this will allow me to take your questions, and to maybe funnel that information back to Patrick and let him disseminate it to you, so that if you have questions, we can answer that as well. I've been studying high school advisory in the State of Vermont since 2004, and have seen a lot of changes in the last ten years.

A week ago, or about ten days ago, Chuck Scranton at the [Rowling] Conference ended his conference by saying, "Personalized learning plans in just about every other transformation effort underway in our schools is totally dependent on a meaningful, authentic advisory system."

And I have found that to be very true as well. But people are wondering, what is advisory? The definition that has been decided on by many of the experts in the field is that advisory is a small cohort of students that meets regularly for the purpose of providing every student with an adult that knows them well, and a safe environment as a home base at school.

And a couple words in there are very important. Small cohort — cohort being that it follows those students through four years of high school. Meeting regularly. Something that meets, if not on a daily basis, several times a week, so that they really have an opportunity to develop those relationships. An adult that knows them well — really, the point person.

I think, especially as you get into high school, people don't know who to call. They're like, "Wow, my kid's got like eight different teachers," and if they're having a problem in biology, you can call the biology teacher. But if they're just having an overall general problem, you don't know who to call.

This gives every student a point person in someone that the parents know that they can contact. And the final thing is a home base — in my research in advisory, I went into depth with research in four different high school in Vermont, and three of those four schools said that they had had recent tragedies in their school. And it was through the high school advisory program that those students were able to sort of get back into the swing of things.

And if they needed a break, they could find their advisor or they could go to their advisory, and they had a safe place. So I think that that is, having that home base which is safe for everyone, is really critical.

There are four functions of advisory, and the first one is administrative. It’s like the old home room. But it’s great to have that. If you need a survey done, it’s done in advisory. If you need to pass out medical forms, it’s done in advisory. A lot of people do fire drills by advisory.

You're only looking for 10-14 kids. The second one is affective, which, I just mentioned developing those deep relationships between students, advisors, and co-advisees. And that has actually become one of the most successful aspects of advisory if you look at the research, that several studies have been done with students that really feel that advisory has connected them to their school, and has connected them to one another.

Cognitive — this is where we're really talking about the academic advisor, really helping them with study skills, time management, academic planning, and especially now, the personalized learning plan, and everything that's encompassed in [Act 77].

This would be the place where students would sit down with their advisors, create their goals, write their personal learning statements, and the advisor would be one of those people — the kids that I interviewed always described their advisor as that gentle kick in the butt that they sometimes need at school.

So that is the cognitive aspect. And now we're really coming into sort of the meta-cognitive, which is in advisory, it’s when kids are really starting to think about how they learn. Not just saying, "This is my goal," but thinking about, "How do you learn best? What are your goals, what are your interests?"

And I did have this all in a great presentation, but I know you're busy and I didn’t want to take the time to go line it up there. So I'm going through the short version here.

HalladayIs there a presentation that you can share with me that I can share with the board?

BrodyAbsolutely. And I will share resources with you as well. So the question may be, do many schools in Vermont have advisory? And in 2013, 53 out of 62 high schools in Vermont had some form of advisory. And they came under a wide array of names. They might’ve called it Morning Meeting or they might’ve called it advisory or TA. There was just about seven or eight different names that people came up with, but it all had those common elements of having the advisor that knew their students well, it was a small group, they met regularly.

And 51% of the advisories did meet every day. So people always ask, "How often should it meet?" 51% met every day. 63% of the advisories met from between 15 and 30 minutes a day. Although the overall average length was 18 minutes. But what I will say is, now this was in 2013 that I called every school in the state of Vermont.

And the administrators in the schools that had 10-minute advisories said, "Yeah, but we're really thinking of expanding that." And I'm sure that if I were to ask them again today, with the advent of Act 77 being passed in June of 2013, I am confident that everybody would say, "Yeah, we're really looking at this again."

One of the roadblocks to a successful advisory is not developing the vision statement and not developing the goals. That is something that is at the core of starting off with a solid program. And that is something that currently the BHS faculty and a multi-stakeholder group are working on. They've been meeting regularly since August 19th, and have really made progress, and there will be a presentation on the progress that they have made in January or February to discuss where that has been working.

But they've been working very hard on this. And that will be made by the BHS faculty. And goals that would be appropriate for advisory — some examples are things like all students in the learning community have an advisor who knows them well and is aware of their academic goals, standing, and coaches them academically.

Or all students in the learning community have an advisor who's an integral part of their planning process for their personalized learning plans. Or all students have a communication link between school and family. Once again, once you develop the vision statement, having goal statements that support that are a critical part of developing a solid program.

And the roles of the advisors, there's really four significant roles of an advisor [unintelligible] coach, a point person, an advocate, and a personal advisor. And the advocate is really someone that, if your student — and I'll give you an anecdote here — if your student had a goal that they wanted to become a basketball coach, which actually happened with one of my ex-students from long ago — and they were looking at eligibility for this student, because academically he had not been as successful as he could've been during his freshman year —

By going in and discussing with the academic eligibility team, we were able to determine that actually maybe giving this student a shot at being eligible for playing basketball was really in his best interest, because he had had a goal that he wanted to do this in the future. And it wound up being a very successful choice. But I went in as his advocate, and if we had not done that goal-setting prior to that, who would've known?

So there is also evidence and research that supports — there was a five-year longitudinal study that came out in 2011 that said at-risk students how participated in advisory programs, that 84% of the males felt the personalized aspect of the advisory program helped them in school, and that it was a caring, committed adult that knew the student well, that made the difference.

And the same study also revealed that there was strong evidence that personalization in the form of an advisor actually contributed to an increase of, a six percent increase in the graduation rate for the program. So there is some academic evidence that would support the advisory program as well.

For me, the question is, "Is it worth it?" and I will once again go to another anecdote where I had a student that had been in my advisory for four years, it was his senior year, it was November. And he had struggled academically somewhat in his earlier years, and he sat there and said, "I just don't think I can do this anymore," and he was this close to dropping out in November of his senior year.

And it wasn't I that said, "Oh no, you've gotta do it," although I said that as well. It was the co-advisees who, one by one, told him, "You really need to go ahead and do this, you've gotta finish; we'll help you. We'll help you study, we'll help you through this," and he walked across the stage in June. So it’s those kinds of things that really, for me, is strong evidence above and beyond the empirical evidence that we have out there that advisory is a strong program.

So with that, I will ask you if you have any questions. If we have time. If not... oh —

HalladayWe have time for about three questions, and then if anything further, I ask people to write down on their cards and —

BrodyRight, and what I can do, what I will do is, I have a pretty in-depth website about high school advisory, and I'll share that with you, and that can be disseminated as well.

HalladayThat'd be great. Are there any burning questions that folks want to ask of Beth right now? Commissioner Dodson.

DodsonI was wondering about, how does — it seems like it would lend itself — how does it lend itself to family engagement? Do you find that it enhances, and do we have data to show that it helps us to connect better with families by virtue of the small proportions and whatnot?

BrodyWell, the smaller proportions, but also, I know in the advisory program that I coordinated down at Twin Valley, it was actually the advisor's responsibility twice a year to contact the parents. And you know, I can tell you for sure that parents were pleased that they knew who to contact. And it’s not — when I say "point person," it is not just the point person for the parent; it is also a point person for teachers.

I had to contact one of my students' advisees the other day because I was like, "What’s going on here?" and he and I talked about his advisee at Edmonds. And we're developing a little plan for him to sort of encourage him to move forward in my class. So it’s a point person for the parents, but it’s also a point person for the faculty. So you really get that benefit of having somebody who really knows the student.

But yeah, it absolutely improves parent-student connection, or parent-teacher connection, sorry.

HalladayCommissioner Giannoni.

GiannoniDo you have a sense of how teachers feel about this? And if you do, do you know of how this has affected teacher contracts?

BrodySo I will tell you that there are three major roadblocks to effective advisories, and one of them is that it is often not considered part of the contract, and often considered above and beyond. And I guess what I would suggest is that we need to really look at advisory as not being something that is added on to the day. We really need to look at how we do things differently.

One example is that when I have students in an advisory... When I have a student and I know their advisor, I don't have to go to all that student's different teachers. I can say to them, "Wow," I can say to the advisor, "How's this kid doing?" and they know the student well enough so that they can give me information. So it’s actually saved me time by knowing I can go to one person. I can go to that point person and find out —

GiannoniBut how do the teachers...? Do the teachers accept it at the other schools, or are they resistant to it because it’s not something they're accustomed to or...?

BrodySo the second roadblock is —

GiannoniOh, I'm sorry.

BrodyThat's okay. The second roadblock is — it’s actually a great point there — the second roadblock is training and support. People need to know that they're supported in this. And one of the recommendations from Ellen Berrings, who was a Rowland Foundation Fellow this past year, who studied advisory and went to a number of different schools, both in Vermont and in New England — one of the things they all came out with is you have to have somebody where part of their job is to coordinate the advisory, so it gives that support to the teachers.

And to also really focus in on professional development that is gonna give them the tools that they need to have to be effective advisors. And the third roadblock is not having materials, and that once again, having an effective advisory coordinator or co-coordinators, that can give that support is just a critical piece of it.

You cannot just throw kids into a room and an advisor into the room and say, "Do it." It’s got to be thoughtfully considered, planned, and executed. Perfect question. And I will say that John Painter from South Burlington is sending out a more in-depth survey right now to all the schools in Vermont, asking — and one of his questions is how advisory is covered in their contract. And as soon as we get that data, he and I will be disseminating that.

HalladayLast question, Commissioner Stoll.

StollDo you have an idea, or is there one model school in Vermont that does a particularly good job of advisory?

BrodyOne model school that I think really does a great job of... We're all kind of in that continuum, but one school that I would — there's actually two schools that I would really look at. One is in Pittsfield, New Hampshire, who combines advisory with student-led conferences, and personalized learning plans, and proficiency-based learning. And those kids, we went down and we interviewed them a year ago, and it was so interesting to see, first of all, how they loved their advisory, but also how, when they discussed their learning, they were able to tell you what proficiencies they needed to recover, and how they needed to do that.

And we'd ask them, we'd say, "Gee, where do you find that information? How have you thought about that information?" They said, "We do it all with our advisor." So I would suggest that they're well ahead of the curve. Casco Bay in Portland, Maine is also well ahead of the curve, but there are an awful lot of schools that are really moving on this continuum. And Vergennes is really making a lot of progress with theirs as well.

HalladayAnd if I may just jump in with the last two things that you said there — Pittsfield is one of the sites for Partnership For Change, and Portland Public Schools is another one. If you go to the Nellie Mae Foundation website, there's actually a great video up there of a student-led conference that grows out of the advisory. It’s about nine minutes long, and it’s a really fun video to look at the type of conversations that come out of there.

Thank you very much for your time.

BrodyThank you.

HalladaySo, real quickly, additionally, the next thing on our board report is a note from the city regarding the suspension of the Cost Control Committee. Commissioner Mason has temporarily — of course it’s temporarily — has suspended or postponed the Cost Control Committee as we go through figuring out some of our leadership in making sure that we're fully staffed. It’s not a canceling of it, but it’s a postponement until we have more capacity to engage in that.

And I do want to just point out that a couple of the recommendations from [Ed Gomo]'s report really are in line with working with that Cost Control Committee going forward. One thing that he mentioned was looking for joint deficiencies between the city and the school district. He mentioned human resources and payroll as particular places that we may be able to find that — and that would certainly be in line with the work of the Cost Control Committee.

The second thing that came out of Ed's report was a coordinated capital plan, and that would also be in line with the work of that committee once it gets reconstituted. At this point I'm going to ask for a motion to consider an executive session to discuss a personnel issue where premature disclosure could place the school district at a substantial disadvantage.

Commissioner Kirk, seconded by... Commissioner Giannoni. All in favor of moving to executive session, please say aye.

VariousAye.

HalladayOpposed? Thank you, Alan. [break]

All right. Thank you, everybody, for your patience. I've got a couple of things that we need to move on here.

I believe we have a motion from Commissioner Porter?

PorterYou do. I'd like to make a motion to hire Howard Smith as our Interim Superintendent.

HalladayDo we have a second for the motion? I'm gonna give it to Commissioner Seguino because she’s done a lot of work on this. Before we have a discussion on this and introduction of Howard Smith, I need to, as board chair, 16 days ago we gave Mark, Stephanie, Commissioners Porter, Seguino and Dodson the task of running an interim superintendent search on an incredibly tight schedule.

We asked for them to get it back to us, information back to us and make a decision so we could do it by, you know, yesterday, today. And in that amount of time, the hours of work that they put in are remarkable. The number of phone calls, the number of meetings. And they had a great time doing it too. Every time I talked to 'em, they were laughing and having fun, and they really worked very very hard to arrive at a very strong, unanimous recommendation.

But you made the motion, Commissioner Porter. Yeah.

[applause]

Would like you to introduce us to Mr. Smith?

PorterCertainly. Dr. Smith is a recently retired superintendent out of Tarrytown, New York, the Schools of the Tarrytowns is the union down there. He retired in June. He was there for I think a total of 12 or 13 — he has a total of 24 years of superintendency experience, between Tarrytown, New York and Canton, New York, and he was also a principal in Williamstown, Massachusetts.

Very well-published, a good researcher, solid. As you can tell, I passed out a number of résumés around here — if anybody else needs 'em, please let me know. He really rose to the top. It was a pleasure talking to him. He meets many of the things that — he's gone through many of the things that we're facing now. And Kyle, do you want to expand on that?

DodsonSure. It was a wonderful process, and just for the public, we want to thank the board and the public's trust in that process. We had a great opportunity to meet a lot of people, and Howard really rose to the top. What was clear was in the interviewing with him, his ability to be concrete and specific about things that he's done over his career that demonstrate his deep respect for and support of teachers, having ongoing professional development to sharpen and hone their skills of developing collaborative processes for decision-making, of making difficult decisions when budgets require it;

Of dealing with a rapidly diversifying community and developing the communication tools and the family engagement tools to allow everyone to be a part of the conversation about what happens for children. He's got a steady hand. His temperament is very accessible and even-keeled, which I think will serve us very well. And I'm just incredibly excited that we were able to end up where we ended up.

HalladayCommissioner Seguino?

SeguinoSo we were focused on a number of qualities, but most importantly, I think that the motto we had was that kids can't wait. And that we didn’t want there to be a lull in the progress of improving outcomes for kids. And Howard Smith really has demonstrated achievement in this area. He's seasoned in terms of difficult budgets. And so all in all, we felt that those goals were really met by this particular candidate.

I'm just gonna describe the process a little. There was a comment during public comment that, a question about this, and hopefully this will answer some of the questions: So we started, how many days ago was it, Patrick?

HalladayIt was 16 days ago that we met here.

SeguinoOh my God. So we solicited nominations, we posted a job advertisement on School Spring and district-wide. We reached far and wide for recommendations. We were in touch virtually on a daily basis with the Agency of Education. We consulted heavily with Steve Dale from the Vermont School Board Association.

We're incredibly grateful for the time he gave us, and for Jeff Francis from the Vermont Superintendents Association. We received about 40 nominations or self-nominations. About 60% of those were from Vermont. 40% out of state. And we contacted every name we got as a nomination. We invited people to apply to talk to them about the job. And a number of people didn’t have the qualifications.

Either they didn’t have superintendent experience or equivalent experience, didn’t — there are a variety of things that they simply just didn’t move forward in our evaluation. But we did ultimately interview ten candidates. Very high-quality candidates. We were blown away by the quality of the pool. And I want to just reiterate a comment that was made in one of our discussions, and that is that we all know that we have a gem in Burlington.

And the caliber of the candidates that we attracted, in particular of Howard Smith, really is an affirmation of the respect and interest and value that people place on Burlington and the Burlington School District. So we were incredibly pleased with that. So as I said, we interviewed these ten people by Skype or in person in Burlington. We were unanimous at every step of the way in terms of our evaluation.

There are a number of people we talked to that have been highly recommended, we thought a great deal of, but they made a decision to withdraw. They didn’t think that this was the right time or the right position for them. So I want to reiterate what Mark had intimated, which is that we were not looking for a caretaker. We really want the district to move forward at every level in terms of dealing with the challenging climate for a number of different reasons, but also the budget, and also simply the ability of an academic leader to really inspire the district.

And I really look forward to us working with him, and there you have it.

HalladayAny discussion?

All in favor of the proposal, please say aye.

VariousAye.

HalladayAll opposed? We have a new interim superintendent, Howard Smith. And so a couple of...

[applause]

I want to just make a couple of kind of housekeeping comments regarding this. First of all, Dr. Smith's on a long-planned family vacation right now, and he has been incredibly accessible. This is something that I think 24 years in the superintendency allows him to take a vacation with his wife, I believe.

He will be returning from his vacation in about a week. His first day in Burlington is going to be on the 24th — the short week before Thanksgiving. He's going to be spending that Monday and Tuesday talking with administrators, talking with the folks in central office, talking with teachers, getting to know the other folks in the community. We'll be having a press conference on one of those two days as well.

A couple other things: It’s not random — well, he's not someone that's out just looking for interim jobs. He has a very real reason to be in Burlington. In fact, he already is in Burlington — not physically right now, 'cause he's on vacation — in that he has an adult child and grandchildren who have relocated or who live in Burlington. So for him, this is a fantastic opportunity. He's interested in this job as an interim, he is not interested in this job as a permanent superintendent.

And my understanding is he, in advance of any discussion around this, already had a condominium that he's purchased here in Burlington. So he's already a Burlington resident, at least part of the year. And so this is something that, for him, is the confluence of many wonderful things, and I think for us as well.

One final thing on this note: Conversations with Stephanie Philips — she has agreed to stay on in an acting superintendency role as needed, so we still have someone who's monitoring the daily ins and outs that a superintendent position needs to be. And she'll be working with our other interim superintendent team to make sure those responsibilities continue to be met until the 24th.

[clears throat] All right. Commissioner Seguino, I believe you have a motion to make.

SeguinoI do. So, the motion is to approve a compensation package of $400 per week per person for the interim leadership team, excluding vacation days, retroactive to July 1st, 2014, and to continue until the installation of the new interim superintendent.

HalladayDo we have a second for the motion? Seconded, Commissioner Cina. Would you care to speak to it, Commissioner Seguino? Excuse me.

SeguinoThis is really to make explicit what’s been an implicit contract with the interim superintendent team. Had we — our plan, and we were required to hire an interim superintendent as of July 1st. And so this is really in recognition of the work that's been done by the interim team since that time, and until the new superintendent arrives.

HalladayCommissioner Cina, you seconded. Did you care to make any additional comment?

CinaI just want to thank the interim team for the work that they've done.

HalladayAny further discussion? Hearing none, all in favor of the —

SeguinoDid I have a second?

HalladayIt was, Commissioner Cina seconded.

All in favor of the...

SeguinoAll in favor of the motion, please say aye.

VariousAye.

SeguinoAny opposed?

HalladayOne opposed. All right. Excellent. And we will move forward. There's nothing on the superintendent's report. Paul, was there anything that needed to be added? Okay.

Approval of the consent agenda, the consent agenda is in front of you, it’s a very very short consent agenda. It consists of one item. The motion, Commissioner Truman, seconded by...?

CurryCurry.

HalladayCommissioner Curry. Yeah, it is. Yeah, I'm sorry, you're right.

All in favor of the consent agenda?

VariousAye.

HalladayAny opposition? All right. Now we're moving. Ad Hoc Search Committee and —

CommissionerHey, Liz?

CurryYeah?

MatsonThis is the last significant voting item, is that correct?

CurryNo. There's a policy, second reading.

MatsonYeah. I think I'm gonna need to hang up. [laughter] [unintelligible] another motion comes on.

HalladayCan I suspend the rules to move to number 14 to allow us to have this vote while we still have Commissioner Matson with us?

MatsonOkay. I would appreciate that.

HalladayCommissioner Truman, you're up.

TrumanOkay, thank you. And thanks for that borderline vote of significance — that's significant, Commissioner Matson. [laughter]

Matson[laughs] Sorry, Ben.

TrumanThat's all right. What your Policy Committee is bringing to you is the second reading of the revision of Policy B10, committees of the board. We have already — and if you, and I'm sure you have, already read the minutes of the committee, you can see —

HalladayDid you move this policy, Commissioner Truman?

TrumanI would like to move second reading and final adoption. Well, wait. Before I do that, I'm not sure how the procedure... What I'm doing is moving second reading as passed for first reading with a further amendment by the Policy Committee. There we go.

HalladaySeconded by Commissioner Curry. Continue.

TrumanSo what this does is, initially it just reorganizes the scope of the policy committee to include, basically, responsibility for governance. No language was changed from what passed in first reading there. It’ll be your governance policy and advocacy committee. What we found in discussions about that was, in the section following the detail of the committees, talks about the naming of committee chairs and members.

It said, "Board chairperson will name committee chairpersons and members annually, no later than seven days," blah blah blah. And what we found was, because of it being phrased that way, it precluded the chair, or whomever, from naming any members at any point other than annually. So for example, Commissioner Porter joins the board after annual reorganization, technically could not have been appointed to a committee.

So what we're proposing is simply taking out the word "annually" and writing in "and initially," so it would read, "The board chairperson will name committee chairpersons and members, and initially no later than seven days following the board's annual organization meeting." And that gives, according to Attorney McNeill, the flexibility to be able to be appointed other times during the year, beyond just annually.

But it still maintains the requirement that annually, and no later than seven days following our annual organization meeting, the committees would be appointed. So that is the one additional change.

HalladayAny further discussion? All in favor of the policy B10, committees of the board, please say aye.

VariousAye.

HalladayOpposed? Hearing none. All right, passes. Thank you, Alan.

CurryBye. Goodnight.

HalladayAnything further, Commissioner Truman, for the...?

TrumanThat's it.

HalladayAll right. Now we can go back up. Commissioner Cina, ad hoc superintendent search committee.

CinaSo, first I'd like to remind everyone that next Monday night we're having our community input sessions, and we currently have just a few of us who have committed to coming. So I'm hoping that most of us could come to at least one. There'll be one for teachers and staff at BHS from 3:30 to 5:30pm, and then there'll be two that are held simultaneously from 6:30 to 8:30pm, one at Sustainability Academy and one at Hunt.

So if people can get in touch with me outside of the meeting about your interest and availability, and I can make sure we coordinate so that we're spread evenly between, that would be great. And also, our [SAHC] has asked me to ask if you all would — or maybe Patrick, if you could put out on Front Porch Forum, the announcement. And then they'll send it out but they thought board members should put it out first, since we're the leaders.

So if, in the next few days, people could share, I'll send a press release out tomorrow morning to you. If you could pass it on, send it out, and then we'll be doing outreach, reach out to your networks, etc. So that was the first thing I wanted to make sure was on the radar screen. A few other quick things.

Tomorrow our posting will go up. So I'm going to send everyone a final copy to look at, but it’s pretty much finalized, just so you're in the loop. And —

HalladayPosting for the permanent position.

CinaYes, I'm sorry. The posting for the permanent superintendent position will go out tomorrow. So I have a final draft. I'm going to give some final feedback to the search firm, Ray & Associates, tomorrow, and then they will get it out. With that being said, we're going to launch into the advertising phase. And this is the first significant amount of money we're going to be spending.

We had budgeted $5,000 for advertising, and Gary Ray's initial request for advertising was $4,800 and... hold on, I'll tell you exactly.

HalladayThat's all right.

CinaI'm obsessed. $4,809. So we still have $191 to spend on advertising. That's covering what he says we absolutely must do. He's also recommending an additional $2,114. I think the ad hoc can talk about do we need to do that or not? It’s extra advertising. But the basic advertising is $4,809. So that being said, that's gonna be an expense that we're gonna have to incur soon, so I wanted people to be aware of that.

The next thing is — so the posting, advertising — just an update on the timeline: That the job posting will close on January 9th, and we will start video interviews, the SAHC will start its screening process January 12th.

Then there will be second rounds the week of the 19th of January. Final rounds the week of the 26th, first week of February.

CommissionerWhen you say January 12th, it’s only video, or some will be?

CinaThe first round is that the SAHC will view 10-12 videos that the search firm generates, and then Ad Hoc will narrow down that pool to five or six. The next week the Ad Hoc will conduct video interviews that go back and forth, and then the last week of January, first week of February, is when we will bring candidates, the finalists, two to three finalists to Burlington to do interviews with the community, with the board, with the SAHC, with the teachers, and with students.

So I can give more info on that stuff later, but I just wanted you all to know the general timeline, where we're at.

HalladayIf I might, if people want to see a detailed timeline, it is up on the board docs for last night's SAHC meeting. You can pull it up in detail there.

CinaAnd I'm gonna forward the board members a message, but if the public wants to know, that is where the public can find it. If you check our agendas for the last few SAHC meetings, a lot of these documents will be posted. And next week's SAHC meeting, some of these documents will be posted for that meeting.

I think those are the main things I needed to cover. I'm just taking a moment to make sure there's nothing... Does anyone have any questions for me?

HalladayThank you, Commissioner Cina. ITC?

KirkWow. I'm sorry, I'm not prepared. So, a couple things in our meeting, our last meeting, was, yes, somebody asked me, there was a leak in the Hunt roof. To the best of my knowledge, they are taking care of it, or it is being taken care of by the end of the holiday. I'm not exactly sure how that's playing out.

My next meeting is next Tuesday night, and I was hoping to get an answer, final on that. I don't know if Paul has any update on that leak, the floor at the gym, if there's any issue.

CommissionerIt’s fixed.

PaulHarvest festival coming up.

KirkThe floor...?

PaulI don't think they're playing basketball on it quite yet, but they will be soon.

KirkSeems to be okay?

CommissionerI think they are.

KirkNo big games, okay, good. Champlain Lighting for the PCBs is... There was only the library left. So that's pretty much done.

Gotta read my notes, sorry.

CommissionerCan I ask a question?

KirkSure, go.

CommissionerIt looks like you have a meeting scheduled this Thursday?

KirkYeah, that's part of what I... I do have a meeting posted for this Thursday. It’s to meet with the Champlain Housing Land Trust to get a feel for what’s going on with St. Joe's School and how the Burlington School District, Champlain Housing Land Trust, and if we're gonna pursue it, they're gonna pursue it, or we're gonna pursue it together. It’s a conversation — no action will be taken.

But it’s a conversation so that next Tuesday we can actually discuss it in the ITC meeting. But it is an ITC meeting. We're just trying to get a feel for [unintelligible] Champlain Housing Land Trust. They've contacted us and they'd like to know our thoughts. And to be honest, I don't know what our thoughts are until we actually sit down and talk to 'em, 'cause I don't know what theirs are.

And we're working on a five-year capital plan. And that's really where the ITC's at right now.

HalladayThank you. Commissioner Cina, you thought of something [additional]. That's fine.

CinaThere's two things that I wanted to say, and I, looking at the list, missed it: One was just that Nathan Lavery had prepared for me a little update on what we've spent so far; it’s not a lot, but I wanted to let you know that so far, on the search, we have spent $382.06. And that's on food and supplies for meetings, and for our minute taker. So just to keep you in the loop, that's how much we've spent so far. And I'm hoping that in our next meeting, I will give you a more detailed budget report that'll reflect our payments that go to Ray & Associates and to the advertising.

The second thing is that in order to prepare for the interviewing process, we need to do a little training. So everyone in the district does, everyone who's on hiring committee does anti-bias training. So I'll be in touch with you about ideas about how we might be able to do that training. I have a few, and we don't need to get into it now. But you know, I have a few ideas about how we can do it in a way that might be flexible.

Another thing is I believe that we should have at least one meeting to prepare for interviews. So taking — maybe it’s an ad hoc meeting that everyone comes to, or a board meeting, a special meeting, where we spend two hours preparing for the interviews. Meaning, familiarizing ourselves with the questioning processes, and the measurement tools that are being used up to the stage of the full board, so that there's some integration between all the work that's being done before the full board makes its decision.

And so that could be in January, like right before we do it, but I just want to share that with you, that there's two trainings that I would suggest that we do. One is the standard anti-bias training, and one is a preparation for the interview process.

HalladayCommissioner Porter?

PorterI'm just curious if, by any chance, any of these trainings are available online or through electronic? So that those that can't make it, can still get the same training, and it’s logged and official.

CinaWell, I'm unaware of that being an option. I know that one way of being flexible with the anti-bias training is, I've been talking with Nicky Fuller about how, maybe instead of doing one for the board where everyone has to build into their schedule another training, that she might identify which district trainings we would be welcome to attend. And then you could choose one out of however many that are at different times of the day and different days of the week, so that —

CommissionerThat would work out —

CinaFor the anti-bias piece. For the interview training piece, I feel strongly it would benefit us if we all sat down for an hour or two before we did the interviews, and as a group, did some work to prepare for that with our consultants. And that would mean Gary Ray and Bill [Bryan]. And I don't think we could do that online. And I'm talking about one two-hour meeting to prepare for interviewing.

At the very least, to make sure we're all on the same page in how we're making this decision. And also in terms of public concern about the integrity of the process — I think it adds integrity for people to know that we took the time, just a little bit of time, to make sure we're on the same page going into the interviews — in terms of compliance with law, with the process that was used up to that point in terms of candidate selection.

So that being said, I hear your concern. Hopefully, maybe the piece we can budge on is the anti-bias. But I don't know if there's an electronic way to do the second piece, because there's an element of group dynamic to it.

HalladayThank you. Commissioner Kirk, you had something quickly?

KirkYeah. I forgot one other thing: There's a new bargaining group with the ITC that we're gonna have to contend with too, as well. I forgot to bring that up. That was it.

HalladayThank you. Diversity and Equity?

SeguinoWe met last week, and the district brought forward a strategic diversity plan that they had brought the month before with some revisions. They were very responsive to the changes, some of the things that we asked them to address. It’s online. We think it’s an excellent plan. It has a timeline, it has measurable outcomes. I think it’ll be useful for them to be able to track progress, and it’ll help us as well.

We also had a diversity training on Sunday, and this is more for the public cameras than others. And I think it was great. I'm gonna ask if a board member could comment on it. I just want to say that a few board members were not there. I think it’s impossible for everybody to be at all of these things. There are a variety of reasons that kept people from being able to be at this meeting.

I just look forward to us — there will be another one. People identified what they thought the focus of the future one would be, and we'll see just how many people we can get at the next training. But all in all, I thought it was great. And I don't know if anybody here would like to just reflect on the training itself.

HalladayCommissioner Kleman?

KlemanI thought it was fantastic. And to me, in the field I work in, a lot of it felt very natural and normal to me. But I've realized as I was going through it that I was perceiving things in a different way in terms of how can I bring things that I sort of do in my daily life into school board matters and into the superintendent search? And how can I refocus sort of, how can I challenge myself to think differently of my own role as a commissioner?

It was really useful, and I thought it was fun, but that's me. [laughs] So...

HalladayThank you. Anyone else who'd like to add a comment to that? Commissioner Cina?

CinaYeah, I've been through a lot of cultural competency training in my career, and I thought this was an excellent example of cultural competency training. And I felt that our presenter, Sam, did a really good job of talking about a lot of very sensitive issues in a way that was non-threatening and inclusive, and meeting people where they were at. And if this is the training that our staff is getting, then I think it’s a great opportunity for professional development that we're providing our staff.

So...

KlemanI also heard from a staff member who's been doing the training, and she loved it. She was really excited to go to day two after one full day.

HalladayAnd those trainings have been yesterday and today, for what, 50 staff members, roughly, I believe? Yeah, Commissioner Shumski?

ShumskiJust Stephanie, you mentioned another training. Do you have a date yet?

SeguinoNo, but I was thinking like later in the spring.

ShumskiOkay.

HalladayCommissioner Curry?

CurryKyle was first.

DodsonYeah. Just so, going on, I also, Kat, had heard very many good things from staff. So I asked Sam — I guess this is the fifth cohort of Burlington staff and teachers who've gone through, and I've heard a lot of good feedback. I thought he was just an incredibly skilled facilitator, he knew his stuff. It’s really hard —

One thing he did a very good job of, I thought, was made the training about all of us. It’s easy in a training like that for it to be about the trainer or their dynamic with us. He got himself out of the way, I thought, and really gave us things to consider, and I thought really framed it. The work is about each individual. How you respond when things go down.

I love the fact that it’s not about me until I'm triggered by it, then it’s about me. And I think that that's really powerful. So two big thumbs up, you did a really nice job.

HalladayCommissioner Curry.

CurryI just want to mention that the minutes are online, and that we're gonna get a PowerPoint — as I understand it, the slides that he showed. And those will be... I don't mean online, I mean on Board Docs. And to also say that I really enjoyed the training. I thought that what I got out of it was how easy it is for us to focus on our differences rather than to focus on our similarities. And how we can get beyond that.

HalladayKyle, Curriculum Committee?

DodsonCurriculum Committee. So at our last meeting we finally had the beginning of some data showing spring 2014 [unintelligible] data versus fall 2014 [unintelligible] data, as we continue to try to hone in on what’s really happening in the district as it relates to this framework or assessment tool for measuring elementary school kids' literacy, is widely respected. It’s a gold standard.

And so you can look at it and there are guidelines for where a young person should be if they're on grade level. And so we're using that versus where students actually are to identify discrepancies, gaps, if you will. And then we're gonna dig a little closer and see what we're doing when we see that. A, do we have that data?

When we see that, do we respond? Are there interventions? How are those interventions playing in? The particulars of spring versus fall — is there learning loss over the summer? That's a national phenomenon, that students have something, learning that goes on in the spring, and then depending on what sort of activities they're exposed to over the summer, they're able to retain it.

Some, relatively few, grow. Many lose, in terms of where they were in the spring. So we're trying that look really closely at that. Once again, this is all about that trying to hone in on third grade literacy outcomes, because there's a lot of correlations, a lot of things that research shows us about not good things happening to students who do not achieve that reading proficiency.

The somewhat glib mantra is K-3, learn to read; 3-beyond, read to learn. Meaning, so much of the curriculum is predicated on that ability to work with text to help you understand what you need to do in Soc Studies, Science, Mathematics, etc. We're going to continue conversations. The United Way has a push that's also — there's a big push around early childhood, the city, the state.

So we're trying to loop into that, because that very much connects with the work we're trying to do. Make as many alliances as we can. And lastly, we're beginning conversations within the board, as are various sub-committees, all of whom do work in areas that either impact or would be impacted by budget, to start talking about how our individual committee work plays into our discussions about the budget that we're preparing.

HalladayAny questions for Commissioner Dodson or the Curriculum Committee?

KlemanI'm just curious about the standards and meeting the standards. Is that information broken down by school as well?

DodsonIt is.

KlemanAnd we can get, we can see that somewhere?

DodsonYeah, there is. We'll make that available. It should be. I asked it to be put on Board Docs, but we'll get it up there, because it doesn’t identify individual students. So just one quick interesting thing: So what we see is, so we used what the data tells us in letters, the letter. Many of you have kids. It'd be, "My kid's reading at M, they're reading at a J."

And we moved that to a proficiency [unintelligible], kind of more into the kind of standardized test numbers, what that says. And if we look at what’s happening at the higher level, there's less change. So at the end of the year the students who test at a high level, the numbers are the same, but the students that test in the middle, there seems to be a switch from...

So threes, which is at the "proficient", decrease. And there's more twos and ones. Fours stay pretty consistent. Now, we don't know what happens with cohorts. We don't know if all those fours are the same fours, we gotta look more closely. But if you look at it quickly. And that would, intuitively, probably, I bet we would find that a disproportionate number of fours are kids who have privileged experiences, they're going to museums, they have books everywhere.

They're having these conversations. And more things happening in the summer that would help them maintain. And some of the others who don't maybe have that access. But that's a hypothesis, but we'd have to look closer to understand that.

KlemanThank you.

DodsonA separate conversation, maybe somewhat connected, is, we've been having a conversation about the issue of class rank at the high school. So what Burlington does is we do not have weighted class rank. Scott, maybe you can help me. We're not alone in that. There are many other communities that, the same thing.

And what that would mean is that if Kevin and I are taking a curriculum, Kevin has AP, I have the regular class, he gets a B, I get a A+, my A+ counts for more in class rank, because there's no weighting to say that he had a more rigorous course schedule, and therefore that B should get some weight that helps him be apples to apples with me.

And a concern by a parent that that impacts, perhaps negatively, students, particularly with the most selective schools, because class rank is a metric that the most selective schools look at. So we're deep in a conversation — that conversation has moved. The high school principal, Amy Mellencamp, has been meeting with this parent and doing some work to help that parent and others, who might ask, understand how we got to where we are, what the understanding is about how that plays out, how our students actually do in terms of their admission to highly selective colleges, etc.

So that's an ongoing conversation.

KlemanI would think also that colleges would recognize the different schools that rank differently, and kind of weight that. Is that —

DodsonThat's... The argument would be a much more holistic, that colleges get this, and that at the end of the day they see through. There's so many different ways you put yourself in front of a college — that's the argument. So there's ongoing, and providing data to substantiate why the high school is arriving where it is, and why the high school doesn’t believe it disadvantages students who take that more —

ShumskiAnd if I may, Kat, the reason why the parent brought it up is 'cause, I assume her student, her son is looking towards the Princeton and the Yale. And one of the things that she talked about is that she had some stats — it’s not exact [unintelligible], like 90% of the incoming class was in the top five percent. So what happens is, to this parent — and again, this parent was extremely careful not to say...

They like Burlington's inclusionary system, and it’s not trying to get away from that, but just trying to reconcile that with something that says, some of these institutions put... As much as we don't want them to put a tremendous amount of weight — and many schools have... Amy Mellencamp came to our committee meeting. She not only met with the parents, she met with us, she told us about what a lot of colleges are doing.

But the reality is there's some colleges out there, like the Princetons, who have not moved away from it. So how does that impact our highest achievers in terms of trying to get into those schools? That's what we're looking at.

KlemanOkay, thank you.

HalladayCommissioner Stoll, Finance.

StollSo I invite people to read the minutes if you want details, but many people were at the last finance meeting. The thing that sort of came through most importantly is that we got a estimate from the administration about what it would be to maintain our current program and staffing levels into next year. So we're talking about the fiscal '16 budget.

And if we maintain everything at exactly the same rate, it looks like it would be about a 4.4% increase in the budget, which I think equates to $2.9 million. I'm pulling that out. So the finance committee then requested that the administration go back and bring us back a couple of different scenarios. And so they are working on those.

And one scenario would be to maintain a level budget, all right? So require some changes in programming, but maintain a level budget. And the other scenario would be to maintain a level budget minus the expected reduction in pilot funds that we're getting. So it’s slightly below.

So there's no decision-making here; we're just getting information, and we're looking forward to having that come back so that we can see what those scenarios look like. Yes?

ShumskiAnd there was one other option, which is based on Ed Gomo's report, is that we also, as the finance department, come up with a number that would be a zero percent tax increase. So not having to do with the budget, but having to do with the tax implications, based on where the statewide education funding system is. Until Montpelier makes a decision next spring, we won't know for sure, but we can kinda guess.

And one of Ed Gomo's recommendations was, "You should do a zero percent tax increase for your base." So we want to know what does that number look like? To be a zero percent increase, what dollar figure do we have to get at?

StollDid you want to —

KirkI did have a question, Miriam. The amount that you said, the first amount with four percent increase, was that including the 1.4% decrease that we're gonna get in pilot funds?

StollNo.

KirkSo we're really looking at a $3.5 million increase? Because we're gonna lose that $1.5 million —

StollRight, yes. If you maintain level.

KirkYes, okay.

StollThat was just a starting point. That was just —

KirkNo, that's my only question. I just want to be clear about that loss of that $1.4 million from the city.

StollSo the next step in the budget process is that, what we're going to be doing in a few minutes tonight, which is to be giving the administration some direction and finalization of our goals for the budget, and then they will be coming back with their estimates, which they will come up with based on looking at our different goals and criteria.

So they're going to be working hard the next 12 days to get that to happen. We met today, and they will try and get that information to us just about a week prior to our finance committee meeting. So I'd encourage everybody to read that when it’s on Board Docs, and to come to the meeting. That would be great.

HalladayAnd also at the meeting will be...?

StollYeah, I'm getting there.

HalladayOh, I'm sorry, I thought you were wrapping up.

StollNo. And then two more things. One of them is Ed Gomo's report did come out. And so it’s online, and I'd encourage everyone who hasn’t had a chance to read it, to please look at it. The administration has it, they're looking at it. And I am encouraging all of us to also look at it, and what I'm hoping to do is to set up sort of a workshop. Ed Gomo has said he would come. So any board members who would like to come and talk with Ed Gomo about it — administrators too are invited.

And then that would probably be after our next finance committee meeting. So I'll invite everyone to that and hope you can come. Again, it would be not decision-making, just a working session so that we can all understand his recommendations a little bit more. And then the final thing is the audit report. So the fiscal '14 audit report is coming in. And we're gonna get a presentation at the next finance committee meeting. So I'd encourage everyone to come, and it will also be on Board Docs about a week before the meeting.

Will it be on Board Docs or in hard copy?

Male VoiceWe'll certainly post it on Board Docs.

StollBut we can probably get hard copies too. Okay. Great. So I think that's the wrap-up. Anyone have any questions about finance? Yes?

CinaJust two. When is the date of the meeting again?

HalladayTwo weeks from today.

StollYeah, the fourth Tuesday.

CinaI can't do math... 25th?

Halladay25th.

CinaOkay, and it’s at seven?

StollIt’s at seven.

CinaAnd then another question which maybe we shouldn’t get into here is — but it’s a question I have, so I'll put it out there, and you can always say, "Let's talk about that at finance or outside of the meeting." Is there a reason why we're approaching the budget — like you mentioned that Ed Gomo suggested this thing about the numbers. I'm not gonna try to repeat it exactly.

But what I'm wondering is, is there a reason why we're going that way versus building the budget up from the bottom? Because my understanding is the direction the board had been going in, or that boards have been going in, is this idea of, you identify the priorities, and then you have the staff build a budget that's student-centered.

And it sounds like the way we're doing it, instead of being [strains]-based and building it up around our goals, we're kind of saying you have to keep it under this number based on what you used to have. So it creates this system where we're looking at what exists and we're trimming it down, versus building something.

It’s a philosophical thing, and I just wonder if that's something we're going to talk about more, or if there's a reason why we're not doing it that way.

StollYou know, the finance committee has been talking about this approach for some time. It’s been difficult to set up a formal budget creation process, because of all the different things that have been happening this summer. And so what Ed Gomo has suggested to us — and I think what the majority of the Finance Committee believes — and I don't know if this is speaking for everyone — is that we are really in something of a transition year, and we're in a year where our primary goal, what we've committed to the community, is that we're going to try and come in on budget this year, and that we're going to use this year to sort of understand more thoroughly so that we can move to the approach that you're talking about.

I think that the sense is that at this point we just simply cannot build it from the bottom up. But our hope is that through this process, we're going to be moving to that. Now, that said, we're asking the administration to come back with a budget, and they can choose the way that they are going to formulate this budget. And I don't know what practice they will use to do that.

It’s very possible that they could build a budget from the bottom up and bring that to us. So the way it’s done, we're, at this point, the administration has control of that. But I think really, we were really looking at this as an interim year, and we're gonna do the best we can. And unfortunately, I don't think this year we can build from the bottom up to the extent that we will be able to next year.

So that's my answer for that. So it’s certainly a good goal; I don't think we're quite there yet.

HalladayActually, your question is a logical flow into the last part of this meeting, in that way back in June, I believe, upstairs, second floor of Burlington College, put together board goals. And those board goals are kind of a value statement that we have. And those board goals are really meant to reflect the large priorities that we as a board seek to guide the education.

And we had a very very limited number of goals around fiscal responsibility, around resolving the leadership questions that we had, and then around greater communication of what we're trying to do. Additionally, each committee created their own goals. And the idea, then, is that these goals that each committee created, and then the larger board goals, provide the skeleton by which the administration builds a budget, to say if you...

A very simplistic version that I like to use to try to communicate this is, when you have a school like IAA that has defined its goal as integrating the arts right from the title, if you have a limited amount of funds and you want to have a drama teacher and you want to have a Spanish teacher, you choose the drama teacher because you have this goal of integrating the arts. It’s not that the Spanish teacher's not of value; it’s just that we have decided this as a school, in the IAA example, that we're going to use to drive our budget decisions.

Likewise, scaling it up to the district as a whole, that these goals should be, when the administration's trying to decide between competing priorities, would be to look back at the goals that we've outlined in order to figure out what the best direction to go. I would like to complicate this just a little bit, and I'm unfortunately not prepared to pull this out right here tonight.

But I also think that it’s worthwhile — and I think I have an electronic version of it, so... The district, or the Partnership For Chance has been involved in some very very good work as part of their — help me, it’s getting too late at night — I want to say Theory of Change. It’s not the Theory of Change. Logic model. Thank you.

Their logic model. And in the logic model, if you can imagine, on the far right end is the outcomes that they're trying to see. And that logic model I think really meshes very nicely with what we're trying to do here. And it’s a larger purpose around student-centered learning. It reflects Act 77 that we heard Beth Brody talk about earlier this evening, and it absolutely fits in with what Kyle was talking about by literate by third grade.

It fits in with the goals of, certainly of the Diversity and Equity Committee, and the like. And so I think that should be an additional piece of information to guide the budget development. And ultimately, a budget is a statement of values. And we've kind of created this framework, and it’s up to the district, then, to kind of create a budget that — the administration to create a budget that reflects these values that we've laid out.

So, you know, I guess, return to see if there's any particular guidance in terms of these board goals that members of the board would like to add to help in the creation of our budget.

Yeah, I'm giving —

CommissionerAre you offering an avenue for people to submit these comments outside of this meeting?

HalladaySo this is... Exactly. So there are two things. One, I was using my teacher wait time. I wasn't gonna call on anyone for a little bit, because I know that's a lot to throw on people, especially at 10:30 at night. And it also may be not the right forum for doing this. You may need some quiet, non-industrial lights above you to really reflect, to make sure that the board goals that your committees, and that the board as a whole, really still reflect your thinking, and time for thinking about them further.

So if anyone wants to make a comment right now regarding those goals, I welcome those. If anyone would just rather have some time to think about it, knowing that the budget is going to be a reflection of those goals, so if you don't have a comment on those goals, then you've kind of lost your right to complain about the budget, you know?

Yeah, Miriam, Commissioner Stoll?

StollSo the document that Liz send out to us on Board Docs is the document that you're talking about?

HalladayThat is the document that we created in here.

StollOkay. And so that's the document that we would hand over to the administration as the key to their work, their next step in creation of the budget.

HalladayExactly.

StollSo, you know, I think that we should —

PorterI'm sorry. I don't think that's true. I think, Liz, what you just sent us was just what we did last week.

CurryThe minutes.

PorterRight.

HalladayOh, oh.

PorterThat's not, that wasn't... That was the board goals for the budget, and as much as it reflected the committee goals that we had chosen back in June. So I just want to make sure that it’s —

StollSo where are those?

CurryI can send them to everybody —

StollBut was that...? There was something that was on a Google Doc that you, a couple —

HalladayRight. That's —

CurryThat was the minutes.

HalladayWell, there's also a Google Doc that came, I think it originated with me, where I took all of the notes from —

CurryRight. I can make sure that was everyone —

Halladay— June and shared it with everybody back in July or something.

CurryOh, you already shared it. I can share it again.

StollAt the planning meeting — may I just ask a question? At the planning meeting, you guys worked on something, right?

PorterThat's exactly right.

StollSo that's in the minutes. So is that the document, the working document at this point?

CurryThat's the only document that — that's the only file that documents any discussion of budget priorities from a board level, but that was just the planning committee.

StollSo would that make sense, for us to look at that document and talk a little about it now, even though it’s 10:30? And the reason I — I understand, I'm really tired also — but we're asking the administration to do an awful lot of work in a short time, and I don't think it’s really fair for us to give them something, and then to come back in three days and say, "Whoops, we changed our mind."

So I just would encourage us to maybe look at that document now and have a discussion about whether we're comfortable with that as the starting point.

PorterSo that was — and Liz, catch me if I'm wrong on this one, but — what was discussed in the planning meeting, I think we should actually separate that from June. So June's goals really weren't reflective of the 2016 budget.

June's goals were how we were gonna operate within this year's budget.

CurryThat's my understanding.

PorterOkay. So what we discussed at the planning meeting was the discussion of the board goals that would be meshed next with the mandates and the priorities of the administration, to give us the point of discussion.

So certainly, it’s —

CurrySo we should look at that document as a board, because so far only the planning committee has looked at that document.

PorterI thought it was sent out to everybody. I got a copy of it.

CurryNo, that was just the minutes from the planning committee, so that went to the planning committee.

PorterWhich is reflective of these goals that we discussed.

TrumanI'm sorry to be obstinate. I'm philosophically opposed, unless something is an urgent, pressing matter, time-sensitive, to be meeting and having extensive discussions beyond 10:30. That's how I'm functioning, and I recognize the importance to staff on this. We're fishing around, trying to identify what document we're looking for. If there's something to be sent out, here's the document, here's the kind of comments we're looking for, here's who you send it to. I am happy to invest the time soon to do that.

But otherwise, I'm walking out the door shortly.

HalladayCommissioner Curry?

CurryI'd just like to suggest that at the finance committee meeting, we discuss the budget goals, and that if people would like to add feedback, send it to Miriam. Before November 25th.

HalladayCommissioner Cina?

CinaI'd like to second that idea. I was gonna suggest that perhaps we do it at another meeting, whether it’s a special board meeting or finance. But I would like to suggest that we make time specifically to look at this. Where we come prepared and clearheaded.

HalladayWe do have a time urgency on this, however. I think that having an additional meeting is not practical. Just because we're already asking the administration to do a lot of work in a very short amount of time, in putting together those proposed budgets. I'm not opposed, Brian, or I'm not opposed, anyone, to saying we have to have this discussion right now. We don't have to have this discussion right now.

What I think the board needs to make a commitment to, however, is saying, "I am going to look at this, I am going to respond to it, and it needs to be done within 48 hours."

TrumanAnd that's what I was suggesting.

HalladayNo, I know.

TrumanIt’s like here's the group email, and he's the parameters for that. And it’s incumbent on us to take that responsibility.

HalladayCommissioner Curry.

CurryI think there's a lack of clarity about what people are actually responding to. So I would just like to request that each committee chair caucus with your committee and develop some kind of consensus of the budget priorities for your committee. Whether that's on the phone or one by one, email, I think that people don't know, actually, what they're responding to. So...

HalladayYes?

StollI would really like to implore us not to go this route. The Finance Committee in combination with the administration created a timeline for this budget, and I thought in fact that this was going to be a primary part of this particular meeting tonight, and we were going to have a discussion where we would look at the document that Planning came up with and we would walk out of here with a sort of a consensus around what the priorities are, and the administration would have that in hand.

And I feel, I fear that if we don't do that tonight, we're basically not going to be able to meet the timeline that was jointly created by the Finance Committee and the administration. And we will be leaving the administration without direction on how to craft budgets that we've asked them to bring to us on the 25th. Or five days before the 25th.

So I know Nathan is here, and I noticed your hand was up — if I could ask him to make the comment. Would you like to...?

NathanI think it’s been largely covered in there. In short, like the guidance that [we] provided to the principals and the department heads was to use a combination of the law, education quality standards that the state set, and the board's goals in order to develop their list, their budgets. And so absent one of those three pieces, you're going to get results that don't reflect that. And so I think at this point we've told them that they need to respond to our office with their budgets by a week from yesterday.

And we told them that they'd have the guidance from the board today. So again, the board doesn’t have to provide that guidance, but folks should just be aware that to the extent it’s not provided, it won't be incorporated in the budgets that are developed and that come before the finance committee on the 25th.

HalladayCommissioner Curry?

CurryI'll just offer again that the minutes from the planning committee had a fair amount of guidance in them. I'm just saying procedurally they don't reflect any type of discussion at the board level. But they had a collection of priorities from the committee chairs. So I'm just offering that as a way to try and move the conversation forward. We're out of time, we didn’t really have a clear framework for this discussion.

So I think we have to do the best we can. Another email is we all email Patrick or someone authorized to communicate with Nate about, or the superintendent, about the budget priorities.

HalladaySo let me ask a question here. I'm looking at the board goals for budget development from the planning committee. And Nathan, I'm asking you here — beyond what’s on that...

CurryDo you have the document, Nate?

NathanNo.

PorterNate, I can send it right to you. You want me to?

NathanSure.

CurryYou have the minutes, you're sending the minutes, right? Not the annual —

HalladayThe minutes for the planning committee.

PorterYep.

HalladayAnd the question is what beyond that would be — what further guidance would be helpful?

NathanWell, having not seen it, I can just say if the minutes are the guidance that the board wants to provide, then we will use what’s in the minutes as our guidance. It sounded like there was potentially concern about folks having not seen what’s actually in those minutes here. So if you want to say use those minutes as your guidance for budget development purposes, then we will do that.

But if you don't want to take any action to kind of endorse a particular set of guidance, then we won't have that to work with during our development process. So it’s that simple.

PorterSo it’s section four of that document, Nate.

CurryWould it be helpful to read these out loud?

HalladayI don't know that it would be helpful to read 'em out loud. I just think it would be hard to follow if we were trying to read that out loud. Commissioner Truman?

TrumanCan I ask for clarification now? I am very serious about it. I recognize the deadline. I am not prepared to have this conversation tonight. I apologize if there was a misunderstanding that there was a productivity arrived at by the end of this meeting. I'm not gonna have this conversation right now because I don't feel I can contribute in a way that's to meet the intent of what we're trying to do, not at a quarter of 11 at night. If my committee wants to email me their thoughts and reflections about this, and someone give me, whether it should be to Commissioner Stoll or to you, to channel that information as to whether Policy Committee's goals should be addressed or amended as such, then I'm happy to do that for tomorrow or the morning after that.

If we're having this conversation tonight, then I'm stepping out. But I'm not sure where we're going at this particular moment.

HalladayCommissioner Dodson?

DodsonI would just agree quickly. I mean I understand the urgency, but looking at it here, it’s not like an easy up or down. We'd have to go through it. There's 15, 20 sentences of things here that I'm looking at for the first time. So we'd have to consider it and discuss it to do it justice. I think it would be a solid conversation, a 45-minute kind of weighing in and saying what we think, and distilling it down, which does seem like it would be a difficult conversation to have right now and do it justice.

HalladayI guess the problem that I'm really having with this is how this conversation is any different than what we did in June.

CommissionerThey do look similar.

HalladayExactly. And we use... I see your hand, Brian. What we did in June was to look at those exact goals and then to filter those into larger board goals. And it’s unclear to me how this is a different process.

CinaYeah, I've been processing this while everyone's talking, and thinking if we're going to talk about it, at least I'd be ready, and what I see standing out to me is that we summarized four main goals from that retreat. They are financial management, student achievement, infrastructure and climate. So it sounds like we did a lot of work at that time to distill four main goals. And we talk about our overall goals, but that's our job description; that's not necessarily our goals.

Finding a superintendent, passing a budget. That's our job description. That's not budget goals. But if we look at the four main goals we came up with from the retreat — financial management, student achievement, infrastructure, climate — those could be possibly modified and passed on now.

HalladayCommissioner Porter?

PorterI just want to be clear where we're going with this. What we did in June was 2014-2015. It’s on the meeting minutes, it’s our goals, it’s the board goals, okay? These goals are not reflective of those. These are the goals that have to reflect what are the important pieces, what are the priorities that we have as we go through this tough budget period?

We're not going to have to... In other words, our goals get matched with their mandates, which can't get touched. And their priorities — I'm looking at the administration, right? And that gets married and says I have X number of dollars. What I look to make sure is in there as much as possible is based on their priorities and mandates and our goals.

Okay? So it would be — to give you an idea, a goal that we might say is, "Really want to get that elevator into Edmunds Elementary," that would be a budget goal for 2016.

HalladayI don't think that that’s a board budget goal.

CinaNo, ours would be, I think, we want to improve infrastructure, and then staff would say these are the —

PorterWe have to be more specific than that.

CommissionerMaybe improve access?

HalladayI think the goal would be for infrastructure or access, and then with that information they would say, "Here's the finite resources, this is the one that we want to be..."

PorterBut again, I think we owe it to them to be as precise as possible, so that they can... I'm sorry, go ahead, Liz.

CurryWell, the document —

PorterLet me call on you. [laughs]

CurryThe document says to ask the administration to use data-driven decision-making in the budget. And it outlines a couple goals from other committee. So I'd like to suggest that we ask the administration to go with it and bring back a budget based on what we have here. Each committee chair represented goals, except Commissioner Stoll and Commissioner Dodson.

So perhaps they could review the document, and get back to Nate by tomorrow. All the other chairs were there and reflected the work of their committees.

StollYou're talking about what’s in the minutes?

CurryMm-hm.

StollYeah, and Mark was there, he reflected our...

PorterWell, I hope I did, but you know what? Take 'til tomorrow and take a look at that and make sure you agree with that, Stephanie.

StollI will. I want to take some personal responsibility for this, but I also want to say that I'm disappointed in how this discussion came about and how it was put at the end, and how there wasn't anything for us to look at ahead of time. And perhaps I should've stepped up and done that, but it’s been the practice — you know, I do the Finance Committee, and this was another step, this was outta there.

So I want to apologize to the administration for not following through on something that we had determined we would do. And I also want to apologize to the public, because I think that this is going to delay our process, because what’s gonna happen is we're gonna come back with something, and we're gonna be hard-pressed to be able to understand how decisions were made, because we didn’t give a clear document.

It’s easy to say something like, "We're looking at third grade, we want everyone to read by the third grade," but that's a very hard thing to operationalize. Does that mean if they have a question between paying for a high school class and paying for a reading teacher, they're gonna take the reading teacher? Well, maybe.

But maybe not. Because maybe there could be another competing goal that could get in the way of that. So I feel like we're doing a disservice, but I feel at this point I would be ready to keep going and to have a good, juicy 45-minute discussion to at least give them something to go with. We have had meetings that have lasted longer than this before.

That said, I don't think that there's the will to do that. So I guess the second best thing would be for me to, for Kyle to look at it, for me to look at it, for perhaps things to get sent to the chair, and for the chair to document some sort of thing by tomorrow end of day that could be sent to you as a start.

And hopefully that, if it wasn't good enough, you could let us know, and we could work on it at the next Finance Committee meeting.

HalladayCommissioner Porter?

PorterQuestion of impact. We're striving for the 25th, which is a Tuesday, I believe, right?

HalladayCorrect.

PorterTo have the administrative team present the first draft budget to the finance committee. Are we gonna have a finance committee meeting the week of Thanksgiving?

StollYes, we are, and also we're striving for them to have it to us a week beforehand, so that we can actually look at it.

PorterGood, yeah. So what’s the impact of us not...?

StollWell, what the impact is, is it pushes everything back, and we're looking at having public hearings on the budget in December. So it really was a fairly tight schedule. I believe, you know, Paul, you and Stephanie Philips put it together, and it really is a fairly tight schedule. There's not a lot of wiggle room in there, is there?

PaulWell, I think Nathan spoke to, we're going to have to proceed as best we can. [unintelligible] going on.

PorterQuestion, sorry.

HalladayNo, no, you're fine.

PorterI'm just trying to get us through this. Would it be out of hand if the finance committee presented, the next day or two, presented, get together and had their goals? Expanding on what we already did on the meeting minutes, trying to stay within that realm. And with some things I don't think you're gonna have a problem with — make sure he has all the staff that he needs for the —

StollI feel very confident that the Finance Committee is reflected in here. I feel confident in what you did. So I don't feel that finance committee is out of the loop. I was hoping —

PorterOkay.

StollI think the notion is having something endorsed by the board as a whole is stronger than having something endorsed by the planning committee or having something endorsed by individual people. I feel like that, when the public says to us, "What priorities did you use?" to have a document that said, "These were the priorities that we gave to the administration," I think is a very strong statement.

PorterWe had the committee meeting. Ben was there, David was there, I was in proxy.

CurryStephanie was there.

PorterStephanie was there. And we had actually talked beforehand as to what were some of the important things. So I wonder how far off we really are.

HalladayI guess that's what I'm still struggling with. I'm looking at these priorities, and it’s unclear to me what further information needs to come from these priorities outside what’s there to give guidance. Commissioner Seguino?

SeguinoI really see Commissioner Stoll's point on this in terms of having the full board. But I do think structurally we do have that, in the sense that this is coming through the committees. But in deference to that, and sort of to shore up the sense that it is the full board, I would simply suggest that we give 24 hours to committee members to give feedback to their committee chairs that will then be channeled to Patrick to incorporate into this.

HalladayAnd I will make a commitment on early Thursday, if it works for you, Nathan, sometime during the day Thursday to meet with you in person, and make sure that any additional comments are reflected.

NathanI don't know that a meeting be required. Again, just so folks understand, we asked our principals and department heads to use a combination of information, including these board goals, and to have something back to our office by, it was a week this past Monday, so this coming Monday. So if folks here want more time, obviously I'm not going to send this out tonight and expect that there'll be any work done on whatever...

So if you wanted to move into tomorrow, but at a certain point, providing them with information on a Thursday, when they might have done the task or be in the process of wrapping it up, I feel like we run the risk of having them have already done a lot of the work, and either trying to go back and incorporate... I'm just not sure it will be as meaningful at that point. So certainly, if that's the best that folks feel like we can do, then we'll take the information.

I just think that you're losing ground.

HalladayI think that this is a good summary, reflecting the goals of the individual committees that would be a filter through which, either at the building level or at the district level, should be guiding the decisions. And kind of a rationale would be helpful from you as to when — give us some of those good versus good decisions that you had to make, and how this was helpful or what additional information would be helpful from the board in reaching those.

I see Commissioner Kirk's hand.

KirkNo, my hands aren't up.

HalladayOkay, I thought you were...

KirkNo, sorry. [laughs]

HalladayCan we have the will of the board to say, "Using this as guidance?" If there are specific comments that need to go beyond what’s reflected here, get them to me tomorrow. But lacking that, this is not in a pretty form in terms of for publication and the like, but I think it reflects the thinking of the individual committees and, by default, of the board as a whole.

NathanI can pledge to tidy it up before distribution. [laughter]

HalladayAnd I can help with that too. Yeah, Commissioner Stoll?

StollI think this is what we have to do. I'm not happy about it. I think this doesn’t give much guidance to a principal, quite frankly, if I look at these things. I can't see how any of these are really going to help a principal determine their budget. And I know that it’s not really our place to tell principals what to do, but I do think that they're looking to us for some general guidance about what’s important, and I don't think this gets it to them. So I was really hoping that we would have a meaty discussion tonight that would get to that point from where the planning committee started us.

But if Nathan is willing, feels like this is the best way to go... Another way to go would be to simply say we're going to have a delay, and we will have a special board meeting to talk about our goals, and everything will be pushed back two weeks, and we could also make that choice. Go back and update the thing.

But I guess I would ask, if I could, whether you think that's a better call, or whether you feel this will be good enough to get us going. And I'm sorry to add [unintelligible] in this point. I just don't want to make the call myself.

HalladayWhile they're thinking, go ahead.

DodsonYeah, I've got a concrete thing — something that would be helpful to me, particularly as one of the people who needs to look at this, is part of this feels to me like a continuation of our movement to a governance role, particularly after coming out of the sort of role that circumstances, I would argue, necessitated that we played moving into the summer. And if someone could articulate, looking at this here, what they think appropriate guidance would be, that isn't this, but that gives a principal something more specific.

That's an honest question. I'm thinking about what would that something be that's more specific than this, but doesn’t cross a boundary to where really I'm acting more like a superintendent or someone who's giving a directive around how I want you to perform as a... rather than governance.

StollI agree. That is exactly the conversation I thought we were going to have. Like, what is the level of guidance we want to have, and how does that flow out of our board goals? And we're not having that.

CommissionerWe could've if we started 30 minutes ago.

StollYes, we could've. [laughter]

NathanWe're thinking about it.

StollYeah, please.

PorterMay I ask a question, please?

HalladayYeah, please.

GiannoniI think I'm confused here. So far we received a 4.4% estimate from the administration. Is that true?

HalladayThat's if we were to carry forth this year's programs into next year — it would cost 4.4% more than fiscal '15 would be —

GiannoniOkay, so we've got that, and we've sent them back with a couple of varieties of zero. So how much guidance do they really need when [unintelligible] already going to be challenged —

HalladayWell, I think that's exactly [unintelligible]. They need this guidance to figure out where the cuts should come from.

Dodson[unintelligible] might say, "Don't touch this, because it’s such a high priority."

PorterCan I just...? We have to stop discussing whether or not we're going to discuss this, and figure out if we're going to discuss it or not.

HalladayWe're waiting for a response here.

PorterOkay. [laughs] I mean I don't mind pushing it back a couple of days and have another meeting. We've all done that 100 times. But if we're gonna discuss it, let's discuss it.

CommissionerI'd just like to say, you know, I think most of these schools, most of our principals are getting a lot of feedback from their team within the schools. I think they would know a lot of what they need to do, coming to this point.

NathanI think we don't have a compelling conclusion, but I think the concern is, if we delay any more in order to get better guidance, that the rest of the timeline is gonna become so condensed, including the portion for public input and the portion for us to do all the revisions based on the feedback that you folks hear from your constituents and that sort of thing.

So given that and where we are now, I think I feel better moving forward with these, even knowing that they might not provide as much guidance in some area... In some places they're really specific and it will be really clear and useful to us, and in other areas there won't be... When we're explaining the decisions that are made, there won't be as much reference to these, because they don't speak to some of those areas.

So I think at this point, given the schedule that we have and the concerns that I personally have about getting it all done, delaying any more in the hopes that we get better goals is probably not time well spent.

CurryThank you.

HalladayCommissioner Curry.

CurryCould I just ask that as you develop the budget, you also track a list of questions that you have for the board, if there are areas that need clarification from your perspective?

NathanSure. You mean specifically with the goals, like what did you mean by this, or...?

CurryYeah, so when we get to November 25th or whatever, you can bring those questions up.

NathanYeah. If they're forthcoming, we'll definitely pass 'em on.

HalladayEchoing Commissioner Stoll, I need to offer an apology too. I was not at the meeting, I was out of town, and I thought that there was a little bit more clarity that had been reached around the use of these in the planning committee meeting, and I'm sorry for wasting an extra half-hour late in the evening on that.

And I'm certainly committed to moving forward. Whatever additional guidance you find necessary, let us know immediately, and we can work through our committees to get some clarity around those. Before we adjourn, a reminder that beginning next month we're going to be moving these meetings to Contois Auditorium. I would've been tonight, but City Hall is closed because of Veterans Day.

DodsonIs that just a group meeting, or [unintelligible]?

HalladaySo there's going to be a schedule that's going to be coming out that we're going to start circulating committee meetings through the schools. Working on the development of that right now, but the committee meetings are going to be in the schools. Full board meetings will be at Contois.

CinaCan we keep search committee meetings here, though?

HalladayThat's fine. That's up to you, that's fine.

CinaThat's so confusing.

HalladaySeconded by Commissioner Porter. All in favor?

VariousAye.

HalladayOpposed.