Both boards of OCSU met at 6:00 PM at LR on October 27th to discuss the supervisory union’s assessments on the standards the state recently required them to self evaluate on. They also met to discuss a shift in the breakdown of the district assessment on the budgets of both boards. They discussed the Long-term Facilities Planning Team Report and whether to move to combine into one board. There also was an administrative report on sick pay for part time employees. The LR Post covered the meeting and these are the transcribed updates. The meeting was sparsely attended with only four members of the public present in the audience including the child of the admin team. There were several central office members present, including Superintendent Jackie Ramsay-Tolman; Melissa Fortuna, Business Manager; Principal Mark Forentino of Glover; Erica Harryman, Director of Instruction; Shannon Laliberty, Orleans Principal; Sandra Lapham, Director of Student Services; Jennifer Ullrich, Brownington Principal; Sharon Gonyaw, Lake Region Principal.
During the public comment period at the beginning of the meeting multiple community members asked the board what are the pros and cons of combining into one board and how that would look for representation of the individual schools. No one on the board commented at that point but at multiple points throughout the meeting different board members especially from the high school board. The LR Post then asked about the new policy of taking an hour of teachers sick time for being five minutes late to work, and how that would affect the ongoing contract negotiations with the union.The Post also asked if this policy was in place for administrators and other people who work in the district office as they do not have their contracts negotiated through the union. Neil Urie, Chairman of the EMS board said that this is the policy and that contract negotiations are ongoing.
Erica Harryman then presented the data that was collected this fall in the Star 360, and VTCAP testing that was done in the spring of last year. Currently 46.7% of students meet the reading benchmark and 46.1% meet the math benchmark on the Star 360 assessment. There were several questions from members of both boards about how high the actual benchmark is, and who sets that benchmark. Bernard White Jr., High school board member of Barton, asked why even with more pressure being put on teachers to make sure all students take this test some aren’t taking it. Mz Harryman said that sometimes students are absent or opt out of this test and it is the policy of the district not to force them to take it.
Melissa Fortuna gave a presentation on the assessments that the individual districts are required to pay to the SU. The way that these costs are distributed among both the EMS and HS districts currently doesn’t quite align with the state’s recommendation. Some assessments are only required to be paid by either EMS or the High-School. If they were to apply assessments on a per pupil basis for the assessments that currently aren’t, such as for the COFEC, special ed, and curriculum parts of the OCSU assessment, it would shift more of the burden of the assessments to the high school. Melissa is recommending that they shift the assessments to be all based off of enrollment. Melissa also said that with only one board there would be no need to do this if it was only one board. Barbara Postman from the high school board of Barton moved to change the current policy which decides assessments based off of a variety of ways to only based on population of the two boards. Richard Carbonetti, the chair of the high school board, from Albany, said that there would be a reduction in admin time and hopefully cost. Krista Mayer, EMS member from Glover said that she thought this may make it easier to pass budgets at the EMS level because it is a concern of the voters that the OCSU assessment are such a large percentage of the overall budget.Debbie Brunelle asked a clarifying question about whether some of the assessments that are contracted services would continue to be assessed based on use instead of enrollment and Melissa said they would be. Melissa also noted that when the state moves to a foundation formula model for determining school budgets this unequal split of the assessments would result in unequal spending on a per student basis at the high school and EMS levels. The motion to change to this new formula for distributing assessments passed unanimously by voice vote.
Superintendent Ramsay-Tolman said that to meet state law they would be giving part time employees who are non union and who work 18 hours a week or more paid sick time. This process has already started as of this year.
Superintendent Jackie Ramsay-Tolman went through how the board shall grade itself and the district as a whole on how it conducts business. There is a large number of standards that the state wants the board to evaluate itself on by using a rubric that has several indicators. Superintendent Ramsay-Tolman will be sending out a 29 page document that the board members will have to fill out. The evaluations have to be submitted by November 21st to the Agency of Education. Bernard White made the point that he thinks it would be more efficient to go through all this work on these standards and complete the forms the state is requiring if the boards were combined. It was noted that there is a significant administrative burden to go through all of these things.
The carousel meeting was adjourned at 7:14 PM.
Following the carousel meeting both of the boards met separately but at the same time. During the EMS meeting a report was given by Superintendent Ramsay-Tolman about the unfolding bussing situation. She said that there have been three cancellations in the past month. Currently they are waiting for background checks to get back from a viable candidate who already has a class c CDL. Butlers will be fully staffed with that hiring. Both Julie who operates Butlers and the mechanic have been driving along with a full time substitute currently so that they are able to run all of the routes.
Committee assignments were changed so that people who aren’t on the committees anymore could be removed from the list.
Dan Rook gave a report on the facilities committee and said that their next meeting was on the 27th of October. He also said they would be working on getting the word out about meetings through more channels in hopes of boosting attendance.
The EMS meeting adjourned at 7:33.
In the LR meeting there was much discussion of what the move to one board would look like. It was noted that this change would need to be voted on by the electorate. Many members wanted to see what it would look like but it isn’t clear who would figure that out and present it. Superintendent Ramsay-Tolman said that currently the district already acts as a unit on many things such as teacher contracts, and other policies are the same across the district. The changes would be one board and the budget. Jerry Piete said that he didn’t think there would be much pushback. This change isn’t being forced by the state, but might change the way the state looks at the district when they redraw the maps. Barbara thinks that the bureaucracy required to properly do the evaluation mentioned in the carousel meeting is costly and useless.
Sharon Gonyaw, Lake Region principal, said that the trunk or treat event was well attended. There was a bounce house and many different games presented for the kids. She also mentioned the modern band concert that happened on Friday October 24th. She said it was delightful and there was a spaghetti dinner before the concert that was free for the community. Gerry Cahill asked for a list of class sizes and then Barbara Postman made a motion for Principal Gonyaw to present those numbers to the board. It was passed by unanimous voice vote. The elevator contract has changed companies for the highschool and the elevators are going to be inspected by the new company before the impending date where their inspections become no longer valid.
Richard said that in a previous executive session about contract negotiations that was held with Rick Kelley and other union representatives things are going well.
Barbara Postman motioned to adjourn at 8:03 Pm and they adjourned by unanimous voice vote.
Link to packet provided for the meeting:07-21-25 Packet LR-EMS Carousel
