Attached and pasted below are the unapproved minutes for last week's school board meeting.

MORETOWN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL
School Board Meeting
Tuesday, December 14, 2004

For Approval

Present:
Board members - Karen Horn, Deb Hunter, Mary Nowlan
Principal Roberta Barone
Meeting called to order at 6:06 pm by Chair, Deb Hunter.

Approval of Minutes
On a motion by Deb, seconded by Karen, the minutes of the regular November 17 board meeting were unanimously approved. On a motion by Deb, seconded by Karen, the minutes of the December 1 special budget meeting were unanimously approved. On a motion by Deb, seconded by Karen, the minutes of the special December 6 joint meeting with the select board were unanimously approved.

John Schmeltzer arrived at the meeting at 6:10 pm.

WWSU update
Karen informed the board that there will be a full Washington West board meeting January 6 and an executive committee meeting December 20t at Harwood Library.

Quarry Update
Deb handed out the decision by the Development Review Board to deny the quarry application.

Church Septic System
Deb reported that she had spoken with Mary Murphy, one of the trustees of the Moretown Methodist Church to inform her of the board’s decision not to grant permission to install the proposed new septic system as it would not have the legally required setback from the school’s water supply.

Principal’s update
Roberta reported that the PTN has funded an Artist in Residence program for January 3 through January 6. Ruth Ann Pattee, the executive director of Kids Act, will be working with the children on the Wizard of Oz, with a show January 6 at 6:30.

Executive Session
On a motion by Deb, seconded by Mary, the board went into executive session at 6:40 for a discussion of academic records.

The board emerged from executive session at 6:46.

Action Planning
Roberta and John agreed to meet to review data for action planning purposes. Roberta indicated that she would like to open up the concept of action planning so that it does not rely solely on data, particularly because there will be no comparative data to analyze next year as the school has switched from NSRE tests to NECAP tests.

Next meeting
The board agreed to hold another special budget meeting Tuesday January 4th at 6pm at Moretown School library.

Budget Discussion
The board again reviewed the 2006 budget. Discussion ensued.

John Pike and Bob McNamara arrived at the meeting at 7:40 and answered questions and walked the board through different budget scenarios that had been requested. Karen left the meeting at 7:50. Roberta agreed to produce another draft budget with changes requested by the board for the next meeting.
Bob and John left the meeting at 8:40.

Speech/Language position
Because of some incoming students who will need intensive speech and language services, Roberta has asked Moretown’s speech therapist Kelly Poulin to train classroom aid Lisa Moreno to assist students with less severe needs. On a motion by John, seconded by Deb, the board unanimously agreed to add 10 hours to Lisa’s contract for these increased responsibilities.

On a motion by Mary, seconded by Deb, the following board orders were approved: #20 for $43,936.94, #21 for $1816.06, #22 for $44,345.11. Board order #23 for $1,390,883.68 was held pending a question about student residency. Roberta will follow up and board members agreed to check in at school the next day to sign the order.

Adjournment
On a motion by John, seconded by Mary, the meeting was adjourned at 8:40 pm.



APPROVED

Date:  __________________              _________________________________________
                        Mary Nowlan - Board Clerk