##VIDEO ID:GvcG58J6PBc## e e e e e for e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e for e e e e e for e e e e e e e e e e e for e e e e you know and of course I need to have for knowledge right because we'll probably have to you know and of course I need to have for knowledge right because we'll probably have to close the floor um you know for a couple of days while they do the project and all that stuff too so so just waiting and they asked me when was you know there's no like when's the best time I'm like when it's not school vacation week you know like just is basically other any other time we can make it work as long as long as I know you know when it's going to happen so um yeah poking it's the it's the consistent poking that that has happened with that so than you thank you yes it's it's what what you got to do some poking any other questions smiling people are smiling over there um um and then otherwise yeah it's I don't say it's quiet but it's it's kind of like in that interesting period of time where schools you know everybody's gotten back into the swing of their lives with school and everything and so then the holidays come up and everything but the um but the friends the friends I did not did I put this one in you did I just added it to my calendar the um the other thing that's happening actually tomorrow night if anybody happens to be around um is Mean Girls is you know going to happen at the high school and so they're having like a little preow at the library um um tomorrow night it's like So Mean Girls the musical is gonna be at the high school and so they're gonna have little selections from the show performed tomorrow night at the library and um they're also gonna have the Nan project who is all about um they're they're an organization that does peer counseling for kids um and they also you know suicide pres prevention and stuff like that so they're going to intersperse some of the selections with um some speakers from the Nan project as well so kind of uh so it's a really nice idea like I it's the first time the friends are doing something kind of like at this level so um I think it's like a really cool idea and I'm sure they'll have a good time like not a lot of people have signed up but I think a lot of people are just going to show up you know because all the kids and all their friends will come and the parents and there'll be a lot of people there in the end um so that's going to be cool really tomorrow night that's going to be great uh it is I think 6:30 which but I think that's right um yeah so that's like great in otherwise um you know just just the regular just all the regular stuff when is this to stop the program me and girl uh so at the high school no or just like it's it's gonna be tomorrow I think it's 6:30 I believe it's 6:30 okay I believe that's correct um any other questions things no yes otherwise it's been a I guess normal whatever normal there is it's kind of normal okay so we can move on to new business and you all have this in your folder The Institute library so those of us who were on this little subcommittee met and everyone had a chance you talking old business no yeah old business under old business yeah old [Music] bu um okay so we wanted to rename it we didn't really want it to be a tuition reimbursement we'd rather it be a scholarship we want to do more for the employees of the library make it a more positive work environment for them and if they do want to go move on to get their masters and there really isn't another program they can be in there's not just courses they can take at a local College it pretty much is a masters of Library science is what they'd be getting at this point in their career um so we kept it as the scholarship policy of MLS courses so people working on their masters are working towards their masters regardless of how quickly or slowly they're doing this that um we wanted to make it more of a scholarship and give it up front we'll have an application that they'll need to submit um what is this yellow I don't know me oh did I I highlighted that okay I don't remember what I do from day to day okay perfect it's perfect um so one of the things we wanted to do was to keep it um you know to help make the library a better place to work was give them something and a lot of libraries have programs like this we didn't so we wanted to do that for our employees so if they do want to move ahead in the field we're going to help them do that by giving out scholarships um we didn't limit it to a specific number we just have a number per year that we want to decide on and we'll decide when we get the applications how much we're going to fund we also lowered it from one year to 6 months um and we'll get up to 50% of the tuition costs and again that will be made apparent in the application we'll see what they're putting out and where they're taking the courses most of them are online now so um and there's many different programs they can take but we'll see all of that with the application that comes in one of the things for when we decide to give the scholarship to keep it fair uh we had talked about none of this is set in stone we're bringing it to the committee tonight to see if anybody else has any input um we wanted anything taken out that we could possibly um if we had a problem with the specific employee a particular person on the committee we wanted anything omitted that would make it personal we just want the course how long the person's been with us and how relevant it is to the job to see if that's something we want to fund for them um so that's what was highlighted here and you can just see that we'll just be calling them applicant one or applicant 2 um instead of using their names so that it's more fair yeah part of the application obviously is you know they have to be in good standing with the with the library as an employee um so that would be vetted as well through the application process so it's also because we are a public meeting we don't want to these are people's personal exactly information so you don't want to giving yeah names out to the public um yeah so um has everyone read through this does anyone have any comments so there's no cap on how much money per we staff member we no no because some people will be taking more courses some people are want to get through their Ms fairly quickly other people are just taking maybe a program every other semester and so there's no cap on per year how much no to spend on this no no there we we discussed a cap a general cap for spending on the scholarship program but we decided to leave it open-ended as to how much one person for example could to be able to be flexible with demand if there's only one person applying every year there's no reason why we can't help them more if we are allocating this amount of money whereas if it turned out there were many applicants they would receive much less in each of them so we we left a lot of it um open-ended so that the board could make decisions um without it being in violation of our policy so should the cap be in here at least we need to discuss it still yeah we didn't have a it's a a well I think I think hearing what they said tonight was a good good indicator that we don't want more than 5% taken out a year with everything everything so that that sort of caps us on how much we can actually give out after everything the library gets in general we only have an amount left that we need to work with so right I think that would some sort of language in there so that we're not bleeding this dry definitely definitely a cap on annual running on the scholarship program and yeah so that might be a better way to do it um as a percentage of what we have instead of a dollar amount um well it a dollar amount yeah it can't be a percentage because we don't know what our other expenses are going to be per month so it can't be a percentage it's going to have to be a dollar amount and stick to that dollar amount and then my only other concern going forward is seeming like we're being arbitrary or a little bit capricious with um the amounts that each person is getting even though there's no indicator on who the person would be I I just worry about any um potential of seeming like um some person might not be getting as much as another I I don't know I I get so so I guess I'm wondering how you keep with with with not knowing how how are we going to know that the same employee isn't getting say we get more right applications in mhm and we're reaching our limit of spending um the whole idea was that we were going to be even with people and not have one person getting more courses paid for so how would you know how would how like what is the mechanism in case that happens be the application so that's why we made two application deadlines throughout the year so there's so say say we allocate $20,000 for the scholarship program it would be we have $10,000 to allocate after all the applications come in on May 1st and then 10,000 more to allocate after all the applications come in on November 1st and it would be up to us collectively as a board to decide how to allocate that money or if to allocate up to that cap based on the applications that we have so if it if there's only one applicant and they are deserving and we have the money to spend then we can discuss that as a board that's why the scholarship framework I think is so beneficial to to everybody because um the the fact is that it's a scholarship that's capped at this month much and we make our collective decision about how to equitably distribute that on a twice annual basis and we can also do in the application because that's something that we haven't even discussed on what's going to be on the application is like okay how many times have you received money from the board you can put that in the application so that as part of our review we can see that number I think there needs to be some yeah there has to be some tracking there has to be some way to track I think so that if we do get like five applications like okay you've already gotten money this year right well that we're going to go to everybody else before right yeah there's got to be some way to track that sure and that we can do but as long as we've got the money we just wanted it to be more of a positive thing for the employees rather than you know this is the limit this is all you can do um and the reality is many of our employees already have their masters in library science so there's really not that many people that are going to be that's that are going to be applying for the masters of Library science programs so I I don't think that's ever going to be an issue where we're going to have too many people applying it may come up but again if we've got the cap then it's up to us to decide how we're going to divy the money up and who we're going to give it to and I I can I can say that as of right now I know of two people who can apply for this and there is a potential third one that could be coming great yeah wonderful and it'll just keep our people at the you know educated one thing that I would like to ask you Noel um and maybe we'll need some time to go back and take a look but um if we could account for all the other miscellaneous spending in the withdrawals from the that the financial advisers yeah that's usually that last that's in the packets oh but I mean like I guess without going through each month by month like if we could we get a summary get a summary of the year or um yeah I can see I can um see what Jenny can pull together um because I said like usually it's it's mostly archive looks like it will be like archives professional development programs and then usually anything that's sort of um some sundrees kind of thing so if we're paying for some um food for an event or something like that like some things like that um will come out of there but I mean it's it's one of those things like it adds up over time it's usually never a ton but like but we also will pay for um you know Bob gon's you know fees out of that that stock of money like all of that kind of stuff yeah I mean it's just I haven't been here long enough to really understand like how those things came to be designated as expenses that come out of the trustees fund as opposed to I yeah I'm just curious about that yeah yeah yeah for the most part um I mean from what I know and I don't know like the Arches if like Natalie or Julie or reie who' been here longer might remember um for some reason and I don't know why I don't know the reason of this like the $20,000 like that they were kind of mentioning was like the number that was kind of set upon as here's money that the trustees are giving for whatever uses that the library needs which is in the budget yeah which is so so like and so yeah part of our budget is to be like there's $20,000 that we're counting on quote unquote from the trust fund um like a lot of most libraries don't have a trust fund um or other extra monies like that so A lot of times things like like my old library all of the program money that we got for any programs came from the friends of the library so they paid like Museum passes and all the programming so that we can have programming come from another source is like amazing right because it's great um to not have to worry about it because you get a lot of limits um and so some things like that that you don't have to worry about so much was that I think again I wasn't here when that number was decided on I don't know how that number got decided um in the first place but it is like a nice a nice summon but um when I first came and I was meeting with our old bookkeeper suos she was saying at the time that usually we used under the 20,000 like we weren't using 20,000 we were using maybe 14,000 or 12,000 or something like that so it wasn't actually we were expending it most of the time um and then you know it's just been that very recently that we revived this tuition reimbursement policy that's coming out of there as well so so that's what pushed it from 20,000 to 33 yes yes yeah yeah because we yeah we're not we're not doing any other new spending um and generally like anything that's a bigger because if I'm if I wanted to have something that was going to be beyond that 20 I would come and ask right and say like hey can we have extra money for something right um otherwise I take money out of state aid for projects or whatever so great yeah thank you yeah course so um I said we do need to develop um an application for this but does anyone have any questions on what was submitted or what you just received I asked my question so I'm all set and I'll I'll just re read so you're so you're saying the board May gift up to 50% but you but could be less depending on what you have so the expectation would be that you're like you're applying for a scholarship that could be value like so it could be $1,000 it could be 5,000 you don't know depending on what's available for but not more than 50% of the cost of the course okay we don't we we talked about you know ensuring that um we would be gaining serious applicants who had a you know their own vested interest and weren't just going to sign up for classes because they were free for example that's not you know um and my other question about this too it doesn't specifically say is um so say somebody these taking two classes simultaneously is that is it like for one is it a one course that they're getting money for is it like if they're taking a couple at the same time does it matter I guess I don't think so it's just like that one whatever it is for that period of time that they're taking is what they can reply for okay and if no one else is applying and we've got the funds we might do 50% of all of the classes that they're applying for if we've got multiple people and we're getting a little thin we might do 30 40% or we might do people that haven't received scholarships it it'll just be very dependent on who's applying and how many people I mean the the the language of how much definitely needs to be in here before we take any vote on this for sure I actually was going to suggest that the ad hoc committee ought to reconvene to reconsider given a lot of the information that was shared tonight and then we can potentially put this to a vote at our next meeting or my one other question I know in the old um policy that if a person was full-time or part-time mattered like how much they might you know percentage of that is that still gonna well I mean I we did discuss that and I think we all were in agreement that it ought to be taken into consideration but I don't think it made it into the language okay yeah that was just my only other question was if they were part-time would they get you know if they work 20 hours are they goingon to get half as much you know that that kind of thing if there's the percentages that are going to be come into play if they're part-time versus full-time so my only other question was in doing your research did what libraries contributed to the education of the staff members out of their budget so in other words libraries that don't have trust funds they have a line item in their budget that P that okay um so that's actually a good question that I'm not sure of the answer to I mean I know a variety of libraries there are some libraries that do you know will reimburse people fully like 100% for courses they take I know like Andover is one of them um but I'm actually not sure where their money comes from that they that they're reimbursing for but a lot of um the libraries I know that do do it tend to have be from wealthier communities who do have some kind of endowment sort of fund or trust fund of some kind so so basic so libraries com comparable to ours or or from a city like a Salem or a peid or whatever they do not reimburse their staff it's much rarer to find yeah it's rarer to find um that be and so then mostly it's because they don't have some kind of fund that they can pull from that money from so like they'll pay for they might pay for professional development you know like classes or something like that like oneoff workshops or things like that but they're less likely to reimburse for the MLS mostly just because they don't have the funding for it so historically our professional development wasn't for it was more for a conference not for a class for for the staff well interestingly right because the policy that we had approved a couple years ago that was actually an 30-year-old policy for MLS classes so people taking MLS classes but it was just the $ thousand because that was the times um right so interestingly the reimbursement policy here has been in place for MLS courses um specifically um and then Prof other professional development like so so we our professional Development Fund is not this right like so this is separate than professional development for conferences and things like that so see them as two different tracks kind of thing so do does the professional development budget get used completely every year for professional development or is there ever any money left over that could go towards so um so what we've been doing with the professional so we've been mostly um having the professional Development Fund coming out of our state aid money and so what we kind of started doing because prior to this um previous directors were using it more for themselves and not for the staff we'll just say so um so the staff was not able to use it so what my uh thing has been going since then is just like to see how much now that they're aware of it and they can use it I've just been letting them use it as much as they want to to see how much we're actually I'm actually spending on the professional devopment so we have been using it up um this last year we used it up and then I think we went over last year and then this year we should also be on track to go over it again so I wanted to be able to set a more realistic budget once I saw how much we were using of it um so yes we are we are we are using it which is a good thing it's a great thing okay so people are feeling like they can go and get to professional development so and go to conferences and things um and I pay for their memberships and in professional organizations with it as well we're just really fortunate that we have this money and this is something we can do for the employees so I'm all in favor of it um hopefully we'll get more employees walk because of how they're being treated um all right so I'll get with the committee and we'll pick another day we'll add these items into it and also because there weren't a lot of scholarships so we're going to have to create an application because we did look there weren't many libraries doing this type of a thing um so we're going to have to look at generic applications and then change or add what we want to those so we we discuss discuss that at the next meeting or ad hoc meeting okay um any other questions about the fund um I'll just ask you this is I'm just being nitpicky now but when you're saying the applications for May and November do we have a date as far as like May 1st and November 1st or we like May 15th and November 15th we were hoping to chat with you yeah we we had suggested May 1st and November 1st but we were looking for your input as well okay and you thought those months would work yeah I thought we kind of talked about it to a degree and I just kind we kind of looked I looked at a bunch of Library school programs like when they because you should have an idea right at the end of Any Given semester about the following semester what you're want to take so in May you should know about you know definitely add more specificity to the language for the next just so I know when I have to tell people get your application in yeah well we'll get that and where are we now new business no no no no I just thinking we're not approved for I know I know no I was my brain went off on a what about the people in between here we we'll deal with that okay so any new business nope no okay and um I'll make a motion to adjourn second okay all in favor all right I motion moves thank you I everybody remember to put your names back in your folders yes ma'am okay are we offline now not yet I don't know they probably haven't even notic