 for sort of business is public comment and just so you know we will have a second session of public comment after the third buzzer budget presentation so if you want to comment on the budget and want to wait you're you can count your account now you can comment twice if you want to but I just just in case you want to react to that so I'm Tina Muncie and a few years ago I was a principal of a small school and so I appreciate the wonders of a small school and the problems of a small school and I'm saying that as a frame of reference for what I'm going to say next I noticed in your first budget presentation you had a slide that I've seen several times during the course of budget presentations in the last few years and on this slide it showed that it costs almost ten thousand dollars more per student per year to educate someone in the Roxbury schools you could put all of the Roxbury students on a bus and bring them here and educate them and it would cost you less you could allow all of the Roxbury students to choose any school they wanted to go to and pay their tuition in the beginning and it would cost you less but that's not the most important thing to me the most important thing is I don't believe that the Roxbury students are getting as good an education in Roxbury as they get in Montpelier now I want to quickly say I have to assume that you have the very best teachers in Roxbury and I know because I've worked with teachers for years that they are working very hard that's not the issue the issue is the system and you as a board have had a lot of discussion about equity over the last few years and I feel like this is not equitable and so I'm here tonight to say I wish in the next few months that on your agenda you would put an item to discuss how you could educate everyone equitable in your in Montpelier Roxbury how could we educate the students in Roxbury better what would be the system was it one of the two I mentioned was it something I can't even think about but how would you do that because I honestly believe we're not being equitable to all of our students thank you very much any other public comment anyone online all right sure you're all familiar with the saying show me your budget and I'll show you your values as you think about this year's budget I just asked you to think about the following questions how does our current budget reflect our committee's values when it comes to neurodiverse learners does our district have a philosophy or strategy for ensuring equity for neurodiverse learners and if asked who do articulate what that strategy is does our district have educators who are certified or in Gillingham specialists and are you a parent of or have you spoken to a parent of a student who is a neurodiverse learner to better understand what their experience in this district district has been like I don't expect an answer to any of these tonight but they're not rhetorical I think if you ask yourself these questions with some curiosity as opposed to defensiveness and we can reflect on what we learn you'd be in a better position to build a budget that reflects the needs and values of our community and in addition I just want to say that I have deep concerns about the way our district teaches reading and writing especially as it relates to neurodiverse learners our district has a duty to adopt an evidence-based direct explicit literacy program instruction as opposed to our current whole language approach and it would be hard not to talk about our current reading curriculum and equity in the same breath due to the issues of low income LEP and BIPAC students were at a greater risk of falling behind their peers in reading proficiency this has a lasting and profound academic and social emotional counterparts one in five students have a has a language-based learning disability thank you for your time thank you thank you Angela and let's look we have someone else I could please introduce your name and I thought just too far Lisa Burns hey Lisa I um I will probably speak again in the budget section but just before we get started I would like to request to the board I've spoken to many people in the community who feel that your efforts at transparency have not been very successful with regards to the budgeting particularly and so one of my questions that I'd like to see answered is if there is in fact a budget cap of any type for the um the trap project and we're getting this done in record time from the time you voted to to allocate enough money to get the project going in November the plans are now to break ground in June and have it done inside of a year faster than any other infrastructure project making your net zero effort seem pitiful but you left the door wide open in November for add-ons and costs and we haven't seen anything about the bid so I would just like to note there's a budget cap for how much our board is willing to put into our trap um yeah it's kind of a funny question um and I'll that's that's it and I'll uh ask uh some follow-ups during the budget part thank you okay so Lisa uh anyone else Jim I have a letter from the community that what I was asked to read out loud okay next to the tax-paying citizens of Montpelier and the MRPS school board we of the ues food service feel compelled to highlight some of the conditions of our employment with the district in the hope that during this budgetary and communication review process there might be some consideration for fair employment practices and a livable wage for its employees it is important to know that all food service personnel throughout the district are not unionized therefore we have no representation or voice in policy and administrative decisions we have been told that our only option is to negotiate directly with the superintendent we feel strongly that previous attempts of communication with the superintendent have been met with indifference so we are here tonight to ask for your consideration given the following food service personnel for the district are at-will employees which means in the state of Vermont employers can terminate an employee at any time and for any reason or no reason at all therefore we have absolutely no sense of job security even in times of severe staff sort of shortages we are not allowed to work more than 5.75 hours a day otherwise the district would be obligated to offer us benefits therefore we often have to work at an unsustainable pace in order to provide healthy well-prepared meals for hundreds of children each day according to the Vermont department of labor the average wage for cooks institutions in cafeteria is eighteen dollars thirteen cents an hour our wage is below that by several dollars an hour the rate of inflation for 2022 was 9.1 percent we were given a three percent wage increase at the beginning of this school year we are working parents single parents heads of households we take the responsibility of safe and nutritious food for the children and staff of our school very seriously we are always professional and exceedingly kind and consider it and the children know that they are very cared for we hope that as the district develops a budget for the coming year that this group of employees is no longer overlooked we don't feel acknowledged or appreciated by the cost spent on buying all employees coffee mugs keychains t-shirts etc when we struggle to make ends meet for our families thank you for your time and service we hope that the general principle of equity for all will be materialized ues food service thanks will there be a printed copy of that somewhere let me it's Lynn yes hi Lynn let I will check and see if the person who sent it to me is okay with me forwarding it on to the board thanks um the next word of business is consent agenda I'll give a motion to approve the consent agenda I move to approve the consent agenda do you have a second I second but can I ask about the windows key agreement sure I had a question about that too okay well I'll second I guess we'll second my discussion removal I don't think we have to remove we can just discuss before we vote on it right yes I don't need to remove it I don't know if you need to know can I offer a friendly amendment because um Anna sent us uh if we want to authorize the pre-qualification criteria for potential construction management it should be in addition in the motion to approve the consent agenda um she just sent this yes last night maybe so it's construction management management pre-qualification selection criteria so you're you would add that I'm asking if we can add that as an amendment to the motion I accept that amendment okay sounds okay okay thank you um do you want to talk about the windows key agreement can you just remind us what it is please well it's funny about it when you sent me a windows key agreement I kept thinking do we have kids in windows key I got that it's the windows key valley so the windows key valley is the region that Montpelier Roxbury is a part of it's my superintendent's group it's um okay so within the windows key valley there's an agreement for lottery students so that we run a lottery each year for students who want to go to a different school within our region and students who want to come here okay so we just have to have an agreement of what number we're allowing to go and what number we're allowing to come in um so and the board has to approve that right so this this is just that agreement okay which is a yearly thing can you tell me what's what high schools are in that yeah in windows key valley yeah so it's folding us northfield um white river junction uh harwood stowe just going through my superintendent friends u32 although we have an exchange with u32 as well now people's isn't oh yep peoples thank you we just don't have any kids really going there that's morrisville right yeah yeah yeah so they would be part listo and and i mean i don't want to spend a lot of time on this we can talk about outside the meeting but can you just tell us like what if a kid is interested in transferring they put in an application with bell they'll hear at the high school so they get on the list for the lottery the lottery's held in the spring late spring okay around whether they get it or not and do we max out that number was um eight students was it eight students you know i don't know i'd have to ask pal i don't know exactly where we are right now with it okay and do we usually we take in as many as we send out is it like an equal exchange no no it's 8 to 40 8 to 40 okay send no more than 40 except no more than eight okay and while we're in discussion i had a question on the warrant um what's what is the new school of montpelier the new school is a school for students with special needs got it um and so we have a student there who's tuition got it okay thank you any further discussion all is in favor of the for the subject of it i any opposed excellent um so board discussion and action have two committee assignments appointing lin to negotiations and equity and ret to policy committee do i have a motion to make those two appointments so do you have a second i second uh any discussion one point of discussion is i just um i would love for in march when we're we're organizing thinking about what which committee is in which roles that we all want to play um maybe for us to sort of put slightly more thought into into that process we had talked about each committee chair writing sort of like an overview of what the committee is doing um what the work plan is maybe the frequency of meetings and to have all of that information available especially to our newer members um but so that we can all sort of like balance our time commitment and then maybe balance committees to based on what people bring to the table we had talked about in policy that jim brings this like legal mind to the table which is very helpful yeah and i agree that i think we might just want to be essential in general but i called the work what they're doing time commitment time commitment because i think time commitment is getting a bit much yeah agreed and yeah and and then i think if we maybe come in with with ideas what the committees do i wonder if there's even possibility for consolidation of some committees or at least a little more intentionality about yeah these committees need to meet regularly these committees can be i mean like finance is an easy one for meeting quarterly but yeah i think there's a lot of board members who are doing more like six or seven meetings a month instead of two and that's that's heavy and that also goes to recruitment too this becomes harder and harder to get people to pull that a lot of time then um all right excellent um um all is in favor any well any further discussion all is in favor all right and you posed great um congratulations to the new committee members and thank you thank you thanks rat uh and now the uh our third uh budget public forum mm-hmm so keep in mind that for the board you've seen a lot of this presentation prior be sure to get this up and this is the longer presentation that the board saw the first go around with a few a couple editions in there so um there have been some changes which christine and i will talk through here's the outline of the presentation today and what we're going to move through i'll go through some of this kind of fast because enrollment data you can just look at um and it's just good to have in the back of your head and here are demographic information as well um our themes we want to continue to support our theory of growth which i'll talk about in a in a minute while being sensitive to tax implications for our community uh the state factors we have an anticipated dollar yield that of course is uh voted on by the legislature in may um so it's still written as anticipated we don't and we don't believe that's going to change too much between now and may uh the cla and equalize pupils we do know the cla at this time don't we yeah so the cla we know um now and health and we have a good sense of equalized pupils we just forgot to change that part is this not the right one oh 12 7 it's not 12 7 sorry let's look at the right one that's my fault christine is like no i changed that slide it's totally my fault let me pull up the correct let's try that again all right so our demographic seven changed between now and december okay so equalized pupils we have a number it's still likely to change a little bit our health rates are increasing 12.6 percent across the board the school board has no say in that number that's given to us and our insurance is increasing by 296 thousand 38 dollars that's insurance through visbit not our health insurance necessarily oh wait no is that the health insurance number the visbit yeah the visbit is increasing by 5.5 percent so the 12.6 percent is represented in the 296 thousand dollar number that's what the equivalent is the local factors are we still we have decreasing enrollment in our Montpelier schools enrollment is relatively steady in the rocksbury village school um and we have contract negotiations going on with two of our unions the mrea is our faculty her teachers and our mr e ssa is the instructional assistants those negotiations are ongoing right now quick reminder to the board in the community this is from michael fullen's work michael fullen is a educational researcher out of uh canada who is highly respected in education the right drivers for growth are capacity building collaborative work working on pedagogy and systemness which i think he was a word he may have made up and the wrong drivers are accountability with no meaning behind it focusing on individual teachers or individual leaders and their quality focusing solely on technology for technology's sake sake and fragmented strategies over time the strategies that don't connect to each other so it's just a reminder of um what are the right and wrong drivers when we're thinking about our theory of growth and continuous improvement our continuous improvement goals for the years 2022 to 2024 that will we we will decrease the percentage of chronically absent students when we made this goal it was 32.3 percent we are still around 32.3 percent because of the flu and covid and rsv that hit our schools pretty hard in the end of november and throughout december particularly at union elementary school and main street middle school in order to meet this goal though our community liaison the ason was added in fiscal year 22 nick connor he's amazing we have five full-time social workers we're suggesting a partnership with americor that would work through nick's office they would provide mentoring and additional student community connections i believe the cost of a partnering with americor is around 12 000 it's not a huge budget item but it could give us a big bang for a little bit of luck we've transitioned the truancy model from one of punishment to one of curiosity and relationship nick of course by law still needs to send truancy letters however those letters are now are now preceded by a smiling phone call from nick of and and talking to what's going on and trying to get an understanding of how the district can better support a family whose child is not coming to school we have data dash dashboards to better understand absenteeism which is great we can see when kids are absent who what types of kids are more absent what days of the week they're more absent it's really fascinating data wednesday and thursday are big absentee days for mont pelier high school for instance we would have never guessed wednesday and thursday as the days but that's where we see the biggest absenteeism for mont pelier high school you know little things like that is popping up that are that's really fascinating um and we're looking to reallocate an instructional assistant position here at mhs towards attendance class skipping through accountability and building relationships we've not been able to hire that person as of yet um and then the other side of our continued improvement plan decreasing the number of students needing tier three support so this is remediation um on universal skills and the most layman way to put that is that if a child is reading writing or doing math around two years below have skills two years below their grade level um it doesn't always come out to that way but that's the most layman's way of putting it um then they would might qualify for remediation in tier three um to no more than five percent is not just a made-up number that's what um research shows it should be around um through significant research with response to intervention done several years ago so in order to do that we have focused on intentional student engagement and first instruction we needed to clearly define the tiers of instruction um which we've now done we needed to prioritize standards and the universal skills and proficiency indicators for each of those things we needed to provide a fully staffed um faculty that have expertise in remedial instruction we're working on that still we're very close to it we've added some positions to help this we've moved that team um to under Mike Barry the director of curriculum and technology so that we could ensure that they're not getting different messages from different leaders and Mike has been able to move their work much faster this school year um we added the director of social emotional learning and wellness in FY 23 Jeff's Murray is is just doing it fabulously in her job uh we are looking to add two full-time social emotional learning interventionists one for union elementary school and one for main street elementary school we've actually put those positions into our IDEAB uh grant for this school year that's of course our grant that we received for special education um because these people the intent of these positions would be to provide SEL services and skills that are written on IEPs which we are have a growing need for um we have yet to be able to hire those positions of course we added a mid school year so um it's not surprising but that is part of next year's budget as well coming out of the revenue source of IDEAB and we're looking to add panorama which is a data warehouse and that's suggested for fiscal year 24 so we have yet another place to pull data from quickly and accurately uh this is our theory of growth the board has seen this slide many times now we have a theory that if we have these four what we call pillars um moving efficiently and effectively then we would be building limitless features for every one of our learners and the four pillars are a collective responsibility and collaborative practices a formalized essential learning timely system to enrich intervene and remediate and high quality instruction in every classroom there's a little write-up underneath this to go into more detail as to what each of those pillars are and in terms of those four pillars for budget or financial um and of course financial is both dollars spent as well as time spent since we're spending people paying people for their time under collective responsibility and collaborative practices we're redistributing staffing for student information and data systems we had a resignation and the central office staff and we're redistributing that to help mike barry's office out a little bit more our guiding coalitions our teacher leadership teams that work with the administration in each building to guide this work forward and our professional learning communities our teachers are all in professional learning communities so that they can collaborate because this work is too hard to do individually under professional development we have continued coaching and professional learning communities to our principals so that they can further support the teaching teams um we have assessments and goal settings effective action and accountability that hasn't previously occurred and then for leadership coaching instructional leaders to lead that plc team growth they've done some work with solution trees so far this year and are continuing that work under formalized essential learning we have designated teacher leadership on all of our curriculum teams that work directly with mike barry under literacy we have a focus on word study and writing this year writing instruction uh in math our teachers we work with teachers development group at mhs and msms that's um more adolescent math developing math patterns of thinking and ways of thinking um and then we're working with christin cordemontch and differentiated math practices at ues and rbs as well as with our fifth grade team at msms and then ensuring collective collective understanding of our priority standards and proficiency scales we've done some considerable work on that and families will begin to see a change in reporting um in the next few months through our prioritization work under timely system to enrich intervene and remediate uh on staffing we're adding those social emotional interventionists at msms and ues we're suggesting the board add a school counselor at msms bringing us from one fte to two full-time employees at msms and counseling services and we're suggesting to add a district psychologist um full fte there under professional development targeted remediation in tier three we want to continue to increase the capacity of our intervention faculty through professional learning through time spent together using case studies and such to develop their capacity there and then an increased focus on first instruction in tier two intervention work which is goes through the plc's and the leadership team is also working to to think how can we do this um in a non-fragmented way moving forward next year for our professional development that's still in the works under leadership we we ensure that schedules offer time for intervention remediation and enrichment we have that going pretty well in three of our buildings it's a little trickier here at montpiler high school just because high schools are a little bit different beast in terms of scheduling and that's still a challenge that we're working on and then have collective learning regarding effective goal setting and universal skills we're still creating goals that are too big to accomplish for our kids um so we we need to continue to bring that down so kids can build confidence through quick wins with their goals in terms of high quality instruction in every classroom we're not adding any new staffing in regards to high quality instruction this current this next year our teach we do have two coaches who function in our district maybe kimball and math and laurel in reading and writing they do coaching cycles with our teachers but the those positions have already been added so that's not a new position in terms of professional development like i said when literacy we're focusing in on word study and writing this year and next math with our tdg work in christin cordemont's work we're still working with up for learning and john kida around our sort of practices and working at the leadership level with engagement strategies and what do we mean when we say what are effective engagement strategies for instruction and leadership we work at least once a month as a leadership team to coach instructional leaders to lead pedagogical change in our district all right christina you get the good stuff so the glossary of terms that you're going to hear me use over and over over the next few slides is the general fund which is the main operating fund of the school district the capital plan which is the long-term fund for planned facility needs and that's worn as a separate article on your ballot the education spending which is the total budget less any local revenues such as federal and state grants um tuition and interest so that's really the amount of money that you have to raise um through taxes equalized pupils this is my favorite one um this is how our students are weighted we don't look at our students as we don't just do a head count that's not how the tax rate is derived from it's based on equalized pupils so your preschoolers are weighted at point four six secondary students are weighted at one point one three we get an additional weight for poverty poverty and english language learners um and you all you've heard that the waiting study is going to be changing um in your next budget cycle f y 25 the property dollar yield um this is the estimated amount the district has to spend would have to spend per pupil to have an equalized tax rate of a dollar while generating enough money for the state's ed fund so if we have a good economy we have a higher yield which you'll see in this budget um we'll have lower tax rates and the CLA this is the appraised value of property versus the market value in this budget cycle we do have the CLA that was announced just a couple weeks ago currently the budget unknowns um our equalized pupil count is likely to change i just got an email today that they'll they'll be changing that again so by the time you vote on the budget it'll it'll be a different um equalized pupil count and the revenues were just waiting on the transportation aid and under expenses we're waiting on our career center six semester average and the contract negotiations so we made an estimate based on um prior years so our budget at a glance currently our total budget increase is 6.07 we still have an estimate on the revenues waiting for uh what the transportation aid and then the equalized pupils again this is an estimate we know this is likely to change so the overall um ed spending per equalized pupil increase is 8.95 percent the enrollment projections do you want me to touch on any of that or so for our staffing overview at the district level we're suggesting to add a school psychologist which is 1.0 fte this is actually a budget neutral ad um because we've been contracting that service out so much that we would we're going to use the money that we've been contracting out and stop doing that hopefully and hire a person to do that which will be much more efficient and effective for our district um we've also moved the social emotional learning director it we have been paying uh that salary out of our professor when we've moved that into the local budget it's this position that we feel we need we want to hold on to we have the opportunity to put it in the local budget this year so we've made that switch at union elementary school the social emotional learning interventionist that will be working with students with special needs who have social emotional learning skills written into their ips which is of course an individual education program or plan sorry uh we're suggesting a reduction in force or a riff for k6 licensure this is represented on the enrollment slides um you can the board can see how there is a bubble that's moved through union elementary school it's moving into the middle or it's in the middle school in the beginning of high school um and union elementary school does not need as many k6 um for licensed teaching general teach general education teachers the reason why it says k6 is because that's where the licensure status is um in our contract and the way licensing goes at main street middle school we're suggesting adding a school counselor at 1.0 fte union elementary school and monthly or high school both have two counselors main street currently has one uh we'd like to add another one based on the social emotional needs of our students uh also adding a social emotional learning interventionist at main street middle school to round out our effective tiers of intervention this is like i said before being a revenue source is being used to pay for both sel interventionists and then adding a literacy interventionist at msms for that tiered system of support and our pillars to support that pillar of learning currently there is 1.0 fte literacy intervention at main street middle school and we'd like to have two we have data to support that we need another education spending for people um we're going to now look at what the total budget is in the following slides and excuse me since the last meeting um the only number on this page that changed was the an additional decrease to the equalized pupils that i'd gotten just moments before our last meeting um so there was an additional 17.74 equalized pupils that were decreased this slide is the expenses by school so this compares each building excuse me so the expenses by program our general education budget is up 6.14 6.14 percent um this has to do with the health insurance premiums and you're going to hear that as a constant theme in each one of these lines is because the health insurance we have staff in these sections so you're going to see that increase each each program um special education is up 4 percent uh career center tuition we're not anticipating much change there the co-curriculars and athletics that's up 11 percent um that's increases to the wage schedule transportation we increased we made an increase to the racial justice alliance we added boys jv volleyball a math club and an affinity alliance under student support which includes the nurse guidance social work speech that's up 11 percent again that's because of health insurance premiums and contract negotiations staff support which includes the library curriculum professional development that's up 8 percent um and the main increase here is we consolidated all the copier contracts and all the cell phone contracts into one area so it would go under the tech budget otherwise we were allocating it to each department or each function and program let's see the school board and superintendent that is up 4 percent so we have an increase in our audit expenses the principal offices and special services and admin that's up 7 percent an increase due to health insurance premiums the business services there's an increase about 4 percent that's an increase in health insurance and building buildings and grounds that's up 4 percent that's increases in heating and electricity costs we're seeing about 60 000 more just this current year so next year we're anticipating a much higher increase um safety we're looking at doors and locks so there's um an increase there of 23 percent under transportation there's a slight decrease based on the actuals that we're spending on transportation right now our debt service and fund transfers there's a small increase um in our principal and interest payments but that's it so overall it's a 6.07 percent increase on expenses the next couple of slides just demonstrate different ways of looking at the budget um you can see how where it stands in the overall budget general education versus special education and then the next slide is just uh comparison year to year and this is another way to look at our expenses this is by category so if you want to just look at salaries and benefits and kind of separate those out um you can see that salaries are up five and a half percent this reflects the actual staffing that we have and the open positions that we budget for health insurance you can see the reflects it reflects the actual coverage on single versus family you know the different plans that our employees are participating in professional services um that's up 8 percent this current year um we have a huge increase in 504 requirements so we are planning on um maintaining those contracts for next year so we are seeing a large increase there purchase services is up just a 2 percent increase um those are building base uh well I should say increases now we did go back to the drawing board on that one when we first went to the um on our second budget presentation so we did increase go back to the board uh the building administrators and let them add some things back in the contracted service is up 1 percent normal year to year increases for our contracts tuition um a small increase just due to district out of district placement um supplies and technology and books uh we're anticipating a five percent increase there the network increases are offset by e-rate e-rate revenue so this is federal funding um so you'll see a revenue source that will offset this increase utilities like I said oil and electricity are up so we're planning on we're budgeting for that equipment um we did go back to the board drawing board on that one that should say increase my mistake um so we are increasing by six percent there it's a six thousand dollar increase dues and fees those are increases to our professional associations district wide uh principal and interest is up one percent and then the fund transfer to food service we're just maintaining the 110,000 that we did for the current year the next two slides just show it as a pie chart and a year to year comparison so the revenue side um we're still waiting on a couple numbers here the six semester average for the tech on behalf um the education spending grant at the top so that's the balancer that's what we have to raise in taxes and and collect from the ed fund everything else is is subtracted out of your total um expenses to get to that balancing number uh the small schools grant is going to remain level state transportation aid um that's based on the f y 22 actuals the sped block grant this is new and this current year it was a different funding mechanism last year um so that's uh 12 percent which was nice to see um the extraordinary cost that's based on the service plan and any students that we anticipate being over 65,000 for our district placements uh let's see the special ed triple e grant that was this is a new number from the last time i met with you it's higher than we were anticipating i had been using 105,000 because that's what we received this current year but it went up to 117,000 um we're not anticipating any state place reimbursement the driver's ed reimbursement is usually right around $8,000 so we're not anticipating any change there and the tech ed transportation that doesn't change much so we're anticipating 14,000 id a b um all of these the next few lines these are all our grants so they match our expenses dollar for dollar they're reimbursable grants so when you spend the money we ask for the money back and and that's how that works um the only thing i would highlight is down at miscellaneous this is where you're going to see an increase in e rate reimbursement mike barry and i are working on making sure we maximize the reimbursement rate that we get from e rate and that's for all of our tech needs so the next slide is the capital plan and there there's no change here for fiscal year 24 so this is what you've seen in the last few presentations and the tax rates so this is okay this slide will show you your residential tax rate calculation so you have your general budget um and your non tax revenues again the equalized pupils are likely to change the property dollar yield is subject to change um usually set in may it's shockingly high this year um the last two years it's been kind of unprecedented to go up $2,000 like it has been usually we'd see a couple hundred dollars um but i i don't see a reason that for that to change much at least that's what they're telling me um and so with the current assumptions the tax rate would increase by 1.28 percent per month pillar so that's two cents and decreased by 9.67 for roxbury so that's a decrease of 13 cents the next slide i like to point i just brought this to you i think oh is there one that says ballot language that's okay so this slide is new i added it the last time i met with you and i think it's important just to highlight um that the current language and the ballot they changed it a few years ago i can't remember what year they changed it but it doesn't really clearly show the voters that this is a minimal tax increase for montpillar and a tax decrease for roxbury the language doesn't show that right now so i just want to highlight this and bring it to your attention as a as a mechanism to talk to your voters um you know just to explain what it means so the the current language reads shall the voters of the montpillar roxbury public school district approve the school directors to expend 28,580,118 dollars which is the amount the school directors have determined to be necessary for the ensuing fiscal year it's estimated that this proposed budget if approved will result in education spending of 19,653 per equalized pupil this projected spending per equalized pupil is 8.95 percent higher than the spending for the current year so if you look at 8.95 that can be a scary number um for um taxpayers but going back to the previous slide just real quick um you know it's a 1.28 percent increase on the tax rate for montpillar and it's a decrease in roxbury so i just wanted to give you that kind of um information so you can share the next slide um so what does that mean on your property tax bill um for a hundred thousand dollar house in montpillar that means your taxes are going to go up 22 dollars with this proposed budget for a hundred thousand dollar house in roxbury your tax bill is going to go down 139 dollars so you can also see in there the 200,000 property value or 300,000 property value and another note um there is about two-thirds of vermont households pay their property taxes based on income so that the income sensitivity that you sometimes hear about if they fill out their declaration of homestead during filing their taxes uh they could be awarded a direct payment to the town um for their taxes so their tax bill would be decreased oh jill's really good at this if you want to okay uh the next slide shows the residential tax rate history so this just demonstrates with the cla and without the cla and how important that number is if we if the clas and uh oh my gosh in montpillar and roxbury hadn't changed or if we don't have to include the clas you know your tax rate would be a dollar 27 but because of the cla it goes up to a dollar six a dollar 69 for montpillar and a dollar 30 for roxbury well decreases for roxbury the next slide is the non-residential tax rate so these are um for second homes vacation homes that type of thing and that's the end of my presentation there's some questions and this is available on our website for folks at home questions just had a couple quick ones um the the waiting study change that we're anticipating next year where it shows up is in those the equities people count that you're still getting changing numbers is that right so next year at this time that will be showing up yes okay and i'm afraid that it's not going to be good news for montpillar and roxbury right well they have issued a they've given us a calculator that we can start looking at the numbers so um in my next financial reports i might be able to kind of give you some more information on that okay and the idea is that like our equalized pupils will be adjusted by a different weight for poverty and ELL and things like that that it's not right now it's okay um and then this other question it might be for libyar it might end up being rhetorical so for the ues um the riff are we anticipating a vacancy do we have like i'm just wondering if we have someone employed that is like is i mean does that mean effectively that we're losing a staff member at ues yes however the way our contract is written is that a riff can be accomplished through a resignation within our k6 licensure area okay so if a high school science teacher resigns that doesn't help us but if there's a resignation within the k6 licensure then that accomplishes that riff okay and that's how it generally has happened in the past you know you can't promise it but right typically there is some turnover in our k6 faculty okay thank you it does and and you said ues specifically it's in the k6 licensure so that includes rvs ues and main street middle school with our fifth and sixth grade teachers and and following up on that the on the new waiting study have we had gotten word on how that's going to be implemented because i know it's going to have um deleterious tax implications for the district but is do we know is it going to hit us all at once are they going to phase it in is that my understanding it's a five-year phase-in plan yeah have you heard that number two yeah and and and relatedly i noticed that i mean there is kind of going to the our student projections um you know they were going down um but then i see like the 2526 kindergarten class seems to be a little more in line with historical numbers so are we confident that they're going down long term or did we just have a couple of years where people decided to kind of take a break from having kids so i think that's yeah that's based on birth rates so it's really impossible to tell you know like it it's impossible we couldn't predict who's going to sell their home in Montpelier what family's going to move into that home in Montpelier um so it i think it's impossible to predict so it might be a little too early to tell we have a longer time yeah like liby said that's based on birth records so that's the only thing we have to make any projections looks like marik this is him and i have a follow-up question on the yeah marik yeah i've also been following on the equalized people i was just wondering like what are the likely effects of potential bad news for Montpelier when it comes to the the waiting study or equalized people i want to be careful as phrasing it as bad news because it is good for vermont to change the waiting study to make sure that we have an equitable funding system right across our state um what the impact is is that Montpelier Roxbury will have to significantly increase our tax burden in order to level our budgets is what it looks like and is there any initial ideas about how significant that will be we don't know they've given us a couple models but they're models right now so we don't have a definitive and it is a five-year phase it is unlikely to be insignificant yeah that's a good way to phrase it yes yeah so um christine and you said that the equalized people number that we're looking at right now which is 1220.1 right you said that's likely to change again is that right or is this the new one yeah um this is new since the last time i met with you right um and it is likely to change just um not as significantly as this last change right some schools are still um submitting their numbers okay it's a statewide kind of equalization um so we have to wait for that to come out there's usually three or four iterations iterations and it's likely to keep going down in our case or would it is it possible that it would go up a bit i i wouldn't be able to speak to that okay i'm sorry okay okay i might be the only one on the board that doesn't know the answer to this but um we had public comment so i figured bring it up right now uh can you speak to the the reasons why the cost per people at rvs is 10,000 higher than ues is that an easy answer or is that a whole separate meeting i think there's several reasons there's there's simply less people there and we still have services that need to be provided so it looks like the most basic answer right so um whereas a special educator at union elementary school has a caseload of 12 students with an individual education plan our part-time special educator currently has a caseload of two but we still need to provide services to students with special education right so it's like an economy of scale it's totally an economy of scale piece yeah yeah thank you i have a question that might have a future answer um not yet known and it's a little bit granular and kind of programmatic in nature but um i'm just thinking about like the the various different sel connected positions that we're adding and i'm wondering um like are the psychologists the social workers school counselors sel intervention it's like all going to fall under the sel director or they like shared positions between sel and sped and i'm just wondering about like from a management and efficiency perspective and like how it's ensured that kids are kind of accessing you know the services and getting the best outcomes like i guess how will those be managed and that might be like a future question for jess when we hear from her in the future but so any position that falls under social emotional learning regardless of whether it's services students with special needs or not falls under jess mary any position that is just special education or general special education like the psychologist will fall under peggy suvannostra who's our director of student services that's how we defeat that up they work extremely closely together so they're often sharing an office um with each other and they're often online and meetings together currently so that they're learned they're still learning each other because they're new to our district and they're new jess is a new position um so they work incredibly closely and spend a lot of time together right now and it's just my question of how that benefits kids you know it sounds if there's a lot of connectivity between those huge amount yeah absolutely and the plus we were just talking about this yesterday on monday morning in our in our core team meeting which is our central office leadership team meeting the director of curriculum instruction director of student services and director of scl spend more time together than they've ever those positions have ever spent together previously before we were able to hire peggy su and jess it was very siloed yeah those departments were very siloed not anymore yeah they're talking with one voice and they spend a lot of time together okay great thanks it's fun to see yeah so i'm i'm happy with the budget i think um it's always a little frustrating like on slide 31 where you see our tax rate uh without the clc la sorry year to year and it's like a dollar 27 one dollar 27 cents next year projected which is the lowest that it's been in all the years that are on the slide and um so it's just frustrating to me i i know that ret asked this at the last meeting because i watched the video but the language on the ballot is there any way for us to add a sentence to the end of that language or does it have to be exactly the way that you have it on the slide decision there's talk about going to the legislature and asking them to change the language because it just doesn't portray the true picture of your tax rates i mean i'm really grateful to live in a district that's super supportive of schools and tends to um pass the school budget with a very wide margin so i don't anticipate us having a problem but just you know if i were in a different district or i'm not sure um what the voting history is in roxbury but you know it's i know that i've i've worked for districts before where the school budget doesn't pass sometimes and this language isn't helpful um so i have a few questions i i think they're pretty quick do you mind if i go through them you can cut me off yeah definitely just to note that we are having public comment no we are legislature or reps to the state house come next week that might be a point to bring up to them okay i know that's actually a really good idea okay great that would be great i think um so the the last meeting that i was in attendance which was the first one in december we had the admin team here and they were talking about some of the stuff that they were hoping you know if there was any wiggle room that they would add back in and i saw it looked like by pock and rja alliance that there was some money put back in for that can you speak to what they're mostly supplies okay they're mostly supplies for different clubs were you able to include the stipend that they were looking for for the staff person right they they she has it that's in the budget so there was some confusion there as to what i think jason brought that up yeah here at the high school there was some confusion as to why he brought that up because it was already budgeted okay so we had this understanding yeah it was a misunderstanding as to what was and was not budgeted and um and julie from msms had talked about tech devices for the seventh and eighth grade team were we able to put any of that so so she was able to add 30 000 extra dollars back into her budget and most of that were supplies for clubs and steam uh which is ellie rozenberg's new programming um at the middle school and then um also jason had mentioned for montpellier high school the scoreboards and enclosed outside bench i believe that's part of what he added christine is looking at it right now i believe that's part of what he added i think i'm glad i can circle back to these things and that you have the answers right and to be clear we're spending more to fix our scoreboard than we are to replace it so okay so our scoreboard in our gym is pretty broken um and then i wanted to circle back to something that i had asked also at the at the last meeting i was in attendance for and that was that i'm on a listserv about for the montpellier high school boosters club and there's been a bunch of requests that come that came through there that seemed like it would fit in a school budget and not necessarily like a little too expensive for a boosters club to to be funding and the three that i remember off the top of my head were jackets for the championship i think it was the soccer team or the track team that they were looking to buy jackets and somebody had mentioned that either each who puts that into the budget and then there was another request for travel expenses associated with the track team who had qualified to compete at the either the regional or new england state new england so there were some travel expenses requested for that and then a big one was that the theater program here at the high school they had requested some lighting upgrade so it was like conversion from old lighting to led lighting and then a proper um lighting board control board that would be able to work with those lights and um and that's like around ten thousand dollars and they have a some sort of fundraising page for that and they've asked the boosters for that but i'm wondering if there's any room to include those types of things maybe this isn't a discussion for tonight or this budget but just like moving forward trying to anticipate those things for principals to talk with their staff out but so throughout the fall principals work with their staff to say hey tell me what you mean like tell me what your budgets are and if the principals aren't asked those things i think part of the problem that's happening is that um teachers are used to going to boosters yeah boosters are pairing the the pi group for some things um and don't think to budget for it like don't think about the budgetary process which why why would they right that's not really their right their primary responsibilities so they go for the easiest route to access money right away um because it's not always easy to access money right away from a school district that is responsible to taxpayers right um and so i think that's part of what's happening here um and we also had new principals coming in this year who were learning our budgetary process budgeting is different in every school district right and so um i think part of i think it's those two things happening that teachers aren't telling principals wouldn't necessarily what they need principals have to make hard decisions they have to prioritize things in order to get to the number that they need to get at um and it's easier to get quicker money from an outside entity than it is to you know go through the process so i think there's several things happening yeah like i was i've seen kiana who's the theater person the fundraiser and i i too was like why should doing a go like i had no idea okay before the go fund me was even up so i was like why should doing that you know i never heard a request for that and i went i'd never asked jason about it because it slipped my mind but that was my initial thought when i saw that on friends month there yeah so i mean that one in particular you know the theater is so wonderful and it's doing so many things and they're looping the middle school in and so for me it tugged at my heartstrings you know as like this seems like an easy like low hanging for if it's only $10,000 i mean we have the fund balance money right now the school board has that too that we could take it from but i wanted to bring it up as a point of discussion and then maybe propose that we hear from kiana at a future meeting and maybe it's not in the budget but maybe it comes out of fund balance but i just think it should be addressed at some point yeah and also kind of along those lines i mean could there be kind of opportunities early for work to get out to you know people who might not think about the budget as a process to get small things funded like coaches etc to you know just kind of an invite from principals like put all your stuff in like they do do that yeah they do do that the challenge is something like jackets for state championship soccer team yeah like you don't predict that right yeah right you can't predict that it can be like a little you know fund for unanticipated expenses that are small that they could go to and then you're like hey we we yeah we won we won states we didn't expect to yeah yeah can we yeah yeah and typically when things come to us for that that's what we use our fund balance for um that's how we typically use it but if it doesn't come to us then we can't make that decision we'd also i'd also say that there are lots of small things that come to us and small things do add up over time and so we need to be cognizant of that as well and i think that's part of my job and the principal's job to to put things through a lens of what's appropriate use of the funds and what's not yeah i know and i think the more the more those are known the more you can prioritize so then it doesn't become a community question as to why we're not another community question why we're not or uh there there are some savvy coaches at U32 who are very good at advocating and i'm i'm sure they know exactly where to go for money and there might be folks here who are a little more shy and then folks who might quickly learn that possibly you know hey if i if i talk to my principal at the beginning of the year and get my things teed up my things will we'll get you know in there and then other people aren't thinking about it and they're either going out to boosters or going without um so it might be a you know like the loudest voices to always get right always get up and yeah um so another question i had was the the um we had been we've been hearing a lot about literacy and i don't understand you know the different trainings that are available but we've heard orton gillingham mentioned many times part of our essay listening sessions and stuff can you speak to that like how many people we have trained in our district we have one full-time time staff doing only gorgil orton gillingham right now and we have three staff members who are trained in it and i just wanted to say a few years ago we had zero right yeah well last year we had zero okay um we had um on slide 30 uh i just think that that might need to be updated just to be to reflect the actual housing prices in montpelier like there aren't very many if any houses that go for a hundred thousand dollars anymore so we might just want to sort of like bump that up to give a more realistic um view of what people's houses are worth and what they're being taxed on every thousand one hundred thousand dollars of value it goes up right so people can do the math but it says a house worth a hundred thousand and a house worth two hundred and a house worth three hundred and i think it might start at two hundred and go to four hundred yeah it might be a little outdated um i mean it's also based on assessed value and not what you can sell it for right okay those are my questions it can have behavior data in it it's not the same as what we're using right now no it's not right now we have a homegrown dashboard uh and so this would replace that and how is that is the that being is that we i think it was it was our board retreat uh beginning of november we learned about that tool and how is that has that been a progressively helpful tool our homegrown dashboard yeah i mean i think there was some different use and has all the usage of it that's sort of normalized throughout or sort of i wouldn't say it's normalized yet it's still primarily in the hands of mike and nick and um central office staff uh however i now can text nick and say i need the chronic absenteeism percentage that is accurate for now and he'll have it to me in two minutes whereas i that's never been able to be accessed before so through panorama my goal is to eliminate the the middleman i shouldn't have to ask somebody to get this data i should just be able to go get it myself right right now with the homegrown pieces um mike and nick truly run that now i have access to it and i can see it um it's just the it's just a little it's it's not slick it's not user intuitive yet um the other one is the other questions um with the if i say yes the cost per pupil has gone up 8.95 but the taxes are going down by 13 cents in roxbury and someone says how that doesn't make any sense why is it mostly the common level of appraisal is it that that specific thing plus one other it's mostly the dollar yield plus the common level of appraisal the both of those one plus the other i'm i am jill to make sure that she's agreeing with me that will go in i don't know if you can do that but make a sign in the voting space well does our ed spending include like federal money and other things too i mean that might account for some of it no takes out all the grants our ed spending for people see amount of money we have to raise through taxes and ed can i ask um the cost per equalized pupil 19 000 or something um do we have any comparable numbers to other districts understand that's a good question i i didn't bring any that number is available because i've looked at it before and they have like every school district and you can see it and i back when i was like really paying attention we were kind of like middle middle high end of the path but not anywhere near the like top well we're also yeah if i recall the paper in the 70th ish percentile 77 yeah it is available on agency of education works i think you can see the possible people if we wouldn't know would we know like ours is going up nine percent we know what other districts are going up on which anecdotal anecdotally sorry anecdotally thank you thank you i'd say we're pretty much where everybody else is right now yeah in both of our um professional groups we've heard the same numbers and actually much higher i was when i was i went to my monthly meeting last month i was going in shocked with a nine percent but that was on the low side to my colleagues so and and boards look at this differently is what i'm learning this year actually i i've never really paid as much attention as i have this year for whatever reason and some boards come in and and superintendents and business managers don't do the whole equation like we do from the get go with anticipated dollar yield anticipated cla and i'm i don't know why they make that decision but they don't right so um i think it's important for the board to know from the get go what these impacts are on the budget we can't ignore them um and so their other school boards just focus on percent of increase around equalized people and that's it really they don't look at us so i know in districts very close to us the boards have said six percent no more and um central office staff are now having to like think who how many risks do like that that equals people right so with with just the natural increase because they were around 11 percent so they have to like half they spend so it's just a different boards look at it differently business managers put together reports differently um but yeah i think that's pretty anecdotally that's pretty common across the yeah i've worked with school boards that say we only want an increase of six percent you know or five percent on the expenses you know they'll limit you that way so let me show the whole picture are we entering the budget forum part of the meeting unless we have further comments or questions well the forum is that a hand from Dave Delcore or is that a cursor on the screen can i just yeah that's a human yeah sorry i just wanted to ask what the process would be for just for this portion of the meeting because i know usually with public comment we hear we don't respond i just like what's and then what's our purpose because i also know that there's not much change we would expect to make to the budget after this point so we could be hearing some feedback that we might not be able to implement or so i i just wanted to know kind of how should we manage this part of the meeting um how do people want to manage it do you want to answer questions do do we want to give ourselves the opportunity to answer questions if there's questions that can be answered it seems that yeah i would like to if we have time i mean we can kind of maybe i don't know if people there's nobody in the room so if people online maybe could um click the raise hand function if you if you plan to give public comment then we could like gauge roughly how many people have questions but yeah people who would like to make comment um could you if you understand the raise hand function could you please do it's it's under reactions i believe yep yeah if you go to reactions so it looks like we have two three i mean if there are questions that are appropriate to answer we are happy to answer them um uh and we may state that the question is not appropriate to answer too so um looks like uh looks like david lisa and nathan in that order and if you want to if people want to pop in after that just go ahead and hit the raise hand function but yeah just a quick question um on the expenses by category slide and just sorry to interrupt please introduce yourself quickly even though we can see your name don't work on the expense is by category slide that showed the budget total at twenty eight million eight hundred and fifty thousand one hundred and eighteen dollars um and the draft ballot article is exactly two hundred and seventy thousand dollars less than that and you know five hundred eighty thousand instead of eight hundred and fifty so it's either transposed or there's a some reason that i'm not getting that the two numbers are different and i just want to know which one's the right number go ahead yeah um david that the twenty eight million five eighty does not include the capital plan so you we have to add in the capital plan which is two hundred and seventy thousand so the total budget is twenty eight million eight hundred and fifty perfect thank you and that's the capital plan is a separate item right on the ballot thank you yeah so that's a separate article on the ballot article eagle eyes of a reporter so please introduce yourself again for the can you hear me we can now yeah my name is lisa burns i don't think it's on my end um my name is lisa burns i have a student in the system for the and i've had kids in the system since uh 2012 um i'm concerned about the cost of the track so i would like to hear if uh there's any any planning about a maximum uh cap on how much we need spent also i'd like to know um the fund balance um to get uh substantially depleted by track but you have uh additional uh money in there and if there are any plans for that or long-term budgeting plans that take into account the age of our schools the pcb testing the alleged upcoming um net zero work where i would try and lower our footprint the windows that um keep getting pushed back and more expensive where does all this fit into a big plan for that pot of money thank you let's start i can start on some of the the easier parts of that so uh lisa if you look on slide 27 of the budget presentation that's the capital plan and you'll see the the time period for the window renovation as well as other renovations to our buildings primarily at union elementary school and main street middle school um those are included in the capital plan those kind of things christina do you have our fund balance numbers up i saw you google or looking at yeah i can start to pull that up just in this presentation there's nothing regard in regards to any of that for that 24 budget the track is not inclusive in this budget because it's paid for out of fund balance so it has no impact whatsoever on our tax rates or mob failure roxbury's tax rates um because it's not being paid in that way i wrote down a number from the last meeting no right yeah fund balance yeah because christina said this yeah it was 1,593,000 and that two percent that were required by law to care or by policy um to carry like a two percent fund balance which would be five hundred and forty three thousand um and we're allocating you know right now as it stands we have four hundred thousand dollars in this budget allocated from the fund balance um so that would bring it down to one million one hundred and ninety three which is roughly what four percent to sort the higher which which are the district yeah no my my question is exactly is to that point so as we were hearing the discussions of the bill germ adventure track um back in september or october november um there was a lot of talk where at points it was up over five million and and then it was stated that we would discuss those issues in add-ons um once this had been started and i understand it's definitely started so congratulations but i wonder how much more um the fund balance of the fund balance is going to be spent so to to pay for that trap because everyone admitted that the 1.9 that's been committed so far is not going to be adequate and i've seen no information about the bids contractor bids that have come in um more what you've added um so that's what i'm trying to gather how much money is our whole our district well i don't i don't think there's any discussion about the 1.9 million inadequate for what we allocated it for and that is with all of our other needs lisa sorry you're cutting in and out a little bit the the connection is not strong but i think we understood what you're yeah what you're saying yeah so the yeah the 1.9 million was allocated for you know a certain project other things were discussed um no money was allocated for that um money may or may not be allocated for for additional things depending on you know what we discussed in the future um you know we did allocate enough for the project that was put before us um historically there were three pieces yeah project that the board asked for yeah so the board asked for three different ways the track project could go and voted on the smallest yeah and including elements it didn't include a track we know it's an internal turf field which is the you know five million dollars that i think was referenced um so those those are future discussions that you know the the board will have to wrestle with later um you know in terms of if i may just interrupt briefly uh as i understand you plan to break ground very soon and the contractors are being hired so i would think these decisions need to be made now and to say you'll tell us about how much it'll cost in the future uh seems a little just to think anyways for its taxpayers and we my understanding is is that the the project that we allocated for we we can build without without additional funds um so okay so on that you're you're actually not correct we we do not have to make decisions about additional funds for what we've decided on i think to clarify like liby you were trying to clarify that there was in the presentation from andrew larosa um the facilities director he gave us enough information the board enough information about like all the variety of things that we could potentially add to the project and the board decided not to fund the all of those other additional things they decided just to fund the most basic um way that the project could move forward which is basically just doing the track and the only an extra thing that they added i think was like the eight lanes straight away so that money has already been allocated from the fund balance which was not any additional tax burden to any taxpayer because it's basically savings that the school board has from um from school budgets of years past that we've saved up and didn't end up spending so we kind of had to spend some of that and we decided to allocate a certain amount of money towards that project which is not a tax burden um and i think if there was a i think what jim was speaking to is if there was any sort of future ask to revisit some of those uh other parts of the project like let's say the snack shack or a press box that that would be require all the public you know open meeting law warnings and stuff that were required the first round so you would definitely hear about those conversations and be able to be part of them yeah and i think also to give you a concern like we did not create an expenditure that's going to necessitate an additional expenditure so right because we built the track it does not mean that we have to build the turf field correct it does not mean that we have to build the the building shed we could choose never to build those however the board could also choose to build those i mean it could revisit both of those ideas in the future and decide to build those either with fund balance funds or it could decide to fund them in another way so uh we've committed to a discrete project that's that's a project that does not necessitate us spending further things so we didn't decide to you know build half a building kind of knowing that if we build half ability right the other half right um but you know yeah but that but the board also did not make any promises that would never do either the projects in the future too the board could decide this board or another board you know next year or five years from now that one of these other ideas is a good idea um and and look at it discreetly then so uh we have a discrete project that we approved that doesn't convince us to further funds but you know the board will you know if if there's new ideas and new needs down the road um yeah we'll consider those including some of the ideas that came up as part of this brainstorming process and additionally if something were to come up that was an unexpected expense in the when they break ground on that project we'd have to deal with that we would have to then publicly warn a conversation about allocating more funds or you know if in the investigation of this project we realized that you know as we did with like the playground that there is maybe contaminated soils and it goes from right the the project we we budgeted for to a much bigger project the board could revisit the you know that idea and say you know either maybe not or maybe we need to fund this differently does that clarify Lisa does yes thank you very much that was very helpful um the other part of my question though was about the um the net zero um and the implications that um that will come from once we finally um get that that project going um the cost that it will take to bring these very very old buildings to net zero as well as the potential cost of the pcp study looking at the uh the burlington thing with the $165 million bond if any of these things are um under discussion with our school board about how they might be handling those money issues thank you i'll turn my speaker off so maybe it'll work better yeah christin do you want to give an update on the net zero study yeah so for net zero lisa uh the school board earmarked $50,000 or committed $50,000 to uh net zero and that was in the spring of 2021 i believe and so at this point the energy and facilities committee has is coming together and we are working on drafting a resolution and our policy around the district's kind of approach to to achieving net zero um and we're really trying to take a good hard look at what the best most optimal most optimal use of that $50,000 will be whether that's in support of development of of policy or systems or whether that's uh you know turning that over to uh facilities to do an engineering study so we are we are still in process on that and um i would expect a draft resolution coming from our committee within the next two to four weeks is that helpful it wasn't really what i was asking but i i think that there's just simply no information you there are no long-term plans then for our old buildings um a piece to be uh contamination thank you lisa i would also say that our um our energy and facilities meetings are open public meetings and if you go to um our committee page you will find our meeting agendas as well as minutes that you can get up to date information on that in our meetings and we did discuss the pcb thing is is an unknown it's a mysterious unknown that we won't know until our schools are tested so there's no really good way right now for us to know exactly how much money we should be thinking about allocating for that so it's one of those things that is also an unknown from the state perspective as to how much money the state will be allocating right the other testing comes through yeah so it's you know um there's no good way for us to financially plan for something that can't be known um but you know we're in a good position having a four percent fund balance you know we're not at a two percent fund balance which is all that we require we have a four percent so at least we have some some way to um you know some money saved and set aside for emergency purposes David is that your hand up again or is that a total down like Nathan was next to and Nathan's hand is going down Nathan do you still want to know it's still there the hand is still there oh yeah it's just running in your background okay Nathan um hello school board thank you very much for the work you do and especially thank you to Libby and team on the budget which is a huge deal um I'd come back to a theme I've asked about a lot in the past um both about folks who are on IEPs and 504 plans so you know students who need a lot of support but then I'm especially interested in the students who are um not strong enough to qualify for an IEP but still you know maybe underperforming their their uh great expectations or um needing more sufficient emotional support etc um this is I guess to Libby do you feel confident now you know after you had a number of years you've got staff in place and you've got more data is and I know that the budget's not the only answer but is this is that are there enough resources either in hand now or in this next year's budget to be making really aggressive progress for all students on on performance and support yeah Nathan I can remember you asking this question I think my first year superintendency so I appreciate your perseverance um yeah we we've done considerable work in this area it's all under the pillar of timely system to intervene and remediate and and we've added significant resources in terms of human resources over the past three years um in each budget cycle the board has seen increases in our intervention staff and I can remember saying to you at one point Nathan that we can't just add people to a lack of system um and so we've worked very hard on the system piece of this going back to Michael Fullen's think about systemness rather than individuals and so we've made significant in inroads there um and if you can see part of that in my in one of the latest blogs with the UES intervention team in particular um which are um an incredibly high flying team right now and doing a lot of really good work at UES so I'd encourage everybody who has similar concerns with Nathan to watch that blog um which you can find on our website and we are increasing our capacity at Main Street to match the capacity we have at Union I think there is a need for more capacity at the high school in the future in terms of remediation efforts uh however we uh don't have the system or schedule there yet we haven't figured out some things yet at the high school um so I hesitate to add more human resource at the high school without knowing what they're doing um without having the culture and the climate and the system and the schedule in place here at the high school for that work so I can imagine in the future we will be adding more FTE there um however we've made significant inroads at UES and MSMS and we have a system in place now that we're seeing large gains for students that we've never had the data to show before and we never had the system to show before um through our intervention system so um it's work I'm proud of and it's it's been hard work and long work and a pandemic didn't help didn't help in many cases uh but this year in particular uh through a lot of work by Mike Barry quite honestly he he's gone then intervention team across the district working together as a collective group and making some differences for kids who are tangled thank you very much uh you um you did mention RBS yeah RBS we have .5 or actually we have 1.0 FTE sorry um an intervention that's out of our title 1A uh funds so we do have 1.0 FTE there um and that that person that individual is part of the district-wide intervention team um and working closely with the intervention team and building a lot of professional capacity RBS is also a slightly different beast because of the small amount of kids they can look at their school as a whole in their five full Beth's next blog actually that she put in today it hasn't been published yet but it's coming out soon um I highly recommend you read that as well blog posts around the five pillars she explains beautifully how RBS right now is working on using all of their full-time employees and looking at their data for 34 students and saying who's doing what and bringing it up that way rather than thinking about one interventionist job so when that blog post comes out I believe it's the next blog post that will be published so when that comes out take a look at it because Beth does a beautiful job of writing that up thank you very much from uh from my perspective as a parent of two children at RBS their experience is not as a grade or a class participant it's it is as a whole school participant like they're they're going there's no great there aren't really grades in a lot of ways they're they're they're interacting with all the kids at all the different levels in multiple different ways it's a whole it's really a different experience yeah and that's by design by a lot of good good good thinking and process from Beth and to get kids mixed up and seeing lots of different kids and and having teachers that collective responsibility really trying to instill that and the teachers there because they can right so it's it's Beth's done a good job with that work or she's working towards it she's great and it's it it builds the community because it connects families that might not otherwise be connected honestly I have I have a couple of follow-ups from public comment that could we could use this time to address yeah I think that well the one that Angela mentioned about neurodiverse I think is a little bit of a combo with what Nathan was just saying is there are there things where you could point to in the budget where you say this is it this is how we are supporting kids neurodiverse kids is that largely through IEPs this is partially because I have a big you know like I'm very ignorant about it so it would be helpful in the budget because the budget's big yeah I don't know I guess it yeah it's a big view so you would look at the special education pieces okay social emotional learning pieces you look at facilities pieces so for instance our lights have been completely changed over the past three years so that they are the large majority of our lights if not all of them are on dimmings dimmers okay they're not the fluorescent bulbs they're you know like we've we've done a lot of work there so it's that it's tough to break it down to a granular it's also our system of intervention remediation and first instruction as well you know so when we're talking about engagement strategies for first instruction we're talking about how do you engage all kids yep in the learning and how do you how do you use multiple modalities to make that happen um how do you get kids up out of your seats and and talking or teach them how to talk you know that's the executive functioning sale so there's it's granular right you wouldn't see it necessarily represented in a general school budget because of that because it's not like you can just hire one more staff person and and say you're my staff member for neurodiversity yeah we wouldn't do that but for example the intervention team that you had on the vlog do they have training to help with different varieties of neurodiversity when it comes to the interventions that they're doing yeah i think part of the tricky thing is that neurodiversity is a relatively new term to education and i believe people are defining it in different ways so some people are using that term for more social emotional pieces or executive functioning skills some people use that term for different ways kids learn to read some kids some people are using all of the above for that term um so i think that's part of the challenge when people use that term um there may be a you know academic definition to it but when parents are using that term for instance they they may be using it with multiple definitions so i think that's important to know um which is not surprising with new terms right so you can say the same thing probably about social emotional learning you know so um or mental health or restorative practices or restorative practices exactly when they have new new ideas coming into education it takes a while to hone in definitively yeah um okay that's helpful thank you my second one is to follow up on the letter that i wrote the numbers in there about or not that i wrote that i read from the ues food service team you know one two the numbers that they threw out were inflation went up nine percent in 2022 their you know salary increase was three percent would it be possible to see what the what it would look like if we said if we said let's say what their salary goes up another three percent could we see that for the next budget you know what what that budget implication would look like i just just have no idea for food service for the food service workers in this budget food service is not included um food service is a self-sustaining okay completely different fund so the only thing you see in regards to food service here is the transport from the general fund got it the food service fund okay so it's basically its own business yeah run by jim birmingham right so and it runs at a deficit every year right so it it's a matter of how much you want to increase the deficit right okay so i i mean i i understood that i think at an intellectual level i didn't realize that then salaries for the workers who are in our food service are to represented in our budget i didn't realize that yeah it's interesting is the deficit represented in our budget yeah 110 thousand is what we transfer from our budget into food service that's what's in the budget well that's that's what we budget to transfer right sorry when you end the year you know based on the reimbursement rates the federal reimbursement rates and the state reimbursement rates and how much participation you have in the food service program you don't know your deficit until you get to the end of the year so then i know a couple years ago i think grant had to come back and say oh we need an additional 60 thousand to cover don't quote me on those numbers because you anticipate a deficit and that's statewide i don't want you to think that that's unique to Montpelier every food service program that i'm familiar with has always run a deficit so that's not unique to your district where the deficit wasn't that much that year so the year that right now it's funded federally and state and by state funds that first year a full year of COVID we had there was huge reimbursement rates so we actually ended up with i could call it a surplus but really it was the balance of what you folks transferred in there it was like you only needed you only needed a couple thousand dollars to cover the deficit so you ended up with on the plus side and the food service fund and we decided to keep it there yes we left it there so anticipating a deficit this current year because the funding mechanism has changed the rates have changed we're not sure how it's going to look next year we don't know how it's going to look if the state is still going to be kicking in because right now everybody gets free breakfast and lunch so who who would be like the appropriate decision makers for them to it doesn't feel like it it's us you know for them to forward that letter to or for us i mean because i am supportive of if it kind of breaks my heart that they don't feel like they're valued employees and i would love to make sure that they know that they are valued employees so what what is in our purview to like make any change so jim birmingham runs our food service um he's our director of food services and the way there's been significant changes and i was actually it slipped my mind i was going to have you pull these up earlier um but there's been significant changes across the years and how much food service has been paid um and i particularly remember christina you might know this like two years ago there was a serious bump in food service wages because we didn't have enough staff so jim was trying to attract staff um so that we could be fully staffed was it two years ago or three years ago that was the beginning of the first full pandemic yeah i think it was 21 22 yeah fiscal year 22 there's a significant increase do i remember that question coming to the board or no no we were informed about it but you were informed of it okay um and so we did make that significant bump it was on with grant christina's predecessor he did have a plan to increase food service wages across several years we we shoved up the timeline on that and we also we also added a food manager or a kitchen manager i'm not sure exactly what their title is at union elementary school and main street middle school whereas previously we only had one at the high school so we added two um positions that do receive health care benefits at union and main street we added the position at rbs as well um and then there's staffing there there's staff who do the cooking and things so the food manager do the ordering and and menus with jim and all that kind of stuff so we the the board did i believe add those two positions three years ago yeah we'd have to go back and look um so there was there has been significant changes to how jim structures the food service and how it's generally works is jim comes to me to talk it through um and we make decisions that way and so it's not statewide it's district wide and it's a business he's an employee of the school district yes and then he manages a budget that is state and federal separate yeah it's it's essentially a separate business and he receives state and federal funding through reimbursement with how many meals kids take every day and do you have a sense of where we stand like just like the per pupil question sort of where we stand with food service workers their salaries or their hourly wages across districts i can give you that number i don't know employees and other districts are unionized so um i have worked part of AFSCME or their instructional assistant yeah i've worked at districts where they're union um and their support considered support staff so there is that model out there and i believe at one point in time our food service was unionized prior to me um but they've never been unionized since i've been superintendent that's interesting i want to say they were part of AFSCME at one point but i could be wrong on that yeah i think that i think that's true i'm totally sure about this correct well i don't know if we if it would be like a but an agenda item for another time maybe but it's i mean i as an individual board member and supportive of the food service staff and would like to for you and jim to sort sort of explore the possibility of increasing their wages or or maybe encouraging them to unionize if that's what they want i think one of the challenges that i have to weigh as well is that we have several staffing right and so if we pay one group of staff members considerably more than say our instructional assistants then we could potentially be setting ourselves up for our instructional assistants to leave to a different job when we are in desperate need of instructional assistants you know so we have i have to look across the board about with multiple employees um it's not quite so cut and dry yeah i would i would like to echo your comment i i don't think it absolves us of having some interest in this i didn't i didn't really realize that structure and i'm concerned because i know how much so many of us rely on our food service employees and they're interacting with our kids every day and feeding our students these like amazing meals and i i'm also really concerned that they i didn't realize they weren't receiving certain benefits and i didn't realize they were making well below 18 dollars an hour so for what it's worth i would like to add that concern it would be good to hear from jim i was just thinking would the board like a presentation from jim birmingham yeah i'm normal for it's i mean we've had that in the past we have he hasn't come in a while he's been coming a couple years yeah i've ever seen it so that would be two years yeah yeah yeah the last time actually it's fantastic yeah now jim is fantastic and the last time i think we really got him like food service presentations the issue is actually more around wellness it was around the nutritional nutritional policy and wellness um but i think there's a lot of improvements yeah i would be that would be great hi can you hear me yeah yes okay i've been trying to get it on zoom while feeding kids and doing homework this is macy bruce i am a taxpayer and a food service employee i would like to correct you liby by saying you did not add positions you actually gave a very long-term employee benefits after 25 years of service so um there was nothing added that wasn't already there and it's not accurate pardon me that's not accurate we increased hours and we made a new position in food management and then added staffing to cover that like that position wasn't just rolled over to a new one their fte remain the same so tell me please where you added staffing to ubs we added a kitchen manager position so number of it increased is that what you're saying so there was an additional person the staffing increased to increase the food manager position and it sounds like somebody who was currently on staff went into that position and then did you hire someone to fill out to ask jim okay i'm not sure about his staffing okay that's pretty i don't have anything to do with me i see why this has been running back kitchen for 25 years she finally got benefits last year the year before um so we are very understaffed we haven't had any addition to staff so i would welcome an opportunity to meet with you for jim to come in um because like that information as i understand it and experiences is not correct we are really understaffed and um running food service under a business model within a non-profit or organization you know that that doesn't make sense we don't we don't earn a livable wage we are many dollars an hour three dollars over three dollars an hour short of the state of Vermont average pay for what we do and so you know there's gotta be more that you folks can do i hope to honor and respect the hard work that we that we do every day to feed hundreds of children well thank you for bringing this to our attention i think the board i'm definitely hearing an interest in learning more and figuring out what the situation is and what we can do it sounds like hearing from jim about the structure and getting some some members of historical information is the first step but um you know we we do want to reiterate that uh food service is you know critical and critically valued um critical to our kids and critically valued and we really appreciate what you do so we do uh do appreciate you bringing us to our attention and do do want to learn more and i think getting jim on a near term agenda to talk about food service so we can understand these issues better and see what we can do is is important right well jim told us really specifically that you know he's not going to negotiate a wage for us that we have to go to liby and love jim he's a great boss so whatever you know what do you folks have to do to just do us right no thank you we we want to make sure that you are adequately paid and adequately um compensated and um that you come in feeling or valued and rewarded as you should be i look forward to your response to support thank you thank you nancy thank you these can be uncomfortable conversations but it's also like the board doesn't know what we don't know and it's you know it's good to to start um start the conversation so thank you excellent um um anything more on the budget otherwise that we can go to policy monitor and thank you everyone for showing up and asking great questions um uh policy monitor and you have two policy monitoring reports to approve uh do7 and f19 do7 is volunteers and work study students and f19 is uh limited english proficiency students uh do have a motion to thank you thank you christina yeah thank christina thank you i do have a motion to approve those two policy monitor reports i look to approve the policy monitoring report for d7 and f19 do i have a second um any discussion all those in favor i i any opposed uh so we have a third reading of the of the policies replacing repealing current the policies replacing repealing current policies a02 a03 a04 um i'll let emma speak more the policy committee met a couple days ago uh i think the two things one a couple of these i think are pretty close a couple of these i think the policy committee would like a little more time on um so i think it probably makes sense to have a fourth reading uh i also just want to make sure it looks like all of the pdfs that anna sent around had the changes i also sent them around and were just to make sure um uh but kind of given what was there and the idea i i think we have a fourth reading of these um any questions or comments for the policy committee or anything emma you want to add yeah i'll just add that so on december our december 12th meeting we made the changes from the first read but then and we had some technical difficulties because my computer died and jim had to switch to taking notes and then um and then you there was a second read on december 21st and our only meeting since then was um this past tuesday and we that meeting was sort of taken up with the library the librarians from the district proposing a draft of library material selection policy and then our student reps americans act are working on the curriculum language for the dei policy so i didn't realize we were going to run out of time and so we just ran out of time during that meeting didn't have time to incorporate the new changes so we've scheduled a meeting for um the 10th i believe which is next tuesday right yeah tuesday the 10th um it's from 12 30 to one so i have your notes you know on the documents and thank you for those but if anybody is free and can come or wants to email us with additional feedback on on those policies that we can make those changes and then i think um we definitely are going to need a fourth read so i don't think it makes sense really to go through them tonight because there's no substantive substantive i blended the two um uh changes from from the 21st and and i also think it it makes sense to have these all at the same time because they're rebuilding a place of quality so if we enact a few and don't enact them all then i think it might be confusing yeah two of them are ready the other three aren't yeah okay excellent um that's next tuesday at one tuesday at 12 12 30 to one we're trying to okay we're trying to be quick about it yes um so yeah either you can try to you can come to that meeting or you can either would you give me the numbers again of those policies that you're going to review it's with it's a 20 through 24 which are those are the new policies that we're repealing like our current i think a01 through a03 um they're on the agenda too they're they didn't read them all but i just don't have a vote that we're gonna go okay yeah there you can you'll be able to reference them on the agenda they're all linked on the agenda and the three that are going to be repealed are also listed on the agenda so now i think we have a good session to just give an update on um contract negotiations uh for both america and the teachers um so i think i think anna helpfully put the motion language in the agenda so someone wants to we need two motions we need um a motion wait a second do you need the motion did you put the magic language unless you did yeah i saw it in there it is it's on the agenda it's in there motion to consider except for the purpose of discussion no but we have to make a finding about the um district being placed at substantial disadvantage you are channeling your inner bridge at ac so yeah so first we need a motion that with the district at substantial disadvantage to discuss contract negotiations in public or some such language but i think that's close enough for yeah anna you want to say something close that the board finds uh the board that uh help me out here uh the board um would be uh placed at a substantial board would be placed at a substantial disadvantage um if contract negotiations were discussed in open session second any discussion all those in favor hi any opposed nay now we just need a motion now i move that we enter the executive session in the focus of discussing contract negotiations with miv a second all the favor all right any opposed it's great uh it's going to and how do we