 And the first thing on the agenda is adjustments to the agenda. Do we have adjustments to the agenda? I think we wanted to move the most important stuff to the end. So at least we would be able to be here for that. But I think the agenda seems like it's already mostly set up that way. Yeah, she had let me know last week that she was going to be having this issue. So I tried to arrange it that way the best I could. Okay, I suppose if we get closer to the, you know, budget discussion, maybe we could do the new hires before discussing them before the budget. But we can adjust it at the time, I guess. Andrew, I want to talk about the deficit. Okay, is that something that you want to do on board comment or should we? No, I want to make it part of the budget. Okay, so do you want to do that before we lift this part of the budget discussion? No, we can do it anytime. Okay, let's just include that in this part of the budget discussion. So that'll be any thought to we'll have a discussion about the current deficit. That'll be fine. Okay, all right. Do we want to assign times and have a timekeeper? I think we can probably just try and keep individual reports to 15 minutes or so and move on. We put them at 20, I'll put this right when Lisa should sign on for budget. That's true. But we could probably discuss the audit before that would give 15 minutes for the audit to and then Lisa should. Sounds good. All right, and we may have some public comment, who knows. So I think we'll just move on without a timekeeper and if things seem to be taking too long, I'll chime in. So we'll move on to public comments. Do we have any public comments at this time? Okay, hearing none, we will have another public comment time at the end of the meeting, I believe. Yep. So we'll move on to the consent agenda. We have the minutes for Tuesday, December 15th and the minutes for Thursday, January 14th. Does anybody have any adjustments or corrections that we need to make for those? Then would anybody like to make a motion to approve the minutes? So I'll make a motion that we approve the minutes of the regular meeting on Tuesday, December 15th, 2020. And the minutes of the special meeting on Thursday, January 14th, 2021. Is there a second? I'll second it. And discussion. All right, all in favor, say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. All right. Any opposed? Okay, we've approved the minutes of Tuesday, December 15th and Thursday, January 14th, 2021. All right. Now we'll move on to board comment. Any other board have comments at this time? Jamie, you're up. Good evening, everyone. So to add to my report, you know, I'm really proud of our ability to reopen schools safely and effectively last week. The communities and teachers continue to do a great job of navigating COVID-19. We did have some incidences of COVID-19 in towns throughout the SU, and then we were aware of some positive cases within Stockbridge Elementary School that occurred right around break. I'm really happy that we took the week to pause virtually last week. Sorry, not last week, two weeks ago throughout the SU because I do believe we hadn't done that. It would have resulted in closures across the SU just because at that point in time, we did have some community spread that we are aware of. So I was happy that we remain closed until the 11th for in-person instruction. We opened up last week and we've been able to successfully continue to navigate it. I want to emphasize that throughout lessons learned, I can't emphasize enough that every procedure we put in place is to mitigate risk, but we can't take out all risk of COVID-19. And the other big lesson learned was that if students maintain appropriate distance, use proper face coverings and all of that's in place, if a student is in a classroom with someone who is identified as being contagious in school, the entire classroom is considered a close contact if the student has been in there for four hours. So that was eye-opening for some families as we navigated some positive cases within Stockbridge. I think folks felt like if you wore a mask and you safely distance six feet apart, that you wouldn't get contacted as a close contact. It doesn't mean you have it. It just means you've got to go through the quarantine process and then it needs to result in a negative test. So that was challenging times for the COVID response team at Rochester Stockbridge to respond to because we were forced to do the contact tracing. And so that resulted in our team making phone calls throughout the entire break, including even on Christmas. And so that was a challenging few weeks. I think we've learned a lot from it. I think that the Department of Health has indicated that we've done a terrific job with responding and that our procedures really are in alignment with the safe and healthy school guidance. But I think there's a few things we've learned throughout it that to ensure if we do have positive cases in one of our member schools in the SU in the future, just how we can better communicate proactively with the communities to give them a heads up like there is a delay sometime in contact tracing because you think you have all your initial contacts done. And then you could find out that you have another positive case three days later. And then that results in more line tracing and contact tracing. So there sometimes is a little delay as you go throughout that process. And then, you know, it's budget season. We've been able to successfully put three district budgets to bed for the 21-22 school year. I'm hopeful that tonight we can get an approved budget and then get to work on how do we ensure that we're proactively communicating that budget, discussing with our communities what it supports and talk about, you know, why we had to make some decisions that were really required based on the current financial times of the state of Vermont. Principles have already done their draft of their annual report. I've been reviewing that. We will send the mailings to the boards for your review prior to them going to the printer just so you know. So you will see a draft before that happens. And those drafts will all be getting completed and put to bed next week. So busy couple weeks here to get budgets put to bed and ensure that, you know, we're communicating appropriately with our communities around what those budgets support. And I'll entertain any questions folks have. Just a quick reminder too that we do, we will have a wagon wheel meeting next Monday to approve your warning for the budget and put that to bed in addition to we need to ratify the support staff master agreement. So that will happen at 6 and then at 6.30 will be a full SU meeting, the regular scheduled meeting in January. Are we doing our own school report? Yes, that was decided at least one or two months ago. Did we vote on that at the board? I mean, not opposed to it, but I don't remember. It was definitely a discussion. I don't know if you voted, but that's the direction you said you wanted to go as a board. There's definitely consensus around that. Definitely needed the report by January 8th and the board decided if we were going to do it from one town, we should do it for both. Yeah, I think given the deadlines, it wasn't practical. So I don't know if we had to vote it on it, but it was pretty clear that was the way we had to go. Are we going to talk about the annual meeting tonight? Yes, that'll be after the budget discussion. Yeah, I'll walk you guys through the different choices you could have around that. When do we need to get the financial report out to the town? You mean our mailing bomb, the budget mailing? Yeah, well, you have to do it a minimum of 10 days prior to the vote. We're going to try to get it to the printer next week, like I said, so that it's out there no later than the second week of February would be the goal. And Jamie, can you say again? And of course, that's assuming that the board's desire is going to be to move forward with a town meeting vote, of course. And that's part of what you have to talk about tonight. The board has a you guys have permission now after the governor's signature Friday to delay a vote if that's what you so choose. Jamie, just a question about Monday night's meeting. Again, it's a wagon wheel. Does that start at six o'clock? Yep. Local district six six, six thirty. And of course, tonight's conversation will inform what that meeting at six looks like in regards to your warning and how you want to go about that. All right, any other questions for Jamie before we move on to the principles? I'll just add and I'll mention it again. I have been in contact with your town clerks. And Tara and I have already scheduled a meeting with the town clerks across the SU that they've all agreed to for next Tuesday. So whatever's decided within those warnings on Monday night, Tara and I were meeting with town clerks just to ensure that everything's coordinated. So we've already set that meeting up for next Tuesday at one o'clock because it's just different this year. So coordination and being on the same page is going to be critical. Yeah, thank you. That's great. OK, principles, we'd like to talk about your report. I'll jump in. So we've got a couple of links. We added an introduction and a kind of summation at the bottom to kind of get outside of the parameters of the three goals. We thought you'd be interested in learning a little bit more about the professional development days that we had in December. So if you want to take a look at those agendas, that's there. We also started off the new year with an all school faculty meeting and the presentation that we shared with the faculty is there. Basically, we reviewed these three goals with the faculty and some of the steps that we've taken towards reaching those goals so far this year in the first four months that we've been together. Our week of virtual learning went well and we're back now. High school just wrapped up midterm assessments or what we know in midterm exams today and Star 360 reading and math testing has started. And we'll hope to have that done within the next week. We've got some more specifics about each of the goals. We'll let that speak for itself. The newsletter and the high school newspaper, the Wildcat Insider, both of which I think all of you've probably seen before are linked in under Goal 3 if you've got some time for additional reading and want a ground level look at what's going on in the schools. And then for other, we had the first day of our new food service staff today in South Royalton, Bonnie Van Fossen, who used to work for the district and left and came back. So for the first time this school year, we are fully staffed in food service. Our facilities consultant, Lyle Smith, stopped by last week and we are hoping to get to work on a five-year facilities maintenance plan that we'll work on in the Board Facilities Committee. And we're expecting a second round of federal stimulus money. So we hope to position ourselves to be ready for that and some of the additional HVAC needs that we discovered as we were going through this fall and kind of combing through the classrooms and other rooms on campus. So we're having a great year and continuing to feel really fortunate that we've got our pre-K5 students in person every day and everybody else four days a week. As you connected with friends around the country over the holidays, you probably realize that many parts of the country, kids haven't been in school all school year. So it's a pretty special thing that we've been able to ride out the pandemic in person. Any questions or you want us to go into more depth on anything? Thanks for covering that, Reed. Well done. I'll just comment real quick for the virtual week. I don't know if how many kids got this as an option, but I know our kids got to sign on and check in with their what would have been their in-face classmates for a morning meeting with the Royalton fourth grade class. So so they were pretty happy about that. Following week, they're a little bit bummed that it wasn't happening anymore after that. But but during any of those virtual weeks, I think it's good if we can, you know, for the virtual Academy kids, if they can get some opportunities to reconnect with those classes that they would have been with back at their at their home schools. I think it's a good opportunity to maintain those connections and stuff. And I know our kids were excited about it and all the kids that were in the in-person class were excited to see them too online. So I might add one thing I'm looking back that got left out is this afternoon, our older students participated with the Vermont Law School in their annual celebration of the Martin Luther King holiday. So there was some singing. There was a speaker who he wasn't flown in this year, like usual, but spoke to us virtually from his law offices in Florida. And he has claimed to fame as he was the lead lawyer in the case against. R.J.R. Reynolds that sought a $23 billion punitive damages for the death of an African-American man due to smoking. So we got a lot of success standing up for underdogs over his lifetime career. That's great. Do we have anything else for the principals? Should we move on to Tara? Sounds like, Tara, I think you're up. Thank you. So you all have my initial report that was sent out in advance. Auditors are continuing to work through the FY20 audits. They're anticipated that they will all be done by the second week of February. So we're happy with that. I outlined all the reports that are due from the business office in the month of January. We were making great progress as far as the 1099s are concerned. And then we ran into a snag with the software company that they're trying to troubleshoot. So hopefully that will be resolved by the end of this week. And we can wrap up those, but the majority have already gone out. I'm continuing to work with the agency of education to get our CRF reimbursement funding processed and into them for submission. And then my discussion items are for later on in the meeting for the budget. And then if you want, we can move right into the revenue and expenditure summary update. I'll just add it's audits under discussion in 8.1. But I do expect a draft that can be released to the SU board in Rudd board this week, a final draft. It just we won't adopt it because the other districts final drafts are not done. In case there were small changes that needed to be made. But you will see the board will get a final draft of your audit this week. And the SU board will get one for the SU board. We just can't take action until the rest of the districts are done. Correct. Ray, do you want to put the revenue and expenditure summary up, please? So per the request of the finance committee, which is a great recommendation, I have highlighted in pink the changes in this month's report versus what was previously submitted. So on the revenue side, I also outlined it in my board report to you as well. So you had it there. I increased the tuition revenue based on the additional tuition that we've received. I adjusted the transportation aid revenue based on the actual funding that we received from the AOE. And then Jamie and I had discussed that we had put the COVID expenditures on, but we didn't actually offset it on the revenue side. So we have added that in there as well in anticipation of receiving the funding. So it washes itself out, but at least it's on the on both sides of the spectrum. And then on the second page on the expenditure side, I've just updated where we stand on the COVID expenditures. Are there any questions on that? So is there a tangent? Go ahead, Lisa. I was just wondering what the transportation aid was and the tuition revenue was before. I don't have the previous version in front of me, just this one. Just open it up and I can let you know. The first version that we issued, the tuition was 606-136. And the transportation aid was 171-194. OK, thanks. You're welcome. So we have we heard more about the the COVID funds reimbursements. Like, is there something that's made us more confident that those are going to come in or just? I don't see any reason why we're not going to get our reimbursements. Yeah, I mean, the grant was approved. It's really now them just doing their part to essentially stamp it and get the check out. But everything that we are asking for for request were approved. It's not like so every expenditure that we've requested was approved via the grant. And this total sum of money we asked for was approved via the grant. Right. And they're still trying to decide on their side how they want it to actually look in this submission. So they've come back and asked us to make adjustments. And so it's just a matter of going back and forth to getting it where the documentation where they want it to be in order to reimburse us. And can you remind me how the there were two different grants, right? There was the one that we submit and we get reimbursed for. And then there was a pool of money that we were able to. They're all reimbursement grants. You had to request the CRF, which the the lead grant, the coronavirus relief funds grant. We had to submit a budget based on what we thought our projected expenditures were going to be from March through the end of December. That was one pocket of money. And the second pocket of money is what comes to the next round. So they wanted you to hold off. And that's the ESSER funds. And that's where they wanted you to hold off to use because that grant is longer than the original CRF grant. So what you don't get funded for under the CRF funds, you can then request funding for under your ESSER funds. And that grant also is any of those expenditures that we can't claim that are continuing expenditures after December 30th. We would write into the ESSER grant as well. And then the most recent additional funding, we're still waiting on guidance on how that's going to be distributed. My understanding from the meeting I had last Friday is that it will be allocated to us similar to how we were set an amount of money under the ESSER grant that they will do that process again. It's actually called ESSER 2, I think is what they ended up calling it. So we're just waiting for some additional guidance and how that process is going to be rolled out for the next cycle of funds that are coming through. And then you have the Efficiency Vermont grant, which was part of that original funding package that we submitted proposals from our HVAC contractors and our grants were written on those proposals. And then once the work was completed by December 30th, we have the invoices we then submit and we get reimbursed for those funds through the Efficiency Vermont section. That's the HVAC work that Reed was referring to as well. Does that revenue show in this report? It's not showing in this report because it was a direct reimbursement for the expenditure. So it's not showing on either side of your reports, Bob. So the expenditures aren't showing in the budget? The expenditures are not showing on the summary, nor is the revenue for the HVAC work. I can add that if you would like me to, so that you know. No, I don't care. I thought the revenues were being included in our budget. The HVAC wasn't. Okay. That one was directly lined up, Bob. So we just didn't put that one on where the CRF was a multitude of different items. So it made sense to capture that, that that has actual codes. So we could just pull that out and give you guys a sense. But we didn't project the HVAC work because it was a direct reimbursement on the actual scope of the job. What's the answer stand for? I knew you were going to ask that. I have no idea. Money for COVID. I don't remember all the acronyms, Bob, but I'll look it up. I believe it's the elementary and secondary school relief act. I think you're right, Reed. I think that's what it is. This is my big long sheet about it. Yes, elementary and secondary school education relief. And their CRF is the Coronavirus Relief Fund. And the biggest difference between those two grants, as Andrew was sort of alluding to, we know what we can get for a total sum of money in Essar. CRF, we built a budget and then we had to wait of whether or not they would approve that budget. Right. So I know what we can actually request up to in this one versus CRF where they didn't give us a figure. Right. Was that money spent for what? Academics? Well, I had to be COVID related and the expense that was in budget. So you got to think PPE, any type of staffing we had to add due to COVID-19. Increased but purchases of devices. They had to be additions. It couldn't be supplanting what we currently already had, but we had to add stuff. The outdoor classroom expense to have the students having the classrooms outside in the beginning part of the year. That's part of it. The alternative school, the Virtual Learning Academy, those are all items that we're covering under the CRF grant through December 30th. And then those continuing expenses will request in the Essar moving forward. So we don't know how much money that is. So we know how much money we receive for CRF. But we don't know how much money this second grant. The most recent act that the additional funding, the next source of funding that was signed into law a couple of weeks ago, we don't have any guidance on that second round of funding. We know what we were approved for under the CRF and we know what we were allocated for under the original Essar grant. There's a third pot of money essentially now. This new one that's coming out that President Trump signed in at the end of December, we haven't had any additional guidance as to how that's gonna be allocated and how much we'll get for that one. The Essar grant, is that figured into the revenue here? No, we haven't said anything. We haven't dispersed it yet and it's an SU grant. How much more of that, like does it seem, how long will the first Essar last for? The first Essar goes through September of 2020. You're gonna pull it back out. Sometime in April, Tara. It's the grants due, the applications due in March. The amendments. We will need the second batch of funds regardless, just because. Yeah, oh, we're gonna absolutely go after the second batch of funds. Yeah, we're gonna get any money that we can get for our continued COVID expenditures. Right. The expenses are showing up in our budget. It must be, right? The expenses that are showing up in the budget right now, Bob, are the ones that we are claiming under the CRF grant, not the Essar grant, the CRF grant. I know, but we're, but we've hired people and we have programs doing, how are we paying for it? All via grant. I fully expect that that will be covered through the grant the entire year. And the Essar funds will pick up in January where the CRF funds ended December 30th. And that is where we write the Essar grant to pick up where that grant left off in the additional expenditures that we will acquire as a result of COVID from now through the end of the fiscal year and into the next school year. That's how we will write our Essar grant when the time comes. Oh, we don't have the money for that grant yet. I'm trying to figure this out. Nope. So maybe I'll try. So Bob, I've been, we have the money for the grant. It's paid for all COVID related staff and expenses up through December. I also know that I have another pot of money that's gonna cover what we anticipate to be expenses from now through the end of the year. We only added enough staffing and supplies that were aligned to what we were projected to have in the Essar. So we were conservative in our approach around expenditures related to COVID-19 to ensure that we had enough money to cover those expenses. Well, I'm still a little confused because you have expenses, you don't have the money. How are we paying for it right now? We're paying it based from the general fund and awaiting the grant, just like we have to with title funds. You have to spend it and then they give you back. They used to disperse those grants ahead of time. They don't anymore. They make us wait. Everything's on a reimbursement. So you have to provide the proof that you paid for the expense and then you get refunded through the grants. Okay, so these, right now all that money is coming out of our general fund to pay for those expenses. Yep. And we're not gonna see, well, when we see that money, then it'll take care of the expenses in the general fund. Yep, and we'll reimburse the general fund. All right, meanwhile, the general fund looks like we're spending money that, you know, we don't have. Well, that's where these projections that Tara produces is useful because it takes that into account and it's not just based on the actual revenue that's in and whatnot, you know, it's... Well, is that revenue projected? Yes, Bob, it is. All right. That's what Jamie had me add in this draft version because in the first one, I hadn't put the offsetting revenue in, but he had me added in this one and we will have it there moving forward as we progress through the reimbursement process. Just, I'm pretty sure I asked this in some previous meeting, but the salaries for teachers that are in the BLA, are they all, is it only, you know, there were a few teachers that were in our district that are now in the BLA. Are those salaries still being paid locally or is that COVID-reimbursable? So new additional staff is COVID-reimbursable. Okay. We could have some staff that we already had. Right. Okay. Hi, Lisa. How are we doing? Back. I was just trying to get my bearings looking at the agenda and the documents that are here. So... We were just reviewing the revenue and expenditure summary update. Great. Thank you. That's helpful. And Andrew, if you want to keep going, that's fine. Or... Okay. I was worried we were going too fast, which would be a problem for... So the good news is, Tara, can you give the board? Can you just again highlight for those who can't see the document that are on the phone, the projected surplus we are projecting right now? Yep. So as of December, I'm projecting that we'll have a potential surplus of $185,883. If we continue on this trend, this path. And that's not necessarily taking into account just so you know the hard work that teachers and principals have been doing in supplies savings. This has just been looking at big ticket items. So if we continue to work diligently, my hope is that number continues to increase as we go through the year. And as Bob was talking about with the deficit, I mean, my hope is, is that we are able to potentially pay off a chunk of that deficit this year. I just want to express how much I appreciate those efforts. I know that the picture isn't 100% Rosie moving forward, but I feel like all of the efforts that the teachers, that the administrators that everybody is making to help us problem solve this situation is noticed and I appreciate that. Yeah, same here. Thank you. I think I understand it, but just to make sure, so just double-check. So those ESSER funds that, you know, we're expecting to get reimbursed or that we're expecting to receive, that's built into your projection already or it's not built in? Not the ESSER fund. Only the CRF funds. Okay. Funds we haven't done anything with at this point in time because we're not using them until after the December 30th usage period ended for the CRF funds. But presumably you haven't added in the expenses that would be expected for March yet. So, presumably those will just, those two off that will just increase a bit. Yeah, a big chunk of your guys is COVID expenses. There was a little salary. But like, you know, when you think about bringing staff on, there's certain districts that didn't have full-time nursing that we had to add local staff. And then, you know, the VLA, we added them all at the SU level. So, you know, those salaries are being paid out at the SU level and then the SU will be reimbursed. You know, Rudd in general added some floating subs, but in general, it's not like you added a bunch of staffing. A lot of what you're seeing there on your expenses were your tents in PPE and those types of things. You were saying that you were being conservative to keep total expenditures in the ESSER grants, until you knew that the CRF funds were gonna be paid out. Does that mean there's some room in the ESSER funds to, you know, say if there is an increased staffing need at the VLA or wherever else? Yeah, I would say that we've budgeted in a way that if there was a need that was an emergency, we could cover it. There's not a huge wiggle there. Okay. We ensured that we weren't gonna incur local expenses. And the ESSER funds, we also have to share with our independent schools as well. So the only expenses that have actually even been paid for by the ESSER funds are those expenses for our independent schools. So I don't know if they know what that means, Terri. So that would be like the Sharon Academy, Brookhaven, those independent schools that are within our supervisory union footprint. We're required, just like we're required to allocate some of our Title I funds to them, we had to do the same in our ESSER funds. We do that every year in our regular title grants. And they had a set amount of money out of our ESSER funds that we had to provide to them for them to utilize for the same expense types that we have. All right, does anybody else have anything else for Tara before we move on to the next agenda item? Lisa, do you wanna head up the further part of the meeting? So we're moving on to the discussion items, correct? We're on to the audit. Yep. All right, I feel like I can, I have my bearings. Thank you, Andrew. Yep. So we'll turn things back over to Tara, the 2019-2020 audit. So we were just, you might've missed at least, we were just sharing that we will have, the auditors are continuing to work through the remaining districts. They anticipate that they will have them all done by the second week of February. We will have final drafts issued for the supervisory union in Rudd. We just can't, Jamie was sharing this, we just can't take action on them until all of the districts are done in case there's any internal transfers that we need to make and once those audits are also completed. So that's where we stand. Okay. So we have more, more, you wanna talk about the projected general funds. You talked to the Rudd Finance Committee about that. Can you bring the board up to speed on that for both Rudd and the SU? I'm comfortable with that. Okay. So as far as the supervisory union was concerned, the restated FY19 general fund unassigned balance was $19,511. The FY20 general fund balance as of June 30th, 2020 was a deficit of $395,242 for an FY20 general fund unassigned balance restated of $375,731. So that is what would need to be assessed out to each of the member districts. As far as White River Unified District is concerned, the FY19 general fund unassigned balance restated was $405,726 in the deficit. The FY20 change in general fund balance as of June 30th, 2020 was a surplus of $129,345 which results in the FY20 general fund unassigned balance audit draft one of a deficit of $220,902. And then your food service. The FY19 enterprise school lunch ending balance was a deficit of $31,532 and the FY20 enterprise school lunch ending balance audit draft one was $126,524 deficit. So what we discussed about it, the finance committee was is the numbers run a little bit better place than what we projected in August in the general fund. So that's good news. The board does not have to take up the enterprise fund. It's the general fund that they need to take up. And there's the idea that we're gonna go about at the SU meeting on Monday is the idea of centralizing food service to try to find bigger efficiency, sharing of kind of knowledge across the kitchen staff around the SU and try to get better control cost around menu planning, bulk purchasing, things of that nature. They would still, you know, we keep our own employees for next year but we would have them centralized at the SU level around an enterprise fund. So we'll talk about that Monday, but when you look at the deficit, you need to take care of it's your general fund and then it'll be your billback portion of the SU deficit, which was less than we projected. Not significantly, but it was less. The concept being around your deficit that the, you know, what we talked about at the finance committee was we're projecting a surplus locally right now for you. And my hope is of our efforts continue to be at the SU level that we won't be running a deficit that potentially there could be a slight surplus this year at the SU level of which you would get a portion back, which would increase your surplus. With all that said, it would make sense to wait until we close the books this year to see how much of a deficit we're actually talking about that we need to deal with. And then at that time, we could borrow the money and then budget the repayment over three years and not have the repayment come due until July 1st, 2022. And then that would be budget as part of the 2022-23 budget. That's what we talked about at your finance committee meeting. So questions or thoughts about that plan? Good. I'm on the opinion that we should take care of the, yeah, I'm on the opinion we should take care of the budget for the separate, I mean, the deficit with a separate article on the town meeting. Well, the problem is that with the PLA change and all the other stuff, we're looking at a pretty large time hit already, despite, you know, basically through no fault of our own like our spending's going down and the taxes are going up a lot. So, you know, it seems like it'd be better for the taxpayers to be able to look at this potentially next year when we're not already seeing a large tax increase. Like if we add this on top of the 13 cents that we're already looking at, then we're asking voters for 16 cents or, you know, depending on how much we do all at once. You know, if we're doing a three-year bond then that'd be something like adding three cents or so. Whereas we can kick the can down the road one more year and hopefully things will look a little bit rosier next year. You know, we already know that we have a large tax increase hit this year. I think the thing that appeals to me most about deferring this for one more year is that the work that's been happening to come out the end of the year with a surplus is minimizing the amount that we need to pass on either through adding an article or taking it alone at this point in time. I feel like we keep hearing how much people are struggling and so adding more to that this particular year seems hard, especially looking at 13 cents when we're being really responsible with this budget, I think. And having another year to let the numbers settle out so we can save where we can save. We'll know more about it. I don't know, I feel like I'm talking myself in a circle but I guess I'm leaning in favor of that idea of dealing with it in 2022, leaning toward that. I'm leaning towards the same, Lisa, I concur with what you're saying. I think it seems like we've been able to, in this past year, coming out ahead with 185,000 plus this year is really encouraging and it seems like there's a possibility that we could continue to move down that path and there'll be less deficit to address and maybe in a year we'll be meeting in person again or people we're more familiar with the process of talking about budget is gonna be hard enough for people to do this via ballot and hopefully enough virtual attendance for our discussions around budget. So one less item for people to respond to in a trying time, I agree would be, there'll be a little more, I don't know, maybe a little more able to listen and understand the other nuances that are happening with the budget. Yeah, I think the important thing for the taxpayers to know that there's a plan. If we have a plan for dealing with it then I think they'll, and we can communicate that then they can trust us to get it done and they see the progress being made currently. If we were just saying we've got this $300,000 budget and we don't know what we're gonna deal with it then or through their $1,000 deficit and we have no idea what we're gonna do about it, that's one thing, but if we say we're because of the tax impacts of the yield and hard financial times, the plan is to do this and they know that we're gonna have to deal with it next year, but we've elaborated on a plan and I think that that's reassuring and it's not like we're being irresponsible doing this, we're using the tools that we have to minimize the impact on the taxpayers way I view it. I still think we should special article and ask to pay it off in three years or something rather than kick it down the road. We don't even know what's gonna happen next year. But do you think it's a good idea? I mean, if we do that, then we're asking them to add another three or four cents to the tax rate when we're already increasing it by three. They may not approve it, Andrew. You could present your case to the voters and they may agree with you. Okay, well, I'll disagree on that. Chris, do you wanna chime in? And I don't know if Rodney is one of those two phone numbers that called in, but I just wanna make sure we have a chance to hear from everyone on the board. Yeah, I guess I can see a little bit of both. If we have a vote on it now, it's just, I mean, it's some more stuff on top of some already bad stuff and it's either gonna go through or not go through one way or the other. But we do have the leeway to, again, have a couple of years to address that deficit. We don't have to address it in the immediate year, right? And so, we are projecting a budget surplus for this year. And that could offset that deficit in terms of the amount of the loan that we would have to take out, which like Andrew said, would reduce the amount of that hit. And I guess the question is, is it better to take that hit now or to take it later? And I mean, if we take it now, it's gonna be tough and it might be more likely to pass, our existing budget is more likely to pass without it. But the quicker we pay it off though, on the other hand, the quicker it's gone and we have potentially better continued budget scenarios in future years. So, I don't know, I can see both sides of it. I'm not sure which one is, I would lean towards maybe deferring for another year, but I don't know, I would maybe wonder what, you know, Bob, do you have any other argument as to why, you know, doing it now versus later would be better? I think that Jamie, I think Jamie's cleaned up a mess and he's got the savings from cleaning up that mess. I don't think there'll be a mess next year. I think it'll be pretty tight next year. And I think that he's done a good job this year and I think he'll do a better job next year, keeping it all in line, but I don't see huge surpluses next year. And I think we might as well address the issue and find out if the, and we can just put it on as a separate warrant if the taxpayers disagree, they agree with Andrew, then they'll vote it down and we'll go ahead and do it the way Andrew wants. And if they want to get it taken care of like I do, then they'll vote for it and we'll take care of it. I, you know, we think we'll leave it up to the voters. That's how I feel with a separate article. In a normal year, I think I'd be persuaded to see things your way, Bob, where we're all in a room together and somebody can make a motion from the floor and we have the warrant there and we can have a discussion. I'm already worried about Australian balloting. I just every time I think about it, I keep thinking back to, I keep thinking that I'm not, my name recall is not good this evening, but when we were going through the merger process, a gentleman from Royalton who delivers my parents meals on wheels and I can't remember his name right now. Anyway, who would talk about how much harder it is to pass a budget with Australian ballot. And so I'm just incredibly nervous that if we don't, if we continue to have very few people show up for our meetings, I'm seeing that we have 16 people total on this meet right now, that people won't have the information that they need to make a good decision about this. They won't actually hear your voice explaining why it makes more sense to do it that way or Andrew making the counterpoint. And then we'll end up in a situation where we have to cut more deeply than we want to and it impacts kids education. So that's just my worry and maybe I'm just jumping to conclusions, but I feel like in an atypical year, setting ourselves up for the easiest, the most simple formula to pass the budget we think we need is the direction I feel like I'm leaning then. Yeah, and I do think given all the challenges people are facing now, adding an extra expense on to somebody now isn't, in a normal year, I'm totally with you Bob. That's how I wanted to do this, going into it. But I mean, we don't even need surpluses for taxes to go down next year. We just need them to reappraise. So the CLA goes back to a reasonable, close to 100%. And then we have, the taxes will naturally be coming down. And if we add three cents on then, it won't seem like a giant jump. Like the CLA increase is really artificially hammering the tax rates here. I'm not afraid of, oh gosh, I've lost my thought, but of voting Australian ballot, at one time in my life I was, but after going through it with two different schools, I'm not afraid of it. I think it's really good. Those people that support education and their schools will be out there to vote. And you'll get some negative votes because there'll be people that won't. But if you're doing a good job, and if we're doing a good job, then I think that the voters will approve the budget. Now I think Jamie is going to, he's going to support this budget in a whole lot of different ways. I can just tell you the way it communicates already. Believe me, the word's gonna get out there about why we're doing things that we're doing and why people should support the budget. He's gonna make that happen. He's not gonna sit back and not do anything. He's gonna do that. And so I don't fear that. Now maybe it'll go down, but it's not gonna go down because of people not liking the school. It's gonna go down because people can't afford it. Simple as that. I'd rather address this issue now right up front and take care of it if we can because I don't know what's coming in the future. And I don't think we may not be able to. But we don't know what's coming in the future, but we know the present is really hard. And so, even like given the current situation, if we had, yeah, I don't know, that's just what I would say is, sure there's a possibility things will be really hard next year too, in which case we can just do it next year or there's a better possibility. I mean, given what we know about the vaccine coming and people hopefully being back to normal next year and people being back to work, presumably, assuming there isn't some other big issue, then it'll be easier for people to pay higher taxes next year than it is this year. And I think that's a reasonable assumption. And yes, we don't know what's gonna happen, but we know that this year is particularly hard. And so I don't see the point of adding extra hardness on not just from our school budget, like I think you're oversimplifying, like I think a lot of people, I don't see that many people kind of splitting their tickets on this sort of stuff. They'll probably vote no for the budget if they don't want the, probably vote no on both things and adding something else, no or yes on both things and adding something else will just kind of increase the number of people who might go no. That's just the way I feel, but maybe I'm wrong about that. But regardless of kind of the school budget side of things, just from the families in town financial side of things, I feel like it'd be easier or it's better when we know that people are going through hard times and we know that things are likely to be better next year for people to have that financial burden next year, not this year, given that it's an option. I'll make a motion to add another article to cover the deficit. Is there a second for that motion? So we can discuss it some more, I'll second it so then we can have some discussion on it. Okay, so we have a motion on the support. I have a couple more questions I guess. Okay, other questions or discussion about this? So I guess for me, a couple other things, I mean, do we know what any projections about what's gonna happen with just regular town taxes? Are they being projected to go stay the same or go up to or, because I think that'll be part of it is, what else are people having to take on in addition to the school budget in terms of their actual just town taxes? And then I guess the other one too, I mean, not everybody's on it, but I know for Elise's Royalton, the people are on town water, the cost of town water went up 20% on this last bill because there's not enough users right now, there's not enough consumption. So to address the regular costs that they have, the people that are using it, our bill, our water usage stays the same as last year, but we're paying 20% more this year than what we did last year. So anybody that's on town water is having to address that as well. So if you're outside of town and not on town water, that's okay, but I guess that's another question too, back to our budget, are we budgeting for that on the school budget too? But I mean, cause that's the issue right now with like, I think with the LS being remote and then also some of the restaurants and other businesses that aren't consuming water like they normally do, those costs are going on to the other consumers to cover the difference. So does anybody know anything about town taxes? I know about town water, but... I don't yet and I'm feeling remiss as you pointed that out. Thank you. I can really appreciate what Bob is saying. And I understand the desire to let the voters make the decision. If it was in a, well, I can't even remember the word now, but if it was listed as a point of discussion, but as much as I agree with that, I also feel like people are really stressed out financially and we're gonna be having informational meetings, but then everything's gonna get voted by Australian ballot. And I listened to the webinar that the Board of Education had put on describing how school budget meetings are going to be voted this year. And I think there's just a lot of new on both the stress of being able to pay bills and pay more in whether it's town taxes to school costs, et cetera, that just one more item, I think could really blow a gasket on people. And I would, I'd rather keep it simple and guide people through this first year of virtual voting and trying to be connected. And I feel like putting it off for the next years is emotionally a wise thing to do. And I think that the way we've been, you know, the way Jamie and everybody has been managing our budgets, I just, I feel like we're moving in the right direction and we've, I think everybody's got too much on their shoulders right now to have to add this to it. Any, yeah, Andrew. I guess the one thing to clarify would be what would the financial implications of doing this versus not? I mean, basically we're just gonna be carrying the balance on the tan and the tan interest rate is low, like it's, I don't know, I forget what it was, but 1.4% or something like that versus whatever we get on the bond, which might be a little bit lower, but not, I don't think, I don't see that there would be a significant money-wise difference in doing it one way or the other. So unless, unless terror, somebody has any other thoughts on that. I mean, my thought is too, if it was approved, I mean, I still think it, but who's the board to try to negotiate the loan agreement to be such that the payment doesn't come due until the following year. So that's something I'd want the board to take into account if you were gonna add it to the warning, because you haven't budgeted for that payment and you're not gonna get it to adjust your bottom line via that vote, right? So it would be really critical that we, because they're voting on a lump sum that you're gonna warn. So if that bond gets approved and we can't adjust when that payment comes due, then we're in trouble if we haven't budgeted for that payment. Well, I mean, so in that case, then they're really, I guess you'd access the funds sooner and whatever we'd be paying the interest of whatever that rate is versus whatever rate we get otherwise. So that would be the one difference. It'd be basically which loan we're paying, a bond loan or the TAN loan. But as far as like when we pay it off, it would be the same timing if we do it next year. Unless you guys wanna, unless you wanna gamble and add that money to your budget without the voters approving you to take out the loan. Jamie, I'm talking about a separate article. Well, I know, but the separate article, I get what you're saying about that. If the voters vote for a separate article, the money's there. Like would you amend, have the separate article amend the budget amount? So if the budget's approved, amend the budget plus $200,000 or $150,000. For this current year? And take out a bond. Is that what you're talking about, Bob? No. I'm thinking that if the voters pass the article, it's gonna be part of the tax rate. Right, so that would have to amend the total amount that we're spending because we need to incorporate the payment on the bond in the current or next year's budget. It would be part of, if the article passes, the amount of money that we would need to pay that article would go, would be part of the tax rate. So you'd have the money. You don't have to change your budget or do anything to it. Well, I think it's really important that we explain that to folks. I mean, I think technically it does go in the budget. I mean, you're basically, the principal and interest payments go in the budget. So we'd be amending the budget. No, you don't have to, because they're gonna increase the tax rate. If they pass that, if they pass this, they're gonna increase the tax rate by the amount that we would need for next year. Right, but the way that you increase the tax rate is by increasing the total expenditures, which increases our total per pupil spending, which then goes through the tax calculation and gives us the tax rate. Well, I don't know about that, but I'm telling you that if that, that. Whatever we borrow, I don't know how much, what the deficit is or what we would try to do, but it would be if the voters voted, and it costs three cents, it's gonna go on to the tax rate. We're gonna have the money to pay the bond. If they vote for it, we're gonna have the money. Just a point of clarification. If we're attempting for a bond, there's a whole bunch of additional information and articles that you have to put in your warning and it has to be warned in a certain number of days, a certain number of times. So if this is something that we're going to attempt to try and do now, we'll need to get some additional guidance from legal to make sure we even have the appropriate time to do so. I don't remember all of the rules and regulations right now off the top of my head about a bond warning. But when we discuss this back in the fall, we weren't looking at a bond. We were actually looking at an expenditure note from the bank. So I know there's some different options that we have that we can absolutely revisit, but we just wanna be certain on the timeframe of whatever decision you all decide to make that we have the appropriate amount of time to do so. What do we call the question? Okay. So the motion that's on the floor right now was that we add a separate article in relationship to the deficit to the warning. And that was made by Bob and seconded by Chris. So all in favor of this motion say aye. Aye. Okay. Opposed? Nay. Nay. Okay. Any abstentions? All right. So the nays have it on this one. Yeah. And I would just say that I think the timing piece of it is a big one. And I think this is something that we have to address and that I think we need to start that planning now for next year so that we make sure that we have everything set up, all the justification, the financials, everything right, all the timing right and everything so that then we can make the best case that we can. I think trying to approve this budget tonight and then also trying to add that in on top of it is just a little rushed. And I think we need to do our due diligence and make sure that we have it exactly right. Yeah. And I think that the communication around it is going to be critical. So I'm agreeing with you and also that. Yeah. I think we should include something in the board report that explains the reasoning. And Tara, if we can get the figures for what the current amount is, if we're getting the audits in the next couple of days, I guess those will have it. But yeah, then we can include that in our report that plan for dealing with it. So people don't see that. We're just kicking the can down the road. Right. All right. So that brings us to the FY22 budget. Hopefully everyone's had an opportunity to review. We saw it last week. Doesn't feel like it was that long ago, five days ago. So. So we adjusted the revenue to account for your change in tuition to the 17-8 figure. Okay. Based on what you guys discussed Thursday, we didn't make any additional changes. You'll see that that did slightly impact the tax rate. And if you look, the per pupil spending is down in next year's budget proposed budget as compared to this year, which I think is an important thing for us to make certain we communicate with our communities. Do you wanna go down in the bottom right please to the tax sheet? Tara, can you blow that up right? And Tara, will you just walk them through that again, please? So the total expenditure budget is the $12,026,099. Bless your offsetting local revenue of $1,119,399. Results in an Act 68 education spending, $10,906,701. You divide that by your equalized pupil of $595.67 and that's version two of the equalized pupil as released by the AOE on January 13th. Ends in the equalized spending per pupil cost of $18,309.97. The exclusions are there if we needed to use them in the event that you were over the threshold, but you were not over the threshold in this scenario. So you have your adjusted per pupil spending, which remains the same at $18,309.97. Results in an equalized residential tax rate of $1,7012, less the merger incentive of two cents for this next fiscal year, brings you to a preliminary equalized tax rate of $1,6812. And then the equalized non-residential tax rate as set forth by the state of Vermont tax department is $1,73. The next box down is how that impacts Bethel. So you take your FY22 equalized tax rate of that 1.6812 by your CLA of 1.101.8%. Results in an actual estimated tax rate of 1.6515 over the FY21 tax rate of 1.5608 is an increase of 0.907. Then we move over to the Royalton box. And again, you start with the equalized tax rate of 1.6812 by the CLA of 94.98%. Results in an estimated FY22 homestead tax rate of 1.7701 over the FY21 homestead tax rate of 1.6409 results in an increase of 0.1292. And Bob, that's where you're mentioning the CLA in Royalton. There was a significant drop. And when we get down to that 94 range, that's not great for tax rates. So I don't know how we, and I think it's probably a select board thing, right? The CLA or the appraisal, those sorts of things. I feel like every year since the merger happened, the CLA like stings us in the end. And we keep waiting for that number not to drop as steeply, or I do anyway. And then it's like the next year, we're right back at it with the CLA. And I feel like it's often on the Royalton side of things. I don't understand that because I just feel so badly about it. And I feel like- I don't know when the last time they assessed. I mean, in general, property values are selling at a higher rate than what houses are appraised for. So I mean, there's some good news for folks that are selling homes in Royalton, but it's not good news for folks that are holding onto their homes. Right. And taxes on it, right? I mean, that's a big driver for the CLA. And so I'm not certain the last time that Royalton did reappraise, but- I know in the letter- Is there a last question for like applying for an exception or something? It seems like this year, particularly things are going for our kind of wonky. And is there any way of kind of looking at what things have actually sold for and if there's- No, I'm not aware that we can request them to adjust that. Yeah. Never heard of it. I need some people just to sell back and forth at below market rates. I know in the letter that's issued by the tax department, there is a statement in it that says the CLA below 85% or over 115% necessitates a reappraisal. But it doesn't specify if there's any other action that you can take outside of that. I don't know if you petition your select board or your listeners to do a reappraisal. I don't know any of those rules and regulations around how that works. My experience has been when it gets down under 90, most towns take it up then, right? But I mean, we're getting close. Yeah. I'm not sure that my comment was particularly helpful. It just, it's just frustrating. No, but it gives an opportunity to speak to that. I mean, that is a big driver on the CLA. Yeah, I did look at it. It was 2016 was the last time that it went down or up. So it's been, I think it was 21 cents as of the amount is attributable that CLA change since 2016. Yeah, it's too much. It says budget tax rate increase of 1.7 cents in Royalton and 1.6 cents in Bethel. But the per people spending is down so shouldn't that be a budget tax rate decrease? I'm assuming that includes maybe the merger incentive or something. Maybe if we could just have that in a separate line and the merger rate phase out so that we see that the budget rate tax rate increase is actually a decrease. That's a good idea, Andrew. Because that would not be clear to the common person. We'll add that to the tax sheet. All right, you actually cut your budget impact but not enough to make up the less the incentive. Yeah. Any more discussion about this or motions related to this budget? I make a motion to approve the budget at expenditures of $12 million, $26,000 and $99 per people spending of $18,309.97. Thank you. I'll second. Any additional discussion? Hearing none, all in favor of passing the budget for FY 22 in the amount of $12 million, $26,000 and 99 cents. That was $99. I'm so sorry. And the student rate of $18,000 and education spending per pupil of $18,309.97. Please say aye. Aye. Aye. Okay. Is there a nay? Any wanna post? Any abstentions? I think I heard everyone. Okay, so we've approved the FY 22 budget. Thank you. Thank you all. And I just wanna put a shout out to the principals. You did a really, a great job. So thank you. Yes, thank you. I've appreciated throughout this process hearing your thoughts and seeing the work that you've done. All right. So this brings us back to the timeline for the warning, mailing, et cetera. And I have to admit when we get to this, I had said that I would start a draft letter to share from the board like we usually do. And I promise I will actually share a draft tomorrow. I keep starting it and there's so much in this past year that it just feels like a lot. So it's probably better just to share it and start collaborating and then we can cut and do the things we need to do. So- A five page long letter. Yeah. So as far as decisions for the board. So as I was talking prior to you getting here, Lisa, I mean, the board has several options. They can move to warn a meeting on town meeting, you know, warn a vote for town meeting day via Australian ballot. They have to have an informational meeting, at least one within 10, you know, 10 days of the vote. That doesn't mean you can't have more than one, by the way. The recommendation is that we coordinate our warning and pull hours with those of the town. Doesn't mean you have to, but we do have to have the same pulling hours for the district. So it seems like here we're gonna line up. I've been talking to the Bethel Town Clerk and the Royalton Town Clerk. It's my understanding that both are gonna do Australian ballot on town meeting day and that they're gonna have a request for absentee ballot, not mail-out ballots to everyone. Our lesson learned from doing that with other districts is that that has worked better and that it works better for our town clerks as well. So I'm gonna recommend that you think about doing it that way. It's also pretty easy to request an absentee ballot now on the Secretary of State's website. You can request there and then it comes into the town clerks and then they can mail it. So you can do it one or two ways. You can do it online or you can do it via direct request. And based on talking at least to Carmen, I know that their Royalton's gonna be set up to do it that way. Tara and I have a meeting next Tuesday with both of your town clerks as well as other district clerks just to ensure that we're all lined up and get any and all questions answered. The warning doesn't need to be finalized until next week. Is it about the 28th, Tara? So my plan was to have you adopt at the 25th. We secure signatures and then that gives us a couple of days to get that posted. The real decisions for the board then is when, if you wanna warn for Australian ballot and on that day and then we'll align the polling hours across every part of your warning, but we'll ensure that those align with your town clerks as far as having the same polling hours for voters. Like I said, I'm gonna recommend that it be a request of an absentee ballot. And this will all be on your warning and we'll have it all drawn up for you Monday night and sent to you ahead of time so that you can just read from it and approve it based on this discussion tonight is the idea and alignment with your town clerks. And we're working to finalize the mailing. The mailing will be put together here. You'll see a complete draft of it. We're trying to get that to the printer by no later than late next week so that we can get that in folks hands. And then we're gonna decide, do you want multiple informational meetings? And that could look like two and then the week leading up or it could be one outside the week and then one within the week. And those are all things for you to consider and think about as well. I don't know if I missed anything. Territory, did I miss anything? Not that I can think of, Jamie. We'll put the packets together similar to what we did in the one that we did last year for Bethel. We're trying to use a consistent format throughout the supervisory union. We'll have all the traditional reports in it that we have in addition to your school board report, the principal's report, superintendent's report, the budget documents and then the statistics that are usually provided around enrollment and staffing at the school that we've historically done, the three year tax sheet from the agency of education that they just released tonight. I just barely got it by email at quarter to seven. So I have that now in order to complete that for each of the packets. We'll have the warning in there, the sample ballot in there if you choose to do the Australian ballot method. Wow. And beautiful pictures of our community's children. Principal has already completed a draft report and they're finishing some other things within it, but there's a lot of awesome pictures. Great. I think that's important to ground people in like the reason for the budget. And usually our letter is one or two pages. You just leave room for us. And then is the audit in this report as well? The audit doesn't go in the actual book. There is a statement in that's mandated by statute that we have to put in the annual book of where the audit is available to access to anybody who's interested. So that's part of what we put in the book itself. I mean, the audit's 99 pages. You guys don't want to pay for that. Right. Right, but there must be... Yeah, I think sometimes there have been just like the summary sheets from the end. Pre-unding with those are... We put fund the treasurer's report. We put the fund balances in where they ended at the end of the prior fiscal year. And then we put that statement that if you want to obtain a copy of the audit, you can access it at the White River Valley Supervisory Union offices. And then once it's finalized, it also goes up on the website, just like your FY19 audits are up on the website for anyone to access that wants them. Awesome. Thank you. And for informational meetings, whether we have one or more, I'm assuming we're gonna be able to record this. Is it possible to then make it available for people that can't make any of the live meetings? Absolutely. And we'll have that on your websites. And we can also push out the link so folks can access it that way too. But yes, we've recorded other ones in the past this fall that we've had to do this way. I'm just thinking that because this is gonna be so different this year, it's gonna be a real learning curve for a lot of people. And the more we can get as much proactive information in the local papers as possible to pull in the Herald and Valley News and to make sure that they're actually writing about this and helping people find out where they can get the information that they need to participate in an informational meeting or to see a presentation and be informed and prepared for this year's school budget meeting and town meeting, et cetera. So I'd love to make sure that we're addressing that as well somehow or other. Well, I'll put a shout out. The Valley News and Herald have treated us incredibly well at least since my tenure. If you've noticed, we've been above the fold in different issues across the SU in the last several weeks. So my assumption is Lisa, they will certainly support us in this work. Yeah, I think if we could get a separate article just for the deficit stuff, that'd be useful. Because I think what people last kind of heard was the $750,000 mark. So if we get first that it's closer to $550 or whatever it actually is. And then the fact that we have a surplus coming this year and kind of the plan for dealing with it, that would be a good lead to a good headline anyway. And something that voters should know separate from whatever's going on with the budget generally. Well, and the other thing is... Well, and even if... Oh, sorry, I was just gonna... Go ahead, Lisa. Board members that are gonna be either running for their seat or not. And I know that Rodney's not. And we need to get the word out there that there is a Bethel seat that's open and there's a new way of, you know, we're not gonna be voting from the floor. Anyway, people have to know and we need to find somebody that's gonna be interested in running in Bethel. And I don't know who's up for reelection in Royalton. It's Bob, right? Lisa, I wanna, I mean, I'd like to let the board know I'm not gonna be running in March. Thank you for letting us know and thank you for spending this year with us. Yeah, definitely. Have you, Jamie, I saw a memo go out about board members, board member... Yeah, I mean, that went out to all school-related community members, right? Like anyone that was part of our email blast. So across the SU, that document went out to 1,600 people. My plan was to Facebook push it out again this week. And it's also one of the headline documents on the website. But, you know, the more you all can do to help remind folks, the better for us. And I think just as I'm navigating the tent house, having just a post specifically about our district's openings, like I saw that and it was good, but it was kind of a SU-wide thing and having something specific on our school's website about that opening. Facebook page, right? Yeah, I almost wonder if we should have, I don't know if this is possible or if we have board funds available because we haven't done as much training and I reference that from time to time. Just to take out like a half page to include the information we want people to know about our deficit and what we're planning to do. That we have a board vacancy in Royalton and a board vacancy in Bethel. And this year, you maybe don't have to stand at the landfill in the cold and try to get signatures to get on the ballot. And also just, so that was one point and about the informational meetings and when they're going to be. Last year, the Herald did a fabulous job of covering us in articles that got a little bit lengthy and I'm concerned that people don't read everything that's presented for them. And so what ended up happening is I would get phone calls from people or emails because they didn't know the informational meeting was happening and I was thinking, I drive past the blinking red light in front of the school in Bethel that tells you that the informational meeting is happening twice a day, what is going on? But I think people just get busy and they don't see it unless it's like right in their face. So I appreciate the instinct to push it out on Facebook and put it on front porch forum. But I almost wonder if something where we're getting really succinct information out about the things that we need, like people to show up for our meetings, people to show up and run to the board. Didn't one of our other districts use their Blackboard Connect last year to make sure to get the informational meetings out to the families in the building? I remember getting one at home. A reminder. You use that in multiple districts. Yeah. Have we already missed the printing deadline for the town reports? I'm just thinking if we included a one page like this, it's going to be by Australian ballot. If you want an absentee ballot, you need to request it. Look for the mail or for the full report. Normally there's a report in there. So people might... We missed the number, that was two weeks ago, Andrew. That was January 8th. I can check with them. But that's the original time. I remember in previous years, the deadline that we actually got them stuff was different than the printing, cause they have to collate it and stuff and then it goes to the printer. So I wonder if... I can check and ask. Like I said, I've been in touch with the town clerks. Yeah. I think just something to say that, you know, there'll be a separate mailing for the town stuff would be good. That's a really good idea. It's better to over-communicate than not enough. And there's still plenty of people that don't use the internet. And with COVID, I don't go, I don't leave my house more than once a week. So I don't drive by signs and, but I do get the paper and I read it. So I think people that get the paper, especially those that aren't that connected by internet are gonna, are reading it cover to cover right now. So any kind of information we can put in print will be really beneficial to make sure we're getting to all the voters. Your deadline, if you wanted to remember that deadline for completing the consent form is next Monday. And the deadline for the Herald's tomorrow. So if you wanna get those two vacancies in the Herald for Thursday, you need to make a motion to do that. And then I'll work with Christie first thing in the morning to try to pull that off. All right, let's vote. All right, you wanna make a motion, Lisa? I make a motion. Well, tell me, Jamie, what kind of language you want me to say? You just need to move to authorize me to post an ad to advertise that Royalton and Beffle have a vacancy and how folks can request to be on the ballot and that's going through with their town clerk to complete that form. I'll keep it pretty succinct, but I didn't wanna, I wasn't gonna do that because you hadn't necessarily taken action to even say, yeah, we're gonna vote Australian ballot and we're gonna do it in March 2nd, right? The governor just signed that law Friday and some boards within this SU are gonna postpone, is my sense. So it's sort of all over the map. It's not consistent. Yeah, do we need to make a motion to, we probably do need to first go to Australian ballot. We need to officially make a motion to do that. Yeah, I've got the email or the school district meeting information sheet from the VSBA up. I can read their suggested motion if we. Yeah, let's get that over with. Yeah, is anyone thinking that we should try to hold an in-person meeting? Okay, all right. I just wanted to put that out there and make sure we were all on the same page. All right, so I'll make a motion that pursuant to act 162 of 2020, I move that the White River Unified District 2021 annual meeting be done using Australian ballot voting methods for all articles. I'll second. Any discussion? Chris lifted that language from somewhere. How do I get it? I can forward you the link, I think. I'll try. Can Jamie's link that he sent out? Or do you want to just copy and paste that language to her? Well, I'm looking at, yeah, yeah, I'll find it. I'll find it on my computer. I had it on my iPad. Okay, thanks. Using two separate sources. All right. So all in favor, I'm not gonna, it's not gonna sound exactly like that motion, but all in favor of moving to Australian ballot for the 2021 annual meeting. Please say aye. Aye. All right, any opposed? Abstentions? No, okay. And so we have chosen to move in the direction of Australian ballot for this year. And did we specify the date in that motion? You don't have to, Andrew. That will be part of your warning on Monday night. So on Monday night, your warning will adopt the polling places, the date and the time. Okay. Is there a specific day that you need our board reflection so that we don't throw off your timeline? It'd be great to have it by next Wednesday at the latest Easter. By Wednesday. So that is the, again. 27. Perfect. All right. And I think we can beat that deadline. Okay. Great. Any other information about the mailing, the timeline budget vote? We've adopted Australian ballot and the budget so that if I'm looking at the agenda correctly, it brings us to the new hire section. Did we want to make a motion to approve the advertisement? Yes, the motion Lisa started, I'm sorry. So I'll make a motion to authorize Jamie to post an ad in the Herald regarding the two open board positions in Bethel and Royalton. Is there a second? Second. So we have that motion on the floor. Is there any discussion? How much is it going to cost? Usually it's like $65 for one of the little like rectangular ones, I think. I think we can afford that. I can confirm you have the funds available in your board expenditure budget. Thank you. Great. If you want as much surplus as possible. It's not a thousand dollar expense. So you don't need my signature on it. Um, can. My hope is that the intention is to put it on both the Bethel page and the Royalton page. Hmm. So that'll show up in both places. That's important. That's good. It's going to cost twice as much then. So. They won't give us a discount for double advertising. Well, they only have to format it once. Yeah. Different. Drive a hard bargain. Yeah. All right. Any other discussion? Okay. All in favor of authorizing the superintendent to place an ad for the purpose of recruiting new board members. Please say aye. Aye. Aye. Okay. Any opposed? Everybody. You and I are on that first thing tomorrow, buddy. Yeah. All right. Any other discussion? Okay. All in favor of authorizing the superintendent to place an ad for the purpose of recruiting new board members. Thank you, everybody. Good. All right. Thank you. Anything else before we move forward to new hires? So, uh, I mean, just. I don't know if everybody watched that video or whatever, but. So yeah, I mean, so we'll vote on the Arctic. You know, each article will be a Australian ballot item. They'll be the moderator. I guess they'll, you know, be the names of those people, hopefully. And then, but then there's still be a line for right in. I think the one thing they said, did say you don't have to have on there is like, how we normally have the motion to like, accept the report from the board or whatever. We don't include that this year. Uh, it's just the. The standard voting items. So, um. Yeah. And the other thing I got from that was that we should make sure that people know that they have to request. The school board and the town ballots separately from the clerk. They need to request both. That's why if we can include something in the town reports, that'd be great. Uh huh. Yeah. Do the clerks agree to put in like our ballot with theirs? If anybody. Requests it or. The town clerks have been great. They've been great. Yeah. They're working. Fully with us. And like I said, we're meeting again next Tuesday just to ensure that all those details are worked out and that we're communicating it appropriately. And in our articles, there's that piece about that, like the ballots get collected and then they. Get co-mingled and get counted at a. At a central location. Uh, one of the things they did say in that meeting too, was that, you know, those, the tabulator machines that, that count the, the votes that if you use a tabulator that that counts as co-mingling, as long as you don't. Run a report. You know, you don't run all the Royalton ones and then run a report and get the count on Royalton. You do all of them and you just get one report. And then that way you don't know. You know, how many votes were from Royalton and how many were from Bethel. They're all co-mingled and. You know, they're all co-mingled and how many votes were from Bethel. Nobody can blame the other town for something. Good or bad happening. Right. Right. And that's part of our articles of agreement. So. Yeah. So I don't, I don't know. Do they do a tabulator and. Or I guess, how are we going to do that is my real question. I know that. Like Royalton does have a tabulator machine, but. But I think the. The last time. Yeah. That's correct. So. That's correct. So the respective. Whatever. And that is. So. Presumably we could just have the Royalton ballots brought to there. Yeah. That's, I was just going to say, perhaps that's part of the conversation. Jamie. You and I can have with the town clerks on Tuesday is who has tabulators. So. And that's why they're all meeting together, Tara. I mean, my, my goal was is that if we, we meet with them all together, we work out these. Tammy, did you have something to add? No, we're fine. Thank you. I also, this is new for them. So I think there's strength in them all meeting together too. I know. That different town clerks are feeling, you know, more comfortable with this than others. So. I think it's powerful bringing six of them together. So we just talk through all of this. Great. Yeah. Hey. Any other logistical questions related to our annual meeting, budget votes, those sorts of things before we move forward. So you'll. We're meeting with Dina on Friday. Our school attorney. She will assist us in getting all these warnings finalized and then you will get the draft of it as soon as it's done. And then you'll have that Monday. And for some reason, if we need to make an adjustment, then we could, but do know that that will come out to you prior to Monday night. And then on Monday night, you can project it. And or read it from it. And you'll have that right there for you. Okay. That sounds great. Thank you. Do we want to set the informational meeting schedule? Sure. That'd be great. I would rather we start to get these dates plugged in. So we need one within 10 days of. Second. We are already booked on Saturday, the 20th, just so you know, by one district. You could do that. If you want, we just move. I'd want to coordinate the timing of it. Our regular meeting is in the 23rd. Wait, no, 16th. The regular means the 16th. Right. Which doesn't mean that you can't warn budget info that night. By the way, we've done that in other districts. But you still need to have another one after the 20th. We also, you know, probably you know, if people are requesting absentee ballots, it wouldn't be bad to have an early one and then one closer to the date. I agree. When does. Absentee ballot request to start. I believe they have to be available 20 days before. Is that accurate? Pretty certain that's the number. Chris, do you remember? Was that referenced on that? Pretty certain it's 20 days. I think it's 20 days. Chris, do you remember? Was that referenced on that? Pretty certain it's 20 days. I'm sorry. I some for some reason, my internet went down and I got dropped from the call. But I thought we had been doing. The 20s, like the 22nd of February in one community and then the March 1st in another. So we do like the two Monday nights in a row. I might be wrong about that, but that's what I was remembering. So that would put us at February 22nd and March. 20 seconds of full board meeting. Okay. Yeah. I was saying that I decided to do something different, but right now that is a full board meeting. I think the March 1st is a good idea. I would move the other one earlier because if people are requesting absentee ballots, they might be voting earlier anyway. Okay. So how soon do we think we'd be ready? I think you could be ready to week of the 15th. I mean, you could do your regular board meeting on the 16th and talk about it. And then you could want an informational meeting on the 18th and then the first, if you so choose. I'm just throwing that out there. It's thoughts. I don't know what you got. Yeah. I think that's a good idea. I think that's a good idea. Haven't we also in the past sometimes done the informational meeting and then transitioned to our regular meeting? Yep, you could do that on the 16th. I would almost be in favor of like one marathon meeting on the 16th. Yeah, sure. You could have an informational meeting on the 16th and then the official one, of course, you know, do them as two separate recordings and then the, the informational one, you know, yeah, we can then have that as a way to share out to people that want to watch it. They can't watch it live. Would they both be at six o'clock or? Well, that's what I was going to ask if we wanted to start the informational meeting at 5pm and then plan to have our regular board meeting start at the regular time. I know some years we've heard from families that if we warn it later, it makes it hard because if it's a meeting that lasts for an hour or two, it conflicts with the bedtimes of people's children. I don't know. Because then we could do with the informational meeting and then our regular meeting on our, at our regular time. Yeah, I can, I can start at five. That works for me. And I would think the informational meeting could possibly go over an hour. But then we'll just have that. Our regular board meeting to start whenever the informational meeting ends is that. Or we might try to force an adjournment on the informational meeting after an hour and a half. But I didn't in one other district is they adjourned and then they open up their official meeting and then adjusted their agenda to finalize the informational meeting. But we did have that happen to her if you remember in our son. Yeah. And I think we're always really open to public comments and questions. So, um, and we usually have them built into the beginning of our meeting and then later in our meeting. So if people stuck with us, they could still. Ask questions after our presentation, which is usually only the first 15 or 20 minutes or so. And I know it's going to be good to formally ask the principles to pull something together for us. So that they know what we want from. So we should be ready to. I don't know, just give us a formal ask of content so that they can put that together. Your budget policy documents specifies what the informational meeting needs to. Provide. So that's a working template that kind of hits all the highlight points around. What the budget supports, what you need to celebrate. What, you know, what the changes to the budget are. And then so my plan would be is that. Um, whatever. You know, presentation we work from needs to incorporate those things because that those specifics are in policy. Every district seems to be a little bit different about who takes the lead of creating the presentation for certain districts. I've built it for other districts. The board's taken more of a role in it and I've supported it with Tara. So you just got to give us a little direction around whether or not you want us to build the draft and then you add to it or whether you're going to build the presentation draft and we add to it. Like I said, I've done it both ways. Just each district board takes on kind of a different flavor. Well, I kind of like it. You provide the skeleton and then we can fill it out because we make sure that we're doing it and hitting all the points that are important. So I think we're going to take it at least. Yeah. I mean, in the past, we, we have kind of. Done the. Presentation side of things and had the kind of provide the, like how the school year went and then we provided the. Budgetary side of it, but I feel like you guys were much, much more. Like this year, you guys. We're much clearer on. The budgetary build process. So, you know, I feel like you do a better job explaining the budget that we would at this point. Yeah, I think that would be good to have you all build it. And then, you know, we can. Add in slides like what we've used before in the past with some of the slides where we add in stuff about, you know, what was it that really drove the cost. Or any tax changes and stuff and, you know, any. Any special specific information that we know that people are going to want to know about. But if we have the rest of the body of it done, that would be great. And I think I think it is important that you guys present it. And then what areas you need assistance with. We're there to support you when called upon. And we can identify what slides that is even prior. I think it would be really useful. I think it would be really helpful for us to highlight like the outdoor education aspect of things. I think people appreciate seeing what their. Tax dollars have gone to support. So, you know, I think we've all had the experience of wandering into the crowd after the budget passes. And having people share what they found compelling about what they're doing. And so I think that's really, really important. Just one year, the elementary school kids had done a video on like positivity and people really enjoyed that and enjoyed knowing that they were focused on community and building like traits of positivity and gratitude. So anything that we can use. I think that's really important. And I think that's what's happening because some of the people who show up for informational meetings don't even have grandchildren in our system. They live here and they want to support our schools, but they don't have those personal connections. If we don't close that gap. Do you guys want to just go ahead and informally move and act upon your two informational meetings. And then that gets in the minutes and it's just. Okay. So we're going to schedule a informational meeting for February 16th of five o'clock and. March 1st. Are we doing six o'clock or do we, did we do the annual meeting at seven in the past? The informational meeting, the annual meeting we've done. I think it's six, but. Okay. Let's do six o'clock on. March 1st. Is there a second? Okay. All in favor of setting the meeting time for. Five p.m. on the 15th. And then of February and then six p.m. on the 1st of March. Please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed. Any abstentions. Okay. Thank you. Okay. I mean, you got that for the 16th. Correct. Five o'clock on the 16th. Oh, I said 15th. I'm sorry. Wait a minute. The 16th is a Tuesday. Was it intended to be a Tuesday? Yes. I said the wrong thing. I'm so sorry. It's one six. Yes. One six Tuesday. One six just before our regular board meeting. Okay. Thank you. All right. Guys are rocking it tonight. And a lot of done. Yeah. Hey. Anything else related to these meetings that we should address before we move forward in our agenda. All right. So now we'll move on. To new hires, which is next on the agenda. So I'll just add. I put these in here just for awareness, but all of these people are SU actually employees to fill positions that were vacated that we hadn't replaced yet. They're all budgeted. You know, we lost some folks at the start of the year. And we were looking for the right candidates in order to replace them. So they'll show up on the SU new hires as well. So you don't need to actually take action on those other than just so you know that we did fill that Erin green did fill your vacant custodian position of which we had a vacancy for the whole start of the year. And read in the principles decided due to COVID. Not to replace that position over the summer because the buildings have been closed. So long. And Erin came on and joined our team officially. In November. Read. End of November. Monday after Thanksgiving. Yeah. So the other positions are special education positions. Yes. Okay. Great. They are in your buildings. So that's why we listen. I'm just. And I've met all of them and been really pleased with the quality of candidates. We've been on the bring on board. I continue to say the candidate pool that we're getting. I've been really impressed with. And the quality of candidate that folks have been moving to my level. I do interview everybody. From floating subs to paramedics. And I've met all of them and been really pleased with the quality of candidates we've been on the bring on board. I continue to say the candidate pool that we're getting. And I've met all of them and been really pleased with the quality of candidates we've been moving from floating subs to paras to custodians. I do sit down and meet with every candidate. Before they're brought on board. Just so the board knows. Great. Appreciate that. My budget is not real. Not budget. My agenda is not reloading. That I grab public comment correctly. We have public comments. And then there was an item about food service. That was for future. Great. Thank you. All right. Anyone want to share during public comments? Hi, this is Tammy public comment. I do not have the articles of agreement. And, but I think it's appropriate to ask. Could someone do a review of the articles of agreement to determine. The status of. The chair position is it supposed to alternate between towns each year or every other year? I think that chair has been filled. In the past two years. Lisa. I'm not this comment is not directed at you or reflection of any of your work, Lisa, but more so to hold us all accountable to those articles. I think it's appropriate. Just to kind of review those every once in a while to make sure that we're in compliance. So by no means is it to be interpreted any other way than making sure we're in compliance with such. I just did a search of the articles of agreement. And the only place at least that. When you do a control left for fine. The only place that chair comes up is at the very end where it comes up. I don't think there was anything formally stated. In the articles about it all trading. I think that was. An initial. Idea. That we had. To try to do something like that. But, but I don't think there's anything formally in the articles of agreement. Yeah. And we discussed it. I agreed when we were discussing it that I think Lisa does a great job and does a better job than I would. So. I've been happy with the way that things have been. So. It was mutually agreed upon by. The representatives of both towns anyway to keep it the way it is. I've had. Several people from the town of Royalton. Say that it was part of the article's agreement. To switch board chairs. Each year. And, but I couldn't find anywhere in the article. So if it was agreed on by the boards, it wasn't. I didn't see it. And I didn't see it in the articles agreement. But if you talk to board members at the time, they will tell you. That is that it was. So. Yeah, I mean, I was. I was on the board at that time and I'm definitely willing to see this seat if anyone. Would like to chair the board. We definitely had a discussion about it, but it didn't seem. To raise to the level of putting in the articles of agreement. Just because it is a volunteer. Position. I don't know. I don't remember a lot more than that, but. I think it was definitely discussed. I remember the conversation. At the time. But I also recollect the decision being made not to put it in the articles of agreement. Well, I'll just throw out there and speak to, I think based on the current stance of the mergers that have occurred throughout this SU. Your guys's ability not to. To see yourself as a new entity and not Royalton and Bethel. I think has served you well. Where are some other districts right now have my two of my other mergers out of my four have gone up for decoupling boats. One already and one's due to go uptown meeting day. And so. I will say, I think part of the success of your merger is, is that you've seen yourself as. A lot of people have been on the road in the wild cats. And not a lot of discussion of Royalton. And versus Bethel. I just, so I'll just add that. And as someone who is navigating for district mergers still at an infancy. You guys seem to be in a different place at the moment. Yeah. And I would say too that, you know. Well, thank Lisa for all of all the work that she's done. And I think it's very clear that she. I think it's very clear that. I think it's very clear that. All the students in both schools, both campuses in our district as, as equal. And there's, there's no, you know, preference that, you know, it's all, you know, that all the kids are important. All the teachers are important. All the. Staff faculty. Principles. Everyone is important. And, you know, we've done a good job of. Yeah, they're not being any. They're doing the board chair. Again, this last year. You know, it's something that. You know, I'm sure I'd be willing to do in the future, but I know we're like, for me right now, some of the time commitment in terms of the SU boards and the. And then policy committees and stuff with the. Especially with the age of our youngest kids, she's not quite ready for. Me to be doing more meetings. I'm not going to discuss that with my wife's son, but I appreciate the work that Lisa's done. Even before Jamie's comment, I felt that the board had done an appropriate job in answering my question. I'll capture it in the minutes. Thank you. Thank you, Tammy. And can I just add it's been such a pleasure to work with this board. I just think of the discussions we had early on. And the contentious issues that we've had to wrangle and the conversations that we've had. And I think the fact that we can communicate really honestly and civilly and openly with each other is something that I find myself valuing more and more as, you know, the rest of the world seems unable to accomplish those things. So actually, I thought that as I jumped into this meeting tonight, how grateful I am to serve with this group. I'll second that. So that brings us past our public comment. Looking forward to the future. So food service and our full board meeting next week, correct. And just a reminder of how important is that we get a quorum next Monday, right at six, please. You guys are usually great about it anyways, but just a reminder that we'll need to adopt that warning. So please come at six. Okay. Are we going to discuss the VLA or the virtual learning academy? At the full board meeting, Bob? No, it's on here. It's on the agenda. Just one. That was just as a reminder for me to bring it back up again. And have Linda come. And let you know that my plan was to do that just not tonight because we had the, my focus tonight was for you guys to get all this morning done. So that was just a reminder. I'm not going to touch it and stuff. Okay. I don't have any, I mean, it's nothing. I'm just interested in how it's going. Yeah. So I'll have Linda come next month in February. Again, that was sort of a place order to make certain I did that. Wonderful. Thank you. I mean, we're ready for a motion to adjourn. I feel like we might be. I'll make a motion to adjourn. I will second. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night.