 Open the Montelier Board of Directors meeting once a January 5th, so like 632. First order of business is public comment. I cannot do anything. So, if anyone from the public wants to talk, speak up otherwise there's no one in the room of the McGrath. And Christina. Christina. Oh, sorry. Scan to the left. All right. No public comment. We'll move on to consent agenda. Do I have. A motion to prove the consent agenda. You're making a motion or you have one. Okay. Any discussion. All those in favor. Any opposed. Thank you. Okay. Now move on to see the ACC governance and is that. Jody, but I see on the board. Can you hear us okay? And I can. Thank you. Thanks for having me. I first want to apologize because the warnings that I actually need you to approve. I only sent to Libby yesterday. And I didn't have a chance to see that. I didn't have a couple of errors in there. So I did just barely send the revised edition. I don't know if everyone has had a chance to see that. No, they haven't. Okay. So let me see if I can share that on my screen. I can't. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. So there are two, one is the board by the board if you so desire. And then also signed by all the board members so that this. Our. Request can go to vote on March 1st for 10 meeting. And the first is whether or not the voters shall. Move to create a new school district. The central Vermont queer center school district. And then the second is around the. Who they should vote for. So I can do the work tonight of filling in. All of the district name stuff, everything that's highlighted. You'll notice I didn't highlight an article one. It says very unified union school. That's that needed to be insert district school here. But basically the warning should say, shall the voters of the Montpelier Rocksbury school district. Public schools. Vote to establish the central Vermont career center to school district as described in the governance planning committee report of the state board of education on December 15th. 2021. And we'll find out if our 18 sending school towns would like to do that. And then the second one is the follow up to elect the board members. The at large board members because if you'll remember, six of our board members would be appointed from the school district boards. So somebody from your own board. And then the rest would be at large from our four largest districts. Everyone across the 18 towns can vote for those people and the district board members. So we all have the options. But they have to reside in one of those districts. The largest districts to get that vote. So what we need is for each school district, all six of them to approve these, this warning. So that we can move forward and have that vote happen on town meeting day. I moved to approve the warning to establish the or ask voters to establish the central Vermont career center school district. Okay. Any discussion. I have a question. It's the article to a new board members or members from our board. The article two refers to the at large members. So those are new board members who would only be working for the central Vermont career center school district. And in addition to that, we will send someone from our board to represent our school district. And then we will send someone from our board to represent our school district. And then we will send them on that board. Was my understanding. Is that right? Correct. And so would those names be. In this same. Ballot. Yes, those names will show up. Basically anyone in any of the six, the four larger school districts that wants to run needs to do the same thing that you would do for running for your, for your school district. And then they have to get the 60 signatures on their petition. And so those forms are available on our website and at all of our town clerks. Okay. That should be done before. Okay. That would have to be, they have to get that in by January 24th. Okay. Jody, what happens if someone doesn't run from any one of those four. Tax or districts. No, I don't think it would happen. I think it would. I think it would be great if you could, if we could, if we could go out to the city and see what happens then I believe we would seek an appointment. Okay. I just need one minute. We know. This would be a separate morning or can it be consolidated into our normal. Warning. The board will look at next. It actually has to be. separate ballots by our towns. Correct. Ours is going to be pink. But the town clerks have all met to discuss this. We were together on the 28th, and so they know that this is happening. Yeah, so two words together. Yeah. Any further discussion or questions that I had? Me, are you? No, no. Judging. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Great, excellent. Um, it was just the one we had in the group, right? Yeah, thank you. And if you end up doing that on the same day that you sign your own warning and warrant, that's fine. We just need to make sure that it gets done in the same amount of time as all of the other school district warnings. So thank you. Jody, did you say we all need to sign it? Jim does. Any time to, it's all the boards, right? Yes. It's not all the board members, we're just all the boards. Oh, okay, got it. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks, Jody. Sorry, I had to go on this. Sorry, one more question. Sure. Is that, is that your budget also be included in the march with a separate thing? The budget is still going to be in the very unified union school districts for this school year. Even though it may apply to the new district, it doesn't, it wouldn't fall under it in time. So it's still going to be just Barry city and Barry town. And again, it doesn't impact the budgets of anyone, any differently because the tuition formula still exists. And that's how we'll be using that. Okay. Thank you so much, Jim. Yeah. Thank you all. Have a good evening. Thanks, Jim. Thanks, Jody. I think we're on to you next. All right. Well, I guess I would start with a question. This is a full briefing. So it's like 40 some odd pages or slides. The briefing will be posted on the board's website, but seeing that we don't have any visitors and that all of you have already gone through all these slides. My question is, would you like me to just kind of do an abbreviated version that will post the full briefing, but I could just try to hit the high points and go through it quicker than I would normally if there were visitors here. I think so. I think because we have the full briefing already recorded on Orca, so people can kind of watch it and access it. I would just kind of go through and do an abbreviated version that stress any, you know, potential changes or other highlights that might be good, but I think that's... Okay, great. And then... Good use of everyone's time. On the 19th, the next board meeting will just be another quick one, if there's any changes and then we'll be approving the budget warrant or a warning. And there will be another chance. Does anyone feel differently about that approach? No, I mean, we'll still be able to ask questions. Yeah. It is... Sorry, for all the things for... We had our last school board meeting over this whole time. So that people can access it, they wanted to come in and be members and they couldn't be here today, but wanted to really come back. So just we can direct them to look at this school board and then just... This is where my question is going. Yeah, so the full presentation was given at the first meeting and it was an abbreviated version. This is a full briefing that we will post the full briefing, we'll just kind of skim through it, but it will be available. The next one will just be highlighting any changes, but the public will get another chance to go through the whole thing because we'll have an informational hearing the day before the vote as well. Okay, perfect. And that was December 1st. Just for anybody who might be watching right now, that was the December 1st meeting, so if you want to go through the full thing. Yep, they can find that. Yep, thanks, ma'am. Christina, if we switch roles, because I can't see people popping in. So if you just let people in, thanks. All right, so we've got the presentation in front of you. I think I'm gonna skip to, let's see. How about the changes slide? That's like the seventh or seventh, there we go. So the changes since the last time equalized pupils, I did change that number. It went down by 26 and a half students, which is a little disheartening. It actually went down by 36 and a half, but we know that there's a correction that the AOE has to make that's gonna be about 10 kids. So right now my best guess is this 1,234. That drop of 26, it's for various reasons, one of which is, as you recall, that later on we'll go through what all the steps are in that calculation. It starts with a two-year average for ADM. Last year, when I look at our two-year average for ADM, it looks like last year's number was artificially high by five. And a little personality flaw of mine is if I get good news, I don't question it enough because last year I probably should have pushed back and made sure that the number looked good, so I didn't. I think that was off by about five, which is about five of this 26. 12 relates to our poverty waiting. We had 12 more kids added as a result of poverty than this year. And when I look at this year and I take our total poverty count and I multiply it by 0.25, the number this year is right. So last year, once again, it looks like last year there was a calculation problem and we had 12 extra kids in there. So a lot of this isn't anything to do with this year, it has to do with last year. So equalizing ratio is another thing. At the very end, everybody gets hit by like 96% or something to bring all our numbers down. This year's equalizing ratio is lower than last year and that equates to about five as well. And then the other one is pre-K, which is a real decrease is about four kids. So now that I've dug into it, it looks like this year's number makes sense. It's not good, but it makes sense. I think there was some problems with last year's number. This could be really a real problem for us because every seven kids is about a penny on the tax rate. So you look at this and you think, oh, that's a four cents on the tax rate. But luckily, because of the dollar yield being so high, we can absorb this without too much of an impact. The other thing that changed is CLA. If you remember last time, we talked a lot about this and we thought property values are really a lot higher than maybe we should drop our CLA estimate even more. Luckily, we did. Montpelier came in at 80.76. That's a drop of 3.7 from last year, which is very significant, but not over the top. Luckily, we had dropped that to like 78% the last time we gave a briefing. So this was actually better than the last time we guessed at it. Roxbury is a drop of 8.1%. So that's a huge drop. But remember, Roxbury was a very high CLA. So a swing in property values can drop that a lot more dramatically because Montpelier, it's been a longer period of time since we had agreed to play. The good news is the last time we made a guess at CLA for Roxbury, we guessed 94%. So it didn't really impact too much whenever I rebranded the job relations. We did have some small expense changes based on actual hires for custodial and health benefits and everything else. It was a bit of an increase that I plugged in. We did go back to central Vermont Supervisory Union and kind of renegotiated our after-school agreement with them and we were able to knock that down some. So that was good news. And now on the revenue side, our triple E or early education block grant was a little bit higher than I had previously estimated. So those were all the changes. And the next slide talks about what's left for unknowns. We still don't know for sure the equalized people count. My AOE contact said maybe Monday, more likely Tuesday. So we'll see. I should have the best guess that they have by the next time we get together on the 19th, I believe it is. The dollar yield, we've got the best guess that we're gonna get until town meeting day, but just as a reminder, that's set by law. So that will change at some point. I think the number we're using is as good as it gets though. The only other thing that's not on there is I did get a note from the AOE saying there might be a minor change to our tech six semester average, which figures because we got their number and it was exactly what we had been using. So I was all excited. And then they came back and said, oh, maybe there's a change. So it won't be a big deal. It won't even be a full student if there is a change. So next is the added glance. So if you look real quick, the total budget is still a 4.5% increase. The total education spending is still a 4% increase. What you see as a change is our ad spending for Pupil is now about six and a half. And that's only because our equalized Pupil count is lower than I had before. It's still showing up highlighted in yellow though, because I haven't gotten a real number yet. My hope is that maybe it'll bump up a little bit, but we'll have to wait and see. Probably skip through the enrollment projections. We've discussed that a lot. And then the theory of growth and staffing, I think we'll hit that as part of the budget changes, I think. Oh, well, actually, could you go back to that? We'll start with that district. The community liaison, we did make a change here because we decided to change that from S or funds to local funds. So I just wanted to point out that we made the change and it's chart here as well. The BCBA Board Certified Behavior Analyst is suggesting use of S or three. Next, at UES, we did switch an academic interventionist from S or the local to sustain that position and thrive as one that we're suggesting use of S or three. Next, Main Street, academic interventionist using S or three. And then finally for the high school another academic interventionist using S or three. So if you do the math on that, there are six positions that initially were thought of using S or funds, whether they're currently filled or were proposed. Of those six, two have been converted over to local funding, so they're sustained already. At some point, we need to figure out though how we're gonna adjust those out of four and that'll be through future budgets. Can we go on, let's keep going until we get to program expenses one of two, one more. One more. Okay, so this has been updated just a little bit in the narratives like the general education talks about the four S or funded positions that we still need to work on sustaining. Special education talks about the thrive position that we added, career center tuition. That reflects 22, six semester average kids, which hopefully will be about right. I don't think anything else changed on this. So we can go to the next one. I don't see anything here. The school board line, just as a reminder, about half of that increases because we built in some money to build ballots, which is an issue we're still sorting through. Okay, I don't think we need to go into revenues. And honestly, I think capital, we've kind of gone through that enough. So we could just get to the tax rate terminology. So education spending, you know what that means. Equalized pupils. So this helps kind of go through what I was trying to discuss earlier. It starts with a two year average ADM. And then it gets adjusted for factors like pre-K is only 0.46 instead of a full kiddo. So there's a subtraction for kids that are pre-K. Secondary is an add of another, an additional 0.13. And secondary is seven through 12th grade. Poverty is an additional 0.25 times the number of kids on free and reduced. And then limited English proficiency is a 0.2 for every ELL student. That's the part that was missing. AOE had us as zero kiddos and we know that we have probably about 50. So whenever they rerun it and get our number, then we should get another 10 kids. We talked about the dollar yield as a reminder. What we're using now is the tax commissioner recommendation and there were two different ones. We're using the more conservative number. I just want to make sure I heard you right. You're expecting that our equalized people will go up by 10. But that number was already in here. Their number was like 12, 24. And I added another 10 already. So I'm pretty confident that 12, 34 should be a good number that we'll know for sure. Okay, thank you. And we already talked about CLA. That's unknown now. So we can go to the next one. So here's an updated tax rate calculation. Once again, the yellow slides are still kind of unknown. Equalized pupils is definitely an unknown. Dollar yield is unknown to the extent that it will be passed by law after the budget gets passed. CLA is now plugged in. What I did do in the little text boxes was I gave you an invocation of what the tax rate invocation of some of these things are so that drop in equalized pupils has about a three and a half cent negative tax rate impact. The dollar yield has between 21 and 25 cent positive impact. So that helps the tax rate. And that's 21 would be the impact of Montpelier 25 in Roxbury. Or I'm sorry, that's switched 21 in Roxbury, 25 in Montpelier. The merger incentive absorbing that loss of two cents is about a two and a half cent impact, negative. And then the final note there for CLA, the drop in CLA from Montpelier has a negative impact of 7.6. And because it's a larger drop in Roxbury, that's an 11.9 cent negative impact. Next is the impact for every $100,000 in Montpelier. You can see is actually a drop in taxes of $27. In Roxbury, it's an increase of $33. So if you look at that as far as what the change is, in Montpelier, it's a drop of 2.7 cents. In Roxbury, it's an increase of 3.3. So Montpelier is a decrease of one and a half percent. And in Roxbury, it's an increase of 2.3%. So fairly reasonable numbers, I think, as far as tax rate impacts. And as a reminder, it could change depending on the final dollar yield. It shouldn't get worse, I wouldn't think. And another note, about two thirds of households get an income sensitivity credit. So as a percentage, it would still be the same kind of an increase or decrease, but the impact itself in terms of dollars might be different. Max, I have a question about the conversation I heard is that we're taking the income sensitivity, but the credit is not money that people are getting. It's just a credit that gets in the taxes. Is that how that works? Do you want to take this? Joe, do you want this? I'm going to go around. It's now gets the dollars sent to them to apply on the property tax bill. So when you get your bill, you see your total bill, but it would be less, whatever your property tax credit would be. So yeah, it's just reduces the amount you have to pay. So you wouldn't have to pay it all and then get reversed or anything like that. But you see what it is on your tax bill. And I just updated the next slide, and there's only a few slides left. Tax rate, history, just for some perspective. We all know that we can't control CLA. So typically we look at the tax rates without CLA to see how we're doing. And without CLA, you can see Montpelier is actually about 11.8 cents lower for FY23 than the year before the merger, which is very good. Roxbury, even with CLA factored in, is 21.5 cents lower than before the merger. So from year to year, you might have a good news or bad news, but if you look at it across the period of time from before the merger to FY23, we're very good and very good share. And then just some outlook information. Now, even though we build a budget one year at a time, we always try to look at what the future looks like so that we can try to do smart things each year to stabilize tax rates. Re-appraisals we know are gonna hit us next year, so CLA should be a difference next year. In Montpelier, I would think that would mean the tax rates will go down, property values will go up though. Equalized pupil count, we know that the weighting is gonna change. It will probably cause a significant decrease in Montpelier Roxbury, but my guess is that they will phase that in so it won't be a dramatic change in one year, I would hope. Enrollment is fairly stable. We know the high school is still climbing. We know that the Union Elementary School enrollment is declining. Overall, we're gonna have to continue to look like this year at FTE adjustments to either shift resources or maybe it will be an opportunity for us to convert some of those ESSER funded positions into local so that we can sustain them over the long term. Emerger Incentive, this is the last year for FY23 that we have to absorb that two cent decrease. So that's the news going forward. And then the summary, with ESSER funding and with that increase in the dollar yield, it allowed us to add a lot of much needed resources this year, which was excellent, very good for the kids and very good for the taxpayers because we were able to do that without a big increase in tax rates. I already went through these percentages. The total budget is up four and a half. Ed spending because of increase in revenues is only a 4% increase. Because we lost and equalized pupils, that's a big increase, but the bottom line tax rates are very reasonable, even a decrease in marked failure and a reasonable increase for rock story. And that's it in this very abbreviated version of the briefing. Plenty of time for you to ask any questions you might have. Questions for Grant? Thank you again. The question, I have to go back to the sort of the circumstances around the association of the after school program, just sort of how that comes about and what's involved. And don't make a start. She wants to have an energy one. She wanted me to shut up when I got to her. I asked just to add to that. So it's in one question. I was just curious if that renegotiation was going to result on a change in programming or how it would impact the S or three and just how that might affect the students. No, so really what it boils down to is when we first merged, we went into the bridges program for after school at Roxbury. When we first merged, they were doing a, what's the name? 21 C, right? 21, 21st century Grant was able to pay for a lot of that. And buried in page like 81, said how much we were going to have to pay as a school district. And it was like $10,000. And then it just said future years will be negotiated or determined. Well, that 10 jumped up to, I believe the initial number was like 25 next year. And we said, oh, we can't do that. We said, we can do 15, but no more than that. Then 15 went to 17 and a half, then went to 20. And based on Libby's leadership, we basically just went back and said, can you walk us through this and help us explain, or help us to be able to explain why we went from 10,000 to $22 and a half thousand dollars. And that's why 23, can you give us some backup? Tell us how much other districts are spending or other schools are spending. And basically as a back and forth to that, it was revealed that there wasn't any great analysis behind what we were being asked to provide. And so we basically reset it back to the original 10,000 and we were informed basically that the only real expense was the coordinator that was coming out of district funds for Central Vermont. And so a fair share of that really would be around the 10,000, $200 for us. And they agreed that that would be fair. So we were able to drop it all the way back down to 10,200. It doesn't represent any kind of change to programming or services to kids. And in fact, they're writing us into the next 21C grant. They're writing Rocksbury into it, which will share up bridges for, what is it, do you know, four years? Five years. Yeah. So that grant is going to be restarted. I know that there was concern among the number of family members that could afford bridges with the grants that if the cost per student were to go up, it would be a hardship for a lot of families. And I don't know. There is no change to that unless it's changed by Central Vermont. There is a reoccupation process that needs to take place. It's not a guaranteed grant. It's a competitive grant process where the district wants to go back in and reapply for the money. So it's not rubber stamped, but as far as I know, 21C is not on the federal shopping block. So it's likely, but not guaranteed. Thank you. Anything else? Yep. You mentioned, or you have in your slides, the equalized people that's going down 26, right? Coupled with the fact that the budget's going up, the ad spending is going up. Our ad spending per pupil is going up 6.2, right? That's what we have over here, 18,252. I was just curious, is there, I could be completely off base here, but is there an impact spending too much per pupil as compared to the other schools or the districts in the state? And is there a penalty that we get because of that? And how close are we? Where do we rank in terms of? It's an excellent question. And please, that I have an excellent answer. So the excess, there is an excess penalty threshold that if you're on one of those slides, in FY 18, the year before we merged, Roxbury exceeded that threshold, which is why their tax rate was so high. But we're at, what was it, 18, 252. Right now, the area said that for FY 23, the excess spending threshold is 19,977. I think it's just under 20,000. One of the slides you have in the notes. We're in great shape, so we go. What? So we're obviously coming close to that, right? Well, it's almost 2,000. 1,000 now? Yeah, like 1,700 like that. So per student, which is a lot. So I'm not at all worried about exceeding the excess spending threshold for that. Yeah, if you, what Christina was just saying is true, that's, this number is probably a pretty average number. Okay, statewide. I have a question, was there any increase on the ELL programming? Yes. Because of our family and those with that video? Yes, as a matter of fact. We increased it prior to our new family, but then that just justifies it. We're gonna increase it. This year. This year. Because we may have too much. Yeah. Oh, I didn't know about a second family. Yeah. Yeah, we planned on doing that because it's a need now. That's great. Yeah, so the point was at 0.4 or 0.6? We are at 0.6, and we need to increase it to 0.4 in order to get to a one point off. Do you know when the new family, we can talk about that later. Yeah. Any questions? Thanks a lot. Thank you. Thank you. Next time we will have an actual budget for you to approve with the warning for you to approve and sign, and then we'll sort through the other warning for CVCC as well. Actually, can I have one more granular question? Is it, this is very granular. Is there coffee here for teachers at UES? Coffee? Yes. Yeah. Is that included? There's card machines. I think they even have a fancy brew thing that they... No, that's here at MHS. The teachers got that here at MHS at UES. I gave them personally a curry last year. Yeah, they need a pot. They can order. They have that in their budget. Thank you. Okay. They can order those. The UES caregivers align. Yeah. Let's go ahead and buy some. I want more of those glasses. Yeah. All right, thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. So next we have comments on the budget, which I don't think is going to jump in on. Okay. So we will... Is that not what we put out on the market share today? Those are answer comments. Okay. There. I think we actually had scheduled time for public comment because there were a lot of people who came for the presentation. There are a lot. So we are way ahead of schedule, which is not the worst thing in the world. Second reading on of the policy D7 special education. Any comments or changes or edits to that? I would just add that we're still waiting for the manual from the AOE. So we are hoping to write little context at the beginning, but until we see the manual, we can't really move to the work of doing it because we don't know what is it. I'm not sure you'll see that soon. Delightless. Well, we are supposed to have it adopted by today. Apparently, they did get an extension to submit the manual, but we haven't seen the actual thing. That's the thing that we also get an extension. So maybe we should just adopt it and then go back once we have the manual just to be on the compliance side. That's what I would recommend. I don't know what Jim... If we were to put a link, or if we were to add the wording from the manual, just to bring it to the board as a reading, does it have to go through the three readings again? Is it that major a change? I think yes, it's probably yes, if we're actually going to make changes to the policy. But we can do that. I mean, this is not a time we just put it on the... Right, right, for your readings, yeah. Yeah, we'll be largely in compliance with a couple of weeks' gap. So what you'd be recommending is put the third reading on for next agenda and then we won't have it before February. So then approve it first in February and then bring it back for when we get it. Do we have any sense of when that will be done? Well, we are at adjournment. One thing I do want, a couple of things. Next being in addition to approving the budget, we're also having the several numbers of our legislative representatives come in. So we're going to set up a roundtable. Yeah, so good thought to questions you want to ask them. I think Libby's strong, strong desire is that we send a message that in this time of keeping our heads above water, that new mandates are not something we're looking for, but rather really support from the legislature to get us through the time of shortages and difficulties. Yeah, obviously, you can ask your own questions and bring your own mandates, but that would be settlement. Certainly a settlement I share at this time. And then the other question is, there's clearly some major discussions going around about the people's and waiting that to be more equitable. So we have questions around those. Pensions, I didn't hear the first part of several numbers of our legislative going to our board meeting, I have to go back and see. It's it's got to be most of them. They all said yes. I think they all said yes. I don't know if I've heard from Jay Huber yet. And one note on that, we're supposed to be in Roxbury, the next board meeting. We switched that around to just for space because there's a space challenge at Roxbury if we want to do what we want to do with circles and stuff. So the next board meeting with the legislators will be here in the library and the meeting after that will be at Roxbury. OK. That's like, yeah, so give thought to again, your questions or comments you want to deliver. Um, are we asking them to provide us with any information? Definitely send things you want me to ask them ahead of time. I'm just going to give them a general request to talk about issues that they think are pertinent to boards. Yeah, I know Mary Huber, especially is involved in the Education Committee. You know, I think Andrew Perslick has been pretty deeply involved in this as well. So we've got a couple, couple members who are really up on. So I'm so I'm going to encourage them to give us an overview of what they see being on the plate. So we should should be concerned about, but sorry, the information exchange, but yes. And so the board knows I testified yesterday to the Senate with all the V's, VBA, VSBA, PSA and the Teachers Association. We were pretty frank about the situation at schools right now. Is that recorded? Yeah, yeah, great. I'm at the end. You want to see me? Yeah, I'm actually going to dive off. So I'm pretty good to look at that video because Secretary of French gave an overview of all of this stuff, which is like the challenges are pretty steep. Currently in France, they just found a virus today that's a lot more spreading than on the ground. So that's excellent news, Jim. Grab under your chair. Please send me a date today. That's just excellent. So I do I do believe I didn't get to hear all that that in the state of the state, the governor was proposing possibly using some of the balance to send to school districts for career development stuff. I don't know if that would be something we want to kind of we also the following that you guys know if I hear anything if you don't hear it, but by that time, maybe when the lawmakers are here, they might be interested in our thoughts on that. And it's almost like it requires more administrative attention at all. Then can it wait? I think that's a good message to deliver. And yeah, sometimes, you know, small, good things can be the thing that straw the bracing house back and you're like this. So let's just give it to the our new career center district. I would like to think this through just because I want to find a kind of balance of a line between our emergency and the pandemic reality, but also how that relates to what kids are facing today as well. They increase in bullying, harassment, defensive mental health problems. So, you know, saying no new mandates, whatever we have this money and we have black personnel like all of these things. And and so I grapple with that. I grapple with our teachers are really tired and I support them. And I want, you know, all the district. I know that you work in a lot and that everybody, you know, I've done a lot, but I also grapple with that and the fact that our kids are behind our kids, you know, our bullying is increasing and kids are suffering. So and families are suffering. So like, how do we move the balance of the urgency for the reality that problems that we have before the pandemic continue to be problems and even tired? You know, they come out and just like from meeting on the ground with people. Like, I just grapple with that. Like you have a very different sense of urgency that I have with the people that I work with. So it's it's kind of like this anxiety that we both have around like, yes, and yes. And so how do we support the kids even like what we're thinking about is like, how do we what is it that we need to do to be able to grapple with our reality and take it into account? Other communities that can happen to alleviate that, right? Like, how do we bridge those things and how do we think of transformation? And how do we think of healing together versus? So that's I just want us to grapple with that conversation in our head. Now I decided to bring it up now, but kids are suffering and really there. So now teachers are and superintendents and everybody's fire. But you know, that is a reality that I think that's a good point in the workforce challenges, because I'm thinking what would it take? Right? Because we do have money, but there's not like the bodies to do the work of the children in the school. Like, so how can we use this opportunity? Like, I know that they're talking about investing in like nursing, because there's a nursing shortage, but there's also clearly a shortage of education professionals. And is it like a loan forgiveness? Is it a training program? Is it like that alternate passport insurance? Like, are there things that we can do? Because we actually do seem to have the financial resources at this time that we really need it, but we can't find the people to serve that role. So that's a good point. I don't know what we could ask them to do, but I want to make sure that the workforce is not just narrowed down and oversimplified, that it very much is also education workforce, I think. And they're the same people who can't afford to buy a house in Vermont and can't afford, you know, can't work without childcare. And they're the same folks. And so it's all tangled into that. Yeah, I mean, I think that's a good point. I think the way I grapple with my mind is I really think now is the time to start thinking about things we can do outside of schools and placing new burdens on schools to alleviate pressures. Those are great ideas. Make it, you know, make it easier for, you know, for teachers to get masters to be qualified to have their debt forgiven. Beef up services that that support schools because we ask a lot of our schools. So beef up those services outside of schools that in a lot of countries are much more developed than they are here. Community mental health. Yeah, you know, increase our mental health services outside of schools. Increase accessibility. Decrease costs. I think those are great things to ask for and kind of, you know, paint the problem that when you, you know, put so much pressure on schools, those fault lines start to show in a pandemic because, you know, I mean, this is basically our primary care physician right now. For a lot of people, there is the community schools bills, which I know that we're not what we don't have the title to apply for it. But, you know, that community school is like thinking of like that model of all those services, all those connections who like community schools have proven in some states to work. And and some of those things are like just thinking for our district to think about about that is like, what are the relationships we need to increase with the local community here that can support this event after school programs? But, you know, whatever it is that we are going to need to make this pandemic legal for some of these families. Does Washington County Mental Health have a relationship with the school system that's active? We have a complicated and small relationship with Washington County Mental Health, which is probably a different board meeting. However, they're just briefly their business model that they have is a pod model that places like Central Vermont by a pod. They can't staff it. But in that pod comes behavior interventionists and people with it, right, but they can't staff their full pod. And it and it's very expensive. And if you don't have that level of need for a pod, then basically they say, we don't service you. So we can call them when we have a significant need for a child for Choice Academy or something like that. And if there is a spot, then they will talk to us. There are no spots for those services right now. So we because we don't buy a pod and because they have no spots in their in the school that they run, we have very limited conversations with one of Washington County Mental Health. Unless a student already has that. And we have a very small amount of kids who have that relationship. So now I have understood, though, that we've been able to through community networks, we've been able to get some kids some services pretty quickly that are connected to Washington County Mental Health, which is really good, right? But we don't have a thriving partnership. I couldn't call them on the phone and say, hey, we need help. What can you do for us? They probably want to talk to me. Because historically, the community we can see is that they essentially pay horrible. And so nobody stays. And so they don't have the staff. Yeah, right. The community work that that is so essential to keeping people out of the hospital, providing services. They get back when people are at this stage of their mental challenges as opposed to complete crisis. Yeah, it just doesn't happen. They're primarily funded by the state. Right. And that's I mean, I don't know if that's the that's the conversation I would like the legislators to have. How do we fund that that piece so that that our Community Mental Health Association can be thriving so we can have a thriving partnership with them because the current business model doesn't work for schools of our size or districts of our size. I would also argue that there is mental health and there is mental health, right? Like you can have a punitive mental health system that it's not going to support the students the way that we want them. And there is healing systems that take into a lot of more things than just like a therapy session or like a emergency psychiatric visit. So so this is why when I think about transformation about it's about thinking of the systems. And I know Julia, you guys know Julia Sheffitz. She wrote a letter back last year about signed by 17 local therapists that said, you know, here's the things that we're seeing. And she created a program with Ryan Heritage at UES that got taxed like really, you know, like in this first year at UES. It's like, oh, my God, we have no more space. And so for you guys that are new and it was like a local system where therapists were able to say, hey, we have a kid in need who can take this kid. And then, you know, it was like a referral system done by them. So something like that that we can think about, like how do we increase it? Just getting we can't go back to the same thing we could do in and then fill in again, even if we have a million dollars. Those systems sometimes don't fail. So I just I love the community here in Montpelier. And I know there's so much love and giving and desire to make all these things work that even for our legislature, you know, like I cannot say the same thing for like some other times. But yeah, just grappling with that. I just don't want us to close the door on us and saying we don't have it. We is that for Libby to think on her own because she's already taxed so for us to also help to think about what what what could it take? We are the ones talking to the community and knowing the community that is here. So yeah, I think those are all good points. Like we definitely need to think practically about how to make things better and but also be mindful. Of the effect that those have and make sure that they're helping and not creating creating work that right now is really hard to do. And the other thing I want to mention, thank you, Rhett, for volunteering to be on the committee that made this putting together. We still need one more brave soul to to volunteer for that. So we're just putting that call out again if you don't want to jump out. But definitely think about it. I think that that red song from Rocksbury that probably means that one of the monthly rights would be ideal. I'm sorry, what committee is it? It's the Committee for Nathan's Visioning Process. Oh, we're something in school, so I'm going to try. Now, I know everyone is is hired another person today. We're getting them up. Yeah, but definitely definitely think about it. So and I think if someone did it, we might be open to excusing that person from another committee, perhaps, especially if it's a committee where there's some redundancy. So all right, motion to adjourn. Just quickly, I send out the little flyer for the community sessions for next week. You have any feedback on that? Let's send it tonight, but thankfully, we could send I often to Anna, if that's OK with you. So, and I'm wondering if there is a way to send it in your list just for everybody, you know, we can talk afterwards, but we can talk afterwards about some ideas I have. OK, I have a question. Yeah, the. The. Statute or guideline or rules that say that Rocksbury has to. Form certain things like mailing ballots or allowing on citizens about whatever the whatever the topic is, that it has to be the same as more clear is that in that 46 versus that in our specific chart, I think neither of the above. I think it's I think the ones around voting are separate voting laws of the state. That state, maybe that could also be potentially talking for discussion on our next meeting. But I really I really have concerns that more clear consistency has an intention, passes it, and then it's held up because Rocksbury doesn't feel the same way. And there may be, you know, we can make many efforts to try to get people together and have compromise or whatever you want to call it. But the likelihood that they'll always see things the same is not high for every issue. And I think it's unfortunate if. You know, the will of one group is is, you know, stopped by the will of a super minority in what I mean that is wrong. So I don't know what. That would be a great topic. I think yeah, I agree. That's a fantastic topic. I mean, sure, it's a problem all across that's the rule everywhere. And it must be holding up a lot of progress. Yeah. And I think of the especially idea of, you know, consolidating districts means that you put, you know, some small towns in the big towns and, you know, small towns have a real you know, allegiance to and history of town meeting. And it's just not really practical in a place like Montpelier. So that seems like you could structure the law so that doesn't become an impediment or a person. Right. Really quickly, I feel like when of clarification with regard to the legislature and what I feel like I've heard from Libby and other superintendents and principles, et cetera. My understanding is that the request isn't, you know, don't do anything at all. It's don't put on our plate one more unfunded mandate. You said super super that it's not don't, you know, invest in various systems of support for our communities and kids. It's schools have been stretched very thin for a very long time. But they've cracked for a very long time because we've put we've turned our school systems into reservoirs for so much of our. Public policy shortcomings and social shortcomings that that's my understanding. Now, I think that's absolutely it. I mean, really, you know, focus on not just dealing with the crisis, but I think dealing with the healing and the restoration that needs to occur, but do it in a way that that understands restraints and doesn't say, you know, here's six new things that the superintendent needs to implement in April. Are there things that are being asked for to make it more attractive for recruiting educators and education professionals? Yeah, we all talked about that. If you watch the testimony then or and you read Gini in my so I testified with Gini Collins, who's a superintendent down in Rutland. And that's from today, the testimony. Yes, yes. And Jeff Fan and talked about it at length. I believe Jane Nicholson, too. I can't remember exactly from the BPA. But we all talked about different ways. So, for instance, one, Gini brought up. There's a, you know, clause in teachers' retirement. They can only work so much time in order to get their pension. And right now there's some retired teachers who really want to fill gaps in the workforce. But they can't because they can't work so long. So she was like, wave that for a year. That is something you can do really easily. Just wave it for a year or two. So that's just an example of how we can get through this. Stoppage quickly through work of the legislator that would really help us with. There's other ideas to get tested. But it's very long. Senate, Senate, Senate, yeah. So can I move to a different wrap up topic? Yes, I just felt really compelled to acknowledge the news that we got this week about our 8% vaccination rate. I think any victories we can acknowledge and appreciate is worth noting. I continue to be really impressed by the quality of education that my kiddo is getting, the quality of communication we get from her principal and from Libby. And then even just tonight, we got to know it about like checking interest on booster clinics. I mean, the list goes on. And I just think we I would like to just publicly acknowledge and I know a lot of families feel really grateful we're in this school district during this and I just can't say enough about our gratitude for you and your team and all the parents were volunteering to do testing and the communication is such a reassuring at a time that's still really hard to be a parent during all this stuff. And I just really wanted to express my gratitude for my kids. And we got an up interest. We'll have that booster clinic probably the week of the 17th. And that's a big deal. A lot of districts are not doing anything like that. You know, after my day, I was on the Horn of the Beach. Saying any booster clinic now. A lot of districts are not doing simple. They're like kids, you know, I just know we've spent so much time hearing about this huge strain on our teachers in the classroom. But for what it's worth, their efforts are. For paying off because I do for my small place and what I hear from other families is they're still getting a really good quality experience and getting challenged on top of being safe. So our teacher anxiety level is high. This skyrocketing right now. Yeah, absolutely. So be nice to a teacher. Give them a hug. Send them a jack-o-pattern. Anything else? Great. Come prepare to some good, good thoughts and questions for. Next week, come prepared to approve a budget and. Keep the K-95 masks on and stay safe. Then get boosted if you're all right. And get your 12 to 15, even if we don't have a clinic. But I think even before that, you can take your kid out to. One of several locations and get them to see if that's going to be all right. We should do a turn. So. I got. I was a favor. OK, have a good night.