 Good evening everybody. I'm going to call my name is Floria Smith. I'm the school board chair. I'm going to call them meeting to order at 6.15, about 6.16 Eastern time. We are all here today for a common cause which is supporting public education for our kids across our five communities and to stay student center and and make data informed decisions all together today. Let's acknowledge as a board that recording in progress of where we are and how we got here today. I know it's not easy but but let's be hopeful. We're going to carry on forward and be as judicious as we can to set our school district in a sustainable path for the future. There is a lot of work to be done and difficult decisions to be made and we know it won't be easy but hopefully our share commitment to our students, our communities, and our public education to sense all the differences and provides a common ground for us to stay center in the opportunities that we have together as a district and the larger sense of community that we need to model for all of the attendees here today and for all of our communities. So I am actually weirdly enough really fired up and excited for the conversations that we're going to have tonight from strategic planning to configuration and to the budget. So let's get started. So the next thing is to the adjustments to the agenda. We are going to cross out or table number three because we are not at Calis today. What we're going to do is do that when we are in Calis on the 10th. So we're moving the 10th to an in-person meeting at Calis because we have to move today to remote. So if the board is okay with that, could I have a motion to accept the agenda as amended. Thank you, Ursula. And a second, Michele, all those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Hey, we have an agenda accepted by everybody and now we're going to move into, I see that we have a lot of people in our meeting today so I'm going to move into public comments. And I just wanted to check in a little bit about public comments today. Public comment not today but as we haven't had this conversation in a while but public comment is an opportunity for the public to make comments directly to the board. The public should not expect a response to their comments. The board role during public comment is to listen. The board takes the public comments into consideration as it does its work. And I'm going to read a couple of guidelines for public comments that we have done in the past but since we haven't done it in a long time let's just do this today. Please identify yourself and which town you're from. Comments should be kept to two minutes. Mark is going to have a little timer. I promise we're going to see you and the timer is going to be really little in the upper right-hand corner of the screen. Comments should be directed to the board. The board chair will respond to public comments as appropriate but and the board will determine whether comments made during public comment should become part of a future agenda. Okay so with that any public comments that are not related to either the strategic plan or the configuration study or the budget because if you see the agenda we have allowed it's time for public comment after those presentations so if there's another subject that somebody is here that would like to have a public comment right now please raise your hand okay I see one hand correct okay Hannah please go ahead and unmute yourself and Mark you're. Hi there. Oh I'll turn on my video. Sorry I just installed my app today so I had to open all my settings. Thanks I just have I just have one comment that has to do with procedure and not content and that's that um I know the facilitation of these board meetings are super contentious and it's really difficult but I I've noticed and this is a note for for you floor for the chair I've noticed interruptions specifically of the board members from my town that I elected. Oh I'm from Middlesex my name is Hannah Brown I'm from Middlesex so I know that everybody has super strong feelings and I personally would be a terrible facilitator because I'm you know fiery and impulsive so I I I understand if you have really strong feelings or disagree or want to correct something but part of the norms of the board is letting everybody talk and I really would appreciate it if if that were held to and I mean I truly feel that when a board member is talked over or it doesn't get to finish their thought or is argued against that that's that's actually a disenfranchisement of the voters of the town that they represent so that's my comment I would really appreciate it if those norms could be held to thank you very much thank you Hannah hey Jill do you want to unmute yourself can you hear me okay I yes we can hear you okay trying to think of it's been so long since we've done the zoom thing um thank you for some time tonight to speak I've shared an email with the board with my concerns about the proposed library cuts in our district and I don't want to read through the whole letter in the essence of time and people who might want to have the chance to speak tonight but I did want to clarify another potential concern on top of the letter that I sent and that is in regards to the potential plan for my understanding of takeaway time and all of our libraries in order to provide library services at one school and my concern in that is that it's really challenging to understand a library collection to understand library programming to understand how to collaborate with the teachers in a school and I think it'd be really a huge challenge for anybody stepping into that position whether it's one person or a combination of people in order to fill that role it's not like putting on a band-aid or changing the trash librarianship is no longer about taking care of books it's about building an inclusive collection working with your students and staff and helping people love libraries and it's just I don't think it's possible to be done by a multitude of people I'm happy to answer any other questions regarding the letter that I sent but I think I'll leave it at that and I thank you for your time tonight. Thank you Jill just a quick reminder because some people join after unless you can't be part of the entire meeting we are going to have time to speak about the budget at the budget there's a section for public comment right after the presentation of the budget and we'll have time for public comment right after our configuration study a presentation too and our strategic plan so yeah Becca thank you Jill I responded to your text Becca so do you still have a comment or can you wait until we're in that's a great question I don't know that I'm going to be able to it's dinner time and all that so I don't know so can I make my comment now is that okay okay great thanks so I'm gonna try to be really succinct um I just want to there's sort of an overarching thing um for me is that the way that the that folks frame this conversation is really important um in helping the community understand sort of where we're starting from and I think it would be really helpful if we started from a place of understanding that it is a lot more expensive to educate kids today than it was when some of us were growing up right so part of the reason our budget is going up is because it's more expensive to educate kids to be part of a 21st century world and I think if we started from that framework it might help this conversation feel a little bit more generative and a little bit more productive and less about sort of cutting and slashing um so the other piece is that I think that having these conversations without knowing how many people in the district are paying based on income and how many of them are based on property taxes makes it so we don't actually really know how these budget changes impact people and I really appreciate that we're going to do that once we have a final budget but I think it would be helpful to do it for all three potential budgets so that we could actually really get a sense of what we were how people's um sort of tax bills are going to be impacted um and then I just want to say that I don't want to see the world language program cut at Romney um last year taxpayers made it very clear that we didn't want to cut and so I was already surprised to see it on the chopping block again and you know similarly the cuts to library and allied arts we made it pretty clear last year we didn't want to see those kind of cuts and I think that they are penny wise and pound foolish um because you know again we're um educating kids for a 21st century world right and it's like the previous speaker just said it's not just about books right it's about coding and intellectual like in tech and understanding critical thinking skills really important and art we just we know how important art is for helping kids to be better more focused learners and it's really key so again penny wise and pound foolish um couple I know I'm almost out of time I have a couple questions about online items um uh the instructional related technology services part of the budget I'm curious about the professional services and the increase of $150,000 they are curious what that is and what the communication service in the superintendant line item um 150 additional 150 thousand 150 additional god that's a hard word to say but you know what I mean $150,000 additional there curious about that and where that's coming from especially when we're making some really significant cuts another part of the budget so thank you thank you honey hi everybody can you hear me okay yes hi this is honey Dean Barrett and I am currently a teacher at duty and a resident in double sex with two children at U32 and I'll share more later about boss on the budget but I just want to um share this kind of clarifying question that I have the board speaks often about equity in schools and I believe what you are leaning towards is having equal programming and equal staffing in schools equity in schools is quite different from equality do you want schools to be equitable and have what they need or do you want them to have equal programming I just want clarification on that um further the current inequities and inequalities between the elementary schools versus the middle and high school are pretty massive so I'm just asking you to be clear in your wording and your planning thank you thank you honey okay I don't see any other am I missing anybody Erica rose go ahead and then we're gonna move on you're muted Erica thank you go ahead introduce yourself um I'm Erica rose the art teacher from callous elementary and Berlin elementary it has been suggested that our district cut point eight FTE from our art program and our educators teach up to six classes a day this is unreasonable especially considering that we teach across five buildings if you spent any time with an elementary art teacher then I'm sure you know that it takes an incredible amount of time to prep for a quality art program that exposes students to a rich and wide variety of media it takes time to set up and maintain multiple classrooms and it takes time to transport materials and student projects between schools if I had an hour I could explain what goes into prepping for clay art is a different beast and should not be compared to other subject areas when you look at the amount of instructional time we spend with students if our FTE is reduced to what's being proposed and we're asked to teach more than four classes a day in multiple buildings then the quality of our art program will be jeopardized there will not be time in the schedule for clay or many of the materials that my students are currently exposed to for many art classes the only place where students get to create and use their imagination beyond markers and crayons there won't be time to display work throughout the school or organize art shows it's painful to think about my students missing these opportunities we be robbing them of a significant part of their education this level of reduction is unsustainable and inequitable as a district we will not benefit from such a drastic change to our art program but more importantly our students will suffer please seriously reconsider this devastating cut to our art program our students deserve more thank you thank you very good okay Catherine dutch my name is hathen nudge and i'm a student from calis elementary school it's my understanding that the calis elementary school nurse and counselor may be reduced to halftime i don't think that this proposal proposal is in the best interest of the calis students students rely on our nurse daily for various reasons many students also rely on the support of our counselor thank you thank you very much Catherine okay with that let's get started with our strategic planning and configuration Megan sure i'm gonna share my screen just a second hi everyone okay i think everyone can see um i'm gonna do a couple of things i'm gonna frame our conversation a little bit and then i'm gonna introduce um our colleague and facilitator through our strategic planning process to do part of this um just kind of open it by saying we know this is a big conversation there are multiple big conversations happening tonight and the steering committee knew that when they planned tonight's agenda they know that hearing about the strategic plan and where the district is headed is a big conversation by itself hearing about the work of the board related to configuration is a big conversation by itself and certainly the budget conversation is big and they decided to put them all together because they're connected what we want for our kids how we should be structured and how much it costs to educate them are all connected so just sort of acknowledging there's a lot of information that's going to be shared um in a second i'll share more detailed information but um the there's two things that we're going to share with you in this portion of the meeting one is an overview of the strategic planning process and this is the board's opportunity to learn and about the final version of the strategic plan um board as you know you've been updated throughout the process and you will um approve this plan should you decide decide to approve the plan um at your last april meeting the april 17th meeting um the second part of today is a conversation to bring to the full board the presentation that the finance committee which has been charged with studying configuration um bring that presentation to the full board so that's what we're about to do tonight um i am going to facilitate the slides there is an input opportunity built into this presentation specific to configuration it's not yet the budget portion we'll explain what it looks like at the end um but i just wanted to let folks know um so we can't really see you we won't stop for questions during the presentation and there's an input opportunity um at the end so this is what we're going to do today um and the first part uh which is really about our core values and our strategic plan i'm going to turn this over to genie phillips um in a second when i frame kind of why we started here um but genie is our consultant from the great school's partnership who's been working with us for um a little over a year now uh on this plan so again we knew when we started a conversation last year um and actually continued a conversation that this district has had in the past that the most important way to ground a discussion about how we should be configured is in a discussion about what we believe we want for students and so that is a strategic planning process so genie i will advance slides hi thank you so much for having me um i want to first acknowledge the committee of folks who worked really hard on this strategic plan we had parents and community members as student administrators uh educators from different buildings and so we had a big um group of folks who've worked really hard in many capacities to um uh solicit community feedback and then to synthesize that into core beliefs goals and action steps so you can see those folks there if we move to the next slide i'll just remind you um i think last spring we looked at this exact graphic and talked a little bit about the very various phases of the work starting with engaging that community that committee and talking about how we were going to engage the community so that we could draft a shared vision and core beliefs then moving to goal setting engaging the community again and then from those goals articulating action steps so here we are in phase four of sharing the strategic plan so uh the next slide um just as a reminder of the questions we asked at the beginning of this process which we're focused on what are the hopes and dreams our community has for our young people what are the core values that should guide our work what skills and qualities they do they need and how will they know that um the district cares for and about them and those questions just yielded so much rich data we engaged the community we went to each of the schools and engaged teachers in those conversations we had a big community conversation at u32 and then we also put out a survey with these questions and used that data to formulate the core beliefs for the district what we found uh in our work was that well-being was super important to your community that transparent and responsible leadership rose to the top as something that really mattered community engagement and relationships rigorous curriculum and instruction and humanity justice and community and belonging all of those things were really important across the community and we spent a lot of time synthesizing all of that data into this document and then again sending it out for feedback I think this might be the sixth iteration of this document actually we revised and revised and revised that led us to the next phase well really into phases two and three where we had focus groups with students with community members with educators and and also solicited feedback by a thought exchange to figure out okay what about these core beliefs what is exciting or important what's missing and then if we do these what does that look like what are we already doing towards these what more do we need to do and that yielded even more data that data really led us into a deep synthesis process where we were able to figure out that there were three main goals with some action steps underneath and so the first goal is really focused on um could we go to the next slide Megan thank you uh building and nurturing a culture of well-being and inclusivity and so I think Megan is going to share the action steps document if people want to read all of the action steps is that correct Megan in the chat so go ahead I'm gonna paste several things I actually should have said that before I let you jump in I'm gonna do a few things I'm gonna post the slides so that folks can follow around with the entire presentation and then there's two documents that are the core beliefs and the goals by themselves so I will do that thank you Jeannie. So this first goal includes action steps around social emotional learning around how we build community in our schools and beyond our schools how we focus on inclusion and how we can even think about assessing student well-being so that we can improve it as we formulated these goals we also thought about how are we going to measure progress on these and so on our next slide we have some measures of progress I'm asking Megan to like do multiple things at one time um so there's some existing indicators things that already exist in the system that will help us measure these things the equity indicators um that was good I can't actually paste things without stopping the presentation for a second so I'm gonna let you keep going I'm gonna I'm gonna forward it to someone else who's gonna post so for those on the screen it is coming it's just not there yet thank you so much um so the equity indicators the district has developed the communication and engagement plan those are existing things we can use to measure our progress towards these goals these action steps and this goal and then there's also the creation of a new indicator which is a professional learning plan that helps us keep track of the learning that we are articulated for this goal in the action steps the second goal is really focused on on what we're teaching in the classrooms it's um about making curriculum and instruction more responsive to students providing more real world authentic opportunities in school and beyond school and further growing instructional practices in our classrooms when we measure um the progress on this we're going to be looking at some existing structures like the common assessment system the education quality monitoring plan and then we're also talking about instituting new indicators a youth advisory council um the professional learning plan I mentioned for goal one will also help measure here and other regular feedback mechanisms to make sure we're making progress as we move forward on this goal finally the third goal is all about leadership the governance structures that and about engaging the community and communicating with community transparently this the goal the action steps in this goal are really focused on strengthening family student and community connections and building the systems including accountability systems that help us monitor our progress in the strategic plan I just want to send a big oh I forgot about the indicator sorry the indicators here there are already a lot of existing indicators related to governance and so those will really help us monitor our progress on this including um ed quality standards um the communication engagement plan the configuration study we're going to lead into those are always we can measure our progress in this area and I just want to give another big shout out and appreciation to all the committee members who served to make this work possible such a joy working with them even when the work was hard they had such a can do attitude and work so hard to really listen well to your community and to synthesize that into these core beliefs and goals and action steps thank you thank you Jeannie I'm actually going to take a second to put those links in right now so forgive me I'm going to pause the sharing and that's mostly because we're about to share a series of slides that has a lot in it um so let me do this so this is the configuration slides and on the screen you don't have to follow along this is just in case you want to and these will all be posted on the website afterwards um and if you want a standalone copy of the core beliefs like this I'm going to check this link to make sure yep that is what I thought it was and then a standalone copy of the action steps which are all in the slides so if you would rather just look at it in one way you can do that and I would just reiterate thanks to Jeannie um one of the things that I would say is that this process has been about as iterative as you could possibly be and for a facilitator that's really challenging um it's really important because that's how we needed the process to be but I appreciate Jeannie's ability to roll with how we how we did the work okay so now I'm resharing okay so the last piece just to close out the strategic plan part um what we found uh these three pillars you've probably heard us talk about these before if you've been in any sort of board-related meeting but this is how we define the work within the system that's how we take the the vision piece and bring it down a grain size and we already had these three pillars and there's an incredible amount of alignment with our action steps coming out of this process and these um which is really exciting because that means that we are really working on the things our community wants us to do so these these will continue to be um iterated iterated to include um the action steps coming out of the strategic plan okay so we're going to switch gears a little bit um and for the next part of the presentation I'm also going to have the support of two of our administrators um as you know the finance committee is the group of the board that was charged with um the sort of shepherding the configuration study so doing the deep work and bringing it back to the full board and we asked two administrators um an elementary and a high school principal so Alisha Lyford from Eastmont-Pillier and Stephen Dellinger-Pate uh from the high school to help with this so they have been part of the finance committee and they'll help with this presentation and I'm gonna start with an overview of how we got where we are um and I would also just remind us this is not the first time this this district has had this conversation you've discussed this from as far back as 2014 um but starting last year the board made a really concrete decision to say before we think about how our district should be configured we need to know what it is we want for our students and where we're headed because that's really any configuration we create needs to get us to this and so last year by design the board started with strategic planning that is when we put a request for proposals out contracted with great schools and started the work that Jeannie just shared so everything that we're doing in this part of the study is grounded in that work um last august the board saw a presentation about different ways to approach configuration the links that are in this these slides are also on our website so you can get them in different ways um but the board learned about various ways other districts in Vermont have studied the issue of configuration and in September the board charged the finance committee to lead the study and make recommendations to the full board um that's a structure that I use they chose to use the finance committee and they changed the representation of the finance committee to make sure that there is someone a board member from every town in october the finance committee saw um a number of pieces of data um again linked in here in november the committee did some brainstorming about different configuration options and decided that the full board should engage in that presentation in that brainstorming so they did that in december in february the finance committee reviewed configuration simulations this is mostly what you're going to see today the committee did ask a few extra questions that we've updated in these presentations but that's what you're going to see tonight which brings us to april that's where we are right now um and the board's original target for action is june and action is whatever the board decides it to be but the board did put a place holder um in june to be able to uh move move forward and move forward could mean a decision it could mean further study it could mean whatever the board decides um it should be so again another way to just represent how the board approached the work is this is grounded in what we believe for our students um we need to think about how to organize ourselves to get there and study that deeply and we need to engage the community the committee and board again engaged in a number of activities to determine their priorities for configuration um this process really focused on making sure all of our students can access high quality and enriching and instruction and um they discussed a number of things and landed on this set of priorities and these became the priorities that we looked at different simulations um alongside so the board wanted to prioritize a configuration that lets our class sizes meet education quality standards and are sufficient to provide rich instruction meaning big enough to be able to give strong instructional opportunities to students our board wants schools that are big enough to maintain full-time nursing and counseling positions our board wants to maintain or expand enrichment opportunities that are consistent across the system some of our schools are not big enough to provide some of these opportunities um the board wanted to limit or eliminate shared positions across schools um it's really challenging to have small fte or to be covering multiple schools you will hear us talk about that in this budget presentation and so as the board is exploring configurations they want to limit that for our staff the board also identified a pretty high priority and a lot of um uh everyone a lot of commonality in looking at a configuration that moved middle school together to be grades six through eight and really create a middle level program for those grade levels um that was a pretty universal recommendation and the board wanted administrators to model simulate what it would look like to have fewer than five elementary schools i also put this slide in here it's one that the board will see again in the budget presentation after the budget failed we did put out a post budget survey and it asked in general for some information about why people voted the way they did and what information they'd like the board to know and the way thought exchange works is that monitors things in two ways the two highest number of comments so about 22 percent of the comments were in support of configuration and reconfiguration a lot of those comments sort of had the tenor of i know this is really hard and i think it's time for us to look at that and the second most common set of comments were the costs of our education right now are really difficult for our communities and those two so in addition to just counting separate comments thought exchange asks people to rate comments and the two comments the two themes that receive the most rating work around consolidation support and costs and i put that in here because as the board does its work and thinks about how to engage in community um this is a metric that talks about the um level of support for these conversations so i'm going to keep going i know this is a lot um configuration simulation so this is really the piece where we show you what the finance committee um saw a little bit earlier and just a couple of things to get us started when the board asked administrators to simulate these models they wanted us to look at these models without looking at schools and this was an important part of the exercise because instead of just taking our current reality and moving it around it allowed us to say what would we build and how would we build it if we could start from scratch um and it really opened up the conversation for leadership what would we design if we could really start over with with what would be best for students um the other thing that's really important to know and you'll hear us say this a few different times um our articles of agreement require the vote of towns before things can close so a question that we hear often is um can we just do this faster and the answer is no this has to be a thoughtful process based on your articles of agreement also want to show um this this slide has been in multiple presentations both budget presentations and otherwise but this shows our enrollment we know that we have declining enrollment and we'll continue to decline actually quite a bit past f y 26 but we show this because the simulations were modeling for you used f y 26 enrollment and that's because we can't make this change next year at least these significant changes so f y 26 felt like the right numbers to model this is a very busy slide so if you are looking at it on your screen or you look later you'll be able to dive into this but this is just our enrollment by grade level and i think that's relevant because it shows you the changes starting at the younger grades and when they start to move up and then there's a similar chart here for um seven through twelve enrollment so i won't spend a lot of time on those slides because i think that you can um peruse them on your own and i'm gonna start with one more slide and then i'm gonna turn it over to steven the other thing that administrators looked at for the board was what is the student capacity in our buildings um and this is done based on an agency of education analysis of square footage um there's a per student amount um this actually uses the most conservative calculation um but at berlin we have about a three hundred and thirty six student capacity 252 in callus 189 in dodie 413 in east mount pilier 268 in rumney and 1319 at u32 and that's important for the board to know as they think about um what capacity do we have in our physical spaces and then that last line is how many students are currently in our schools so with that i'm gonna turn it over to steven who is going to talk about um uh six through eight configuration all right good evening everybody um thank you for having us uh here for this presentation um what you see in this slide is just um as we heard earlier moving the sixth grade to u32 was pretty much on everybody's um brainstorm list as a as a strong possibility and so we just wanted to make sure that we showed what would that look like um the opportunities are to be able to expand to a full middle school program not just a seven eight program um which will uh provide some additional opportunities for our sixth graders and will allow us to expand and diversify some of our offerings to our middle school as a whole there's some advantages to having more middle schoolers and how you do your program it also allows us to expand our after school programs and um it really responds to some of the enrollment declines as you'll see um how we kind of configure in the next slide and so what you see in this slide is that in the physical year 26 um the middle school would be comprised of 261 students and the high school 912 would be 481 and that would take us from where we are right now with about 708 students and bringing in the entire sixth grade our enrollment would only be 742 because of the declines in enrollment overall and i really want to point out the 12th grade in physical year 26 there's 145 students when that group graduates the incoming class the following year so that'd be physical year 27 will be somewhere around 90 students so we will have almost 50 student drop in our overall enrollment in just that year so we will be down closer to our enrollment where it is right now when we reach physical year 27 and so just being able to accommodate the students you can see that that's not going to be a problem and also it allows us to stabilize some of our workforce as well because right now we have three cores of teachers and those three cores of teachers can continue to teach both sixth seventh and eighth grade when we have those kinds of numbers when we drop below 100 essentially and we do not see any future year in which we break 100 once we get to to these physical years for our class sizes and so in the next slide this is a this is a slide you'll see a couple of different times in the way that we broke this down was we answered some of our questions which is what are our optimal class sizes are we are for instruction are we meeting those the answer for the 68 middle school and the set 912 high school is that we have optimal class sizes it really does limit or eliminates partial fte's and this is part-time teachers which we know are difficult to find and and difficult to place in in school so we can reduce that need we can have expanded offerings and the the potential cost savings just for this piece alone is that we would not need 5 teachers across the district for the grade 6 level classes because we would be able to consolidate those teachers with the middle school courses they are and so we could actually reduce the total number of teachers we need for 6th through 8th grade as you see you'll see some of these same things for implications for further study some of the special education questions on how do we distribute our our needed teachers what recommendations we make around that essential art services would be changed and then there's just some basic licensure logistics that we have at you 32 because most of our teachers are 712 licensed and so the 6th grade is there will need to expand to make sure that our teachers have middle grade certification which would be important for us to have another year this is one of the other reasons why it's important that we plan a year out for this so our teachers can gain that it's not a difficult process but it's something we just need to go through thank you Steven the for the next section I'm going to turn it over to Alicia lifer hi everyone so I'm going to share with you two different models that we looked at for elementary schools this first slide that you see right here is if we were to go from five elementary schools down to three pre-k through five you see the average at the top there being 202 students this is just a simulation if we took all of the elementary students and evenly distributed them across three buildings this would kind of be the average class size you'll see on the next slide in just a minute that we we actually had to start talking about actual buildings because our current facilities don't lend themselves all of them to this model one of the things that's important to notice here is it does reduce those extremes by balancing out the numbers it offers the opportunity for robust music offerings and other allied arts in all of the buildings fewer part-time positions and more equity um in responsibilities in this model of three schools so when we looked at the facilities specifically um I'm not going to talk about the school but the facility building we narrowed it down to the Berlin facility the East Montpellier facility and the Middlesex facility and you can see here um this chart that shows you how many classes of each and what the sizes would be of each grade level and at the bottom in the blue you can see the average class size across the grades k through three and then four and five honestly when we looked at this we know that there might be some variability in where the students go to school if we were to redraw town lines which is not a project that we engaged in this time um but definitely something to think about again similar to what Stephen showed you this slide um looking at those questions it does um fall into eqs um and achieve the our district minimum numbers for class size it does not completely and eliminate the part-time staff because we still have some of the schools that about 150 students um it would allow for full time nursing and counseling it would allow for opportunities for expanded offerings um there are definitely cost savings and you can see the numbers here for what that would look like to go down to three um facilities one big thing um for further study definitely would be further looking into the transportation uh the special education special education support um and what that looks like and the allied arts and i'll just jump in briefly to give a little bit of an update on transportation we have our former um uh lead person from first student who knows our district very well doing a transportation analysis um we weren't sure if it would be ready for today and it is not um but she is basically looking at these simulations and imagining where you might draw the transportation lines because we know that if we reconfigure we need to make sure that students are um on the bus for a reasonable amount of time um remember we already bring all students to u32 and we are able to do this largely well um but she's doing that analysis so you're going to see transportation in several places that's already been set in motion and then the other thing i would just add in terms of the numbers these are numbers that the finance committee didn't see and wanted and these are conservative estimates meaning um it's likely that there would be additional reductions but this would be the people costs from not operating buildings that's that first number the cost of no longer needing capital planning projects for two buildings that's a pretty significant number and then this just demonstrates classroom classrooms that would be reduced um there would be potential for additional because we would also be reapplying a metric for allied arts and other things um so just to kind of explain that and then i won't do it on the next one because it looks very similar okay this model looks quite different so it's actually going from five elementary schools down to two what's starting at kindergarten through grade five and having one of our facilities be an early education center beginning at birth going through pre-k um board if you remember back in december when you were at east montpellier and um were drafting ideas on the chart paper one of the big things that came out was partnering with our community and expanding our child care um offerings this this um scenario does that so it would partner with community-based child care programs um possibly also add child care for staff have full-time nursing and counseling stability again for class size variation it some of our larger schools and you'll see numbers in the next slide um it could create a leadership structure for those schools this one is megan was talking about earlier would require the vote um of communities because there would be one of the towns not operating a school um it also this would require a partner for the child care component of the center right we would continue to offer pre-k through washington central um before the pre-k would be partnering with it with child care um and then we really talked a lot about what like what facilities do we have in which ones lend themselves most to this model um and so um megan if you go to the next slide the reason we chose berlin as the facility for the early learning center is that felt like the direction most of our towns may be headed in um with child care needs going to work right heading towards montpellier berry interstate all of that as opposed to heading away from um in other towns um so if berlin were the early learning center we looked at current numbers so there would be about six to eight classes of 12 students in our pre-k if we looked at the east lawn pillar facility there would be roughly about 300 students in that facility utilizing 14 of the 15 classrooms and if we looked at middle sex facility the important thing going back to the town lines we'd have to get very creative right and that's where that transportation study would also need to come in because we're looking at five towns going to two schools and and what that busing and everything would look like one thing i just want to um point out in this slide that i didn't mention is that the access to special education for a three and four year olds would dramatically increase because they would be all housed in one building as opposed to as we have it right now housed in five different buildings um and that's something that the the previous model that i showed you wouldn't have the same impact and then finally looking at this model um this one actually answers yes to all of the questions it it could limit or eliminate partial fte optimal class size continue keeping full-time nursing counselor opportunities for expansion as megan shared the cost savings what that might look like and again the big study for this one is transportation okay thank you steven and alisha um so a couple more slides before we do some input and and um also just kind of a reminder again the board asked us to simulate things to see what is viable what does the board think is worth further study so there are a number of things to still figure out with any of these these are conceptual models that the board asked us for so that the board could decide what needs further study so i just want to remind us that's the level we're talking about it's why a lot of these are estimated numbers um we also took a look at a couple of different things to illustrate for the board um either models that don't meet our configuration criteria that the board gave um and are really not feasible but this first one we show to the board mostly to show the board the magnitude of the size that we serve because i think sometimes we forget this um there is um not just in theory but there could be one single elementary school that serves all of our students because 482 is not an exceptionally large school it's certainly larger than we have um it would have optimal class sizes it would limit fte obviously it would have more than one full-time nursing counselor and lots of potential for offerings um and significant cost savings we do not think this is feasible we don't think this is feasible we don't think our communities want it um things like transportation would be significant and it would require facility expansion even in our largest school but we offered it to the finance committee just to illustrate what our size really is um the second is our current model and i think this is really important for the board to see we don't have optimal class sizes in all of our schools um we have a lot of partial fte as as you know and you also talk about tonight um if we maintain full-time nursing and counseling it becomes cost prohibitive because of our size and we really we don't just have um it's not just that we don't have an opportunity for expanded offerings we don't have the basic offerings in our school in our smallest schools we don't have the choral and band programs that we have in our larger schools because we just don't have enough kids to offer them um and as you know the costs associated with this model um will continue to increase um i also just wanted to point out that one of the challenges with um the model that we have is we this year uh made some decisions around class size uh because we were presented with very small class sizes and so we have merged kindergarten and pre-k programs in two of our buildings when we do that just year by year based on what's coming in we are not doing it in a thoughtful way across the district and we'll continue to have to make decisions like that um we also modeled reducing from five elementary schools to four um as sort of a smaller scale change it only impacts a single building but as you can see we are small enough that it actually doesn't achieve the board's priorities um our class sizes would still be small it would still require um part-time staff we would have the same problem with nursing and counseling um and expanded offerings and so yes there are some potential cost savings but probably not worth the disruption so the final slide here which I won't spend a lot of time on is just a summary of the three configurations that we showed the board and there's not a lot of new information here so to keep us moving so we are all on a zoom and there are a lot of us on the zoom so uh this is a little bit of an input session it is not long it's also not the only uh opportunity for input this is really just to give the board a sense of what the folks in the room feel um in a moment we are going to open up zoom rooms and break into virtual discussion groups each of the groups is going to have a note taker from the district and it's going to have at least two if not three board members um and so those are the folks that will move the conversation around or along um we're only going to be in these rooms for 15 minutes about five minutes per question if you don't want to join a room that is fine you don't need to you're going to get a thing that pops up on your screen that says um join a room you can just decline it if you don't want to do that and on the next slide and I'll also post it in the chat there's an input opportunity there's a link so you will be able to respond to the same questions if you are just someone who'd rather respond that way um then at the end the board members in each of those rooms will report out two highlights from the conversation and again the board this is just an opportunity early the steering committee felt like it was important for folks to be able to weigh in at some level um and that's what we're about to do Chris did you have a question I do so um these breakout rooms are to solicit uh community input not board input is that right correct yes okay yeah thank you yep thanks for that um I'm gonna post paste these questions in the chat so you can also see them later because in a second I'm going to take the share down but these are the three questions it's just very simple and five minutes on each and again I'm also going to post this link so if you're someone who would prefer not to um join a room that's that's fine Megan I just say one last thing is that because there's going to be two or three board members per group we we set it up for six rooms so it'd be about 25 people per per for some room just decide between you guys who's going to report out the two highlights okay that's it okay so I'm going to stop the share and um Mark I'm actually going to let you open up the rooms hello everybody hi Ursula I can take it off unless there's any board feedback um Shannon Miller I'm a parent um of a Berlin kiddo and two U32 kids um I'm really surprised to see an early learning center um listed as a priority um it's very cool as a former parent um of three little kids obviously to see that but I'm wondering um if we are struggling right now to fund pre-k through 12 why we are expanding our offerings down to birth um I also am thinking of Washington County Family Center right down the street and knowing that they've frequently had to close due to staffing issues um so I'm just curious if we have thought at all about um being able to find enough licensed individuals to staff a center of that size that's all thank you do we want to raise hands do people just want to jump in popcorn style or jump in for a second absolutely hi thank you hi hi everyone I'm Carol Holden director of special services I'm taking notes and but I don't have access to the form so I'm just going to take them at my own and then upload it can you remind me which question we're on so I can categorize correctly the three questions I gotta go find mine the three questions were what excites you okay and so if we like I think um Shannon sort of went into maybe a few like she answered all three I think okay can you remind me of the other two so I can what excites you what questions do you have and what concerns do you have okay so I will summarize Shannon's within those and then I'll let you facilitate from here thank you okay I see honey's hand up so take it away hi I have a question and a concern I have a question as to how we would create 12 classrooms at Romney um currently there are nine so is there an associated cost with changing the building or are we looking to take away spaces such as art music and library to create those additional three classrooms um and my that was my question my concern is that Steven proposed that we need to wait to reconfigure to um so the current staff at U32 can be ready to teach sixth grade um some of us are sixth grade teachers I am a sixth grade teacher and that just felt um that felt like a goodbye like sorry you teach sixth grade right now but we're going to take our staff and we're gonna make it work with them um and I know that's not what he's thinking but I just want to be really have have him be really thoughtful in that presentation because we have very talented sixth grade teachers right now who um should be considered for the position even if it's not um where it's currently at right now thanks thank you I saw Elizabeth oh Elizabeth did you have your hand up next yep you guys just are going in order so I'll call on Elizabeth awesome thank you so much um I am a parent of twins at Calis elementary and a daughter at U32 in seventh grade um and I too share the concern about uh focusing on opening more early ed programs ironically I'm an early ed director and it is a wonderful thing and we should do more of it but when I think about the current children in our district I really feel like that has to be our first focus and a focus that we consider through all of these different steps um I'm excited that if there is a merge of schools that there will be more arts and more band and music opportunities Calis has wonderful music programs but it'd be great to be able to see that expand for our kiddos especially for those that have different um modes of communication and excitement and learning um and then the last thing I just wanted to say is that as a parent of children who are in a program that has smaller class sizes um one of the configurations I can't remember which one it was I want to say down to two two schools maybe the class sizes were way way way too big um I get the idea that adding more staff to a classroom will help to balance things out but often more does not mean better um especially in situations where you have the kids that we have right now that we're educating that are experiencing a lot of trauma a lot of mental health needs so for me smaller is better and I would steer far away from configurations that increase this class sizes significantly thank you so much thank you Larry Gilbert except I don't think that this is a Larry Gilbert I'm not sure hi uh oh it is it is Larry Gilbert yes um uh thank you um what's exciting what's exciting for me to hear is the thoughtfulness that has gone into this process today to the there's been a lot of sort of loose talk in the community it seems um about about closings uh and reconfiguration but this is the first sort of concrete and specific proposals that I have heard and so I'm really delighted that this process is moving I don't have an opinion on you know what schools ought to close how many whether the the right number is three or four or two or even one that's an interesting proposal but um what's exciting for me is that um the thoughtfulness that has gone in so far thanks thank you Hannah um yeah so what's exciting uh to me again is the if if it if it really shakes out this way the increased opportunity for um enrichment uh across the district so I'm thinking if it means that world languages which are unbelievable um in middle sex could be expanded um that would be that would be a boon um to everyone I it's exciting to think about um uh my kiddos um you know having meeting more friends more people um right now uh Dodie and Romney do a lot together um girls on the run basketball that's been that's been really neat to see um meet more people um so that's exciting to me um I share the same concerns I mean I was 15 months old and the idea of and and he's been on yeah Turtle Island has a weightless 300 kids long that's the weight list that's not enrollment that's a weight list and I've gotten the same thing from the Montpelier Children's House even though we have whatever I mean the weight list is 160 kids long and he's been on a weight list since I was three months pregnant so that's exciting but I also think it's the wrong direction um which says a lot because wow but I use an early childcare center um but we're dealing with such massive cuts that that just seems uh like the wrong place to focus I'm also um I'm concerned about having about having pre-k at a place different from where those pre-k kiddos will end up going to elementary school I think there is a ton of value in going and having your pre-k be your introduction to your school I think that's so valuable and I what they were talking about with um special education and being uh being more um of an option for little little maybe if there are three elementary schools but we'll still have that increase um but I see the kiddos and I know for my kids experience and in their classrooms kids that get that introduction to their schools and their school community have a much smoother transition in kindergarten both in terms of the place they're at and they already know the teachers and they're going from I mean my god now we're down to two and a half hours but it used to be five hours to a to a six and a half hour day so I think that um that's a big concern of mine if pre-k and we're already dealing with that with Romney and Jody this next calendar year and that's a that's a concern of mine um that's it okay thank you Hannah Mark hi um lower my hand when I finished and figure out the buttons excited I have two kids sorry I teach at U32 and we have two kids at Calis elementary fifth grader and a third grader um excited about increasing opportunities music art other than say drama and just all the things right that'd be great to have oh language world language I would love if my kid could get language so that's all good um I'm very would be very concerned if I went to the two elementary school model I know the statement was made that a lot of our communities go in that direction I know a lot of my neighbors don't go in that direction and to send your very young child all the way to Berlin from Calis that's closer to Hardwick than to Montpelier is is a lot um so I don't support that move at all yeah those are the main things I'm excited about increased opportunities I'm really concerned about the idea of sending all of our communities to somewhere that far away for so many of them for the youngest kids thank you thank you Ashlyn hi my name is Tyler Smith I'm a teacher at Berlin my wife Ashlyn also a teacher at Berlin and we both live in Berlin I'm also a co-president of the association um what it's what excites me I have a daughter who's in sixth grade currently and it excites me that kids will be able to grow up and have more opportunities than she had she had some wonderful opportunities but world language like Mark said that would be absolutely wonderful um I am worried about just reconfiguration and uh not enough thought being put into how we choose which model to do I think I'm not going to echo a lot of the concerns that were already said but um schools that are too crammed um I feel like that that is definitely not what our communities want um and what was the third one I'm so sorry so it's excites concerns any questions that you had understanding we're not answering them in this situation yeah uh no I don't have any questions thank you this was lovely to be able to do this in this form you're welcome thank you anyone else honey can I just say one more thing um as someone who currently works at one of the smaller schools that um might be dispersed elsewhere um it's worth saying a hundred different ways that we need to be so thoughtful and how we um make this reconfiguration happen it can't just be that some of the bigger schools are absorbing the small schools there really needs to be a lot of agency put into it um from leadership all the way down and including families um because it's a pretty drastic change and we want everyone to be a part of uh making it successful thank you mark sorry I should be able to speak in the moment since I do this professionally but um I forgot my third grader is in a class of between 20 and 25 it's a combined third and fourth grade class of course but it's not ideal it's it seems to be too many he's got an excellent teacher who runs the room really well and I have nothing but respect for her she does a great job but it's too many so that idea of going down to two schools and making a lot of classes between 20 and 25 I'd be concerned about that particularly for the younger classes thank you Julia hi my name's silly I'm the principal at Berlin elementary honey I just one thing that Alicia didn't mention in the presentation but I know the configuration group has talked about is that if we were to move forward with a three um campus model or three elementary schools the reason why she chose or they chose in the language Berlin facility is that the idea would be that there would be or a you know the Romney facility would be that there would be a reimagining of a name for the elementary school so that it doesn't just become an absorption that it's a creation of a new learning community in a different site if that makes sense I just when you said that I was like great we didn't talk about that so um that's I just wanted to note that thank you Celia of course I'm just looking for hands any other comments anybody wants to share Natasha did they give us a time limit or they said 15 minutes but I don't know when we came into the room I did not get my clock I did not do that part of facilitating we did get a to do of identifying two two items to share out hi Hannah hi again it's so weird not to be pressed for time I do really appreciate this format I want to take you back and and say that if there were a choice between three and two I would think that if if two elementary schools meant that you know we were at 25 for every class that does seem like it would be it would be a lot too much to handle I mean I know when my kid I was in kindergarten what was that honey will know that was 21 or 22 kids and 22 kindergartners I mean it was 21 it was a full-time teacher and then hopefully a para but really a full-time certified teacher so it was really two certified teachers in that classroom um and that was that was their minimum I think to make that work and I agree I mean my my older kiddo had 10 kids and that was amazing because it was that COVID year that we were back in school um but on the other hand like I do I do understand having a few more for an enriching experience but but I agree with the previous comment um that that I think that's stretching capacity thank you do we want to look for common themes I mean in the excites category I heard plenty of you talk about excitement about expanded opportunities for students within reconfiguration Natasha you and I get to duke it out over who presents when we go out not it oh I see I see that was a big step back gotcha Hannah is your hands up again like no okay I just want to figure out how to put it down fair enough um so one of them that we will put report out would be um an excitement from our group being expanded opportunities what about between either questions or concerns do you guys want to care I see your hand up yeah I'm just looking at the notes the concern if I was to summarize it it's all pretty consistent about um understanding that we're thinking through this but but not swinging the pendulum too far so too far too fast or um going from too small to too big so um what excites people is the idea of kids having more resources and opportunities and then the concern is the other side of that pendulum which is too far too fast or going too big I would just add and be an observational here um another like a zoom out observation or summary could be to share that people did a pretty tremendous job of identifying and honoring how this feels for people in the community and talking this through in a structured way that put it all out on the on the table without um offending there's been a lot of murmurings in the community that this will be hard and and from an observational place this was really productive and constructive and service to our kids thank you Cara and then it's Ashlyn and Tyler right yep um just I came up with my question has it been brought up uh any question about what would cuts look like if we went to two schools uh like what would staffing look like if we went to two or three schools how does that all kind of lay out I can only briefly just because they threw those numbers up on the screen they have very roughly looked at those numbers and what the cuts would look like um because the school contract like the the teachers contract and the education support staff contracts would have a large amount of play in that too so it is a complicated issue that requires more thought and explorations Celia and then we'll do Michael Tyler there if you look in the um in the chat on zoom there's a link to the slides and they're the longer rec it's like the rectangular box that takes up all the page looking at one configuration um one other I was thinking like noticing that I had heard um sort of was that there was a worry about shifting to looking at a birth to five center I heard that through kind of a pull through thread um of to Cara's point like not rushing into a decision but I also heard a concern about focusing on younger students without first figuring out how to serve arcade pre-k to sixth population that's currently in our district and if it serves this group I can add that to our too big too far too fast um concern that we report out we'll just smoosh two things into one Michael yeah good day I'm Michael show on the PBIS and behavior coach at East Montpellier elementary um just thinking about transportation no matter what model um is looked at more closely or any of the models um can we include uh increased supervision on bus routes considering that kids may spend longer on buses and um that's probably the least supervised place in our schools right now and just as a as a question can we look at um increasing supervision on bus routes thank you and Cara's taking those notes so all the questions will come to the committee and we have like three seconds so we're recording in progress Chris I the other 10 000 gorilla in the room is Montpellier you know we talk about the five towns you know I agree I thought was having that we have this we have this whole other schools district sitting in the middle and it doesn't come up at all it's it's really it's kind of crazy well you know bring it up because I'm just going to say this is sounds like a time when we should really be talking with Montpellier before you know everybody we're hey Alan and Chris thank you I know it was hard we were caught in the battle too in our group uh just want to we say again that this won't be the last time that people will get to give feedback and we're going to have a a survey so we'll go around and and share two two highlights for for a group so if you guys have your spokesperson which is going to be required because there was a lot to be shared so are you the spokesperson for your group Chris um actually our group was Alan Lila and I uh because we were in the general session and I got never made it into my breakout group and Mark was just working madly to try to get us back in and then so go ahead go to group one go to group one thanks but what we talked about talked about a couple things one is um the importance of the small of the small schools the small towns and their vibrancy uh that we need to to take into account uh the other is this almost sounds like a good time to start talking with Montpellier uh to see what their plans are and before we make any steps and and those those two things um and and Alan also was concerned about you should be talking about the budget but go ahead we're getting to the budget okay yeah right really great um so we had a really great group and a really nice discussion I think there was a lot of excitement and hope in hearing the presentations for reconfiguration just thinking about instead of student numbers dwindling and resources dwindling kind of this reversal and this burgeoning of resources and and students being being together so that was one main takeaway and definitely highlight I think the the main questions and concerns that are remaining are a lot about um busing and how both how long children are going to be on buses kind of how we figure that out so I know that that that study is is coming and then also um a a nudge to uh look at the impacts of or our impacts on on climate change associated with um the these reconfiguration scenarios with the additional busing um so that was it from our side thank you Kili and Natasha, Joshua and Ursula who's your spokesperson for your group go ahead Ursula um so within our group we had an overarching excitement towards expanded opportunities and enrichment for students um some of the main concerns that were brought up were that they don't want to go too far too fast too big with our options and a worry about shifting concentrations to a birth to five center if we aren't fully taking care of the students we currently have. Thank you, Mackaylin and Zeck. Okay so we we had a lot of a lot of energy and a lot of excitement around the idea that we could bring you know bring services back or strengthen services particularly in in the arts and in music making that more robust in larger schools um one concern that came up a number of times you know was for you know for teachers around the transition of sixth grade to um you know to the high school was just a lot of uncertainty around what does that mean for a licensure what does that mean for who can teach what how is that going to impact you know who is you know who's going to still have a job and who walls and so I think there were a lot of it's it was all it was really framed as question as a question I think they are real questions but it's it's a thing that's a stressor right now. Thank you Zeck. Diane we're group number four do you want to report out? Sure um so again reiterating this excitement over the increase of it you know opportunities uh some of the big concerns and questions that were coming up were around the specifics what you know the devil's in the details and so when we're saying the increase opportunities what does that really mean what are those costs that are going to be there also a very strong feeling that um how are we making the decisions as to which uh which schools do we keep and expand are we what are the values that we're applying to that what are we looking at in terms of is it size or is it um the you know there are many examples of the the closeness and the strength of smaller schools and the deep generational connections there and so really questions around the specifics of that expense it did come up about Montpelier and so I think it just raises a lot of questions and a lot of wonderings about the process about in terms of um how we gather that information and make sure there are lots of voices at the table. Thank you Diane. Amelia and Jennifer? So in our group it also echoed a lot of the similar themes that have been discussed a lot of the same points of excitement about increased opportunities especially for sixth graders if they were to come to U32 and a lot of excitement around child care and some of the key questions were around concerns for supporting communities through the transition how do we sort of strengthen the connections and the bonds and relationships in the midst of that transition that could be disruptive and and you know really challenging and questions about class sizes specifically what's what what are the optimal class sizes and in relation to a comment that that was from experience of having you know a class that felt too big um concerns about transportation and licensure logistics so getting with the theme yeah thank you. Thank you Amelia. Michelle and Daniel? Okay so things that were exciting were the possibilities having child care for the younger children and maybe for our employees to be able to access also the increased opportunities for students in the merge such as specialized reading programs that some use and some don't world language a lot of the questions also I feel are part of the concerns you know how do we repurpose a school so that you know it's a still a vibrant place for the community members um there was questions about how do we make it so our students don't feel like they're just absorbed like swallowed into another elementary school which you know talking we talked about like the naming of the school like if callous went to East Malpillar we wouldn't want to still call it East Malpillar um those types of things um transportation was another concern um kids being on the bus for you know either really early or for how long so um what will it look like for children's you know for the children based on a larger school? Thank you Michelle so again this is not the last time that you guys will have an opportunity this is an ongoing process and we'll you know we'll keep reaching out to the community and nothing is on stone yet this is where we are at this moment we're going to take a five minute break so that we can dive in and stretch just for a minute so we can have our heads back for the important conversation about the budget so it's 18 sorry six I don't know because I'm going to do seven forty three it will be let's just be back at eight sorry I can't back in five minutes okay two recording stopped okay everybody one more minute and turn your cameras on board members when you're on and if you can turn your cameras on that's okay but at least they'll know that or give me a thumbs up so I know that you're ready I know it's a lot it's that a little bit of a marathon today but it's all linked together and see your thumbs up day in recording in progress so we're gonna move into the budget presentation and then we'll have time for for comments after the budget presentation and then the board will have time to deliberate okay so with that I'm gonna give it back to you Megan to share your screen and get us started and Suzanne yep so um I'll get us started a couple times I'll turn to other folks in the leadership team Suzanne will also take a good portion of this so um we've just spent a lot of time talking about things that we normally start a budget conversation with which is this is what we're trying to do for kids so what you're about to see doesn't repeat that because you just spent a lot of time on it but again our job as a leadership team is to take the direction of the board in this case the financial direction and what the board expects our schools to do for kids and bring the board proposals based on that um just kind of a reminder this is part of a broader budget development timeline we are not normally still meeting about the budget at this time of year um but as you know the budget did not pass on town meeting day and so um the board has asked for proposals today for discussion um and we'll be adopting a revised budget by next week in order to meet a timeline for a May 7th re-vote and here's what we're going to do today um we're going to review what the board parameters were and the requests they made of administration and then we're going to move into those budget proposals we will talk a little bit about some themes from the various input opportunities we'll summarize the changes in each proposal that the board asked and we will look a little bit at tax rate projections again these are three different calculations based on what the board asked for some information that you would normally get and we'll be part of a forward-facing budget presentation we will develop those once the board adopts a budget um so kind of a review of the parameters the board set the direction they gave administrators and then therefore our approach um this you are quite familiar with um these are the original parameters from the board uh during the budget process um it is a combination of things the board needs our school to do and cost related parameters um the board did back in November remove the parameter of keeping our costs um at the inflation rate um because for many reasons the costs are significantly above the inflation rate so this is not new information and at your post-vote meeting your first meeting as a board um this is the direction you gave um so for a number of reasons especially this year the tax rate projections are incredibly volatile and they are changing so um that's actually always true but it's especially true this year it's also always true that the part of the budget the board controls is spending and so the board has opted to focus on spending because that is the part you have control over the original proposed budget that did not pass represented a 16.14% net education spending increase and you have asked us to model bringing that increase down to a 10% increase an 8% increase and a 6% increase and that represents these numbers of additional reductions so these are in addition to the reductions proposed in the budget that did not pass so leadership team continues to use this set of principles to guide their work we need to be able to achieve our vision and our pillars within our current configuration as you heard during the configuration study none of those movements can happen in time for the FY25 budget we need to make sure our staffing resources remain within education quality standards and we need to respond to enrollment changes so that was the principles that administration used in doing the work so i'm going to go through a set of slides some quicker than others because some you've seen before and this is going to talk through the three different proposals that you asked for just a reminder you've seen a slide before this is sort of your engagement process during the typical budget season it starts with what is it that we're trying to accomplish there's opportunity to communicate and get feedback from staff and from community and then the board does its work i'm reiterating this slide for those of you that already that were here for the configuration presentation this is the same slide we did put out a thought exchange after the budget failure that is not a perfect method of gathering input but i would say this is the most responded survey we've ever given so the way thought exchange works is people make comments but they also can emphasize other people's comments or rate other people's comments so the thing that's important for the board to hear is these are the highest number frequency of comments so about 22 percent of the comments are about supporting the need to reconfigure a lot of really articulate ways of and i'm not doing justice to it a lot of comments like we know this is hard we know this is something that our communities feel really strongly about and we think it's time so that's kind of my summary there's a lot of comments about 18 percent of the comments standalone are about our continued increasing costs are really difficult for our communities and they're feeling like reductions are necessary there is that's about 18 percent and those top two comments are also the highest rated comments there is also feedback in the survey about administrative positions and sort of the idea of looking across line item areas about four percent of the comments are about preserving opportunities for students and making sure that services aren't impacted and then there's a number of sort of comments it is only two percent but i think it's relevant for the board to be really clear about its communication for the next round this is a slide you've seen before this is just reiterating our enrollment decline and the reason we're repeating this slide is because a lot of what we're going to talk with you about is sizing our district for the number of students we serve right now which is far fewer than we've served in the past and this is just that same chart in a visual form it's important for the board to know that these changes which were in your adopted budget on january 17th are already assumed in this budget so everything we're going to talk about is in addition to this right so this as you remember the board um agreed on these proposals um and so these are factored in already and i won't review them because we uh went through that in detail as part of that budget process so the first thing that i will highlight is um this is the 10 net education spending increase so again we're currently at 16 this is bringing that down to 10 which is about 1.9 million dollars in additional reduction um we'll talk about this in a few different places um when i finish talking i'll talk a little bit about fund balance um but this is what is included in this proposal um one is um we did a deep dive into our uh non-personnel line items and made supply line reductions across the board there is an interest line adjustment that we made the magnitude of those numbers it's about 260 thousand dollars in supply line reductions 112 thousand dollars in interest line adjustments a lot of these numbers are in the memo that's on the website for those of you on the screen and um the thing to understand about those reductions is um these non-personnel line items are where a school district often generates fund balance um that and an unfilled positions is another place but what that means is the budget is tighter so it is likely that we would earn for lack of a better word um or a crew less fund balance so that's just something to be aware of this proposal for the 10 percent increase includes a reduction of the director of technology position so that is a central office leadership position um that we would reduce um the there will be a small professional services contract that would need to remain to carry forward our cyber security needs in particular as you know the district was the victim of a cyber attack a number of years ago and we need to keep those protections going but this is a reduction of this leadership position the second set of these next two pieces here um the board heard recommendations last year from administration uh for a number of reductions and the board chose to restore those reductions they are put back into this proposal at 10 percent um in addition the nurse and counselor positions these are ESSER funded positions ESSER money has gone away um this was part of your original budget proposal and those are included in these reductions there are a number of reductions that are related to enrollment um I also would just say these previously proposed reductions are also related to enrollment um we serve fewer students than we served six ten years ago and we'll continue to serve fewer students we have not significantly reduced staffing to match that reduced service reduced number of students so there are classroom teacher related reductions that it are um directly tied to our enrollment decreases um there's a administrative assistant vacancy at U32 and there are a number of allied arts reductions um again these reductions preserve this a number of classes per week um I'm going to turn to Alicia um kind of speaking on behalf of the elementary principals to talk a little bit more about allied arts uh we know there's been a couple of questions about how those reductions were made sure so I'm going to give you more context than uh and kind of backstory than you're you're used to getting from us but we thought it was important because you are going to see you've heard from allied arts teachers and you're also going to see uh different variations of allied arts in different percentages um in this budget presentation so um in an elementary school day right the day is broken up into chunks we have um several years ago the leadership team came up with agreement where all consistently across the schools of our allied arts blocks would be 45 minutes before that time we could range anywhere from 30 minutes to 60 minutes in different buildings and our students were not all getting consistent uh time with each of the teachers what we didn't do at that time is look in our buildings at the FTEs and the personnel that it required to have those 45 minute blocks so for example if you look at this school day and I think it was Erica who had talked about this earlier tonight when she said this six block kind of idea you can fit in a in a master's schedule you can fit up to six blocks of allied arts in a day you can fit three before lunch typically in three after lunch if you you know do the math and multiply 45 minutes times six it's 270 minutes of a day that you could fit any one of those teachers um in front of children a school day is 420 minutes long for a for a student in elementary school so not all of that day of the allied arts teacher would be teaching students even with those six blocks um but the math that we use to kind of calculate looking looking broadly across all of these categories so we looked at art specifically we looked at music we looked at library and we looked at PE and we talked about each of them as individuals we know that a PE teacher and an art teacher have a whole lot more equipment set up than maybe some of the other arts because um as Erica shared with you earlier there's a lot of take down and cleaning and and setting up that happens we also know that other arts like our music teachers might not just be teaching general music in some of our buildings we have band we have um chorus right so we took all of that into consideration and we looked at library um some of our librarians strictly teach library and others teach both library and tech more similar to a PE teacher where they're in front of students twice a week we also know that they um have the whole circulation to think about and um it's not just about being in front of kids for librarians as you heard earlier there's a lot of other times spent not when kids are in the room um preparing for and making sure that the circulation is is in order and up to date so we looked at all of those factors when we came up with these FTEs um we had not done this work several years ago and we we kind of had that consistency in number of minutes um and so what you see here in the 10 percent the 0.8 decrease in art and 0.6 decrease in library is across all of our buildings what we have not yet done and um I believe the next steps would be would be to meet with those art teachers and to look at what are the FTEs that remain and how do we distribute them across our buildings so it wouldn't be that any one art teacher would be in all five buildings that's not the best use of their time nor would that be fair to them to ask them to be in you know five buildings every week um so that that step has not yet happened basically what we did is we looked at the kind of a master schedule thought about what that would look like and what the needs would be in each of our buildings looking at number of classrooms we have for next year thank you Alicia appreciate it this this set of reductions to get us to 10 percent assumes using about 273,000 actually almost 274,000 in fund balance um when we get to the end of these three I'll have Suzanne speak a little bit about fund balance and the um as you know the board had this conversation a little bit in March um we have uh we are advised to have two percent of our operating costs in fund balance retained and then we have money outside of that and we have a lot of unforeseen um potential costs coming down particularly around PCBs and so the board asked Suzanne to think about an amount of fund balance that she was comfortable with that put does not put the district at a significant amount of risk but allows you to use it so she will talk a little bit about that this proposal here assumes using just under 274,000 of fund balance the board asked to look at a eight percent net spending increase so that is about two and a half million of additional reductions from that december uh january 17 budget this assumes 485,000 in fund balance applied and it is the reductions on the previous slide plus some additional allied arts reductions the reason these allied arts reductions are on the eight percent and not the 10 percent is because although the reductions don't occur at u32 the implications of the reductions move people around k-12 allied arts licenses are k-12 um and it makes this pretty complicated it does not decrease services for students it still maintains those agreements about allied arts it's just more complicated frankly from a human resources perspective and that's why it's on a column that in our mind is still doable but it's more challenging and so the the calculations that alisha was talking about those are what landed these here the only real difference again is the complexity it makes for the adults in our system it still preserves student services um there are additional administrative reductions in this proposal not significant position cuts but taking our uh currently the gillian the dodie position the dodie principle is a 0.9 it's it's a 0.89 um it's a reduced contract number of contract days so this proposal would have our other two smallest schools also be reduced by that amount and it would bring the dodie position down a little bit further to a 0.8 you board have heard me say before um i believe the time to reduce administrative positions principal positions we have reduced administrative positions that's in the 10 column but principal positions my perspective is that if we are operating a school we need a principal to operate that school and so the time to make those reductions is in within the context of configuration we know folks have asked about the leadership numbers at u32 there's a slide in a little bit that shows those numbers we really don't have the data to support reductions in administration at u32 i'll talk about that in a second and then there are some additional enrollment related reductions in this eight percent proposal um we have some administrative assistant reductions again these are number of contract days rather than elimination of positions and it is to sort of bring alignment to the small schools um rumney retains a 1.0 nurse it was never esser funded and that would actually make rumney have more nursing um in terms of distribution of resources than other schools so there is a 0.2 nurse reduction in this proposal a small reduction in um a yoga offering at u32 and this proposal would also reduce two bus routes um we actually believe that we may be able to reduce more but two is a conservative estimate and um i might have to actually i will come back to you with what that dollar amount is we have a per bus route dollar amount that i had written down in a different place and i will come back and tell you what that is so this is the eight percent and again that assumes about four hundred and eighty five thousand dollars in fund balance to get us there the final proposal that the board asked us for is a six percent net at spending increase that's about three point two million dollars in additional reductions this applies the biggest proportion of fund balance eight hundred and sixty four thousand and it includes the previous reductions um plus a reduction in building and grounds at u32 um and support staff positions if you'll recall um u32 has perennial vacancies in support staff and this would not fill two additional of those positions i'm actually susanne i'm going to do the next slide because it's related to equality i'll let you speak to the fund balance when i turn it over to you for numbers so this slide you've seen different versions of this but this is just showing the board that the reductions that we have proposed and this chart assumes all of the reductions all the way down to six percent and we're just putting this here to show you that even with those reductions we remain within education quality standards in each of these areas the green highlights are just the areas the functional area that shows up on the list of reductions so that's what this chart is and again the administrative data is in here as well and it's looked at in two ways at quality standards looks at that by how many teachers an administrator supervises we added some information about the total student body that they serve and i will turn it over to susanne uh good evening just a reminder as we look at the slide that the budget expenditures are the amount the district plans to spend which is the dollar amount that is worn and voted on revenues represent the money the district anticipates receiving to offset expenditures in all three drafts presented on this slide the revenues include a proposed amount of fund balance the net education spending is the amount that needs to be raised by property taxes and is used to develop the local spending per pupil that the homestead tax rate is based upon draft one is a proposal that utilizes two hundred and seventy three thousand nine hundred twelve dollars of the fund balance to offset expenditures to lower the net education spending uh draft two four hundred and eighty five thousand dollars and draft three utilizes eight hundred and sixty four thousand to lower the the net education spending in the past the board has utilized the fund balance to support the retirement buyout unanticipated spending in special education and investing in the capital improvement reserve fund several factors were weighed when considering how much fund balance to use to reduce the tax impact the across the board cuts made in each draft represent significant belt tightening across the district and will result in the generation of less fund balance in the future there is still an unknown amount of money that will need to be spent to mitigate PCBs at U 32 and possibly the other schools in the district which is why you're not seeing us take the entire amount of your fund balance and say um let's use it to offset this one of the reasons that we have encouraged the board to focus more on the net education spending and less on the tax rate is the impact of the decrease in the CLA across each of our towns this factor is out of the board's control and yet it is one of the largest factors in the increase in the individual town tax rates so we just have this slide in here for a reminder of those CLA reductions know if the washington central budget continues to fail uh at subsequent votes the district would be required by statute to begin july one on an operating budget that is 87 percent of the f by 24 budget uh what you see on this slide is the local education spending models for the 10 percent 8 percent and 6 percent increases and it shows you what the equalized homestead tax rate projection is for each of those budgets uh note that the 10 percent is a negligible increase almost a level funded uh amount in that equalized homestead tax rate both the 8 percent and the 6 percent are decreases in the equalized tax rates i think you're right um what you see here are the estimated changes in taxes on a hundred thousand dollar house for the 10 percent um education spending increase you're seeing berlin at a 340 calis at 208 east montpelier 335 middle sex 267 and waster 152 and for each of these you'll want to take that number and multiply it by whatever increment of a hundred thousand you have for a home so if you have a 300 thousand dollar house you would multiply that number by three to see exactly how much of an increase you would see in your taxes and here i wanted to provide you with some general information regarding bremont statewide education funding system and how it is connected to the budget that the voters adopt only 33 percent of the school district education spending for f y 24 was funded through the homestead education tax so that's the year that we're currently operating in the remaining 32 came from non homestead property taxes and 35 came from the general education fund from the state as you know the property yield is an important factor in determining the homestead property tax rate the property yield is set based on overall statewide education spending since a significant number of school district budgets have not passed and many like ours are not yet warned the agency of education has not provided an updated projection of the property yield homestead property taxes are adjusted for household income in the majority of households in the district and i'm prepared to provide the board with income sensitivity information since this is an additional layer of complexity one that we haven't gone over in the past budget presentations it would be best to present it based upon an adopted budget for the board thank you susanne i'm gonna stop the sharing and flor i will turn it over to you hey so before the board starts a deliberation we we have a period right now when a community members can make a can make comments so if you have a specific comment to the budget right now please raise your hand and we'll listen to your comments okay i'm going to give a minute more to see how many people we have and then the board will start deliberating and there won't be a back and forth with the community so okay perfect i was seeing a few more okay susanne it's two minutes and you can get started introduce yourself in go ahead hi i'm susanne laudan i'm in middle sex and i have two kids at romney i guess i'm confused by the lower enrollment meaning that the students that are still present in the schools don't deserve a full-time nurse um you know there are kids in the school with anxiety worry that you know former relationship with that nurse and it keeps them in school and keeps them from being sent home um there's also kids in these schools that have serious health conditions you know type 1 diabetes seizure disorders so by not having a full-time nurse in these schools you're putting these kids at risk and you're creating an unsafe environment for them thanks again hey mariz i actually had a very similar comment both about the it might be that i just didn't understand what the changes meant for the nurse and counselor positions um it looked to me like we were losing time at dodie and maybe it looked also at callus um for both the counselor positions and the school nurse positions um and both of those are really beneficial as not just especially the nurse not just as your standard you know somebody has a cut but very much into the emotional well-being of the children um and trying especially when you have a team where your teacher is engaged full-time with the class as a whole and if you have a student who isn't at a level where they have one-on-one help having the counselor and having the nurse there as that um additional assistance for a team approach to children who may not need the one-on-one assistance but still need a team of people to assist them when their teacher can't take one-on-one time with them is really crucial and it feels i i understand the budget numbers but when we're looking at at a goal being to make sure that all students are at a facility where they have those full-time assists it seems like a um short-term situation that could do a lot of damage that's the opposite of what the board's goals are long-term even in just maybe two years that's what i have thank you tracy thompson go ahead tracy um sure that it's uh tracy lebowitz it's my old name on there um but yeah um middle sex parent and um i i guess i just wanted to make um i i mean i'd like to ask the board to go in the direction of the 10 increase um the the most generous one that allows for the fewer cuts um i think you know flor you started this convert this whole meeting by saying that you we want to be heading in a sustainable direction for for the schools and i i think you know we presented the consolidation options and i just i don't think that we are at we that the board has really found what that sustainable direction is and i don't think it's wise to make big big cuts until we know like what direction the board wants to go with all of this we have all these options out here but no one knows really where we're headed and until we know where we're headed i just don't think it's wise to make significant cuts once once some of these programs go away it's hard to get them back like the world language program at rumney and the nursing once they're gone and once we've watered down rumney like how do we get it back especially when we're looking at rumney as a school that will be receiving additional students um if i'm understanding the consolidation options correctly um and i'm i'm uh i'm just i wonder if anyone has looked into the transportation costs with the idea to consolidate the pre-k and the kindergarten with rumney and dodie there's these are you know three four and five year olds that are going to be bust long distances we already have long bus rides in those areas my son's on the bus for 45 minutes and that's to our local school now we're talking about going further like there's going to be transportation costs for that i don't i don't know why we're splitting um one program at at rumney one program at dodie it just i don't feel like there is a sustainable direct direction and that these cuts are really bringing us closer to something thank you do i have more time or is that it that's it and but you can always bring us comments just because there's still a lot to be deliberated by the board and just to be fair to everybody go ahead laura laura carabou kindergarten teacher and callus parent of u32 student berlin taxpayer um i really aligned with what tracy said in the way that i'm wondering about taking the least amount of cuts out of our budget considering that we're going into reconfiguration options in the next few years um it seems really rash to deplete the schools down to bare bones before that happens and um i also think that um sorry i'm looking at my notes it concerns me that we could lose really good teachers who need full-time jobs and you might be changing their positions as well as administrators that are really um good administrators we need them to and we don't want to lose them so reducing their jobs will affect that i um also really want to speak to my concern that the last budget go around didn't maybe um show good support from board members across the district and that concerns me that all of the board members should regardless of their alignment to their feelings and whether the budget or not was the right way to go they should be showing support for the schools and in unity with each other and supporting the budget so whatever goes forward really needs to be sold to the community so that it does get voted on in a positive light um and i i also wouldn't think it would be out of the box to consider cutting high school transportation to the high school other local schools don't transport high school students to their school buildings those kids have opportunity to find uh more resources for rides they're older um and so i'd like to see more thinking out of the box rather than just cutting line items thank you honey i thank you to the leadership team for putting this together and the board for allowing people to weigh in the proposed cuts in our 10 percent net spending state no service decrease however the ripple effect is one that we won't fully know until the fall and is really hard to understand if you're not in our school building every day and watching how the staff juggles to make things work currently i'm collaborating with our librarian on research projects for the three grades of literacy that i teach our counselor and i meet a minimum of twice a week to check in about students and families and make a plan to best support kids i'm grateful for a once a week team meeting to assess student data and make academic and social emotional learning plans this year we are stretched thin to have daily recess and lunch duty coverage all of these things will be impacted and more next year there will be less or no collaborations there will be far less time for team meetings and planning making cuts to fte of several people in our building is taking away vital pieces of the puzzle that make our schools successful lastly i just want to also bring up to the board to make sure they have a full understanding of if you do not have a nurse in your school building full time what that means for the students who need nursing care i don't have the details because i'm not a nurse but it does fall under the nurse's license if somebody else is providing care in the building and that's been a really big concern in the past of people not wanting nurses not wanting other people operating under their license and other people in the building not wanting to put that on to our nurses license thank you thank you hey ali thank you can you hear me yes great my name is ali mani and i have been fulfilling the role of teaching librarian at two elementary schools in our district for six years i've already written a letter about how the role of a teaching librarian is not fully understood and that using measures like eqs numbers does not represent the reality of our learning communities i also shared that teaching librarians are on the forefront of our district's commitment to humanity and justice and that in the age of fake news ai and too many digital distractions we are promoting a love of reading and critical media literacy what i did not share with you however are my concerns about stretching our allied arts teachers further spreading staff thinly across multiple schools has many unseen impacts impacts that might be overlooked when putting together a budget the first and most negative impact is on students who are chronically absent or vulnerable if you teach a full slate of classes in a school for only one or two days it is hard to develop relationships under the best conditions add in extreme weather days holidays professional development and those students have quickly fallen through the cracks without these relationships and connections we know that many students struggle to self-regulate and learn there are also unrecognized impacts on school morale and teacher burnout supporting a budget that chips away at these positions when we are about to undergo a massive change in the structure of our schools seems incredibly short-sighted i would urge you to direct school leadership to come up with a budget plan that is less severe in its impact on students and school communities next year thank you for your consideration thank you ellie thanks lee welcome can you meet yourself hi thank you um my name's ainsley i'm a middle sex resident parent of two and a teacher at callus elementary school um these proposals are scary to me as a parent and as a teacher i feel like a lot of what i'm seeing sacrifice the best parts of school for many students and leave us with skeletal staff and crews that won't be able to best support student needs the proposed cuts in my opinion don't feel very creative much of what i see here community members have already rallied against these cuts will create chaos during a restructuring process that already feels very turbulent we're going to lose quality education if we settle on any of these proposed budgets in my opinion i've attended many board meetings especially around this budget discussion and i've heard your constituents ask things of you just in the last meeting one of the community members from my town suggested a pamphlet as a way for the board to promote their budget and get communities and i spend share communities um share information with communities about how their taxes will be affected and what these changes will look like within the school districts or in our schools respectfully it doesn't appear that the board is taking these action steps on getting information out in creative ways to all of our towns our community is not united in this budget because it doesn't feel the board is united in this budget i understand that your work is not easy and i really value the time and energy that every single board member puts into this job but i'd ask you to think about what special place education has for you either as a parent or as a learner and what that felt like for me a big part of successful education or education that i think of with a good thought is small town sorry just two five seconds oriented on our children and these cuts don't seem to support that it's scary to me thank you alan yeah my name is alan gobert i'm a former school board member i can feel your pain you're in a really tough position and what i worried about um as a former school board member but also as a somebody in the community is you really have got to get a budget passed if you don't you're going to be living on 87 percent of what you had last year and you do not want to do that that is the number one thing you have got to watch out for i think the real problem is you know you've had a very difficult job you you're working within a failed system in the sense that the financial savings and the streamlined practices that consolidation was supposed to bring really haven't materialized the structure of the unified union district makes finding a solution to the problems difficult the work you've been doing as the board has become really very complex consolidation led to reliance on professional staff to bring to you what are hoped to be solutions to the challenges that you face laws have been the ongoing conversations used to have between taxpayers and board members local residents who support you who need to pass budgets we now face a really serious financial problem not just in 2024 but continuing beyond that every year i've noticed you've decided not to mail out ballots to all voters in the district's five towns for the votes coming up on the budget that's your option and maybe you're right in thinking that the people who are going to vote on april 30th are going to do that whether they get a ballot mailed or not but i really worry that you will undoubtedly be accused of attempting to throttle the vote by not providing ballots to everyone and if you win the vote with a reduced voter turnout you'll know that you've lost touch with your constituents and though that might help for this budget it won't be forgotten by homeowners homeowners will continue to grouse as their property taxes continue to rise at a rate above inflation and the schools in their towns close what i urge you is that you put this all on hold and you have a budget of five percent which i think could pass and you take time to think this through clearly and thoughtfully so we really don't end up in a bad place in a couple of years thank you thank you john can you introduce yourselves uh john bray bant town of callas warmer select board member and opponent or opponent of the consolidation i want to say i agree with everything alan gilbert said with the exception of the five percent suggestion i would agree with a previous speaker that we should you should please go forward with the 10 percent budget increase um i would also it was said earlier i think chris mcface said that you folks need that you're kind of not thinking as broadly as you should we need to have a conversation with mont pillier they're in a worse situation and we are they were talking about a 20 percent increase the comments made about the full-time nurse i totally agree with that please give serious reconsideration to those cuts uh to son that was a type type one diabetic that would have been a bad situation at heap and in a school with no nurse um the state education fund has increasingly like so many of these funds become a slush fund to fund other items i would ask again that you look more broadly i know i see uh floor over at state house please uh see if you can work with our legislative representatives to get them to narrow where those uh state education funds are being spent to only our schools please please work outside of just your role here um what else i i got to say as a son of a school teacher i i don't know why anybody want to be a school teacher in this day and age um now net you're dealing with these cuts across the state and across the country this is a national phenomenon folks this is not unique here and we're seeing what makes this country great hauled out everywhere uh please do not get radical um lastly us old folks i'm not going to be here in 20 years and uh we're going to be replaced by young folks with kids so i'd hate to see our schools given up and then they had to build new schools because we sold them and they became an industrial park all right thank you thank you john shannon hi i'm shannon miller i am a parent of one at berlin and two at u32 um and also a previous berlin uh classroom teacher um i have some concerns with the ideas around um reducing the allied arts positions these positions are really hard to fill in rural schools and i am concerned that they are going to get harder to fill if we have classroom teachers who are really struggling to get their work done um to the extent they would like to get it done and they're driving all over a district um i also would just really like to um shout out if i can amy young at the e s um i've heard all the comments about librarians tonight and she is that and more she has built a maker space in there that kids utilize during recess that's not something she had to do um i have had a number of classroom projects there that never would have happened um if she hadn't been there to help me with the technology and also adjust the support um so losing her um to any extent would be a real shame um i also would like to echo some other people about this idea of selling the vote i live in west berlin so i'm sandwiched in between montpelier and pain mountain school district everywhere i look there are flyers it's on social media it's on front porch forum about what they're asking for and why and valuing education and people in these towns are talking about voting yes um and they are bigger numbers than we're looking at i feel like we have some work to do on marketing i think you've had a lot of people show up here tonight that want to see you maintain quality programming i'm one of them i want to know what to share um what is the board viewpoint what can we say to get this out to our communities um sort of in one united voice um to really motivate people to come out and vote and support our schools with as much programming um as we can reasonably maintain that's it thanks thank you shannon and sharyl hi i'm sharyl ecklin i am a teacher at callas elementary school and i teach fifth and sixth grade and um i agree with my colleagues orally and ainsley when they were both saying that it is just unbelievable the cuts and the slashes that they are making to callas especially like number one cutting our art program so we might lose erica who is an amazing gift to the children the art projects that she comes up with inspires our children my kids can't wait to get into art with her for fifth and sixth graders there is no way that is sustainable if you're cutting that we will lose an amazing teacher i could go on losing our librarian nathaniel works super hard he collaborates with every teacher and he also teaches some core subjects for our small school we figured out how to make it work with the staff we have and you're going to pull from all directions and just leave us as ainsley said a skeleton i don't think that's fair the way we're getting slashed so hard um once again coming at our principal with a 10 cut when i told my students that they were almost in tears there is i have not met many principals that work as hard and connect with every single child in our school like cat does we we really need to think about these human beings and what they give to our students and not just how it looks on paper um and our counselor ruth works she is out straight every day meeting with students helping kids here helping them there our kids have so many needs coming out of covet and i know everybody wants to be over wants to be over covet but it is not over our students are still coming back from that and we need her her help every day we could actually use more help in that respect and not less um what else let me look at my list there's just so many things here just in our own school oh my kids i talked to my fifth and sixth graders about what's going on with the state of vermont and how we're funding schools thank you cheryl sorry we are out of time and the board really needs to meet i apologize they're welcome to send us a letter thank you okay mag and i'm i'm making for ruin wait because mag go ahead great thank you for and thank you to the board um i just want to add some comments i did submit a letter to the board yesterday um concerning the cuts to library services and i'm just not sure the community understands and we see a point six cut in library services at callas what that means is they're going to be pulling a librarian one day a week from Berlin elementary school ems and rumney and dodie to go cover the missing position at callas and so it is a reduction in services when we're only looking at librarians and the outdated model of here's a block of class time um that a librarian would teach and here's how they manage the library um that discounts all of the other times that they're called actively embedding librarian skills um library skills with classroom teachers content level teachers allied arts teachers you've heard other teachers speak of that so to reduce those positions you're going to be reducing other opportunities for librarians to collaborate with teachers to teach digital citizenship to teach stem to teach uh literacy um reading independence and enjoyment um i i just want to say there's so much more that a librarian does and provides we know that consolidation is going to happen we anticipate a three school elementary school model potentially we know cuts are coming to the callas library position unfortunately for folks in callas um and we are prepared to move forward um but we just think a cut next year is very premature um librarians uh offer a great bang for the buck um in our position in school and there's just so much more that we do especially with a tech director who might be leaving the position not being fooled people are going to be leaning on us to provide those services at their schools administrators teachers um come to us for everything from tech support to which um software should we use um for classroom management so the last thing i'll say is we we do have declining enrollment but we have increasing circulation and use of our libraries thank you for your time thank you make it ruin sorry couldn't find the mute um i'm going to start with just defenses of programs and individuals is honestly not helpful in this situation having been a school board chair for 10 years you can make a full-throated defense and position for every single position in every single school at the end of the day this board has work to do and it has to make a budget that's going to pass and you have made a commitment a couple of times now for two years you promised to make cuts that you didn't make and now you find yourself in an impossible corner because the completely predictable outcome of all of the forces coming to bear at once is happening these cuts are overdue they're not premature i don't think a 10 budget cut increase is sustainable given that we have fewer students again as predicted by the nasdaq ratings for the past 10 years none of this is a surprise there's a sense that we either raise the budget again for fewer students or lose quality programming i think that's a false choice and our administrators have said clearly that we can meet our education standards even with the six percent budget that is in front of you for consideration today this board cannot do nothing for another year i would also discourage you from using fund balance that's a financial trick i would discourage you from um moving on i think you should consider the six percent budget with the re-edition of the building and grounds director i think that's the budget that you should be looking at this would have been less drastic if it was done over time if we want to put these programs back then we start having the conversations that finally are starting tonight about talking about where students go and what positions they have and what opportunities that we have instead of kicking the can down the road like this board has done for the last two years this board made a promise two years ago to have these conversations and you didn't do it until the budget failed thanks ruben okay thank you thank you very much for your input too we're going to move into deliberation as it's getting really late and the board still has a lot of work to do to give clear clarity so we're going to go ahead and if board members could turn your cameras oh yeah i see you all they just everybody just moved up so i think uh i'm i'm willing to figure out what's the best process for you guys i think what makes the most sense is to just go around or we're popping around what your reaction is you guys had plenty of time to look at the at the documents if you had any clarifying questions now is the moment to ask them otherwise uh you know if you could speak to one of the models in the budget that you're willing to support who wants to go first are there any clarifying questions i know a couple of you had a couple of clarifying questions mackaylin um i think my internet kicked out um when just briefly about the buildings and grounds position or yeah can can someone just speak to that and i'm just curious sort of why that ended up in the last case scenario and like what the implications of that would be sure i'm gonna i yep there i see you steven do you want to take that one yeah so currently u 32 has a building is buildings and grounds director and we have a district director of facilities and so what we looked at is consolidating some of that work creating more of a lead custodian and lead maintenance position at u 32 it's a part of the longer term if we have fewer buildings to manage that probably is a little bit of a redundant position but it it's a difficult choice to make but it's certainly one that we feel like we can do if necessary at this time the only thing i would add to that though is that the the number of facilities folks in the buildings is based on square feet and we count that buildings and grounds director in the number of people and we are right sized currently that is why that position is in the six percent and not asked not included in the 10 are they eight because it's really not a position that we would um want to see go away thank you daniel uh this is also a question i was wondering um megan in your presentation earlier you said you had somewhere in your notes the per bus route cost and i'm also curious if you and or steven could respond to the notion of or the proposed possibility of cutting transportation to high school i'm gonna dig up the thing it'll take me a few seconds steven do you mind take any other one while i do that uh i would not recommend cutting transportation to the high school i mean i i that's not a proposal that we have offered is administration um we we feel like that is a greater issue with our students being able to get to school and be there um on time and able to learn i i think that would require a tremendous amount of planning uh because we have students who don't have easy transportation to school um and and don't forget that's um are we talking high school or or high school and middle school it's not it's not a subject we've explored thank you i would concur the um transportation in general is a big part of how we make sure every single kid can get to school i did just put in the chat um these two bus route reductions though we do have low ridership on some of our roads so we do think that we could do this without actually eliminating transportation just to be clear um and it is for those two routes it's about 165 thousand based on our contract because it's roughly 82 000 per route um we are also up next year to re uh put out another request for proposals so um right now we have to utilize the language in our current contract and that's what that is so that's the number in the chat and just to follow up those the low ridership routes we would cut how would they affect ride times for others we would have our transportation folks look at the routes to i can't speak to exactly which routes would be combined um we do keep we try to keep routes to a certain length and so we would not make reductions that extended the bus route past disproportionately past where we are already chris you're muted you're still muted when well you figure i'm muting i'll let kili go and then you can go kili thanks i just had a um maybe a request that the estimated change in taxes table on page 11 i was wondering if we could see that as a percentage change um just because i think that's how people usually view those numbers i think it's hard to say it's three hundred forty dollars per hundred thousand dollar house more than what you're paying already um that would be great thanks kili we can add that it's interesting most people asked us for the dollar amount in general but we can put once you know what we're modeling we can put both to it yeah maybe it's just my mind that works that way then thank you thanks kili i see you you're a muted chris go ahead so i have a question for megan on the 10 percent um category you have uh the the dodie uh and callus nurse and counselor in f y 25 so does that mean not this year but the year following this year it means the f y 25 budget which is next year's budget the one we're voting on yes and it's listed that way just because it's a reduction that we already proposed for for next year's budget that's all that's the only reason what's categorized that way the f y 24 header is just simply representing that those are the reductions we proposed last year so that's the only way those headers are there okay got it um the other the other comment i have is um there's nothing i think that prevents us from mixing and matching different cuts in different categories is there meaning like if we want sport uh say the um building grounds cut in the six percent category uh and keep the uh you know some of the library and and art in category the 10 percent in the eight i mean we can mix and match where these different cuts are coming from right i would answer it this way the um short answer is the board can direct administration what we've tried to do is organize these around things that are directly responding to decreased enrollment and um i would sort of echo the comments around their reductions that we feel very strongly would allow us to continue to provide services for students um typically the role of the board is to tell us the dollar amount and what you want us to achieve and we would then tell you where that would go um so that's how i would answer that if the board is choosing to move things around you would need to do that very specifically um because we've brought you the recommendations that we feel um allow us to do it right but okay but you've made these recommendations these proposed cuts but at different uh levels of spending right okay thank you thank you christ michelle yeah just um something that i've noticed and maybe somebody could speak to this i'm sure somebody else will notice it even as taxpayers the largest portion the largest percentage in our budget that is the increase is the superintendent's office it was also the smallest decrease between the original budget and any of these um scenarios that we have here i don't quite understand the second part of your question but i'll start with the first one the line item in the superintendent's office is the is two things the addition of the director of human resources position which we provided a lot of information to the board back in last back last august um around that and the rest of the reduction is just salary and benefits reduction which is you know the salary and benefits follow the teacher's increases so that is the explanation for that increase in line item is that it's an fte that was not in the previous budget so it shows up that way sorry and you'll have to ask again the second part of your question because i just didn't understand it so like when i went through all the i'm a numbers person i hate to say it it's data um when i went through all of the numbers through all of the different three scenarios every other budget went seem to have gone down some amount the superintendent's office went down the least it only went down by 0.18 percent so i'm just yeah it's still just seemed a lot like everybody else every other department throughout here went down a lot and the superintendent's office didn't mean susanne i don't know if you want to speak to that specific piece again it's because there's a position in that line that wasn't there in the past and even though we are then taking a position out it's it's not going to show as much of a reduction because of that but susanne maybe you have a better the only thing i can think is that the superintendent's department has very little to change um that that has much flexibility i could dig deeper into it but that's really we we had the increase you're right about the the reason for the increase but there's not a whole lot that you can have flexibility in with the superintendent's office thank you megan and michelle and susanne right amilia i'm a little puzzler is that you jonathan be a good one no this is brian yeah brandy we're we're done with community input right now i'm sorry yeah so if you want to wait till the end of the meeting because the board is deliberating right now i apologize okay amilia i'm wondering if we could have um a comparison between slide 23 and then the increases compared to what the increases were for the budget that was last proposed because i it seems like they're similar do you know what i mean like that seems like the the 10 percent and the eight percent the six percent it seems like the percentage is proposed with these cuts is not significantly decreasing people's taxes and i think that could be important information to pass the budget no you know to to help educate people about the the weight of the clas which i think is i think i think that the silver lining of the budget not passing is that it's really given more opportunity for people to look into those details to get involved obviously we've seen tonight a lot of feedback um and that deeper understanding that regardless of what we choose numbers wise the real sustainable solution is going to be in the decision that's made in the reconfiguration and so i think from that standpoint my opinion is that if we can reduce the cuts as much as possible to to 10 or maybe even five percent and really continue this conversation with the community about the reconfiguration as the sustainable solution um that seems like the consensus is that the the community is better educated on the details and caught up in areas where they felt like there were gaps in communication and so now there's this momentum to pass the budget and to maintain positions and so i'm feeling like maybe this conversation with the board could be ongoing to April 10th and we could kind of consider potentially part of what chris was saying if if we could maintain the world language program at rumney and the nursing counseling and library and arts position with that equal to the five percent and like how do we want to talk about that as a board and with the community but my my feeling is let's continue this unable to have to not rush it but i'm not gonna there's some questions in there i know there's a lot let's give let's give a chance to everybody to go and then we'll go back to to that because really looking at the percentages that we have right now mackayline sounds good hey chris i see you i'm not ignoring you i understand everybody go first yeah and then you can understand again oh just to be fair this is my second question too is that okay there was nobody there was nobody else so okay now you can wait now you can wait and jonathan can go because he hasn't asked the question okay go jonathan all right um so just to take a little bit about what chris suggested i'm just going to put something out i'm not putting it out necessarily as a motion right now but um looking at the the use of fund balance and and i tend to agree that you know we should be careful there of course but if you combine let's just say for argument's sake we use as is said suggested on page six in our packet that um the the proposal bill is soon using no more than nine hundred and twenty three thousand two hundred two hundred fifty two dollars right so let's take that nine hundred and twenty three thousand dollars combine that with the uh one point our building and grounds director you uh position and pretty certain and that gets us over a million dollars in reductions already on top of the reductions that are already built into what we uh the previous budget that failed which includes right three point oh classroom teachers a whole bunch of other teachers and and school staff which frankly two school counselors all of that makes me very very uncomfortable but then if we add another million dollars plus with what i just suggested as a new um uh piece of a reduction or at least you know take some fund balance to supplement um our reductions uh then the impact will be uh maybe minimal in terms of staff rather than looking at some of these others uh that seem to be to me again to be just really really harsh um and i'll just say one other thing which is that um there has been a lot of um press there's been a lot of conversation i think in the state house more broadly and i don't think we have talked about this maybe enough um and yes it's beyond our district but the reality is the state of ramon needs to figure out a way and how to fund public education uh because it's it's turned into a disaster i think when over a third of the you know the districts in the state uh their budgets failed that's not because the individual districts are doing anything wrong it's because over time there has been this um i think building momentum which is and frankly a cost shift onto local taxpayers to pay for education and um yes students in ramon is declining that's not in dispute at all the reality though is for many students the needs are actually increasing and if needs are increasing that's harder than justify say one for one one less student therefore one less staff or something like that it just doesn't work that way it's not that simple so i think there's a larger much larger conversation that needs to happen in the state about really figuring out how to fund public education that's sustainable for all the districts for all the kids in the state not just for individual districts so those are my comments for now thank you jonathan i just want to just leave one thing on the room that you know we can't wait for the legislature to figure out because that is too far down those conversations are are happening that everybody's involved everybody's trying to be in the state house as much as possible those conversations aren't happening so but we can as a board tonight we can't wait for that to be resolved right so that is just thank you for enforcing that and don't worry that a lot of people are in it and we'll continue to to lobby and you know and testify for that but that doesn't resolve our problem tonight no and that's why i offered a solution and i think my work mcaylin and then chris um thank you i just wanted to ask i really appreciated um point it being pointed out that there you know some of these cuts don't represent a service decrease or at least a clear service decrease um i'm a little concerned though about um and i've brought this up before um the the health education position at dodie is filled by not a health educator but by the nurse and the counselor so my concern is you know um getting back to cutting those positions if that's gonna equate to actually a service reduction for the dodie kids in terms of health education um just looking at it from an you know an equity standpoint there that is a question i have and i know gillian is like without good cell service so i don't know if she can answer it tonight but i can answer it this way health is a requirement so we have to provide it and we would have to figure out a different way of providing it um in all of our school elementary schools anyway actually we provide health ed in various different ways uh from traditional health teachers to nurses to sometimes counselors it's all kinds of um things so there would be a mechanism to provide health at dodie i don't have an answer to exactly what i know but yeah my recollection is that each of the other elementary schools has a point to fte designated health educator but that dodie doesn't have that there's there are designated folks who provide health ed and right i understand that but the nurse and the counselor dodie their fte was not designated anyway i just i'm worried about it from an equity standpoint in terms of the cuts to be specifically there and i think what my answer is that it will be provided just in a different model i know but i do worry about what's been said about the like pulling for a little bit from everywhere in these smaller schools um so but thank you oh sorry i think that was muted and i sorry sec and then daniel and then you can go chris i didn't realize i was muted i apologize i think just to start you know we've heard a lot from people who are you know who are defending specific certain specific positions and i think that whenever you have a conversation like that you know people people really rally to defend your certain yeah specific points um with a couple with a couple of notable exceptions of people talking about the need to you're really recognizing respond to the enrollment we get a budget pass um i think the counterpoint what we've heard from people is the fact that we also got a lot of feedback from the vote and i think that in order to get something to pass we we need to be looking at these scenarios that involve the bigger cuts um i'm not sure that i want to go all the way to the six percent scenario mostly because so much of that is um you know is fun you know is fund balance you know they you know when you look at the difference between the eight and the and the sixth the majority of that is an increase in fund fund balance transfer and i think especially given the pcb scenario situation i don't i don't you know i want to have the reserves to deal with that um i would entertain some of the other pieces there but i think that looking at the proposed cuts this is really about what's happened to our enrollment and the other thing that i do want to say just based on the you know some things that have been said about the the nursing and i know i talked about this earlier in that conversation i mean there are there are creative things we can do with nursing you know i talked about telehealth earlier i talked to one of our through work through one of our telehealth people so when nusky school dresser is doing full-blown primary care visits by telehealth you know they have so that's you know i i think that there are a lot of third services we can provide to students based on the total regional nursing capacity you know with fewer sec what happened you were you done i was like i'm all set yeah sorry okay okay daniel and then chris and a little skeptical or distracted by what you last said zack i'm interested in learning more but i i can't visualize how that would work um i do agree with zack about the fund balance i find that the eight and six percent um increase options troubling from both perspectives troubling based on what they represent and cuts to service and also troubling in terms of their reliance on fund balance um i'm generally against using fund balance i don't think there's a way around at this time the jonathan's point um i think whatever whatever we contribute from fund balance this budget go around we need to acknowledge that that's going to have to be made up in the next budget right so the fact is if say we're prepared to spend nine hundred thousand dollars of our fund balance uh i think the most we should spend this year is 600 so that we have 300 to help us dig big ourselves out of that hole next year and i'm not suggesting that that's what i want to do i think something more around 300 this year and 150 next year might be a more appropriate approach uh this is a year sort of a perfect storm and yes we've kicked the can down the road i fully acknowledge that and we we need to do something this year also next year will not be the same as this year and hopefully not all the pressures will come to bear on us at once next year that said i still think we might have trouble you know if we contributed five hundred thousand dollars to the operating budget from fund balance this year that's five hundred thousand dollars worth of cuts we're gonna have to face next year and so some sort of graduated approach i think makes sense i think also it needs to be said that while i don't think a lot of voters are going to appreciate this because we can't give them hard numbers around it you know to jonathan's point there are broader conversations happening there are other school districts in this same boat who are going to be making cuts the property yield is going to go down up let's forget which it is up thank you susan um and so where we to do nothing the tax rate increase would come down a little bit that voters need to see us also making reductions i'm sort of landing in a nine percent or a 10 percent range if i had to pick right now i would pick the 10 option okay kris it was your it was your turn yeah okay so first i want to just make it can you clarify what central office budget means since we're having this conversation about it that's first second i want to um kind of respond to alan gilbert in terms of the ballots not being mailed out that we did that because of a timing vote timing purpose no other purpose and we should state that very clearly that there is no effort to suppress the vote which would be horrible but we did it because of our timelines and we and we want to have another vote if we have to uh and there was just and that's what drove the decision not to mail the ballots out and then the third is i think we can look at these different scenarios a la carte and pick a number from each section that that we're willing to um reduce uh and and come up with a you know a combination of the of the three different um uh proposals uh each it sounds like each one uh each of the proposals can you know be taken without diminishing the offerings according to the permount quality standards um but but i'm leaning toward you know keeping as much of the direct services for students as possible um because i think that's where you get the biggest bang for the buck which is what i heard from the folks advocating for the librarians is that there's a exponential multiplying effect from that position uh that uh you know spreads its benefit across the school in ways that other positions may not um because they're they're the helping hands in a lot of different categories so i think we should consider taking um chunks from each of these different categories seeing what the percentage comes up with uh and but with the goal toward getting i do think the community is looking for a significant uh reduction and so i think that would have to be in the eight eight percent range myself um but i think we can get there without um well by minimizing harm uh by you know maintaining nurses maintaining counseling and the um uh the other arts positions i think we can do that by picking and choosing from each of these different categories thank you thank you thank you chris i i just want to be careful that we are not trying to undo the work that the administrators did for us because each uh each little sort of a la carte piece that we talk about is going to have a snowball effect on on any of the models so we would be looking at redoing a lot of a lot of things diane so part of what i'm going to reflect is looking at what our context is and what's going on right now at least what's striking me and one of the things so director of technology i think to me what where that strikes me is that we're considering that because it's an anticipated vacancy i realize there's also other views of how that work can be done i just in this day and age and after what we went through a couple of years ago it's it's kind of surprising to me that we would be looking at director of technology so if one of the reasons is because of vacancy um and i'm not saying that that's how it's striking me then why are we not looking broader also we keep hearing about our reduced numbers we know there's an increase in and what our students need um not just in learning but in other things but we also know that we've got these vacancies showing up in our administration of of the high school so what does that context look like in the reality of being able to fill those positions and does it allow itself for um we're looking there if anticipated vacancies is what also brings up opportunities then i just wonder what does that mean for that uh you know i'm concerned that we won't be able to find people in the positions so should is there an opportunity there for us to be considering about that structure and so that that's just what's striking me about that right now thank you dan Ursula um so i think i would lean towards the eight percent spending i have some things that i'm not crazy about it i don't like the fact that we're looking at fund balance use because it's really a one-time fix um for a problem that will just push cuts further down the road as well um pretty much not a fan of not putting money into our capital plan but i understand the need um to look at those cuts having done that i also want to speak to the fact that like using these recommendations as an alucard menu to like pick and choose floor sort of said it it undoes the work alisha talked to the fact that they sat down and took this really deep dive into numbers of like fte's and students and how we serve our kids and that's what the leadership team did and our leadership team is made up of people in each of our schools so they do know how they run and they know how to run schools and how they run our schools and these are the recommendations they've made to us in these formats not as a here are 25 line items pick and choose what you want to get to the cut that you think would work and i know we've talked about who came out tonight to talk and how they specifically spoke towards positions and people and we all know we've known for years every time we talk about cuts we know we say it's hard because we know that these are people and human beings in our communities that have worked with our kids and it is sad and emotional and that is hard but we also know that in our current configuration there are expenses that we currently can't handle we have had people come to previous board meetings and it is our job to remember all the people who have come to us through the entire budget process and talked and we have had people come and very specifically talk about the affordability of living in our communities and one of the things that i find really notable when we talk in our communities when we ask people what do they value in their town or for their schools the first thing people typically say is the community that exists but if we price people out from being able to live here we are pushing people out of the community so we need to make significant cuts we need to let the taxpayers know we're trying and i think that we need to value the expertise of the people working in our schools who have made recommendations to us if it's okay i'd like to make a motion that we approve the eight percent net spending increase option i'll second that yours uh thank you sec okay now we can have discussion to the motion uh there's a couple of you that haven't spoken yet so diane do you want to speak to the motion well i want to speak in general that if we have identified as our core values that we have community involvement and community voice then we don't really get to pick and choose what that community voice is tonight there were voices i may not have agreed with but it's up to me to hear what people are saying so i'm just saying that we all know what brings people out in different ways and and that's fine but it's if their core value is that we want community engagement then i have to be open to what that community engagement looks like and and just be available to it it doesn't mean i have to agree or be swayed or do but i just you know we had an amazing turnout tonight and and in other nights as well and then the activities that are going on in our buildings and so it's just community engagement is community engagement and so and i guess i'm a little um i'm a little torn right now as to whether or not i'm ready to vote um because we had said potentially waiting so that's i just i'm not sure where i stand without thank you diane i i think just to go off what ursula was saying before you go michelle i just want to remind people that you know definitely there were there were people that lived in our communities that that were here that spoke tonight but there are also people that work in our community and live in our community and not that was not the majority so towards what ursula was saying we got enough emails the last time and the people that that came at our last meeting when they told us you know all of them that were there she's like you know we don't want to lose trust on you and i'm not talking trust about administrators so don't jump i'm talking about trust to us right like and they told us we are coming today to tell you i don't need to come tomorrow because here is what i told you to do right all of the 586 people that voted no in the budget or i can't remember now i think it's about that they're not in the budget so so i think that is what i think ursula was trying to put in the in the room not you know like just so that we don't forget about those people that were there when we're balancing our decisions tonight michelle and then and then chris so i would support the eight percent increase the eight percent budget as well just because there is a large number of fund balance in the six percent one one of the things though that megan said once she was talking was about the administrative cuts that are in the eight percent one and that like not really wanting to cut those so my only amendment would be is could we move the u32 buildings and grounds director over and leave the principles the way they are with everything that's going to be happening in the year in this coming year with the possibilities of reconfigurations they're going to have more on their plate than um they have in the past so that would just be my my one thing for people to consider so are you making a friendly amendment that then ursula and sat up to uh accept or you're wanting to wait i'm just trying to clarify why i will make i will make a friendly amendment that we would move the building and grounds director over and leave the principles at the fte's that they currently are at okay and then i just want to be careful that we don't then start to move into a menu of things then moving back you know so i'm just thinking of the amount of work with that and that to accept or not accept the the friendly amendment not doing this to be mean or anything but i would not accept that i'd not we heard from two people who said that it's not a wreck like it's not something they'd like to do that our buildings and grounds um numbers are right sized and so making that cut isn't their favorite recommendation but it's like one of those sacrifices they would make if they had to hence in the six percent budget i wouldn't accept it i'm sorry so then we would need to vote in the motion that is on the floor right now and to move into something different so point of point of order i think we i think we can vote on her amendment not as a friendly amendment but as an amendment a freestanding amendment to the initial proposal that is true we can we can do a separate amendment not a friendly amendment michelle would michelle would have to change her friendly amendment to a actual amendment yep okay i'd like to amend the eight percent budget to have the principals stay at the current fte's they are at and replace them with the buildings and grounds director from the six percent budget then you need a second for that i will second it in the interest of democracy okay so michelle and or so that how was that not trading it like a menu and um it it is treating it like a menu and we should have discussion about that so you want discussion around the amendment is what is on the floor or we yeah where we call the vote and we okay so uh keely i was gonna comment on something else but i i find this hard to vote on because i don't know what the dollar amounts are for the three principals versus the grounds keeper i don't know actually what we're doing with the budgets are they are they equivalent i think you have to vote on your potential amendment before we can enter the discussion to answer questions like that because that would be the building isn't her question towards the amendment so that she has information she needs sorry yes yep susanne you want to field the financial part it is an additional reduction to the eight percent of fifty nine thousand nine hundred thirty nine dollars it so explain it more susanne it would be further decreasing the eight percent because the amount that we were cutting the principles by is fifty one thousand five hundred twenty one dollars and the amount that we were saving from the cut with the director of buildings and grounds is a hundred and eleven thousand dollars okay so it's an additional decrease on the eight percent of fifty nine nine thirty nine god thank you don't have a percentage for you but that's what i'm talking about right thank you susanne and wherever floor you think it makes sense steven jit can just speak a little bit to why it is where it is even right thank you so i just want to be clear that the way we put together the the cuts for for u 32 were that the the 10 cuts were enrollment based cuts for us so because of the reduction in our enrollment the eight percent were program modifications so things that we would have to modify that our students receive that's why you see something like yoga in there so while we don't get rid of our our p arts programs that because yoga kind of falls into the arts actually um but there are other options available to this and then when we talk about the cuts at a six percent level we're talking about program elimination and so while we put this piece in there we we did not think that it was something that it was it was if we needed the money at a dire level but as susanne said earlier this is part of what it takes to to clean and take care of our building but what we're trying to do is just look at what the options work but to us it wasn't interchangeable with other things unless we wanted to say that we were willing to cut programs and and and some of our services at the 8 percent or 10 percent level but that's just not what we were trying to do so i just hope you understand we weren't hoping that this was a menu of services but it was really just a way for us to say that this is what's appropriate at each level in our decision-making and and so i just i would leave it at that point thank you steven christ do you have a question yeah i do so most of these cuts are cutting services um across you know in all these different cuts are a reduction in service i don't think you get away from that uh and that's not you know what i apologize chris i didn't mean to interrupt no no go ahead i mean i you know unfortunately we're not we're not in the same room because this is the type of dialogue which is best had i think in person because we can face each other uh and and you know it's unfortunate that the storm came and we uh you did this virtually which i think has worked pretty well but in situations like this i think would be helpful to be in person but go ahead steven yeah christ what i would say is when you look at the the cuts at u 32 and i'll have to let the elementary principal speak more specifically about theirs when you look at the cuts that we proposed at 10 percent um those additional teaching positions are not losses of any services or any programs for our kids um what we we typically have to do a budget before our scheduling process occurs we're in the midst of our scheduling right now and we can see that um that those those teachers positions aren't necessary to offer all of the courses that our students need next year um and so um so we were able to find those um through our scheduling process um in just the last couple of weeks um and and be able to say that this doesn't reduce our number of courses it doesn't reduce our our offerings when you move into the eight percent category that is no longer true for us when you move into the eight percent category we actually reduce some of our programs at that point and at six percent those are those are more substantial cuts to programs and services within the school and that was just for us as um as a um as a school in the way that we were able to look at it and like i said i can't speak to how the elementary principals were able to do some of the same things i you know it just doesn't make um it's not clear that if you're cutting positions like nine percent for the nurse eight percent for the counselor that you're not cutting services you are and we should be blunt about that and i think it's something that we should avoid at all costs um but we have to um but i i agree we have to um so i i think we an a la carte is a good way to go at this um because by by including these offerings in each of the different categories uh you've basically said that these are things we can do without um not well but do without and so i think picking choosing to you know reflect what our what our policy values are which is i think more direct services for for students like nursing and counseling and taking care of them is would be a way to go and have that very uh um thorough and broad wrenching discussion caroline i'm gonna let carline go so that maybe she can speak to the question on i was going to speak to the amendment and just add on to what steven said um if the i just i appreciate the amendment i just don't think it's a great one to make i think if you're going to take anything out of the eight percent which i really think that when we looked at it the further we went it it had more of an impact we agreed to that as a leadership team if you felt the need to take anything out of the eight percent i do not think taking the administration out is going to land well with the other staffing fte's that are in the eight and in the six i i appreciate the comments that michelle made and i do think they are very valid i i would not feel right if that's what if that's what was picked thank you carline natasha i was just wondering if the the elementary principals could speak to add on to what steven said if they had the same kind of thinking about the ten percent eight percent six percent that steven had been looking at them looking at these sorry natasha i did mean to speak to that when i said it yes that that is um with with one exception i would say i i do feel like um there is a painful reduction in the ten percent and so i wouldn't say that the ten percent was easy um however every percentage that we went it had more of an impact in terms of sharing fte's across more buildings or other things that it did go further um and we did all agree with with where things went um i hope i answered the question effectively sorry it is late uh yes you did thank you okay okay are there any other elementary principals here i want to speak to that okay uh christier have your hand up again but i'm done sorry okay yeah let's let's let's vote on the let's vote on the amendment first in and then and then we'll move into Ursula's motion okay so all those in favor of the amendment as read by michelle so that really the total amount it was uh 51 thousand dollars and 110 thousand did i get that right is susanne i think so administrator in the building grounds reducing it by 51 521 but increase sorry the net change is an additional decrease of 59 939 dollars 9999 dollars okay all those in favor please send me five by raising your hand is going to be easier today than please raise your hand if you're in favor of that flora we should probably do a roll call vote if it's not unanimous since we're virtual okay sorry so old um i'm gonna i would just call chris yeah chris are you in favor uh no i'm voting no okay is kate kealy no sack okay diane no Ursula no Amelia no michelle i'm gonna say no now um mackaylin and natasha i'm just everybody's moving that says no no okay no and jonathan and jonathan no okay so daniel's a no too sorry daniel okay wait i'm not totally okay daniel no okay all right so the the motion is defeated okay i hopefully didn't miss anybody so now so now we can keep discussion on the motion on the eight percent and accepting the eight percent chris now i'm gonna move that we table that um um vote until we've had further discussion about and and also get further nobody has called the vote so you can you can discuss so you can keep discussing nobody has okay well but i'm the problem is what i'd also like to get is what the value of each of these cuts proposed cuts is because when uh susanne told us about what the building grounds directors uh amount was versus the principles that brings it into a context where we have more information to try and achieve an eight percent cut differently and i think that would be very helpful in terms of knowing where what each of these values are and so i'm gonna i'm gonna move that we table the vote on this uh until we have that information and then take it up again at our um uh april 10th uh meeting that's my motion point of order yes we have an open motion on the floor so we can't have another motion on the floor we can defeat this so so i can't when when can i move to table it you can speak to the motion you want you can speak to the motion so once it's on the floor you can't move to table it i'm reviewing my well you can not do that you can postpone it you can postpone it i moved to postpone this matter until but we would need um yes and we would need the majority of the vote to the majority of the board to accept thank so you do that right do it through a motion yeah i move that we postpone this matter until okay then i move that we postpone this matter until we have more information and have a further more thorough discussion at our april 10th uh meeting in person accounts so we need a second nine i second that and discuss yeah yeah go ahead um yeah i i i also just want to raise the point that i feel like we've heard from a lot of people that we uh could have communicated the last budget better or more thoroughly and so i am also hesitant to pass vote on a new budget without taking it into more community forums with these three scenarios you know maybe like posting more about the three scenarios what they mean or holding public more public forums i just i um i think it's a really complicated process and i think a lot of people do not understand what's going on i think a lot of people in berlin just saw 25 percent increase in their taxes and they're like no and they don't know how much of that is coming from education spending and they don't know how much of that is coming from other things and i think we need to do a better job of saying this is where we're starting with no cuts and this is where we've gotten to with cuts but this is just something that you know if we don't pass this budget we're going down to 87 percent at some point um and maybe we adopt a budget and then we and then we socialize it better but i am concerned about us picking one of these numbers without more input from the community so i i think what where we are right now uh kelly is that we as a board need to make a decision the community we started this process back in september and the vote the budget was defeated right so the what we have to to do right now is if we don't adopt a budget at least at our next meeting we wouldn't be able to have the ability to have two votes for example of the way and and we get this much closer to being to having to operate with an 87 percent budget right and then we would continue to instead of like gearing up ourselves to be able to do in a more sustainable way our configuration study and engaging the community in what the future is is going to be and being able to really have those conversations we're going to continue to delay this this budget conversation if we adopt a budget we will be able to go out and and and market it this this year part of what happened was that we had to hold our report because everything changed at the last minute we agreed and me and everything at the last meeting a minute had to change but i i think as a board we have a responsibility to adopt the budget and i think community members had given us enough information for us to make a decision with everything that we have heard in this past few you know since the since the budget failed right we've referred we have got emails we got out like we had a lot of people today in this meeting we had a lot of people that are in person meeting the last time so so we have the responsibility that's what they elect us to have to make those decisions and then we have to go out and yes sell the the the budget uh Ursula and then natasha so flor you kind of said what i was going to say but that we are elected and it is our job to pick the budget um and i understand wanting to have community input but we have heard from a variety of people within our community through emails through people coming to meetings and we can't just look at this meeting we have to look at all of the meetings that we have held um i think people have been coming to meetings or we've they've we've given them opportunities to discuss the budget since october with us so we haven't this isn't a rushed process at this point and i mean this section of it is going to have to feel rushed because we didn't pass the first one and now we have to find a way to pass one um so i think we need to pick one and then work on selling it thank you Ursula and natasha um we still have we still meet our timelines if we don't make a decision until our next meeting correct so i will only speak for myself um i would appreciate waiting until next meeting to make the decision because i think that there has been new information brought forward i think people asked questions that they're waiting for answers on and i would like to have time to kind of process that before having to make a decision tonight especially because we've heard so much information and seen so many slides and had so many numbers thrown at us um and it's quarter of ten um which is not when my brain functions the best and i do want to be very thoughtful about whatever decision it is that i make um because i am very conscious of the fact that we you know i'm representing um not just the people in the town of lister but you know families across the district so i would like to hold off on making a decision on what we're what we're going to board until next week so i have a chance to really digest what was what was what we heard from the community today what was presented to us and get any additional information to the questions that were asked that were not able to get those specific um answers to okay so we have a motion to that but just to ask the board a question on on what you had just discussed is like if we if we do that we do need to provide clarity to our leadership team right we're not asking them to come back with a different budget we're asking them to to clarify the questions that were that were that were placed i just want to make sure that we're yes i'm not i'm not asking for them to come back i and and let me say i appreciate the additional work that the leadership team did um based on what they brought forward i feel like the questions that i had at the last meeting were thought about so i do appreciate that they were different there was different information brought forward this time than what's been brought forward to us in the past um so i'm not i'm not trying to rework the budgets i just want to be able to get the answers to those clarifying questions and have some time to process again because i do want to make the most thoughtful decision about this and not make a rushed decision when i am exhausted and my brain has been overrun with 47 pages of presentation slides which i appreciate all that information but i need to be able to digest it and and and another format besides a three hour and 44 minute meeting okay okay so let's let's vote in the amendment and then uh Amelia do you have a question about the amendment sorry the the postpone the motion and postponing sorry i just called an amendment it is that i can ask it after that okay are people ready to vote for that i'm not trying to call the vote i'm just asking so that we can move on and provide clarity can you repeat the motion though please yeah we're we're we're uh chris moved to postpone he moved to postpone this matter until then our next meeting on the 10th in call us so all those in favor so wait so natasha and keely second yes or just a quick point of order it's not just it's not just a motion to postpone it's a motion to table the the motion on the floor which is to adopt the 8 option because i think it wouldn't be germane if it was just a motion to postpone it has to be directly related to the motion on the table yeah so it moved to postpone this matter until the next meeting so it doesn't remove them it just we're postponing the matter we'll come back to this question at our april 10th meeting i'm sorry to to quibble but it's not just postponing the matter it's speaking specifically to ursula's proposed motion and he's i mean correct me if i'm wrong chris because otherwise it's not germane you need to be proposing to table that specific motion yes so that matter that what he said so we're just not calling it motion is postponing ursula's motion until our next meeting ursula um so i'm just looking at robert robert's rules right now and we can either pass defeat table refer to committee or postpone indefinitely so i want to make sure we're using the right word and so it'd be the table until the next meeting which is fine i'll use the word table i just want to make sure that it's not meant to postpone indefinitely because we have right right yeah and i was not postponing it indefinitely i was just postponing until the next meeting so either either way so i want to thank our fellow parliamentarians well i i'm trying to use the table that we put together so okay uh natasha is a yes uh i'm not even gonna look at the screen daniel no you don't want to postpone it you want to get a session today okay right jonathan uh yes to postpone it it chris yes sack no kiley sorry i hesitated and then i was muted yes okay diane yes ursula yes amilia yes michelle no good i i'm missing one of you guys thank you one sorry sorry yes please okay one two three four five six seven eight yeses and one two three no so the motion carries is so it's we'll discuss at our next meeting and now we need some clarity if can i revoice what i think the follow-up question is and then yes make sure i have it right so we bring you what you need one is eight dollar amounts for the reductions proposed on the chart yes okay um that's all i definitively have so if you could define define what else you need us to bring it's the only clarity i can bring to it right now kiley and then amilia amilia first i am saying something i'll put my hand down for a minute okay i am wondering if we would if we could see the 10 net ed spending without the art and library cuts as a response to what a lot of community members were concerned about if we go with the 10 percent and maybe it go maybe it bumps it up to 11 or 12 i think i'm wondering if we could see if we could explore that as a board i think the way to get at that would be you if the board is choosing to make decisions about moving things around you would do that based on the items with the dollar amounts that we're going to bring to you otherwise we're reproposing and we already have proposed so i think if you're going to do that you would have a motion on the table at the time what you don't have right now is the dollar amounts to inform you so i think you'll be able to get there okay otherwise i think each per each one of you may have a different version of that and it would be better just for you to have the information and have your discussion on the 10 thank you okay daniel i was just going to say one other clarification that would be helpful we heard from steven we heard from caroline but it just the a little bit about you know what administration's philosophy was in creating the 10 proposal what their philosophy was in creating the eight percent proposal and what their philosophy was in creating the six percent proposal so maybe that's just rearticulating what steven and caroline said and what you also i think said spoke to a bit again but just for clarity's sake if that could be written i would appreciate that all right so there's no other clear kelly all right this isn't a clarification does anybody else have clarifications i just wanted to ask something so if if nobody else has clarifications i just want to completely clarify so meghan and her team are coming back to us just with those questions answered correct all right they're not redoing anything okay all right kelly yeah um i was wondering if before we before we moved on though if we could go around and just say how people are leaning or feeling because i know we had the eight percent motion and i i don't know if that's what most people are feeling or or just some people but i think it would be good to get a sense of where we are as a board going into that next week's vote would people be amenable to that yeah i don't i don't know i i think it's a good question i that was my regional question which of the budgets were you most you know to speak to that and i don't think anybody spoke to anyone specific but if people we could just say thumbs up if you're leaning towards eight percent or thumbs up if you're so we can do let's start with ten percent just thumbs up not there's no vote for you know like you feel like that is the budget that you would be willing to to support ten percent so we have one just one see one two three four okay eight percent there was more than four for ten percent floor okay i so what i i believe it was i counted six okay thank you so if you were six percent if you were ten percent could you just raise your hand again i just want to get a better count of so it's natasha chris and emilia dayan and jonathan right and feeling i you're all the way down in my spine i don't know why and daniel now ten eight percent two three four is that am i counting that right one two three four uh susanne i'm just saying i'm kind of five so i'm not sure i'm going yeah it's just late i can so what if we went through everybody and just ask them which one would that be a better way to get through the counts essentially and then we and then we let jonathan is so late for a bit kelly just pick one well honestly i'm torn between ten and eight and i really want to see that percentage tax rate increase because i think that's how the voters are gonna look at it okay between ten i'd prefer ten but i gotta see what it looks like uh michelle eight sack eight dayan ten natasha ten jonathan ten daniel i think ten emilia and preferably without the elementary allied arts cuts chris um and i would say between eight and ten uh but with the different configuration um and i think we can get there by you know serve community's purposes and and hopefully uh general board purposes but so between eight and ten or so eight and mackaylin you frozen i said ten we couldn't hear you i was just waiting and waiting at the suspense okay yeah all right so that concludes the meeting for today could i have a motion to adjourn by consensus yes thank you thank you okay yes and thanks for the public for showing up