 All right, thanks everyone, opening the meeting of the Malpere Roxbury Board of School Directors at 6.32 p.m. Glad to see so many people in the room, as you probably got from our notice, we have some very important budget topics to talk about. And I just wanna kinda preface it that tonight is really about information. As you know, there was a change in the law. Act 127 that is designed to change how students are weighted, which is a very important part of our funding formula in terms of how much we get from the state versus how much the town is asked to pay. There is, as Lily's gonna explain, there's some phase in provisions that have pretty serious implications, but the overall message is that we're in a situation where we are likely to face several years of cuts or exorbitant, and I mean exorbitant tax increases, and we're gonna have to figure out how to deal with that. Tonight is not about figuring out how to deal with that. Tonight is about assessing the situation, asking some questions for the administration to come up with some various scenarios so we can chart the best path forward. I wanna make very clear that this law is very well-intentioned. It is meant to get more money to students with higher needs. That said, as you're gonna see, it has very real implications for our town and for our ability to provide the educational services that we wanna provide at the level of affordability we've been able to in the past, and they're very real. I also wanna stress that this is something we have very limited control over, and I mean very limited control over. It's something that unfortunately we are in a more of a reactive mode than a solution mode, so we're gonna have to work with what the legislature gave us unless the legislature changes its mind, and we are not going to count on that at all. So we're gonna have public comment up front. We're also gonna have public comment after the presentation. If a lot of people are wanting to give public comment, I'm gonna limit the time, and I'm gonna do so in a way that, you know, make sure everybody has a chance to say something succinct, but not to go on and on and on. Not that anyone does that, but occasionally it happens. But I wanna make sure everyone gets heard. I also just wanna, you know, again, say that we are gonna have several meetings where we're going to, you know, absorb what we have tonight, come up with proposals. Tonight is not the only time that you have to say what you wanna say. Others gonna be ample opportunity, both to give commentary when we have more information, when you've, you know, absorbed the information. And I also wanna say that, that, what is it, School Board at mpsvt.org. We'll get an email to all of us. You may want a very, we read our emails, we respond to them. It's a very effective way to give us information. So if you wanna sit with what you hear tonight, think about it, come back to us with an email. That is a great way to do it. And again, you know, we're gonna probably add a meeting in December, just given that this is a very unusual budget this season. We'll have listening sessions and meetings in January. We have about two and a half months to, yeah, consider this. So it's a long process. And tonight is really just absorbing the situation we're in. And that's what we're gonna focus on and then kind of move to next steps, which are some scenarios and eventually making decisions. So long process, I hope you all stick with us through it and give input, it really helps us make decisions. But this is a situation we have not been in, certainly in my tenure on the board. And I really can't remember one, even just as a kind of parent and caregiver in the community. So it's a unique situation. It's not the best situation, but together we will find a way to ensure that we meet our educational goals, do what we need to do for our kids and do it in a way that is bearable for the taxpayers. So with that, we're gonna have initial public comment. Again, we're having another public comment since after the financial presentation. So if anyone has something they wanna say before then, maybe on a non-budget related issue, please either come up to the front or if you're on Zoom, please use the raise hand function, which is in your reactions button. Great. Seeing none. Oh, you wanna come up? Okay, come on up. My name's Tom Frazier, I'm from Roxbury. I've lived there for 50 years and was intimately involved in the rebuilding of the school when it started out as a two room school in a town hall that was falling down and rat infested. In the 1970s, we took a major step to rebuild the school and keep it in the middle of the village so that the town would always have a town center, a town soul, if that's what you wanna call it. A lot of people wanted to close it down, move it up on the mountain road, lots of other things. We decided at that time to keep it in the village. And since then it's been rebuilt, it's been added on to a couple of times and it's a very nice facility. And now I feel like this board, because you have to come up with a savings of X amount of dollars, are gonna throw Roxbury under the preferable school bus to save that money. When we vote on a school district, on a school budget, it's a district-wide budget. We have no separate vote for Roxbury and Montpelier. But yet you have come up with a $33,000 per student cost versus your $24,000. $9,000 for 40 kids, that's a lot of money. But if we didn't have your, as I understood it, when we signed on to this merger, we became part of your $9 million debt. We had no debt. Our school was built and paid for. So now I wonder whether or not any of your debt is part of that $33,000 per student. There's also transportation costs that we didn't have back in the day that we now have because of this merger. And those are also part of that $33,000. A lot of us were against merging with Montpelier. I mean, I think it's worked out well for the students. And I have grandchildren now in town that are gonna be going through it. And I think that they will benefit in the long run. But I'm not sure our town will benefit from losing at school because that seems to be the way you're headed. The transportation costs, according to the budget that I looked at, was $600 plus $1,000 a year. You know, that's a lot of money. And it all relates to transport, not all of it obviously, but a large portion of it is having to come to Montpelier and back however many times a day. If you close the school, if you take the students out, you're still gonna own the building. And you still have to maintain the building, maintain the sewer and water system. Because you have local residents that are part of that system. You have a bussing situation that that cost is not gonna go away. So I question how much you really would save by closing our school when you consider the cost that would actually be to the town itself and to the town's sense of being. So how much of you are really gonna save? You know, I don't know. I don't know how you figure these things. I look at your paperwork, I don't understand any of it, and I don't pretend to. I'm just looking at it from a very practical standpoint and what the town has put into this building and into this merger. And we feel like, you know, we're getting the short end of the stick, which is what everybody expected would happen sometime down the road. But you know, I feel like today is more like April 1st than November 1st. Something, you know, we're just, a lot of people are really upset and we understand. I mean, I knew this back last year, that there was nothing that we could do about it. We have two votes out of nine. It's not, I mean, I realize it's all based on numbers, but it really doesn't do much for anybody's piece of mine. Well, so that's all I have to say. Anyone else before we go to consent agenda? Do you have a motion to approve the consent agenda? We do include a co-curricular. And we need to consent agenda with co-curricular included. I move to approve the consent agenda with the addition of the co-curricular. Do you have a second? Positions. Any discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Consent agenda passes. June, can we remind people that you also offer to open up public comment after the discussion? Yeah, no, I said that. Okay. Sorry about that. So now on to board business, which is finance committee update and potential approval of first quarter report and then the budget presentation. Anything from the finance committee? The report, particularly the first quarter report. The outstanding part from the finance committee is the costs of repairs from the flooding. And so that's an unusual piece of the current budget that wouldn't normally be there, but everything's being reversed, including FEMA will cover deductibles. So that's all seems good. And then there's some work from FEMA, FEMA to do some improvements with the electrical panel that maybe moved out of the basement in the high school here. Other than that, we had the fund balance still has the track money, $400,000 that we agreed to make available if needed for the fiscal year 24 budget. And then there was, we're sort of projecting another 400,000 that may be available if needed for the fiscal year 25 budget. Any of that, any of those things could change. Any of the general fund figures are remain to be actually spent. Thank you. And I'm just gonna add a little comment. I'm guessing we're going to probably want to take all of the reserve fund we can to help with the situation, I guess, is that just because I know this is gonna come up, but that is probably an idea that we will float seriously. I think Christina said that last year there was only about 78,000 used of the 400,000 that had been earmarked. So that's been the situation is likely to change. Yeah, that's definitely something we will consider because I know that question will come up. Sure, do you have a motion to approve the first quarter report? I move to approve the first quarter report. Oh, second. Oh, second. All those, any discussion or questions? All those in favor? All right, aye. Great. Libby. All right. Zach. Oh, we got Jake. Jake with the late, late aye. Jake is not feeling well. Okay, let me share my screen here. I want to start before we get into any of the numbers, recognizing that the information in tonight's presentation is very hard. It's hard to hear. It's hard to provide you as the superintendent and Christina, business manager, who might want to come up to the table over here. Yeah. Yeah. Christina Kimball, our business manager. And I can say that Christina and I, with members of our leadership team have, well, Christina and I in particular, and we've dragged our leadership team into it, have done little else, but think of this process and these pressures for the last three weeks, losing a lot of sleep over these. And so, because we just were trying to get it right and understand everything. This law is complicated. There seems to be limited direct information as to how we apply the law. So, Christina and I have been down probably 500 rabbit holes and continue to uncover them even this afternoon when we had agency officials on the phone and I talked to probably five different superintendents and Christina talked to five different business managers just this afternoon as we uncovered another rabbit hole that we didn't quite understand in order to try to understand it all. I'd say now I'm pretty confident I might about 90% of understanding because there could be information that, one, quite honestly, we're wrong. And two, we just simply haven't understood yet because it's so complicated. So I just want to put that out to everybody just in recognition that this is hard stuff and it's complicated stuff and it's a very different way of doing things and that we have to get used to that, the new language and what it all means. So, moving forward, the beginning slides here. How do I get rid of this one? Hold on, let's get us off the, there we go. Oh no, you get the pictures off the screen. So, there we go. Yeah, go to slideshow. And if people in the audience do not have the presentation, there's some on the back. Just a little reminder for any budget year, this one, the past five that we have done, there are things that the school board and administration can control, which are in green on this slide. And there are things that we have no control over whatsoever in the budget and that's in red. So you'll notice that the red far outweighs the green. The non-tax revenue is in yellow simply because we have some control over that and the agency of education has some control over that. So, it's not a total green or red piece. Just, oh, where's the link? So just a reminder, one of the big pressures is Act 127. That was a law enacted last year that Jim referenced in the beginning of the board meeting tonight. It's an act that's intended to provide educational equity and quality to students across our state. It's a good law and the intent behind it is a good law. Some of the pieces, I wish they had reconsidered. However, the idea that our weights were outdated and did not do what it needed to do for students, they were right on with that scenario. That's gonna influence our district in a way that's hard. However, the purpose behind this law as is intended is good. So just keeping that in mind. There is a link to it there if anybody is interested in reading all the legislation. There's a glossary of terms. I'm not gonna go into it totally. It's just for people's reference. These terms now roll off our tongues. And so if you need a quick definition, rabbitty or this page in the presentation. So getting into the weighting. On the left there are the old weights. You can see that there were just five of them. And on the right-hand side are the new weights. Looking at, they went, the state and the agency of education went through a long study process with UVM to come to these weights about what was fair. I will say that I honestly wish that I had been more understanding of it because I think they overlooked some things with these weights. So you notice there's no mental health concerns with these weights. There's no intervention. It's making the assumption that elementary students do not need intervention or remediation services. There's a lot of assumptions here. It does make the assumption that a student who is multilingual needs more services because that's accurate, right? That's an accurate statement. And so it did make some assumptions. It didn't make all the assumptions. Now that these numbers are becoming a reality, it's a little bit, we can understand that a little bit better. But these are the weights that we have currently in the new Act 127. So there are always typical pressures on our budget and 127 is adding some additional pressures. So what used to be called equalized pupil is now called long-term weighted average daily membership or LTWADM. I'm gonna use the term for this presentation as equalized pupil simply because that's the term I'm used to and it's the term the board is used to. It is pretty much the same thing. It's just different weights and they named it a different thing, okay? Our school district will be disadvantaged in this in equalized pupil because of Act 127. Financial decisions from school districts across the state will impact something called the dollar yield. The dollar yield is not unique to 127. I don't even know if it's mentioned in 127, but the dollar yield is always part of our budgeting process. It always influences our budget one way or the other. And it has to do with how flush the education fund is and how we can, Jill can make it even better than I can, but make it so where a dollar is worth a dollar in the eyes of the ed fund. Yeah, Jill? Sure. Okay. So the new weights will result in more equalized pupils across the state. This will impact the dollar yield, most likely in a negative way because we'll be drawing more from the ed fund since we will have more equalized pupils. So the dollar yield will lower. It will come closer to that dollar. This number three, while it's a typical pressure in our budget, it's not gonna come into play too much in this presentation and it's not gonna really come into play while making some assumptions there. But the CLA did some wacky things here in Montpelier this year that were unique to this fiscal year and it was unexpected. This isn't gonna come into play a whole lot. We thought it would, but with better understanding, it's not. Let's see what the CLA is. So CLA is the common, thank you, Jim, is the common level of appraisal. It's how our houses are appraised at versus what they're selling at or what they're actually worth. And so the CLA, I'll just go through this quickly, but again, it's not really gonna influence our budget tax rate this year for reasons I will explain in a bit. But the CLA here in Montpelier was really low when we passed our budget last year. We passed our budget last year in Montpelier with a 74 CLA, 74% CLA. Between the time when we passed our budget and when your tax bills came out here in Montpelier, the reappraisal had happened in time for the new CLA to come into effect for the FY24 budget. All the things we're talking about is FY25. So we made the expectation when we passed our budget last year that the CLA from Montpelier was going to help us this year because it was gonna go skyrocketing, right? But that didn't happen. That actually helped you as taxpayers this year in fiscal year 24 because it went from what we passed as a 74% CLA in March to 113 on your tax bills, 113%. So that skyrocket happened this year, which is great. It was a lower tax bill. However, FY25, the CLA in Montpelier is expected to drop. So when it drops from year to year, that comparison, anytime it drops, that's gonna increase our taxes a bit. But again, I'll explain why that doesn't have a significant influence as it would in a typical year. And the reason we're focused more on Montpelier with the CLA is because that is having a bigger impact. In Roxbury, it's not having as, didn't and won't have as big of an impact. Yeah, the CLA doesn't move as fast in Roxbury as it does in Montpelier. Right. Okay. So Act 127 has some pieces in it that just, that has more to do with than just the weights that add some additional pressures and some additional reliefs, it should say. And I'm sorry, if I'm talking really slowly, it's just because it's so complicated and I wanna make sure that I don't just run it off. Our equalized residential tax rate, which is the tax rate prior to the CLA being calculated in, according to Act 127, is capped at a 5% increase through FY29. That's a relief for our tax-paying base because that's a cap, right? That's saying it's not gonna go above the 5% for spending. And so that's a really good thing for the next five years. So this is in place for five years until fiscal year 29. The ED fund, the Education Fund, will make up the difference between what we pass as a budget and what that 5% cap is. So they'll pull that in every district from the Education Fund, according to this law. In order to get our tax rate in fiscal year 30 to a reasonable and responsible fiscal number, we will have to continue to decrease spending for the five years so that in fiscal year 30 we are not really hit with an enormous tax bill. We think that could change. The cap, this 5% cap will hold and we can rely on it as long as our equalized people or our long-term weighted average daily membership is below 10% increase from the previous year. Should we come over a 10% equalized people spending? The secretary can, it's not the secretary shall, but the secretary of education can look at our budget and what we've spent to determine if it's excessive spending or not. Whether or not that will happen is up to a big debate in all kinds of forums right now where superintendents live. But it is in the law that the secretary can make that determination if we come in over 10% equalized people spending. If they determine, if we say we're doing it, we're coming in over 10% and the secretary determines that it's excessive, then our taxpayers will be on the hook for the typical tax rate that is not capped at 5%. The cap goes away and that's significant. So the tax increase will be significant. So this is kind of the biggest slide and thing to understand in this presentation right here. And I know I've had to explain it out loud about a lot at this point and then still I'm trying to figure out the best way to explain it, but it's just kind of to get it down in bullets and go for it. I'm actually gonna ask Christina to talk to this slide. One of the things I asked Christina to look at and I wanna say to make it really clear, we are making a lot of assumptions here because so many numbers can change between now and five years from now. We could have middle income housing projects go up at the Elks Club or wherever and lots of families move into that and increase our enrollment. We don't know what's gonna happen in five years. The legislature could change this law in five years and change the weights. The dollar yield could do whatever the dollar yield. We don't know what the CLA is gonna do. So I just wanna put that out there that there are so many assumptions that Christina made on this slide that and at the same time I still believe it's an important slide to show simply because it shows that over five years we can't keep spending the way we're spending and have a responsible tax rate at the end of five years. So Christina, do you wanna explain what you did in your nice, loud teacher voice? Good evening everyone. So in this slide what I did, I just projected that we were gonna add $2 million to our general fund budget for each year. The blue line shows you currently from FY24 to 25 what a 5% cap tax rate would look like. So that's what the blue line shows you is just our 5% cap if we were able to stay under the 10% at spending per equalized pupil. The orange line shows the new weights. So again, I made a lot of assumptions here. I'm assuming what we're adding to the budget based on salary, benefits, inflation, and those types of things. Also I'm assuming the CLA, I'm assuming the dollar yield. Every factor in here is an assumption. But just based on a trend of adding $2 million each year we get to FY30 and we won't have that cap, that protection. So our tax rate would jump from $1.62 to $1.84. And that's a pretty significant jump compared to our trending tax rate increases. Nick, since you're standing, can you go shut the back door for me? Thank you. So what does this all mean? And again, I wanna just reiterate and reiterate and reiterate. We are making some assumptions here that could change. They could change for the better. They could change for the worse. They could change, but one of the things that Christina, Mia, and Jim and I decided very early because of the impact this has on our tax paying base, on our staff, on the school board and what the discussion is gonna be. We wanna be as transparent as we possibly can be from the get go with this conversation and get as much input as possible so this body can make really good decisions. With that, we are making assumptions, okay? So we're making projections off of our assumptions. A lot of our assumptions are pretty good assumptions. When I say we've lived this for three weeks, we've lived this for three weeks. They're pretty good assumptions. Yeah, I understand, Savannah. The budgeting process is always filled with assumptions. There are numbers that can change. We do our best. Historically, we've done a pretty good job of arriving at assumptions that are within the range of where the true numbers are gonna be. Yes. So one assumption we are making, and the assumption is coming from direction from both colleagues at the tax department and the Vasbo, which is the Vermont's Business Managers Association, who work directly with the Agency of Education's Finance Department, we're making an assumption of a dollar yield, which has a significant impact on our budget and our tax rate of $9,687. To give you a sense, last year's dollar yield was $15,400 in something dollars. So this is a precipitous drop in the dollar yield. Something that I've been superintendent for six years, that type of drop has never happened. It typically increases, quite honestly. So this is a much different drop, but this is what they've told us to plan with is this type of drop. The dollar yield, we're supposed to get a notice from the tax department on December 1st. Sometimes that's a couple days late, but our first board meeting in December is December 6th. So fingers crossed we'll have a realer number, is that a word, realer, a more real number for that board meeting on December 6th. So that's when we're supposed to get it, but right now we're making an assumption here. Libby, one more time, can you just repeat what with the dollar yield in the previous year? $15,400 and change. Okay, so we could increase our budget by $2 million. You heard Christina reference that number, that reference wasn't just pulled out of the sky. We need and anticipated approximate $2 million to represent just the salary and benefits increase for our staff, for the staff at Montpelier Roxbury. That's of course an approximation. We don't know who's leaving. We don't know who's coming, that kind of thing, but with our staff we have now, it's approximately $2 million for just salary and benefits. No other programmatic shifts, no other increases to the budgets, but salaries and benefits. We do have the solid increase in benefits for next year from VEI, not solid, but we have anticipated from VEI, which is the letter we use, and the increase to all of our benefits here in the district is 16.4% increase, 5% increase from last year. That's the largest increase it's been in six years. So it's a significant increase. We knew, we anticipated and we expected from three years ago that we would need to move about 4.5 FTE from, that are currently in grants. Essar Grant being one of them, Medicaid Fund Balance Grant being another one. We knew we'd have to move those positions into our local budget this year. This is not a surprise and it wasn't unexpected and we had planned for it. It's approximately $500,000 and we had a plan to do that. However, there's still this 2 million down the, you know, it's like decreased 5 million to get to the 2 million if that makes 500,000 to get to the 2 million if that makes any sense. But I did want to just put that out there in terms of transparency. This was an expected thing we were going to have to do in our district. So with the projections and that's underlined and if I should have put it in like a bigger font with projections and assumptions of the dollar yield and the CLA, the ed spending per modeled long-term weighted average daily membership or equalized pupil, the increase would be beyond that 10% if we put in 2 million extra in our budget. And just to reiterate, the 2 million is not adding, it is keeping pace. Right, right. It's not, we wouldn't be adding any programs or anything. It's simply what we've promised. It's what we've promised. It's raises, it's increased in benefit costs and it's moving some positions from one source of revenue to another. Yeah. It's not adding anything new, but it's also not taking anything away. Exactly. It's just presenting what we have. Yeah. It's moving forward Right. So in red there up on the slide, that could and capitalized could trigger the potential meeting with the secretary of education regarding excess funding if we came in at that number. The projected equalized residential tax rate which is the tax rate before the CLA is factored in could be capped at 5% if it's not determined excessive. If it's excessive, it also could be 84.217% in actuality with our assumptions. So that means that difference between the 5% and the 84% would be made up by the Ed fund. Every district would be doing that. Okay, so like every district in the state would be pulling more from the Ed fund than we typically do. And that's a big if, that is bolded and it's underlined. If MRPS is determined to have excess spending, then the cap is lifted. And the projected residential tax rate with no cap and after CLA could be very, very large. For Montpelier, it could be 108% or $3,650 increase on a $300,000 house. In Roxbury, it would increase 84.21% or $3,290 on a $300,000 home. It's significant if the secretary would come in and determine our spending excessive. And that's a big if, right? It's a gamble. So this is- I just wanna clarify that that is not taking into consideration the homestead. No, it's not taking into consideration the hometown property, which you know, the percentage of voters in Montpelier, don't you? Totally put you on the spot there, I'm sorry. Don't blame it on me. And for some perspective, the increase on a $300,000 home last year was like $280. Yes. So for Montpelier, you know, $1,895 homesteads, $1,200 are income sensitized when they pay their taxes. Can you repeat that, sorry? About two thirds. Two thirds in Montpelier. And then for Roxbury, there are 222 homesteads and 140 of them qualify for income sensitivity. And that's where you receive a credit on your tax bill based on your income. I'm sorry, what was Montpelier? Montpelier was two thirds. So another scenario is to increase our budget by approximately $800,000, assuming the dollar yield, assuming a lot of things. Another way to put that though, is that if we need $2 million for our salaries and benefits, things we've already promised to our staff, we'd have to decrease our budget by 1.2 million. This would not cover our projected costs for salaries and benefits for our staff currently employed at MRPS. And we, the leadership team, would need significant direction from the school board to determine how to target that decrease. If we did this, then the ed spending, I played with the math until I got the closest to 10% I possibly could without going over. And we're around 800,000 there. We come in under the 10%, so we'd be protected by the cap. They would not look at our budget at all. They wouldn't have a reason to. And so it would be capped at 5%, which is why you don't see the third row there because it's a moot point. It wouldn't come into fruition with this particular scenario. Now I wanna reiterate though, like the message that is very easy to get from this is, oh we need to cut 1.2 million. A lot of assumptions are in this slide. There's an assumption on a dollar yield we don't know. There's an assumption on the final LTW we don't know. There are some assumptions here that we still don't know. However, the assumptions we've made are pretty good assumptions. They're not exact, but they're pretty good. So to get to as close to the 10% as possible, we'd have to reduce our budget. That is a statement that I feel very confident making. So Christina and I are suggesting a timeline revision in the, I guess it's the board policy for budget development. Typically just so the audience knows who don't live and breathe this stuff, we typically present our first initial budget in the first board meeting in December to the school board. We provide a second draft based on the feedback we received from the school board in the second meeting of December. We hold a public forum in the first meeting in January for anybody to offer feedback and then the board votes on the budget final, like what gets sent to the printers, the second meeting in January. That is the typical process. We are suggesting this instead. This is a budget meeting we don't normally have in our budget cycle, so it's kind of kicking off now. The next board meeting on the 15th, we'd like to give the board and the community time for this to percolate and time for people to think on it and provide the board with feedback. And so we're gonna go ahead with our fall data presentation on the 15th of November. The first board meeting in December, we would recommend that the board have discussions regarding the direction that they would like the administration to take in generating that first draft of the budget and then presenting that first draft on the 20th. I am also anticipating, as are Jim and Mia, that the board may need some additional meetings to have discussions with the public in between those meetings in December and possibly January. We need to have a budget finalized and approved by the board by the January 17th board meeting. So Christina can get it prepared and sent to where it needs to go. And that date isn't even our policy. That's law, right? To get it in time for town meeting, right? You have to have it 30 days, you have to have it 30 days before town meeting by statute. So right now, in this moment, I'm gonna reiterate what Jim said earlier. This is not the meeting to discuss strategy. This is a meeting to ask questions and try to understand a very complicated law and its impacts on MRPS. I think all of us need to recognize that everybody in the room and on Zoom and who will watch this at a later date recognize that this is not easy and it will not be easy for the foreseeable future unless we have made drastic mistakes, which I'm not gonna say that that can't happen. Educating our communities regarding the influence of Act 127 will be paramount in the coming years. And this is the time right now to ask questions. And if Christina and I can't figure out the answers, we will certainly find them for us, for the community and the board. And with that, I hand it to you, Jim. So what we're gonna do is we're gonna take public comment and then have board discussion. Could I see a show of hands of people who wanna make comment in the room? Two, three, four. Christina, Christina can you slide back a little bit? And on Zoom, I see one, one. So we've got five, two, six, seven, eight. Any others online? I'm gonna give a quick call because it'll influence how much time I give people. Eight, total. And anyone else wanna give public comment going once? I mean, you... Come on up and ask it for public comment. Yeah, so nine. Okay, let's do a minute each. Let's start in the room first. Would you like me to answer questions as they come or attempt to answer questions if I can if they come or would you like me to write them down and then answer them all together? Let's answer them as they come. Yeah, okay. That way they're fresh and people don't need a reminder. Okay, so I am going to time folks. I'm gonna, at least for the people in the room, two fingers for 10 seconds, one finger for five, so that way it doesn't surprise you and you can wrap up and just form a queue and go, Joe, yeah, yeah. One minute, you said, Joe? One minute. Pardon the speed with which I'm gonna go over this. You can always send it to the board afterwards, Joe, too. So good evening, I'm Joe Carroll. I'm the president of the Montpelier Roxbury Education Association, our local teachers union. As we begin this long, complicated and challenging process around how to deal with the budget constraints we're facing, the MREA wants to emphasize three things that we hope will be at the forefront of your thinking. First, the MREA is a stakeholder group in the school district and in our community is looking forward to a transparent and democratic process. If really hard decisions have to be made, those decisions we hope will be made in partnership with those in the decisions effect. Achieving the best possible outcome from this situation necessitates that all school workers, students, community members and stakeholders have a seat at the table when these decisions are made. In other words, nothing about us without us. Second, we also wanna emphasize a reality that needs to be centered, no matter where this conversation goes. Students are coming to our schools with many complicated and hard to meet needs. Meeting those needs is very, very difficult. A quick look at the Youth Risk Behavior Survey or other data points. Just one off, so please push up, Joe. Okay, thank you. As the conversation unfolds, we can't emphasize enough how important it is to recognize that cutting any position that directly faces students and meets students' needs might be short-term solution to a budget crisis, but it would be a very serious mistake long-term. Finally, given how complicated financing education is, we invite the board to a longer-term discussion with the union on how we can advocate to the state for a more equitable funding of schools. I'm sorry, I went over. Thank you. Thanks, Joe. Thank you, Joe. Next, in the room, Peter. Hi, all. Peter Sterling from Montpelier First. Thank you so much for serving on the board. I know it's a lot of time and a lot of work and really appreciate everything you're doing to keep our schools running. Just a comment, it's important to get good information out there, and I know you all are trying. And in this slide, the increased two million, I know you referred to it verbally, but we should not be talking about what a potential rate increase looks like for a home without mentioning whether these people are income subsidized or not, like someone's gonna see this number and get really upset if they're low income, and we just gotta be super clear on that, because once numbers like this get out there, they start circulating all over the place and people get really upset about it. And if you can just be as clear as possible, I think it would take down everyone's anxiety a lot, not everyone's pain in the neck. So again, thank you so much for doing all of this. Really appreciate it. Great, thank you very much. Next please, Morgan. I just have a question about the Act 127 cap page of the presentation with the two points. The long-term weighted average daily membership per pupil needs to be below 10%. I'm not clear about 10% of what? It's 10% increase from the year before. Okay, so the budget generally increases every year, but if the increase is below 10%, I'll compare that. You're good on the cap. Thank you. Yeah. Nathan? Dear school board, thank you for doing what you do. My name is Nathan Souter. I'm a parent of two students in the district, among other things. I think my main question is that, I'm assuming that this law is an attempt to rebalance, based on needs, as though in Vermont, every Vermont child is our child, and we should distribute resources appropriately to their needs. Okay, so one implication is that we have been benefiting for years from the waiting and that it's our turn, or something like that. Is that accurate? Not the latter thing, that's editorializing, but this is a rebalancing of how the statewide funding of education is used. That is accurate. I don't know if you can say we've been benefiting from it. I don't know if that's an accurate statement or not. It's just the way it was, you know, so just the way it was. Yeah, yeah, it's a redistribution. I mean, I think there's a question of whether redistribution means that the districts that don't benefit from this need to be put in a tough spot, or we just need to rethink how we spend education, period, but that's a question for the legislature. Okay, and then... And quick, because you're... Yeah, I'd be interested to hear you all reflect on what other factors can we influence? How can we, you know, what would enrollment increase do, et cetera? Yeah, thanks again. Good, thanks. Next, please, in the room. Any others in the room, I think there were. Yeah, Talia. Yeah, Tom Frazier again. I just wondered whether or not there was any thought of renegotiating a contract with the union to affect savings. In most industries, as big as an education industry, they do that in a private sector. I realize you can't just lay off a bunch of people like they do at X or someplace else, but usually they ask the union as a buy-in for the cost of doing business. And maybe that's something, I mean, I just quickly perused the salaries in the school district. I don't think anybody's starving. It might be a good idea rather than having the close facilities or cut programs. Yeah, thank you. And again, we have, this is the information session, this is not, nothing as of yet has been put on the table specifically. I understand. James. I have a plate to my hand, so if there's others. Oh, I don't know, are there others or? It's yours. It'll be very quick. And it's really just a question about where we can send questions. I have several I wouldn't wanna bother folks tonight with, but is there a formal process or place to send questions on the process as it's simply sending to the school board email? I would send it to the school board email and then I'm on that as well. And if the school board doesn't mind, if it's a question I can answer quickly, I will answer it. And I should put, me personally, I wouldn't be expecting an answer directly from your, it's more putting them into the hopper. If I can answer it, I will. You're true. Thank you. Thanks. Anyone else in the room? Moving to the screen. Let's just do it in order. Jacqueline, please. And again, introduce yourself for the camera. And when you're ready, why don't you appear with the mute button off and I'll hit the timer. It ain't sound. I don't think she's talking yet. No. Did you hear that? He called you to speak. Why don't we go to Lisa and see if we can, we'll come back. Lisa? Yeah, sure. Thanks for taking this. I have two questions for y'all. First of all, will there be any public availability of the questions that other people send in in the answers? Or will those just go into like a private discussion so that we, other people won't know the answers. I'm saying if, you know, 20 people write 20 questions, will you post those questions in the answers to them is one question. And the second question is if our fund balance has been growing and growing and growing we know that 1.9 is set aside for the track of course and it came in way over budget, the last budget before the flood was close to 2.4 million. Is it safe to assume that the track on the, is now that money can be spent to alleviate tax burden or will you be going ahead with your track project? Thank you. On the first one, I think we definitely want to, we have figured out what we definitely want to get as many questions and answers out in public as we can that are appropriate. Again, we haven't made any decisions. This is new. I think it's pretty safe to assume that that $2 million is certainly going to be a big part of the discussion to alleviate this burden. But that's a decision to be made later but I would be surprised if it was not made. So, Zach. Thank you and thanks to the MRPS staff and the school board for facilitating this meeting tonight. I'm Zach Porter and I'm a Montpelier resident with a union elementary student for a daughter. And I am just wanting to ask a question which is that the presentation tonight and I realized that there's probably going to be more just kind of strategic considerations brought up at future meeting. So maybe I'm getting ahead of myself but the way that the presentation was given tonight and I don't mean to presume that this was intentional at all, it put the focus on the teacher or faculty or staff pay increases as kind of where the issue is that that's the money that we need to be looking at here. And I guess I just wanted to put the question out there are there other areas where we could save money so that we don't have to, you know hurt our amazing school staff in any way. And I would just like to see at a future meeting options that could save our school system the potentially necessary funds that we need to save but that don't come out of the really important salaries and benefits for our great staff. So thank you. I just want to comment on that. I think the $2 million presented as just a reality of kind of where, of the costs that we have already committed to. I mean, I want to say I was part of the negotiating team that worked with Joe and the teachers. We as a board are very proud of the raise we gave teachers. We thought it was very due. They are the bread and butter of this district. They make a tick, they educate our kids. We value that. That is simply a number we are committed to but we honor that commitment. And that is a commitment that the board was very glad to make our teachers got a bump. It is very well deserved. It was probably very long overdue especially as we saw the heroic efforts they did during COVID. So that number was not meant to present that as a problem at all. It's simply an obligation we have and a number we need to take care of but I think I speak on behalf of all the board members. When I say we are very proud of the commitment we made to our teachers and they deserve every cent. If I may jump back in just to say I was not trying to suggest that there was intent in any way to put a spotlight on that. So I didn't mean for it to come across that way. I just want to make sure that all of these potential options are considered in the future. So that's all. Thank you. No, thanks, Mark. Someone whose name is not on the screen but is not in check. It's a moment, okay. Thanks. A lot of it? Yes, thank you for allowing me to speak today. I want to just bring up that because there's a lot of assumption it's really hard to say through a presentation that is based on a lot of assumptions and I know that some of it is out of your hand and I just really want to encourage a transparent democratic process as well. I am thinking a lot about the teachers but also thinking a lot about Roxbury student who some of these policies or like these laws are also for them. So I just want to, I'm a little concerned that that's where we're going to jump and that we're talking a lot about these assumptions and I know you're not bringing a proposal today but I would really love to see a process that is transparent for all of us educators and students and families and also to ensure that the presentations are a little more plain language for some of us that don't understand a lot of the numbers and things. I think it's still up here and I think we can benefit from lowering that threshold. And I just want to appreciate all the educators that work so hard for our students and hope that they are untouched. Thanks. Jacqueline, have you fixed your audio problem? Do we know? We can't hear you. Are you muted? Jacqueline, can you hear us? So my Anna behind the scenes, when you connected to Zoom, you didn't connect to the audio part. So can you allow Zoom to connect to your microphone? That might be the problem. Or just sign out and sign back in. You usually hover over the controls and at the bottom left, there would be like a microphone looking thing and a little arrow and you would click on the arrow and it would tell you, you would have options of how to join audio. She's just sign out and sign it back in. Question in the chat. Or just address the board, the email board. Yeah, email the board or... And we could read it out loud even. Yeah, let's see if she's gonna... Anna seems to think it's an odd issue on the route, for sure. So she's gonna try to call back in. Sometimes it's headphone related too. Yeah. I think we can start the board discussion and then if Jacqueline comes back in, then we can certainly have her jump on. So I'm not sure how to start this. Yeah, one thing I don't think you want to get too much into problem solving, but I'd like to direct is kind of more things we would like to see from the administration in terms of scenarios for next time. And also just overall thoughts on kind of where we are. Is she back? Yeah. I saw connecting to audio, so... Yeah, but can you hear me? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Jesus. And I'm supposed to be tech savvy. My generation is so younger. I've done this a hundred times. Sorry, my son's gymnastics, me, Eric's gymnastics class. My question is about the timeline. Why is it so short? And is there any kind of preexisting scenario in which legislature has reconsidered a timeline? I mean, because it just seems really tight. We have to have the budget to our voters 30 days before town meeting day. So that's the reason why, and it has to, Christina gets, the board votes on it, Christina gets it, has to put it together for the tax office. I'm looking. And so there's time, there needs to be a few days for that to occur. So that's why that's in statute. We can't change that. I'm assuming that other communities are having this same kind of shock scenario. And I'm assuming that across Vermont, every other superintendent is like, what is happening? Is there no way that we can, as a community or group, go back to ask for more time or a way to, this is a big cut and it's not just us. We're not alone. You're right on that. We are not, we are not the only community or school district who is influenced in this way. So you are right on that. And I think Jim has already asked our legislators to come meet with us. Yeah, no, I've asked our legislators to meet with us. I mean, the way I would take it, I urge everyone in the room, you know who our legislators are, if you want their names, you can email me, I'll provide them to you. I stopped the phone today, but I'm fine. Yeah, yeah. This is great. Yeah, you know, to. All but the kids. Yeah. It's a timeline we have to work with unless people who are not us change it. So I think that we need to assume that this is the timeline we need to operate under. As Libby showed, the consequences for potentially thumbing our nose at this are huge. And I definitely agree with Peter's point that there are a lot of people who are income sensitized and the ultimate number won't hit all of them, but a number will hit most and a large number will hit a good number. And that's a lot of money to make a statement. So that's certainly something we could do, but we're playing with people's money who is not our own. And that's a big deal. So I would certainly urge everyone to reach out to the legislature and let them know that this is a statewide problem that's, I'm not sure, reflexive of what this law was intended to do. Thank you. I was just gonna make a suggestion for how to manage the board discussion, which is maybe just like start at one end and give everybody a chance to ask any questions they currently have. And then maybe if Kristen asks the same question I have, you just get me. But just to like, I'm sure we all have questions. Yeah, absolutely. Just go on down the line. Yeah, this is to top questions and reactions and then we can do a little more around Robin. So start with Kristen. Yeah, I think it's been a hard week. I think everybody up here, I think our leadership, Libby, it's been a really hard hit in the last week just trying to integrate this information. I'm feeling for all of you and the mind-bending nature of school budgets is really challenging. And then with this added in, it's even that much more complex. I would wonder what analysis can be done in terms of what exists in any and all rainy day funds that we have while maintaining our fund balance that's required by our policies, but just could we analyze our budget and see where do rainy day funds exist and what do they amount to and how do they measure up to the savings that we think we need to achieve at this point based on all the assumptions? I would also wonder, and I think it would be helpful to us and likely the public just in terms of when we can expect certain assumptions to solidify when we know we're actually, when we're dealing with real numbers. You know, obviously we're talking about cuts, but I think when we have more solidly around those numbers would be really helpful. And yeah, I think there's just like a lot of shock and awe here. And I think that as a board, I mean, I can recall when we had the consortium of folks that came to us about this act and that I think we all believed in it in spirit and concepts and I think we voted to actually join that group and I think we do very much believe that equity should be front and center in terms of our educational priorities. Being from Roxbury and I think the big elephant in the room is certainly what is the fate of RVS? This has been on people's minds for since the beginning of the merger and leading up to the merger. And I think that the idea that that could be considered as a viable pathway and that we are looking at a potential timeline of, I mean really we're talking about six months to cooking a budget. And if that could be something that's considered and decided upon for our community, it feels outrageously fast. And I don't believe we can have an adequate process that involves community engagement. And I mean, I think oftentimes there's decision A and there's decision B and the best decision often lies somewhere between C and Z. And so I'm concerned that this incredibly quick timeline is going to undermine the outcomes. And I think it's not how this board likes to do business. I also understand we have some very significant, possibly repercussions if we don't comply with the law in their timeframe. But I appreciate it, I think it was Joe's comment. Is there something that we can collectively do on behalf of the district? I find that it's very important right now for us to reach out to their legislators. I do not believe that if we were to talk school closure for the community of RVS, and I know we're not getting into solutions and strategies tonight, but it's an elephant in the room and I feel it needs to be addressed and I don't think that we have time to waste. But if that is a potential consequence, I think our legislators need to be aware that the act may have a very unintended consequence, even just for consideration, but they need to be aware of that potential. And I think it's a disservice to them to not inform them of it. So I think for now, I'll leave it at that and pass the torch. Thank you, Chris. I had the benefit of peppering about a half hour's worth of questions right before the meeting, so yeah, I want to reiterate. So one thing, I actually think we're dealing with a lot of uncertainty, which is different than assumptions. And I think it's really important to not act too quickly and to not make big decisions with so much uncertainty in the air. The largest being the legislature. Our Senator, Andrew Perklick, is on the Ed committee and the law is a product of the legislature. The legislature changes its mind all of the time and it's influenced by its constituents. And so I just want to reiterate the importance of communicating to our legislators, particularly those on the Senate and House Education Committees about the potential impact of Act 127. And to go back to the uncertainty thing, Libby, we're not the only ones. You mentioned there's a bunch of other districts, big districts in the state who are dealing with the same issue, who again are telling their constituents the exact same thing. And so I think it's important that we recognize that the act as it is now is not what it's going to be necessarily in one or five or 10 years. And so it behooves us to influence the direction. Before you go, Mia. Yeah. Kristen did have a question in there. Oh. Around when will numbers solidify? Right, yeah. So I just want to make sure that that gets out there. So Christina has all of those dates. Yeah. Good. Hey, Libby mentioned earlier, we'll get a yield notice on December 1st and they can change that yield. And they usually do by the end of the legislative session in May. So we'll have a pretty good idea at the beginning of December. Again, likely to change by May. The Seattle. I want to reiterate on that. That is always an assumption the board makes when developing a budget because it is not solidified in law until May, which is passed after the town meeting. So go ahead, Mark. To add to that, in my 17 years of doing this, the yield has always gone up by 100, maybe $200. The last couple of years that it's gone up a couple thousand dollars is quite unprecedented in my experience. So the fact that it's going to drop so drastically is also new to me. The next factor that we look at is the pupils. And the pupils are usually given to us in December, but then we get version two, version three, and sometimes version four in January. So right up to the 11th hour when we're sending it to the printer, these factors can change. The next thing that we get is, well, the next factor is the CLA, the Common Level of Appraisal. We get that typically around the 15th of December, right? Do I have that right? And that will be set. That will not change, hasn't changed. Unless it was a reappraisal. So this was my first year seeing a reappraisal in the middle of the tax year. So those are the three factors that we're waiting for, and those are the dates that we'll get them. You're welcome. Thanks, Christina. Thank you, Libby, and Christina, for putting all this work together. I also want to say thank you to everyone for showing up on line and in the room, because we asked you to be here and you showed up, and that's pretty cool. Let's go leave it at that. I have some numbers questions for maybe Christina, maybe Libby. If the budget were to increase by $800,000, why would that be just under 10% increase on a budget that is actually like a $26 million budget? Because $800,000 isn't 10% of $26 million. Our budget isn't $26 million, it's $28 million. Okay. So $800,000 is even less of a fraction of. You're thinking, you have to, it's not, oh go ahead, Christina. Christina's going to be a better person to answer this. Right, I'm asking somebody to walk me through that math. Yeah. Just stay. Well, I just think it's good to walk us through that because those, that 10% is an important 10%. Yeah, so it's not 10% of our budget. The 10% increase looking at the long-term weighted average daily membership. Right. The ad spending per, let's just say ad spending per equalized people. So that's the 10%. It's not 10% budget to budget. Right. If we looked at an increase budget to budget, just looking at the only factor that the board has control over, that increase of $2 million, I'm not gonna use the $800,000, is 6.92, that's the actual percentage increase, just budget to budget. Right. So does that answer the question? Yeah, I just wanted to make sure that that was all put out there because it's not totally reflected on this slide and it's helpful to understand why we would need to make a cut when, you know, if somebody's just looking at like, oh, you're just talking about $2 million on a $28 million budget. Yeah, so you're taking the one factor that you're in control of. Right. Dividing it by our pupils and that's the percentage that they're looking at. And I would say on top of that, some communities talk about just the budget to budget percentage increase and they don't go through this whole exercise with all these assumptions. So when you're reading things in the paper, you know, it's important to know what percentage or what factor they're talking about, one, two, three, or four. Because it's explained differently in different communities. Right. So if I'm understanding it correctly, that whatever our budget is right now, $28 million divided by whatever our current equalized pupils are, that's a certain number. Yep. And then for FY25, if we were to add the $2 million that we need to add and then divide it by the new equalized pupil, that's a new number. And those are the percentages that we're comparing to get this, to keep an eye on this 10%. I'm looking at Libby because it's- Not exactly. We've walked through this quite a few times. It's not apples to apples, it's gonna apples to come, God. So we're just trying to, because the weighting is different. So the equalized pupils that we use in this current year, 1,220. Right, just gonna keep it a simple number. Compared to the 1,146 that we have, they're not the same thing. So we can't really compare those two numbers. Okay. That number is gotten to by different weighting formulas. Right. Okay, I understand that. And so this was the rabbit hole we went down. When I say Christina and I went down a rabbit hole today, this is it. Okay. Of trying to figure out exactly which number to use for the long-term weighted for pupil. So that's what we called Brad James about, who is the person to call at the agency of education. And he told us to use the number we have been using for this calculation. The new number, which is- The 1,144. Right. It is the long-term weighted average daily membership from FY24 multiplied by a factor to get it to apples to apples for the equalized pupil. Okay. And that in and of itself is why we need to consider such a big cut in our budget is that because it's not just the stuff that we can control, it's these other, it goes through all of these different formulas. Yes. And that, so the weights, and the caps are the things that Act 127 influenced or those were in Act 127, right? Yes. The dollar yield was not in Act 127. Correct. Is that correct? And the dollar yield is the other, the decrease in the dollar yield is the other thing that is significantly impacting our budget currently. Yes. Continue. And the CLA. And the CLA, right. Which we're expecting to not have that big of an impact on our budget. It's dropping. If we're capped, it won't have as much of an impact. The dollar yield is significantly impacted and this was something that I don't think those of us in the field were aware of. Expecting. When the new, expecting, that's about it. Yeah. When the new weights were announced, the dollar yield to fall so long, so big. Right. And the dollar yield is impacted by 127. Got it. It's not, it didn't show up in the law, but it's impacted. Yeah. By 127. Yes. Okay. Those are all of the questions I have for right now. I'm trying to wrap my head around that in a month the administration is going to need some kind of direction from the board and I can't quite figure out what I need yet to know in order to be able to, as a board member, provide direction. So I don't have any more questions on that front. I think, I'll just say I definitely understand the frustration felt at this table and in the room and on line and by the people who are watching at home. And I understand the need and I think I agree with the need to educate our legislators about this. I don't think it is realistic to expect Act 127 to change. Certainly not in time for us to establish a budget for FY 25. No. And I also think that given the purpose of Act 127 and the fact that we as it was being designed said we absolutely positively believe in the need to equitably educate every single student in Vermont, not just every single student in Montpelier-Roxbury, I would caution us from going to the legislature and saying you need to change this bill because it is negatively impacting us. This is really hard, but it's also the right thing to do. And so I'm not ready to join the torches and pitchforks yet headed to the state capitol and say this law has to change. Yeah, I know I'll set me up. I think it's the right thing to do. I'm not sure it's the right way to do it. I have questions about, I think another political problem we have, frankly, is our governor who I don't think is going to be sad to see districts coming from education. He may have been a little smarter than the legislature was on this one, which I fear that's a rabbit hole we can go down later. I think you're right. We are stuck with 127. And it's the reality that we have. In terms of things I'd like to see, and I say this as someone who was on the merger committee who's drawing support of the merger committee who got to know members of the Roxbury community and know how important that school is to the community. But I do think we need to see some scenarios of how these cuts would look, including changes in facilities and also changes in personnel. And not just how they'd look from a monetary standpoint, but how they'd look from an educational standpoint, because one of the places I do not want to go is strained from, I think, the systems of support and the progress we've made in closing the achievement gap over the last several years. So my bottom line is to ensure that we keep the systems of support, keep and ultimately grow the systems of support we have for students and ensure that students have the type of opportunities that they have now and with options to increase. I think a sad fact of that is we might have to look at some facilities changes to achieve that and I'd like to see how that looks as well as other scenarios. And your assessment of how that impacts education, including things like money we're spending on transportation, not just between the two towns, but within the towns. We expanded busing in Montpelier. Is that something we could look at? All tough, but I would like to see something like that in the next meeting or two. I mean, a question I have, if this is a distribution, the towns that are getting more money, what does it look like in those towns? And then second, is there, if the Ed Fund is making up the difference for us for the next few years, if we stay under 10%, that seems to be a drain on the Ed Fund. Is that being made up at another place or are we at a place in five years where we've got a state Ed Fund that's grossly depleted? That is the question that I have asked several authorities and nobody can answer because I have the same question. I mean, it's not within our purview, but if this starves the Ed Fund, that's bad for the whole state and that's bad for the students that's intended to help. And just going back to the support, we need to keep classroom teachers. The positions we've added that are the positions that benefit I think the students that this bill is intended to help. And there's a real fear that if we're forced to starve ourselves, that's where the cuts will happen. And that's also seems contrary to that. So I mean, I've got a lot of questions for the legislature, but those are the questions I gave or the questions for us. I'm happy with the intent of this law. The way it's playing out does not seem like it was all the time. Jeff, can I really really quickly jump in? I wanna say, I apologize if I incited. Put your pitchforks away, right? Don't go down to Andrew's house just yet. I agree with everything that Jim, you just said and Mia, I appreciate the passion that you shared. I also was a staunch supporter of 127. I think slight tweaks to the weighting can have huge impacts on districts budgets. That's where I think the legislature needs to think about. All right, so these weightings, maybe we can change them slightly to better reflect what it actually costs to educate all of the students in our state. And the other thing I wanna just double check, as I understand it, this whole conversation really comes down to if and only if the secretary determines our spending to be excessive. And a 6% increase year to year on a budget passes the straight face test for me as not excessive. But we're not the judge of that. The cost is high and it's full Scot's AOE. So I'm just trying to stay calm. And I think as all of the information has sort of flooded over me, I'm just trying to remain calm and not overreact. And I want to be thoughtful and deliberate and for the board to consider every possible path forward. I really wanna thank Joe Carroll and all the staff that's present in the room as well. But your eloquence really simplified something for me. You said nothing about us without us. And that's been sort of resonating but not in such eloquent language with me all week as I've been considering all of this. And I'm really thankful for the community that turned out because I think that's what it really boils down to is we need to hear from the community. They need to understand this and they need to signal to us how they want us to move forward on this. It's gonna be a collective decision and it's gonna be a collective impact. I think we have a strong diversity, equity and inclusion policy and the board stands by those values. I believe. And we signed on as a board to the Coalition for Vermont Student Equity that was supporting this legislation. So we supported this legislation but as all of the information was coming to us, nobody ever said, well, just by the way, it will also increase taxes by 100%. I mean, that number was never floated to us. So I think the pressure does need to be put back on the legislators not to repeal the law necessarily but to figure out how to guide the districts that are facing a 100% tax increase. We're not, we're not, we're not. We could. As Peter said earlier, we're not. Well, we could. And yeah, I mean, it's, again, back to my stay calm and not overreact. But also not overreact in like, hey, we're gonna have to cut the budget. Hey, we're gonna have to close Roxbury, right? Like also it won't directly cause a 100% increase to taxes for everybody necessarily. So in all ways, just to try to stay calm and not overreact. But just, you know, as a board, I just wanna make sure that the public knows that like we were educated a little bit about this and none of these numbers were floated in the way that they're being presented to us tonight. In fact, there was an article that I read in September in VT Digger just a couple of months ago, a month and a half ago where they said that the, they reported that the Champlain Valley School District would likely face a 16% budget increase. And so then we're looking on this piece of paper at a 84% budget increase. So those numbers just don't make sense to me. I don't understand how in September, yes, an answer. Yeah. The same two percentages. Okay. There's a budget versus tax rate. Yeah, it's budget versus, what you just stated was budget versus tax rate. Okay, so the quote from VT Digger was. That their budget is increasing 16% is what I heard you say. Okay. So it's budget to budget is what they're looking at. So our budget would increase 6%. Our budget's only increasing 6.9% if we were to add $2 million. Okay. And the percentage on there is the tax rating. This is where we all need to go take a little math lesson. Well, that's what I was gonna do earlier. What's frustrating is because people are able to hold different things. Right. And that the messaging is out there and it's easy to misinterpret that messaging. So that was one of my questions. Thank you. You are 100% correct with that. But it's easy to misinterpret. Yeah. What is coming out in the papers. Well, and have any of the legislators responded and said, yeah, we ran the numbers and we knew that this would be the impact so I'm not sure that. I have not. If they did that, I want to be clear. If they did that, I have not heard them say that. Right. So I just want to be clear on that. So I'm just wondering if this might also be sort of new information for them. You know, I'm thinking this might be slapping a lot of people in the face right now. So I had a question about the weights increase on the chart, the graph and how it increases every year. So I guess I'm assuming that I have a misunderstanding about it, but if we're losing 76 pupils because of the new weighting, how does that keep increasing every year? Are we likely to be losing pupils every year or will the impact in years two, three, four, five be less because we're taking that initial cut of 76 pupils this year and then in the following years it will be less? Yeah, so historically we've lost pupils, right? We always talk about declining enrollment. This is a big hit, but then I think your next year it will be, you'll still see a small decrease. It just won't be such a huge hit like it is now. We're in a transition year, right? So we're going from apples to cucumbers and it's a big change. And then when we go cucumbers to cucumbers we're going to be a little bit better off. So can you explain, I mean, this is the first time I'm seeing the graph, but can you explain why the new weights number just keeps going up at the same rate? That's not the weight number. Oh, I'm sorry, which slide are you? It's labeled, it's orange and it's labeled new weights. New weights. It's the tax impact with the new weights. It's not the new weights going up, it's the tax impact with the new weights that would go up. But go ahead Christina. I guess that's my question is, if we're losing the 76 pupils in the first year why would the tax impact of the new weights go up every year at the same rate? So with the new weights, I'm just increasing the budget, $2 million each year. So that was one of the assumptions. I'm sorry, there's three assumptions when you're looking at that orange line. There's an increase to the budget. There's a change in the yield. There's a change in the CLA. So your tax rate's gonna go up every year as you're increasing your budget naturally. So what most likely, so we'll increase our budget most likely each year. The dollar yield will most likely decrease each year because we're pulling from the Ed fund, just what Jim said. And the CLA most likely will decrease because how often do we do appraisals? Every 10 years plus. Every 10 years. So the CLA will most likely decrease. When the dollar yield decreases and the CLA decreases, tax rate increases. When your budget increases and dollar yield decreases and CLA decreases, your tax rate increases. So that line will continue to increase. So what's the difference between the 5% cap and the new weights? Like why are those two numbers different? This increase from FY24 to 25 is more than 5%. So that's why the orange line is higher because we benefit. So what this is really demonstrating is we're gonna be capped at 5% for FY25, 26, 27, 28, and 29. What it demonstrates is when we go from 29 at 1.62, we're gonna jump up to 1.84. And- Because the cap goes away. Because the cap goes away. So instantly your tax rate, you have to pay what you really need to raise in taxes. So when we looked at this and assuming just adding $2 million a year in FY30, we would need to cut five million, roughly $5 million to get the tax rate from 1.62 to 1.70, rather than 1.62 to jump way up to 1.84 cents. Does that make sense? Kind of, I might need to spend some time with this. Yeah. Thank you to totally understand it. It's fair to couple. Let me say it another way. If we wanted to maintain a 5% increase in our tax rate, the very bottom number, what you get on your tax bill, after all the factors are in it, we wanted to maintain just a 5% cap because we've been capped at 5%. So let's just stick with that, right? We would have to cut roughly five million dollars. Otherwise, the cap goes away, you're gonna have to pay $1.84 in order to raise all that money for the budget that you've created in six years from now, which is way beyond 5%. Yes. I guess my question is, if we lose the 76 pupils this year and we increase, I forget what the percentage was, per pupil, we keep it just under that 10% per pupil, then next year, wouldn't we only be facing more typical numbers of loss of pupils and not in the 70s? Yes. Wouldn't the loss be a lot less in the second year than this first year? Well, yes, except that, well, what I think Christina and Libby are helping us understand is, one of the reasons it's not so much about the loss, is less in the second year, but that the tax rate isn't gonna go up so much in FY26 is because that cap is still in place because even though our pupils will only decrease by a small amount from FY25 to FY26, we still have what, we still have a quote unquote bigger budget after all of these factors are put into place, then without the cap, then like, I don't know, whoever deems the size of the budget we ship, I don't know who they are, but that's why the cap for this year is so important is because without it, our tax rate goes sky high. And would that not happen in year two? No, what I'm saying is it would if there was no cap. It won't happen in year two because there's a cap, but in order to be able to get the cap of 5%, we still have to keep the budget low. Right, but yeah, I guess I'm not understanding, like you would imagine that the 76 pupil loss is basically one grade level in this school district, that if we're losing that many students in one year, that that's gonna have a huge dramatic impact in the first year of this five-year plan, and I'm not seeing in the numbers that reflected, I'd like. I think one misunderstanding there is that an equalized pupil is not a kid with their butt in the seat. I understand that, yeah. Okay. All right, so like one. But still, it's equivalent to, right? I think. 76 pupil loss. That makes, I see now what you're asking, I think what the thing is that we are not making up, unless we were to really dramatically cut our budget. Like right now we're talking about maybe cutting it by $1.2 million in order to get to that under 10%. But because we're not doing so much of like an even bigger cut than that, we still have a quote unquote gap to make up in the subsequent next year two, year three, year four. That's why we haven't totally, we're not totally making up for the 76 losing, losing or dropping 76 pupils in one year. The cap is backing us up to keep us from our budget actually matching. So if we weren't looking at the numbers with the cap, and I don't need to spend that much more time on it, if everybody else understands it, then we can move on. But where we say capped at 5%, the increase of $800,000 page, right? And it says capped at 5% or a 75.71% difference. So if we weren't talking about capped numbers, would we see a huge decrease in that number in year two, three, four, five? What we do with our budget? I guess I'm trying to imagine this as like a long, it seems like a five year plan. Yes. And I'm trying to imagine it that way and trying to understand what the impact is in the future years. And that's not clear to me now. And I'm seeing it for year one. I think part of the challenge is that that five year plan, I agree with you, that we do need a five year plan and we're making a lot of assumptions in the five year plan that are hard to make right now. There's too many influences on there. However, with the assumptions that we've made, and this is one of the reasons why it's hard for me to wrap my head around this is because it's unfathomable to me that in five years our budget is a sixth less than what it is now. Like that's unfathomable. I can't wrap my head around that. It's irresponsible because we wouldn't be able to educate the students in our district the way that we really need to. So that makes me question whether the first, then it just, that logic just translates to the first year also, where it's irresponsible. I understand. I understand the phases of grief that you are in right now because I have been there myself. Well, I don't know that it's necessarily a phase of grief. I think it's like just logistically, that doesn't make sense to do that for five years. Agreed. Well, I think what I was doing is spreading one big chunk of pain over five years. Yes. Yeah. You know, explaining that we're being protected and buffered by that 73 people lost over five years with the cap. It's buffering us from that. You're not paying the full cost, the full tax rate that needs to be generated to raise those taxes. So it's a five year protection plan. And then you'll see the big hit. If the weighting is the same in five years for now. Yeah, yes, of course. I'm gonna, I have follow up questions, but I'm going to, I'm gonna take too much time. I have spent my entire professional career for 20 years working at the agency of education and at the tax department. So I feel like I can wrap my brain around this, but I still was really surprised and disappointed when I really was digging into the actual language of the bill. I do think that, and I realize we are, this is the first stage right of denial. I think the legislature obviously had very good intentions and frankly in the same way that we're kind of looking at these weights and really feeling the weight of it, there are districts across the state that are celebrating that they're finally getting this acknowledgement, right? There are districts that really had very little weight for multilingual learners who are, who have been suffering for years. So I do understand that. So this is not a statewide angst. This is very much like some districts are very happy with the results of this weighting and some are in our position. I think Montpelier-Roxbury is being punished doubly in the language that I read in the bill. I was like, well, I would think, well, we would at least get to have some of the sparsity weights or the small school weights for Roxbury school. Certainly we fit into that category. But the sparsity is district-wide, not based on the actual school building, even though it's about geographic distance. And it also explicitly says that since we did cooperate with Act 46 and voluntarily merged and are receiving the merger grant, we are not eligible to receive some of these other weights. So I think that those two things should have never been conflated. The merger act that we carried out six years ago that has led us to have the grant has nothing to do with Act 127 of now. And I think that was a pretty terrible concession that the legislature made, that I'm sure we're not the only schools. Basically, we got punished for following the rules and consolidating. And now we are not therefore eligible for some of these weights that very much should be designed for exactly a building like Roxbury that has the distance and size that these weights were designed to help. I also think Montpelier-Roxbury is being punished because it's sort of the reverse Goldilocks, right? We're the middle of the road as far as spending, we're the middle of the road as far as our size. We don't stand out as any of those outliers like some of the districts do. So because we're like just right, we are not benefiting from these weights either. And we're also not getting, and we're also, it does feel punitive. I would also say that Montpelier-Roxbury is also part of the Center for Career Center, which I'm your representative on. I'm also a state employee and the health insurance increase is significant. And as hitting everyone statewide, and I do think that when we're looking at the salary and benefits, I think it's really important to remember that that is another, there's a huge component of that that we also don't have any control over. There's a statewide health insurance plan that we're given the number and that is the number and that is not up for negotiation. And that is hitting districts across the state, not just us. I'm incredibly, and if anyone's curious, the merger grant that we get is $80,000 a year. I don't know if we didn't get that. If the pupil weight would be more money, I'm assuming maybe it wouldn't be, but that's kind of an interesting question that I'm gonna try to kind of figure out because I do think that those two things should have been kept completely separately and that because we followed the merger process correctly and voluntarily, we're now not eligible for some of these weights. And the last thing I think that is really scary is the secretary discretion on excess spending. The secretary of education position is a political appointee. The language I just double checked allows the secretary, if they do find that it's very sort of up for interpretation language that it was for good cause or not for good cause that a district went over the spending. Then a committee of business managers and superintendents would actually review and judge their colleagues. I'm gonna tell you right now I'm not gonna be on that committee. I'm not a volunteer, and I'm not a Christian. That feels incredibly unhelpful and wasteful and politicized and against the spirit. One last thing, and I realize this is not, these are not questions, but I kind of might have a question when I'm finished, my statement. And then the last thing is just, I'll see you now, I lost my trade of thought. This is very upsetting. Where was I? Merger grant, tax rate review committee. Okay. Politicized. Politicized health insurance. All right, sorry. I lost it. You better give it a good run there. Yeah, thanks. Thanks. Yeah. You said you might have a question. Yeah, I, one of my questions was about the merger grant so I was able to find that in our budget numbers. I am dumbfounded that the yield is anticipated, and I know that this is like, I should understand, but to go from 15,000 to 9,000 is like a massive statewide impact. And I just don't, I don't understand why that number would change that significantly. My understanding of it, and I could be wrong, is that one, there's going to be more long-term weighted average daily membership, more equalized pupils, pulling from the education fund. And then the second factor is that the behaviors of districts who are going to be capped at 5%, all of us, regardless of whether your advantage or disadvantage could be capped at 5%, right? That makeup that we're pulling from the Ed fund to get the rest of our operating budget from, that's going to, just like what Jim said, deplete the Ed fund, which the dollar yield will be closer to a dollar by doing that. So that's my understanding of it, which is enough to be dangerous, but not truly wrapping my head around it. Thank you. And your, the behavior was my last and final. The Vermont education property tax system is considered an incredibly fair and equitable way of doing this. Vermont is like lauded for having a statewide education property tax system, but the legislature has added these incentives and penalties to so many degrees in order to try to manipulate certain behaviors for districts to make spending decisions or to be disincentivized from making spending decisions that really so much of it every year feels more and more out of our control. So, you know, so for example, it feels really strange to me that there was an incentive to consolidate and merge. And now there's incentive to reward or to change the weights for some of the districts that didn't do that, but then penalize the ones that did, even if they otherwise fall under those weights. So the layers of what we as a board and a district actually have the ability to impact is getting smaller and smaller every year. And I would like to, I would like to advocate to the legislature to stop using these various incentives and penalties to try to adjust behavior, but rather be more straightforward about the goal we're actually trying to achieve. The weights are absolutely meant to direct the resources appropriately, but when you, I think the 5% is a concession to districts like us that we're gonna lose out in this, I think that was what that was, is like, well, we'll throw them a bone and say they won't get penalized too much or it'll happen over five years, which we'll happily take, but again, there are very few parts of this budget that we can change. And I feel as a Montpelier resident for 20 years and a parent of a student who's now been at three of the four schools in this district, that this district does not excessively or irresponsibly provide services to our students. I think we're very responsible and very much middle of the road as far as our size and our spending. And I really feel like we operate under no frills. So I'm disappointed that we are being, I feel penalized for that Goldilocks line we are threading where we're just right and that's not working for us. And now I'll stop. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. I wanna echo that. I mean, that's my sentiment. I mean, I strongly support the Goldus bill and I know that there are districts out there that need more support from the state and I'm glad they're getting it, but I also feel we've been an extremely responsible district, both in terms of our spending and also in terms of really building support systems for the students that need it and for the students that I think this bill is trying to benefit. And the sausage making of this bill to put a district like ours in the position we're in seems like a very unfortunate and sorry, result. And I know we can't control it, but it's not where we should be. It's where we are, but it's not where we should be. Brett. I've heard a lot of people making the case, a very strong case that our spending is in no way excessive. In no way could it be considered excessive. And there's nothing in this presentation about the next five years. There's a little bit on the graph, but I heard last week at the end of this, we're looking at a $7 million cut. Now I'm hearing it's a $5 million cut. A lot of numbers are changing as this understanding evolves. Are we basing the five to 10% on what our equalized pupils were in 2024? Or are we basing the five to 10% equalized, equalized calculation based on numbers that are where we've lost 74 students? I don't know whether those are, whether you, and I hear that there was a factor in there, so I guess it's kind of the same if that factor is involved. But if we're looking at, you know, one to $1.2 million needed every year for the next five years, why on earth are we talking about dramatically harming my town on year one? In a two month, in two months, two months, we're gonna talk about killing Roxbury Village School irreparably. It's never gonna come back. In two months, when we're talking about dealing with a problem that has prolonged over five years, we're gonna have pain over five years. Why would we consider closing a school in a two month timeframe when we have to deal with equal amount of pain next year, and following year, and the following year, and the following year? That does not make any sense to me, except that RVS is extremely difficult. It is extremely difficult to run a school with 40 kids. It's extremely difficult to provide the kind of multi tiered, you know, levels of remediation. I'm sorry that my, then acronyms are not flowing right now. It's really difficult to run that school. It's really difficult to get teachers to build the skills, to teach really effectively to a one to classroom that has some kids that are at a pre-K level, and some kids that are in a fourth and fifth grade level. Those are really hard things to do. And so the other factor is there's a greater proportion of kids in Roxbury that need more support than there are in Montpelier. There are a number of kids in Montpelier that need additional support, but there's a greater proportion of that 40 that need more support in Roxbury. And so when you look at the scores in Roxbury, it's gonna stand out. And what would happen if those kids were at Union? It would just dissolve. All of those problems would kind of dissolve. And it would look great from an academic achievement perspective. It's the lowest hanging fruit for a number of reasons. But if we pick it, it kills a community. And to do that in a two month timeframe when we're talking about dramatic pain over multi years is irresponsible. And I think that there's a lot of factors in that that suggestion has come up. And it's a hard school to run. I understand that. And I don't think that it should not be a possibility. It should certainly be a possibility. If we have five years of pain, then we have five years to decide to move kids from Roxbury to Union. And maybe it's decided over one year, but over two months is unbelievable. That's my position. I just have to take a moment, sorry. But I just want to appreciate and echo what Rhett is saying right now. I think that the amount of uncertainty that this has already just created in our community is untenable. This timeline, we are literally talking about seeing our first budget scenarios come before us in the beginning of December. During the holidays, everybody knows how busy that time of year becomes. And we're gonna, in six weeks, we could potentially make a decision to close a school that has an unbelievable historical value, a current value. I mean, schools, the top order, of course, is to educate our students. None of us can deny that schools provide an unquantifiable value when it comes to the fabric of a community. The connections, the ability to go to your school to be seen, to be heard, to be known, to be supported in a rural place that is geographically dispersed and has the challenges that we do, we need a community hub. Should this process play out and we decide that that building could become something else and serve that purpose, that is one thing. But the idea that we would make this decision in six months, and I echo what Rhett says, it's forever. You can take that piece out, but adding it back in, I do not have much confidence that that would happen. And the damaging effect to our community is it's just, that's not palatable in any way, shape or form. I think that in talking to the previous board members who were here during the merger and after the merger, there's the document that I call our marriage contract, the merger document, that it says that after four years of the merger, the board could take a vote and vote to close the school, okay? We signed on to that. However, in the time of the merger, my understanding, Jim, you're the last person standing still on the school board, and thank you, that also shares that collective memory. But the school board members of that time recall the conversation was that we would never close that school based on budget alone. It's not written in the document, okay? But I think if we are to entertain this idea, we have to be able to show, and ideally we would never entertain at year one, but we would have to be able to show the Roxbury community that there is an educational benefit to moving our students from Roxbury to Union Elementary School. I don't know that we can show that in a matter of six weeks with everything else going on with this quagmire. So it's been a very difficult time, the last five days. I am grateful, I think at a meeting that he mentioned, Thailand all PM, I don't know what I would have done in the last five days without it. Me too. I just feel that the position that we have been put in is just, it's outrageous and untenable. And I feel for our districts who, in Vermont, whom very much need this funding and needed it 10, 20 years ago, that is not something that I don't wanna shun, shame, or discount that in any way, shape, or form, but this cannot be ignored. That this act could kinda prioritize the decision of the closure of a school in a six-week time period. And being repetitive, Lynn. Actually, I was thinking that we really, when we're thinking this out, it is a five-year plan, right? It's not a one-year plan. And so I think we're gonna have to put a lot of effort into very carefully looking at how to make that work for five years. We might be able to fix it year one by getting rid of Roxbury, right? But then we've got four more years where we have to figure this out. So I just wanna, no, no, no, I, so I just want us to be thinking long-term when we look at how we're gonna make this work. Okay, I've been out for a long time. Are you calling on me? Yeah, okay, great. Hi, sorry I'm not there, I'm pretty sick. So I'm at home. My name is Jake Feldman. I'm the newest member of the school board. And my day job is at the tax department doing education funding among some other things and I've been doing it for like 10 years. The commissioner's letter that was mentioned earlier that comes out on December 1st, I've been putting that together for eight years. I was also involved in Act 127 with modeling quite a bit. So I understand this stuff pretty well and I understand the new law really well. And there's a lot of people still participating in this meeting, 65 it looks like on Zoom. And also maybe a lot of people in the room, not really sure, but I think that I don't think that the situation is as dire as it feels to people. Our district is gonna be insulated by this 5% cap. We're not gonna be able to, we're not gonna have a level tax rate. That would be, I did some back of the envelope stuff here at my desk and we would have to cut like a third of our budget to have a level tax rate from FY24 to next year. So that's kind of like, not feasible, frankly. So I'm not even sure that I would ask Christina and Libby to even work on it because it would just, it would look so bizarre. So the 5% cap was designed for districts like us and I think that we should leverage it basically. And then as far as like planning for five years, trying to manage the Vermont's Education Fund or know what's gonna happen for five years is impossible. I've tried it in the context of some governor's proposals from the past and it's like, not really, not doable. So I think that in the short term, we should leverage the 5% cap and we should kind of see what happens with the new people weights and also how districts react to them. So I am not as worried as others in the room at all. And I think also a proposal that came out at the beginning of the meeting to try to understand this stuff as well as we could before we started thinking of solutions or budget ideas is a good way to go. I think that getting a handle on the numbers and just some basic education funding stuff is important for us before we talk about budgets. That being said, the 5% cap is gonna be what we experience and yeah, that's what I have to say. Can I ask a follow-up question to Jake? Jake, I appreciate the sentiment that you don't feel it's as dire and that you're not as worried as some people in the room. That gives me some relief. I'm wondering, when you say we are insulated by the 5% cut and that we should leverage that, are you, cat, cat? Yeah, sorry, the cat. Are you saying that we should look at the $1.2 million decrease or $800,000 increase or that we should just move the budget forward at a more reasonable place? Which option are you saying is your favorite? There's no way to add that to the budget. There's no way to have like a normal year over year change in equalized tax rate of like 1% or 2%. You're never gonna get there. You'd have to cut millions and millions of dollars. So what I'm recommending is to proceed as normal. Like if you asked Libby and Christina to prepare some budget where our equalized tax rate was the same. Right. Next year, even though the yield is going down by a third, you would be so shocked to see it that it's kind of nonsensical. So what I think we should do is sort of carry on with providing the great services that we do into next year. And then is my understanding that we would put that budget forward to the voters, they wouldn't know what the secretary's decision would be. On whether they were going to deem it excessive or not at the time that they vote for the budget. So we would just be sort of crossing our fingers and hoping that the secretary would deem it reasonable. Yeah, the 10% thing that was mentioned earlier. I, you know, again would offer to work with Christina and Libby on this a little bit. I don't see how we're going to hit that. I could just sort of back the envelope. I don't, I would need to see the numbers, but I don't see how we could be going 10% year over year. And that being said, like after Act 46, they put in a very similar provision on rate review and no districts were subject to this rate review. So that happened in eight years ago in Act 46. And I just don't see how this group is going to convene and reviewed districts budgets between when the yield bill is passed in late May and when the tax department has to give town tax rates for their bills on July 1st. Like it doesn't seem like that's even going to happen. And, you know, we're not proposing anything crazy that even would, as far as I know, that would trigger, you know, somebody's scrutiny. Like, you know, from what I've heard so far, it's like regular, you know, run of the mill salaries and benefits are mostly the cost driver. So I'm not concerned about the 10% and I do want to reiterate my offer to work on the math with Christina and Libby on that. Because remember, when they compare the 10% change, you can't, it has to be apples to apples. So for FY24, you can't use equal pupils in FY24 and long-term weighted ADM for FY25 as a denominator, because those are different things. So what it says in the bill is when we look at your spending per pupil in FY24, we're going to use long-term weighted ADM for that too. And that makes it apples to apples and that's why I don't see us going up by 10%. Are you suggesting that the numbers we have are wrong? Jeremy, couldn't you hear me so well? I said, are you suggesting the numbers that we were presented are inaccurate? I have to take another look and I didn't see the document post specific. And I'll kind of check, so whatever I'm saying could be off, but yeah. Well, just what Jake is saying is what Christina and I dug into today and asked Brad James specifically, which number to use? And he pointed to the number that we're using. Yeah, so I would say send me the numbers. I want to see what long-term weighted ADM for FY24 isn't for FY25 is, because I haven't gotten that from Brad James, but I would like to check it. And what factor were you calculating for our year-over-year increase? What do you mean what factor, Jake? You calculated some year-over-year increase in per-people spending. I think that that's based on the raises that were just negotiated. I think there's an 18% increase in health insurance costs that is also part of it. And that's basically all of the additions that Christina and Libby added to the budget. It's just we gave raises and teachers, I love you, you deserve them. And we gave raises to Libby the year before and I'm so grateful for what Libby's doing with the district as well. There's an 18% health insurance rate increase. 16, so 16, still pretty massive. I think that those are the only increases. It's not like we're adding any positions, doing any dramatic, anything. There's no way I think that we could possibly be considered excessive. And I don't trust, I don't know that these, everything's changing so fast. I think we're in a tizzy and we need to take a breath. We definitely need to figure out and make sure, yeah, if you're right, Jake, that there's something in the calculation that we can just do the 2 million without hitting 10%, I think we have this year's answer. But I think we have to be damn sure of that if we're gonna, I mean, I do not want to, there's huge consequences of hoping this committee doesn't come together and doesn't find that more than 10% is excessive without knowing that for sure. Well, we have a good chunk of time. We do. Well, we have a chunk of time. I don't know if it's a chunk of time we want. This particular math problem shouldn't be too bad at all. And yeah, so I'm happy to take another look at it. Excellent. Students. I feel like I understand any of this well enough yet to talk about the technical stuff. I am also trying to stick home and mostly very overwhelmed by all of this, but I do want to say our role here is to try and represent somehow all the students in the district. I don't really know how to do that, but even just with the students at Montpelier High School, I have to say this makes me really worried, obviously for all the reasons that everyone's worried, but also because my group of students has been through a lot in the time that we've been in this district. I don't think I need to list everything out. I think people don't know what I mean. It's been an interesting time. And so for that reason, I'm not excited. Also, along those lines, I totally understand the practicality of using the track money to help with this. That seems totally practical. It's also really disappointing. I know that's something that it's a project that would have a massive benefit to the students in this community and the whole community. So I want to make sure that, I don't know, we at least don't move ahead with that decision too fast. Yeah, I just want to make sure that, I don't know, just to state the obvious, any decision we make is gonna have a massive impact on all the students in this district. And yeah, I don't think it's a prospect any of us are too excited about. And I certainly am not. Yeah, I agree with everything Miriam said. I think when Kristen was talking about like community and belonging, I think that for me that my teachers are a part of that. They've helped me through a lot, personal, academic. I think if my teachers aren't at their happiest, I don't know if I would be because the classroom really does reflect on the students. And I was just wondering, was there any discussion on how this decrease would impact students or like the classroom? And if there was like, what did that look like? So to be clear, there isn't a decrease. Okay. We haven't made a budget yet. So all we're talking about is the pressures on the budget and potential scenarios that could potentially happen. So there hasn't been those discussions because we haven't made any decisions at all. We're gonna need direction from the board on that. So those conversations haven't started to happen because we haven't made any decisions. Okay, but they will happen, yeah. So I know we've done a lot tonight on this quarter to nine. I think we've got most of what we need out there. I think one thing we should talk about, and I think it'd be a quick discussion. Our next scheduled board meeting is 15th, then the sixth of the 20th, if I'm correct. I think we need at least an extra board meeting, if not two, and the 29th and the 13th seem like obvious dates to put something on a calendar. What if folks think about that? Do we do a lot of schedule two, but over 29th, which is not Thanksgiving week, it's the week after. And in terms of, do we want two? Do we want one, do we want two? See if we need it. I think scheduling two, and then we can determine if we need it, if we need it. I also think about this board that works incredibly diligently on the committee level, and with all of this going on, I just think that we also really need to give primary focus to the budget right now. I mean, there are weeks that I spend hours on committee work, and it just feels like we need to relax that right now while we give this the focus it needs. Yeah, I think this is our primary focus for the next few. I mean, as we've seen tonight, there's a lot at stake. There's a lot of moving pieces. There's a lot to get our head around. Scott? I think I saw in one of the principal updates, meetings have already been scheduled with Truex Collins. Is that correct for the community visioning? And so, yeah, I'm just wondering how much of this conversation will inevitably filter into those conversations, and if there's a benefit to holding off on that process. Do they, does Truex need to have those meetings like next week and the couple weeks after? We have to change our agreement with them, which I don't think they'd be opposed to. I'm curious why we would. I'm just wondering about the two timelines overlapping and potentially like the very different conversations. In some ways, yes. In other ways, I don't think we're connected. Yeah, so I think understanding if we want them to be connected or not, and if we don't want them to be connected to separate them in time, if we do want them to be connected, then, yeah, then I think that's different. But understanding the impact of one process on the other, I guess, is just, I'm just trying to acknowledge that. I mean, I love the other thoughts. I mean, one thing I think, one thing that's really resonating with these is, yeah, I think it would be ideal if we have to make big decisions about a building like Roxbury, that we have time to do that. I think the Truick's Collins thing will, I mean, the minor sells another year on that. That could be great. And the Truick's Collins thing, I think will help us with that. And I think if that gets off more slowly, that might give us less information. If we are bought an extra year to think about that, to, yeah, I would like to see the process move. We also have to figure out, do we have expenses around this school that we have to budget in because of flood risk? So, I mean, yeah, I think we could probably weave in some things from this budget conversation as the Truick's Collins things go, but my preference would be to keep that going. I don't know if others feel different. Yeah, I'm just saying, it's all happening at once, but I think whatever comes out of the conversations about facility and flooding and long-term planning will absolutely impact how I'm looking at the five-year, 10-year budget. So I want that to happen. I don't think we'll have that information by January. No, we won't. We'll have it in March. Yeah. Right, and so we've, yeah, I'm sorry to publicize. No, that's okay. So I think the sooner we can see that, the better, the more time we'll have to use that information. But I hear what you're saying. We don't want that to get side-railed by the immediate budget conversation either or overwhelmed by that, or, yeah. And from my perspective, that process, that facilities process is part of what I believe that everyone needs to have an opportunity to engage in so that there's openness and transparency and a dialogue with the community. And the prospect of closing RVS as a budget decision completely left gets destroyed. There's no, there's none of that. And so I really hope that the Truex facilities thing can be really successful. And I'm not saying that, you know, hard decisions don't have to be made. And they're gonna have to be made now and next year and the following year. I just really want those hard decisions to have as many voices involved as they can. To the end, I would also, I think we have two community engagement sessions planned with Truex and I think both of them are gonna happen at Montpelier High School. And could we also plan for one to be held at Roxbury Village School? I can ask them. They're all virtual as well. I just think with the nature of the conversation here, it would be ideal if we could create some direct engagement opportunity in Roxbury. And we could structure something else to do that too. Truex College can get to it and they bring them into that. They could do, bring them in virtually and do something else as well. So Jim, you were suggesting two more board meetings? Putting on the calendar? Yeah, put it on the calendar. If we don't need them, we can use it. But yeah, sticking with once, the 29th and 13th. Sure. Are there any objections to that? And also, I mean, if one or two of us can't make it, one or two of us can't make it. So let's do it. I'm sort of hoping that somehow there can be some sort of avenues forward, like a variety of avenues forward that the board can look at. Like what does it look at if we don't change anything? What does it look like if RVS students are at UES? What does it look like if we find a way to use the fund balance in year one or in year two? And the other factor, though, is what do each of those pathways look like in year two and year three, even though it's impossible to predict that? But it feels like having some things to really look at as the best numbers that can possibly be brought together would help us sort of put these decisions in context. Jake, did you want to? That's not Jake. Stay down. Do you want to open up? We have a hand. Do you want to open up for the comment back up? I don't think so. I think we've got plenty of time. We have plenty of meetings. So you can email us a question or, yeah, we have two sessions. Is it Shannon Miller? It's who? It's Jan Pinkas. She's got, I can reach out to her. She's a Roxbury resident, too. Okay. There's someone in the jail. It's not Jane. I just had a real quick comment. You know, I've been on the board since March 2020, which is a really funny time to start serving on the board. Certain things become a lightning rod. Like I hear the emotion and like response and I'm heartbroken to hear that people have been so upset because I feel like this is like step one. So, but I totally get it the same way that like the track, like it becomes like a one word, everyone becomes like a lightning rod, but the actual solution and where some of us are at is much more nuanced than that. I really wanna hear selfishly what Trucks Collins has to say about the middle school because I feel like our teachers don't have what they need at the middle school. So like, I don't want there to be an assumption by anyone that we're all here like, oh, this is gonna be an easy, we're just gonna make a swift decision. I think there's a lot more, I just wanna be clear that, I don't think we're all universally focused on those two lightning rod items and then that's it. Like I just wanna be really clear about that, but there might be a lot more going on. Yeah, and I also, I mean, we wanna be as deliberative as we can. I don't think anyone on this board wants to make any quick decision on anything. RVS included in a particular, I don't wanna stress, I mean, I was part of the RVS community, I was very supportive, I'm very supportive of that school. As a school, I have no desire to close it and close it quickly and I want time for that discussion. But I think we have to get a very clear sense of what our situation is, what our options are. And I'm gonna be honest, that's one of the things we're gonna have to talk about. And to be quite honest, this board has brought that up, but taking on the discussion of making sure RVS is in a viable position, so we didn't have to make a rash decision on the budget. And I think it's partially on this board to say, we've kicked that conversation down the road and we're now at a point where we might have to have it more quickly than we want to, which I think is unfortunate. But no one wants to do that. I think myself at the head of that and clearly, I know what it means to that community, I know what small schools bring people together. They bring people together in Roxbury, they bring people together in Montpelier. They are staples of communities and no one is going to make a rash decision about a centerpiece of a community any more quickly than we have to. Hello, could I'd like to say something? Can you hear me? Yeah, we can hear you. Okay, my name is, I'm Jane Pincus and I just wanted to say thank you all for your consideration. I've lived in Roxbury for over 50 years now and I've seen how the school has developed and grown over these 50 years. My children went there years ago. I just wanted to thank you for the work that Rhett and Kristen are doing for the school and for their passion. And I feel kind of, I want everything to work out. I'm not good at learning about tax information, but I've been really, I've learned a lot from your discussion tonight. So I just wanted to thank you. And I think it would be wonderful to have a discussion here in Roxbury in these next few months if you've got the time and inclination. So once again, thanks a lot. Yeah, thank you. And since the floor opened, I'm to be fair, someone else wanted to get a word in as well. Please give it to under a minute if you can. I was just gonna say, and I sent an email as well. I think it's my fault. I haven't attended before in a budget meeting. And so wrapping my head around what the budget process was before the changes and absorbing all of the information that's happening now. If there's like a budget 101 meeting where there could be some like more information to give time to digest what that was before and all of the acronyms as they threw through the slides to understand that a little bit better. That would be helpful. Yeah, I do want to say that the agency of education or is it BSPA has like kind of a. BSPA. BSPA is like a schoolhouse rock video type thing of the budget. I'm also going to say I've been on this board. I've been on this board since 2016. I cannot tell you that I've fully wrapped my head around what the budget process means. It's very Byzantine. So we will try to make it as simple as possible, but it's not a simple formula. Let's do the policy monitoring and then adjourn we obviously have a lot to talk about over the next few months. Any final comments? I just hope everyone has a good night's sleep tonight and especially the Roxbury community members. I was hoping that the meeting tonight would give me a lot of clarity and it has in some ways and it hasn't in other ways. But as an individual board member, I can only speak for myself, but I would not be interested in supporting a budget that would close a school this quickly. So I want to explore the other options and in most interested in Jake's perspective of pushing a budget forward that's more reasonable and expecting that that will be deemed reasonable by the secretary. And I know that that's gonna require a lot of education. So I'm looking to the community that's in the room to support us in educating other people so that the budget is not voted down if we do go that route. Tylenol PM, sold at CVS. I ran out last night. I ran out last night when we stopped. I just before we move on to the budget monitoring to say, I think where we've landed is we've heard initial thoughts from board members. We've answered some questions and Rhett's request. I was gonna also kind of recap it in the same way Rhett did, which is like, let's see a few general scenarios the next time we come back to the budget. One that is the like, we do nothing. One that is the, you know, what are all the cuts we could make that feel reasonable? What is the really like, like really hard one? You know, like let's see a few paths, not with any specific details, but what did the numbers, how did the numbers play out? I think that's what you were saying, Rhett. And I think that is the logical next step after today. Yeah, yeah, I'm not gonna ask us for that as well. And I think another thing too, Tom, you've spoken twice, plenty of meetings ahead. I appreciate it, but please, I think an email. And then also getting together with Jake and, and... Do some math. And doing some math. Yeah, Tom, didn't mean to cut you off. I appreciate all you've brought to the board tonight, but I think we do need to limit comment and you have spoken and the other people had not had a chance to speak, which is why I opened it up. But you can send us an email and I certainly hope that you and everyone else, you know, it's fine. A lot of us would be lingering around after the meeting too. Yeah, for questions. If you want to spend our year for a minute. And again, like remember, we have not made, we've not made any decisions and just, and also just make it clear, it's just because we look at something doesn't mean we're going to do it. I mean, we need to look at a lot of things. And most of the things we look at, we are not going to do. The policy monitoring report. Do the motion to approve? So moved. Second? Let's just further, I could say, are you doing all three at once, Emma? Oh yes, policy monitoring, D4. If somebody else has the agenda open, I guess they should. CM and F20. There you go, Emma. Yeah. So moved. Second. Any discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Aye. I moved to adjourn. Second. Second, all those in favor? Aye. Aye. Thank you everyone.