 meeting to order, focus of the meeting, we're going to approve the budgets, the OSSD and the RTC, and set budget information meeting dates. Is there someone willing to serve as meeting evaluator today? Paul? Will? I just want to back to that book, Paul, which book. Thank you. Big book. Check that one out. All right. Public comment is first. Do you have anything to add or say or question? Okay. All right. So first is to approve the annual report to voters, which is inside our agenda. Is this lanes or is this mine? Mine? Okay. So we read this over last month. I fixed the typo, the enrollment. Is there anything else that anyone wanted to add or change before we approve it? Hopefully, yeah, you guys have had a chance to read it since we got this material on Thursday. So if there's a motion to approve as written, that would be great. Motion to approve as written. All those in favor? Aye. All right. That will be our annual report to voters. That was quick. Luckily, we talked about it last time. All right. So the informational dates, the budget informational dates have to be within 10 days of our Australian ballot vote, which is town meeting the first Tuesday in March. So that means that our budget information date needs to be before the fifth of March, within 10 days. So I don't know. What's your pleasure? We will hold it in Randolph, right? So generally it's at the school in the, we usually do it in the theater, the auditorium. Yeah. Usually it's like 6.30, I believe. What day do we want to do it? And it can't be March 4th because that's the annual meeting. Right. The Monday before is, is the annual meeting, which can't be the same day. Do we want to hold it on Wednesday or Monday? Wednesday the 27th? It's fine for me. I think I'm out of town. They're all during school vacations. I was going to say, yeah, that's the only caveat that I was going to say. Yeah. We can't do it not on school vacation because 10 days, you know, it starts that Sunday. So. Okay. Is it calendar days or is it? No, it's, the way it was worded. It sounded like calendar. So yeah. So we're sort of constrained to vacation week. You know, if you want to keep it on a Monday, it doesn't matter really to me. I can't make Tuesday. So that's our pleasure. Oh, Wednesday. Wednesday works for me. Okay. Let's make it Wednesday at 6.30. Okay. So that's the 20. What's that day? The 27th? 27th. 6.30. We said high school and we want to do it in the auditorium. I mean, I think the media center is easier to have a discussion. It's traditionally been the auditorium. I have no idea why. Are you comfortable starting in the auditorium and then moving to, excuse me, starting in the media center and then moving to the auditorium if we get that many people? Sure. That might make more sense. Yeah. Let's do that. Yeah. Yeah. The annual meeting is always in the auditorium. I believe we've had the media center for this kind of thing. That could be. All right. I could be mistaken. Yeah, I think so. Okay. So let's just do the media center then at 6.30 on that Wednesday. Too many people we can always just switch over. Okay. Given the attendance and the other budget information meeting so far, we had probably 30ish, give or take five at Randolph and there is one scheduled for each of the other schools coming up towards the end of this month and I think the first or second week of February. Yeah. January 30th in Brantree and then February 13th. February 13th here. How will this budget information meeting different from those? The information is a little bit more refined. There were a couple of minor changes. Some of them kind of major in terms of the potential tax increase in each of the separate towns in a good way since that meeting. But other than that, they will be fairly similar to each other. A lot of talking about what the rationale is behind the reason that we're looking for this, what we hope to address, what we hope to fix and the fact that it's a one time deal. We're not going to be looking for this year after year. We're just trying to do kind of a correction, if you will, and then kind of go back into the study state that we're in. So people get that idea that we're not coming back for the time after time after time. And the annual meeting, is that also at 6.30 on that Monday? It's at 6 o'clock. That's what has traditionally been. It's on the morning. Okay. I mean, I think if you wanted to change it to nights and nights, we have to change it. I don't know whether there's any reason to make them the same or... Okay. We'll just leave this then. Any other discussion about the budget informational meeting? That's on March 4th. The annual meeting is March 4th, at 6. And it's not okay to do those two meetings the same night. We looked into that, because it seems to make sense, but you're not. Yeah, I was wondering if it was 6 o'clock at the start of the meeting. Unfortunately, we can't do them the same time. All right. Board of Management and Governance approve OSSD budget and warning. That also is in our packet. I'm going to make sure everybody's got a copy of it. I'm going to apologize for being a little discombobulated in your start today. We're trying to get things set up to do a little budget presentation, at least to show you the numbers and kind of a general outline of what we're looking for, because we've kind of talked about the specifics at the last two meetings. That's too old to connect with this. So I'll talk a little bit about the general overview, but you do have the forms that Robert prepared that have the same numbers and whatnot on them. So I do apologize for that. Let me see if I can pull this up here. So I'll kind of go back a little bit to the last meeting that we had, and we talked about a couple of important things to start the conversation. And the first is that there are really three budgets, right? We've got the Raven budget, we've got the OSSD budget, and we've got the Technical Center budget. And each of those, the funding comes from different sources for the most part. The one we are primarily talking about right here and now is the overall district school budget, the OSSD budget. We will also talk about the Technical Center budget at the end, because that still is outstanding and needs to be improved. Raven was already approved at a previous meeting. Overall strategy, before I get into the number totals here, in terms of building this budget, was spending a lot of time, weekly meetings with the cabinet, getting a feel for where we stand. Our academic performance has been middling at best. And to try to really get a strong handle on ways that we can kind of turn things around and do a little bit better than we've been doing in the past. The cabinet was great. We met weekly for about two, two and a half months. The biggest focus when we began discussing this last year was the students with the trauma-based behaviors, that they are coming into school because of those behaviors. They are unavailable to learn. So they're missing learning day after day when they come in. And that's on good days, on bad days. They can sense things going on around them as a danger because of the traumatic stress that they've been under. And they will have a meltdown that will stop learning in the classroom for an extended period of time while people try to get things back on track. So it was taking a look at those trauma-based behaviors. It was realizing that they've been around for a while. It was also realizing that as those students go through the grades and go through the years within the schools, that we're not really fixing the problem at all. At best with the current models that we're using, we're getting them through the day. We usually sit them down with a paraprofessional. We're up to 26 paraprofessionals in the district, which is a lot. And they get them through the day. They're able to help them regulate their behaviors. But the problem is that when the paras do that work, the students never learn to regulate the behaviors for themselves. And so the problem never gets better. And so we have this kind of mini pipeline that's going on where as the students will get up through the grades, they'll get out of the elementary school into the middle high school. They don't have all the supports in terms of paras there, and then they kind of strike out. A lot of them end up in out placements, which is very expensive. We have two students this year that are what to about 247,000. So it can get quite expensive to try to try to work with these students. So the goal is to put programming in place at the early levels within the elementary school to identify these students and to remediate them. And the sooner that we do it in their work through the grades, the better off we are. Because if we can address it before those behaviors and the traumas become so ingrained, we're going to be better off will be able to remediate. Whereas if we wait six or eight years before we're able to attack this and work on it with them, things just get reinforced and it may be impossible to and because a couple of years ago, I was on the board, Brett had gone, he had been working with the new multi tier system of support support. And that has started prior to so how can we do we have a bunch of students that came in that were couldn't you couldn't handle with it? MTSS? A couple of pieces. And it's an exception. It's an exceptionally good question. The first piece is that our special education population has been growing by 1.5% per year overall across the district. Now, when I say that, that's 1.5% more of the entire student population every year that goes by is our students that go on the IEPs from the previous year. So it's it's a dramatic jump. The students that have these disabilities now tend to be the students of trauma. Whereas with the MTSS that tiered system supports and a lot of the supports that we have in the building right now are really geared toward to academic problems. Yeah, so it's a structural issue. Yeah, but it in it impacts can be emotional emotional disabilities. It can be as well. And so we've got it. We got structures in place that are really geared up for academics, but not so much for the behavioral component. So what ended up happening is as those students were coming in and coming in, because there wasn't a great structure to be able to remediate them to be able to deal with them. The solution was to add Paris. The Paris have been going up for the last three years, again, about. And so we're up to 26, which is, you know, blown 750 thousand or so we were talking about earlier today for those pairs. So the hope is, is if we get those those programs and the programs will stay, they have a cost to them. But over the course of time, we can whittle away at that 750,000 in Paris, and nothing wrong with the Paris. But again, the work that they do is not long lasting. It gets the through the day, but it doesn't give the kids any skills. Alright, so we've done some whittling when I first came in after talking with the cabinet, we did that pie in the sky budget, which was about an 18% increase. The last time we met, we were down to about a 12.8% increase. We are now at an 11.2. And we've whittled things down pretty much as far as we comfortably feel that we can and still address these problems. This is going towards putting in the preschools, which will will help with the trauma based behaviors. It's putting in the therapeutic program at the elementary school at Randolph Elementary to serve the entire district, entire elementary district. It includes adding 3.5 special educators to help with the fact that we've got increasing enrollments and to reduce their caseloads to manageable levels. It also helps some with some behavioral interventionists that we're bringing in, math interventionists that that's required that we don't want to depend on title for and also an individual up here at Brookfields whose job is to help out because we don't have a full time principle here. Brookfield has got 26% of its population are students with disabilities. Not all of them, you know, severe trauma, you know, there are a number that are academic, but they are also growing by leaps and bounds. Not having a full time dedicated principle here has caused a problem. And the problem is, is that when a student melts down in a classroom, there is no place for that student to go. Nobody who can come down, co-regulate with them, get them calm down and sit back and process with them. So hopefully they're learning some skills so it doesn't happen again. So are you going, are you, you're, you're looking for someone who has the background for behavior. Behavioral. Not an educational leader, which is the job. Yeah, so when we first started the discussion, it was talking about, you know, do we need like an assistant principal at Randolph so that David Roller can spend all this time here. And when we really kind of looked at the problem, what they really need is somebody to come in and work with those students. So getting a behavioral, high level behavioral interventionist to be able to do that work, I think is going to, going to help out tremendously. It also includes adding a full time regular education teacher here because they need it in terms of the growing student population. And folks also have to remember that the population, the enrollments across the district are growing. I believe we're up about 50 kids this year. I expect another fair jump next year because there are still some of the schools around us that have closed their, their high schools and some of those students are still making some final decisions. So I think we're going to see some Tung Bridge students and some Washington students as well in the coming year. And we've got the buses going after already. So let's put the numbers on this and I hate starting off with that 11.2% increase because it sounds horrible and huge and it is. It's a good increase but towards the end what I'll talk about is what the actual impact will be on the average taxpayer in each of the ten. So I think that'll help delineate things a little bit better. So where we're going from in terms of the budget expenditures with students is last year it was 16.6 million. This coming year it's going to be 18.5. And we're going to talk about federal grants towards the end of this because that's going to make numbers look bigger than they are. So 16.6 million to 18.5 it's an 11.2% increase. We had talked earlier about spending thresholds right. We said there's this really high threshold up here that's currently 18,311. That if we cross that threshold in terms of what we're spending per student what will happen is we will be paying for all of the expenditures. The local taxpayers will be paying for everything above that threshold. So when we did this increase we tried to stay under that threshold so that the rest of the taxpayers in Vermont are helping to subsidize our increase. And they subsidize about 33% of the increase overall when we were kind of looking at the numbers today. So where we're at with this budget is our per student expenditures will be a hair over 17,000. It will be 17,183 dollars per student. That gives us over a thousand dollars per student buffer in case you know teachers get their raises next year. We got to be able to buffer that in so we don't hit that high threshold or if there are any other costs that come our way. And that thousand dollars per student if you look at the fact we got about 880 students here it's about 900 thousand dollars. So it's given us a pretty good good threshold. And again as long as we are under that 18,311 dollars per student the rest of the taxpayers in the state are kicking in 33%. Last year that 33% amounted to 4.4 million dollars of our 16.6 million dollars. So it is quite significant. A couple of things just to be aware of in terms of federal grant monies and Robin may be able to explain this a little bit better than I is right we're shooting for 18.5. Problem is that there were changes in the last year where we have to state our total expenditures which we didn't have to do before including the money we receive in federal grants. Right money came in we spent what came in it didn't impact the local taxpayers at all. But now we have to report it so that everybody is aware of the total expenditures for students. It's going to make it look like we're asking for a million dollars more than we are. So with the inclusion of those federal monies there even though they're not affecting local taxpayers at all the budget request is going to be for 19.4 million. So about a million of that is that that federal grant. But what we're looking for in terms of state taxpayers is that 18.5. That make a little bit of sense in terms of does that mean we're actually spending more than 17 one per student. We're actually spending because we're dividing that million. So we're above the threshold then if you include the federal funds because you said we had a nine hundred thousand dollar buffer but we're actually getting a million plus a federal fund. So it doesn't go toward it doesn't go towards hitting that threshold. It's just reporting the federal funds that that we're receiving because that's never been done. Okay. So but that doesn't that's that's not so it doesn't go into per pupil cost that just show and show and show and show and what we're spending for federal money. But but the unfortunate aspect is is that when we go out you know and you go to the taxpayers and they're voting they're going to see 19.4 and it's going to make it look like it's even bigger than what we're really asking for. So that's going to be part of the communication piece on all this bottom lines for for Braintree. We'll go through Braintree Brookfield and Randolph because their common levels of appraisal are a little bit different. You know if their common levels of appraisal were that were the same for everybody then you know what their increases would be would be the same. For Braintree we are talking about a ten point six six cent increase per hundred dollars of assessed home value. Average home value in Vermont is two hundred and one thousand. So their average tax increase in Braintree to get this done this year would be two hundred fifteen dollars which comes out to seventeen eighty nine a month. Seventeen dollars eighty nine cents a month. The other thing that people have to keep in mind is that there is a sensitivity threshold if your family income or your household income is less than ninety thousand dollars you won't be getting hit for that full amount. I think it's they were talking about changing it I don't know if they did not the threshold of ninety thousand dollars but I think it's if you're under ninety thousand dollars in your houses and assessed at more than four hundred thousand dollars you know you you you're gonna get benefit from that sensitivity threshold you won't be paying as much of an increase. Questions on Braintree. Brookfield Brookfield got hit the most this year in terms of their their common level of appraisal. So for Brookfield we're talking a thirteen point five eight cents increase per hundred dollars of assessed home value. Again average value being two hundred and one thousand in Vermont this would be a two hundred and seventy four dollar increase for the year. It's not though it's not going to be done until twenty twenty one. So you're your local and Robin can correct me if I'm wrong your local assessment is right set by your assessors but what change is this how the state is assessing your values. Right. Relative to it. Yeah and so you guys were assessed I think what was the last hundred and ten or hundred. This is why yours jumps because you guys are the low ones last year. So that for you guys that two hundred and seventy four comes out to twenty two seventy nine a month. And again the income sensitivity threshold is there. If your household is making ninety thousand dollars or less you won't be paying that full amount. Randolph the bottom line would be a ten point nine nine cent increase. So that means on the average home in Randolph the average tax increase would be two hundred and twenty one dollars which is eighteen dollars and forty four cents a month and again same thing. Income sensitivity threshold is there. Two hundred and one thousand four hundred dollars. Vermont average. Yeah it was I actually tried to get in and see what it was in the town that was hard to figure out. So in this budget what is there for I mean I see mostly special ed and behavioral interventionist how about regular ed. Are we putting any money towards besides one Brookfield teacher. Or are we just going to at this point in time there is and this is part of the discussion. I think that the high school is still deciding. They were looking at either a director to take over kind of the remediation. They've got a bunch of different programs that help students that are struggling. They were looking for a director for that. They were also looking for a full-time foreign language teacher. And I don't know which then. To keep the two. So all this in terms of the teachers with the exception of what's going into the public preschool. Right. Because that serves everybody. All that is to address this huge increase in the special education populations that we've seen. Remember the part of addressing this issue is that the special education budget leaving it unaddressed. It's been going up 15% per year. We're at 3.3 million of a 16 point. Actually I take that back next year. We're at 3.3 million for overall spending on the on the sped budget out of you know what'll be an 18 million dollar budget. It's a huge chunk. So if we can find ways to kind of whittle that down while serving the students to give them skills not only so that they're successful here but so they're successful in their lives afterwards. It's going to be benefiting everybody. And that's kind of the goal. You know we're putting this in because the structures don't appear to exist to be able to remediate this problem. We want to remediate it. So two three years down the line when this stuff kicks in the cost aren't going down. And then we can shift those resources elsewhere. I think an important part of messaging and promotion especially as we try to attract kids from neighboring districts is to emphasize what we do provide for the top achieving students what you know what AP courses are we doing what what other assets do we have as a district instead of dwelling always on the remediation the behavioral issues the trauma and this and that it sounds like so much often of our messaging is around those issues. You know when we talk about the half days and whatever you know I think promoting ourselves as also able to you know challenge those and provide for the top achieving kids is really important. And so maybe that needs to also be part of you know the promotion and publicity around this budget is you know. We are doing this while maintaining X number of you know AP courses and whatever else we're able to provide the top kids and we've got got quite a bit between the exchange programs we've got the AP programs are connected with the vast system. But we need to promote that. Yeah. So yeah agreed. But I would imagine too late that this is part of kind of a longer term vision that this budget year there's a focus on these. Yeah because if we can if we can free up those resources we can put them we can put them to different use down the line. Right. That's kind of the message as well as that. As long as we articulate that you know because I think sometimes we just sort of go down this downward spiral of what we're doing quickly right now rather than looking at the larger picture like what else are we doing well you know. And there is quite a bit. I mean there there are there to step aside from this for a little bit. We had 15 new kids last year in a state whose enrollments are declining. There's a lot of good that people people see especially in the high school year. And it's it's unfortunate and I agree with you 100% we're very focused on this because that's where the problem is and this problem solvers that's kind of tends to be where we focus our effort. But you're right on the communication piece about the stuff that we're differentiating for the gifted learners. I think it's important especially as we reach out to the neighboring districts. I agree. Okay. Can I ask a specific question around the. Intervention intervention program in Randolph without providing transportation from kids throughout the district to Randolph. Yeah. And so that that's part of the hope it's centralized in Randolph. It's an expensive program because it's got the adjustment counselors in their special education teacher whatnot. But you can't duplicate it in all places but we've got students across the district that have those needs. And so it's a matter of prioritizing part of it from the different schools is if you know the students identified as a good candidate. It's a discussion with the parents and it's saying hey are you willing. The one agreement however for the most part is in general if you go down there you stay. You finish up your career because that's where those supports are those specific supports that serve your child. Have you thought about the contingency of family for some reason doesn't want their child to be transported. Yeah. At that that point in time. I'm getting into some semi touchy stuff. It would come down to if it's a student on IAP which most of these students will be. It comes down to what the team feels is best for the student because we are one district. So the team could make the very strong recommendation that this is the best placement for the student given their needs. By the same token the parent can always reject that recommendation. You get what's called the state put IAP. They stay doing exactly what they had before until some sort of agreement is reached. Sure. And the reason I ask is you know with all these resources being put into the program. Yeah. I just want to make sure the thinking has kind of followed through to make sure that it's a viable option. Yeah. And part of the discussion in a case like that is look you know if the parents are really against it will the kid be successful. That's that's got to be part of that that broader discussion. So then your whole attempt to save money and to improve behavior you know of the child up here without the supports. Are we then going to get a pair up. And then adding more. No you got you've got again part of the goal piece if we look at work field in particular is if everything goes through keep our fingers crossed. You've got that behavioral interventionist up here. And that's the work that they do. It won't be quite as intensive. But that's a person like I said the kid has the melt down they can pull them out. They can do a little bit of desensitization in terms of the trauma with them. They can also you know do that processing depending upon the age of the student OK you know what's a better what's what's a better tack let's try it and if it fails they come back they come up with something else they try it again. But the biggest piece is if the students can process eventually they get it. But the problem is you got to give them that time to kind of calm down get the fight or flight to slow down before they can process and that's what you know space like this will a lot of happen. There's some other things that we're talking about putting in a little little footprint skill sets. They'll put little footprints on the on the floor around this room that face in different directions and have the kids do something small each one. And so if the kids really blowing out and really uptight usually when they go through a little little walk like that by the time they're done there they're calm enough you can they're regulated you could you can work with them and try to get things to improve really talk with them and get things moving forward. So a lot a lot of pieces to this is a big big thing big deal. So I did I did hear a little community comment from that. So there's a lot going on with the younger kids. But I don't know my kids are bigger and they're older. I don't know if I want to be I don't know if I want to be spending extra money. And what's the long term plan you sort of mentioned. So we've got a sort of I'm assuming you kind of have a plan and you said we're going to spend this money but then we're going to conserve it back again. How are you going to manage to do that. So I heard more people are we already now going to be at this higher level of spending. So yeah. So we've got we've got two things that are going on right now. We've got the maintenance structures that are in there right now which are those 26 Paris right. And there are some other parts and pieces that kind of go along with that that are very expensive and not not producing any long term results. Got to keep that in place to support the kids while we do the new and then hopefully if this does its job we can start weeding away the paras and so this comes down. Now you know we could cut the budget. I don't think we're going to be able to do that because I have a feeling our enrollments are going to keep going up for a while. Or what we can do is that as these these resources become available we can pump them into other things other programming. What would you like to do with the high school that's that's nice and fun. I mean if they've been a lot of discussions especially kind of building on to the makerspace that they put in there and building some classes around that to really connect some kids. So there's quite a things that we could do. We're at a point where if we get this you know barring you know getting a huge population of kids that come in out of the blue that we've got the resources that we need at that point in time as things change we should be able to shift it around. We fix things over here that freeze up resources to put over here. And we're able to do that. Do you have the data to sort of show me how are we going from like one cent to send one cent to all of a sudden ten cent. From what I could tell I look at and Robbins Robin can probably speak historically but it looked like the increases were you know about two percent one to two. But I think taxpayers look at this are they going to go. Oh my gosh and do we have any idea how municipal rates are coming in. I mean because if people are like I mean I mean Adolfo is. He's been doing quite a bit to try to get things in control. It doesn't look like he's asking for more. I mean I mean that was a whole discussion about the police station in Randolph. You know we had a discussion earlier today about the fact that they're trying to lease out the. Oh what do you call it the town not the town don't they have a prettier word for it. The transfer station. The transfer station of the landfill they're actually going to lease it out to a company to come in and put up solar panels up there and generate some revenue that way. And then they're not going to save a lot because they're not a big electricity user but they'll save a little on the electricity as well as. So it looks like he's trying to keep things steady state I can't say for sure. But we do kind of email back and forth right now he's just trying to manage things and make things work as best he can with what he's got. Can I ask what the reaction has been that I unfortunately haven't been able to make it to the information I mean that you have recently right. And I quote I quote we wish this was done a long time ago. And that's been the the reaction since last year matter of fact I got a little grief that I didn't push a little harder for more last year. Again that's a you know that's 35 people. I have not received any negative emails or or or anything in terms of the budget request at this point in time. There may be a lot of people that are just holding their tongue. I don't know. But you know we there's a responsibility here that's as as being a member of their community you recognize that being a member of community means you give up a little bit so that everybody gains and I think that's where we're at. If we do not address this problem what ends up happening. We get 15% increases the special education year after year. They're switching to a block funding system that we may not be sustainable because it's geared towards fixing kids with academic problems as opposed to fixing kids with trauma based problems. We may be in a real bind if we don't get a handle on this. And the state kind of has been saying this. But again their their focus was a little off. Is like yeah the reason we're looking at changing the special education funding is because there's better ways of doing things. We need you to do those. But instead of getting us to do the better ways first and then cut the budget they did the other way around. And the other issue with it is again their their design was mostly for kids with academic issues. Are you getting any pushback from the state in that we always were sort of coming in very low. And all of a sudden we're going to be coming in. We're not long we don't cross that threshold. Matter of fact a couple of the. Talking with the superintendents probably just pulled the numbers from somewhere was talking with them the 17,000. You know a lot of them are in the low 17,000s around us for good. We've been we've been we've been we've been about three four hundred dollars per student. A hundred dollars per student under the state average. Yeah like like last. And what what happens when you do that we had a little discussion on on Wednesday is that you know teacher salaries are going up by a little over 3% per year. Your budgets are increasing by you know 2% per year. So over the course of time what you've got left over to run your program and things goes down. Now yes there were drops there were drops in enrollment. We consolidated so we saved it. I mean we weren't really. Yeah but but enrollment is all the innovation that's already here and this building was basically you know we put a lot of money into this building over that over time and I don't I wouldn't say instruction necessarily was impacted by that because we were saving money and all these other things. But you got to got to remember that the instructionally because we did you may not have been here we did the end reports instruction instructionally we are very poor in terms of their student performance APS back on the national. Well that was just that one flip. The rest. We had been average before that. It's it's historic I did a five or six year average with the data. Previous meetings I remember we were. I mean that was we were we were putting a lot of emphasis that the staff and leadership was they weren't putting they were putting emphasis on let's focus on the assessments that we use. And the knee caps because back then it was the knee caps because that data came in so late. That was hard. It's useful really. And you have to really you have to teach to test to get great score. So if I remember correctly the leadership was working toward let's be average and and we'll work on. So we think I mean the data wall they've been working on that for quite a long time now. At least. We were given the impression that things were going well. But that's where I would say and I will say this to my fellow board members. We have been listening to how things are being done. And even to this point no one has said this is where we are. This is the benchmark for where we want to be. And then we compare and say are we hitting the moment we're looking for. And as we go to spend this additional. Pretty huge increase. That is something that I think is a board need to make sure that we're holding the leadership's feet to the fire to say OK. You're putting in this resource. Where do you think you're going to be and use that data wall data. If that's what you want to use but give us these benchmarks that you're going to be shooting for. And I want to know in 2019 this is where we're at. This is where we're targeting and this is where we are because we haven't gotten that kind of information yet. We've gotten it on the very tail end with SAT scores and you know a compilation of things at the very end. But we and we sort of did the need. I mean I remember sitting through me cap things from the time I've been on the board for quite a long time. A little bit of spell off the board. But our need caps have been sort of in the average range. And I don't know if now with SBACs are we planning to be the top district. No. I mean I don't know. When I think you know historically the terminal the terminal testing days we'll use math for an example. So you know the kids will take the kneecap or SBAC or whatever it is at various points along the way and then they take it in the 11th grade. Historically whether it was kneecap or whether it was SBAC 11 percent of our kids were hit in proficiency. Right. That's nowhere near the state. When you compared it to the rest of the state it was worth. We're we're through. We're we're through the average range. Matt math the average I think was running 37 percent. We were at 11 board members. There was a present. But if I remember correctly we were pretty much in the average range or at least that was what we were told as board members. I think you know you were you were a little below average. You were closer. The LA we were generally average or slightly above. Yeah. 11th grade was always our poor point. But we weren't terrible. Is that. I mean you're the new leadership. You can you can sort of say these are the benchmarks that I want to use. And this is my rationale for using it. This is what I think it's a good test. And it's going to give us that data that we need to say yes we're meeting these outcomes that we're doing for. And. And the math the math the math piece the reason it's a focus is because it's the as I've kind of gone around and talked with folks around and know what's happening in in education. The math is what's holding our kids behind. They won't go over and they won't apply over it that plastics because they don't have algebra too. And when only 11 percent of your kids and 11th grader they're not going to. They don't have the skill set. So we got we got to at least get them up to that point is that algebra too is a threshold. You can't apply to state colleges now unless you've got that on your note. So part of the discussion but but part of that we actually looked at the data on Wednesday a little bit. And what you saw was the you know the English was steady here. It was a hair below below the state average. The as the kids go through the grades and math it does this it drops. It starts off at average you know at the low elementary and it drops each year as as you kind of go through. And I think it was Damian brought it up. We're talking about you know why is that. Well it's quite possible that the reason that you're seeing that is because of the trauma based behaviors. I know the teachers are doing a good job. I've seen them in the classrooms. And one of the reasons I say that is because math is a foundational course what you do here determines how well you're going to do in the next year. If you're coming in unavailable to learning because of these trauma based behaviors you're losing you're losing days each week where you're not able to learn you get to the next year in line and that may be the reason for that that decline. Among parents among even employers there's not always that understanding that you really need this because I run into it all the time and in general American kids don't enjoy math and they're sort of we have this mindset of I'm good at math I'm great at math or I'm terrible at math and I don't want to have to do any more math and it's sort of teaching them that you couldn't do math and getting over that hump. But anyway, because I run into it in my work kids want to go to college and I look at their transcript and they don't have the math that many colleges are looking for. So that's where with this flexible pathways to I'm a little it's a total sidetrack but just so you're aware of it is again when we look at so I serve the tech centers and Harvard and Randolph and colleagues that serve the other ones in the state is as kids sort of move off to the tech centers they sort of feel like well I'm getting this embedded math and that covers me and it doesn't especially a lot of these more technical careers now that are requiring that higher level math so we need to be careful that we're educating those kids before they make that transition and supporting their instruction. And that and that's you know part of part of what's going on or at least the plan is with this is this idea that you know if you're if you're in 10th grade and you've missed big chunks every year for the previous nine years I can't help you I can help a little bit but I'm never going to get you back up to that that level of where you should be in the time I got left. So the hope is is addressing these problems early the kids are getting the skills so even if they don't like math they can at least feel confident about it you know have to have some self-efficacy in terms of believing that believing in themselves as a learner in mathematics. If you're coming in every day and you're stressed out and you're traumatized and you're sitting in a classroom that you can't perform in because you don't have the foundational skills which isn't really your fault that's traumatizing in itself and that that'll really turn off kids and so part of the goal but a lot of it with this budget is it's this idea that you know it really was a lot of concerted work with the cabinet pulling from them what their needs were on the ground going around doing visitations and confirming you know yeah yeah I see it I can buy buy what you're selling and really just trying to make sure that I'm given them what they what they need what they see in their in their schools to make things happen so that's really we had the the principles from the elementary school give a presentation on this data at one point you weren't there and I wonder if we could have that sent to us again so we can review it if we wanted to have that as a resource in case anyone was asking us yeah I can I can send it to you as well I can send theirs to you I'm also going to get you this I apologize like I said without the the screen there I'll get this to you as well I can give you all the data let's move on to the tech center we have a lot to cover tonight so we also have to approve the Texas center budget do we need to actually vote on this budget yeah okay so we should while we're still on the OSSD budget we need to vote to approve it as as Lane has presented it we've had discussion is anyone ready to make a motion to approve the budget make the motion to approve the budget I second any further discussion are you ready to vote okay all those in favor of the budget is written aye anyone opposed alright budget is approved okay thank you very much I don't know what will happen we will be doing quite a bit of communication we've already stated and if it doesn't go through we will do the best we can we'll go got that we'll never change but I think it's I think it's important to try thank you very much just to note I don't see we're doing some front porch form I think that's an important outreach that was the she connected me with that thank you for doing that please continue alright so we've got the RTCC the new iteration of the RTCC budget in front of us Lane you want to present that to us as well so when we came together last time for the first vote the tuition came in at 18,273 which was high that was a jump up of the previous year from 16,489 we had talked a little bit at the time that a lot of how much we could whittle that down to was really dependent upon enrollments that we didn't have a lot of control over the amount of funding that the technical center gets and the amount of support that they get depends upon the last three years of enrollments and for the majority of that point in time their enrollments were low they were down probably 116-ish 109 in there and we were actually at the lowest point in that averaging this year unfortunately we have 147,150 kids in the tech center I shouldn't say unfortunate it's actually a great thing but it's going to take a little bit of time for that increased enrollment to catch up in terms of the averaging for the budget we cut or I should say Jason did a lot of work cutting a lot of pieces he's got it down to probably pretty low as he can whittle it and he actually it's about what I said he's at 17,925 per student and a lot of that at this point in time he's cut so much that it's really out of our control because it really comes down to those averages those enrollment averages that's the controlling factor here right now because everything else has been kind of weeded away that's a 2.1% increase from the previous year hopefully as if the enrollment stays up where it is over the course of time the means of tuition can come back down to what some students who are so for each town and my signature to my name is the question maybe I can just come in and talk to you but so this budget is not associated with with the exception that we send most of our kids that most of the kids that go to the US to go to the tech center or our kids so we pay the tuition so it's part of this budget in that new budget for the tuition to the tech center so that's where we pay into this how many kids do we have at the tech center this year do you know it can just be a ballpark if it takes you this year where this current semester was like 140 but up 140 total about 70 is oh 70 is ran off okay so half of them are ours and did Jason think that this would impact other schools? no when it was up at the 18,000 level I said you need to do some talking about this because I'd be more comfortable I said I recognize you've got that limit because of the the enrollment piece of it but it'd be more comfortable if it were under 18,000 he had spent a good amount of time actually talking with his faculty about what they thought was doable they're kind of at their maximum you know in terms of what he likes to see that building out they can only have up to 12 per program and a lot of them are pushing that so he's at kind of the ideal enrollment right now in terms of whether or not it'll have an impact on other schools by law it can't if the kid wants to go yeah they have in the past and boy they better not get found out that they're trying to dissuade them from doing it because that'll be a problem the other piece and this goes back to the communication is that yeah it's up there it's not out of line with some of the other tech centers around but the difference is is we do things that the other tech centers don't we're a full day most of those other tech centers are a half day we offer any courses the students need to you know get their diplomas from their home district to them other districts don't do that that's all on their own so there's a quite a bit extra that goes in there for those services that they're getting from us so would you say I think it's great to go beside to that yeah any other questions about the tech budget like I said again as those as that enrollments those higher enrollments hit that average for the better we ready to vote to approve it can I have a motion to approve the RTCC budget I'll make the motion to approve the RTCC budget a second all those in favor say aye aye opposed okay next discuss negotiation with unions Robin you're you're welcome to hang if you want I appreciate I got it I do have to to give a tremendous amount of thanks to both Robin and the cabinet because they there was a tremendous amount of time which was good but it was right because it gave us the discussions about what we're seeing is important discussions with the union thank you Robin thank you at the just to kind of start things off we can talk about the the CBA first and then we can get to the support staff and there was a little bit of a miscommunication stated by a person at Wednesday's open forum who made the statement that confidentiality was breached because you know we talked about the potential impact of what the union was asking for with with the press and I pointed out to them that no confidentiality was breached because both the union and the school board agreed that everything would be open so just to make sure that folks uh... was that a staff member that said that? or was that a just a member of the citizen? leave it at that uh... so in terms of their CBA uh... kind of review really quick what they're asking for uh... and tell you when the next meeting is uh... as well and I'll talk a little bit about the comparables that I've been gathering uh... so first thing that they're asking for is they want to flip the out-of-pocket payments uh... right now what happens is for uh... their ten percent of their deductibles the out-of-pocket payments for medical uh... in prescriptions uh... they pay the first ten percent of that deductible and then the we step in and we pay the other ninety percent of it they want that flipped so that we're paying the ninety percent first and then basically if there's anything left over they'll pay the ten percent uh... they want the towns to pay a hundred percent for out-of-pocket costs associated with prescriptions uh... they want the towns to train the teachers on their health care plans as part of their paid professional development time they want their yearly dental coverages doubled in their orthodontic benefits tripled they want a sick bank they've requested sixty minutes of personal planning time each day they want to limit faculty meetings to twice a month they want it eight percent increased the staff salary portion of the budget for next year providing raises of between six point three eight percent and ten point nine five percent for the teachers depending upon where they are on step in scale uh... they've historically received three percent raises uh... when i did my comparables and i have all the data that i can share with the team uh... they're currently at the top end of the pastry spectrum not only for the districts we compete with but also for the larger districts in the state and i even compared to stout uh... they also have the best benefits package out there with only one other district in the state that i could find that even came close uh... the next meeting and again it's open uh... to the public to the press anybody who wants to be there is on the seventeenth uh... from five to six thirty in the randolph elementary school media center and so a lot of that so basically the last meeting that staff or faculty uh... that's the cba that's the uh... the teachers and so uh... everybody presented you know what they were what they were looking for uh... this meeting is where we start to kind of go through and talk about whether it's reasonable support staff contract any questions on teachers uh... support staff contracts uh... very similar to the teachers they want the towns to pay a hundred percent for out-of-pocket costs associated with prescription again they want the towns to train the teachers on their health care as part of their paid professional development time and these folks are hourly workers uh... they wanna sick leave bank uh... they would like to add additional vacation days with the amount uh... dependent upon their years of service uh... they are looking for me explain this quick before i say it uh... when the support staff are hired there's a grid that determines what their starting pay is and then after that they just received whatever the yearly increases are as as of the contract they are looking for a ten percent increase to the hiring grid a ten percent increase to their current salaries uh... they would like to have an increase of twenty five dollars to their daily salary whenever they have to sub uh... or if if they're called upon to sub they want to be paid for the teacher professional development days so we have those six uh... professional development days a year the full full day ones uh... traditionally their hourly employees they have not been included in that so they are looking to get paid for those six days the next meeting for support staff contracts is five p.m uh... we're changing the time a little bit i kinda sent the email around uh... because they do have some training that they're doing in the afternoon so five p.m. on the twenty second uh... also in Randolph elementary media center so a lot now comparably uh... at least the starting uh... scale the starting hiring guide that ten percent increase is probably reasonable uh... when i did the comparables they are depending upon the category that they are in uh... you know whether it's a cook or whether it's a custodian uh... some of them are very low by comparison on the starting guide uh... a lot of them you know we were taking a look at the hourlies a lot of them are making sixteen seventeen eighteen nineteen dollars an hour right now because they get those yearly increases you know typically it's been about three percent questions and i'll send a reminder the cbd all right smooth on uh... need your board progress update all this is you the board goals when we spoke about this i think later than that i can't remember though when something like that we came up with this as a rough draft board goals so as you can see uh... most of those were two thousand eighteen nineteen is what we've got for the year so we're we should be working on these and so uh... i guess we need to decide what we want to actually do and so do we want to say each month was going to take one of these and start chipping away at it so for example in the action steps to look to the right the for the first one there gather internal and external feedback on ends so the date for the next review we still haven't set that date and so we haven't started to get that internal and external feedback yet and we haven't identified who the employers and other community leaders that we want to include to get their individual feedback uh... we decide who they're going to be and so we need to try to do that that was supposed to been done in the last quarter there and uh... the rest of them it's about uh... communication so i think lane has been doing a fantastic job in communicating with the public and so the action steps have mostly been met i think right along so i don't know that there's anything that needs to actually have has to happen that hasn't already been going on if there's something then we can add it in there but from what i can tell uh... we've met most of these uh... communication wise the one we haven't discussed at all uh... that we said we wanted to do was whether we want to have uh... like mailings or something like that uh... we haven't discussed that any further whether we're already doing the day data presentations but we were discussing like purpose purpose mailings in addition to like when we do this you know we got draft warnings and then we talk about these at a specific meeting uh... do we want to have others where we do data dumps if you will for the community other than what we do in here uh... we haven't discussed what we would like to do if we would like to do those or what that would look like so that would be the one part that we need to uh... probably talk about and then goal three was for development we still have not heard back from our gardener about new performance evaluation as far as i know she was getting ready to retire i don't know if that's changed hands but i can reach out to me please to see if you have a new i i reached out to her we're hoping to hold up on another evening three-hour policy governance training in uh... late march for the board as a whole uh... i emailed her a week ago and have not heard anything back i don't know you know is that usual i do feel like it did take her a little while i was going to send her a reminder tomorrow or something but we would like to set up and another evening retreat in mid-march for you know just getting ourselves up to speed on some of the things but uh... so with the board so to me the governance you know development uh... we wanted to discuss the frequency of governance training which thought we had said we were going to try to do it monthly or bimonthly no we've said four times a year for having one tonight uh... so so far i've done three so i think we're doing all right as far as that goes uh... we you know i think we do need to be more cognizant really of keeping ourselves up you know up to date and realizing how we can and should be using the policies i think that's true uh... so we what we have as outstanding is really is that first goal is that first one that make sure the ends are relevant but the values of the community and future oriented uh... i think also confound this goal is we could add a separate activity that we haven't we don't have in here right now but based on and comments in the past uh... about looking at the limitations of the superintendent there's been several times where it's come up where and thought that there was some stuff that maybe could have been in there that were in there and we don't really have a time other than when he goes uh... like for instance about to go over two point something i don't remember what the number is yeah and and so other than we come up to the actual valuation we don't look at those goals and so perhaps we need to add an activity uh... simply looking at all the limitations and are they still relevant are they still what we think are in keeping with what we want to have and if we need to add more subtract from the good example is why are we going to be union meetings uh... that's a discussion i think probably needs to happen uh... we've always done it that's why we do it and so is that a limitation that we should should be in there that all on the superintendent i don't know but that discussion we should have so i think activity wise we should add a a second one there i don't know review of the limitations or board limitations should that be could that be fit into a regular meeting or i think so yeah just like maybe because we're doing quarterly doing PG training and between that so quarterly take a new chunk and work on that i would like to have a little bit of a focus on monitoring and i would like to have some training on monitoring because i think we have we have sort of these ends in the but i think we're still sort of a little bit off on how we're actually monitoring that's exactly what i proposed about that that's what i'd like her to focus us on is how should we be be monitoring and you know as we're no longer doing board observation you know what what should we should we replace that with something or so that that's what i wanted that that three hour retreat in march to be on we talked a little bit too about the fact that there are there are areas that and i don't have a good solution to it there are areas that you guys need to be looking at that if somebody wanted to hide them from you they could and i can tell you what those areas are when we get in the training but that's that's a concern that i have as well yeah and i think in the past we've missed things that we shouldn't have even though we were trying to do due diligence so i think paul the only other thing you know the the communication piece i think since we already have the principles presenting these things what we're lacking really is the you know the publicity about those i mean this is an open meeting but you know it's so boring usually we should be advertising you know next month you know it's going to be you know the principles telling us how our kids are doing you know it will do it first you know it's the first thing on the agenda you know it's accessible it's interesting there's questions you know that's what we really need to be doing on front porch forum in the herald saying you know this monday these things are important for people to know in here so i i think that would really help right that's what that first one was right there right is is are those still relevant because those were right right a decade ago but again because we haven't really i don't think we've really figured out how to monitor them we don't have benchmarks we don't have like here's where we were and now this is where we are now we don't have any of that the challenge really is that the report cards now revolve around the ends the report cards do the you know everything really revolves around the end so we which is great but again when i'm saying benchmarks i'm saying percentage of kids are going to be at a three point whatever in the report cards and you and this is the ration this is why we think this is a good measurement of how our district is doing and this you know in fourth grade we're going to have this many there and this is why we think you know and then that could be just the report card piece then another piece could be and we're using this assessment and this is why we're using this assessment and 50 percent of fourth graders are going to be at this place in there we've got to have in order for this to really work we've got to have we can't just have a big data dump of you know hey we're monitoring this and we have this data wall and which is all fantastic stuff it is great and we're moving in a really great direction but it's not that that sort of outcome driven model which is what this model is supposed to be so so the ends um when we did the did the report early this year that was all revamped to do just that it's not it's it's it's it's 15 pages it'll take you a while it was uh it's it's not perfect but it gets right to that and yeah and what i've done is i've worked with the the cabinet and they are talking with the departments at each one of those effects and i'm giving them the opportunity to reinterpret it a little bit you know i i talked with them i talked with the cabinet a little bit and pulled in all the ideas and i created that report but they've got things that they've seen since they've been looking at some of the data that they'd like to massage a little bit so you're going to see some changes on that but that's exactly what that did is you know by 2021 you know 40 of the you know fourth graders will be you know achieving you know proficient on the the math uh you know SBAC it was that sort of a and then the discussion about why why that specific tool was chosen for these these students so but doesn't mean it's perfect it was a first shot at it yeah and yeah i mean it's a work in progress i'm not you know we're massaging it along the way until we sort of but the value is in that discussion because that's where we learn what's important oh yeah well and i'm glad that your teachers are being involved in it because you know they're on the ground doing it and they're seeing to me makes it seem like it's not just administrators who are rushing to put a bunch of numbers together to then date it up to the board i want it to be meaningful and and helpful to move the system forward and hopefully achieve and that that was part of the discussion with it is in the reason that some of those assessment tools were chosen was just for that they all had to have value to the teachers to be able to inform their instruction right if they're collecting they that doesn't help them go back into the classroom after something's been taught and and help them to say yeah we we did really well here with these kids on the these these standards or or not then it's not going to be useful to anybody it's not going to drive things in the right direction sort of the trend in education now right 10 10 years yeah the trend in everything now is this that's the standard standard base evidence-based improvement quality you know it seems to be yeah it came from it came from a business model came from a business model but sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't right right sometimes there's no data yeah so let's go back to the board um goals so we're you're proposing to add sort of focus on the ends a few times you know every three months or something like that yeah so i would say so part of this gather internal and external feedback lines we haven't determined when we're going to do the next review yeah i think that's fine but one of the ones the the next part of that benchmark is board meet the leader in education and employment sectors develop a future focused vision i think that that's one that we should be adding in didn't do in the quarterly type thing where quarter bring in some new people that just we always had the principals come in but what about other people well what the business leaders what about educational leaders other than our internal leaders so we have uh the not any uh our superintendent's association guy comes um detox and vsba right and vsba and then we also have mark mcdonnell and our other legislators come and and those are good but what about other people we need other so i would say that's one day that we have i guess those two two separate days so i would say maybe come up with two more groups i don't know who but we as a board should determine who would we like to see come in and then have them do something similar where it's kind of a question answer they they say from my sector's point of view these things are going on your employer who i ran into and he will he will come to a board and sort of give us a snapshot of sort of where it he'll he'll look at the labor market in Vermont i can see if he could do sort of new england or you know sort of what's out there what are employers looking for always get into a lot of work but it's a lot of work is there are a lot of jobs but they're not livable wage jobs so i'm always like i want to know about the livable wage jobs not just there's jobs out there because you know that's the goal was to you know hopefully get our students to the point where they can find work that's a livable wage work so they can be independent people but anyway so do you want to set up a meeting with him and sort of give us a view on sort of where Vermont's headed in the next 10 15 years i think they have data up to 10 or 15 years and he's he's he's a fun guy so maybe may or june yeah april march is going to be packed right and and well june's packed yeah so yeah or april so maybe see if he's if he's available for regular board night the other other possibilities you know if you want to go to the education side you got pat bolton right up at vtc might not be a bad person to reach out because she'll have a lot of demographics on the college bound folks especially in the tech industries and then depending upon which group they're with that are three groups in town that's doing that you know they're re-inviting the last three there's there's quite a few pretty good experts and some of them all businesses in and around so that might not get that just ideas yeah you're talking about it yeah so that kind of thing yeah is doing a bunch with you know just look i mean area employers are they are looking for employees right and they're have they're struggling to find they're going to get their algebra skills so you know i don't know if he might have that might be so somebody from business is somebody so the labor department of labor guy who sounds good and then somebody from education would be another so maybe the vtc guy and then rotate through yeah previous years too we sort of read you know we found a futurist book and i i came across one but now i can't remember what but those are always kind of fun too where it's somebody who's just sort of talking about you know what is the future going to look like because really when we have a little kindergartner starting there's a long way from now to sort of have a sense of sort of where we're going in the world but that maybe you do that we assign the book to like june right i'm also working here but that i can i'll try and find that title i don't know if he's a really good but again that future all i can hear is pristen hush you're saying future future that's really what this first goal is about is supposed to be the future right so add that and then i think under the action step for goal two just adding in advertising for the park where it says uh superintendent will present data for community at monthly board meetings we just who's going to take charge of that the advertising the publicity i think no no i'm not stepping up no but what i was going to say is i do think i know lane i think you've been hooked up now with from march farm but i've always thought that there should be a board member that has you know sort of dedicated responsibility boards putting stuff on march farm so just throwing that out there as an idea you know that in the herald is someone willing to to do those two things i mean someone could advertise promote our february meeting because nicole and or someone from nicole's office and jeff and the legislators are going to be there it's the first thing in the meeting it's interesting i think it would you know a be of wider interest um i don't know does one of you willing to take that on i can do that thank you at least yeah for the like the front porch forum yeah it's for the all the areas right okay for that and and the herald that would be great um and this is to try to get people to come to meeting yeah yeah or just to have you know that this is might be of interest for people who are interested for that most people yeah that's that piece right they can leave most people don't come out because it's like dinnertime and they're trying to get their kids i know that so i don't know how much that will help it we could get some people have we thought about putting out information about what happened at meetings or like posting information about what was discussed already we do have work we do but how i mean the herald kind of does that maybe you should summarize the meeting a little bit usually uh with that work i think so so skip stuff right they have they have um they have favorable agendas the agenda so they just the bullet points are there and they just come up whenever they want to see any jumps to that point is there a way to get a link to that to put that on front porch forum absolutely so i could post the link to this was contact with the person in orca yeah coordinate over there and because it could be that if you want to here was the last meeting and then this is what's coming up at the upcoming meeting perfect right or here's the whole this is where you go to if you want to see this and you don't have to watch the whole thing that should be there yeah right if you're interested in any of the things that happened click here and then coming up if you want to attend a meeting and then that would be it could be like a monthly front porch that would be great i think that's a terrific idea thank you later on yeah yeah thank you thanks very much all right um let's move on we're way after our time here um discuss partial tuition forgiveness um so uh at the beginning of the year because of the consolidation of rocks buried with Montpelier there were a number of parents that were very fearful of sending their kids to a large school um and trying to get them in a brain tree brain brain tree has a very good reputation um most of them ended up going because you know i i sat down i explained with them i i also set them up to kind of talk with the folks over at Montpelier that you know unless the board approves you know uh transferred this nature so it can't happen we had one parent who was very adamant and um agreed that they would uh self fund their student going to brain tree so we accepted that um when it became apparent a few weeks in that they weren't paying the bills gave them a week um to you know follow through pay the bill or get their child enrolled in Montpelier and then ended up working to get the child over at Montpelier where the child currently is um as part of those discussions at that point in time there were some extended family members that were involved and it's very apparent that the parents do not have the means technically it didn't cost us anything to have the student at brain tree it's not like we had to add staff or anything because that student was there um so rather than continuing to pursue this which executive limitations requires me to um is to ask the board to to forgive that that on behalf of the parent there's two parts of it in terms of the tuition piece what they owe is about three thousand um but there's also an after school piece i am not asking that the after school piece be forgiven the after school program it's a small dollar amount they should be able to to pay and i'll continue to pursue that does anyone have any issue with forgiving this um tuition just so i understand so the it's for forgiveness for tuition during that time when the student was at brain tree and that student is now enrolled in Montpelier is that yeah so they were paying the bills we got them connected with Montpelier got them transferred over do we need to vote on this we will let's vote do i have a motion to forgive this tuition um bill for this family motion to forgive all in favor i anyone opposed okay um the raven building update whoo okay so i'm gonna i'm gonna say say at the end of this conversation i'm going to say something publicly that has not been said publicly before so um as they've been going through they've had the engineers down there they've done the ground surveys um they're taking a look at things the more that they look at the more issues that pop up you know it's it's not just replacing the building and the foundation at this point in time and rotating the building um so that it's structurally sound on the soil that's there but the septic tank was never properly maintained the septic is going to have to be replaced it's old there's the issue of heat it did not ever really have real heat originally it was wood fired they were you know stoke a wood stove to try to keep the place warm and then a year or so ago they put in a propane heater that was done in house and not up to spec so the heat is an issue so the the best scenario that they've got to heat that and probably they were trying to combine a few things they were trying to combine the repaving with supplying heat to the the new raven building was to actually run a water line um out to raven from the boilers at the high school and that would allow them to also then go back and then kind of repave that area that needs to be repaved they also were looking at adding a thousand square feet to the building to increase the size of the program because there is always a waiting list it does save the districts that send the students there as well as our home quite a bit of money it's about a million dollars every seven years or so for us that it saves us they're coming in um around they're saying 1.3 million so i want to talk about this not i'm not proposing that we go for the 100 the 1.3 million um but i want to talk about a a potential alternative to this that that may be suitable but it'll probably upset some folks um the warehouse that was built has the office in the back um has a nice place upstairs that could be a classroom i'm gonna make the recommendation that we take over that warehouse for the raven students it has you'd be surprised what's what was put in there and you guys i can give you a tour if you'd like it's an ideal situation the revamping of it you know there should be a kitchen that that need would need to be added there is a loft up top that was intended to be a very large conference room probably a third the size of this area that he converted to the classroom space it's heated it has a full office in there and then a space that could be the kitchen as well and it's got the bathroom it's got the lifts already it's got everything it needs and then the suggestion would be the oh yeah the suggestion would be to um or lifts available for it that are that are present the suggestion would be to take the stuff that is stored in that warehouse and store it in the raven again the big issue with the raven it's got the mold it's got the mildew it's got a lot but if we're just storing stuff there that's covered that might be the better what is stored in well it was it was originally supposedly it was built to be a central supply right so that all the the materials would go there and then when people wanted it they would go into a software system and say hey i need 40 rolls of toilet paper today and just to help with tracking and ordering um has not been used as that thing seemed to be going you know very well without it the lot of those materials could probably be actually stored right in there specific buildings as well so that's the other possibility so wow that's that was an idea that i had thought earlier but when the the initial evaluation the magnitude estimate came in you know they were saying about 600 thousand now that there there was not any maintenance really done on that for a significant amount of time it's just it's it's a mess i mean it really is so what would this warehouse cost to make it a you know a classroom classrooms in a space for kids uh i i haven't i haven't done an actual estimate but put a kitchen in maybe maybe 15 20 grand to put the classroom in maybe 10 15 grand and it has central heating it's got it's got top of the line it's got its own generator it's got it's got the two heating systems in there it's got a propane heater which does the large area it's got a heat exchanger that does the back area so even if the power went out the generator would kick on i mean it was this is top this is top notch and the maintenance people they have that now right now they have their office there there is an office that has the whole command center set up in it as well in the center of the high school that's where their main wow so this was built in addition to this seems like a no-brainer i was just my biggest concern with the raven don't lose your thought my biggest concern with the raven at the time again was just that you know that the reason that that was such a good project was it didn't sound like it was going to be that much and it would get that building off the property and put something in its place because again the building's got got issues go on i have a couple questions too i i i apologize i don't know where where is the warehouse so that next to the right to the s right next to the isn't that the maintenance building it's just it's a warehouse their their actual offices and stuff are in the high school there is another full blown office that was built in there that probably shouldn't have been um so they're what i call two command centers so there's a full command center in the high school in the center of the high school in the the custodial offices in there which is the you know the nine screens on the wall to monitor everything if there's a a lockdown it's where the police would go and command things from but the second one was built in the back of that warehouse right it wasn't that because is that is that was because they could have a remote one they needed right or my understanding matter i mean you've been updating and working on safety protocols didn't that i can give you what i know um one is i do not believe in talking with robin that they were aware that that was going in there in the warehouse the second command center the second thing that i can tell you is i know when brent brought me around on the first day and was introducing me to the then facilities manager i can remember brent asking that person okay so um now that you've got the command center set up at the high school when are you when are you moving you know the couple of folks here out so i don't think brent may have been aware that was my impression on the the discussion that happened so um yeah it was it was it was just interesting so again you got a beautiful there was a beautiful space there these kids deserve it i mean that building has fallen to excuse the expression crap around their ears over the last last decade so what is the building that still need to be removed so the problem with the raven building is it's it's it's it's plentiful and it's just it's not appropriate to keep kids in there it's got mold issues it's got leaks in the ceiling that were never repaired so structurally it's weak the spacing between whatever the supports are in a ceiling or too far apart for the amount of snow weights that we still get rid of i mean sounds like we still well we could we could still we could still get rid of it um but i was thinking um you know if if worst-case scenario if we had to store some of that stuff that would be the place to do it couldn't you build a cheaper warehouse yeah yeah you can just build a shell so it may it may be cheaper just to build another shelf somewhere even on that location the reason the expenses were getting up to be so high um is like i said there were other issues like the septic is a big one they would have to get rid of the septic run it out to the main sewage on the on the town side you don't need a bathroom in a you don't necessarily need a septic uh shell right like if you're the shell i know you wouldn't even need water yeah for the most part you know it's just just a place to put stuff and then it was all needed the classroom pieces because they they sometimes do a little steel trips over to the tax center yep they're still they're pretty close i mean it's just further walk another another tenth of a mile maybe but the big thing is they're still in talking with jim at the beginning of this they're still on the the high school property because they do they they use the school nurse they use the lunch they you know if there's a if there's a problem there there's uh administration close by that can help out um so that was one of the reasons when we were looking at alternative sites that you know jim was really wasn't for he's like no we get we get those extra supports we need to keep them and this is well this is a great idea terrific idea the only thing i would say if you were to do that i would i have not discussed it with anybody this is the first time with exception robin earlier today my only concern would be uh they would have to get to the high school right from there and so i would say it would be more than just remaining the building putting in a sidewalk of some nature because really the only way to get from there to the high school is on that road there is a sidewalk there's a sidewalk alongside the parking lot alongside the parking lot but it ends doesn't it? it ends at the end of the parking lot okay oh yeah because it's expecting people to know them one way around the building because i assume you don't want to walk them through that well the the other piece that we kind of touched on that would go along with that idea is um the fact that they do have to repaint that i mean that's that's that's that's one of the other pieces and and so that's one of the other reasons i'm kind of getting hesitant when i see that 1.3 million like you guys are is look we've got to put a roof on Randolph elementary within sometime the next five years it'd be it's more cost effective to do it all at once than to do a piece meal we've got the and we've got the the the repaving to do and we've got to rebuild parts of the back of the high school especially the loading docks it's crumbling it's just not safe i mean so we've got got some major things and if we're we're pumping all this money in and we don't need to yeah it's a good idea environmental resource management class to do sort of a multi-use path that sort of brings them around the back of the building right there is no path going around the back there is there is a i mean we walk walk that way to get to the sports fields we all do yeah you know to get out to the sports field but that way or maybe that could be something maybe jim would do that with is the students you know it could be part of what they do is make a multi-use path but then it might be nice to then have a nice walkway from that parking lot around and with the whole you know the locking of the back door now we do need to think about and i've always come to that crosswalk and then they're in the parking lot you know there's no real really good pedestrian way for them to maneuver through that parking lot you've got these little you know third graders can't see can't be seen over the hood you know and they're walking they're navigating through the parking lot which is one of the most dangerous places but we have part of the priority piece too was if they do the repeating as well was to change the traffic pattern in front of the high school you know we do have that right away between the two houses that does need to be fixed because what happened is they kept it dirt over the course of time they keep adding more dirt to it so now when it rains all the water pours into the basement of the two houses yeah the a-frame did the guy finally because before it was paved oh yeah now well now the problem is because because they put the dirt in there and it built it up it's uh the water all pours into the basement so they're quite happy to have it paved oh it used to be paved that that's my understanding in writing yeah well if we if we have right away on it it may be in writing for me it'll relevant yeah but we'll check i don't think so don't know his house burned down and he moved into the a-frame and i'm repeating what i've heard from the the folks at the tech center and from the facilities folks when i say that i haven't talked to the gentleman directly yeah well i'd be careful what you do and i would make sure you know who has right away to what right we thought we did and we paved it i think and we took the pavement up and so we were like okay all right so we don't want to do that yeah let me make that let me that's a pain right all right let's move on if we can i think that's really interesting the whole idea about raven it's it's great all right laura the other thing is the warning don't forget you gotta either prove it or at least look at it i thought we did okay did you did the budget oh okay we haven't hit the consent agenda yet we know that was i guess that was in board management and governance okay so everyone has a or should have a copy of the warning it may be on the table there in front of paul yeah we will all have to sign the official copy which i have here that will be published so this is just the warning for the annual school district meeting held on monday march fourth it's always at the high school oh so that's part of the warning so you want to want me to discuss i sure yeah so this is um this is what goes out to the the community to warn them ahead of time of the things that they would you know be voting on so you know some of it is your the three of you that are up for reelection it's electing the the officers for the district like the treasurer it's also putting out the the vote for the budget so if you go down to article 10 and take a look at that remember i said don't get to get scared when you see that 19.4 it's actually 18.5 it just looks that much more because we gotta put the the the federal grant monies in there if you flip the page we get to surplus funding all right so this year we had five hundred and twenty nine thousand three hundred and twenty six dollars in surplus one of the things that i want to say on the surplus because this was another misconception that was brought up at the the wednesday meeting is where it comes from it has nothing to do with mismanagement of the budget you've always had a surplus for a number of years and there's a very good reason why when we plan a budget we do it a year in advance the biggest portion of the surplus comes from staff turnover you had people that retire high and you hire in people that are lower on the pay scale because your staff turnover has generally been around 14 people per year the what you get for surplus is generally about the same right it's usually in that four to five hundred thousand dollars range the other place where it comes from is there were reimbursements that we get in some cases we have to budget ahead of time at the beginning of the year for things that we know we're going to get reimbursed for at the end of the year from the state but we have to have the money available upfront to be able to pay the bills when it's due pay the bills and then we get reimbursed and some of those can be predicted so there there's zero out some of them cannot you get kids that move in in the middle of the year that you got it yeah so there's there's that's the other piece of this so just so folks are aware where the surpluses are coming from so with that five hundred and twenty nine thousand um we're looking to do two things and then we'll talk about the very last one the the hundred and thirty thousand um four hundred thousand to go into facility in the maintenance reserve fund and the reason for that is we've got a pretty high need right now there was a lot of maintenance especially in terms of hvac that just was not done a lot of things that needed to be replaced on schedule that were not replaced on schedule so we want to make sure that that that fund is is where it needs to be in case we have to tap it we've got the roof that's coming up we're talking about the paving um we're talking about you know the raven piece whatever the the final determination is going to be on that so to keep that that surplus fund kind of bulked up there in terms of the other portion of this we're looking to transfer a hundred twenty nine thousand three hundred and seventy six dollars into the transportation reserve fund traditionally we buy a bus or two a year um to kind of make sure that the fleet doesn't get to be more than you know seven or eight years old that allows us to do that um there is enough money in that hundred and twenty nine thousand to buy a bus um as well as we have another hundred thousand in the regular budget to buy the second bus shouldn't we need to the twenty nine thousand three hundred and seventy six that's in there um would potentially cover the cost to buy an additional vehicle um we have one of the co-facilities directors that is driving his own vehicle back and forth at fifty eight cents a mile um we can get uh you know about fifty thousand dollar truck through the state contract for about thirty thousand dollars um throw a snow plow on it and everything else and use it um for those support cents so that we're not paying those those additional fees for the mileage get him out of his own own personal car so those are the ideas there article eight um what this is is we talked um earlier about the fact that um special education is switching to a block grant in another year or two and that means that you get the money up front you don't necessarily get reimbursed unless there's some extremely high spending that goes on so if you have kids that move in that have moderate needs that you may have to send out at sixty four thousand dollars a pop in around that range we're not getting reimbursed for it and it'll blow our budget out of the water really quick because they were under the assumption that we could have touched on it a little bit earlier that revamping special education um that it was all about kids with academic disabilities you can do that with academic disabilities if you provide additional supports um within your schools and you make sure the teachers are providing the best first instruction right out of that right out of the gate but the problem is the kids that we're encountering uh more and more of the trauma based students this would not help with that so you know we had had a kid move in last year actually we had the two moved in last year that was there were three hundred some odd thousand out of the blue if we've already got our block grant in place we got that money at the beginning of the year those kids move in we're going to get reimbursed for a little bit of it at the end of the year but we just blew our budget out of the water by three hundred thousand so the suggestion is is to make and we checked with um the the the big wigs at AOE um to make a surplus fund for special education yeah we get the block grant but at least we have a little money set aside in the surplus fund if we get a real expensive kid that moves in in the middle of the year that we're not going to get reimbursed for if we have to we can tap the fund to supply that this hundred what is the state expected district to do going to deficit spending if in the middle of the year you get somebody there their logic was was and and again they did it backwards their logic was if you fix the deficiencies in your district everything will be fine but what they are doing how they're making you try to do that is they're trying to make you do that by changing the budget first to force you to do it as opposed to fixing the deficiencies first and then changing the budget to a lot of they think that school does more than they need to or um they also did a pilot project of which we were one district where they sent people to evaluate the way we deliver special education at the DMG and so there was quite a discussion and and you know sort of change in the way schools are delivering special education to make it more efficient and less costly and then we were part of that pilot and they are they are correct there are ways to make it more efficient and less costly but it focuses on academics it does not focus on yeah and so that's going to be that's going to be the problem so this hundred and thirty thousand this is not part of the surplus from this year um there was money that was set aside a few years back because the state was requiring the school districts to change over its financial software package so there was money that was set aside in a little surplus fund to be tapped for that purpose the state has purchased its own software package and is supposedly giving it to all the districts for free as long as we use it so that money is no longer needed so what i'm suggesting is that that hundred and thirty thousand be moved out of that financial software surplus fund which is no longer needed and put into the special education fund so you get to the end of the year and you haven't had a student maybe you haven't it sits there for the next year what are we earmarking it to that and then you can't do it so once once you have voted to put it into a surplus account it takes a town vote to move it to another account because so that's why it's it's on the warning and that's a very good question you're you're getting the taxpayers to agree instead of giving this money back to the state which should go back to the taxpayers it wouldn't instead of giving this money back to the state we are voting to keep this money but you have to use it for the purposes that you specified for if you're going to change that they have to vote to allow you to change that i apologize for pointing them tired jiggling around a little bit so i don't know if there's questions on any of the warrant pieces yes that everyone needs to sign right let's move on el monitoring reports we have two reports we reviewed them discussed them last month people were invited to go and do further research if they had questions for lane or needed further background about these reports so they are still or again included in our packet 2.4 and 2.5 did anyone have any further questions or for lane on the reports since we discussed them last time unless anyone has any further questions i think we should be able to vote on whether to approve them or not so can i have a motion to approve el 2.4 i'll make the motion to approve 2.4 is there a second second all those in favor of approving um the monitoring report 2.4 hi hi hi any opposed all right and same for 2.5 which we also discussed last meeting and um anyone who wanted further information or or have questions answered was able to go to the os sd why is 3.4 in parentheses on which piece it says 2.5 then in parentheses 3.4 that's probably the your requirements under your policies that you review that's ends monitoring yep yeah um so do i have a motion to approve 2.5 as written i'll make the motion to approve 2.5 as written second all those in favor all right any opposed okay um for ends monitoring board observation of school events is something that we uh decided quite some time ago not to do anymore um and as i mentioned earlier i did reach out or i am reaching out to val Gardner to help us figure out what type of ends monitoring activity should have replaced that so um we will be having a retreat sometime in probably late march to do our pg training and i would like it to focus on ends monitoring so let's move on to consent agenda approve minutes from the ossd meeting in december um did anyone have any additions or corrections to that to those minutes do i have a well let's just approve the consent agenda as a whole we need to set the high school choice capacity limits um lane you want to speak to that i think that form is in there this is for uh school choice at the high school level you know obviously you want to take in as many kids as we can but we don't want to overdo it we don't want to get it to the point where in the middle of the year we got to add staff so i i think i put in 100 to add and then i looked at the formulas that they had in terms of requirements for allowing students to go to other schools so i i put in what the minimum was 25 20 what typically what i mean usually we only send four or five out right and how many did we take this year school choice um brand new this year or total total i think we had about probably 15 16 new um and add that to another you know 15 16 that we had there okay so quite a bit below the 100 all right um and we do have it did check we do have the capacity for that at the high school that belongs it's not many four or five probably um if actually if you want i'll get you exact numbers um what do we need just to approve those limits okay that will be part of the consent agenda then approval of aoe financial management questionnaire i i think that's in is that what this is yeah so basically it's indicating that you know we're doing certain things the state wants us to do it indicates to the state who to contact um that sort of thing this is something new to me i don't remember it did that yeah pardon robin completed that okay and so all they all they need now is a signature from us yeah okay um approved announced tuitions that's in there they're actually down a little bit um from last year which is which is good um and that's because the the numbers are up so the numbers go up the the tuitions that were approve raven collaborative agreement for 2019 and 20 and that's just uh the agreement that exists with the sending towns to have their students attend raven so no change there and approval of professional staff contract for a long term sub i see that that's in here too that's just a person that is going to be longer than the general yeah they had um the fire there were two of them if i remember there was one that is taking over for a person going out like on maternity and then as soon as that one's done there's another maternity that's that's coming up so it just made sense to keep them on okay get them climatized to the kids in school is there a motion to approve the consent agenda as a slate a second a second all those in favor of approving the consent agenda aye aye any opposed okay um we have the superintendent's report enclosed with the agenda lane is there something you want to add or the superintendent's report is basically the annual report this time same thing that you probably saw from the principals and it really just focuses on the communication strategy to the community about you know the the rationale behind the budget and why it's important that it pass it's being called to write three different articles the first of which went out last week that was what was up on the front page yeah i keep getting that wrong for some reason but there'll be two more write-ups and then a final one that's in addition to that'll go out so it's basically the communication strategies there and ben was ben was great and i work together on that there's also the principals reports which will also be published in the town supplement before our vote same with the annual report from rtcc and from the high school so all of those things are included in our packets and all will go out to the town the financial report do you want to speak to that is there are there any changes or typically what i do when i look at this if you look at one of the expenditures pages and you go down to the bottom of one of the sections on the right where it says percent just as a rough rule of thumb to kind of focus things we're halfway through the year right we're at the end of december at six months so you would expect them to be around 50 percent so and they're not all linear you know sometimes your stuff that has to be paid up front sometimes your stuff that's paid up to the end but on average if i see something that's way out of way out of line with that that's usually when i start asking questions so things are actually pretty good the the couple of things that i things that i do want to point out is we have made 25 000 on our our daycare revenue at brain tree so those are that's the portion of the day that parents are actually paying for and i believe there's another 4 000 or so that is being has been made so far by the the after-school program that's there the 87 000 in the whole in terms of the school lunches is actually because the we don't have the december money in yet but we're actually ahead of where we typically are by quite a bit this time of year so hopefully that that looks like that's on a pretty good pretty good but those are the big things that kind of jumped out when i took a look at it there's other questions are there any other questions from the board hearing none we can talk about the next is board evaluation that was you paul i'm not going to read down the sheet however i would say that we listened to each other we had diversity of viewpoints multiple we're speaking not it wasn't by any one person and everybody appeared to be prepared for the meeting and i would say we need to work on not getting bogged down on some details and not getting behind the schedule we were tending to i think we we really underestimated the time necessary you know so that was our fault it's 8 30 so it's still right within our normal board time so are we going to have do we need an executive session okay i have a i should the two little updates that just just came in incidental wise they did they've been doing a lot of work on the water system here they did have a coliform test come back so they've chlorinated the water they're going to test for a while but we still have the everybody's aware we still have those so that i think it's i think it's 90 days of testing they have to do but i'll i'll reconfirm i just got that that information a little while ago we did we did do the testing they did some sample schools and so now what it sounds like is uh we're waiting for the last round of testing to come back after we change their deposits so we narrowed it it came back positive on one tap they narrowed it down to thinking that because the taps are old sometimes they use lead in the part that seals so we've gone through replace the taps and we're waiting for the round of testing after the replacement to come back so that's pending yeah there was uh the the testing the state that also dealt with some cleaning agents to see if it was getting into the well water typically use cleaning agents for chlorate or yeah i i had a lot of chemistry too and i don't remember which which it was but we came back perfect on that but you know we are still there's ongoing issues here that we're still working on what that seems to be is that is the state operating right now the um there was a initiative that just came out by the secretary of ed to test every tap in every school in the state and so that actually looks like it's past and it's going to happen so you know we had to do some survey data to tell them how many you know different outlets we have that would have to be be tested so that that'll happen so you'll know every they used to come in and just do some samples you'll know every every single one like to know where they're getting the money but hey anything else uh you said you had two questions did you say you had two no okay all right so we can adjourn