 city ballot and vote in your town polling places. So I'm Lisa Floyd. I'm the chair of the White River Unified District. And we will begin by doing introductions of the people here with us this evening. So if everyone would identify yourselves just so people know who they're talking to. We have that slide. I'm Andrew Jones. I'm the vice chair from South Carolina. My name is Lisa McCrory. I'm the clerk and I am in Bethel and I have a I have one kid that's in the high school he's in 11th grade and two kids that have graduated. One from the new Rudd and another one that graduated from Bethel before we merged. And I'm Chris Riley board member from Royalton and I've got two kids in the fourth grade. Rodney Ravel, Bethel Vermont. I have one high school student and this is probably my last meeting as they'll have a new director taking my place tomorrow. And then on the administration side my name's Jamie Canardy. I'm the WRVSU superintendent of schools. I'm Tara Weatherow. I am the WRVSU business manager. Oh and Bradley middle school principal. I'm Reed McCracken, the high school principal. And I'm Andrew Bowen. I'm the elementary principal. Thank you all for those introductions. We'll begin our presentation with some housekeeping items. All right so just couple housekeeping and budget or housekeeping items and budget vote information tonight is our second informational meeting and then tomorrow voting will be done via Australian ballot starting at 8 a.m. and ending at 7 p.m. both at the Royalton campus and at Bethel campus or the two voting locations for you know come to Royalton if you're a Royalton resident come to that campus and then go to the Bethel campus if you're a Bethel resident. If you have an absentee ballot and you haven't returned it yet you need to do so by 7 p.m. tomorrow and here's an example of what that ballot will look like. So whether you've received an absentee ballot or if you're voting in person tomorrow you should get a school district ballot that looks like this. Good evening. Thanks for joining us. So we wanted to kick off by talking a little bit about the White River Valley Supervisory Union as an organization and some of the changes we've made this current school year and as we move forward into the fiscal year of 21-22 to really just address some community concerns and trust across the 10 towns of WRVSU specific to the central office. One of the things that we've been focused on was addressing the deficits that we had across the Supervisory Union both at the district level and at the Supervisory Union level. There was an article in the Herald on Thursday and I want to take the opportunity just to address one of the things they reported was over a nine hundred thousand dollar deficit with the White River Unified District that was across the SU. It was never projected that the White River Unified District was going to have a deficit at that amount. Certainly the Supervisory Union was projected to have a deficit at that amount across all of our member districts and the Supervisory Union. The good news is is that we've been able to recoup some additional funds from our grants. We've been able to really have a focus this year on fiscal responsibility through the lens of appropriate and proactive supports and interventions for students, meaning that we're trying to get early intervention in place for our students so that we're not trying to fill academic needs and gaps both socially emotionally and academically through more intensive supports and interventions, meaning we're trying to keep our students here within the Supervisory Union and we are hyper focused on as staff leave what positions need to be filled or how can we look to do business differently. And in the White River Unified District throughout this past fiscal year, we chose not to replace some of those positions. And in the budget that we're going to present to you tonight, you'll see a couple of positions we decided not to fill based on folks that departed the organization. We have not had any of this take place and had to have an impact on programming, meaning we still offer foreign language. We're still offering music at the same level as that we were offering it. And we've been able to expand our alternative pathways programming and been able to have a schedule that's going to support more intensive intervention at our primary grades with the idea being that we're going to gap fill academics early because we know all the research shows that by the time students get to middle and high school that if students are still struggling with reading, writing and mathematics, that their trajectory is not great. And so we need to make certain that we're doing a really strong job at the elementary levels to gap fill so that when students get to middle and high school, they can pursue whatever dreams they have in secondary and post-secondary pursuits. This budget does support that and it supports it at a decreased bottom line for all of you, a decrease per people spending. And we believe that this budget will continue to support us paying down your deficit. And so I just wanted to make certain that I acknowledge that at the start. You won't hear me much more tonight, but do know that the administration and board has worked incredibly hard to bring you a fiscally responsible budget that didn't take away any programming for your children. And that I'm very proud of. In addition, we're focusing on investing in teachers and not programs. And what do I mean by that? We're having a clear focus across the supervisory union in professional development and strategic professional development that ensures that our teachers have common language, common instructional approaches and that they're research based. And so the budget as we move into next school year will have focused professional development at all levels of the organization. And it's part of why we're bringing in a chief academic officer next school year to help oversee that important work. We are able to do that because we were able to reduce the FTE in the supervisory union for next year by five full time professionals. I think that's important to note. So we did bring in a chief academic office, but the supervisory union office is going to be operating on five less people than it was as we started July 1st. We've also created interdependence through our eight schools. I'm really proud to note that we open on September 8th in person across all of our members schools and our elementary students have been in school five days a week throughout the entire school year, other than a couple small shutdowns that we had to have due to COVID-19. And we've been able to do that because our principals have been working together collaboratively. I'm proud that our principals meet every Thursday. And they meet without central office in the room to think tank and problem solve and to make certain that we're learning from each other to do what's best for kids. So I'm very excited about the work that we're is currently underway and the future of WRVSU in the White River Unified District. Thanks, Ray. So every board meeting we report out on these are our goals that as two campuses and one school we're working towards. So there's three of us that are the principals of this one school. I have the benefit of traveling between both campuses. But what we're working on as a team for everybody is develop personalized and flexible pathways for student learning. And that looks very different as we report out each month, providing a robust and multi tiered system of supports for students, which Mr. Cannerney, Superintendent Cannerney already touched upon. And while maybe it's been a little more difficult this year due to the pandemic, we are working on improving our community outreach and partnerships. So those are going to be some long standing goals that will be continuing to work on and you'll hear probably a little bit more about throughout this presentation. And again, I'm Owen Bradley. I'm the White River Valley Middle School principal. And one of the things that we do like all schools is have a continuous improvement plan. This is good practice. And we have organized this in our pre K 12 setting. And we have several goals and goals at each of the school levels, elementary, middle and high school, and some through line goals. So we are really proud of that. And it's what we it's our touchstone. We go back to that and make sure that we're meeting those or working towards those goals at all times. One of the ways we set our goals and make decisions is by using and looking at data, social emotional data about students as well as academic data. And this year we've been increasing our use of data across the elementary middle of high schools. One of the assessment tools we use is called star 360. That's a test that we give in the fall of September in January and again in May. So three times a year. And we meet twice a month as data teams across the school and report out to the community at a board meeting every trimester. Here are some of the highlights from those data reports. So I think our biggest highlight we're most excited about is making it 95 days of in person with our elementary students before we had to come out with COVID. So we're really excited about the the amount of learning in person we've been able to accomplish and the not that we've had not so much of a lack of instruction. And while you know we would love to tell you everything's rainbows and roses, we have work to do. And part of that work we've seen is in our mathematics programming. And we are drilling down deep on that and we're looking at vertical math. What that means is mathematics pre K through 12. And we're really focusing on how do we increase the programming so that it meets all needs. And at the same time, make sure students have strong skills as they move through the system. Generally speaking across our programs in math and reading, one of the big concerns that the data show a year after year is that over the summer there's a loss of student learning from the time students are out of the classroom. With the extra 12 weeks that we are out of the classroom because of COVID last spring, that was a very real concern and something that many schools have seen around the state. I think because we've been back five days a week in person from the start in elementary and four days a week in the middle school and high school, which is very unusual around Vermont, certainly around the country. We haven't seen that decline. We've been able to hold our stores pretty scores pretty steady. And there are a couple of bright spots like at the high school, our 10th grade math scores are showing an improvement of 10% year over year. I'm happy to present this next slide, which is outdoor learning. And, you know, this has become kind of very true throughout the country. And we there, I'm really proud that we were, but we're also constantly improving that. And we're moving that up into the high school. And we have a pre K program that's very robust outdoors and middle school. We took advantage of that for safety and for learning this year. And we're going to move that to the high school. There's so much as we know to learn outside. And in Vermont, it's really just a lovely way to extend your classroom and to engage students in learning. And we do everything from biology, arch mathematics, and even fire safety and learning shelter building outdoors. So some of the things to share with you co curricular Lee and COVID Lee, you will, when we had to close down last spring, our spring sports seasons and things like the high school musical were canceled, which was was quite a hit for students. And we had to change the way graduation worked. But starting this fall, we were able to get in some of our usual co curriculars, albeit in different forms. So we had a modified fall soccer and cross country season where students wore masks and generally stayed physically distant. We had a short outdoor fall drama production that was videotaped and shared with the larger audience. Here you can see our actors posing in the school cart courtyard. We've started playing a shortened winter season. So we've now had two boys and girls varsity basketball games. The girls are playing right now on our new donated pixelot video system, which is pretty impressive. If you haven't had a chance to check that out. And our high school boys take on Northfield tonight at seven after this meeting is over. So we're excited that they were able to get on the court and play a little bit. Very different experience with nobody in the stands. But glad that it's able to happen. Another highlight this year is that some students started a high school newspaper club. They've now put out two two editions of the Wildcat Insider school newsletter that's all digital. Page right. Another big change because of covid is the way our community based learning and flexible pathways have taken place this year. Usually we try to get we get over two dozen students out of the community working in job sites, doing internships, doing community service projects and generally getting real life experience that earns them credit in the school. That hasn't been so much the case this year, although we have been able to have some internships and encourage some students to look at different schedules this year to really facilitate their independent learning away from school and kind of set them on a pathway for success in their adult lives. Some new experiences for flexible pathway community service community based learning students. They've done a lot of interviewing kind of meeting with businesses in the community and videotaping interviews and putting together videos of what they've learned and entered a couple contests with those which has led to a lot more in different service learning experiences than we're usually used to. So I think we just wanted to wrap it up with saying thank you. Thank you for being here and your general support throughout this whole school year. We feel really proud about this budget. We think it's responsible and we hope you support it as much as you've supported us so far this whole year. And I get to tell you or say to you thank you all for all of your support in safety when it comes to the pandemic. I know that it's been there's been major inconvenience every possible way. And we have learned right in front of you how to do this thing called school in a pandemic. Temperatures and gloves and hand sanitizing on and on and on. And we really we feel the support and we are very happy for that. Thank you. And finally, you know, we as principals, we went through every line of this budget and out every place where we thought there was anything that that we could remove without significantly impacting student experience learning experiences. What do you know we've taken our roles as stewards of your taxpayer dollars very seriously. So thank you. And I'll just add before the board takes over on the financial aspects of the budget, I want to just thank our teachers, staffs and students again, because you're doing amazing work and I'm unbelievable. We appreciate it as the board and administration are of all your efforts. We couldn't be where we are without the efforts of our dedicated teachers, staffs and students. So thank you all very, very much. Thank you all for sharing about what happens in our schools on a day to day basis. I really appreciate that introduction. Andrew, Chris and I are going to share a little bit about our budget starting with our current financial situation. So you may have heard in the news that we started with a general fund deficit from our FY 20 audit of three hundred and fifty thousand dollars. And so one of the things that we've been trying to do and that the administration and the staff and teachers have been trying to do, led by Jamie Kanarney in the school district in Tara, is to be really fiscally responsible right now in order to bring forward a surplus that we can apply to our deficit. So that's what's been happening and we have been successful in reducing the deficit or we hope will be successful. We're projecting about one hundred and seventy thousand dollar surplus for FY twenty one and that will reduce the general fund deficit to one hundred and ninety five thousand dollars one hundred yes and three hundred forty four dollars. So it'll be significantly reduced. One of the things from the original number, one of the things that we know is that we have three years to satisfy the deficit or to pay it off. And so if we can move to the next slide, there's a little more information there. So what we'd like to do is continue to be as fiscally responsible as possible and apply any surpluses we have to that deficit and then next year actually decide whether what's left of the deficit will impact the tax rate. If it stayed the same at one hundred and ninety five thousand dollars, then it would be three cents for one year or we could ask for a bond to spread it over three years. We are hopeful that we can continue to make that number smaller as we move forward, but that's sort of the worst case scenario and how we would have to directly deal with that. One of the things that has happened that's helped us in terms of understanding where our finances are at is that we've created a finance committee. So members of our board who are interested in the financial side of things more deeply and have a skill set that allows them to dig in a little more deeply along with community members work more closely with the business office and then they bring reports to our regular board meetings. And that's been incredibly helpful. Especially as we prepared this year's budget and thought about this deficit. That brings us to our next slides on our spending changes and priorities. So I'll turn things over to Chris. So for some spending changes that that we were seeing as Superintendent Canary mentioned, there are some positions that we're not replacing. So there was one full time position in music that wasn't replaced. We also David Wells left at the end of last year the elementary school principal in Royalton and we didn't replace that position. And so that was another one full time equivalent position that we decreased. There's also three full time equivalent support staff positions that were decreased. And then with reconfiguration of scheduling and roles and responsibilities, there's been efficiencies that have been found in driver's education, foreign language and health. In terms of reinvestment, we are investing in pathways and pathways coordinator, also a coordinator of student services. And then again, increases in outdoor and experiential learning. So again, net spending decrease, though we're seeing is going from twelve million ninety eight thousand one hundred nineteen dollars down to twelve million twenty six thousand ninety nine dollars on the revenue side. So we have there's two sides to the budget. There's the expenses and then there's the revenues. So here are changes we're seeing on revenues for local revenues comparison of the the current school year twenty twenty one to next year twenty one twenty twenty two. We're projecting a decrease in interest income of twenty two thousand dollars and then also a decrease in tuition of twenty eight thousand dollars. The next two categories we're expecting to stay level but at sixty transportation money we're seeing that we're projecting that to go up by two thousand five hundred sixty seven dollars. But vocational transportation, we are projecting that to go down by eighteen thousand dollars adult learning and drivers at reimbursements. We expect to stay the same. But again, as the superintendent mentioned, in terms of grants trying to deliver more grants you know from the SU and bring them to the school level we're projecting a increase of revenue from grants of eighty nine thousand one hundred dollars. So overall local revenue projecting an increase of twenty two thousand nine hundred dollars. But then when we factor in state funding we are projecting seventy four thousand dollars decrease in educational spending and then also twenty thousand seven hundred dollar decrease in the tech center money that we receive. So overall that brings us to in terms of revenue, a overall decrease of seventy two thousand dollars that we're projecting. So and you can see those changes and the sums of the two columns for our equalized pupils. We're also down slightly, but the state is compensating for that in their calculation for enrollment due to covid. So for the coming year if our enrollment or ADM is down, the state will use last year's ADM count instead of this year's. Overall, our equalized pupils are down by point seven percent. All right, so I'm going to take over and do the fun part, which is how we calculate a tax rate from all those numbers. So just to do a quick review the calculating tax rate you take your spending and you subtract out your revenue and divide that by your equalized pupils to get a per pupil spending and then we convert that per pupil spending to an equalized rate by dividing it by the state yields factor, which we'll talk about in a bit. And then that's where the merger incentive calls off our equalized rate. The final rate is the equalized rate divided by the common level of appraisal. Now we'll go into each of those steps a little more detailed now. So just to summarize what was in the other other slides, the spending is down about seventy thousand dollars and revenues up local revenues up a little more than twenty thousand. So the net spending is down about a hundred thousand dollars or point eight percent are equalized. Peoples are down point seven percent. So when we divide those to the per pupil spending, they basically cancel each other out. So the per pupil spending is down just point one percent. But still a little decrease in per pupil spending is always a good thing. Particularly since you know you're dealing with health insurance increases and other increases that, you know, the administration worked hard to still provide a decreased budget. So so now to talk about the state yield. The state uses this factor to convert between per pupil spending and an equalized tax rate. You can think of the yield as how much one dollar's worth of tax, how much per pupil spending is worth one dollars worth of tax. The state has to estimate this value depended depending on how much they need to collect from property taxes. So they'll adjust it up or down to increase or decrease the amount of revenue they take in. But they can't know this what amount they need to take in until they've all the budgets have been passed. But they need to provide guidance for us giving these presentations so that we can give an estimated tax rates to the voters before they vote. So what the normal process is in December, the agency of education sends out a letter that has an estimated yield that we use for our projections. This year, they came out with a letter and the yield was down fairly pretty significantly from 10998 to 10,900 763. And so that would cause what the yield going down that would cause an increase in tax rate. So but that tax letter came out when there was still a lot of uncertainty about some of the other revenue sources that the state uses to fund education, which includes sales taxes and the lottery and meals and meals, taxes, meals and board taxes. So there was a lot of uncertainty about that. There was this was before. The first COVID relief or second COVID relief package to pass. So there was still a lot of uncertainty in January. The House Ways and Means Committee took another look at the revenue side of things and presented a bill, which is now in front of the House, which had a proposed yield of 11,385, which is significantly higher than the December projected yield and would be pretty good news for the tax rates. So, you know, we are a little conflicted about what yield value to use. Usually we just use the projected yield. But since new information has kind of come out since then, we just wanted to make sure people were aware that this is fairly uncertain what the yield will be. The final yield winds up getting passed by the legislature. And last year, you know, the proposed yield that was proposed by the House Ways and Means Committee wound up being the final year. But the year before that, it wound up changing multiple times throughout the process before it became a final law. So, you know, right now it's proposed at 11,385, but that could definitely change. And we don't want to over promise and, you know, say the tax rates are going to be lower than what they wind up being. So what we're using for projections is the yield last year's yield, which is kind of in between December tax letter yield and the yield that's currently before the legislature. So we're going to be using the 10,998 yield for these slides. But just be aware that, you know, if you look at between the December yield and the one that's proposed in the House Ways and Means Committee, the resulting tax rate, there's almost a 10 second cent difference between those two values. So this could have a fairly significant impact on what the final tax rates wind up being. So, but using that last year's yield, with our peer pupil spending essentially flat and the same yield, the preliminary rate winds up being about the same down slightly. The merger incentive, which we received for merging our two districts, is slowly phasing out. It goes down two cents a year. And so that is two cents lower than it was last year, which makes our tax rate go up two cents. So our equalized tax rate is up one point one percent for this proposed budget. Now, the final thing to talk about is the common level of appraisal. And this was another factor that was pretty significant in fact, and tax rates this year. The common level of appraisal is a way that the state adjusts the equalized tax rate to reflect the differing levels of appraisals in each town. You know, wouldn't be fair for a town that has appraised values that are lower than property rates to be spending or sending less money to the state education fund than a town that had appraised values that were higher. So they look at how the towns appraised values compared to actual sale prices in each town and come up with a factor that to convert the equalized rate to a final tax rate for each town. The common level of appraisal is independent for each town. So it's different for Bethel and it's different for Royalton. So despite our being one district, we have two separate CLA's because the appraisals are done separately for each town. So that's the main reason for that. It fell almost three percent in Bethel, which caused the tax rate to go up about four cents there. And it fell almost five percent in Royalton, causing almost eight cent increase in Royalton. So this is a fairly significant impact on the final tax rates. Just to look at what it's been doing over time, it's been consistently falling each year. And as the CLA goes down, that causes taxes to go up. So if you look just since FY 16, it's been twenty two cents the increase in taxes can be attributed just to the CLA and fifteen cents in Bethel. At some point, we'll do a reappraisal as a town and our CLA will go back up to reflect the higher appraised values. And you know, at that point, our rate will go down, but presumably the values, home values that we'll be paying an arm will be higher. So it kind of balances out in the end. So just to look at how each of these pieces impacts the final tax rate. The net spending changes decrease the taxes a little bit, but that was canceled out by the equalized pupil change. The incentive phase out adds two cents. The yield change if it's the. You know, one that's currently in legislator could lower our taxes by five cents or if it's closer to the. To the. Tax letter value, then it could add three cents. So that's a big source of uncertainty there, but hopefully it'll be lowering the tax rate in the end, but we don't know yet. And then finally, the CLA added almost four cents in Royalton and seven. Seven point three cents and sorry, seven point three cents in Royalton and three point eight cents in Bethel. So the final tax rate change in Bethel will be up five point six cents and up nine point two cents in Royalton. You know, I know that this is an increase in both towns, but the. We're been really happy with the amount of work the administration did to reining costs and. You know, provide us with a budget that cut spending and cut per people costs so that we could. Have a. A fiscally responsible budget here. So to go over the ballot and a little bit more detail here, this is what you'll see when you go to vote or if you have your. Your absentee ballot is normally when we're in person, we go over each of these articles individually. And vote on them separately. But now it's just a single ballot where each of these articles is a separate space. So if you want to go to the next ballot, we'll get each of the sections a little bit bigger so we can read them. So the first three that will. On the top left there are the. District officers like the moderator and district clerk and district treasurer. Each of those just has one person running for it. So if you want to vote for that person, you fill in the circle next to them. And if not, you can write in somebody else you want to see. If you do write in, you need to fill in the circle next to the right in part. So article four is to fix the salaries and the amount of six hundred dollars per member of for the school district officers for the two thousand twenty one and two thousand twenty two school year. Article five is to fix the salaries and the amount of one thousand fifty dollars for the school district treasurer for the twenty twenty one twenty two school year. And article six is big we lost Andrew Lisa. Yeah, I think so. So he was just talking about article six and article six is just our tax anticipation note. So that's the note that we typically talk about that allows the school district to borrow money and pay bills until they collect all of the taxes that are owed. So sometimes the timing just doesn't work out and that allows us to pay our bills on time. Do you want to take over article seven, Andrew? You can keep going. That's fine. OK. All right. So article seven is the actual budget that we just presented the information on. So that is the piece where the budget is approved and also it results in the education spending of eighteen thousand three hundred nine dollars and ninety seven cents per equalized pupil. Article eight and nine are for the Royalton school board candidate. We don't have any candidates this year. So you would need to write one in. So article eight has one for Royalton and then one for Bethel. And with us this evening we have one person, Shannon Morrill Cornelius, who previously served on our board from Royalton, but moved to Bethel, who is willing to be written in. And I'm hopeful she'll speak to you all a little bit more after we wrap up this presentation. And then finally, we have the overview of the budget as a whole, not the budget. I'm sorry, I don't know what I'm saying of the sample ballot as a whole again in our presentation just. To show you a little bit, if you haven't already voted because I know some people have what you'll see when you go to vote tomorrow. At this time, if people have questions, we're happy to entertain those. You can either use the raise hand function and I'll call on you. Or if you have called in, you can push star six and unmute. If you've called in, please identify yourself before you ask your question. So we know who we're talking to. Thank you. Shannon, would you like to ask a question or tell us a little bit about yourself? Well, that wasn't why I was calling in. I actually have a question. Great. So I am particularly you may know my husband's a nurse. I'm a geneticist. I'm particularly concerned about the cuts in health and health education, especially after this year, especially with I, you know, OK, my family is interested in health and I know the junk my kids have been sitting around eating. So I'm worried about the cuts in health education for our elementary students, especially, I think that we have to start them as young as possible. Could someone speak to that and why I know we're trying to to do more with less, but why that program seems to have been singled out. Jamie, I'll start. And then I think the principles can jump in. So Shannon, one of the approaches that we've been trying to implement across the elementary schools is around a wellness in social emotional curriculum that's implemented by all of our teachers. And so what we're looking to do is teach those concepts, but teach them across all classrooms. And so we've got a curriculum now that we've developed that's being taught by classroom teachers and Andrew could talk about what other members of the faculty are teaching that curriculum. But there are clearly identified lessons in learning intentions weekly. In addition to that, we've been contacted by Sam Drazen, who's been doing some really good work around social emotional learning that ties into health and wellness that we look to access and use next year as well that provides clear learning intentions and lessons that we could implement. I think the power of that then is is that all teachers are using common language. So there's common language and expectations, expectations and routines around those concepts and it's not just taught in health or indoor wellness based on what school calls it. Some elementaries call it wellness. Some elementary schools call it health. It's a one off and it's not necessarily integrated and or reinforced throughout the school day. And so the hope is that those concepts are reinforced and integrated throughout the school day and not just in health class. Andrea, did you want to add anything more to that? I don't know what you didn't say. I feel like you covered it. But yeah, we we're doing mandatory morning meetings this year. We started. So every classroom is doing a morning meeting and trying to incorporate a bunch of different pieces, some of the social emotional. But we're slowly building into that a bunch of this, you know, the health, the wellness, all of that. So this was new this year, the whole morning meeting for everybody in the same way. But that's definitely where we have been trying to incorporate those things and look forward to doing more of it. Did that answer your question, Shannon? I guess also we currently have a health teacher has has that health professional been consulted in any way because I know that a lot of the things she was doing were more innovative than just health. I know when my I have one kid who's been through that in fourth and fifth and sixth grade. And some of the great things he learned were, you know, how to tell if an advertisement is fact or fiction and how to tell, which is so important, right? What are the alternative facts that we're learning here and how do you write anything? So I'm curious. I just I hate to see it lost. I think that there's a huge benefit to that. And I hate to see that devoted time lost. But I understand if everyone's trying to teach it. Thank you. And Owen Bradley would like to respond as well. Thanks, Shannon. Great questions. And, you know, we get to this spot where it's like tough choices. We I agree with you the health programs robust and lovely. We actually have three people that teach health specifically content wise. We have Lori Smith, Melissa Purdy and Jim Hewitt. So at all three levels, the idea is to offer as much as we can. And at the same time, balance making sure that we're giving students strong literacy and mathematics skills. And I know you appreciate that as a medical professional. Thank you, Owen. We have other questions. Hi, this is Tammy Benoit. There is a question in the chat and the question in the chat is, do we know of any state or federal stimulus money may assist towards our budget? Thank you, Tammy. I missed that. Yeah, thanks. Hey, Tara, fill in the gaps for me where I miss it. But so one of the things that has just come down from the agency of education is that we need to put in place a recovery task force for COVID 19 and that money will be tied to S or two funds. And that's the elementary and secondary something act. But I forgot exactly what Esther stands for, but that's what it is. And so that was tied to money that was passed back earlier in the fall, late fall. That's not that doesn't have anything to do. Chris, with the current bills that are happening in D.C. And so we fully expect significant money brought in via S or two that will be focused on truancy concerns focused on professional development for teachers, focused on intervention, specifically, how do we deal with and address regression over the summer and get students who have some. We still have some students who haven't been in school since March and one of the last March and one of the things that we're finding is is that outcomes for our students that are in our virtual learning Academy or teachers have been working incredibly hard in the virtual learning Academy and doing a great job. There are very own teachers here across the SU, but the parents support at home specifically with our students in kindergarten, first, second, third, fourth grade and those primary grades are very dependent on the support they have at home. And so we've been working tirelessly to address virtual learning, but we also know we have some students that are going to need a great deal of support because of regression. And so we've been meeting already to address how we're going to do that in the summer. I think we're going to be ready to launch a really strong summer program that's partnered with one planet that's going to provide academic enrichment and intervention by licensed teachers throughout the summer. And we're going to target students and partners will be used to pay for it so that money is not going to be in the way of students accessing that programming that it will be open for all. And so those are some of the areas that the federal funds will be targeting. In addition to, we expect that some of this money can be used for infrastructure. And so we're hopeful that the timing is ripe for us to address our heating system within the Buffalo campus and that we'll be able to tap into some of these S or two funds in additional funds here in the future to offset that cost. And so with that, it's not going to impact the taxpayer because we do know that there are some delayed maintenance that we've had deferred maintenance that's occurred across the SU and part of that being in red, and specifically the heating system in Buffalo. And so we're going to be looking to tap into those monies in that regard, too. Tara, did I miss anything? Now you covered it all. And just to give the full title is elementary and secondary school emergency relief fund. Thank you. Thank you both. Shannon, you have another question. I do. So one more quick question or maybe not so quick because it's now March and we've been here a year right in covid land. So I'm just wondering if someone can give a brief synopsis about what this whole mess has done to us financially. There were, you know, games that didn't happen and refs that weren't paid and field trips that weren't gone on. But I also imagine there were costs that were incurred that we can't even see because parents can't go into the buildings anymore. So we have no idea what's going on except what our kids tell us. So could someone just speak to was it net gain, net loss, overall crazy money going anywhere? So Shannon, we've been able to maximize our covid relief funds. That's part of the federal funds we've received and any additional costs that were related to covid we've built to that grant. We also have an S or one grant that we will use for the remaining months of the spring. And the projected surplus that we're indicating to you, both of the SU and at the district, that is with the expenses that covid-19 and reimbursement projected and figured it. And so yes, we have incurred costs, but I got to say that the feds have done a good job of supporting those costs and assisting us to stay open and have a fully staffed virtual learning academy. Without those funds, we would be in trouble financially. But those funds have offset those costs. So I'm just briefly, can you because we can't see it's as a community, we have no eyes into the building. Can you comment on what did cost more? So there's programs that yeah, and I'll let the principles jump in. I mean, so one, we staffed our own fully staffed virtual learning academy, which has our teachers has one of the principles within the supervised reunion, Lindy Stetson, who's been overseeing it. And so there were there were some costs that we incurred based on needing to replace some teachers who are teaching in that with subs, long term subs. And so we've incurred some costs there. In addition, we brought in additional staff as floating subs because we knew we were going to have teachers and faculty out due to the protocols and procedures of COVID-19 in house screenings. And so therefore, we needed to have additional bodies to ensure that we didn't have to close due to a shortage of staff, which I'm probably haven't had to do yet across the SU. And of course, there's PPE cost around around cleaning and materials and things like, you know, heated lunch servers to get more meals out to students because we deliver meals to classrooms and students don't access the cafeteria, you know, just, you know, PPE. So there's been significant cost incurred in those things. I don't know if the principles you guys want to add any more. Certainly technology and devices was a big cost that we incurred and we were able to utilize our CFR funds to allow for us to purchase the technology and devices we needed to best support our students. I think it's all kind of. Oh, I didn't raise my hand. Sorry. I was just going to say it's kind of been a wash. I mean, I've never signed so many purchasers for a hand sanitizer in my life. And there's some funny things like that we've bought like tents who thought we'd ever buy tents. But yeah, we haven't gone on field trips and a lot of the some of the things we do that are normal, we have saved a bunch of money on as well. I would also say that, you know, one of the things that's been amazing with the faculty is we froze the budget right away. For not pandemic reasons because we didn't have a handle on it and Jamie wanted to get a handle and the faculty's been amazing. We have spent money in other places like tents and shovels and outdoor stuff, sleds. And we also have not spent money as you might say. I don't know if we get to know what the wash is yet probably later down the road. I'll also just add we also through efficiency. Vermont have upgraded your guys's ventilation system to over a quarter of a million dollars. And so that's been money that we've used to to refurbish our HVAC systems which have improved efficiency around heat cost and things specifically at our South Royalton campus. Thank you. Right. Perfect. Just checking the comments since I missed Chris's earlier. Alicia, you have a question for hi. Yes, I do. This is just more because I have sort of a new role being a property owner with tenants that have children that go to both schools. I'm just kind of wondering it got me thinking about all of the rental properties in Bethel and Royalton areas and at $18,000 a pupil. How much like if you have a family of four, that's a lot of money. I'm just wondering if there's ever anything in the budget that kind of, if there is anything that relates renting and things like that to like class per pupil, like if there's people that actually are not property owners. You know what I'm saying? I don't even know what I'm asking. I just kind of made this like general observation about that, that like if you have a family that has a lot of children, that is that's money that us that taxpayers, which I guess being a property owner, that's just a choice that we make. But is there ever anything that kind of shows that in our budget lines to like show people that sometimes this is why it's raised and whatnot? I saw Andrew raise his hand. So I'll let him take the first opportunity to respond. Yeah, I mean, one of the challenges we have is actually with falling student numbers not so like when we have more students were able to spread the spending that we have out over more students or per pupil spending goes down. So when you have families with large numbers of kids, that helps us because we're able to, you know, have more students to spread the spending out on. And yeah, the way that it works, it's just the property taxpayers are the ones that are paying into the Education Fund. So, you know, if you have a renter that has students, they're not paying for each of the students, they're paying rent to the landlord who then pays property taxes to the state. So I don't know, that would be my explanation for those things that it wants to And Alicia, I would just add every year it seems like or every couple of years the legislature takes up whether or not funding education spending primarily through property tax is the best means to do it and is their equity in it. And so once again, they've started to discuss it a little bit, although my sense is due to COVID-19 and other things that they have to navigate right now, it's not a priority. But I do think in general, something that Vermont will need to look at in the future is funding education via the property tax, the most equitable way to do it and most sustainable Okay, thank you. Thank you for the question. We have other questions either about the budget or programming, we're all here together, the ballot. Shannon, would you like to share a little bit about your willingness to be written in on the Bethel spot for school board member, school director? Sorry, my husband is out back with a chainsaw, if you can hear that in the distance, they are working on a screech owl house right now. My seven year old and he and they're trying to Lord, anyway, sorry. So my name is Shannon Moral Cornelius and I did put it in the chat just if you want to check how to spell it. I'm running for the Bethel seats specifically. And I was on the board previously for two years and had to step off because when we first moved up here, we were renting in South Royalton when I joined the board and we had planned to stay and build a house there and then we found the perfect house, but it was across the line in Bethel. So now we live here. And so now I'm running to get back on the board a little bit over a year later, but from the Bethel side. So if anyone has any questions, certainly feel free to find me on Facebook or, you know, let me know through chat if you want to call and chat later. I'm happy to do that. But so I'm running as a writing candidate, so you'd have to know how to spell my name. And as I have told even my dear friends, you can take your phone into the voting booth. So even my dear friends have a have a hard time spelling my entire name correctly. So I apologize for the length of that. But and we have two two kiddos in the school system, one who is a seventh grader and one who is a second grader. And like I said, spent today building a screech owl house and now is out and they just hung it up. So anyway, thank you. Thank you, Shannon. Right. Any other questions? Just had a positive comment from Chris maybe that the learning environment at the middle school has been a safe COVID learning experience. And he all and they always welcome more outdoor learning. So I appreciate that comment. Or Owen and his team has made it a great experience. All right. Okay, I guess that's that we've reached the conclusion of this meeting. If no one has any additional questions, I'm just going to glance back at our agenda that brings us to the end of the meeting. You're looking for a motion, Lisa. So we were looking for do we lose Lisa? Looks like we might have lost Lisa. I guess I'll entertain a motion to it. This is Lisa. I will second. All right. Thanks, everybody. And I hope see everybody at the polls tomorrow who hasn't done absentee ballot already. Good night, everyone. Thank you. Thanks for showing up.