 I've been in the meeting of the Ruxbury Board of School Directors December 12th, December 13th at 632. So first order is public comment. I want to know we are having a second public comment after the budget presentations. So you're welcome to speak twice. But if you have planning to make comments on the budget and want to see it first, there will be an opportunity to comment after the budget. And just reiterating public comment is a time when the board listens. It's very important to our decision making process and we take comments very seriously. You also really appreciate the time, effort and thought that goes into comments. We know sometimes it can be difficult to get in front of a body like the board and talk. We really appreciate it and want to make it as welcoming as possible. But we do, we are in listen only mode and we don't respond in real time, although we take the comments very seriously and then try to get some sort of response out when appropriate. Do I have any one who wants to go public comment now? And again, if you go now, you can go later. Either in the room or and if you're online, please use the raise hand function. If you know how to use it. If not, just go off camera and signal to us that you would like to talk. So we have one person in the room. So please go ahead and take the chair in front of us and also announce your name. And for us to. All right. Good evening, folks, Jim, I can bury them up to your residents. Appreciate all of y'all are doing. I think it's. Thank you. Thank this task at times. So again, thank you for being here doing what you do. Track by the numbers real quick and for you all, you've seen it in the email, but I think the greater public needs to understand too. To my surprise, it turns out that track and field is our largest spring sport and our Montpelier Roxbury school district didn't know that until yesterday afternoon. And so I think that's something that is important because some folks have said in the past only a few people use the track. So it's actually a very large sport. I saw your numbers there real quick. So if my math was good with the 40 students that were in the track program last spring, that's 11% of the high school student body. And then with the 90 students in the middle school. That's 27% of the middle school body. So the numbers are right again, math is not my strong suit, 18% of the whole MRPS school district student athlete students out there in track and field. So, if we can keep the funds set aside for the track renovation, please do. If the fiscal reality is such that you cannot do that, then please keep as much of that funds there as you can, especially to make immediate improvements to the track. So this is just safe and functional for the upcoming track season. I get that there's other reports coming out from consultants. I don't anticipate they're going to recommend relocating the high school. And so, let's at least try to find a way to make it safe and functional for the upcoming season for our largest spring sport. And thank you. Great. Thanks, Jim. Anyone else in the room. I'm not online. I'm not seeing any hands. Oh, great. So next item is the. Can I just make a very quick announcement. Sure. Just, I wanted to lift up a couple of things that I have recognized in our school district just very, very quickly, if I could. First, I wanted to say congratulations to our Montpelier Roxbury mask theater program for an outstanding performance of your in town and looking over to Lara, because she was a key player on the stage, but there were many, many, many students who went into the company and crew. And I just was, I got a chance to see it on Friday and was so impressed at the talent and the commitment of those students. So I wanted to say that and also say thank you, Alara, and your fellow students for providing that entertainment for the community. That was a ton of fun. And then I also wanted to offer something that I didn't know existed until just recently in my day job today. I had the pleasure and privilege of participating in a webinar in which are several high of our high school students were also there. The high schools healthy masculinity class was featured in our, in this webinar I was in, and young men and their teacher Joe Carol led a conversation with business leaders in our state about the expectations of masculinity in our society today and how to foster healthy relationships among themselves and also broad more broadly among everyone and once again I was just so impressed by these young people in our community that felt like it was worth using just a little bit of public comment time. Very grateful that they have this resource here at our high school because to me it seems like a really important part of what we are here to do which is prepare them for life beyond our schools so just wanted to acknowledge those two really great things happening in our schools. The consent agenda. The consent agenda is essentially kind of small ministerial things that we need to approve but don't require separate time it helps us not be here until 10 every night. And if there is something that board members have questions about they can pull that out for individual discussion. Do I have a motion to prove the consent agenda. Thank you Scott. Second, with the addition of the co curricular. With the addition of the co curriculars to clarify. Yes. Do you have a second. Second. Any discussion or questions. I was in favor. Any opposed. Great consent agenda passes. On to. Projects so Christina, if you want to know how you guys want to. We're trying to physically tag team. Anna, I need the capacity to share my screen. You made me a co host please. I was talking to Anna. New text Jake to talk about the capturing. Oh, I can just. Okay, so. In my orca friend, can you make the pictures disappear on the screen to. From the computer. Thank you. So here is the draft budget. I just want to remind the board and everybody who's listening that this is the first draft. There will be three drafts to go through after feedback is given from the board. So this is the first draft. There are still lots of numbers that are things that are assumptions that we'll talk about in here. There are some that are getting more and more real like literally. What an hour ago. We got new numbers that are not represented in here because we didn't have enough time to update the slideshow. So the new numbers are coming in every single day. It is different from last Wednesday already in a good way and in a better way. So, so we were able to add some revenue between last Wednesday and this Wednesday. So to know further ado. Here's what we're going to talk about today. We're going to do an overview just around the district, the glossary of terms, what are unknowns and just a budget at a glance, because it's the thing everybody wants to get to. We have enrollment protractions that we have staffing implications, expenses and revenues going through the capital plan, and then the tax rates and then time for board discussion and public comments after the presentation. I think we'll ask the board to write down your questions and then save it to the end of the presentation. Does that make sense? Okay. Okay, so here's just some district information of the number of students we have and the number of total FTEs or full time equivalents that we have in the school district. These numbers for the student count are from the October 1st student count. So it's just something to keep in mind. They might be slightly different now. However, these are from the October 1st student count. We do have 290 employees, 161 of them are faculty or teachers. Here's some demographic information. Here you see less than 11. That's because 11 is our end size that we cannot report under. So if you see less than 11, then that means we have zero to 11 kids in that category. And we can't report that exact number because it could be identifiable to a student. So we can't break purple laws here in this presentation. I think that our free and reduced numbers that the board, especially who have seen budget presentations before those drastically increased because the state is calculating that in a different way because of the universal free meals. So right now it's called direct certification through Medicaid forms. Is that correct, Christina? Yeah. So for other state subsidies, then they automatically qualify for free and reduced. So that that enables us to not have parents having to report out and send us back forms. So that's a number now that's given to us by the state. So if you have a handout, you only have the ad pages. I apologize. I apologize for that little snafu. That's okay. That's why we have the projection up here. So hopefully not the good stuff is missing. We tried and you can't get it out on screen. I tried to raise the screen I couldn't. The context. So that said, if people want to like scoot your shirt up closer, go for it. It's fine. The context here, some budget themes. So we want, in any of our budgets, we want to support our theory of growth, which we'll talk about in a minute, while still being sensitive to the tax implications for our community. One of the factors that we're dealing with is of course act 127, something we've been talking about for quite some time now. That's the new people waiting law that went into the will go into effect for FY 25 budget. We have an anticipated dollar yield of $9,452. That is always going to be anticipated in budget presentations because it's set in law and may or June by the legislature, but they're the tax commissioner. Letter that came out on November 30th this year gives us that anticipated amount. The estimated common level appraisal of course what your house is worth versus what it's appraised at that is still an assumption or an estimate at this time, but we have it on good authority that our estimates are pretty good. And health rates, health care increases of 16.4%. That's a statewide bargaining number. So we have no influence over this. It's statewide, but that increases our health benefits to buy almost $400,000 in this budget. And then our local and local factors is that we do have a decreasing student enrollment. It's not decreasing precipitously, but it's decreasing the downward trend. So the district drivers here, our board worked very hard over the summer and in the early fall on coming on free focus areas. One is academic achievement for all students. Another safety inclusion, inclusion and belonging for every member of our community and a commitment to open communication with our community. So you're seeing the budget will reflect to particularly those first two indicators of board focus. So this is our theory of growth before we've been working with this theory of growth for the last few years. So if you've been to budget meetings, this is not new. The traffic might be due because they haven't changed in a year or two ago. But we're working on the premise of four for values in our system. We want to build limitless futures for every learner. That means when they graduate from our system that they have any choice available to them that they want to go after. So in order to do that, we know that we need to have collective responsibility and collaborative practices because educating children is complicated. So nobody know one person can do that on their own. We need to have formalized essential learning so we're positive what it is that we need to teach students and a student in one class does not get different content from the student that learning the same amount same stuff in a different class with a different teacher. We need a system to enrich intervene and remediate, remediate basically saying that any kid is the learning is the constant, not the time it takes to get that learning, but the learning is the constant around our formalized essential learning. And then we want high quality instruction in every single class classroom. So typically in budget conversations I break these four down to show what but where in the budget, particularly like money, the board is focusing on and staffing and things like that we're not adding any staff this year, however, you'll see our four pillars here around staffing professional development and leadership. As we were sharing this presentation with our leadership team today, it was just massive snaps around the table for this chart. Last year, we couldn't put any links to show evidence of this work. And now it's absolutely full of links that people can click on to see exactly what we mean when we say multi tiered system of support. The definitions are in our on our website under that at length. So people can see it they can see pictures of our intervention team and where they work and what their focus is. We can you can see definitions of tier three and tier two instruction with remediation and intervention you can see our assessment plan you can see our curriculum and how we develop it. We have a lot of stuff on our website now through a tremendous amount of work by the team in the back there. So I applaud their work, most definitely and thank them profusely. You can also see links to the professional learning that will still be going on through FY 25 so that is a budget implication we thanks for that right. And in terms of, you know, different tiers and that kind of thing there are people and human resources that the board is committed in budgets are past budgets to ensure that we have the human resource capacity to make this happen. So, a lot of developments in these areas with evidence towards growth. That people can click on. All right, so let's get to the budget. In particular, there's just a glossary of terms. When presenting a budget somebody said the other day I think I said this in the last meeting that don't use buzzwords. It's nearly impossible to talk about education finance of Vermont without using buzzwords so hopefully this is not an odd page hopefully you can keep it you have this one good thanks Tina. You can have this kind of dog ear so you can refresh back to it. The general fund you'll see in our budget is the main operating fund of the school district it's what we need in order to to operate. The capital plan is a separate entity. Currently, it's being voted on as a separate article and on meeting day we're actually checking to see if it has to be a separate article because we do a similar thing with in terms of money transfer with food service, and that's not a separate article so we're not sure why the capital fund is. So we're just checking on that it will be a separate article for this year but it's something that that is different. The capital fund is for long term plan facility needs. Long term plan spending is our total budget less our non tax revenues, such as federal and state grants like title one and title two, as well as locally generated revenues like tuition when a student is tuition into our schools and interest on any kind of account that we might have long term weighted average daily membership LTW ADM. This is the new per pupil weights. We're probably going to call them weighted pupils during this presentation because that's a mouthful. So we will probably continue with weighted pupils if it's okay with the board, although in the presentation it says LTW ADM. Okay. So that's our average daily membership and it's multiplied this is this is the weights that we talk about the property dollar yield. I'm still not quite sure that's exactly the best way to describe it but that's what it is. If any of our two board members in the tax department want to make that make a go of layman's terms there you're welcome to. But the bottom line is that in a good economy there's a higher yield number and that lowers our tax rates. If the yield goes down that increases our tax rates. And it's not something that we have control over in the district except by law in the spring. We do have that anticipated property or dollar yield now. And then the common level appraisal is your praise value on a property versus the market value. Higher market value equals CLA under 100% equals a higher tax rates as closest to CLA is to 100% or over that equals a lower tax rate. And again this is not something that we have any control over the dollar yield in the CLA however do drastically impact the school tax base. So though so each pupil when we're talking about our weighted pupils we're not talking about individual students in individual seats what we're talking about is that each student. Depending on some identifying factors what grade they're in whether they're English language learner whether they are living in poverty. They add different weights which you see there in the long term weighted average you see the weights and parentheses after each category this is what's changed in Act 127. The weights were much different now so a student who has limited English proficiency at the elementary level is that student is multiplied by 2.49. For instance, budget unknown still the tax factors that we don't know our final LTW or weighted pupils, we still don't know that we just got an updated number literally an hour ago before this presentation it is now what's in this presentation. But we do have an updated one it is still, we still don't believe it's correct. So, so we're still there but we do have an updated one, it did go in the right direction at least. And our common level appraisal we're still using an estimate the revenues, we don't know what our transportation aid is going to be at this point. In terms of expenses, we still don't know what our career center six semester averages, and we are currently in negotiations with our AFSCME unit which are custodians technologists and administrative assistance. So we don't know what the outcome of those contract negotiations will be in Christina I'm going to hand it over to you for budget at a glance. Nice and loud so they can hear you behind you. Um, so since we left Matt we had a lot of good news on the revenue side, we're looking at having to use a lot of fun balance and we were able to reduce that we increase our revenues on the special education side and I'll walk through that with you. Um, budget at a glance you're looking at three columns here the first column is FY 24 the final budget after the yield was set. And after the CLA was adjusted for the reappraisal that was done in Montpelier. Um, so in the second column is FY 24 budget if Act 127 were in place, we needed to run through this exercise so we can compare apples to apples to get to the tax rate. So the column that we're going to look at is FY 25 budget draft one. Currently, our budget with the capital plan is 32 million 201,000. That is an 11 and a half percent increase from the current year. That brings us to the long term weighted average daily membership so we're going to follow that pupils currently. Our pupils are 1821 and that is the weighted version and like Libby said we just got new numbers on that an hour ago so your next version you'll you'll see that number increase. That gives us an ad spending her pupil of 14,600. Currently, like Libby said the dollar yield is set at 9,452 that would give us an equalized residential tax rate of $1.54. That's the number that's capped at 5%. So with that cap, we're looking at $1.33. Brad on the presentation online like to see it. This just this budget glance just to say it right now, even though the board sees an increase to the general budget then we showed you last Wednesday, we are under the 10% for people increase. We're currently hovering around 9% right now, which gives us a little wiggle room if some of these estimates come in not in our favor. So in terms of enrollment projections and you the board can see several years of where we were to where we're going and that our numbers are dropping slightly year to year. We've risen and then we've fallen from 2015. In terms of class sizes. This is something we wanted to point out to the board. We will be suggesting to the board to reduce enforce a K6 licensure teeth license teacher. This budget season you see that and marked in green where we currently have five fourth grade teachers at Union Elementary School. So we are suggesting to the board because of class sizes to reduce a K6 license teacher. What the board should not hear there is that we reduce a Union Elementary teacher because it's based on licensure category, not on school building. So it's a K6 person there. We've done this in the past and typically that's solved through some sort of person deciding they're going to go to a different a different employer, typically that or retirement, one of the two. So that's typically how that that particular riff is taken care of. If it's not that way then it goes to seniority. I highlighted or had Christina highlight the K through 4 teachers at Union Elementary School for the 2425 school year and the 2526 school year because this will be a place that the board will be looking at in future years to continually to make riffs. Because our class sizes should enrollments that enrollment trends continue the way they are currently going our class sizes at Union are getting very small. And your class size policy dictates where those classrooms should be. And there are considerable opportunities there to continue to look at our our K6 license teachers. Without breaking class size policy at all so we have a lot of room to maneuver over the next course next years and as we pointed out in the past what six board meetings this is not a one year challenge with act 127 it's a five year challenge with act 127. So this is a place where the board will probably be looking in the in the next few years. We just wanted to highlight it in this budget. This is the enrollment projections for Roxbury in Montpelier we use we have somebody who can who does projections for us at Roxbury we simply take the kids and move them down a year. We don't have that same same kind of count so if we have 6 3rd graders in 2022 23 we have 6 3rd 4th graders and 23 24 there's nothing really scientific about it unless we gain or lose students and we know we have at the October 1 count and so we make adjustments with actual bodies and seats there. So this is just another way to show the enrollment on a line graph that does show the decreasing enrollment over time on the top line and read. And you can see when different historical dates that influence student enrollment happened for board members who haven't been here for a while. So in terms of this budget what we are suggesting to the board in this draft. We had to make some additions so as our funding is ending on in September 2024. So we added 2.55 FTE and intervention paid for through us or are faster grant funding, which is ending so we're we're adding those positions into the budget to help support our theory of growth around timely systems to intervene and remediate and enrich the RVS after school program. We're losing an after school grant that is currently paying for most of that program, not all of it, but most of it. And so we're we need to add 1.5 FTE to RVS after school. However, as Christina is going to know later on in the presentation that we need to ask parents to pay for that service next year. And so there'll be a corresponding revenue for that piece. So it's not a it's not a budget ad in terms of an expense. But it is going to be an addition and social work. We've been paying for 1.0 FTE social work out of our Medicaid fund balance for several years now because our Medicaid fund balance was quite large. And we've used that up. So that social work position in order to support students with social emotional learning needs to be moved into the local local budget. And then there's a new payroll tax from the legislature that's 0.44% that needs to be added to our salaries and benefits page or salaries and benefits rather. In terms of reductions in force, we're suggesting to reduce AFSCME support staff position 1.0 FTE. It's current that position is currently not filled. A K6 licensure as I talked about before because of low enrollment 1.0 FTE, the RVS pre-K position, which is 0.5 FTE because of low enrollment that is currently unfilled as well. The RVS library media has a technology piece to it, which is 0.2. So it right currently has a 0.6 position, 0.2 of it is dedicated to like a technology class that no other school has. And so we are suggesting reducing that position by just 0.2. Not taking the library piece away but take the technology piece away. And MHS science, the district-wide sustainability position is 0.2 FTE. And when you reduce the district-wide sustainability, we have too many science teachers. So that would be a MHS science rep of 2.2, I'm sorry, 0.2 FTE. Budget expenditures Christina, take it. Right, so we're going to look at the total budget. So it's the third line on this page. So expenses by school. This is another place where the board can see the costs starting to really skyrocket at Union Elementary School. And this is largely because of the very small class sizes. So this number, if we were to right-size those classrooms over the next few years, that would bring it down to where Main Street Middle School and Mobiliar High School is. There's room to maneuver there for Union Elementary School. That's one of the big differences between the Union Elementary School number and the Roxbury number. There isn't room to maneuver in the Roxbury number by reducing staff there without other drastic measures. So there's a little bit difference between those two numbers in how we're seeing them, but that Union number has drastically increased in my time here, certainly. And right now our class sizes are very small there. Right now we're going to look at the expenses by program. It's a few different ways to look at expenses. You can look at it by category or by program. We're going to start with the program and then I'll walk through the category. Then we'll get into the revenue side where all the good news is. So general education, the proposed budget, it's an increase of 9.64. And what you're going to hear through all of this is it's a lot to do with the health insurance increases and contract negotiations. So in general education, we're looking at a 9% increase mostly caused by health insurance premiums contract negotiations and the added that's our position. In special education, we're looking at a 29% increase budget over budget. This is also health insurance contract negotiations. We had to increase our specialized transportation and professional services. We're also looking at an increase to OT and PT service. Which is occupational therapy and physical therapy. That's works. Alright, our career center tuition were anticipating little change in the FTE there. Under student support, which is our nurse guidance, social worker and speech, we're looking at about 18% increase, mostly due to health insurance and contract negotiations. Our staff support services. So this is library tech curriculum and our professional development. We're looking at about 8% increase here. The school board and superintendent area. We're looking at a decrease. We decreased professional development and we had a decrease in our legal services. In the school office and the special services administration, a small increase of 4% mostly caused by health insurance. In the business office, there's an increase of force of health insurance. There's an interest increase in our audit contract. We go out to bed for that. And then added professional services. Under buildings and grounds, there's a small increase here 2% that's mostly caused by heating and electricity costs. Under safety, there's a decrease here. We had some 1 time expenses in this current year that we won't need next year. In transportation, we have an increase. We have a new contract. I believe it's a 3 year contract. And under debt service, we're seeing a decrease there in our interest payments. Those are all the bonds that we have outstanding. And then the fund transfer to cover the anticipated service deficit. The next slide shows you just a different way of looking at it. The percentages. And the next slide shows you a year to year comparison in those programs. This slide is expenses by category so this breaks out salaries from each of those programs that we just talked about and it breaks out the benefits of each of those programs. Overall salaries are increasing 10%. So this reflects our actual staffing that we know about. As of today, the benefits. So this is a 24% increase. We're increasing the HRA usage percentage we were budgeting for 75% usage and we're seeing that go up so 85%. And we have the new payroll tax. Professional services. So this is some professional services meaning paying someone to do something. I like our legal contract and that sort of thing. That's going up by 6%. Our 504 and sped requirements are increasing. And then there's just a normal year to year increase for services. Purchase services. There's a decrease. A lot of this is the building based decreases. That the principles put forward. Contracted services is a 14% increase and this is also related to sped requirements and then normal year to year increases. This would be where our increase the transportation is. Supplies technology and books. Again, this is a decrease based on building based budget. Our equipment. There's a small increase. Of $16,000 for facility needs. And that is separate from what our capital plan does. There's another separate slide for that. And then our fund transfer to service. This chart just shows you a different view of your salaries, benefits, professional services, how it makes up our total budget. And the next slide in the year to year comparison. And onto our revenues. So this is where we got a lot of good news over the last week. Since I've seen you two weeks yesterday. Sorry. The top view. Rose is our tuition. So we can get tuition from town that tuition out. Either elementary or high school. So we do see some of that. We also get private tuition though parents that live, let's say, in our neighboring town. They can pay a private tuition. We also receive a small tuition for preschoolers that choose to come to our program after the. The universal three K bill was passed. So we're not going to see too much changes there. I don't anticipate. The next highlight here, I would go down to the local revenue that after school program that would be referred to earlier. We're adding $100,000 there as parent payments to help supplement that program. The next highlight I would go to is the prior year surplus. We're going to see $165,000 was added to the already midded 400,000. The next big number that you're seeing there is the Ed spending grant. So this is the money made up from the Ed fund and also property taxes. The high highlighted piece online. Tech center on behalf. This is based on the six semester average. So we're just waiting for some final information there. Next couple lines, the merger grant, the merger incentive grant, which used to be called the small schools grant. I'll tell you, Roxbury still qualifies for that because they did merge. So you get that for as long as the legislature lets you. The next piece that I bring your attention to is the sped reimbursement, the extraordinary reimbursement. This is where we saw a big jump and $80,000 jump, which helped us not have to cut as much as we were talking about last week. The next one I'll bring your attention to is the sped census block grant that went up $187,000. So again, that helped offset what we thought we needed to do on the expenditure side. And then going down, you'll see the ID ID grant. And you'll see it says it matches grant expenses. So all of these grants are reimbursable grants, whatever we spend we get reimbursed. They do give us estimates of what we're going to be allocated each year, but we don't typically know that until about May. So we're putting in estimates here. This pie chart just shows you are considered the education spending how much of your revenues make it come from the fund and property taxes. The next slide is our capital plan and FY 25 we're planning this is the $270,000 that you'll see on your tax rate calculation slides that we have kind of gather all through this presentation. We're planning on doing us windows and main street window replacement, each 50 roughly $50,000 a piece. We are looking at some district-wide limited roof repair. One being this room. The next slide you saw earlier, we're just going to run through it again to highlight the crap 5%. So we have our general budget at the top 31 million, plus the capital plan that you vote on a separate article. So we're looking at a $32 million budget. Our offsetting revenues are 5.6 million. So that's the tuition, the interest, the special ad reimbursements. So that brings you to education spending. That's the amount of money that you have to draw in from the head fund and property taxes. Currently our pupil count is 1,821 that number did go up an hour ago. So I look forward to presenting that to you at a later date bringing our ad spending per pupil to 14,600. We're using an estimate on the dollar yield that came out on the commissioners letter of December 1, which is 9,452. And not talking about the cap right now, that would bring you to an equalized residential tax rate of $1.54. But because we are capped at 5%, it will be $1.33, which compares to the first column that is the FY24 final budget after the yield was set and after the CLA was adjusted for reappraisal. The common level of reappraisal is still an estimate at this time. I'm not sure I'm looking at Jill. I'm not sure when we'll hear that. The statutory deadline is January 1. So we're trying really hard to make it. Sorry to put you on the spot. That's okay. My whole life right now she's ready. So January after January 1, I think our next meeting is January 3. So this will look a lot different. Well, maybe not too much different. So the next slide. This is the impact. So we wanted to show if you live in Montpelier Rocksbury. Well, we've seen this slide before it used to say $100,000 home that are 300,000 200,000 and 300,000 you wanted to increase that to kind of the real picture so we start out with a property value of $200,000. So currently your tax bill is $2,240. With this proposed budget, it would increase by $435 annually to bring you to $2,675. That's an odd page. Okay. And then you can see for Rocksbury. It'd be $130 for $300,000 house and $261 for your tax bill of $5,480. And just a little side note here. Montpelier has 1,895 homesteads and about 66% of those homesteads pay property taxes based on income sensitivity. So Rocksbury has 222 homesteads and about 63% qualified for income sensitivity. And this is based on 2022 data from the Vermont Department of Taxes website. Does anyone want to talk to me? The next slide just shows historically the tax rate. The next slide is our non-presidential tax rate calculation and our budget does not have an impact on this rate. This CLA does and this is for second homes, rental properties, commercial properties. This is what their tax rate looks like. I'm anticipating this probably to change. So discussion and question time and just a reminder to everybody our upcoming meetings we do have a meeting next Wednesday where a second draft will take feedback into consideration from the board and add in new numbers that we receive. So next Wednesday, the board will get the second draft of the presentation. The third is budget public forum, which is kind of like a typical board meeting where a third draft will be presented. And then on the 17th the board will need to approve vote to approve the budget that will in the warning that goes to the voters. So Christina can get all of that ready in time for the town folks. We do have a budget informational meeting on March 4th. And on March 5th is of course time meeting day for people vote. So, open up to discussion. Yes. So it's to the board first and then we can open it up to public comment. Questions or comments. I have a question when we were going through the changes of staffing. You mentioned that we have too many science teachers. So we have a lower here that's extremely good you speak. Yeah, so she asked about that the science. The science. So we have a district sustainability coordinator who does not currently teach classes for 0.2 of the contract. We're suggesting to the board to rip that position. 0.2 of that position just 0.2 of that position. And based on student enrollment projections that leaves too many FTE in the science department. It becomes a point to rip in the science department. So I had the same question and we did get a letter about this too. It's easy to concur with riffs that don't actually impact someone or it's a vacant position or there's low enrollment. But that one really sticks out because that would be cutting an individual salary for someone that we already have and that feels from me. There's a couple on there that would do that. Okay. That's not the only position that does that. Yeah, and we definitely tried to minimize that to the extent possible but we could not totally. Oh, sorry. I said we tried to minimize the extent to which it in fact did a positions where people were occupying the positions but you could not eliminate that though. Yeah, that's a hard reality but we did try to minimize it to the extent practical. I think it is important for us to remember that, you know, obviously we all understand this but just reminding us that all these cuts are going to have impacts and especially any cuts in student facing positions. I mean, I think I'm just stating the obvious here but teachers are not just givers of information. They're also just also, you know, lifelines for students, a lot of the time and really important to our lives in a lot of different ways and especially if that there's still having a hard time. Maybe stand. Yeah, we're not in the library that's I think more than that. The teachers are direct instruction with students and they're more than just givers of information I think. Thank you, especially if it's a science department position or any classes is just that is going to have a real impact on students and I think it's important that we remember that. I understand that we have to cut the budget but that one is particularly painful to my school experience and I think my classmates because even if we supposedly have too many science teachers. They're all people who make a real difference in students lives on a daily basis. Yeah, no, thank you very much. I had a related question about the point to lose there's 2.2 positions in the staffing cuts. And it sounds like they might both impact people who are already part time, but Well, yeah, they do both impact already partners. So I just wonder about the challenge of retaining people who are already part time and then cut it making an additional cut to that position and if we're likely to retain those people or not and if that was taken into consideration in the point to my other question is sort of like. It's uncomfortable to talk to talk about actual dollar amounts but I'm wondering with that point for the point to at Roxbury and point to here. If that amount of money potentially could I mean we're going to be talking about unencumbering the track funds later or possibly if the board agreed to get more money towards the budget this year. So I think we could wait on those, you know, like, could we offset the cuts to staffing by taking more money out of the fund balance, but I did but I have no way of knowing like what those point choose represent in actual dollars. So the point choose together, Christina can have that Christina can correct me if I'm wrong but it's approximately $45,000. $45,000. Yes. And when we were considering which places to reduce the one of the drivers was, does the position work towards our focus areas. So directly, these two did not. So we, so that is two areas where we were looking at. The technology piece at RVS is not something that's needed at RVS. It's not a class that currently happens at RVS is my understanding. I'm looking at Shannon just to make sure I don't say anything that's not that's off. We'll call that position in for extra support, maybe like a special subject but at every other school including UDF, it's just part of the librarians position as a library media specialist to also be integrating text into a library. So it's still the same subject but it already happened. So that makes them so at this moment we're a little redundant. Yeah, Roxbury. The other thing I just like to remind the board that one of the things we cannot predict is what will happen with staffing. Right, we just don't know. Yeah, because there's too many unknowns that happened during hiring season. And as I've said a couple times the last couple of weeks. It's all the time during during staffing at the end towards the spring and decisions they make so you can't predict what one person is going to do and the influence that it has on that. I would also remind the board that this is not a one year problem it's a five year problem. So while yeah I'm sure we can pull $40,000 from the fund balance. We're going to be having two repositions over the next five years that do have people in them. And that is very hard to do. And believe me, I know that because I'm the first person sitting across from them telling this. So, I understand that that dilemma and I understand how strong how far that is more than anybody probably in this room. However, it is a reality that we are going to have to face in the next five years or so. And these are not bad teachers these are wonderful teachers this is no thought on the quality of the teacher at all. And it's what we need to really focus in on across the next five years and this year. What are our goals to our positions match it. Are we over staffed are we under staffed in those areas, and what are we going to do to make those decisions. We're going to have to make our decisions that that's unavoidable right now. Yes, we can cover it with $40,000 somewhere else. We do not need the district wide sustainability for coordinator to reach our goals for the RBS technology position to reach our goals and we have very low enrollment for the other two places. And do you believe like, if a position is point six and now it's going to be point four, and we lose the person because it was cut down to that level. Do you feel that you'd be able to replace like a higher point for person. Is there a danger in losing a point for science teacher at the high school and with that then potentially put us into a problem where we don't have enough. I mean speaking for me currently do not believe that will be that would be a problem. Okay, because like we've had trouble like my son was in a Spanish class that was being taught by the TVLC and it was not a high quality experience. So it worries me, you know, having like not being able to fill a position like that because we're talking about point two that feels like above and beyond but if it turns into also losing a point for that would be worrisome. There are situations that we have with our FTE in our science department that does not make me worried about that. The RBS library media is something different. Perhaps we would have a struggle finding a point for library teacher if that person were to put because if we have a open teaching position that's 1.0 at Roxbury, it's hard to fill. So that's neither here nor there really because it's hard to hire for Roxbury regardless of what the FTE is. I have a few that are just a little bit more of like help us understand what we're looking at. So, last week, the board was trying to give direction on how to get to about $800,000 worth of cuts slash additional revenue sources. And what is the, what, where are we at with that now just that bigger, that bigger picture number, because I don't think it's 800,000 anymore given that we have this new revenue, these new revenue numbers. Right, we didn't raise the budget by the 800,000 because the revenue came in higher. Right. So what have we decreased our projected budget by. From the version last week. Yeah. Right. Do you want me to look that up and I can I can tell you before we got the revenue numbers. We were projecting that we needed 32 million in order to having close and we're $100,000 below that. But our numbers, it's hard to say me because our estimates change so much. Right. Okay, right. And there's so many factors that have changed. So, originally it was around 2 million and then I went to 800,000 and right then like Thursday of last week after our board meeting because that's when our special education revenue came in and went to 525. And so we're changing it as we work through the numbers but what so in other words, we never did the whole accounting for the whole budget after we start getting these revenue numbers and you just start working with the numbers we have right. And getting below the 10% right per pupil. So it's generally about 525,000 that we're cutting from what we would have originally needed to spend in FY 25 about that. Yeah. Okay. And would more cuts significantly reduce the tax rate from $1.33 and $1.37. How does it tell you that we did increase our people now? So. With that increased if I follow, because I understand the question. Yeah, if we made more cuts to our general budget with a tax rate decrease significantly. I don't think so because we're already without the 5% cap or over that now. So we'd have to cut down to get to 5%, right? Yeah, it's an extremely weird year. Yeah, not like we're used to our, even if we cut like a million bucks, our tax rate is still going to be $1.34. Okay. This is a cap. Right. And if we, if we fall under the 5%, don't be protection of the 5% go forward. Yes. Yes. So it's almost like a Goldilocks below 10% per pupil from last year and above the 5% in order to be a cat, be kept. It's like that Goldilocks area. Yeah. So what I'm hearing you say is there's no reason to cut more than we are currently projecting to cut. It's quite a good amount. Yeah. What I'm inferring from what you're saying. We're at 9%, about 9% per pupil increase. Yeah. Weighted people increase. And so, and we're still above the 5% for a tax rate increase. So we're capped at 5% for an equalized tax rate increase. We're at 21% equalized residential tax rate without the cap. So somebody, the Ed fund possibly needs to make up that 15% difference. Yeah. 16% difference. Right. If you want to speak to that. Yeah, that's basically true. The other very weird thing this year, you know, our tax rates are going up about 22 cents, which is a lot. And then the normal time, you know, a community might see that and say, oh my gosh, this is terrible, you know, school board, please do something about this. But we're so far above the 5% cap that it's like, you know, they're there. You couldn't couldn't even get it down to something. Right smaller. Right. That's helpful. Thank you. My other follow up question is on the new ish revenue around special education that we learned about on Thursday. Is that one time money or is that something that we can anticipate over the course of the next five years. So our census block is correct me if I'm wrong, our census block is based on our student count. So our special ed census block. Right. It's based on the total number of students we have in the district, not the number of students that we have on IUQ. The extraordinary cost revenue that we have that is based on any student that goes over $62,000. If their cost goes over that once we're at that. We get reimbursed at 90% or 95. So we get reimbursed at 95% but act. Act one, so we change special ed funding across the board and so the extraordinary reimbursement like she said anything over 66,000 we get reimbursed at 95%, but they have a second calculation that I cannot understand the agency of education puts it together and we're actually incentive. To spend more on special ed students that are out there so go over that $66,000, we get more money, more revenue for that. Okay. And that's where these increases on our revenue slide 27 of 80. And so we're going to spend more and 187,000 more those are the new numbers that you received on Thursday and so are is that a set. I guess what I'm trying to make sense of is one of the things that we've determined it's not very smart of us to do since this is a five maybe more longer year situation we're in is use one time funds to handle ongoing costs. So what we're going to figure out is these new numbers that new ish $80,000 and $187,000. Can we expect that we're going to see that same amount in FY 26 and FY roughly. That's not really it's not a guarantee those extraordinary students, if they age out of the program and they don't need the services any longer. That could change our revenue drastically in those areas. And I would say philosophically I would love that number to go down because that means that the system that we're building in our schools are able to meet the needs of more kids. Right. So we're not needing to send them to independent schools that are, you know, therapy yeah to say that all of them will but that as we continue to develop our systems in our schools which I think are rocking it quite frankly. I think that that number I hope that number of kids that then we're feeling like we don't have what we need in our schools will decrease and then that would go down. Okay. Thank you. Jim. Yeah, I just have a context question on the 16% increase in healthcare costs because it's so significant and it's also unavoidable. And I'd also just based on the op ed that you had shared Jim it sounds like that that is somewhat possible like negotiable at the state level so I feel like it would be helpful for folks to understand in terms of like why that's out of control, and where the state can kind of come into that or there can be advocacy around that and if we can anticipate that that is a will not be a consistently seen increase over time. Okay, so several years ago. Yeah, we used to negotiate directly with the union provide healthcare directly. There was kind of a grand bargain struck by people at a higher pay grid than us all that this would be done on a statewide level with all teachers. The idea there was that if you had more people in the pool there'd be leverage you could bring prices down that has just not been the case, not even close to the case and 16% is unfortunately kind of in the ballpark of the type of cost increases we've been seen pretty much on a regular basis so so the state bargains for that. I mean like granted healthcare costs are going up everywhere I mean we have a we have a broken healthcare system that is like no, no mystery to anyone so I think there are factors at the national scale that are driving that. You know that's that said, you know we don't know what it would be if we didn't have statewide bargaining but certainly with statewide bargaining it is, it is a cost that is increasing at a vastly higher rate than inflation. And we can't control it we're just stuck with it. And I think, you know, seeing how focused Congress is on fixing our healthcare system. I'm expecting that we'll probably see it for a bit longer. Yeah, that's a different question. Yes, a different topic though on the staffing piece so what we were talking about just previously was you know kind of losing existing teachers and then we have situations where we have positions that are not currently filled. And I'm curious about the RBS pre K or just like any unfilled position that one in particular, I think we hear a lot in education the importance of zero to five and early education has a potential for lifelong impacts and more positive outcomes so I'm curious if you know, and I know that there is a lot of active surveying done, you know that went out by Tina at RBS and our Roxbury community to kind of make that determination that we did not have the numbers for this coming year. And I'm curious, you know as I'm looking on the screen and I'm definitely seeing some parents of some young kids out in Roxbury that are going to be pre K eligible upcoming. Is that something that will be kind of reviewed on an annual basis that could be changed in according to need. If, and regardless, you know, where that lies, you know, and for RBS, I parents, Roxbury parents what, how can they anticipate getting access to preschool education, like could they also come into the Montpelier pre K program I don't know kind of what its capacity is or how full that is but I'm just I would love for those folks to know what their options might be. If we move forward with this budget without a pre K program at RBS. So anybody can under Act 166. Yeah, so we pay tuition for a certain number of hours of pre K that any Roxbury family can can have us pay for. They just have to enroll with us. If you ask in any Montpelier family any any family with a pre K age student, their child does not need to go to the school. They can go to a different pre K and get that a certain number of hours to be paid for. And that's what had to happen this year because we couldn't hire we didn't find somebody to fill that position. Well, RBS pre Ks in the budget right now in FY 24, we had zero applicants for that so we at least around late April early May we started telling families about that so that they could find a position in a different pre K, which there are a lot of them books north they can certainly apply into Montpelier schools are usually a waitlist there. So, but any family with a pre K age student has money under Act 166 that we pay for the pre K tuition to go for a certain number of hours. So from the surveying of the community we had about four families who said yes I'd like a spot for four kids and then a few families who said if you offer it full day every day then I'm in. We're not it's not a full day every day program. So, that would be a drastic increase rather than a reduction. So, in Montpelier and Rocksbury are in the same school district would Roxbury be able to almost kind of get seniority in terms of because it's right I mean first the pre K program in Montpelier satisfies the need in Montpelier. The waitlist is okay so there's a significant waitlist. Yeah, okay, okay. And then in terms of that position will kind of the community be resurveyed. You know each year to establish if there's a need for the program. Certainly can the challenges is that hiring. Yeah. I mean and hiring high quality pre K teachers across the state regardless of whether it's in public school or private school is a challenge right now. Yeah. So, that's, that's the challenge and if we, we promise something that we put it back in the budget, and then we can't hire somebody by what day, you know, may June and then slots get closed up so we yes we can do that. And it's a challenge. Okay, thank you because I don't want to promise something that we can't deliver on because of a higher. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yep. Yep. Thanks for that. So I have to miss the last meeting. And but I did watch it. But I still wasn't 100% clear on so when you had sent out the survey about like what is the breakdown percentage wise like that. The board would want to signal to you for cuts and I'm just not sure like what happened in this budget proposal to like the busing or facilities or school based budgets. The board gave us the direction that last week to not touch transportation. So that wasn't in their facilities is an interesting one because when so we decreased facilities by $100,000 and injured can probably speak to this better. But when Andrew Christina went into the budget to discover, you know, to find where they were going to find that money. I realize that there were things in Andrew's budget still that we are going to get insurance money from from the flood where we could get insurance money from from the flood. So for instance, this basement stored a lot of furniture. And so we're going to get money for that furniture. So Andrew's furniture line could be reduced as a expenditure. However, we're getting reimbursed for it. So we were we did decrease Andrew's budget by $100,000 except with the insurance. We get revenue for some of it. Does that make sense. Yeah. So that pretty much stayed the same. We decreased the amount of money we had in staffing and benefits. So at the board meeting last week. Andrew gave the direction to keep it at $400,000 to not go above it and we are below that we are below $400,000 right now. It's around 265,000 300,000. It's around $300,000 right now. And then the board asked us to look at general school budgets and decrease the monthly years, three monthly schools by $10,000. And then when we actually looked at the ratio for the Roxbury budget, we decided to decrease the Roxbury budget by $2,000 instead of the $5,000. And so just because of the ratio, the percentage of that cut from their budget. And so they've done that the principles have done those cuts. So we followed the parameters, even though revenue was coming in, we knew what the board was valuing and we decreased those cuts and kept some the same. Does that make sense. Yeah, and we, you know, we were able to give revenue in so we've gone from $800,000. We can't hear you. So I said, and we got revenue in so we, you know, so we're facing 100,000. So some of the cuts that, you know, we're able to avoid some cuts. And the other piece, so I forgot this piece, the fund balance contribution, the board directed us to add an additional $200,000 from so it'd be $600,000 total. And we reduced that based on the revenue coming in to $165,000 in addition to the $400,000. Sorry, Zach, go ahead. Yeah, related to what you're just talking about. Given the parameters that the board sort of gave you at the end of last meeting. It seems like the fact that nothing was ultimately cut from the facilities and we said we'd be fine with up to 100,000 being cut from facilities. We also said we'd be fine with up to another 200,000 and only 165 is coming additionally from the fund balance. It seems like there's some additional room there to not cut other things that we've already said that we're okay with. And then the other, yeah, so I'll just, I'll stop there with that, that comment, because it is related to what you were talking about. So you want to explain the facility better, because we did, we did cut from facilities. Yeah, we ended up paying $65,000 after Andrew and I reviewed each line. So essentially $65,000 we won't have to use, like we won't. Right. You don't get insurance payment out. And then we, I'm not going to say there won't be an emergency that comes up and we need a new boiler or something, but as far as what we're budgeting. So that's point stand that we prioritized buckets and it seems like we didn't reduce by those numbers completely. So some of these more dire cuts seems like we left ourselves more regular from when we left last week to today. Yeah, the only thing I'm going to say about that, I agree, but we have four more years to go. So as we're taking money out of that fund balance, it's going to be money that won't be there for the next four years. So I don't know that we should just think because we've got, you know, managed to finagle some things we should go for it. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I know it won't be there, but if we're using it to sustain a or to keep one more year of something that's going to be a sustained. So we're going to have to deal with that expense at some point about. I agree with that sentiment that Lynn is saying but I also feel like I agree with what Jake was saying that this particular year is so bizarre, and we're having to wrap our brain around, you know, the new funding and how much cuts we're going to have to make and we've consistently kind of wanted to start strategizing about what the five years is going to look like and then have been told and decided that we kind of can't because so many factors including what the legislature might do to the waiting in the future. So in a way, if we're going to be a little more generous with fund balance I'd rather do it this year you know like I feel like that buys us a little time to be more strategic in the following four years. And to wait to see what happens in with the legislature in the actual Act 127. Especially if I think what the point that Scott's trying to make is I'm seeing $35,000 and savings of what we had indicated for facilities and a $35,000 savings from what we had indicated for fund balance. And I'm not, you know, like these are sort of building level decisions that you need to make, but I would feel comfortable with offsetting those 2.2s if that meant retention and that sort of thing and that was better overall. The ultimate decision I feel like ends up being up to the administration and like what makes sense for the building. But it's something to consider. Yeah, I would just say the thing I mean you didn't mention is we also reduced or Libby in the straff budget also reduced. The board had directed $400,000 of salary cuts and we're now at 300,000 so there was a reduction of that as well so if we're talking about where did we find where did we apply those savings. It was on salaries, fund balance and facilities. The schools are the ones who we are basically saying sorry, you have to sorry principles you still have to make all of the cuts we've asked you to make. Which even that to me like the school budgets I don't know that much about the school budgets but it's come up in the past around field trips and equity and, you know, graduation and moving on ceremonies and it did sound quite generous the numbers that would be throughout at the last meeting. But I've also been part of conversations where I was surprised at, you know, how little money they have for certain things at the school so like that was actually a category that I wasn't that excited to cut because all the things that Libby listed that were being spent out of that budget directly impacted student experience which is what we indicated we are not interested in impacting so. We're going to be interested in continuing to cut 35,000 or 32,000 every year from our school budgets for example. Yeah, but maybe that's the thing we have to do this year in this super weird year. And then, you know, this is this is the first several super weird weird years so. Yeah, and there are no guarantees that this law is going to change one bit in the next five years and I think with Phil Scott as governor. It drops really close to single digits. I sort of agree with them. I mean, we went from catastrophic red alert to it's, you know, the numbers have only been trending in one direction. That's my first just thing that I want to say. I also want to talk about briefly. I don't want to get too far into the numbers because when I do the math that you know I don't know exactly what it's going to come out as, but I would guess that you would have to sort of set a tuition. And then people would either opt in or opt out. Because if the tuition scares half of the expected people, do you eat it, do we eat it, or does it get canceled, or how does the how would that work like, there's not like people aren't paying anything now. There's not a great, you know, hunger for tuition for after school program in Roxbury as one way might imagine and so if people don't opt in, what happens. I think we'd have to look at because we've thought about that. And we'd have to look at the number of kids we have, and then make a determination of whether it's worthwhile. I think the district would to use your words eat a certain factor. But if we're servicing three children, then probably not the rest of it, you know, but if we're servicing 15. That's that's half of Roxbury so that would be something that we probably look at to use fund balance money to cover the costs. Yeah, we looked at what new elementary is paying that what their parents are paying and that's what we, we kind of used as a model for Roxbury's program. Does union have a sort of a scholarship model as well or or or a way in which some families who can can help some families can't or other ways to come up with. Part two is a part two is a was a call for a license program so it has their stars and and so they can collect subsidy from the state. And it is not, not bad, nor has it ever been that. But is there. I would hope that there would be a good discussion in case there are ways to come up with ways. You mean something like a sliding scale. No, no, no, no, no, like, you know, I mean, some people might pay more like, you know, like some sometimes some people pay more because they know it's going to help somebody else and if that if there's a little bit of discussion. And just to feel out whether there was some some way to sort of work through things there. I don't know how complicated that would be or whether, you know, I know it would be worth the time your time from the perspective of Roxbury families. I don't know how much time you have. So, I'm just kind of putting that up. I'm going to add a piece to the, you know, thinking beyond this year that act that the new weights that were applied in act 127 certainly do have an impact, but not as significant as I look at slide 30 from the presentation, as the drop in the dollar yield from f y 24 to f y 25. And that is also something that we can anticipate will be dropping a whole heck of a lot, and that does also factor, get then calculated in to for us to figure out the tax rate. So, anyway, it. It's just another thing for us to be considering when we think about not just cuts we're going to have to make this year but in future years, Jake. And that's really the, the, because there's so many more pupils on the system. That's why the yield drop so much this year. But from now on it's going to be normal movement of the yield. It's not going to continue to plummet by $6,000 every year. Right. That's good. That's good. That would last a year and a half. I mean, if the education fund, because nobody's talking about how much of the education fund is going to be used by these budgets that are being passed statewide. And if the education fund is lower, the yield needs to follow. Yes, but this massive plummeting. It's massive. 50% more kids. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We did not get 50% more students. I'm not sure whether or not it turned out to add sort of revenue overall, or whether it just. You know what I mean. So at least. People's towns are seeing. Some places are seeing a lot of help. I will, I will tell you right though that they're not. So a lot and this goes beyond our budget and it may not be the best place to talk about it right now, but the superintendents who are from Advantage districts. The opposite of us are not able to add a lot to their budget for two reasons. One, the governor's messaging. So they're generally in more conservative towns. And if the governor says schools are paid or are spending too much money, they believe it. And so they're going to, they're worried about their every single one of them are worried about their budgets going down because of governor's message messaging. And then the second thing is because they're worried about the education fund. And so they're worried that if the education fund, if the legislature doesn't do something about the education fund and the dollar, you'll continues to drop precipitously or not. And whether this is a founded worry or just a worry of superintendents, then they will have a cat. They'll reach a clip in five years just like us. Yeah, and another thing is I understand the education fund is that because of the 5% cap with the education fund is doing is it's shifting to the Advantage districts. But then it's also having to backfill what the taxpayers in the disadvantage districts are getting covered via the cap. So it's getting, it's getting, you know, it's normal expenditure and then it's getting sucked off of by the disadvantage districts to make up for it. Which means it's being spread thinner. Is there any indication that the super technical association is going to have an opportunity to address the education committee and legislative session. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, we're lobbying. Yes. Yes, we are lobbying. The first task is to get everybody who are in important seats to understand the educational finance system. Holy, which I don't believe is happening. Maybe it'll be a huge boom and sports betting revenue. That's right. Fill that in. I heard that on a VPR this morning. How are we feeling? How are we feeling about public comment? Do we want more board discussion? Are we ready to open up to the public? Scott. So the people as residential tax grade. Right. That's the, that's the thing that we don't want to go over 10% increase. Now, yeah, you're close. And right now you said we're somewhere around 9% increase. Why wouldn't we make it closer to 0.99? Yeah, we thought we had that originally. Christina and I were at a conference with superintendents and business managers from across the state last Monday. And one of the themes that we heard that honestly, we, the two of us hadn't thought about yet. Was that because a lot of these numbers are predictions and estimates, they could go the opposite. They're going in the right way right now, but they could very well go in a different direction. And so this leaves us some wiggle room. So we don't come back to you on January 3rd and say, we got some, we got some bad numbers and we have to figure out, and we need to make these additional cuts. So staying around 9% gives us a comfort. For now. For now. Yeah. So on March 5th, we're not going to be at 9%. We're going to be somewhere close to 10%. We don't know. Yeah, we don't know. I mean, the thing is, if you're at 0.99%, you give yourself absolutely no margin for error in case something tweaks up. If you're at 9%, then a few things could tweak up and you're still not having to be like, okay, we've got to make cuts from our planet. We have time before we submit the budget to the town to shift that a little bit. I mean, what we pass on January 7th is what we pass. I mean, some of these 17, some of these numbers are going to be totally final until June. Right. Gotcha. I was going to suggest a list of things that we pop in, but if we don't know until June, doesn't matter. You can't, you can't play with it. I was just thinking like, if you get to a place where we have, you know, 90% 95% confidence in the numbers that we have and there's room for a 0.2 science teacher. Can it go in at the last minute? Can there be some things that kind of pop in at the last minute, but not if you won't know for sure until June because the budget's well-cooked? Right. So by statute, you have to pass the budget presented to voters 30 days before town meeting. So on the warning, all your voters are seeing the ballot language and that's what they're voting on in March. So you can't change anything. I mean, of course you can say we want to hire this or we need to hire this person or whatever. Within the budget. Making adjustments to the budget. You can adjust the budget. You can overspend the budget or underspend the budget, but you can't make a change to those numbers because they need to go to the town clerks. So then you can get your tax bill in July. So, but we can, so we, there is, so you could add things. You could add to the budget was done. You could say, actually, we can afford this 0.2 science position or FTE, whatever it is. I mean, you have to find a revenue source for it, which oftentimes it's like the reserve fund for a year or, you know, yeah. And you can't just pass a budget that's for 30 million be like, okay, we're going to spend 36 million. Let's go, you know, let's go crazy. But like the 0.5 pre-k position that has been unfilled because it's not operating that's been going into the general fund. Is that correct? And budgeted. Budgeted money that's not spent ends up in the general fund. Yeah. So if, yeah, if we budget for an expenditure and, you know, say several staff positions opt out of benefits because they're going with a spouse or partner's benefits. And that saves us a bunch of money that we budgeted for that would go into the reserve funds. Is it too much to ask of you? It's too much to ask of you guys. The other thing to think about your budget is if you are under spending in this area, you might be over spending in facilities because the roof had to get fixed. So if your kitchen is on fire, you're not going to be decorating a lift. So that's how I always think of a budget is your house, right? So you might gain some and you lose some. And that's why I'm providing the fortified force that we can keep where those changes are happening. Yeah. Thank you. Public comment. Great. Let's do it. I know we have some people in the room, my guess is at least a few of you want to say something and we have a healthy number of folks online too. So people that were just raise your hand if they want to speak only three. Is that it? People on the virtual on zoom. Could you do the raise hand function if you want to speak? And if you don't know where that is, it's down at the bottom of your bar. I think under reactions. So raise your hand or just wait. I've seen zero online. Is that the actual case? Okay. Three people try to keep it to a minute or two. I'm not going to keep time. But if you could try to keep it to a, you know, short but not. I'm probably short. That would be fantastic. And again, if anyone online changes their mind, just go ahead and raise the hand function and when the room changes their mind, you can obviously step up. So whoever wants to go first, please do. Hi, I'm Morgan Lloyd. I teach fourth grade at Union Elementary School and I live in Montelier and have kids at the high school to in the high school. And I pay taxes here to have a quick question and then I'm going to share my question is whether increasing the number of students who pay tuition to attend school in the district is a viable way to influence the budget, either by increasing enrollment or increasing revenue. It is most definitely a viable way to increase revenue and one of the places we're looking at it is to get more exchange students, international exchange students who pay tuition. There's two different kinds of international students. Some people, it depends on the visa they're on. So we want to get the ones that pay tuition. Exactly. And so my other comment is for the board as we looked at for me to forget what page it's on looking at future reductions at Union Elementary School because of low class size there was a slide that showed that per people spending is up maybe drastically because of smaller class sizes and I just want to ask the board to consider the really essential foundational skills in literacy and math and social emotional learning like how to get along in this world with other humans that kids are gaining in those early years and I really feel like class size does significantly impact a teacher's ability to give individual attention to students to respond to students as individuals and not just as a class that needs to be managed to meet with small groups to work on those foundational skills. I don't know if I'm old enough to say or I've been doing this a lot long enough to see a trend but in the roughly 17 years that I've been teaching, I don't see the social emotional needs or let me just put it this way. I see needs only increasing over the years and I think that post pandemic and post flood and in our current economy where many people are not as well off as they might like to be and maybe there are health or mental health issues that are sort of community and I think that we can probably anticipate that kids are going to continue to struggle and need those supports and I think our schools are doing a fantastic job right now meeting those needs and multi tiered systems of support and social workers and social emotional workers and we're learning staff but I feel nervous when I see those conditions targeted for reductions and I don't need class sizes to be like 12 to 15 but there's a big difference between 16 and 20 and then another big difference between 20 and 20. Thank you. Yeah and I do want to say one thing that we are not considering which I know other districts in our position are considering aging our class size policy I mean I think the numbers were looking at you. Yeah, the numbers were looking at us is probably discussion we would be having even if we weren't in in the budget situation we are just because they're. You know the classes are getting there at the set they're protected to be at the very low end of what our policy suggests and kind of well below kind of the alcohol we're not we're not at a stuff the classroom mode of all. Yeah, Joe. Good evening. Thank you again for coming to the very board meeting yesterday we really appreciate that. We appreciate you leaning into the questions we had and striving to create a sense of understanding around these constraints. So, thank you again. So I know it's year one of a five year process and my hope is that we can continue to ponder. I mean, the conditions or sustained the conditions for transparency around how and why future personal cuts may or may not happen. And I think the meeting yesterday was a good start to that. I just want to underscore that. I also want to say that, even though we're striving to have cuts, you know, in a way that has the least impact on human beings and I honor that that's the intent the way our system works is kind of wonky. It's based on seniority and I know that's been said by a few folks on the board here tonight, but in reality, a riff in one place doesn't really have a, even though the intent is there doesn't really have the impact I think that you're suggesting it does and what I mean by that is that one riff in one area will lead to adverse effects for a human being and just as a teacher I think that an entire ecosystem can kind of go away when that happens. Right. So you have a teacher and dozens or over 100 students. And that has a significant impact I think on the learning experience and just to kind of echo what you said earlier in the kind of lifeline that teachers can support so just ask you to consider that even though reasonable people could disagree on say a point to sustainability position. And I don't want to litigate that here tonight. And the impact of that is significant and it does affect a human being who will have to consider other options outside of our district. And I think the last thing I'll say, I'll try to go quick here because I'll be over time. And Morgan said this already more eloquently than I could but students are coming also the variety of needs that are stretching teachers beyond capacity. And I think that you can continue to think about that when you're talking about cuts and I think that like it or not we're in a moment where it's not just the exceptional content instructional delivery. And that's already been said thank you for acknowledging that it's not just literacy or numeracy or any other knowledge domains that were valuing as a district. It's a sense of belonging meaning safety community. And I think for students to know in their hearts that in a world that's becoming more volatile, accelerating on certain and changing that the teachers are preparing them for that in a way that they feel I can influence that world, and have an impact for the better and I think that takes a whole lot of support and guidance. In other words, maybe more personnel not less. And so I just invite everybody to be thinking about that as we move forward for the next few budget cycles. Thank you. Thanks. I know, sorry, you're like a very popular still supporting the track but just more on the, what Morgan had said, I was like, well, we increase numbers to we increase revenue. Is there almost like, do we need 20 more students and then whatever that equivalent is or what's that number do we have a target so we can maybe keep the staff that we want and the budget that you want and be the school you want to be. And then see if we can partner with the city on that and be part of the greater housing crisis discussion because I think that's a really big part of it I have so many friends who would love to live a month earlier but they can't then they're in the district. If we could find a way. So, if we could be part of that larger discussion and stop our trend going down and get it to level or maybe even go up a little bit. Maybe that can help so that years, the four more years that we're, you know, worried about, rightfully, maybe we can find a way to have that be not so bad. So, love for us to try to crack that. Yeah, thank you. And thanks for noting that a lot of the trends we're seeing are trends beyond our control and the including obviously housing has a lot to do with it, you know, the city just went through a flood, you know, the city is going to be asking a lot of our taxpayers as well. I don't know who's moving to the 32 district because their numbers are plummeting as well. More so than ours. More so than ours by a considerable amount. I mean, like Romney's projected numbers I think for a year or two are Romney and Dodie's are Romney's projected numbers for like this year or for like the next couple of years is something like two thirds of what it was. Yeah, so it's. Yeah, you're not met. We are not in that position so I also will say that I've thought a lot about the flood throws a curveball, right, so I don't know what our enrollment's going to do are people going to see Montpelier as an opportunity. And, and when some leave come some come in as an opportunity for a different start with a new business where there's plenty of space for businesses right now. Are people going to leave because of the flood and because of maybe a lack of opportunity or because of the cost of living or the lack of housing. I just I don't know what that's going to be we're not in a just like we're in a wacky budget year like Jake said, there's, it's very hard to make a prediction about the city, the town and the future in the next five years and how that will influence us. Yeah, I know and we also I mean I'm very cognizant of not getting into a rolling situation where, you know, we want to bring more families to Montpelier with kids who can enter our system. If the story about Montpelier is that our tax rates are going like this, and our school budgets are going like this, you know, pay more get less is not a come up to Montpelier story. And we want to do all we can to avoid that. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Hi. I wasn't trying not to be, but I don't want to regret not to be. So, I'm Alison. I'm a science teacher at MHS. That's also an all player resident on a house here. I just want you to think about how much money you may or may not be by cutting point to the science department. It's a little bit of it's just at a wonky situation where I'm low man on total. Less per FTE than everybody else in the science department. So, if you cut point two for my position, you'll have to point for that could be covered by other people in science department, but they based on their position. So, I would ask you to think about if the board doesn't think a district sustainability position is valid a valid expense. What would we do with that funding to benefit students. Are there more creative classes that we could offer in science department. That would increase student engagement. I've taught of course that has been grant funded for two years here. So I've been paid by grant instead of school district. That the school district hasn't wanted to pick up as a thing to issue. It's the river class all about rivers very current and Monterey students. Or it's been talked about lots that are science classes aren't accessible to a certain population of our students there are students that be modified curriculum that we can't really provide within general education classroom. Is there a way that we could provide an introductory science class to those students that need something different than what we're offering right now because those students are basically being cast through the system. Right so I would ask you to think about if we don't need a district sustainability person what might we need that can help our person. Excellent. Allison sorry. Nathan. My name is Nathan sooner. I have two kids in the district. It's very hard to follow Allison. That's that's what it's all. Thank you. Thank you as always to the board for being so thoughtful and for Libby and your team for being so thoughtful as you go through this. I just got a few detailed questions. When we talk about taxes property taxes in our city that are driven by education spending. I know that 66% of the of our households are income sensitized. I was realizing that I shouldn't assume that that just means their property taxes. I say there because I'm not in a good sense that their property taxes stay flat no matter what we do. Right so I would love Jake. I don't know about anybody who understands the tax structure love to understand sort of I'm assuming that you know those numbers change in different ways but it'd be nice to have even more precision on that. I'm not that anyway, because I think when we have conversations in our community and we say, we want to invest in education. Here's the impact on you. It's good to know what exactly we need. I get concerned the same way that you do when I see the moment declining. And I think about, you know, what's the, what's the one biggest thing we can do to stabilize and increase enrollment and I think it is to be excellent. And you all have done so much work to make this district excellent. It's just they're very thoughtfully constructed in terms of staffing strategies, using data to meet the needs of kids, thinking about social emotional learning feelings of longing. And I think that that is, you know, that is a real differentiator potentially of this community in this district from many others. I think if we, you know, I wouldn't do it quite as dramatically as Jim did, but if we if we start to sort of fall off of that, we lose our, you know, comparative age. If I, if I'm a family trying to move to Vermont or just within Vermont, and I care about my kids and education, I want to be part of this district. And so I want us to think through that lens with a long term view. So that's, that's the big heavy stuff. I also happen to coach municipal track and field here in this district, which I also love and care deeply about and I know that you are about to discuss whether or not to I think there is a reasonable position to fall back to, given all the other things that we as a district are facing. I talk about this facility as a neglected facility because it's been, you know, we had a, we had a state championship high school track, but we had to I think there is a reasonable position to fall back to, given all the other things that we as a district are facing. And, you know, we had a, we had a state championship high school track for decades, as I understand it, back in the day before my time, then it evaporated and the track fell into disrepair. We gave away our solid equipment. And so now we have a track that survived the flood markedly well. So it's a resilient, it's a resilient facility already. But we don't have any equipment and the curve that the funds inside the track was was viable enough two years ago that I could market, you know, from where the starts and the staggers and things like that are and reliably come back the next year, and and not have to measure that again with a wheel that curve is gone are almost entirely gone. So there's some, you know, maybe the analogy before if, if our time when that condition, we would maintain it. And I just want us to maintain the facility we got. So let's bring it back up if possible to safe working reliable condition that doesn't take hundreds of hours of parent volunteer time to make it Bible for competition. And let's equip that facility and that team, those teams with, you know, a discus cage that protects people from getting hit by a discus hurdles, a pole pole ball equipment, and just sitting here this evening. Equipment wise that looks like that's about $45,000. And then, you know, replacing the curve on the inside of the track, taking care of the condition of the track. Making sure that weeds aren't growing in a constantly, etc. Those are some facilities installation things would make them that might be more expensive and I can try to meet with Andrew about that. But I think as a fallback position from committing $1.9 million. Okay, if we acknowledge that that we're not going to get if we couldn't find a contractor to build a new track for that price on the timeline that we wanted. Okay, so that's going to happen. What can we do that is, and this is not operating costs right this is not me wishing to take funds from Allison's position. This is an investment in the facility that will last for her decades. If it's so, I think if we can, if we can do that and we are in one other my modest way, being excellent for our community or students. I had a parent of an athlete, write me back the email saying that that was track athlete. I thought, well, as long as we have access to you 32 I'm not sure we really need to care for our track. And my disagreement with that idea is that when we have 70 to 80 middle school track athletes who want to train every day. If I, they can they can get from the middle school to the high school by walking safely on sidewalks in 20 minutes and be prepared for practice at facility that is not well equipped right. As soon as I placed practice at you 32 to use what is no doubt an excellent facility. I lose as many as half or more of those students because of transportation issues. So, in terms of you know, I love track and field because it's accessible. It's anyone, anyone can participate and increase their performance and experience success in the community. And so, by taking care of what's already ours. We can keep that the accessible low barrier. So, I realize that the main show tonight is about the overall school budget of $32 million, which we absolutely should invest in our students. Just a bit for let's preserve some space for our facilities to be. Thank you so much. Thanks. Thanks. And also the rules who have at least one person on screen. Yeah, I see one person who wants to speak anyone else online and what's in the room. That's like to my mind. There's a second one. Oh, oh, okay. Yeah, let's start with the person with the. Who would be actual Craig Bauer and then I'm not seeing a name under the person who's waving, but we see you. And thank you. Even though we just said your name twice. Well, thank you. Thank you, Jim. My name is Craig Bauer. I have four students in the district. I have four kids. They're all students in the district. Three of them go to Roxbury Elementary. We moved here specifically for a small school setting and for our kids to thrive in that small school setting. So to hear you all talk about not changing the size of classrooms. I applaud you for that at the other schools. So thank you for bringing that up. The thing that concerns my myself and my wife as well. I don't hear us talking more about math. Reading writing. I hear the social emotional stuff. Yes, I and I understand that but it does seem like that is highly weighted. Compared to math history. These are things that that, you know, my family values and that we value. And I know our Roxbury community for sure values and there are very few of us that can speak that can can can talk to these sorts of things and, you know, there was a member of our community that spoke at one of the board meetings last time and she was very emotional about it and, you know, I just had to reach out to her and say, you know, it does. It's okay to feel the way we're feeling when we're feeling so secluded in a lot of ways and I know our students are feeling that way too. When they do integrate into the Montpelier area. Rhett Kristen thank you guys for everything that you do right. I have heard you speak of the weight that you hold. I want you to understand you do not have to hold that way. I know we all know how much you care. And I just really appreciate you very much my friend. I love this community so much. I love the school system. I don't appreciate necessarily though what we're valuing right now as a school system or how we're, you know, talking about a track situation when we're talking about our kids. I'm looking at a high schooler on the screen right now who's a part of this board meeting who that's who we should be really focused on. In general are just these kids and setting them up for success does attract situation do that. Sure. I understand that, but we're not the Midwest. Athletics bring money into the schools in the Midwest. It does not hear. We just have to face that fact and I know I'm over my time, but I do feel like I needed to say something along the lines of math, writing, reading, history. Those, those mean a lot to me and my family. Thank you guys though. I appreciate it. No, thank you. I appreciate it as well. And then, yes. Nancy Bruce. Yes. Can you hear me? Yes. Okay. Thank you. Thank you board members for the extraordinary work. That's before you. You know, it's like the ultimate Rubik's cube of like, how do we pull this all together? And I really deeply appreciate all your time and energy doing this for our students and our families here in Montpelier. And I just, I would like to comment on a couple of things that in terms of enrollment, getting families in, I don't know how that's going to happen when the people that are here can barely afford to even stay here. Being middle class and lower middle middle class, so there's no housing. So I don't, I'm not sure where the, you know, the logic of increasing enrollment for students. I'd love to get more information about that. And I really appreciate what Morgan said about class size and the needs of the students. I'm a former public school teacher and I totally get it, like the, the, the, the need, the pressure on our families is gigantic and the issues are huge. And I don't in any way want to compromise as our previous spokesperson said about the, the elemental pieces of academic learning. I don't think, I guess what I would like to hear from you is looking at, I'm sorry, the track survived the flood. Maybe it'll survive another 50 years. And I understand that there's, there's so much that we want for our children. But there's only, there's like not enough money to cover all these ideas. And for me, I want to come back to academics and the most important essential things. And I asked the board to, I haven't heard much and I've tried to be in all the meetings and distracted by kids here, but I hear about cutting costs of teachers. But I haven't heard about the, all the extracurricular activities, sports, those salaries, those benefits of those amazing, wonderful people that we love and appreciate. What, what piece does that have to add to our equation as we try to figure this out. And I apologize if you already talked about that. But that's all I have to say. And again, thank you. You guys are amazing. Thank you for serving this community. And all that you're doing with your time. No, thank you, Nancy. Really appreciate it. Anyone else online. Those who return. No, okay, great. Thank you everyone for the very thoughtful coverage. The agenda. Yeah. I think the next thing is the track. Yeah. So next, do you. So what guidance you have the budget got some. I was asking her what guidance she needed on the budget. We will bring back the second draft next week. Taking into new numbers and any feedback that feedback we heard. We don't. So no, we don't need any more. Okay. So next is a discussion as. Let's go before potential action regarding the assigned funds as you know we assigned $1.9 million for the track. I think that was suggested in the last meeting and Miriam actually suggested before I did at a previous meeting. That that just given the uncertainty over the next few years and how we might want to use those funds. That the current assignment is not, I think really an accurate attention of the board's thoughts. I think everyone on the board who voted for the track still supports the idea of a track. We're just in a different financial situation. With different uncertainties. If we do vote to unassign the track that does not mean that we will never build the track. It does not mean that we will not do at some point the type of upgrades that have been suggested. Obviously we want to say facility. But I think right now as we envisioned that when we passed it is not how we're envisioning the use of those funds. If for no other reason that we don't have a clear vision of the use of those funds. And I think having to be assigned to the track is something that keeps coming up. It is not necessarily helpful for the framing of how those funds are currently being viewed by the board. Another thing we have going on that I think will inform just potential expenditures with those funds around our grounds in general as we have a facilities report. The budget has kind of eclipsed the concerns we had a few months ago about the flooding but we are going to get a report on our facilities including suggestions about how these grounds should best be used going forward. And I think that's also going to inform what we might want to do those funds. So I suggested at the last meeting just unencumbering those funds so they don't have a designation so people aren't confused. And that doesn't mean that we're retreating from any ideas long term. It doesn't mean that we're reassigning those funds any place we're just right now as we envision those funds being used for a track. That track project is probably not something that we would not need to totally revisit and rediscuss before I move forward again. I think unassigning the funds reflects more I think where we're at with it which is we want to we want these funds available to help guide the district through the next five years as adeptly as possible. And again that could mean some sort of track modification. If we get great news from the legislature and some other things change it could mean that we could revisit that project and reassign to that project. So that's my proposal and I'd love to hear any any thoughts. I was just wondering if we knew what our overall athletics or athletics and extracurricular activities budget is. And the reason I'm asking is I the things that folks have suggested as ways to like at least literally use the track safely seem pretty reasonable. I and then I think it's really unfortunate that because we had this great momentum about the track that it has become kind of a punching bag for a lot of things but having the herb fixed and the hurdles replaced and a safety net for shot but javelin discus seem like they would be part of an athletics budget and shouldn't even again continue to be kind of a punching bag and lightning rod and public meetings when there's lots of other athletics and I kids one of the masks kids like there's lots of things we do and I just think I would really like to support something from our athletics budget to at least provide the minimum because I don't I don't agree with the characterization that it's track versus students. It's very much track is students and it's actually a huge number of our students and it's probably one of the least expensive and most inclusive outdoor athletic opportunities that kids have. So I fundamentally disagree that it's it's not a student a specific investment to invest in the track. I completely agree and understand we're in a different financial spot so I I definitely think we do need to reassign the 1.9 million. And I think it seems very reasonable to have some of our athletics budget which pays for uniforms and busing and all these other things could do the minimum piece for something that's used by so many kids. So whatever those that laundry list is to make it safe seems very reasonable and and modest as part of and also other athletics teams use that area as well. And I've also heard yeah a track is actually a pretty great use of a flood plain. It's like a parking lot. It's not great but it works in a flood. So I I just I'm really sorry that the track has become this this public lighting rod when it really I don't think it's necessary and it's it's ignoring a whole other piece of the experience of students have here that's not getting that same level of spring. So you can see on slide 21 of the budget presentation co-curriculars athletics you can see the past two years and the proposed number which I'm sorry. I want to build on that. I mean the idea that extracurriculars is a distraction from our students is one of the most absurd concepts out there. I mean think about your own high school experience. Yes academics were super important but some of your biggest growth experiences some of your biggest formations of identity some of your biggest life learning experiences some of your biggest friendship building experiences some of your biggest confidence building experiences oftentimes came from extracurricular activities the play you were in the sport you you were in that you grew and you pushed yourself and and you learned how teamwork works and all of those life lessons. If you're I'd be a I have very little patience for people who think extracurriculars is distracting from students. It can be some of the most meaningful experiences our kids have and I and it's a very small portion of our budget and it would be an absolute shame if we rock kids of some of these really life changing opportunities and like building opportunities. Well Jim to add on that at MHS and MSMS here we don't call them extracurriculars they're not extracurriculars they're co-curriculars. They are part of our program and part of what we offer students and as a superintendent I would never support a place that did not include. It's just it's just not something that's even feasible in my mind and not only are they very inexpensive but they're they're supported by I mean and this brings the whole community and kids learn from the community members. So many of the coaches so many of the people who make the play is possible who make our music productions possible are basically volunteer community members who give hours and hours and hours for like a $1,200 stipend or something. It's it is such a valuable experience for the community for the teacher or they're a teacher who's giving time. Absolutely. Jake and then Scott. I was just gonna say that if kids are going to be using it. I definitely want it to be safe and adequate. And ask, have we ever have we recently gotten an estimate on how much it would cost to bring it up to to usability. No. You said your question. Or whatever term you want to use. That's the definition. That's the, that's the question. What is that, what is that level. You know, it's, it's been used the way it is for over the years since 20 years ago and they started my trust drive on it. I spoke to you earlier. So, that's not it. It's not an answer. I knew you right. It was not. It's a conversation of where, where do we bring it but our priorities. Some of the ideas that have been brought up very great. Where do we store it. So it's not just the hurdles. It's the rack for the hurdles. It's the machine for all the hurdles. It's the storage books the hurdles and things. So it's not an easy. There's a certain incremental improvements with that. Yes. The facility subcommittee might have that conversation about the work that we want to do. It could very well be Jim and I are meeting next Friday to talk about this very thing. I think that the board could make a decision around, you know, if you're thinking about the fund balance money you could say reserve. $350,000 for track improvements and maintenance. Andrew is correct. We can't store hurdles in the basement anymore. So where are we gonna put it? Like, that's a big conversation for the board to consider. And in the beginning of the process of the track, we had in their storage unit, which was largely popued by the community because it was seen as superfluous. So Andrew's not just speaking, that is a reality. So if we want to do those kind of equipment and upgrades, we need to find also a storage place for that equipment that we currently do not have. I think the safety questions, I think that's actually the thing that we need the actual number on. What do we need to do to make that surface safe for our athletes and our community members who use it every single day? So that's a different question that we don't have an answer to right now. And I don't even know what an estimate would be because I'm not a track athlete myself. So I'd have to talk to some experts. And Andrew'd have to talk to some experts to find out what exactly we're talking about there. Andrew, did you hand shoot up? Yeah, and I would say it needs to be in the context of the athletes. And no, there are 300 people, 100 people watching the basketball game that might say, hey, the scoreboards that the balls go out every year that we don't really know what the score is because the scoreboard that 30 years old probably want to weigh in on the spirit of athletic comes with these things. That's just magnificent. Scott, did you want to get in? So, yeah, 5% of the overall, 5% of what is spent on curricular is what's spent on co-curricular. So it's a drop in the bucket compared to what general education is and it is, as Jim so eloquently shared like what so many people value from their high school experience and what colleges value when recruiting. So, yeah, it's not wise to think of cutting co-curriculars when looking at our overall budget. I have a question and I wasn't around for the encumbrance of the track money from the fund balance, but why would that project not be part of the capital plan, I guess is my question. And then I think I'm just gonna make a motion to unencumber the funds that were set aside for the track project. Yeah, and I think that though I have some questions too. You can go into discussion. Somebody's got some of them. You can second it and go into discussion. Sorry, I was speaking out of turn. I'll second it just to get the issue on the table and then we can do the discussion. Okay, discussion. Should we answer Scott's questions? Sure. Was it the only the one about like why would it go? Yeah. Was that your only question? Yeah. The main question that I had was how did the track project ever be taken out of the capital plan in the first place? It was never the part of the capital plan. Yeah. So what happened? What two years ago, Jim, three years ago, we recognized that we had a very large fund balance and we had Essar funding coming in that could pay for some other renovation work that we were thinking about using the fund balance for. And because of the fund balance and its largeness, we started thinking about larger one-time projects that we could spend down some of that fund balance around. And quite honestly, I came to Jim and said, I think the track is the place to do it because that's the place that needs to be done. I said, I think the track is the place to do it because that's the place that needs the most work at the high school level facility. And that's where the discussion started because we had such a large fund balance and needed to start spending that down. There is a board meeting I can find for you that talks about how the fund balance became so large because it was before your time on the board, if you're interested in that. I don't have the date on the top. No, that part is not as important for me at this point. I guess the questions, why wouldn't we consider the track project alongside any other capital projects for the district? I think that's what the board has been doing, except not just not through the capital fund. Yeah, exactly. I mean, it's. Yeah, I mean, the capital fund is kind of more of a maintenance fund. Yeah, there's projects that are significant, but not huge. Yeah, this is this is a larger project. This is like the renovation of the auditorium that we did a while back. This is more like on the scale of the UES playground. It's a major project that needs more than the $250,000 that we ask out of the capital fund. So one other important detail there is that the conversation did get sparked by students further back by students who actually put together a presentation as part of a class to advocate that the board make more investment in the track facility to support the growing number of students participating in track and field. So it was a really beautiful example of how co-curriculars work with our curriculars. And I would I would say that if and when it gets to a place where it's really just about maintaining it, then yeah, it makes sense that it would be part of a capital plan. But given that we knew that the price tag was going to be so significant to. If what we wanted to do was what we had voted to do about a year ago at this point. It's it's like Jim said, more than the quarter of a million that we essentially spend out of capital fund every year. Yeah. I. At the risk of being overly repetitive, I want to. Add to what everyone's saying and just. Add my own experience to the importance of the track. I mean, I've been doing track since I was in fifth grade with Nathan when we had like 10 people. And I think I was one of the youngest ones there and it was a great time. It's really weird memories that was a good time. And since then running has become a really big part of my life. I've made some of my most and most meaningful, most important, most meaningful connections through running for my sports. Struggling with my mental health with the immense stress of being a high schooler. Running is something that's always helped me cope with that. And I know that the same thing is true for the other people who run. And I know that that's not a small number of people, especially compared to the small size. And also, I, I've done a lot of workouts on that track in the past year. And it's not. Just like anecdotally, it's disappointing and it's kind of embarrassing. Like when I talk to people from other schools, I don't know what to say. Our track is sort of a joke at this point. And it shouldn't be all around. We have very good athletics. Our track team is pretty good. That track is just. Sad. Problem. I don't know what to say. It's like. I mean, Spalding's got a dirt track. Their track is an embarrassment because at least they've got like, I don't know. I can't make motion to someone on voting number and I really, really don't understand how the rules board or work anyway. No, you got it. That's it. You're not voting. But I do want to request that. Either tonight. Either we do this tonight or we put this on the agenda for some time soon in the future. That we allocate. Some amount of money to make that trade. Make that track. And that's it. I think it's really important. It's really important. Functional and safe and. A bit less sad. It's really important to a lot of people. Thank you. So I have a couple of questions. I believe that our kids. We can't have any track meets here. So every time we would normally would have. We have to go somewhere else. Is that correct? Yeah, like at the last, I mean, they think that's better than, but the last track meet we hosted last year was at you 32. And now also like, you know, just build on your point about, you know, can we just use you. You 32 built this track. So you 32 could use it. I mean, like they're being very generous. They've been extremely generous with us in terms of giving their time, but also, I mean, not just influence transportation, it also influences the time. You know, it oftentimes will know to the extent that people have to practice on that track. It's often times after the 32 practice. So that it becomes a very late practice that gets into dinner time that makes it harder for families. And I'll let Nathan speak. That's the inevitable mystery. Yeah. We ask parents to leave work with hopefully a minivan and pick up the middle school load them in, transport them to their two and then a different group of parents will come pick them up and get them. So we're going to play a clean driving records and our swear. Yeah. Yeah. But it just, um, when we have held competitions at our track. And we, we, I chose not to do that last year. When we do that. I kid you not, it's about a day and a half of. Probably 10 or 12 parents. A bunch of the middle school high school team. We literally pull leaves along the curb. And we walk the track backwards. Uh, five times, you know, one time per lane to figure out where the start for the 200 meters should be for the second league to the third league. And then we have teams of kids with a base string. And the, uh, the, the tool that sprays paint mark lines. Um, we have a, we have water sprayers, because we have a lot of water sprayers. We have a lot of water sprayers. We have a lot of water sprayers. Um, we have a, we have water sprayers because paint sticks better. When the track is down, um, I drive my mini van to Spalding. And after making a connection with the Spalding coach, I borrowed the other Spalding coaches trailer. We load all the Spalding high school hurdles on the trailer, drive it to our track, set up the hurdles, thank them profusely, then do that thing in reverse. Um, Tom Allen, who's a tremendous staff person. Takes the MRPS trailer down to Northfield and borrows their high jump. This used to be the case. We now have a high jump pin borrows their high jump pins, brings those up here for a competition. So you're starting to get an idea of the, the sort of lift it took to post a whole week. Um, and we did that twice, twice a season for at least two years. And last year I, you know, we do have a good relationship with you too. And so I said, okay, that's, it's just, it's so much. You know, so we asked you 32, we could close there, but then we're in negotiation with everyone on schedule. They're concerned about liability, you know, their staff, their staff have to be present because it's not our facility. Um, and I love, you know, I love collaboration. And I think that there, I'm, the answer is, the answer is yes, it is just a question how can we do it? But there's a, there's a, there's a stamina. There's a fatigue factor with how often can we do that? And how often can we go to that? Well, with our parents, um, I would love it if those parents used that same screen for, in other ways, just brought up from them. And do we often stay in 32 for you? Do not believe that we pay to use a facility. And we pay for bus. Uh, when we have a bus. Yeah, that's great. So, you know, if we did the whole two needs last year and the year before our competition season in outdoor track and film school, it would have been, it's not like there were some other beats we could have gone to on those times, right? So the kids, that's like a 30% loss of their competition for the year. If we don't do that and we, the service we provide to other teams in this region of the state is tremendous because they either don't have facilities or they don't have the, the. The core of volunteers to put on the need as well run. And it's my experience. Thank you. I still have a question. I don't know. One of them is about our budget though, and that is, um, what if, is there enough included in the line item for, um, extracurricular and athletics to do improvements to the track this year? No, that is budget money. So no, that is not inclusive of any improvements to the track. What the board could do is unencumber the funds today, put it back in our savings account. That's essentially what you'd be doing, right? Is putting it in our savings account. Andrew and I can work with our track coaches and aficionados to find, to just, to define safety and what needs to happen for that track and get an amount for it. And then come back to the board and say, we need this amount. For the work on the track or for equipment or storage shed or whatever. Um, we could come, we could do that over the next, the course of the, you know, budget. Yeah. Um, also, um, the issue of the floodplain, um, and how much we invest in that. I mean, I want, I would like to do improvements to the track as well. Um, and at the same time, I'm thinking, okay, you know, how much, what are we thinking of doing? Because it may get flooded again. And if we think about a storage building, where would that go? Because our properties and the floodplain, right? If we wanted to. So those would be all conversations that we'd be having. Um, Our properties and all in the floodplain. So some of them, a lot of it is, but it's not all there. Um, and as Ben's pointing out, the, think about the parts of our facility that survived the flood and was under a considerable amount of water. The track, the field or the field in the center of it, our parking lot. Um, all of these things survived pretty well. We make better improvements to the track. It's going to, it's going to survive. Um, if we actually did the track, it would survive better. Quite honestly, um, with the water coming off of it, because that's how that particular area is designed. It's designed for water to fall off of it. It's has pathways around it for the water to go, to receive quickly. Um, that, that's how that air, that's why that field looks so beautiful. And the field didn't have any. Significant damage to it. Whereas the softball field over here did because it's not designed that way. Right. It was like a clay bathtub. Um, This is not this is this is designed in a specific way so that it is so it can be resilient to weather. That's all right. Um, I just want to elevate what Miriam is asking for. And, um, And I, I hope that we can try to make something like that happen tonight actually. And maybe alter the motion. Um, And I think we can try to do on encumber. I mean, I know it's arbitrary, but right now, even the amount that's. Designated for the track is fairly arbitrary based on the numbers that we got back from the proposals. So maybe like an encumber of 1.5 million and keep 400,000. Get some better numbers and figure it out. But I would like to sort of signal the commitment. That we made. And I think that we've had a lot of, a lot of, a lot of, a lot of, a lot of failures and I can count on one hand, the number of times that we've had students come to us and ask us for something. And they've come to us. Over and over and over again, just sort of echoing, you know, their desire to have this facility improved. And it's really upsetting. And we're, we're in a. We're in just upsetting budgetary times. We're trying to like, not be able to give them the track that we hoped to give them. But I think that I would like to signal to them that we are committed to giving them at least a facility that. Feel safe that they're not going to fall off the edge of that. You know, has all of the equipment that they need to do the different events. So I would, I would like to urge other board members to potentially amend the motion. I think we have one of two courses for that. Scott can either amend his motion. Or we can vote on Scott's motion voted down. And then. I have someone. Remotion. Yeah. Scott can withdraw his motion. Or unencumber 1.5. Does it. Doesn't matter. I don't think it matters. It just meets. Okay. We have a motion on the table. That's the point. Okay. So why don't we, why do we do that? Why don't we vote on Scott's motion and then. Reassigned $400,000. To the draw. I can't. Oh, you can't. Why do you want to withdraw? Okay. Jake. Sorry. This is sort of predates Scott's motion. But like, why are we. Doing anything right now on the track? We don't need the money. Because I think. There's still a conversation in the community that we're going to spend $2 billion on a track. And I don't think that's accurate. And I think, I think we may spend. Two to $300,000 on an update in the near future. I mean, we are not going to spend $2 billion on a track. And I don't think that's accurate. And I think, I think we may spend. We are not going to spend $2 million on a track in the next few years, just given where we're at and in most. Yeah, without some change that money is probably going to go elsewhere. So. My feeling is let's have the money be more accurately assigned to kind of where the board is now. I mean, we could vote the motion down and keep it to the track. It's something that keeps popping up. And with, I think people justifiably already. In one upset about where their taxes are going that there's. Yeah, and. And two people confused about why. I think if we can eliminate a story out there that their taxes are going up because we're helping to spend $2 million on a track regardless. It's easier to tell people. That no, we are not thinking about that money. In that light right now, given our tax situation, even though we're still supportive of the track. If we have that money assigned to the track. Yeah. Well, just to build off of that Miriam, maybe point a couple of meetings ago is it's just not it. It's not honest. Yeah. If we're not actually thinking we're going to use the money for the track, then it is also in the reverse, putting out a false promise to those who hope we are going to use it that way. If we're not actually intending to. It's just it's confusing all around. And I think it would be a more accurate representation. If I think where the consensus of the board is, we don't know what we're going to spend that $1.5 million on because we don't know what the next few years brings. We realize that we have a great track program. We wanted to really build a track that I think that track program deserves. We are not in the position to do that now, but we can certainly do something and let's let's set aside some funds to do something to make the track safe, to make it better. But let's not either give the false impression that we're, that money is going to be spent on the track regardless of where taxes go. And let's not also give the impression to, you know, the kids that are coming up through the track and you know, maybe in sixth grade and be like, well, I'm going to have a great track, but I'm in ninth grade that that's not going to be the case. Or it's probably not going to be the case, or at least not the track that we originally, there's a building. Chris and then Jill. And I just want to be cognizant that it's like 905. Could we also signal in our meeting summary and our, our minutes that the context of say, if there is a $400,000 encumbrance to kind of get the track to a place of safe standard, you know, the board is directing, you know, or advising administration to move ahead with a process to do an assessment, you know, that includes the input of students and are incredible, incredible coaches. I mean, my heart is just overwhelmed by the amount of time and effort and the opportunity that you are creating for our students. I just want to deeply thank you. So I just wonder if within our summary and in our minutes, we can specifically, you know, make a nod to that we are moving ahead with a process around assessment and to make a more responsible expenditure on the track. Conservative. Yeah. You said responsible. I'm just editorializing. Conservative investment. Yeah. More conservative. Sure. Yeah. Jill. Can I go real quick? I'm really bothered by a clarification. We heard a couple minutes ago that there is no money to do anything to the track and either the athletics or the buildings and grounds. I think if parents were expected to go in and clean up the basketball court for kids to play basketball or the kids were painting the lines, I think there would be complaints. So I don't understand why not only are we not providing a safe track, doesn't sound like we're spending any money. And is I remember the days when the city owned our grounds and that was like in like the rec department or something. So there was always like this tension. And I'm wondering if maybe this is a holdover of that. I'm wondering if the tennis courts have the same lack of upkeep and the same dependence on volunteers. But I just think it's really imbalanced if you look at the number of kids who participate and that there's nothing that parents have to sweep the track off and it's not safe. If the basketball court wasn't safe, we wouldn't that wouldn't be stood for. So I don't understand why the track isn't at least some minimal maintenance or safety as part of our athletics or our buildings budget. And maybe it is. But that's that's what I'm concerned about now. It shouldn't be going to redo it. Yeah. Okay. I'm going to do a brand new one. Okay. That's why there wasn't money for immediate upgrades. Because we the original plan was that it was as soon as the snow melts and it was going to start. The work was going to start on it. Okay. We weren't going to use it this year this season at all because it was supposed to get started. Thank you. That makes sense. And there may be a minimal things. I don't know exactly what how that book curriculars. I mean, it's obviously the salaries that we pay coaches and all that kind of stuff. And there's always uniforms and all of that piece in there. So for me to say there's nothing in there for the track is not accurate. I just don't know exactly how much for what costs. Thank you. So I hear Scott was drawing his motion. I think I hear pretty clear communication from the board to Andrew and Libby. And I think that at some point it doesn't have to be immediate. Cause I know we have things to do with holidays coming up. Some sort of an assessment of what a. A fix would look like that would bring our existing track up to a. Usable and less embarrassing position. Safe and safe. Well, to be, I'm usable. I'm encompassing safe as part of that. And then I'm hearing that there's a desire for someone, maybe Scott again, to make a motion to. To unencumber 1.5 million and leave $400,000. It has a set aside for. Future work renovations upgrades to the track. With the idea that we could move that numbers lightly in either direction. Andrew, you're, you're, you're twitching. And this is, you're trying to, that number as a big number. That's, that's a lot. I can't imagine given what we're working with that we could ever spend. But I think that number is very large. So if there's a mechanism to. We can always bring it down. Yeah, I mean. We're not like 4. But it takes. 75% of the current money. And it puts it into a different category. And I know my math was a perfect check. It's a one short. Yes. So when we get these estimates, it would be great to have like a little bit of an option table, like safe and usable, it's basic. And then I think Nathan is saying you'd like to have meats there, which seems to me like sort of the pinnacle. So the range would be good to know. We don't have a motion on the table right now. Right. Right. I find it a little tricky. Like I don't want to do too many repairs. If there's still a hope of. Replacing the track. Like, so there's sort of this balance of like, I don't want to say no within the next five years. We definitely will not. But I don't think we have to. And like 910, I think we're at a good spot where we can have a conversation about this later. I will do, do you want to make the motion? I can make the motion. Yes. I moved to unencumber $1.5 million of the track earmark. Leaving $400,000 for track. Program and facility improvements. Okay. Second. Second. So we have a motion. We have to have an opportunity for further discussion. Further discussion. Someone did an estimate, but I just want to appreciate the. You 32 track team that came out a couple of years ago. Yeah. Well, my mind. The whole you 32 track team came and they advocated for their neighbors to have a facility that was close to theirs. And it was just. I couldn't wait for them to come out. The little boy that said that there were rocks in their knees. I can never forget that. No, thank you. And thank you to everyone who's. Yeah. Continue to advocate for this and. And be part of all of our co-creator programs. They're all extremely valuable. And I think the passion we see around it reflects that. All is a favor. Hi. Any of us. Motion to adjourn. The moved. Second. Second. I was in favor. Thanks everyone. This is great work. It's been a tough budget season. I really appreciate the thoughtfulness.