 Any revision to the agenda? Can I just give some warnings, Chris? Sure. I handed you three sheets of paper, two of them are budget-related. I have done this budget presentation now three times, once at U32, once at Berlin, and once at Doty. And I did it under rapid fire last night at Doty because I had to get to my daughter's concert up at Peoples, and that took an hour just to do it really fast, and I think I pulled people over. So it's been taking a good hour and a half discussion on the budget at every school. Because of looking at it, individual and merged, and I gave you some new ways of looking at it with one sheet there so you can understand and comprehend that. Ken, even prior to hearing that, I was hoping to perhaps reorder some of the agenda items just based on the agency of the issues. So for example, putting Act 46 discussion up. Act 46? I brought brownies. Love you guys. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I was wondering which one you were at when I saw you and Kim. And this one, we had too many brownies. There should have been a few brownies. Sounds like a better opinion. Supervisor, just moving it up to, like, 3.3, moving it under the budget draft. So I feel that's something we have to discuss. And I have a bunch of questions that I need advice on today as well. Any other proposals in terms of reordering our line of business? Well, I had sent out that piece on the district management group, and I'm happy to talk about it or not. I would like it to go in a minute. But it's going to be more of a conversation that I'm not particularly interested in. No, I think she's asking a question. Yeah, I was going to say the same. I think we're saying the same thing. You go. OK, let's see what time for us. So I would propose that we start with the budget, because I suspect it's going to be a budget and goals this fashion. I think we need you to both. Yeah, I think you're in the right place, Chris. So we'll open it up for her. Let me give a little context, because I'm going to be asking the board for questions. Just in two, switching to yours so we can do the budget first. No, I'd like that. OK. And for Matthew, you saw these last night, so I don't know if you need them again. And Katie, if you want to copy to your website, I'm bringing plenty of them with me these days. There's two sheets. There's that one, and I just placed it on this one right here. OK, and here comes David. So I'll put one up for David as well. Thanks. So I handed you three sheets. The first one we can save for Act 36, which is the timeline. I handed you a sheet that's like this that you've seen other years. It's our current year of budget sorted across all six schools by functions in the budget and with the yellow being low and the green being high. And it's not necessarily good that you're low or good that you're high or bad if you're low or bad if you're high. This is a tool to ask questions. And I would remind the board every year, I seem to forget to do this, but that the Romney is in this section from where it's in the column that goes over the Romney's over. Then you have the percentages for your percentage of the budget. And the next one right before the U32 column titled is the cost for equalized pupil. I don't give this to drive you to make it equal across all schools. I give this so you can ask better questions. Because I believe in having data allows you to ask better questions. It usually doesn't give you the answer necessarily. OK, so Bill just said clear. The Romney column begins. The Romney data. The first one is 1,220. Yeah, so the instructional services cost 1,220,220. I'm sorry. Yeah, 1,220. OK. But the 7,000 is not attached to us. You know that is. That is. So that's 37% of your budget goes to instructional services. Or the cost for equalized pupil that you're spending on instructional services is 7,626. No, that's right. But the 7,443 belong to the city is not filled yet. That's correct. That's correct. And so what this also tells you up above is gives you some demographic data. So in the enrollment, as of 10-1, so it's a pre-K-12. It's a pre-K-12, so a pre-K-6 for here. You get your average daily membership, your equalized pupils. And the reason I'm going to stress equalized pupils and everything we talk about tonight is that's how you get to tax rates. And that's how you get to limits on spending. OK. There's also some square footage, number of meals per day, screen reuse lunch, sped, and enrollment of pre-K students. You'll see that you had a total of this year's current year. Your total budget is $3,266,283, which equates to a cost pre-class pupil of $20,413. Do people see those numbers? Yeah. OK. I'm going to skip all the way down the bottom. I'll let you have a minute or two to read this and ask me any clarifying questions or other questions as well. Down at the bottom, what's below is other fiscal information that's devised by a different divisor, divided by a different divisor. So operational plan, we actually look at the cost per square foot, because the cost for running the building is not going to really change by the number of kids. Then you see it with capital fund and debt. You see your support for food service per meal per day. So you can see what different communities are putting that. And then you see your cost of special education per sped student enrollment. So is the high and low in relation to other schools in the district? Yes. It's all within the district. So I don't have this. Chris, that's one of the things in law that's pushing us to a common fiscal system across the state is start to look at this across the state. And then student transportation, I'm not sure how much that's really even relevant to look at there. I don't know if that's something we've held, but it's just by per equalized pupil. It's relatively equalized because the range isn't that great. It only goes from 673 to 694. So I think we're actually, you know, that's one of the things you have to look at. When you see the yellows and the greens, the range may not be that great, or it may be a small amount per equalized pupil. So it's like, is this really a place to ask a question about? So once again, I give you this as a chart to think about questions you may want to ask about the budget, not so much to give you answers to places to cut or add. It's just a way of looking at what your current budget is. Are you, is that something that we're supposed, you'd like us to do now, or is this for referencing later? This is for reference later. It's for reference for further discussions we need to have. I know that I'm giving the, last year we gave this in November and we didn't get here till December this year. Can I ask you? For Romney, I think the, you know, I wonder about the, you know, if you look at the special education local, it's really high for your equalized student and then you can look down at what's the cost per sped student overall. You're not the highest, but you're, you're above some of our lower districts. It depends not include, for example, a student that we're paying tuition for. It does. It does, okay. Does it take into account kids who's there's revenue that comes back? Yeah, this is only expenditure. This is only expenditure. Okay. Can you explain, just remind me what the difference then is between local and total? It's local because you're, I'd want to go look at that. I can answer that question right now. I believe, yep, yep. That includes both the SU assessment. No, it doesn't. Hold on. That 236 are your local costs right here at Romney, that Romney pays direct. So it's your pair of educators. Where's 236, where am I? See, if I look right at 236, one, one, five, yeah. Okay, sorry. That's your cost here. It doesn't include your cost of what you're paying for your SU assessments for your special education teachers and outside costs. And when I go down. So consultants would be an example enough. Paid through the SU. Yeah. What about, we talked last meeting, it was the nurse talked about contracting without I don't know if it's Washington County mental health, but having. So those all run through, if there's someone has a behavior interventions through Washington County Mental Health or Green Mountain Associates, that's all paid through the SU assessment for special education. And two days a week there, because she said they bill separately. They just have the space and come. Okay. We don't pay for that. So that's taken out by private insurance or Medicare or something. Okay. So is the 236 included in Washington County? No, those are, those that come through the SU assessment. But it does include the tuition that we're paying to. So not the 236, the down below the special education costs per kid on top of the actual cost. I thought though we were focusing on the equalized pupil, which looks like it's actually pretty close to what the other schools, Dodie and he's not familiar have. In terms of being in that like 900. Well, so it, you know, isn't that where you're interested? What I look at, I look at the, when I look at numbers usually for data, I look for order or magnitude difference. So from seven, it's not that huge of a difference overall in amount per equalized pupil. But if, if, if I just go over to Romney to mills to East Montpelier, which is right next to it, it's 970 and it's 923 at U32. So 1400, the difference is about from 900 to 1400 is about $500, which is almost 50% magnitude dip change. Right, I guess when I look at it though, isn't it that the Romney data is 970 for student? And if you look at East Montpelier, No, no, no, no, no, it's one over. It's not connected. It's the one in green, 1,476. Oh, that actually is. So you're 50% greater in costs. So that's how I usually like to look at these numbers. It's a relative magnitude. That's why I was apologizing at the beginning, Katie, that I need to put some really dark vertical bars on this. Yeah, okay, now I understand, thank you. So what I, that's, and that's, I think what you were asking me what to look for, it's that relative magnitude is the big thing. And if it relative magnitude isn't that much different than, okay, let's not ask questions about that. Do we have any data for after the, revenue comes back, what those numbers would be? So I'm thinking about kids who, part of their special education costs are covered. Some kids 100% is covered. Right, so we charge from the SU, you could only charge the net cost. So that line down below is the net cost. Revenues already taken out. So that's the, it's a net special, but remember, it's equalized across, it's distributed by assessment by equalized pupils across the whole supervisory. For this year, because you voted to do that. Yeah. So then that's not necessarily, not up to, services that are provided, it's just our responsibility. Down here is your, is your responsibility. Up here is what you're doing locally. Okay. So you're saying the other, and I have to go, I don't know why it's not more equalized, Chris. I want to go ask Lori that. I haven't talked about that the way you guys are, the way you're asking questions. You're the first board to kind of ask me those differentials. So I want to say, because I would think down below under student transportation, under student special education costs for sped student, that that would be relatively the same. But what Lori might be doing there is adding in the net cost from the SU, plus the total cost at the local and getting that. But I want to go ask her that and get clarification on it for you. Okay. What does it mean if I'm just trying to, to understand what, sort of the root of what we're getting at with this question. Well, it's what you have to look at is, I think, you know, one of the things you, you want to, you want to look at this to say, where are we different than others? And it's okay to be different. There's nothing wrong with being different. I mean, I'm sorry, I just, I mean in regards to special education, I kind of got lost from where Caroline was asking a question and all that. Well, wouldn't ask me, what would you have us look at? And I'd have you look at the greens and then look at the relative size. In the discussion, I would, I've gotten much tighter to answer her question and talking it out. I'd have you look at the relative size across the schools. And if there's a, you know, if there's a big variance, you might ask, low or high, are we not providing something we should be providing? You know, I'd look at the percentages. If you look in instructional services, they range anywhere from 35% to 41% of the budget goes into instructional services. I think almost every year, I've made a case that one of my goals is to put more fiscal, more fiscal resources into instructional services. Now, I also include special education in that and others, so I'd have to total that out. What's interest expense? We, It just happens to be a green, that's why I'm asking. Right, so what, that's a hard one to really look at because you pay for your, the money that you're, that you take in lieu of taxes along with, and you have an expense to do that. You also have a revenue that offsets that on the other side. So, this is just looking at expenditure budgets, not looking at revenues. Interest expense and time of day to the bomb. Or is it? I'd want to go check that, but I think that's all in the cat, all in the up in the debt service, I believe Chris, but I want to go check that. And why is our health so high? Any thoughts about that? Health services? Yes, you have much greater nursing services than other buildings for people. Okay, I know, is there a, I assume, like I know, sometimes there's needs for diabetic and that that's a, it's a life, it's a, like a death technician, is that? I can't speak to that because of people, obviously. So you can't speak to whether or not we don't. The problem is you get, you start to get right down to it's pretty obvious in this community, people know who the kids are that have certain health needs. Okay. So we'd be exposing it. I guess the question perhaps is, you know, is this because of certain health needs that require a higher level of nursing? Or do you think we have more nursing than we need? Is it a necessary expense? At the level of, if it's a necessary expense right now. Okay. And, probably, may not, you don't know what's going on with people needs. Okay. So can I move you, and we can sit and study this all night. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. The next piece is actually the one that just came on Monday. I'm sorry, this one did not get in your packet. This one you did have in your packet, but you had the 8 and a half, 11 that you needed a microscope for. Yeah. So this next one is a little bit more complicated. It's new. What I did do is take information off of this current fiscal year, the budget, the final budget by function. And I brought that information to the top table that you see here that says, FY19 budget information. It's the 8 and a half by 11. That looks like this, Chris. This is where I'm at. I handed out a... Look under that. Look underneath that sheet. Oh, yeah. You got it right there. Thank you. So what you'll see, and I'm going to go right down through the run me column, and then it'll kind of explain the whole sheet. So you have your total expense budget for this year's 3.2 million. There's offsetting revenues that lets you get to allowable revenues to take in that you don't count towards taxes. There's $180,000 of that for run me. So the local education spending is a very key number for tax rates is $3.08 million. That's the numerator in the ratio to get to your costs per equalized pupil. Your equalized pupils for this year are 160 students, 0.01 and 1,100. And believe me, if Laurie were here, that's an important 1,100. So your local ed spending per equalized pupil is $19,287 for this current budget year. Your tax rates are set on your local ed spending per equalized pupil. That's what tax rates get set by. You don't receive any federal grants or Medicaid grants that give you extra one of the things we wanted to show and it was because we were talking about that. For instance, you look over at Berlin, they're receiving $223,000 in school-wide programs. So that actually pays for a little over two staff members and some other things they get. Some outside coaching supports and other things. So that's this current year run me. Yeah, I'll stop right there. So the grants then set to lower other districts, people as pupil. One of the things, not necessarily, but one of the things that we were talking about and this is gonna go in, I'm gonna take an aside after I talk about this, about some work I've been doing through my doctorate, that you have to, when you wanna look at a small rural superintendent, you have to look at where your different revenues are coming from to actually start to look at what's happening in different schools. And so you have to look at those outside resource opportunities to be able to say what's it look like across. I wanna say it again. I said it already a couple of times. I'm not necessarily advocating for the same equalized spending at all schools. Actually, that's been shown not to be a good thing to do. Okay, so I'm not advocating for it, but you have to have the numbers to think about it. Think about what's going on. So the next column down is all draft ones. So Berlin's already in draft two, U32 is in draft two, Doty's in draft two. Next week, East Montpelier and Cal also go through their draft twos. So these are all draft one budgets because we thought it would be good to just compare draft ones. And once we get through draft twos, we'll refresh this spreadsheet. The Romney budget that's proposed that you have in front of you tonight and that you had last time was $3.35 million. There's about $196,000 of offsetting revenue that give you a local ed spending of 3.15 million. Your equalized pupils, and this is an estimate. Right now, things getting data out of the agency is really slow. We were supposed to have equalized pupils by December 10th. Usually we have them like December 2nd. This year we haven't even seen them yet. So this is the best estimate that Laurie and Michelle can do, and so they're usually really close. So your equalized pupils are going down almost eight students. You have an enrollment right now of 143 students. K6. Now this is a pre-K6 figure, but you have to have, you only, a pre-K student is only 42% of what a kindergarten student counts towards equalized pupils. Not that they don't count, but they do in fiscal terms. So you're spending pre-equized pupil right now for the budget you have in front of you is 20,714. Why don't you be able to see across the district what this looks like? And then we started to look at, this is the first time that we're able to start to look at the penalty threshold. And Chris, you've been good about asking for three or four months. Hey, we'd like to know. And in talking with Laurie, she's like, I'm not willing to go give those estimates because pupils has such a high effect on the threshold and where you're gonna go. So right now, Romney is 103, almost $104,000 above the threshold. Red is, and usually in fiscal, red means below, but in this case, it means you're above. But it always means bad. It always means bad. Yeah, thank you. Black means good. If you look across, I'm gonna have you go across, you'll see the district altogether is 528, almost $529,000 below the threshold as a district. If I wanna say this, U32 is in the last year of a bond payment next fiscal year. It's a $430,000 bond payment. They have a second one that will mature in two years after that. If we level funded for FY21, which is a year from now, anticipating healthcare increase, healthcare increases this past year alone just at U32 or $130,000, the whole district will be in the threshold. Now you say, well, wait a minute, that's merged. What if we weren't merged? I've already done some quick envelope calculations for every other entity if they were by themselves, AMES in Berlin. Berlin may be the one, but I think all five entities, all six schools, if they were singleton districts would be either at the threshold or very close to it in FY21. So I don't really think the governance either way is pushing us towards the threshold that's our spending for equalized people, that is. So what I'm hearing from you is that cumulatively this upcoming year, in a merged district, we would not be exceeding the threshold, but in 2021, we most likely would be. Yep, I believe we will. And if we are independent districts, then we're screwed at the moment with the amount that we're... We wouldn't quite use that language, but I would say we have an issue we need to talk about. That's not of, you know, we'll move around some deck chairs, not figure. Yep, so I wanted to show you what the penalty was because you've asked what the... Chris, did I go too fast? What's the driver, if you think that next year, every, maybe not Berlin, but every other... So this year we had 11.8% increase in healthcare. When you look at that, what's that percentage of the human resource cost? That was 3.5% of the human resource cost. So without a salary increase, and we're in negotiations right now. Our current negotiation increase for this past year was 2.6%. I think we'll probably be in that neighborhood, if not higher, because I think that was actually really good bargaining the boards did to keep it that low. So we're looking at 6% increase in salary, probably the year after. 6% on the whole staffing is just gonna drive that right up, that cost into the threshold. You mean 6% from where we are now? 6% of where you are at the end of next year to the year after that. So I'm compounding the three, whatever it is this year, plus the 6% 6 to 7%, we probably have 6 to 7% coming this year once we get done with negotiations. And the penalty and the threshold doesn't go away with merging or it does? No, it's still there. And actually the way the legislation was written in 2015, the penalty figure is written on the CPI, so the Consumer Price Index, plus a variable, I believe it's 1%, but I would have to go back and check this, and this is why we have Laurie around, and Brad Janes at the agency, based on the 2015 fiscal year budget numbers. So it's not based on, because the rate of growth for education has been greater than the CPI. So what it's doing is bringing the threshold lower and lower each year, because it's anchored back to 2015 plus CPI from then on, plus a little bit of a figure. I think it's 1%, CPI plus 1%, but education growth rate has been greater than CPI plus 1%. So this is probably an issue for schools all over the state? It's gonna become more and more an issue. We are one of the more high spending issues in even districts. Romney is one or two right now in the state for this year for cost-per-equalized people. So that was a decision you guys made last year, saying we're gonna spend right up to the threshold, so it's just where we're at, and we're just gonna hit it sooner than other districts are because of what we spend per-equalized people. So are you sort of, you're giving us this information which is helpful. Are you trying to tell us something? I'm not trying to tell you something, but I'm trying to understand because the reason, Chris and I talked before the meeting, and I said, I think this is an intertwined connect conversation about what, the reason I've been asking your priorities is we're all gonna, and I've been asking this of all boards is because we're gonna be in tough fiscal times. We're not gonna get out of them for a long, long time, unless we do something like Addison Central did two years ago, and they decided to reset the whole system so they didn't have to have this conversation, but they had to do drastic cuts in personnel and restructure their system because they were the highest spender in the state, and then they said, their board said, we don't wanna keep having this conversation every year, and they went to a restructuring and to a staff reduction, a heavy staff reduction, over 25 people, teachers, and I don't even know how many support staff. It was a tough year for them last year, but they said they didn't wanna keep having this discussion year and year and year. I'm not telling you to advise you that, I'm trying to give you the information, I'm not trying to scare you, I'm just trying to give you information to make good decisions. And so the penalty, if we stayed where we are right now, is an extra 3.7 cents. The tax rate per hundred, with this current budget would be $1.88. That's with last year's CLA, okay? We're projecting this with last year's CLA, CLA won't come in until the end of the month. If and is the anticipation that will be the same or? So housing costs have been going up around the state. I haven't been paying attention just to middle sex, so I just know that around the state, housing costs have been going up. No benefit. That's gonna, well, when you just reassessed, it'll probably bring down your CLA, because as the assessment gets off of the, if the housing costs become greater and the assessment stays constant, you'll start to lower your CLA percentage. You're at about 102% because you just reassessed last year. I believe that's what it is. I'd have to go check that number. If we were a merged district, the education tax rate before it hit CLA would be $1.79. That's why we left that whole road blank, but it shows it over on the district, all the way on the right-hand side, do you all see that? So if we took that and then applied CLA, last year's CLA, the middle sex tax rate for educating pre-K through graduation students would be $1.77. So the merging of the district would be a lowering of the tax rate of 11 cents with the current budget you have now. I can tell you that Calis, I know is coming in with a much lower budget than where they're at. Doty last night, I didn't stay, but I'm assuming you accepted the budget where we had it, the recommendations. So that 29,000 that they were over is now gone. There's a couple thousand below the threshold, right at the threshold, but a couple thousand below it overall. So that'll lower their tax rate. That would lower if they were independent, their tax rate by probably about two and a half cents because it's about 13,000, the advisor. So that, I give you just as information. Again, I'm not trying to scare you, I'm not trying to push you. Brian, I'm glad you asked that question. I'm not trying to give you subtle information or where to go. I want you to know this and think about the priorities that you have as a board because I thought about Amy and I talked about should we come with cuts, should we come? And I said, you know what, I don't want to go with cuts. I want to hear what the priorities are and for you to tell us where you want us to go do some work and sharpen our pencils. We'll come back, we can either come back to you. The other thing we're doing with all the other boards is I said we're, the new board is now sitting on January 14th, the transition board and they have the responsibility to present a budget forward. Romney is the one place I'm thinking about that you may want to have another time to talk as a board before your representatives work with the transition board to build a merged budget. If that's the direction we go or if we're independent, how do we want to go that way? I mean, I know we're playing this two ways. The executive committee was good at telling me, they'll build the budgets independent then just put them together, okay? So where does the, where the SU budget comes into play here because if this is going to be paying it should be shared all across the board and the SU budget was adopted. And so I'm wondering if I might. Well, adopted or recommended. It's built into these budgets. It's an assessment for you guys to be able to. I'm wondering if the, if there's a concern that we're all going to be over the threshold within a year why there isn't more coordination in terms of helping local budgets and then figuring out what we can afford for the SU budget. Is that off the table for this year? No, I don't think it is. It emerged and, you know, that's fine. I mean, as you know, Chris because you sit on the executive committee and hear it there's more of a regulation and a lot of push that down on the schools. Does a school personnel off take on regulatory work and reporting work to the agency of education? Was that a one point, was less than 2% increase, right? 1.96. But it's 1.96, so 4 million, 5 million, I don't remember. 9 million. 9 million. Because of special education. And transportation. And transportation is in there too. So, I mean, if you remember, the SU core functions only went up 14,000. Transportation went up nine. Special education went up 153,000. So, and those, I mean, those are services. When you ask me what are instructional services special education is an instructional service. When I look at instructional services I combine what are called ancillary services like nursing library, instructional services and special education. If you remember back, we had a couple of means ago. We had the chart that had the multi-year budget. Look, there's a pie that's in there. And I tried, those core services should be about 65 to 70% of your budget. And there isn't anyone in Washington Central that has those core services anywhere close to that percentage. If we were in Montpelier, they're pretty close to that. Spending that much money on instruction. Just because I get to see that budget too. So, if we had this same budget next year that we did this year, we would be out of this problem, right? No, we'd be in it. Why? Because next year the threshold's gonna come down. This current budget that we're talking about. We have fewer students. What? Well, a fewer students to divide the total by. Right. Amy brought some enrollment. We didn't increase it at all. What? If we didn't increase the budget at all. Right, but we'd be dividing it by 143 into the 166. I mean, our equalized pupils is a two year average which is gonna go down even more. Okay, but is it only dividing the 3.5 essentially? I'm sorry, 3.152 on this year's budget by 152. As opposed to 3.086 from last year. No, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, we need to, and is it just based on the per pupil? That puts us over the threshold as opposed to total budget? Well, you can look at it either way. I could give you that number instead of 103. I could give you money. And have the same per pupil, right? I could take that 103 and divide it by 152 and tell you what you need to lower your spending per pupil. Right? You could do it either way. I think it's easier to know that most people usually in budgeting look at round numbers at their whole numbers, not per equalized pupil. So here we meet the penalty because of the per pupil spending, right? Okay, we're looking at cuts. Yep, well it depends. You tell me, do you, because Brian asked last time, how much are we willing to spend over the threshold? I think that's your first question. I asked that question. You did ask that question. I think it might have been rhetorical, I don't know. No, but he's courageous. No, I think it is crazy. I'll give it down real first, it's outrageous. And I think it's the first question you should say. Where are you as a community? Where do you think the community is in spending over the threshold? I've watched many of your fellow board members that there are other boards ask that same question. And I think that's the first question. And then that, there's several after that. So is this budget that's proposed one that you think is needed in order to service our students the way they should be serviced? And for one, sir, does that mean? I would have to say, you know, I want more clarity on what your priorities are. And I do think it's important to look at the long range kind of following the pupil number that is being projected. Do you want to talk about some of the data that you brought? Yeah, this report is from NASDAQ. And as we look at the enrollment projections by grade, you know, we're looking at a K6 enrollment in 2023 of 123 kids. Of how many? 123 kids. And what year? Within the next four years. 2022 to 2023, it's projecting 123. And that is not an anomaly within, you know, a span that they're pretty sure of, you know. So, you know, you get into squishier numbers once you can't trap direct birds and that kind of thing. So, you know, you're looking at according to this K6, 124, and 21, 22, 123, and 22, 23. So I'm just wanting to signal that, you know, I think we need to be thinking proactively in realizing that we're not necessarily different than everywhere else in Vermont as our population is dropping. I'm anticipating a question that might be asked with that. I guess is how is that indicator in the past held up? So that's a projection from last year and that projected for this current year to have 139 students and we have 143. It usually is. I mean, when I look at it across the schools, we've been doing this. We've been working with NASDAQ now for five or six years to run enrollment projections. And, you know, plus or minus five, six for our small schools. And at U32, it's actually even sharper because there's a bigger number of students since it's easier to be more on target. But I've never seen a projection be off by like 10 or 12. I haven't seen it up in that area. And I do go back and look and say, what does it look like compared to what we projected in? It's gotten better every year as we give them more and more data because they have a demographer that's employee one and they do a crawl over and doing one schools. That's the reason we're part of that to keep these projections going. And they say, just as Amy just said, if the kids are born, we're a lot sharper than the next five years, from year five to year six through 10. Do you remember for 2021? I just didn't know. So 2021, they have it at 127. We have 1.43 this year. Yeah. And would you anticipate that it would be 2.19 to 1. So for the next year, 1.43. What was that? We have 1.43 this year. And do you think, does that hold steady for the year starting in the longest so far? So I would go into that. I would go to this. I'm just telling Amy to use the current enrollment numbers we know with pre-K. And what we have, because the way you have to look at it is what's going to come in at kindergarten and leave at sixth grade. That's the differential you have to look at. So it's looking like we've got 18 total pre-K that would be rising. And we're graduating 20. And that includes students that are on tuition bachelors. The 20? The 18, the 18. Who are outside the student going to a different. If there are some that aren't in, are here. You'd have to look at that. So then face down to 1.41 or so? If those numbers go over. If everything else stays the same. Yeah. Yeah. I've been looking at a lot of things. So every time that equalized people's year. No, they're just enrollment. Just straight enrollment. So here's, I could get a lot more technical, but equalized. And I just don't want to make a policy. But equalized is usually about 90 to 92% of your enrollment number. OK. I'm just trying to look at kind of where the trend is going. So the equalized is the best in your enrollment number? Yes. So if our equalized issue is 1.16. It's a two-year average. Two-year rolling average. Two-year rolling average. Was there a significant decrease from last year to this year? Yep. Oh, we graduated. We had a bubble class. Yeah. Last year. Yeah, I mean, in 15, 16, you had, so I don't have last year's right here. I didn't write it down. You had 165 students. I mean, in 2012, 2013, you had 163 students. Back in 2007, 2008, you had 134 students. So we know we've had those two bubble classes coming through. And we've increased class number of classes because of it. Your grade levels right now range anywhere from K to 6. You're ranging anywhere from 18 to 21? Well, there's a 24 in fifth grade. None below 18? None below 18. But you have, that's not your classes. That's your numbers per grade. I gave you your grade numbers, not your class numbers. So the question is, do we want to worry about the potential in terms of strengthening the budget? Yes. And I would say for two reasons, one, obviously perhaps because but also I think regardless of what we might feel about what may be happening, I think sort of starting off a merged process with a budget that's above the threshold, I think, would not foster a good starting partnership with other schools. And if, as a result, cuts were made to eliminate that threshold, what kind of message is that going to send them back to the community? So I feel like while we may not be potentially setting the budget for this, I think that if we can stave off any further unnecessary damage of the goodwill, you know what I'm saying? Yes. But going into a merger, we're faced with that anyway, because there's some taking on debt from other towns that already have it, and so. So do we want to pile on? No, I'm not saying we want to be basically responsible for our building our community. And I think you should not be in a penalty, because I just I think that it's in the wrong message. So I think we should look, you know, if we can get on with this, and I'm not so concerned about the relationship of the merged district for that reason, just because, you know, we're faced with that anyway, meaning that while there's going to be a baggage, we're all going to send baggage to it. You know what? I think everybody does. Yeah, everybody does. I think everybody does. So we don't want to ignore the fact that we want to have this really sound out, I think. So I agree with you, Sam, in that different reason for it. So how do you want to approach this? You know, I think we really like that balancing here for the discussion on how we want to attach this, or evaluate where we think the reductions can be made. So I'm really torn on this, because both of our administrators have said that it would be helpful for them coming with a next draft, if they knew what the board's priorities were. And I can see that, but at the same time, I've also been a principal where, without the board's priorities, I saw where there was excess. And I don't necessarily think our priorities will help the administrators come forward with recommendations. But generally, I like to do what they ask. But I almost feel like, maybe if we just said we would like to see a draft that keeps us away from the threshold, that might push us towards knowing our priorities. So for example, when I was a principal and there was 143 kids and two full-time school counselors, and the state guidelines is one for every 200, it was kind of a no-brainer, but it was a really emotional issue because it was a K-12 school and one did elementary. And so I guess what I'm saying is, if the board's priorities, it almost could have gotten in the way, is what I'm saying. And if there is, I guess, there might be value in just letting the administrators and the staff decide what the priorities are in terms of where we could cut. So like. So can I say something to you? Yeah. I've gone down the road with having the staff in the discussion and cuts. It gets very divisive in a building, and I would never recommend it because it pits staff against staff. If you want to really run a climate in the building, East Montpelier did that five or six years ago. I would argue strongly against that. I see it in schools where it's worked. I think it has to be kind of framed in a really specific way so that it's not necessarily about staff. It's about efficiencies and that type of thing. So I just want to tell you, the times I've been through it, I can't recommend that to you. I can't agree with you. Let me just put that way. I can't agree with you, Caroline. I also think one of my core values as a governance piece is a public school is to serve the public in which it's in its area. And part of that is knowing the values of the community. You are the trustees for the community for this school. You should be able to say, we prioritized it. It doesn't mean I won't, if you said something I didn't agree with, I wouldn't let you know or that I wouldn't come back with other options to do. U32, in their end of their November meeting, told Steven and I to put the whole food service budget into the budget. Then they came back and said, no, we're 100,000 over. We have 100,000 deficit. Put that in the budget. Steven and I came back with a budget that didn't do that. We weren't willing to do it. We said, we're not willing to cut a teacher and a half to fund food service for a $100,000 deficit. We're willing to do other things but we're not willing to do that. We cut a position in the food service at U32 right now, in draft two. We've cut a bunch of paraeducators at U32 to get it, because they are almost $400,000 over the 3% target that the board gave us. So has there been any discussion with the staff about budget priorities from that? No, there hasn't. I do think, I think staff is a vital component of delivering the services that we want to deliver. And you know, they're not a bubble, I don't think, and you know, cuts that, central cuts that will be made certainly affect them. And I think they can have input and insight into where things can work differently because they're doing it every day. Not that you're necessarily controlled by what the staff is saying, but getting the insight from them as to how efficiencies might be achieved can be helpful. And it needs to be by maybe anonymous suggestions. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You can do it that way, even though, like this whole community, you've gotten to know where it's coming from. But just to get the insight from your staff members who are actually doing the work. So, here's what I would say, I'm so strong that the two times I've gone through this and what it's done to morale, I want this board to vote to direct me to do that. Because it is one of those things that will really hurt them around this building. Yeah, well, I was gonna say, I think I'm gonna, well, I'll respond to that. And then I was gonna say something else. I will say as a teacher who's worked in buildings where I don't know that it has happened that way, but anytime there's discussion around cuts, it affects morale and probably performance for probably the rest of the year. And so it's, I think it would be input is great, but the input where there's only 20 people who work here means that one to two of those people would lose their jobs. That's like too small of a data pool to have people talking about what that means. Because it becomes, there's individuals. It becomes personalized. As opposed to an employer of 100,000 people. It's such a tiny environment. But what I, I guess one thing I wanted to share that I've been hearing throughout the meetings is the, when I think about the priorities of the board, it seems like the board's priorities are around the opportunity gap and what we can do to support our students' learning. And I mean, that's the mission of the school, but that seems like it's been the mission and the priority for, I understand that they're coming to these meetings. So I think that rises to the surface to me in terms of identifying priorities. We wanna ensure that we have the highest quality instruction possible for students so that they can have the best shot at achieving. So that's what I hear as an observer of the meetings that's been your priority before budget. And I think that's fair to say, but then you have to talk about specifics as what do we provide to try and achieve that? And whether the board of cuts will heed into that or you have to cut other things because that may not have an impact on that. Well, my tendency to think is that most of what we do has an impact on student education and achievement to varying degrees. And so, I mean, that becomes the one part of it. Is there anything else that more can be done without most pain in the sleep? And I mean, I think it also depends like what we're talking about. So for example, the survey that was created when Bill and Allison weren't together where we ranked content areas. If somebody put math and literacy kind of in a higher priority than say art and PE, that doesn't necessarily mean that we would want a foreign APE teacher. You know what I mean? So if we as a board did that, it may or may not relate to budgetarily where it makes sense. And I mean, the other thing is, class size has come up from the community. Statistically, class size is the, what is it, the least valuable place to spend money. We need to have student progress. In terms of student achievement. I mean, shrink, like, shrinking in the class size. Right, so keeping a class size 22 and below has the least impact on student learning. But even though I'm at the budget, like I want to keep the budget small. I don't pay Vermont taxes to have a class of 30 kids. My kids in classes of 30 kids. So I just think that it's really tricky. And like we last year added the kindergarten class so that the kindergarten didn't have what was it going to be, 22? Yeah, I mean it's currently. So is that a luxury? Is it a priority? Like, I think it's really, like there's, it's what we're talking to. Yeah, so yeah. I think it's tricky. Or is it, I mean, based on the, in this big, based on student population, per grade, are there reconfigurations in terms of what classes should be? I mean, can you, can you, can there be combinations because the, the issues that we had dealt with because we had a larger group is no longer there. But the structure stayed the same. We actually reconfigured some. We've got straight, for a straight second. The kindergarten is currently split so that it's still at 10 each. Three, four is blended. But all of the class sizes, with the exception of kindergarten and K-2 are, there's plenty of little bodies in those rooms, one, two. So I don't think we literally could have put, there's not gonna be an advantage to, to that. And there were real reasons the teachers felt like it benefited students learning for them to actually have a straight first and a straight second at that point because of the foundational knowledge the kids were building during that time. So, can you, can you learn class in terms of, do you think that would be a thing? We've been talking some on K-2 and just ways to support the kind of student needs within various classrooms. And, you know, that's something that I was hoping to dialogue with them to make sure that we were anticipating incoming needs as best we can, as well as the current groups to come up with the best configuration. I was not anticipating framing that in a reduction kind of way, but more like just dialoguing on, you know, do we need a second first grade teacher, you know, or like does somebody need to move up to teach first grade, you know, or what? I would just say that Vermont's suggestions for K-2 or 18 and below for grades, you know, for second grade and below, that's their recommendation. This district has never set a class-size policy, you know, required to have one. I think we have the SU-1. Yeah, yeah, it's the SU-1. No, but it's SU-Y. So it's the average, a minimum of 18, or a maximum of 18, but it's the average first grade class for all the schools in the SU. So it doesn't mean that Rummy can't ever have a class over 18. I understand, Rummy had basically an ongoing policy of not having more than 18 students. Yeah, we tried not to. And we've had some kind of variants that have been ones that I wouldn't want to support of 23 and 24 kids. And even though we had extra bodies, adults in there, I don't think that's the way to go. And I'm not trying to push you there, I'm just trying to give you information. And I want to be really clear, because I wouldn't want a K-2 teacher thinking that I was trying to isolate an area for cut. What I'm saying is that was another issue that has sort of come up at the board level before. And in terms of like moving staff around and the size of classes, both in specials and in the regular grades. So I just, when we talk about priorities and we have the budget at the same time, I guess my point is it makes it hard to know where the decisions about priorities, how it affects the numbers. Are you dealing with the situation that exists this year that has the budget in fact that will not exist next year? I'm not following you Chris. In terms of especially in the second balloon class. I think what were our one-two numbers are probably based on move-ins and some unanticipated things are a little higher than what I think we would like, but you know, quite honestly, you don't shoot kids away with projections like these. So we're supporting that based on the content area in some pretty creative ways as a staff and actually feel good about the instruction that's happening there. I don't think that that is going away though. So is that answer your- The basic- The basic- I think we're gonna, well, I mean currently we've got 20, it's gonna be the same thing going up to first grade next year, because there's 20 kindergartners across two classrooms right now. I guess let me ask a question that's probably evident to everybody in this room except for me, which is, when we're talking about, everybody's talking about staff, when we're talking about cuts. Is that sort of an understanding or are we, I mean it's supposed to mean that we should also be looking at non-staff issues? Absolutely. I mean your building costs are pretty much fixed. You're transferred to capitals about the only thing that isn't fixed for the building. One of the things I'm, I wish I had had time to do this year that I've been thinking about because I've been seeing a colleague do it. When they look across their district, they say what are the costs that are not fixed depending on the number of kids and what are the costs that are fixed? In fact, are variable with the number of kids in schools. So electricity's not gonna change. Woodchips are not gonna, wood pellets are not gonna change. Oil's not gonna change. The, to clean this building's not gonna change. To the level you wanted it at. And the gym floor, we were gonna redo the gym floor, gym walls or whatever. Is that in our cap? I mean, is that a separate budget? We should do that out of our capitol in case we don't do it out of our overall budget. That's what I was thinking about. And so we, you guys, if you remember last year, we actually, and it was my recommendation, so we were presented, geez, I think it was two years ago now with a five year capitol improvement plan or just not even improvement, just maintenance. Just keeping the funds. And what there was costs associated with it and it was sort of an average $100,000 contribution. $120,000. Between $100,000 and $120,000, right? That's $120,000. It's $120,000. It was $120,000. That was like, yeah. And we reduced it. We reduced it because based on a sort of a five year average that we were still in the range, but I noticed in this budget, it's still at 90. So rather than going back up. So we're already underfunding. At least we've been told needs to happen. So that's it. So that would be kind of interesting. Did I cut you off though? No, that's fine. Is if somebody, how did we, I wasn't on the board then. Maybe it was a separate committee. No, when the numbers, like how this group came very passionately said that was what was needed. It wasn't a group. It wasn't a group. It was in Vancouver, he used to work for us as facilities manager across CSU. That one I was here for. Yeah, right to work out. There was previous board members who came also voicing that this. Oh, so with that, if I understand what you're saying, there was a, when the bond, the push for the bond, there was some board members who were spearheading that that felt that they basically made a promise to the community that they, that we would maintain a flush capital fund to not put the community in the situation. And because that question came up over and over, why weren't you planning this all along? And that went along with the mass report. Yeah, that's where the 120 we feel pretty good about. Although he did five years, when you start to look at it and you look at the life of systems in this building and we're starting to face it at U32, it's 20 years since that bond. We're starting to hit some of the major systems need to repair, luckily with the way they planned their capital fund. They're gonna keep using that and it's gonna take care of it and we'll not have to go back to the community in bond. But there's some major systems. Because the community was saying, why are we doing a bond? Why wasn't it done all along? So that was, and it was, I think we made the representation of the community that we would. Yeah, I think you did. We had the capital fund and Charna Boyd doing another bond. Yep, and yeah, okay. So are there other things like that in our budget that we could get the data to support kind of what has been done? So like having Matt come and he did analysis of the building and he provided us a report, that went with the numbers, with kind of the emotion. You recommended the last one. Yes. So are there other areas of our budget that we could? So when you go, the reason you have this shoot right here, you know, as, Bowdoin was asking, what's instructional? What's not instructional? You can look over here at the functions. And so when, you know, I'll go right down with the ones that I think are instructional here. When you look at, and I'm saying instructional, and I don't mean it as any. Does B do chose what's not instructional? Well, there's some things that I would say that you could think of differently. It wouldn't be popular. I'm gonna give you things that aren't popular. Okay. So the first three, the instructional services pre-school program and guidance services are instructional. Health services, I agree with Amy's statement while kids need health services, it's not an instructional piece. Curriculum services is only at the high school. It's not something that's here. Library services are instructional. Technology services, I would argue, could be instructional, could not be. And the reason I'll say that is because we use so much computing as part of, we don't buy textbooks anymore. We're doing a lot through, while we are buying a lot of reading books, which is a good thing. We're using technology to access a lot of information. Then you get into the board of education services or not. SU assessments are not. I would argue the Office of the Principal is needed for instructional services. Some may not, but I would. Interest in expense, operation of plant management, student transportation, debt services are not. Food service transfer is not an instructional expense. Capital fund transfer is not. When you see special education local, special education support from the SU, that is instructional. English language learners is, you don't have any co-curriculars. It is food service transfer. Because our food service runs a deficit? All food services, they're not. No, that's not true. Because there's dodie or something. No, there are other districts that have found ways to balance their food service costs. It's not popular. Things like the Abbey Group. Right, that's what I. Which is an outside service, an outside cooperation come in and takes care of your food service. And the way they do it is they add, our biggest expense for our food service is our HR costs. And we provide full benefits to all our HR. I actually, all our foods are, I think it's a good thing, I want to do it. That, but we pay for it. But there aren't schools who don't outsource that stay within their budget, are there? There are some, yeah. Is tuition reimbursement, is that, that's not a contractual piece, correct? Are you in the budget? I'm actually under instructional services, but that's the biggest amount. So we actually under fund that for what our liability is for the contract. Okay, so that is for your actual, yeah. Yeah, okay. Yeah. So that's not touchable. It's negotiations. So it goes. Okay, but it's not working. Oh wait, so we'll see what happens. The main division, please. There's nothing you can do about this. And you wouldn't, well, in my opinion, that would not be an area to cut, because that's how you get educators who continue their education, like law and partners. So is there anything in here, even in an instructional, in an absent, provides for full instruction? It's hard to say no. It's hard to say, it's hard to tell you, it's hard to tell you there is, I can't say there isn't. I mean, you said it well, Chris, before when you were talking with Katie. It's making, I mean, the best of the worst options. When you're looking at, you know, how do we change this? There are ways, they won't be popular, and it would be making, and you know, when you're looking at $103,000, there's a lot of personnel expenses in this budget. When you look at those non-instructional areas, there's, you know, Operation Plant Maintenance outside the debt service. The highest piece we pay is the three employees that work for us to help keep the building running. It's gonna hit somebody. So, I'm more than willing to talk to you about all the different lines and everything, but you know, if there was some direction in the area you wanted us to go look at, the reason I was thinking about priorities, that's a way to add the discussion, you know, I think, you know, where I will agree with Caroline on this, because it seems like you and I have been kind of going a little back and forth. I think having some direction from the board is always helpful, and then we bring you back. How did we get there? So, well, no, I would love to say that I have a great model that I wanna follow, but I have the opposite. What I don't wanna have happen, I worked for an SU and the board had said we had to make certain cuts and that it needed to be personnel. So, we did, as the administrative team, and people got rift notices. The board then, under pressure, because the cuts hurt, backed off of all of them. So, it destroyed morale, it destroyed trust with the administrators, and it destroyed the administrator's relationship with the board. So, I just wanna be really careful. I don't like the idea of going up against the threshold. I also don't like the idea of taking us, like throwing a dart at the dartboard of where I think cuts should happen, because I have no idea here. If we ask, if recommended cuts are going to come and they're going to be public, I will feel pressure to, I don't know, I guess stand behind it. Like, I don't wanna ask for something I'm not able to stand behind. Like, when we asked for a level-funded budget or no more than a 3% increase, those are things I can like stand behind and support the administrator for bringing us like the tough, we didn't get new laptops this year or whatever it is. I'm feeling really like 103,000 seems like a big chunk to reduce. And I just worry that if a proposal comes forward and we're not able, as a five-person board to stand behind it, five-zero vote, I just think it's gonna, I guess I would wanna be very cautious that we know what we're asking for and what we could potentially be facing at our next meeting, in terms of choices. I think that it's, if we're asking the administration to come back with a revised budget that gets us underneath the threshold, I think it's pretty apparent that were the personnel is gonna be affected in order to drive down that number. So I can at least appreciate why direction is being asked because there's not, this isn't gonna be a positive outcome for some people in this. And so, I guess maybe echoing what you're saying to a certain extent about being able to get behind it, but also what role can we play in, to a certain extent by some level of direction for the administrators. So, it's just, it's a shared responsibility that we all own, like everyone on this table, and it's not pitting us against each other, us against the administration. So, I don't know if that's achievable, but I'd like for us to try to do that. Is there any anticipated response? I think it's exactly like Chris. I'm not aware of any, I think that is one way to kind of thread that difficult without things feeling icky. It's one way to just say, we're looking at kind of a constrained budget season. If you are considering, would you please let me know? I think it can provide us some other options that are less divisive between people. Yeah, we've taken over a million, 1.2 million out of U32 in the past five years. We've taken over a million, 1.2 million out of U32, projected increases based on the dollars back then. I mean, we've increased budgets, but they would have gone much faster without resizing the staff. All but one has been attrition and retirement. Now, is this with incentives to do so? No, incentives actually cost you more. It could be this, no. If there was a retirement, that would be significant. It could be. It could be. Then would it have to be the TG staff or not? So let me give you some figures just so you know some figures. When we use modeling for salary for a teacher, we average about $78,000 per year for total cost. Benny's in salary, that's about the average. And for support staff, it's about $45,000 to $50,000. It's a paraprofessional? Yeah, total cost. They don't get, their salary is almost half of what their benefits are. It's almost 50-50 for cost. No, I know there's thousands of them. Now, it depends on the person whether they're taking a single or two-person parent family or a family plan. But a family plan total cost is about $24,000, plus the other benefits. The MTSS position? Yes, and they're two people in the building, 1.5 position, I believe, isn't it? I don't see them as principal support. No, I don't see them as students. Yeah, I would say that I would argue the opposite that I think that is to Katie's point of the achievement gap. I think that type of position is crucial to supporting students. That would be adamantly against cuts in that area. Yeah, I think it's, that those are positions that are just needed in schools now so that teachers can provide instruction to students. I can say that they are, they're doing good work, and I can't imagine. No, I mean, I certainly see that. It's also that we weren't dealing with hope before clearly there were lots of problems and we needed at least one of those people. We needed two or something. I think that's what I see. What if, on the flip side of it, is there a way to generate more revenue? So it has to be allowable revenue that you can deduct from your expense. So there's, while you saw the spreadsheet that I have right here, that, see how it says total offsetting revenues, you can't go set up, and this is what Stowe tried to do back for, when Act 60, between Act 60 and Act 68, they had the Stowe fund, and they said, okay, we'll just make it so there's less overall local spending. So what the legislator responded to was Act 68 in 2002 or 2004 that said, okay, you gotta count those in your tax book base. So you could go try to do fundraising for what you're doing, but that wouldn't lower your tax cost and your penalty. Because that's what was done. There was the Stowe Education Foundation on that work in Stowe at that point. And they were able to drive down their taxes by people paying the basis. They went around to everyone and said, you're paying a second tax to the fund. And it lowered the taxes, but it, so that was correct. Does that count even with external grants? Not saying that the Gates Foundation is not gonna give us money or something. Right, but it has to be an allowable offsetting revenue. And I don't have the definition with me. Okay, I just want, I don't want to get into the like what? Because I'd have to get Lori here and get the poison. Tuition. You have been tuition students coming? Yeah, we had tuition students that were allowable to come from a sending town that we're sending, but tuition from, I'd have to look into it if it were tuition from like, and my previous talked about having students come from overseas and how that affects your tax rate. I'd have to look into that, I'm not sure. I guess where I was going with this, and this may not be the direction for if he's gonna be going tonight, but I think of pre-K. And are we serving all the kids we potentially could be serving in pre-K in this community? And if we aren't, would there be a way to generate some revenue if we were? By bringing more pre-K. By bringing more pre-K, is it? Amy, correct me if I'm wrong, but it's more of a space issue, right, in the building? Yeah, I mean, there's a certain number of students were allowed for the square footage that we have. So, how close are we to that? We actually have some openings. But I mean, part of the problem is that for many working families, our format doesn't exactly work. And we don't have an extra room under current configurations where we could have a partner program running in the same way that Eastmont Heliard was. Yeah, well, there'll be the end of that. Yeah. Jody has a... Yeah, you have a full day option. So we were somehow to put the two kids in our five days a week, but then presumably have a room. Obviously, I don't know. Okay, that's fine. It's not five days. No, it's three days. Oh, okay. So it's similar times. Yeah. But I think that's, you know, as a working parent, if I could send my preschooler to Rumney and I would pay, I mean, I pay over $50 a day to go somewhere else, but it's way less convenient and less nurturing. I'd rather send them here. I'd like to have that happen. It's just, it's... Oh, I mean, to Brian's point about... Right, yeah. But I was like, really? Yeah. It's an issue because of... So I think about a few years ago we had a space issue with the renovations and we resolved it by being creative. Working with Doty, yeah. Well, okay, working with Doty, that's one way. I was thinking about some of the instruction took place in classrooms. And I heard at our last, at our meeting with staff, maybe this is a universe, there's just one staff person saying this, is that while they are able to collaborate with their core team more now, they would like to be able to collaborate more with the Allied Arts. You know, for bringing the Allied Arts into the classroom, you know, is that a way to create that type of opportunity with creating space? And I know I'm getting down probably too far into the weeds with this. But it might be helpful to know what would that revenue look like if we could... The other challenge, though, is we have to work under child care regs. Sure, back things in the classroom. Right, and so that would be also a challenge to create a somewhat larger class like Matt's space is very large and would accommodate that number for the mixed play and learning opportunities that you want happening in kindergarten. But it was, his room is optimal to, it just poses some questions about that space allocation, I think. The other piece is that we didn't used to have a separate part of the music room, and then we do current events in the classroom. Yeah, so that, I mean, this is why I ask you about priorities. I don't need you to figure out the total solution. The pre-K one, we own community connections, so we've been using community connections to service these preschool extended day opportunities throughout the district. They aren't money makers for us. They're barely breaking even to keep people able to come. So I just want to let you know it doesn't mean it couldn't be, don't hear me as it couldn't be, but we'd have to look at other models for that. But knowing those things is, are trying to think creatively and say, hey, solve this with, are we willing to collapse music and art into one room? Where's that on the priority over a classroom size of 10 each in the kindergarten? Where is that for you as a board? And would we want it, if it was a 10 and a nine, would we prefer one classroom? Yeah, well, that's a board choice. No, I know what you're saying, Caroline. There's a point where it isn't, where I'm going right back to is what Brian said. I want to make sure we stand together because there's going to be hard decisions and people are going to feel that they're personal, but then they're not meant to be. We're trying to make that priority list. And that's why I think it's so crucial for a board to have that before you get into budget season. You can say, we said this is what we wanted. That's, you know, as Katie was saying about instruction, East Montpelier told us, they've told us every year for the past three years, like insurers that kids who are getting tier two and tier three and your services is happening. You can't touch that. You can go touch it whatever you want. That's our number one. And so that's why I'm kind of asking you, what is your number one? Or what are the things that you're saying? Like these are, come back, meet this target. What is it that you can't touch? Or we see this as our highest piece. You know, tell me what you don't want us to touch, but, you know, some of that reflection helps for when Amy and I sit down and look at this and say, and, you know, as you said, tomorrow we're gonna be saying, I know you were saying that tomorrow you're gonna be talking to the staff about this number and where we're at right now. No, I think that was, no, no, I mean, as far as that number, we're not on there, but I'm happy to share that information. Well, we need to share that information. We need to share that information. Work is gonna share it one way or another. No, I'm just saying, you know, it's just, it does provoke anxiety and I want us to be clear on kind of how we're thinking about it. That's all. What would be, are there any, like, computer replacement things that are up this year? So we've got the same budget for the technology for years. And is that an ongoing replacement cycle? It's an ongoing replacement cycle that's spread over five to six years of life. I mean, we have some things that are eight to 10 years and then some that are three, but it averages about five and Keith was just working for you on that one. Is it something that can be put on for you? Well, I think what we need to consider, I think it's, think of it more in the facilities realm. You know, like those replacement cycles work to keep you out of like a big bubble. Right. Could there perhaps be some trimming there also, perhaps? But I wanna look, there's several things infrastructure wise that we're making sure are up to date, like our phone systems and several of the smart boards and projector systems that teachers use on a daily basis are due to be replaced and are getting glitchy in some cases. So, you know, I don't wanna be blind to that factor. No, no, that's good. And are there any systems or a personnel that you know and not, indeed, I finished here or any? No, I mean, they don't have to declare that yet. I think offering dialogue around that might be appropriate given our circumstance. Is that what the board is feeling? I, you know, I would not want to put personnel right now and see any other thing that we can do to get down to the threshold including, I need to say this actually, maybe reducing the capital fund by 30,000, so down to 60, which I think we did last year. I think we did it to 1060. You went down to 30. We went from 120 to 90. To 90 last year? Yeah. How about you before that? No, we were at 120. No, we were at 120. We didn't want to put, so. I think. It's right here, it's 120. It's right in your budget, it's right in your budget. It was 120 and actual for 2018. For this budget year, it's 90. And it's in this current, in the budget for 2020, it's 90. It's 90, it's good. So, I would like to see what can you trim aside, outside personnel at this point? So I'm gonna probably bring in you like a 40,000, a $60,000 problem. Okay, better than a hundred million, great. I think he's saying we have, you have a $60,000 made for the facilities issue? We know, we know. If you trim 30 off of that, you're shorting for later on. And you're probably gonna have a, probably we can get another $10,000 to $15,000 out of the budget max. Yeah, really, Chris. I think it's very well fixed. Are there things that we offer at Romney that are not offered at other elementary schools? In terms of educational experiences? Elementary principals are in the process of doing time study and counseling, so. That is one. So it's Spanish? Yeah, you're the only school with Spanish. And we have Spanish for what grades? Sorry that I don't know, it's K6. And what does Doty have? We had for a while, we had a point to Spanish teacher. And then a couple of years ago, I don't know the exact time for him to go to school. Scaled that down to paying somebody each year to access an online program for instruction in Spanish. This year we got some data that showed that it's just really not working very well for kids. And so we thought, rather than spend, it's only $10,000, rather than spend that on that, if it wasn't really doing anything, we just take it out of the budget and use it to short up our, for now we, in next year's budget, there is no funding for Spanish. So I just, I want to be clear that I am not, like, overly excited about staff cuts. I just, it's a big hole to fill. And like Bill's saying, I mean, I just, I'm not seeing a ton of other stuff that won't impact some students in some, in just, in terms of. Where we're going to put us, if we, if you say take 100,000 out of non-staff, somehow, pretty much we're going to get us where the community didn't want us to go to supporting this facility. That's where the money is. Well, that's, that's, I think that was the historical decision is when, when in doubt, you know, cut the capital, cut the capital fund and that. I mean, this is, since my engagement with the board when I was doing, Chris is doing over there, and then on the board is that when we run up into this issue, when the board has run up into this issue, that's the first place that's always sort of gone to. It seems to me, or one of the key places that's gone to to save a chunk of money. And, well, to save other, to save personnel. Well, to save, yes, yeah, but does it just kick the can down the road? It might, but, you know, the one point where the projection was added to be like 110 students, I think when one of our principals that are projection out of 110 students was just in front of the past. And even I think the 127 that's projected for next year, that probably won't come to pass given the numbers that we have right now. I think that's three years from now. I think 120. Two years from now, right? I thought it was. 2021? No, that's 2021. It is? Next year is 1921, 41. I don't think that will come to pass, the 127, so. Wait, what are you saying? You don't think it would be that low? Yeah, it was, we're at 143 now. You were 165, two years ago. I understand, but we have bubbles. And, But we still do. What? I don't, do we have a bubble for students? Or is it pretty, I mean, we have 20 leaving, 18 coming, so it's a deficit too. Do we have any other significant bubble of students that are in, I don't think any of them. Sixth grade is pretty full. Yeah. In terms of numbers. I'd have to look it up quite honestly. It's ranged, but it's been between 24 and 27. I mean, I think the bubbles have been like 25. I want to say it's 24, but I'd have to double check. Okay. So, I would necessarily call that a bubble in a small school. So, it's like a range. Right. So, I mean, you're facing the same thing Cal started to raise, face two years ago. Okay. And it's, it's that, it's the slow decline. And, you know, you're going to get into talking about personnel somewhere along this path. And, you know, they're talking, they're having to reduce the teacher. Probably they're looking at that next Thursday night. Another reduction of the teacher. They reduced one last year. Just because of the slow numbers and the way the formula works for threshold and that. I don't like cutting personnel. It's after telling a student, if you can't come to school telling an adult that you don't have a job, it's probably my second least favorite thing to do. It's not something I want to do. But it is also the pieces of the budget. So, it's back, you know, it's back again, you know, with Caroline asking about Spanish, you, and it's back to your values. Do you want to be all things for everything or are there some core things that you want? Are there other elementary schools in RSU that offer Spanish K6? No. Do they offer Spanish at all? No, they don't offer Spanish at all. So, what do foreign students- Foreign language. No, foreign language. What do Romney seventh graders do? They go into the middle level. If they choose to stay in Spanish, they go into the middle level of the seventh grade of Spanish, and that was happening before when we had Spanish across the system. The teachers at U32 were saying it wasn't- Not everybody was able to get. They just said it, they really just started again from scratch. So, yeah, so I'm gonna say it's when you say middle level, I think like, it was Spanish one, but it wasn't making, they'll let you go to like a Spanish two. They went right, everybody went to Spanish one. That's been the history since the elementary Spanish program was created back in the mid-2000s. And that the U32 teachers were saying it just, it was a nice exposure, but they started right again at the beginning of Spanish. Is that because there's not enough exposure during, basically, is it one of those issues where we're not giving them enough dosage? I couldn't, I couldn't speak to that. Yeah, I can tell you, because we were born actually for the seventh grade year, I was in seventh grade year, and we learned four verbs and was able to go right into the eighth grade Spanish. So, for him, it was, it was totally sufficient to skip that first year. Now, the policy has been put everybody in Spanish one, there's no, but there's been no testing yet. So that's a problem, without differentiation. Without differentiation. There's other values to elementary Spanish, then. Right. Yeah, I think it was a lot of violence first. But I'm just, Can I ask what the number is? What number? Yeah, right, we don't, so for A for A teacher. Right now, no. Yeah. Celery and benefits, right? I don't think it's full-time. Oh, it's not full-time? No. Oh, okay. I don't believe so. 0.5. 0.5. So, if you do a 0.5 to a 75. 0.35? Yeah, 30, 75. I mean, I'm just doing the average, I don't know what Jen makes. I don't have that with me. I usually don't like to carry that stuff around. What? I usually don't like to carry the personnel's co-cost, like a person attached to a person I like to talk. Let's talk about the average. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I think it's a little, maybe I'll use my daughter's word, rude. Yeah. Let's also remember to not bring names into the conversation. Well, I wouldn't bring any, but. Well, there's only so much. We all know who you're talking about. I know, yeah. I know, but. I actually don't know. No, it doesn't. My kid doesn't take advantage. But. I've just had a quick question from my own position of ignorance since you seem to all already know this, but what's the, so there's this threshold, what's the consequence of exceeding the threshold? For every dollar that you have to raise over the threshold, you have to raise another dollar for the Vermont Head Fund and taxes in your town. And it was, I don't want to get political, but I also kind of want to know the value of it. It started to help kind of schools know where they were in terms of spending and have a goal to be better at their. No, it was really a way to push down the rising cost of education. I mean, that's the way all of us is super tends to look at it. It was a penalty. It was called a penalty for the bill. So on the. It didn't work. So to the extent that if we level fund where at 100,000 over was kind of. Not level fund, we do level services. Okay. My definition of a funding means the same dollars. So, but if we say we're going to put everything in the school that's needed for kids, for the. The same way we did. The same way we did, we're $103,000 over there. Okay, that's where I got that number from. But that means that we would have to raise 200,000. 206,000, yeah. And based on our grand list, that would be. No, it's an extra, extra almost four cents on your tax rate that you'd be doing for that extra $106,000. Not for the 206, for the extra 106, and the four cents. And the additional 103 doesn't come into our school. That's the piece for me that like, it's not like it's coming here and helping. That would be much of the distance center if it. Sure it would. I mean, a lot of you still pay more in taxes, but. That would actually, I'm talking about a nightmare. You know. What was it? Because if they don't double this, it's in the future. Yeah, it would be going to the principal, the school, there you go. Okay, so. What do you want us to come back for a target? Let me ask you this. I would say, from my perspective, if I did that, there's nine putters in the film with this one. I was going to come up with three, but now I forgot them. The three kind of options. Penalty, staff reduction, and I felt like there was a third. Oh, capital funds. And just talk about where our priorities were on that. Would that be at all helpful or no? How would you rank them? In terms of ranking, in terms of reducing, I would want to see what do they start. And I do think the capital fund, we've kind of made a commitment to our community, not kind of made a commitment to our community, I think, to avoid any future bombing to the extent we can. And I think we should keep that commitment as much as we can. But then we get into the situation of our mission, and there's also to serve students, our students as fast we can. And if we end up getting into this penalty situation with three, then we hold to say, well, you're doing a penalty situation in the low town, but they tend to do very much to serve their students. I guess maybe to then make the adjustments, start adjustments in the community as a challenge for being in the penalty zone. But it's a great situation to be at least far possible, but getting maximum benefit for students. And I know that's vague, and yeah, so what, blah, blah, blah. I think everyone would say that. But for me, I would want to put personnel last, I think that's the last resort, because I don't think we're over-staffed at the moment now. Anyway, for what we provide our students is that a fair statement? If we were. That we're not over-staffed, Amy? Um, we are not, I will say, and again, it's not like trying to make apples to apples, but we are staffed differently than I would say the other elementary schools is what I'm being told. Just looking at how we can pick the things. Okay, so our staffing structure, as it's currently constituted, serving our kids in the best way, in terms of achievement and educational opportunity. I would like time to examine this. Yeah, thank you. And I would, I appreciate you speaking to like, please do this last. I'm totally open to like, walking through those aspects, I appreciate everybody thinking through some of the low-hanging, but. I don't understand how we're staffed differently than other schools. Can you say more about that, what that looks like? Can I take you here for saying, can I say, I'm gonna say, yeah, Perich. There's more Perich. You have a lot more Perich than every other elementary school. Okay. You're really staffed heavily on Perich. Classroom Peres or Peres that are part of an IEP? Yeah, both, both. Do we have Peres that are not in a student's IEP? So regular ed Peres. No, no. Yeah, I thought every one of our Peres would be staffed. You have a lot. One of the things that I've tried to educate the boards in Washington Central about is, there's been this belief that the IEP process drives the Peres, and that's not true. Because the way IEP processes, it's up to the school, not the IEP team on how services are delivered. Not what the services should be, but how they're delivered. Do other schools have a student support person, other elementary schools? What do you mean? A student support, but yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we're actually trying to get one into Calis right now. That's what we're gonna go for. And have they had them longer than Rumney? Yes. So it's possible that they were able to reduce their need for Peres. No, what's happening is we're seeing student need escalate around the state, and we're seeing it in Washington Central. I don't wanna say that. It's the way in which the work is done to provide the services. I'm being really direct. I know it's not popular. I met with the Peres last week. They didn't like when I was being direct with him about I'm telling you what research is showing. I'm not saying what Nate Levinson said. I'm telling you what the Fordham Foundation is saying, what UVM is saying. What Act 173, the new law that came around for spending for special ed is gonna be pushing towards us. We're gonna have lower and lower supports for special education because of block grant funding coming starting next year, FY 21. So what is it that you were saying? It where that configuration, the configuration difference is in the number of Peres. When you, that's how this started. And so are Peres, aren't they more attached to special ed students? That's not paid for out of the SU budget for special ed? No, it's paid out. That's why I was pointing to you on this sheet of paper. It's paid out of your budget here at Romney. And so that's the 237? Yeah. The special educators are paid out of the SU, not for Peres. I think a one-on-one who was with a special ed student was paid for by our budget. Okay. Our employee. I'm gonna mess with you. Okay. That is a key discussion. Okay, so if there was an overage, for example, of Peres, does that change where you would rank a reduction? I would wanna know, with the IEPs as written, are they ever written that this student will have a one-on-one? Sometimes they are. Okay, so then that person cannot be looked at. Not necessarily. See, that's what I'm trying to say. So if there's part of the plan, how do you get away from that then? You can have another meeting to reduce services. Well, I'm just saying, if you keep part of the plan already, can you just not provide that aspect of the plan? Or you say, we're gonna achieve that whole some other way. Exactly. Okay, but then. Can I call with one-on-one? No, the student, you don't call with one-on-one. Okay, all right. You're providing the services another way. Can you give a real... I need Kelly here, because we've been doing this in other schools. I mean, one thing I must say is that the teachers were so clear, I was gonna say that same thing. And it makes us feel like if you cut a kindergarten class and somebody's got a bloody nose and you have to do instruction, you can't do what we have to prepare there. I understand the issue. I understand the issue, Walden. I'm just trying to get, this is the tough decisions when we're in the budget, place we're in. But I think it helps us to know that piece in terms of where our priorities are versus the like, sat in the dark. Okay, so do you wanna rent first? What? Can you clarify what you're saying? So I'm saying, can you say it again? Cause I was gonna actually write it out where we were. So capital fund. In terms of... Reduction. Let's just say that we agreed. Forget about how it was determined. If we agreed there was a little bit of an overage in staffing, that's what the reduction would do, it would be to not be over. And then going past the threshold. So which would be your, they're all careful. Which would be your like, what would you do first? What would you do second? What would you do third? Okay, so capital budget would be first to me. Okay. Can I clarify your comfort zone on that? Yeah, I would fund it with $60,000. Which would bring our, it's down 30. Reduce it 30, right? But down 60 from master recommendation. Yep. And I would have staff reduction last. Okay, thank you. What was the other option? I forgot it, Caroline. Capital fund reduction and then being over the threshold. Oh, capital fund reduction? No. Capital fund reduction. And pain over. And then reduction in staffing. Okay, so I, yes. And then the threshold. Say it again. What do you mean by this? So it's one, three, two. So first. I would say reduce capital fund. I would then I would go for the penalty. So you would say, okay. Penalty. Yes. And then reduce that. Okay. Loden. Come back to me. For me, I would say capital fund first. I would probably say, I was going to say 20, but I'll say 30. So Chris and I are the same. That puts the threshold at 80. I would want, I guess I would do a reduction next if it was about over an area where we thought we could reduce and still provide quality education. And then threshold would be third. I wouldn't want the threshold over 30. So I think it does stand out if we're the highest over. So that's where my priorities would be. I agree starting with capital, but I just don't see the capital getting as opposed to there. And I am hesitant to go to 30. Okay. I would just, I don't know if I can put a number on it like that. It's hard because 90 is already low. It would have been much better if it was 120. Okay. Yeah. And I would also, I would encourage, you know, Nicola and Diamond too, with, you know, I know Bill, you've said on more than one occasion, we'll find it in the budget. And like, this is a time to find it in the budget. And, you know, honestly, I think about like, something like four wins that we provide awesome program, but, and I don't know how it's currently functioning, but I know in the past, because it's volunteer driven, we've had classes that have had it because they've had volunteers. We've had classes that haven't, because they haven't had, because they haven't had volunteers to do it. But no matter what, we're paying a flat fee to access that service. Even if we don't access it. Even if not all the students have the access to it, because we don't have the volunteers available to teach it. I think it's $2,000 or something like that. So it's not substantial, but I mean, it's like, that's what I mean by Nicola and Diamond. Like, I would say, from my perspective, you know, based on that model, I would say that's less of a priority than other opportunities. But again, that's sort of, we're talking a small change compared to what we're trying to get away at. Did you want to rank the other two? Oh, I thought I did. Sorry. I had capital fund as one, but that went a lesser amount. Yeah, then, staffing, and then the actual. I guess I would, but let me go, so I'm looking at the capital fund, treating it some nervous. I think, I like the way you frame these branches of Nicola and Diamond. It seems to me that there probably is, you know, it was $20,000 that we can find in this budget. If maybe we don't spend money on, presumably we spent $23,000 or almost $24,000 on books and periodicals this year. I know $10,000 of that was a book that we get done. You know, but going through, I think that there probably is money in a lot of those places that will add up. That wouldn't be, that's about it. We voted. No, I understand. You know, and this, and it's now down before the coming, but that sort of, you know, that those places I would look at, I think you probably would be fine for a year. I'm sorry. Let me finish. Yeah, fine, yeah. And then I would look at any place where you feel like we can reduce staff without causing morale issues or real kind of things for the system of kids. And then I guess I would like to keep this as little of this classroom. Yeah. Sorry, you just, you reminded me of that of that decision based on excess funds. And I'm just, I'm thinking proactively, I don't mind not finding it in here quickly, where we're at and if it makes sense. So where I'm going with all this roundabout way is if we have comfort in our, in our reserve funds, are there things that we could potentially allocate funding for now that are currently being projected as fixed costs in the next budget? So what happens is you make a hole and make a double or double the hole for the budget after that. It's one time money. It's one time money. So you, you know, you can take fund balance and pay for one time things, there's things that only occur like once every 10 years. But if it's something that's an annualized cost. No, I'm talking about. Make a double hole. Yeah. So like the books that you did last year on top was a nice thing to help with some classroom libraries. They should get refreshed a little bit every year. But we needed a major refreshment as I recall from last spring of some of our classroom libraries. Yeah. So I guess what I'm asking is that not that it would be an ongoing cost, but are there things in the budget that are one time? There's very few of those because we've tried to annualize those costs. Just like we talked about with technology. We know their replacements. I don't. So we try to do that. So we don't have the peaks and valleys as much. And we do have a commitment of obviously it's about $1,000 for the board then? Not yet. We're about to go out with the RFP. I mean, yes. We're, yeah. I mean, by February, I'll be back here saying, need you to sign this contract or tell me to reject the bids because we're going to replace that boiler. Yeah. Yeah. That's kind of like the one time one. Yeah. It wasn't the capital or budget. But this, for example, got $39,000 for tuition of private schools. And my understanding is that that may not be an expense two or three years from now. I mean, we can't obviously count on it. I can't. But are we expecting that that will be an expense? Has that been an expense in the past? It fluctuates depending on student need. And that one, we feel pretty solid about, so. No, here, I absolutely need to be in here. But I'm just thinking in terms of what kind suggesting. Yeah. You know, there are potentially places where, yes, it causes it that will hold up. We may be able to find a place where that, where we can reasonably anticipate not sending $40,000 into it. First of all, Caroline, I want to thank you for asking that question, because that helps, you know, if you did hold the board. No, it seems that if we want more information of that, we have to be in the second session. And I don't have that tonight, but we're gonna come. No, but I think she's just saying, there are typically, in a K6 period, is there one or two students that gets funded to an alternative school? Or is it an anomaly? Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. And how long will that, is it in at this period too last? That, I think, might get into then. What grade the kid is in. Well, that's why I said it's in the second session. Oh, gotcha, gotcha. Okay, now I understand where you're going. Sorry. Thank you. Is that helpful? That's helpful. We'll take it from there. We've been here for two hours. Really? It's, oh my. He's still not even at school. I like that. I knew this was gonna, I knew this was gonna be the hard one. It was gonna be the hard one. It seems like I have to do this. And then we'll kind of reorder what we need to do to take part in the show. It was very hard to do, but. So we move on and we're gonna revise the agenda so that we're gonna talk about after the sixth night. And there are a couple of different things that we need to address from the field, talk about the timing of various meetings and a lot of things. A lot of things. If you have like advice, some of these are decisions that I make, but I don't want to do them in a vacuum. I, hopefully all of you had a chance to read the memo I sent out today. I wanna, and I put it on front porch form as well. Apologizing to the folks that we had to re-warn the District Organizing Meeting for the Transition Board from the ninth to the 14th. There were some conflicting statute, and we read them the night we signed after. Advice to go conservatively and re-warn the meeting. So it's been moved to the 14th from the ninth of January. And that should reflect here on the schedule for the organizational meeting that I passed out. The other thing that's a change that I found out on Tuesday from Chris Leopold, who's our attorney helping us with Act 49, is that as you know, there's a subcommittee that the SU Board put together to start to look at the draft articles. You have an action item, action item number 5.9, recommend membership for Act 49 committee. That needs to be done proportionately. So there's proportionality based on equalized pupils. It's basically the same membership we had for the 706B committee, which had three members from East Montpelier and from Berlin. Each, Callis and Middlesex had two members and Worcester had one member. So we need, if you remember, for those of you that were at the Supervisory Union Board meeting, I was trying to be allowed to have six individuals only and that's what's on the current committee. But we only need this committee to have one or two meetings and they have to host a hearing of the public to react to the articles. But that means that you'll need to appoint two members tonight. These are responsible for drafting the articles? Well, I think a lot of the drafting has been done by the subcommittee, but they'll review them and then have a hearing on them and then have a final proposal to go to the voters. They're responsible for that. Maybe it's the best way to say it. To give you a reality. In statute, they said this, it would say they're responsible for drafting the articles. We have the group of six that's been the subcommittee doing a lot of that heavy lifting right now. Proposed for January then. Right, yeah, I'm planning to have, I'd like to have what I'm thinking about right now and I haven't had a chance to talk to the subcommittee members. So for two of them sitting in the room, Matt and Chris, it's the first time they've heard this from me. I'm trying to have a meeting of that committee somewhere either January 2nd or 9th. So they have a chance to work as a committee a little bit before the hearing. Especially for the new folks to ask the folks that were there drafting them. So why'd you draft it this way or why'd you change it that way? And then have a hearing with the public on the 9th and they'll need to be a third meeting for them to take any of the feedback they have from the public and if they wanna incorporate it, how they might change the article. And they have to be done. So they have to go back through Chris Leopold if we change them substantially, I bet, to be reviewed by our attorney. So they then presented to the voters and there has to be a warning, as you see on here, by January 19th to hit a vote date of February 19th, which the subcommittee and I talked about, it'd be best to have a vote the Tuesday before school vacation, which is our last possible Tuesday. We could, I checked with the town clerk today, they're willing to run an election on a different day other than a Tuesday in Vermont. It's always been tradition that elections are on Tuesdays. So we could gain a few days here and there, but not more than probably three or four. So that's the update on the articles. I have it after just our discussion and budget and I'm having, I have the intent from the board that you'd like to have another meeting, talk about budget, bring it back to you and have another weigh in before it goes to the transition board. I am trying to plan this both ways. So if there is a merge budget, what's it do? And then if it's not a merge budget, I will tell you that if we do not merge and we become, you know, there's a stay or there's a injunction from the court, we will not be able to hit town meeting at this point to vote a budget. We are that far down the road and off the track that we cannot be ready. And the reason is we can't, we're already changing inside the fiscal system to have reports ready for town report. And so town report, we have to have everything ready to go on January 10th for the town report for budget wise. The warnings you usually adopt before Martin Luther King day. So we will not be able, we would have to have a special election sometime after town meeting day, even if we were six separate districts. So we're at that point already, but we can't hit town meeting day. This is for budget approval and electing officers? No, for budget approval if we were six separate districts. We're already changing the system because we have to change the system to meet the deadlines that we have and to the new fiscal software requirement that we have. We have to chart, we have to build two different fiscal software systems right now because the Senate in Act 11 and then passed and adopted required that all schools be in a new fiscal software on July 1st, 2019. So it's not just because of the Act 49, what we usually do. We have so much fiscal work we have to do. We have to change the whole coding system and be in that new fiscal software by July 1st, 2019. So what is there? I don't have the fiscal personnel is what I'm telling you to do this. Okay. And it's really, I don't have one person. I need like three Lori Beavos. Are you even going to print out about it? You did it all about it for each school then? So Chris, it's not about printing it out. It's about putting it all together. We do all of this in Excel. We use very antiquated software. Most, some other places don't, but in Washington Central we stayed with Nemrick for years. So all our budget development, when you look at what was in your packet, that's all written in Excel. So it's, you can go through how might you change your processes? But I can tell you, Lori has told me, we've had this, we spent two hours in my office on Monday looking at processes and timelines and milestones to me. And she's like, Bill, I can't stop. I got to go one way or the other right now. And I said, so that means what I'm hearing is if we have an injunction, we're in six districts, we have to, we will not be electing, won't be putting a budget to vote because the warning has to go out somewhere after the week of Martin Luther King. So, you know, it's not town meeting day is the day. You got to back all the way up into January. So it's just, I don't think it's a big deal, but I want you to be informed that we would have another special budget. There's actually just more time. But we didn't want to have another meeting. No, no. So we have the transitional board. We have the transitional board has the responsibility to start putting together a budget to recommend to the new board. So I think you should have another meeting. It's lucky that you're early in the month. We are meeting next, we're just looking on calendar with the 12th. It would be our next regular schedule meeting, which would be two days before. Yeah, so I think for you to, I think that's an okay date. I want to look now, as I was telling Chris earlier, all day I've got this big calendar going on my table, all for those of you who've been in my office that has like six months of things on it right now, all governance at 46 stuff. And so I think the 12th will be okay for you to come back together. I'll look at it by Friday, if I think you need to come back together as a Romney board earlier and I'll let you know. All right, because I think of all the six boards, I feel for Romney and having to tackle the questions we were just talking about, okay? Thank you. So just to- Can I finish about the 10 reports? There's a couple other things I need to know that are in this transitional board membership and the timeline for the local school board meetings. I made a decision earlier this week, maybe end of last week, that the town report that's going into the town book will cover information that's on this current fiscal year and last fiscal year. The reason I said that is because you'll have a statement in there about your audits. You'll have things like your board chair and principal report, salary information for people that work here, the superintendent's report, and the independent auditor's report. If you look at one of these sheets right here, if you can kind of see just get the idea of what's circled and what's not, most of the rest of that what's in the town report is budget for the next year what folks are voting on or tax rates and how tax rates are counted. So those will not be going into the town report. There will be a special report to present that to the voters whether it's merged or not, but it just won't be in the town report. And that's one of the things we need to start communicating is there's gonna be changes to the town report right now, not because we're not trying to get the information, we're just at a point where we can't get it done. No, no, not can't get it done. We can't get it to them because we don't know which direction we're going. And I'm working on the piece of, as I've said to you as your superintendent and for my superintendent's license, I need to do as told by AOE. So I'm working down the path of merger but I'm trying to have an easy off ramp if there's an injunction as well. But I've got to stay on that by law to keep my license I have to do as told by the agency of education. This is somewhat related but not completely. I'm just thinking about we, so we have two positions on this board that are coming up on their terms and what happens to those seats? Are those seats just... So that's a good put and I filmed a video last night but I have to re-film it as the dates have changed since last night. So I'm re-filming it tonight which actually has a nice graphic that explains that the local boards have to stay in existence until December 30th, 2019. You are operationally in control of operations for this current year. You no longer have responsibility or authority over FY20. So the new board has that right now. So with that, we need this board. What's the minimum this board has to do to stay on board? I'm not saying you should do it but approve the board orders and be available for any student or staff hearings if they were to happen. Discipline. Through December, not June. Through June 30th. Okay, June 30th. You need one meeting after June 30th to do two things. To accept the auditor's report for this fiscal year and to dissolve your board. And if it goes beyond the articles as drafted right now of agreement say if it goes beyond December 31st, 2019, that'll be the responsibility of the new board. Some other boards have actually, some other mergers have actually passed that responsibility on earlier. But that's just what we're at. So we have two seats that are and two people who are not running. So then the town would vote on two new people? You'll have votes on town meeting day, you'll have votes, yep. You still will be voting. You have to, yep. We may not think the board is going to go like this. I think it could be. Right, but here's. But you still have a quorum. So here's the thing, you have to have a quorum. And if you don't have a quorum, right. If you still have a quorum, then you're fine. If you don't have the quorum, then the select board appoints. There are some of our boards that aren't going to have a quorum and if they don't get people to run. Without having that quorum, the select board, except for U32, I'm not sure where it goes there, wait appoint members until they get to a quorum and then the board takes over. So that's, I just wanted to make sure I reviewed all that, Chris, I know that took a little long. So I'm going to propose that we vote on members to the Articles Committee and also for the transitions which so we get that out of the way. Yeah. And Chris, just for your knowledge. Is that systemic, right? I mean, is not the chair in the board? It's the chair in the current nature. But that can also be, that can be anything else that was amended so. Yeah, yes, you've got it. I'm just going to say if you don't do it, you can table it. In my opinion, you just say it's the chair in the clerk. Have we voted on it? We haven't voted on it, is that right? No, I'm doing this last time. Yeah, no, but Chris is asking. And Allison has said. I believe this is a relatively new issue. I thought she had said she didn't feel like she would be a good transitional person because she was new. But it was not official. I'm kind of, there was voting on that. It's so important. I think we should put that off. Well, I don't know that we can, but at first, we didn't say no. You did really do a voting. So are there two people who want it, basically? They do want it. Well, let's do F46 first, then we'll do the transition. 49. 49? Is it 49? Yeah, F49, OK. Membership for the Actors. All right. So I'm interested in continuing to serve on the articles. We're talking about the Articles Committee. And we need to representative from the panel of Middlesex. So I'm interested in serving, continuing to serve. Is anyone else interested? I think we, on February 4th, but it sounds to me like their job work will be done before that point. It will be done in January, I think. It better be, or we don't have a vote. Right, that's right. It has to be done. Yeah, so I'd be able to do that. You want? I'd be able to do that. Any other? I would do it, but don't need to. I would do the transitional one as well, or that, rather than the articles. And you would do both? I would do both. I would make it, I mean, the same people on articles than the transition board, because I've been really understepping the issues in a different way. OK. Well then, so does that mean that this will qualify you then? I mean, I'm happy to do it if nobody else wants to do it if we want to. I think Allison was interested in serving on the transitional board in mind, and really to actually work here, which is really important. So if you would like to do the article speak, I think in terms of representing our community, Allison and Chris are probably the better choices for the commission work. Why do you say that? Because you are really opinioning in terms of what you stand for in the commission work. I don't know if our town has ever voted a question. Our town hasn't, but in terms of every source that I've been to, we've seen, you know, I mean, it's the last election. Excuse me? At the last election, I remember you standing over there and saying, I'm surprised by the results of the board. Which election? The election for this current school board. So who was up for the election? It was Chris and Allison. I don't recall saying that. My point is that I think that the middle sex has had a strong and fairly consistent both in our meetings that we've had and in the survey very clearly interested in keeping our own school districts. And that's not a decision we can represent. And so I would say that you probably have the best person much as I really appreciate the perspective. So I would, if we'll take that argument, and I would then say, does that mean that folks in this community that are in support of the merge process don't have a voice? No, of course they do. I mean, but the question is, if we're going to have two people on this transition board, there has been relatively little localized support from where you are to the point of it. It's been overwhelming in terms of middle sex people wanting to maintain their school board. And so for you to be 50% of that representation, it's not personalized. It's just what you have been very consistent in. And you're the one person of all the school boards not to support the alternative proposal. And it's a minority position. And it just doesn't feel like it would do a good job of representing it. I disagree, but that's fine. If I could offer a quick, actually, so I am somebody who has posed, I support the lawsuit and all, but I actually think Brian would be good on that position. The goal is to make it transitional. And this is the representation we're going to end up with. I would think that we want somebody that was in favor with that particular organizational structure to help represent middle sex as a view. I don't see that as kind of contravening, but what might be overall the rest of the way the town is pursuing is this minority. So I actually think that Brian's viewpoint would be useful in a transitional board, because if that's the structure we're going to end up with, somebody who's like, well, how can we make the best of this structure seems to be a good person to have there. I think that's true, David. I think that there are going to be those people who have the chance. You know, for certain, it's not clear. There's been much more support about that. And so it's really a question of waiting. Yes, absolutely. So I make a motion to nominate, is it a motion or a nomination? Anyway, I nominate Chris and Brian for both the articles. Yeah, I think I did one at a time. I'm in the middle of my motion now. I'm making a motion to do both, Chris and Brian for both. That's my motion if it needs to be amended. Okay, so I think because it's two separate actions, that we should look like the mountains because it's two separate motions. And would you accept the friendly amendment? I do. So what do you want? The friendly amendment would be to do with the articles. Articles first. Any first. So I would need a second. Okay. So it's, your motion just deals with the articles. Articles, and my nomination, my nominees were Chris and Brian. No second. Okay, all in favor? Aye. Aye. So now I make a second motion. Okay. For the transitional board, I nominate Brian and Chris. And I need a second. I second. And I would say my understanding is that Allison was interested in this motion. I didn't hear anything about that one, so I'm not gonna disagree with you. Okay, so, any discussion? Because Allison did express an interest in me as well. Yeah, I think she made 12, I was considering if she was doing it for the vote. I would push you to just keep the chair and the clerk and let this happen, folks. And Allison's the clerk. And just, I need to know as soon as possible. I can't be waiting to get things put together because I'm trying to get schedules put together. I really, I mean, I need to talk to the different people that are gonna be there and say, can we go to this night? What's the night? We're gonna be meeting weekly, almost weekly for some time, if not twice a week. The sooner, I really need to know. I need to know by the, I'm waiting until next Thursday for the last board and then I'm really trying to put all this together and trying to coordinate everything. I'm sorry to push you, but I think. No, it's a, can you bring one to reconvene? Is there anyone else who can be here? I would do that. I don't know, I feel like, I mean, one, it's a motion. If it's a tie, I would reconvene. I wanna vote. Alison could have been here tonight. I think she was, my memory is that she was talking about the transitional board because she hadn't been on this board long enough. Even if she was interested, and even if she was here, my nominees would be the same. So I'd like to vote. No, I'm gonna vote vote. All in favor, say aye. Aye. You can vote. To your day. So we can be in a time and house. And when we're all about, we're not wanting to be again on the board. Any interest at the time is now the 40. Are there other items in this agenda that we absolutely have to do tonight? I'll be in here from our administrator. Just transport before. I think it would be helpful to hear where the things are with the lawsuit and also potential legislation. Is there a legislation in particular discussion about? It's been a long way. There's all sorts of legislation under discussion, touching upon lots of scenarios. And at this point, it's too difficult to predict, but I, there will be legislation, I think it's probably safe, but. If you may simply look at the website and flyer, is that how to support the state board? It's too difficult to say. We've got 40 new members and people haven't yet been stacked into various committees and people haven't had a chance to be in the building together to do the meetings, to iron out what that legislation could look like. So I hesitate to lead anyone astray. But I would say it's, there will definitely be legislation. The question where it goes and what the support is remains to be seen. In terms of any lawsuit, my understanding is that it is still being prepared, has to be filed within 30 days. Stowe, Lamal South filed today. It's about there helping Hyde Park. I don't know where they filed it. I'm assuming it's in Hyde Park. I'm assuming it's in Hyde Park. Now no other filing yet, but is it 30-day deadline from the state of the state board action, which was the 28th, so I expect it to be within the next week or so. Just in order to have a new problem. Any resolution for it? May I just... Sure. ...quest. I've had increased calls around building use and I'm really needing the form updated that kind of was overseen at central office. And I wanted to make sure that we get to that sooner rather than later as well as, you know, I would appreciate guidance on kind of the parameters around the building use is becoming, I'm getting a lot of calls for, you know, hey, can we use the gym and, you know, I don't want to be out there without guidance from you. So I actually got a copy of the form and I'll make edits, for both edits anyway. I'll send them around to them and then we'll take it up on our next meeting. But not the next meeting world together. Yeah, show me priorities for certain different types of groups. It's one of the things, Berlin is our building that probably gets the highest use, but the amount of calls that Amy's getting right now are getting close to that. And so we're very, you know, we talk about within the town that our student center, you know, for students that attend the school outside the town students, you know, and I could give you that Berlin one, but when we start to get into nonprofits and the profits companies, there's usually a big shift there for cost. And right now, as I told you, Chris, the other day, it costs about $35 an hour for cleaning. And we have the time log it takes to clean every room or, you know, whatever division of this, but we need to charge that because Nate and Pete and Connor, they're looking at butts off and add more time to them. It's over time and we're gonna, we need to make sure that they're compensated for that. Okay, so, how are we going to make it? That would be great. And just parameters around priorities, as far as our students, would a student need to be, sorry. Can you ask Erin for the Berlin? Absolutely. Because Erin's got the, Berlin's probably got the best because that building's right there on the interstate, people call all the time to use it. Can I make a suggestion now that, Amy, I'll ask you if this doesn't work for your schedule, is that, I know, I understand we're having a separate meeting to address the seats, but if this can potentially, if this can wait to be addressed until the 13th or the 12th when we meet next, is that given that we're running into the holidays and all that, do you foresee that that would be just increased headache for you? I'm wondering if I could help with this if they turn the wheel and you open up the building again. You have, we have, this is what policy is, so it's a very starting point. I mean, I think 12 days isn't the end of the world. I do want specific guidance because just trying to plot rooms and preserve kind of emergency spaces for kids around practices that allow us to still have practice instead of having to call parents for plan Bs because you have no place to put them in a thunderstorm or you know what I mean. The building has heavy use until about six o'clock. And so, and then after that, Connor's working around the building. And so, yeah, I mean, and I'm not here to direct, welcome to Romney, you know, kind of thing at the times that many people would be perhaps looking to convene, so. The reason why I raised that, I'm just thinking of trying to pull us all together for a five to 10 minute meeting versus a 30 minute or beyond. I think it's given just the time of the year is going to be challenging. Actually, the update on the form, if we can move forward with that, we'd like to be using kind of stuff as soon as possible is what I'm saying. I mean, at this point, quite honestly, the availability for various areas between basketball and, you know, other practices and CC and, you know, the other community groups were already pretty busy. So, yeah. Does the form require board? No, it does not. It does not. But, you know what, I mean, me proposing was just sending out one way of communication. And so it's not even a lateral change. And then along, also, Amy, you're input on whether you can work with any of the proposed changes and what proposed other ones to the form. Right? I'll get that to you by next week. Okay. Any other report? Yeah, I think what I would have to say is, isn't it? Oh, can you read? I gave you my report. I was gonna tell you things you need to do on this agenda before you left. You need to do five, three, five, four. We'd like you to do five, one, because right now we're doing, we'd like you to rescind those policies because we have two policies, that's the policies on the books. Okay. I don't think any of those will come up, but it's good to have them cleaned up. You need to do five, five. Okay. And I'm just going down and reading right now. I think Matthew would like you to do five, eight, but that could wait. And then with the work we did at the SU, and then the rest can, you talked to, you did the 49 committee. What's five, 10 resolution on Romney Education Goals? Is that not the guarantee? No, it's not the guarantee. It was just, what is the, just to establish what is Romney's overall vision of boys, overall vision on education goals, and what part of the whole teaching school child is part of it? Do we have a proposal in here? No. No document? Right. We'll do that in the next meeting. Oh, it goes with 3.1? Like that's the discussion, and five, 10 is the action. Okay. So what is the retirement uptown for teachers? It's one that you were supposed to do back in October that's been tabled, that you're required through your master agreement for your teachers that you will either take offer or retire it, and I usually suggest and have strongly since I've been here at events that boards voted to do it, but that you make the motion in the affirmative as all motion should be, and that my recommendation is that you don't offer it so that you turn down the motion. But your master agreement requires that you do it. And do it again. Okay, to consider. Yes, you have to consider, and you're supposed to have done it by November 1st. So it's just kept rolling on your agenda. So is anyone willing to make the motion on 5.4? Anybody need retirement uptown for teachers? I move we approve the retirement uptown for teachers. Is there a second? But I don't understand what it is. There's a clause in the master agreement that you can offer a buyout for a teacher if they would like to retire. Okay. And it's something that actually costs us more. Can you explain that? It's because you have to pay benefits for that teacher as well as over three years, you pay a half their salary each year. You can't set it that it's solely, you can't set it at whatever you want. It's in the budget, what it is. It's in the agreement of what it is. Okay, so can you tell me what it is in the agreement? 50%? 50% spread over three years, plus benefits for the, we understand what you're doing, we understand why the boards are saying no, but will you please make sure they say no to us? Sure. I mean, they'd say it that way, but I'm being a little facetious. If we wanted to throw out an alternative, like 30% spread over three years, No, we can't do that. It's a negotiated item. And the board can't treat. Nope. Romney staff separate. Nope. Okay, I'm just trying to cover it all. But if during negotiations, the teachers saw that everybody voted it down and decided on their own to come up with one that was a little more, like maybe people would say yes, they could do that, that negotiations is here. Yes, they might. Okay, thanks. So there's a motion pending. All in favor? Say aye. All opposed? Say nay. Nay. Thank you. We have a resignation of 0.2 nurse. It's on page 50. Has it been filled? No. That not, I believe, right? We've been doing this. We've been doing it with a substitute nurse. That's... It's going to be hard. We couldn't go to a 0.8 nurse. So we're in a, or we have the position posted. So we have the resignation of Ms. Bordery. From the 0.2 nursing physician. Is there a second? Second. All in favor? Aye. The audit report was emailed to you. There weren't any recommendations for your findings. There were some suggestions that we put in place right after Ron was here. He'll be back in February to talk to you about any more details that you'd like to... Anything that you can chime in the audit report? I haven't read it for like two months, Chris. So I don't remember. If there was, I probably would have... I've heard about it before. And I trust Lori. Is there a motion to accept the audit report? I move to accept the audit report. Second. I'm all in favor? Aye. And I move to 5.1 to move to new policies. I don't have a chance to check these ins and outs. Has anybody? No. Yeah. We already voted to approve these at the SU level. But I, yeah, that was months ago now. So I don't recall any discrepancies. So we have policy number C2, which is the by-laws. C3, which is the procedures reported for future meetings. So we're on a year on this committee. So when you guys make these sort of these recommendations to adopt SUY board goals, are you looking at how they might conflict or how they work with... Yeah, I can tell you this meeting, it's not less than any committee I've ever been on. It's, there's sort of structural problems that I think are fixed now, right? Do we have any representative? From where? There was someone who just didn't come. Right, but we still had those meetings then. Yeah, no, no. And so what happens is it's very difficult to get a quorum and we had a couple of meetings. It felt good to make, so we have not had actually... I mean, these were done the end of last year. Had the end of last year, so I was not on it. Yes, you were. You've been on it since March. I've been to three meetings. I understand that. Too much right now. You haven't been there much, but these were, these went through. I've been there. We don't meet very often. But so, Brian, in terms of your question of do we actually sit down and compare here's what one of these policies says and here's what those policies, no, we cannot. So I would like to, I feel uncomfortable rescinding our policies until I personally have done that. If you all decide to do that, I'll probably abstain. Okay, I meant to do that before today. Um, will you... Okay, so what I'm... Can I make a motion? You can make a motion. I move to rescind only policies. C2 by-law, C3 procedures, reported directors meeting D1 personnel recruitment, selection appointment and background checks, D10. Public complaints about personnel. They're separate. How can you discuss it? So... I think the background check is just an important one. Sorry. If Brian hadn't made his motion, I was going to at least do D1 because the background check, you really can't have two policies on that running simultaneously. I would want it to be really clear what we were doing. So I think that one is important. And I just, just save you the minutes that I don't feel that, at least I can responsibly rescind policies when I haven't looked at what we currently have and made a comparison. And would I... I'm happy to do that for the next meeting. Okay, and I was thinking, and if you don't do it by next meeting, will you... Fair enough. Okay, so with that assurance that we'll revisit this in January and do it one way or another in difference to moving to each other and express that she has to be doing more to bear in contrast. We're not meeting in the summer. No, no. Well, but Brian, I agree with him, he wants a short meeting in December. So, I mean, I'd be happy to add that on, but, okay. So then, January. So with that, I would end up voting against the motion and we'll keep that on. So if you want more time to vote, I will. I just want to ask about the one about background checks. Are we currently not clear on what we're doing because there's two policies? I'm running on it in new policy. You have the background checks? Yeah. So I'm trying to, I'm sorry, because I'm just trying to understand you're a voting member of the SU board and voted to approve these, but won't vote to rescind hours? Or are you, is that what you want, or are you just what you want to? I'm just trying to clarify. Okay. I wanted to give a difference to my colleague. Okay. Because if there are subtle differences between the two, and once we would like to keep, then we can make that decision. If they overlap with me, then we can, you know, then we sort of, we done it. I don't know if they do that. I haven't done a slight comparison of what we just asked to do that with an hour of the deadline. Okay. So that's my decision. Still request the vote, if you want. Either way, how are you? I'm fine with that. Okay, so then. I didn't make the motion. Okay, so then motion is stable until January. Okay. Any other things we need to do today? Oh, sorry. I had it circled. Late hour. I didn't know if you, Chris, you were the one that suggested the goals should come to the, the recommending the school quality goal will be adopted by local board at the SU. We put this on there. I think we're gonna put that off until January so we have a full compliment. We can have discussion about it. You know, I don't anticipate that there's can be a lot of attention to it, but I think we're gonna roll off until January. Okay. With that. Did you hear the business? I'm not sure how to stand up. Well, that's why I'm here. Oh, you did. Yeah, it's a good other thing. No, I didn't. You want to take one as a next time. Well, I'm back next time. We've been here before. We've been here before. Just so you're here for fun. I am that too. We don't want to do that. We don't want to have to say nothing. Yeah, we don't want to do it since he's... Matthew comes in. He's been to all our meetings. And I suspect even if we weren't gonna do this, he would be here. I don't know, because I'm gonna say, yeah. I mean, I'm, I think the next meeting for, we may be overlapping meetings even on the next time Romney has to meet. So can we hear it and then vote next time? Yeah. Absolutely. Not just basically the SC board, I think anyone who was there would remember that we adopted three kind of modest, which was basically just to endorse the, the set of math goals that have been developed by the W.S.H.S.P. staff collectively over the fall. The second was to request comparable goals for literacy for this school year. And then the third was simply to request that analysis and reflection on the data produced and the goals and process at the end of the year. So that's all we really did. But we were trying to take the district boards to essentially ratify that so that it was a collective decision of the board is all right to the district board. So that's it. The utility board did do that last night. I wasn't at the Berlin meeting on Monday. They did on Berlin. They, they did that. The board has adopted them. Okay. And so we'll take that from January. Thanks. Any other business come before the board? We'll be adjourned anyway. We did not approve the minutes. Was that intentional? Oh, it was unintentional. So- And I need you to do board orders as well. I'm just gonna sit in here. Okay. We have board orders? I'll be right here. Okay. You wanna make more than a board order this time? Yeah. I move to approve the board orders in the amount of 249,881,003 cents. Set in there. Any discussion? All in favor? Move that we approve the minutes for our approval 24,018 meeting. Any comments on those meetings? On those minutes? It's all second to motion. Yeah. Okay. All in favor? Aye. I move that we approve the minutes from our November 8th to the 18th meeting. It's all good. Any comments? I had just wondered about one clause in there, but I did not get a chance to watch the video, so I'm happy to simply. Okay. Any other discussion? All in favor? Aye. Motion to approve the minutes for December 6th to that making. So moved. Second. Any discussion? All in favor of approving the minutes for December 6th to that making meeting? Aye. Aye. Okay. Mr. Chairman, we're coming. You may work in. Actually, I have a couple of things I'm not going to talk to the space, but I'm going to submit my proposal for increasing the collection of remiss to the minutes as well as the material I found on the district office record. Is there someone who had to find this? Me, sorry. I wanted to read the question. Any other business? Thank you very much.