 So would you like us to go to the minister? OK, you can go like this. Are you OK to do it? Go ahead. OK, so thank you all for coming. We asked you to come tonight as a school board group because we need to move forward on our plan to address Act 46, the Vermont law that requires that we tell the Board of Education and the Secretary of Education how we plan to move forward with governance of our school. And right now we're at kind of a crossroads. And what we need most of all right now at this point is input from our community. So that's why we asked you to come here. And we're so glad that you have come. And what we most hope for tonight is that you will tell us what you're thinking. And we're here, of course, to answer questions and help you understand where we are in the process and what the various options are and what some of the pros and cons might be to those different options. So just to get us started, I guess Act 46 is a law that has five basic goals. And I had a little slideshow, but we have several Apple products here and only PC connectors. So we can't use them, which is a technical problem. But the major goals of Act 46 are to improve equity of opportunities for students in the state of Vermont. So we're looking for equity for all students. The quality of education, so kids are meeting the standards that our state has written outcomes for education. So equity, quality of education, efficiency, so operational efficiencies, and then transparency and accountability. And all of those four goals at a value that's the fifth goal is value for the taxpayers. So that's what Act 46 is trying to do. And there are basically three options, more or less, for CalIS right now. One is what's called the preferred model in Act 46, which is we merge with the other districts in our supervisory union to form one board, one district, one budget, and move forward that way. The other option is an alternative governance structure. An alternative governance structure is defined as a supervisory union. So we are a Washington Central supervisory union with separate member districts who have separate school boards. And then there are certain requirements that you have to meet to qualify as an alternative governance structure. So you have to meet the goals of Act 46, of course. You have to show that you have the smallest number of districts practicable within your SU. And you have to show that you are working together in the supervisory union to provide the best education for students from pre-K through 12. So those are the major. And the third one. The third one. Stay what we are. And the third, well, that is basically staying how we are. We are a supervisory union. We do work together with the other towns in our SU. And we have our separate districts for separate schools. Well, I think with the alternative structure, we have to show that we've done something more than we're doing now to ensure equity and meeting the goals. And then another option that people have brought up is if we were to merge with non-pillier or other neighboring districts and do something totally out of the box. Right now, Montpillier cannot talk to us about merging because they're in the middle of merger with Roxbury. So they're legally not allowed to talk to us about merging. But that's something that both Montpillier and towns within our SU have talked about in the past. So there are various options open to us. There are roadblocks with each of those options. There are different pros and cons. So we would love to hear from you of specific questions and comments and your opinion about what you think about this whole question, where we're going. I'm Betsy Paira. Can I jump to the possibility of merging with Montpillier? I was at that meeting last week. There were about 25 people there. Half of them were from Montpillier and half were from the five towns. All the five towns are represented. People at the meeting seem to have a really good idea of what the situation is. They realize perfectly well that Washington Central towns cannot approach them yet. Do we know if our, just suppose, I know I'm really kind of jumping ahead and the meeting will probably go in another direction, but would we be allowed to merge with Montpillier Roxbury? Suppose they merged as they, suppose they both, Montpillier and Roxbury, vote to merge. They are a particular type of district which Washington Central is not. The kind of district that Calis is could, in terms of what Act 32 says you must do, can Calis merge with, could Calis merge with them based on the types of district? Calis alone? Is that what you might, the question you might raise? That would be really complicated because we are already legally part of a unified school district. You know, we have the unified high school and so we are legally part of that. We would have to withdraw from a unified high school if we wanted to go our own way, I think. Shondo. All of those towns in the whole SU would have to vote yes to allow us to exit the supervisor reunion and then we could talk to other groups. By town vote or border vote? By town vote. But the other thing too is we need, no, maybe we don't. I was gonna say I think we need to be a pre-K through 12 to merge because we don't, it would be very complicated for just Calis to do that. Roxbury is a, what, a K through eight? Yeah, it's not a K through eight. So we're not a K through eight. But they have, they have that kind of anything else. But they have a choice. What's that? I don't believe they were part of anything else. Right, we're part of that. Okay. And we actually talked to Roxbury. We went down, we had a sub-mini and I was on it and we went down and we talked to Roxbury about bringing them into our SU because they're just like our elementary schools that pre-K to six. Well, they're not pre-K eight, they're pre-K six. Pre-K six. So they are like us. They are like us. But the distance just made it really difficult. So we decided as a committee not to go there. Was it a good point anyway because we didn't merge in? Bob Gilier came to these conversations early on. And they, they, even the, and they had this close on this committee which was looking at the preferred model. And they basically said, we won't merge with you. You know, we won't give up our sovereignty of our local board, which is what you have to do in front of the preferred model. And, you know, they were refused to do that. And the population cut-offs were such that Bob Gilier is not in a situation where they have to do that. And this, we, unfortunately, as a supervisory, you know, are. So they, ultimately, what's happening here, you know, we've been through reviewing the 706B model or the preferred model, which was a committee to set up for. And that's what the state wants everybody to do really. And now we are on our end to figure out an alternative that meets the law. And then it can, if the secretary so chooses, they can impose, they can impose a kind of unification on us, which I find absolutely offensive and wrong because the goals of this don't, we're not going to gain anything by this. But it, you know, I think as a community, this is where, I'm not sure what plan we can come up with, which will actually meet their criteria, which they established, which are almost impossible to meet. And I think, you know, it's going to come down to a push and shove of the public pushing on their politicians and saying, you better not do this to us. I'm going to kick your butts out into the street. I don't mean to be so faithful, that's what I did. Through my accident, the first meeting was scheduled when Chantel could not be here. And I was very sad about that. I really thought it was a huge mistake on my part. So Chantel was involved in our local Act 46 committee meetings for a year and a half or almost two years. And if she would like to tell about that experience or whatever, I'd like her to have a chance to do that. Or whatever you want to talk about, but I think you should have the floor to explain what you experienced and where you're coming from, what you think is important. OK, well, I haven't prepared anything because there's just too much. I thought about preparing it, which is too much information. So just a little background, you know, when this first started, before it became an act, and it was just H513, 31, 13, something like that, I was writing the letters, stop, slow down. This is too fast. And, you know, fighting the good fight to try to get them to stop. And it didn't. And so I got on not the official, what they called, the study committee, but I got on a research group or something. It was kind of a pre-study committee committee because I really wanted to take part in trying to learn as much as I could about it. So that started at the beginning of the summer a couple of years ago. And then I moved on to being on the committee. And I didn't really miss too many meetings. So I was there a lot. And I do remember a lot of stuff. So if you have any questions about what has been done, I can probably answer them because I was there. And one thing about Montpelier that was very clear, the Montpelier question keeps coming up. And we did try. We went to Montpelier. We talked to Montpelier. They sent a member of their school board to our meeting. And what they said very, very clearly was, we have decided that we want to talk to you about merging together, but we will not talk to your SU until you have merged. They were very clear about that. There was no question about when and how they would speak to us about merging and coming together. They wanted to see us come together first. They wanted to see us working well together. And if they couldn't see us working well together, they were not interested in working with us. They also stated they wouldn't give up their board control. I was at that meeting too. I listened very carefully to that. That was a condition. They weren't in a position where they had to do this. And coming to manage to get those numbers. And originally the cutoff was supposed to be 1,200. It was lowered, I believe, to 900 because Montpelier was just over 900 in the population. They basically pulled them out of the mix of mandatory consolidation. They would not give up their local control, which is what this is about as well. That's what we face here. So I guess to continue, there is a lot of stuff to talk about. And I think I wanted to, I really would like to answer questions about what our choices were and choices that were made. If I can remember my computer status. I was going to try to pull up seven keys. I couldn't remember if I didn't charge it. So if there are any questions about things, the way things went, I can tell you from my perspective. I know Rick was there a lot. And he has a very different perspective for me. So I think sometimes we remember things a little bit differently. So you can hear both of our perspectives. Is there any process available to keep local control? I can hear you, sir. I said, is there any process available to keep local control? Well, yeah, where we are now is because our act, there's all kind of very strict legal-y stuff that has to do with this Act 46. But if you formed what they are, formal Act 46 study committee, which our district did. And they worked and worked and worked to try to come to an agreement on some kind of a merger. And they could not do it. And so they disbanded. So now the ball is in the court of all the five towns to decide. And that's why we're having this community meeting. Eastmount Clearview has had a couple. Berlin is having one tonight. Rumney has had two. Worcester's had one, a very good one I was at. And they're having another one on June 13th. And the idea is for us to basically educate and get as much as we can. There's a lot of information. So the community knows what their options are. And then we have to form some kind of a committee. It does not have to be board members. It can be community members. It should be a lot of community members in my estimation. And actually I think that we're allowed to all the towns in this particular instance can have the same number of representatives in that committee. It's not based on population. And that committee would work hard to get an alternative governance structure. That's what most places are calling it, prepared to give to the state sometime after October 1st. They don't even want to see it until after October 1st. We will have to have it in by June 30th, possibly sooner if they get the rules that they're making done. It will be six months after the rules are done. But it looks like June to January 30th will be the date that we have to get something done by. A lot of the background work has been done by the committee that Chantel was on has collected a tremendous amount of data that we will need in order to promote that alternative governance thing. But there's still work to be done. I mean, some of these reports run into 100 pages. And so it has to be done correctly. It has to be vetted, more or less, by a lawyer that understands education law. One of the, it was a subcommittee for alternative structures on the main study committee. And one person who was not an official study committee member, but he was with that, he pretty much with everybody talking wrote a good, what we call a federated union model. But that has some, his ideas were good, but that there's some state statutes that it doesn't quite follow. So that has to be kind of tweaked somehow. I just heard today that there's a district, I think it's Windsor South, somewhere down in there, that they also have written an alternative governance plan, which seems to overcome some of our problems. So we can look at that. But there are 89 or more towns who have rejected or not even had committees to meet about Act 46 merging. You'll read in the paper, oh, 105 towns have merged. Well, not really, because counted in those 105 towns is Montpelier, which didn't merge with anything, and Burlington and South Burlington, those, well, South Burlington, no, not South Burlington. Anyway, those ones are part of the 105 who merged, but they really didn't do much. So almost half the state is not happy. And those people have gotten together on a regular basis now, and there was a meeting in Westminster a couple of weeks ago that I went to, and I can provide you with a video of that, where I can't remember how many people were there, at least 50 or 60, and we had a panel, and people were telling their problems and how they fixed it, and so forth. So it's not just these five towns that are saying, we don't like it. It's over 100, or not over my student, over 80 or so. In fact, yesterday, there was a vote in Ludwell, where they voted down a merger plan, so Black River can keep their high school. I have been reading online a lot about there's Danville, Twinfield, and Cabot were supposed to be merging. I guess there's going to be a vote. There's a lot of distress in Cabot, and they're looking to merge with somebody. Perhaps Twinfield might be looking to merge with somebody. I mean, there are options out there thinking out of the box. We don't have to just, I'd like to stick with our five towns, but if it would help us and help somebody else, I'd be willing to go with an idea with another town like that. But I think I just want to keep everything as open as possible, and then we can narrow it down to see what's best for us. That's my opinion. The other reason we're having these meetings is part of the stuff we have to show the state is that we met with the community, and the community wants to do this, help wanting us to do this. So that's the reason. We're also going to be sending out, or by survey monkey, a survey, so we can have that to show the state. Yes, we've gone to the people. We've tried to get their opinion. And so that's why we wanted to talk. I wish we had the slides, because it does engender questions. But I honestly believe there are ways to do this. Some people say, no, you have to have one board for everything. But when you look at just two board members from Calis amongst 11 people in it, it's really hard to see how we would have much of a say in what actually happened to this school. And when you go to these schools, at the last meeting, one of the teachers was at the meeting and said that they had spent all afternoon, all the teachers, going over each child in the school and where was the best placement for that child. Now, that's a lot of time and a lot of effort. And I won't say it can't happen with one board, but it's just, in my feeling, it's just a feeling for your building and these particular kids. And yes, we want the best for all the kids in the district. But it's kind of like putting your arms around them in one building and doing it that way. And I would be, I just think that having our own building that would work so hard to build. And I don't know how many of you were here in 1968 when Caroline Valentine stood up at town meeting. I'll never forget it. It was my first town meeting. And in that old chandelier that was hanging over her head. And she said, it was just the very end of the meeting. Everybody was sort of getting up out of their seats to go. And Caroline stood up and said, what are we going to do about our schools? Because then East Calus, North Calus has since burned down and Maple Corner were our schools. Later on, before we got this one built, we lived in Kent's Corner. When our son was in first grade, he took a bus from Kent's Corner to the Armstrong Farm, got on another bus, and then went to East Calus School for first grade. It was great for him because he had that long ride coming home and he took a nap. I was not ready, but I can't do what he came home. And we didn't complain, that's the way it was, but it sure was nice to have him all going to one building. And so, you know, a lot of us feel very close to this particular building for science. I have a two-part question. Going back, so current parent. Can you say your name, when you speak? Thank you. So going back to the five goals or expectations of the act itself, what are we not meeting currently? Where is there a need for a change? Well, the equity one is almost no schools seem to need it. Equity in what sense? Well, and that's the problem. Can I speak to that? Yes, you can speak to that. So it's a well-known thing, fact, I guess, that there are many teachers at U32 that will say that in the first week of school, they can tell you what school a student comes from by what they can't do. And that's huge, that's not right. We have kids coming out of sixth grade at five different schools in the same supervisor union that are not getting equal. And equal does not mean the same, the equal educations. They're getting to U32 somewhere at a huge disadvantage in certain ways. And that's just within our supervisor union. So can you imagine what it looks like looking down with a bird's eye view from the state? So that's part of the problem. So that's the equity piece. Okay, yeah. Well, another part of that equity problem, and I've taught at Eastern Empiric for 20 years. And ever since the beginning of time, the teachers have always made that comment. And when you understand that a tremendous percentage of the kids in Worcester and a good percentage from Calis, I don't know the numbers, more or higher percentage in Worcester and Calis are get free and reduced price lunch, which means that they are, I guess, not at the poverty level, but they certainly have a lot of needs. So when you look at that part of it, you can understand that those kids are gonna need a lot more propping up in order to even get over to U32. I think that's a socioeconomic position. And I don't think that those things necessarily are associated. You can be low income and have a high level of education and support at home. But you can't. But I'm just saying over the United States, I mean, this is a given problem. And you know that you need more help when you have more of that group of people in your building. That's not to say 100% of them can't learn. It doesn't mean anybody can't learn. It's just for some of them, it takes longer. And, but the problem with the equity, meeting the equity is that there is no standard. No one has defined when you have met equity. And so it's really, really hard. And all the towns are working very, very hard to make sure that every child has gone as far as they can help them go before they head off to U32. Yeah, I have a question. If these disadvantaged children and the other children all started kindergarten together, then who do we blame for their failure? The school says no. No, it's just that you have to understand that every child does not, and I don't care whether they're socioeconomically deprived or at the top of the heap, children do not mature and grow at the same rate as every other child. I saw it in my own family. Our youngest son was not ready for high school. He somehow got through, and he wasn't gonna be able to do anything as far as they thought. He now, and he wouldn't know how to do any math. And he ended up on the dean's list and calculus and college and owns his own business. So he wasn't ready like my other two kids. And this is true of every single kid. You can start them all on the same day. They have the same birthday. They are not gonna learn at the same rate. Sharon Tell? So I'd like to continue to speak to that. So I think with Act 46, what they're really referring to, more than socioeconomic, more than anything else, is the fact that as a board in Calis, we can vote to support a particular support system for the students where maybe the board in Berlin chooses not to do that. So here at Calis, for instance, we decided to hire a half-time math interventionist. What they have found is that it takes something like, don't quote me please, I know this is going on film and everything, but there's something close to this. 57 times more time is put into a student who needs remediation and math when they hit middle school, I think it is, than if you catch it in kindergarten and start working with them then. 57 times more time. Time is money. So if we can come together as a board and say, this is what we are committed to, we are committed to catching those kids early on and giving them the remediation, the intervention is what they call it, the intervention that they need, the one-on-one help and boost them up and get them where they need to be by second grade and then send them off on their way and now they're fine, then that's a huge thing to be able to do and so now I'm gonna bet that at Calis in about three years, they're gonna start to see inequities at U32 in seventh grade in that Calis is probably gonna be beyond the other, some of the other elementary schools that have not chosen to get an interventionist in math when they hit seventh grade. That's just a guess, again, don't quote me on that, I'm just surmising and it's a hypothesis but I'm pretty sure I'm going to be proven correct because it has been proven that getting those interventionists early has a huge impact on kids' levels when they reach sixth, seventh grade. So this is what we're talking about with equity. What does the board choose to do? What do we choose to invest our money in for the kids at our school compared to some of the other schools? And are we doing it the same? Right. I would argue- Rick and I just jumped in for one second. Just that being on the board too, I think a lot of our ideas around this come from our superintendent and our principals and so the amazing thing about the nice thing about the situation that we are actually in to me is that we do work together. I mean, our superintendent is really big on trying to create equity within the SU. We've already created a common set of learning outcomes so every single one of our six schools has, these are our learning outcomes and they're the same for all five elementary schools and for U32 and they have a math coach that they all share who works with the teachers across all of the schools. They do trainings together, they do professional development together. So I think we're doing these things that Act 46 would want us to do of working together and we can do it in our current configuration, I believe. But I think keeping our current configuration means that we at Calis can say, this is our priority right now and we can afford to hire this math interventionist. This is our serious priority and we don't know if maybe at another school in the SU, they would love to be able to do that but they have this other urgent priority that they can't, you know? And so I think when you have the separate boards for each elementary school, they can see the picture of their school but they also can see the bigger picture because they're part of the SU. We go to a larger SU-wide meetings, we have a superintendent in common who's filling us in on the bigger picture and I agree, we have a long way to go to get to the point where our kids all get to U32 and they're able to achieve equally and the teachers have no idea which elementary school they came from but I think our SU is trying to do that right now as a group. John. Just kind of pick it up on Chantel and also as I said, couldn't, we have the opposite effect, couldn't we have, if we had just one board at U32, the benefit, what would you call that person at early interventions? Interventions. On math. So we're able to do that now. What if this universal board, the one way of our local board said no and we could actually lose what we're having now too. I'm not saying that that's, I mean that might be an equitable outcome too. If we're talking about equity, there can be equity by reducing what we're providing our children and we would have less say right now. We have the right, as I understand it, to say this is what we're doing for our elementary school as long as we meet the minimums but we can go above and beyond but with this universal board, they could say, well, that was a nice program while you had it. I'm glad it worked well for you but we're not doing it anymore. It's not in the budget. It could work both ways. Why they would do that? Because they're a board for, at that point it would be a board for K through 12. And if they are shown the data that, well, you're gonna have to get them proficient at some point. So would you like to spend 57 times more money in seventh grade than in kindergarten? No, no, it makes sense but then I don't know why all the elementary schools are not doing that now. So that whatever the logic is that's driving the other elementary schools and not provide the same very sound program. Those people are now gonna be, have their individual reps up there speaking to what some other priority is and they're gonna say it's gonna be the majority vote. And that doesn't make sense, Chantel, but they could do that. What had happened to you 32, 15 years ago when our son was there, they had one math program for all seventh and eighth graders who was the same math program. And I was on the parent advisory committee for seventh and eighth grade and it took years to get them to expand. They had the one math program that all the kids could do and they didn't have anything else. Well, let me tell you, when I was a teacher at Beast Montpelier and I had an outstanding class of 10 kids that year and I went to U32 and this was before they changed it I guess and said you need to do something for this bunch of kids because they had already done pre-algebra and they're all gonna take the same thing and I went to our U32 school rep and he had the audacity to tell me he would have to talk to the professionals and I kind of wondered since I was a licensed teacher who he thought he was gonna talk to. In the end, the U32, they, not just U32, I don't wanna blame U32. The high schools know that when parents get upset about something that they kind of stonewall them and then those kids go to the next grade or the next level and that complaint goes away. U32 is not the only place it does that. I think it's just a general way that some public institutions have dealing with discontent. I started to talk about doing something separately and paying for it separately outside of school. And next thing I knew, one of the teachers at U32, math teachers, had taken on three kids on her own time, not getting paid for it and doing a separate math class with three students in it. And then they changed it after that. We need to talk about what we want for Calis and I need to know, I guess how important it is for Calis people who have their own board, their own, for me to know that, and their own budget. I think with an alternative governance structure, we wouldn't necessarily have the same complete budgets. In fact, right now, some of you may not know this and it's not under the table, but it is happening. The transportation is now covered by the supervisory union. They have a software program that tells them the best bus routes and where to pick people up and so forth. That's all one contract. And the same way with special ed, that's all driven through the special, through the secondary union, which makes complete sense. Every building needs special education and they can send them out to where they're needed. And I think that's great and there can be other things, but I just wanna keep some of our decisions here, our decisions for our own teachers and our own principal and those kinds of things. Can I get another question? Importantly, I think you've got to keep the community in the decision making. I mean, when I spent six years as vice chair of the board here, too, and we had close to, if not 100% student and proud enough participation in this school, there's no small wonder. I mean, Calis is not a wealthy town. You look at the cross section of what people make here, you're not wealthy. And yet we put out some of the best students in this district, many of them, and consistent fliers. And people come here to this community because of their school. And I would credit a tremendous amount to that community ownership in this school and their participation. I've been at all those town meetings, school board, over the year. I've had to be in front of the townspeople many times. I've been on the other side. And things are, you know, they really are thought out, well, people take great pride in it. There's a huge turnout because everybody feels like there's a lot of control. However, I'll say this when contentious issues came up. We would have people come out of the woodwork, which is a great thing. That's what they do. And that's what local governance does. This model basically eliminates that. It creates a board that is representative based on population. So certain the large towns will really control this or two towns will control it. And their interests are different from ours. But the real worry, I mean, we've been working together as communities for a long time. And we've done it successfully in this supervisory. What worries me, though, is that we'll get a lot more disengagement in the communities and the schools. And that's going to have a tremendous negative impact on the performance of the kids. And I also think that there are going to be financial interests over time that are going to begin to govern what happens to the smaller schools who do not have the voting blocks. Because it's going to be the financial advantage of the other towns. And I'm sorry, people do this. And I think we and what's particularly are going to be on the losing side of that. And our kids are going to be on the losing side. Maggie, did you have another question? I was looking for some clarification because I thought that when, even though the board and the teachers may be interested in desiring a new position, but that still needs approval from the superintendent, doesn't it? So we already have an oversight. If you want to create a new position, doesn't the central office have some involvement in that? A new position in the central office? For example, the not specialist. Didn't Bill Kimball have to be consulted on that and approve that? There's no involvement from the central office already over what our school may or may not do in terms of creating new positions. Hiring happens through central office, doesn't it? And he approves it. And we also have a director of curriculum. So we have these pre-existing structures that support both the elementary schools, all five of them, and then a combined representative board for U32 of all five towns, again, with central office supervision and support that looks at each of our individual communities needs, which are individualized and different based on so many different things, location included. You know, what Worcester or Middlesex needs may be very different than what Calis needs on so many different levels. So I guess in looking at anything other than the alternative model, I'm still trying to understand what would be the benefit. Why would we want to have one board when we already have all these wonderful things in place that have made our school district, U32 district, successful thus far? I think Chantel could speak to this probably better than I could. Do you want him? No. The argument I've heard for consolidation is if we could envision a future in which all the residents of our five towns were responsible for all the children of our five towns and our borders were broken down. And sorry, I don't mean to make this sound ridiculous, because this is a real thing that we care about all the children of all these towns equally. And we show that by having one board where we are represented, where we really take care of each other's kids starting in pre-K instead of starting in seventh grade. Because we already do that from 7 through 12 at U32. But to say, let's go all the way back to pre-K and right from the beginning of our children's education, look out for each other across the towns and not just work as hard as we can as an SU to make things equal, but really and truly just be one big district that we are taking care of these kids together. That's kind of what it looks like. I guess I can add to that. Sorry, I was doing a little glib when I said no. You sounded like you had an idea of a way to start. No, it was a good way to start. It's kind of a theoretical kind of big picture feeling of it. But in more like listing ways that it could benefit, just some ideas. And there's lots more. But one really big one is that we are currently six separate employers. We're six businesses. How are you going to think of us? Actually, it's fine. Well, there's U32 as well. You have the Sacramento School District. It doesn't matter. Yeah, so we're all treated as different employers. So if we were one district with one board and one budget, we would be one employer. So for instance, when we just had to hire an art teacher, we needed a point for our teacher. Eastmont player needed the point five. We had to hire for two jobs with two sets of benefits. Luckily, we found somebody who was willing to jump through those hoops. Great. There are lots of examples of this. In order to be able to meet the needs of all these tiny schools that we have, we have to have lots of part-time people. Those part-time people, it's hard to find good people that want to work part-time. Not a lot of people can afford to just work part-time. And so they have to go around piecing together jobs. If we were one district and one employer, we would have a leg up on other districts in terms of hiring better people. So that's, and it would be, it would just be simpler because for everybody all concerned. I mean, these people are getting, they have two sets of benefit packages that they have to put, they have to piece together. They get two different paychecks, if you can imagine. Like, what the, anyway. So then there's other things, like if one of our schools gets too small and we need to start looking at closing it, and I'm not gonna name schools, but say there's a school that, it just gets to that point. And it's, you know, there's 30 kids there. And it's just ridiculously expensive to educate those 30 kids in this tiny little school, wherever it may be. So we end up having to close that school, but we have this building and we come up with this great idea of having a school that we can, that anybody in the whole SU, which would be a district at that point, could go to. It could be a tech school. It could be a bilingual school. It could be, you name it, we could be creative. We could make a magnet school. They're already doing it in Chittenden East, I think it is. They're already starting to create one of those kind of magnet schools. The boundaries could disappear between the schools. So say this tiny little school of Calis doesn't work for one of my kids. She's just not happy here for whatever reason. She could go to East Montpelier. No big deal. We're all one district, so she could go there. And they might have students that our small school would work better for them, or maybe we have somebody working here who specializes in working with dyslexic kids. And there's somebody over in Worcester who is dyslexic. Send them here. It's cheaper than having a specialist there and a specialist here. We could just have the specialist here and bus those kids here. So there's a lot of things that could happen by being one employer and one district. And things that we haven't even thought of yet. The sky's the limit, really, with the ideas that we could come up with. So. If there's a public will for it, John. If there's a public will for it. Exactly, yeah. I may, it seems to me, and I'm not as fully informed as the board members are, but it seems to me that so many of the impediments to this collaboration, it seems, are self-imposed in that we could arrive at many of these same outcomes while preserving our local boards and maybe achieve them in a better way by breaking down some of those barriers while maintaining our individuality. If a community, and let's just say Worcester, I keep hearing Worcester, I heard a Vermont school board that's what it's, a board of education person saying, well, Worcester's gonna close. That's just the way it is. I'm not using the name because I don't want the guy fire-bombed. But, you know, if they, that community decided they couldn't keep going, did it make sense? Or right now it didn't make sense because they're a population group, right? What's wrong with all the communities that are members of the district getting together and saying, let's formulate somewhat one of these approaches? There's nothing that prevents that. And I was involved in union bargaining for almost 25 years and I chaired a bargaining team. And we did this thing. There were different bargaining units that statutorily were individual and legally unto themselves separate entities like our districts, our schools, I'm sorry. Is there a district same? Yeah, our little mini school districts. And what we did was when bargaining with the state was on issues that we had in common across all the bargaining units, we bargained them collectively. We had an MOU that we arrived upon between all the bargaining units which these individual school, town schools could do the same, boards could do the same thing. You arrive at an MOU and you say, we're gonna point representatives from each of our boards and we're gonna have a master bargaining team with these teachers. And what we're gonna bargain are, and you decide what's on that, but like benefits like Chantel brought up a good point. It makes no sense to have, I don't know how you even do that. How you have different health. We have one unit now, John. We have one contract and we bargain that health benefits together. Oh, you do it now? All right, so you're already on that path. And these things can be done. North country union has 14 pounds. And they have all kinds of part-time people who go from one town to another and somehow they're able to do it. And there are a lot of places like that where these ideas that we have and that Chantel has which are good ideas, but can be met by having individual school boards because people are already doing it. And I talked to John Castle about well, how do you do this? He said, well, you just do, well, then, when we get hired an art teacher with East Montpelier, it turns out that's exactly what Bill Kimble did, just what John Castle in North country told me was the way you could do it. Yeah, I learned a long time ago that easy isn't always better. And I know that for the people for this art teacher who's now going to get two checks and has to juggle her health insurance, however, all of us has gone through a time in life where we had to kind of juggle something to make it work. And making sure it's easy for 100% of the people isn't necessarily the best path I believe for everybody. And I just really think that having our own school board the other things that consider when you're talking about one board that takes in all the buildings, they take in all the grounds. They make the rules for how the grounds are gonna be used, what hoops you have to jump through in order to use this building or that building or this play yard or whatever. So while that might, but another thing that's good about our supervisory union that they are now doing is that they are kind of organizing the custodians and you may know that Berlin is doing a big construction job this summer. So they can't clean their school all summer long. They gotta wait till the end. So someone came up with the idea of the custodians will get together and they'll clean callus and they'll clean Worcester and they'll clean East Montpelier and they'll clean Romney. And then the last two weeks, they'll just kill off Berlin and it'll get done. Well, those are the kinds of things that are happening now and they can continue to happen. It makes me really happy to hear that going on. And I think we can make it work. I think I know we have enough bright people in our town and the five towns to be able to make those things work. Oh, we got a hand in the back. Could you identify yourself? No, Heather, stand down. Okay. I've been in and out so I don't know if this is the answer. I heard a little bit, but a lot of times I'm hearing about what's best for the kids. I think that was a theme. This committee is working within the board. So I'm just curious. I know Chantel had mentioned a little bit about the part-time jobs, which I've heard in the past, but I don't know if there's that much data about that generalization of that up. Because I don't feel that way in our school that that's necessarily true or other small schools. Like I think that they have really good educators even though they're part-time. And I don't know if there's data to show that that's actually accurate to, you know, or it's just based on a generalization. So my other question, I guess my question is, what other benefits would consolidation bring for kids? I didn't know if that was, was that asked before? I don't think it was. I don't think it goes, but we have a question for the kids. What other benefit, other than, I can see like, but I don't know. I guess my concern is, is that going to be really solidified in a contract where kids are gonna be able to access different schools? Or is that just like something we can... My first thing was accessing different schools. And while I like the idea, the miles on buses or by cars to transport them is really inhibits it very much. I mean, I'm about as far away from the schools you can get, which is seven or eight miles. You know, supposing somebody from Northeast Calus wanted to go to Worcester. I think that's great, but it's a heck of a long drive. I mean, I feel sorry for the people who live on that little road. And I think it's called Duggar Road up on the hill in Worcester. Yeah, that's in Calus. You gotta get all the way over here. I mean, that's gotta be a drag on kids and parents and everybody. And one thing that I have been adamant about is that any kind of transportation thing where any children take longer to get home. I'm saying not just the bus ride, but when I was a teacher there were times when kids had to wait in the building for the bus to come back for them. And so for them, it was 45 minutes before they got home. How fair was that to the kids who were on the first bus? So those are the kinds of things I'm looking to keep good for our kids. But I don't know the answer to how it would be better for the education. Jerry. Well, I, my big question is, if we merge with a whole bunch more districts, big, it makes the school bigger. Now, we have children that need special needs. Are they gonna get that? Just because of the bigger school, are they going to be kind of satisfied and do whatever they can do and hope and pray for the best? That's one thing that bothers me. Another thing that bothers me is I do not want to see this district go with the law at 46. I want this school to stay as a school. And I don't like the idea that you're going to have one school board and only two people from this town are going to be there. It's not fair. It's not fair. And I've read a lot about Act 46. I don't like any part of it. No part at all. I don't think it's any good for anyone, not the children, not the parents, and not people like me for sure. And I just, I would like to see get our heads together and come up with an alternate plan. So we can keep our schools, we can keep our five districts school and hope and pray to God that they'll accept it. I thought that was a dumb thing that they put together a legislature to begin with. It's not helping the children. I don't think it's going to help the children. I mean, they're going to be longer getting to one school or shorter, whatever. The little guys, they're going to be tired. And, you know, they keep saying, every child needs to have at least nine hours of sleep at night. Well, you know, if you're riding a bus for an hour to get to school and then get home, you're not going to have that time. The child is going to be tired and they're not going to do that well in school because they're going to be tired. And especially the little one and some of the older ones, in fact. I mean, you need to do, I've seen, I've been into that school before Micah was going there and the kids were sound asleep. I don't know if it wasn't because of long distance traveling, I don't think it's been stayed up too late in there. But anyway, that's my opinion and I'm not going to say anymore. But I don't like that act 46. Dearly, can I just speak to that? Nothing will change about the schools or transportation. You, nothing would change at all. Just the school board would change. What's the school? How do you know that? Yeah. Well, the goal of act 46 is not to change, to close schools at all. In fact, it says right in the law that schools cannot close in the first four years. But after that, it's, I'm going to be. They can say a lot about what they do. And then they turn around and change everything too. I don't trust old people that don't know the truth. I would tell you, you know, Scott Thompson and I sat up. We were fighting this before act 46 was act 46. We went in and we testified in front of the House. And I said to that committee, and I know the chair very well, I worked with him for seven years on transportation. And I said, be careful. Maine did this in 2008 and it's been a disaster. And we're walking into the same trap. I said, consolidation is not a bad thing. If it's driven by the community, I said, you make sure you enable, do not mandate. And they went and they mandated. They created basically a preferred model that is really in all of the fancy language. It funnels you down in their restrictions to where you have to do that. And if you don't do that, they impose it. So I think, you know, when we end up as a community, I think we do have to come up with an alternative. And I don't care if it even really meets all those criteria. What really matters is all the way that the community at large gets out there and refuses. This is what happened in Maine. And let me tell you, they changed that politic. They, since that time, 42%, and this is the last time I look, which was a few years ago, 42% of towns that were forced to consolidate are either in the process or have withdrawn, because it costs more. I called these towns, people, and they said, accountability went to zero, cost spiral upward. And there was basically community ownership in the schools just to centigrade. It was no longer, I mean, it's a major hub for small communities. You know, it works great in the Chittin Counties of the world. They don't, the school is one little piece of a bigger social account. You get in these small communities and it's a huge binder. And so, you know, we, the impact is very, very different. So I think really what this comes down to, it's not just about coming up with alternatives here. What the real push is in this is when it comes down to Rebecca Hultman Company, accepting or not accepting an alternative. The taxpayers, we support them. We pay for these schools. We built this school and it will be given to that union for $1, boom. Yeah, when it's, when it's, when they're done with it, they will give it back for $1. You know what, by that point, it's used up. They will have done it, they'll defer maintenance because they say, well, we're gonna close it. So we'll be stuck with a husk of a building that we're gonna have to put a lot of money into just to make it sellable. And that's what will happen. I manage buildings, I know this. So they got, you know, this is what really irritates me. Did they enable, or did they mandate? And they mandated here, and it's wrong. It's gonna. So the good news right now though is that the legislature has passed Act 49, which was a Senate bill and then a House bill and now it's been passed and it's Act 49 and it includes a little bit more definition of the alternative governance structure and one of the things it says is that if a group, if a town like ours wants to maintain our separate districts within our supervisory union, one of the reasons we could do that is because there's a significant level, a significant difference in the level of indebtedness between our towns, which is the case here. So East Montpelier, I was trying to find the numbers on my email, I have like 1,000 emails about this, but right now, does anyone have the numbers in front of them? I'm gonna have the back has it, right? Yep, I do. East Montpelier, 8.1 million, middle sex 3.5, it's down to three million. East Montpelier, 8.1 million, middle sex 3.5 million and Berlin, three million. And so. That goes until 1933. And Calis is zero. Calis, I mean. 20,000. 20,000. 20,000. 20,000. Yeah, did that too. 20,000. So we're talking about three towns within our SU that hold significant debt right now. The two towns that have no debt are Worcester and Calis. They're also the two towns that have the lowest income. So we're talking about the two towns with the least amount of income, helping the towns with more income pay off their debt. So it looks like, it looks like the legislature has given us a way. Yeah, it looks like the legislature has given us a way to propose an alternative governance structure and to ask that we be allowed to create this separate plan where we have our own, we maintain our school boards. And we move forward toward the goals of Act 46, which Chantel described really well, where we really wanna look out for all of our kids, pre-K through 12, we wanna look for opportunities wherever they are, we wanna make sure that we're working together for a common curriculum and professional development of our teachers and special education, all of these things. So that's where we are right now. And one of the things that we need, that if we decide as a board, which we haven't voted yet as a board, if we decide as a board that that's the way we wanna go, one thing we really need is input from the community. We need to be able to tell the board of education that we've heard from this many residents of Calis and this is how they feel about this. And so one thing that we really need from all of you is to talk to your friends and your neighbors and your families and encourage them to fill out our survey once we send that out to the community and to contact us with their opinions either whichever way they fall, however they feel about this or if they have questions. Because we really need a mass of input that we can say this is what the people of Calis feel and this is what they've told us. Heather, I feel like I'm open-minded about it but I don't feel like the selling points are that strong to make me decide something different. Like I just feel like a single contract isn't a huge game changer for me and then having services, that's not a huge game changer either because if my child needed serious services we're gonna get that through the right system we have. Five, four, E, S, T, I, E, P. Like if they need those services even if they're dyslexic they should be, there's an avenue for those in public education. So I don't feel like I'm here to hear like other, like not just from, I don't wanna put her on the, like other reasons of why you do it. Like I just, I'm open to those things. And just not, I haven't had a lot of evidence to show me like that should be, Phil. People that I talked to, this whole issue of bonding and the deadness, to me says it's dead on arrival because I don't see our towns adopting the debt that other people have taken on. To me, if you wanna put it crassly, it's taxation without representation. We didn't vote for it, we were conservative, we did what we could do here, take care of our place. And if they wanted to spend $8 million on their building, that's their choice. But they are the ones that are bonded for it, not us. And I just, to me, that kills it, right there. I wanna speak to that only because that's the first thing I said to somebody was, well, we didn't vote for these bonds, we can't be made to pay them. And they said, oh, well, the way it works is if you decide to go the preferred model, your town actually has to vote yes or no or whatever. And by voting yes, you're saying yes to that bond. You're consenting to it. That's right. Oh, I agree with you totally, I'm just saying. You don't vote yes, you vote yes with one condition. That's right. We don't accept the bond. Right, but I'm saying- Let the state figure that one out. The state, you know, kind of trying to fold the wall over people's eyes with that one. I have one other comment. Before we had a school board meeting before town meeting, I went to quite a number of the school board meetings after lunch, and you went from 400 people to 40 people. Right, the budget never got really discussed. I mean, it was delightful to sit there. And for the curmudgens who started asking questions, there was one basic answer. I'm sorry, that's mandated. We have to do that. These are required. And it just strikes me that the state's ones put all these requirements on us, and now instead of coming up with a real solution to what's going on, they're trying to consolidate it more so there's more control from the state level down. And there's one that just really irks me, and I don't know whether it's a real advantage to the school or not, but I understand every supervisory union has a curriculum coordinator. There's obviously a department in the state level that does curriculum coordination. And I believe that if you want to be licensed as a teacher, you have to have taken courses in curriculum. So there's all this redundancy being dumped on us from up above. And in a sense, I sort of resent the governor saying, well, if the towns will keep their budgets down, we'll be okay, when in fact it's the state that's costing us all this money. That's right. Just for the, if some of you may have read it in the paper, that Washington Central Supervisory Union teachers and boards have agreed on a two year contract. They did it amongst themselves without the NEA reps and lawyers and so forth. They decided to focus on the health care, our costs and salaries. And they have come to an agreement and it's going to save the teachers and us money. Good money. So we did it, whether Phil Scott wanted us to or not, we did it. And there's no reason why other towns can't do it. I believe the teachers were paying 15% of their health insurance and now they'll be paying 18% and they'll be changing to a different plan and so forth. But it's good for everybody. And one of the best... How much they're going to save because they voted that compensation for their, to pay, help them pay their down payments in their return. Oh, you mean their co-pays and so forth? Yeah. Because the premiums themselves are a lot less. So that saves the town because the town's paying 82% of that. And it does... But the town is financing co-payments. That's true, but... So I don't know if they made any money. It does come, it's complicated but it does work to everybody's advantage, luckily enough. And one of the best, I understand, one of the best people on that board was from Calisport. It's very interested in health insurance numbers and so forth and has worked on it for years and has done a good job. And she's done really, really good. Oh, a question in the back. Just a quick question back on the bonds. Yes. Let's just say how hypothetically we acquiesce. We agree to that 46 and we consolidate. How does future bonds play into that? Let's just say Berlin decides they want a brand new roof. Or we need a roof. Okay, thanks. Let's just say we need a roof. The way the people who were for the preferred model expressed it, well, you'll be paying for our past bonds so we will pay for your roof. But my personal little mind thought, well, this roof is pretty small and that will add to the whole budget. And you know, maybe they would really rather close this little school and not bother to purify it. So there's no guarantee that another town who needed a bond vote would necessarily get it. Okay, so does that mean that we would vote for the Berlin roof or Berlin would vote on our roof? No, it would be one budget. One board. One board. And they would say we're gonna bond for this board. So being a smaller school we would try to vote. We have two votes, right. We could lose some control. Yeah, we could go without a fund. But, and the other thing to remember is that every town, including U32, has what they call a fund-bought balance, which is basically leftover money from the year before that they're allowed to use. It's a huge slush fund. I don't know, it got me a million or more in the district, but that, those fund balances also would all go into that one part. Well, can I say something? The fund balance is actually what that is. I mean, you do a budget and it's a proposal. It's a projection of your expenses. And you don't really use it. That is supposed to be there for emergencies, right? That is if you run over. So we don't have to have a town meeting. That's supposed to be untouchable unless you use something turns off. And that's happened. That happens, you know, you have one student move in who needs special services and you go to your fund balance and that's where you get the money to pay for that emergency. Whoa, we didn't know this kid was coming here and we need to provide them with this. You're not supposed to just spend that. It really rolls forward. It's your emergency buffer. But just for the information, that all goes into the fund. It is, it's 5% of your overall budget or whatever that number is that they need for a buffer. Well, I got another idea too. I think maybe we ought to look into becoming an academy like St. Josuary. They don't accept anybody from all the seats and they do a wonderful education. And I know a lot of people, well, St. Josuary people, they don't even have to pay tuition to send their children to them because it's in St. Josuary. And that would be a godsend. They got a big endowment. There's a lot of money there. Yeah, there's a lot of money there. But, you know, I was reading in the world that there's a school in this area. I don't know, I can't remember. Cabot was looking at that idea. That's right. It was Cabot that was looking to turn it into an academy. Big picture of like, let's become an academy and draw people in. I don't, it would be a terrible experience. It would be terrible to get started. But, and then we wouldn't have to be dictated to the government. Yeah, they're working on controlling independent schools now, too. Yes, they are. I think that's terrific. I'd like to see it happen, personally. Anything that comes from the state government or the federal government always costs you more money. Just remember that. It just never ends. And, you know, the further away you can stay away from the state of among government, the better off we'll be with everything, our schools, our community, everything. I would agree with that. Having worked with town for years in transportation planning and worked with the state bureaucracy on this, I would tell you what, the reason I'm so outspoken about this, there is a hell of a lot more intelligence and good idea and creativity and flexibility sitting in the living rooms of these communities than there is in our bureaucracy. And there are a lot more minds there. And these people in those communities are not from lashes in the pan. They are not there for two years. They live there and they've got a real interest in preserving that school. You see that in the quality of the schools. I know there are disparities around the state. Some of that, there are a lot of causes for that. We've looked at this inside out ourselves and I don't see how shuffling around resources. Some of these are the communities themselves. They have an identity that maybe doesn't support that. And I don't care how much money you throw out, it's not gonna fix that problem. This is a responsibility we have as people and we have to stand up and maintain that. I'm just worried that that is getting yanked away from the people. And I know that we will not get as good result from the bureaucrats. I work in that and I've seen it in transportation, I saw it, we're the great engineers and every time we'd have a project, you'd be amazed at the number of good ideas that came up around projects that we just didn't think about. And then impacts on communities we didn't think about. And that's why this is so important. We, from what's very unique in this still, and that we don't have county government, we have town and you've got state. And we still really participate and you're seeing this erosion of that town meeting type environment where, and that is a great concern to me because if we lose that, we lose a significant piece of our culture and quality of our, our quality of living for kids and for people. Should we be taking a poll here tonight? See what the feeling is of the community, members that have shown up in terms of an alternatives approach and what key components might be part of that alternative approach. I know for one, my druthers would be anything to avoid the weighted vote. You know, I sat years ago as a representative for the town of Woodbury on the Central Montsala Waste District Board. That's a weighted vote. And you had Barrie Town, Montpelier, and Barrie City. And they were the big dominant forces there and every other town had to get, we would call each other up and make sure everyone showed up because we got everyone there by one vote. We could eat it out, eat it out. But you know, lo and behold, and quite frankly, actually Barrie City and Barrie Town got together. The others were done. That's what it helped worked out. And by what, unless you had that one extra vote and you know, sure enough, they'd be always, you know, there was, they were more conservative and you know, the Montpelier-esque group were like they're pushing for mandatory recycling, for instance. And Barrie City and Barrie Town, no way. And Northfield, no way. We're not gonna mandate that. And you know, that's all news now, but they stymied that for years and they would get that one vote always pulled to their side. And it's, you know, it's, you know, don't fool ourselves. We're human beings, the US Constitution's written away. It is state laws are written away. They are not because everyone's gonna go out and violate every law, but it's in our DNA. Every one of us has that program than our DNA. It's part of our survival instinct and self-interest, your family comes first. You know, your community then comes first. And you know, your wallet comes first. And we all, you know, if we were all millionaires, we could all maybe act differently, although statistics would show we might act in behavior even worse. But the reality is you need checks and balances. And when you have a weighted vote like that, the communities with the clout are gonna collaborate and they're gonna wheel and deal on the telephone. Like I saw happen timing again for years and years and years. And you know, there's always a good argument for the other side. It's not good and bad. There are two valid arguments and who's gonna carry the debt. And you know, it will not be us. But we will just to make sure people understand, if we do have to have a new roof, it will be only Calis who bonds for it and pays for it. We won't be able to get anybody else to help us. We have to understand that if we go this route, that's what may happen. However, we have built into our budget long enough, enough money. I understand that we've been taking care of things as we go along. So we shouldn't have a huge big need to redo roofs and redo stuff for all kinds of safety stuff. We keep up with that, I think. Because you always have. Yeah. So yeah, how is that different? It won't be. I just wanted to make sure people understood, you know. I want to make people understand that that's the way we've always done it. Yeah. Well, I'd like to speak to the fact that you, just hoping that people keep in mind when it comes to town meeting day, and it's time for you to vote on our budget, that our per pupil cost is going to keep going up, there is no way around it. So one of my big frustrations in working with Act 46 has been constantly hearing we need to lower taxes. We need to lower taxes. We need to lower taxes. We're spending too much money on our kids. This is too much money. $16,000 per student is too much money. And our numbers are going down. We're projected to go under 100 kids in a couple of years. Under 100 kids. When I first got here, it was over 130. So costs are going up. Salaries of teachers go up every year. We need a new roof. We need a new hot water heater. We need, we need, we need. And our numbers are going down. So are you prepared to keep paying more for students? Should we keep paying more? I don't see anything. Cindy Gardner was, I don't see anything in what's proposed that's going to control the fund spending. They did that study and it said it wasn't going to save money. This is not a question about money. I'm also just, I'm also talking about one of the biggest fears that I hear when people talk about 46 over and over and over again is they're going to close our school. They're going to close our school or they might close Worcester. Oh my gosh. So if it came to the point where we are paying $25,000 per student, just say, just throwing it out there, are you really wanting to keep Calis open? No, but it's our decision then. That's right. It's just to be our decision. I was teaching in Cabot for the first year. Their school began to cost them a million dollars and they were pretty upset about that. But it was their decision. They decided not to go to Twinfield. They valued their small school. They loved their teams, their sports. So they knew their kids. The plan had been to put into the articles of agreement that not only did the board have to vote. This is my other confusion, the thing I'm really confused about that people keep saying this. The board would have to vote with a certain majority and the town would have to vote to close the school. That's how we were planning on setting it up. That was the plan. The problem is with that and the lawyer said this at that meeting. You were there, I was there. He said, you cannot encumber future boards. Those articles of agreement, a year from now, they can change them. We do not control that majority. So they, that. Just like the U.S. Senate, right? The U.S. Senate rule. The voters do not get that option. Once you say yes, you are out. Then it's the unified district that is the power and you're at, they said this, you could not encumber them. So that means, okay, well that unified board says, well, we're just gonna change those articles of agreement. And they do that. Even if it's in their charter, they could get the charter change. The other thing, the other thing I'm very cognizant of is that there have been small towns in Vermont over the last several years who have said, our school is too small, we can't afford it. We are going to close the school. Now, I think the people in Calis have those kinds of brains that they can figure out that, you know, this really isn't working. Let's see what we can do by what schools we can ship our kids to or whatever. But I honestly believe the people in Calis and Worcester will know when the time comes. And they will act accordingly. Well, truthfully, the population in our school, I mean, it hasn't been down. When I was on the board 2000 to 2006-ish, I mean, we got down into the 90s and it's bumped up and down. We're very small school statistically, but we draw families because of this school. I mean, that, we've been pretty stable. You know, that's been a long time. Now, I mean, the statewide average is dropping about a percent a year. At least it was, I may have changed since, but it's still dropping. But we've been fairly stable. And it's because of the quality of our school. And you know what, it has nothing to do with the wealth of our community. It's because of what we put into it. And we will essentially be punished. We're punished for doing good fiscal planning, punished for really participating in our schools and putting out good students. And, you know, that really bothers me. I mean, there's something fundamentally really wrong with higher education. I mean, right now, the elementary is the only, it's the last bastion of kind of public participation in the school system. And Scott Thompson and I, we wrote an alternative, which we submitted to Shop Smith before Act 46. We actually proposed to increase, instead of just having local elementary boards still actually answering to the people or to the people in the towns. We said, let's take this, using the regional planning commission model and take one elected official from every municipal, basically on county lines, on the RTC line, creating a body that would regulate state level education decision making. A lot of this cost that comes down is usually not tripping out of the sense. And, you know, I think we would begin to realize that they are doing exactly the opposite. They're pushing the communities out of this. And that bothers you, you want fiscal control. That's going by the way. And it's proven, every state that they've done this in, it's been the case. And so, I mean, we're just walking the same route. And this, you know, if we go down this path, then we're gonna have 20 years of real mess to deal with, to dig out of this. And that's where, you know, I've been very vocal, I'm very participatory in this for years. I've walked this walk of working with municipalities in my work, all my life here. And I've worked with bureaucracy, I've worked with the towns, and I tell you what, I see where the real intelligence lies. And it is not at the top, it's in this bottom sub-decision making. We want to control our quality and our cost. This is where we do it. I have a question. I have one personal. On the questionnaire that's gonna be circulated, are these arguments going to be clearly put into these, into the questionnaire and others? Because there seems to be the reasons for and the reasons against. Well, the way, so we have a draft survey right now and the way it's currently worded is a little bit more open-ended, sort of what are your values, you know, what do you value? So for example, how important is it to you that there be a local board or, you know, how important is it to you that we, I can't remember how the questions are worded, but they're not, it's not, and this or this, which one would you choose? It's not a vote, like, after this, after that, is that how strongly do you feel it's important to continue to own our own building, to have our own budget, to control our own school. And I'm trying to make it, we're trying to make it short, but to gather information. And also to say, you know, what's the most important thing for you because having a local school, what's the most important thing for you? What do you value? You know, what's the, and a few of, try to get some comments from people as well as that. And mostly we need it to show the state that we have contacted our community and this is what our community wants. We have a small question, are you gonna use SurveyMonkey? And we haven't quite decided how to do it yet. I wondered if once you've got the survey, it goes out to all the people, can you go back to another question of the survey? Is it gonna cut you off and you can't change something you previously wrote? Oh, we'll look at that. So that's important because if it's relative valuations, you wanna be able to, I would rather just be so important. I would rather have a piece of paper and deliver it to everybody's house. It won't be self-selecting. It won't be self-selecting if you do that and it will have much more power and more weight as a survey if everybody has an opportunity rather than self-selecting to participate. If taking it to every house would be better. If you want an accurate- Yes, that's what I'm gonna figure that out. Somebody's gonna have computers, I think, the whole thing right at the beginning of the survey. Not everybody has computers. I agree with you wholeheartedly. That's what I was wondering. Do you need volunteers to walk around with this? If we can figure out, maybe we can just have people on streets and deliver you 15 or 20 surveys and you can deliver them to everybody on the street. Maybe we can ask people to volunteer. I leave them up to digital patients for people. Well, that again is self-selecting when you leave it at the town or the house stores. The great problem with this is that when you ask questions, this almost needs to be done in a town hall-type form. I was advocating from the very beginning of this process to get out to the public, really have public meetings. They didn't do it. It's got very much under the cover. And Sean Tilt knows it. I, multiple times in those meetings, I said, we've got to be having public meetings. Now, get them educated. This is where we find out. So we've had a good time the last couple of times. The people at large in the community, this is where this is the biggest decision this town has made in many, many, many years. I thought Egypt needed to publicize the last ones. I thought we might, yeah. But there was never public. I mean, I was at all this fall, though. Anyone that would come to something like that, you would not have understood a word. They needed to be doing, I mean, I work in public. You do what they call local concerns. Where you get out and you listen to the public, and say, this is what you're doing. There's a rough outline. Talk to us. That's really important. And here, we're kind of after the fact. And so what you do a survey and questions leave huge gaps in all the little details that are really important. This is where discussion is really important. It's why town meeting is very successful. I think one thing we can do is figure out how we're going to get it to everybody. I'll email some of you and so forth. But before you go, make sure you sign the sheet that you were here, please. It's on the round table back there. So we know how many people came. And that way, we can contact you as well. You had a question? Why don't you just mail it? It's expensive. Do you bring your pity back? It's $350 just for the postage. But maybe we will. Maybe that's what we will do. Where's that slush fund? Let's see. Yeah. Let's see where we can find the bond issues for them. Well, maybe we will talk about it. You mailed this? I don't. Yes. Thank you for doing that. Thank you. Well, I thought John had a good point. Can we do a little rough survey of how many people feel how right now? Sure. I'll handle it with somebody else. If you are getting it to the people that are here tonight, I think probably we should be concerned about getting it up to the people that are here tonight as well. I made a few calls, and they're completely oblivious. All I needed came from Dott, and I didn't make the first one because I came back down with pneumonia. And I didn't think it was a very good idea to come to that meeting. But anyway, I'm here tonight. And I mean, if there's any way that I can help, I'm available. Doesn't every resident get a copy of exactly what the publication is called, the bus stop, or the bus stop? This? No. So it's only those of us who currently have children in the system? Or if you sign up on the on. OK, so it's the newsletter that's put out by the school district. It comes in the mail. It used to come in the world. And the line isn't delivered anymore. It did used to come in the world. But we get it in the mail. And you can also get it by email. OK, but I'm just thinking I just want to speak to the fact that I feel like those folks who have been on the school board and participating in this and that if you have access to the internet and you're on Front Porch Forum or you're reading things like the bus stop, I feel like the opportunity to participate has been reasonable. And it's just a matter of the challenge of getting here. I saw neighbors running. I saw a lot of neighbors. And I live on the far end of East Calis, Woodbury Cabot Line. People, it's hard to get to these meetings just like it can be difficult to get to town meeting because it's not on the weekend. So I just appreciate the opportunity and the number of meetings that have been held and the effort folks, Chantel, Scott Thompson, over it seems like it's been a couple of year conversation that this has been very, that there's been a plea to us as a community to participate. And I just don't want to diminish, let that go unnoticed. Because I think, and maybe it's heightened for those of us who have children in the school system currently or have worked in the school system. And I've been in both those positions as a part-time employee who couldn't, there was no full-time job. So I took the job somewhere else because that full-time position didn't exist here. So the efforts are appreciated, but I still feel strongly like we have these wonderful structures in place at the district level. We have a curriculum coordinator. If there's inequity going on, when our kids are not showing up at U32 prepared from Worcester and Calis, let's do a better job of working with the superintendent and the special education program and the curriculum coordinator who's paid well to do that for us as a district. Let's do that. Why will we need to conform to a new model to make that happen? I just don't understand. I think that SU, I mean, they all have the learning outcomes that are SU-wide. I mean, I could be wrong, I don't. Yeah, that's true. I'm pretty sure that it's like all first graders, all second graders. I mean, I could feel like- It's six going into seven. That's what was going. Oh, okay. But I do feel like that's a lot of work what the teachers are working on. It's like if you, like, stirring their, you know, in service days, so I feel good, I feel good about that, that they're working really hard at that and their professional development is like the same throughout the district. I have a couple more questions right here. I have a really hard time not speaking up when I hear something that's not factual because it's going on camera and then that's how things like spread and become the truth when they're not. It's not Calis and Worcester. I don't know how that got. That's what I heard from you in the beginning. That's what I was hearing. Two schools. No. They're two schools and that must have been- No, she was talking about free and reduced lunch at Calis and Worcester and I was talking about something else. For preparedness for seventh grade. That's what I was hearing. Yeah, preparedness for seventh grade. I did not say that those were two schools. They're not understanding. That's what I heard. But let me finish real quick. So like, they'll be like, you know, it might be math at one school one year for two or three or four years in a row and it's like language arts at this other school for five years in a row until something changes. And you know, it's definitely, I was saying it does not follow the free and reduced lunch pattern. Has to do with completely other things. I wasn't talking about free and reduced lunch. Just that it sounded like there are two schools that are sending kids to U32 that are not as prepared as the other towns. And that is one of the rationales for why we need to have a universal board. No, no, that's not, I'm sorry if I- Okay. I'm just not saying that. You know that over the years, it's always been different towns. I mean, for the last 50 years, it hasn't been Berlin or it hasn't been somebody else in there. So it's like everything else, it cycles. Yeah, it's a cycle. So you had something? Yeah, I'd be curious to see a show of hands of people who would favor local control and those who would favor regional control. Sir, what's your name? Ron Thompson. Ron Thompson. Thank you. I was just curious about that. I mean, who are we talking to? I mean, maintaining our local boards as opposed to having a consolidated board structure. Yeah, I'd be curious about that. Who supports continuing a local board structure. Say that again. Who supports continuing the local control. Is somebody coming? Yes, could somebody come? Maybe the other one. I think it's just about it. Just about it. Yeah, it was. So I asked the other question. And the other question was, oh, he's not sure. I'm not sure. Yeah, I'm trying to figure it out. And do we want to ask the other question as a group? No, I said, who thinks that we should move toward a consolidated board, a single board structure as Act 46 originally anticipated? I'll be the brave one. I'll have one for Act 46 to be all by itself. It's company. Did you just mean the federated system? You didn't say any of those alternative options? Well, just the solid one. You didn't give us that choice. So was it a federated? Could someone use the right language? I think the first one was consolidated board. Alternative governance structure with maintaining local boards. That was the one that had that majority. The second one was unsure. I think there was one vote. And then the third one was preferred structure as written in the law. But I think the question that we're hoping to make our stand on is about combining the finances with the towns. I think that's the question we should also ask. How many people would like to combine our resources? I don't think we need to think about it. But yeah. I just met with Janet recently. And they did get new, I don't know the terminology, but a new part passed to amend Act 46. And it did pass. And it said that it is now legal to transfer the debt to the town. That's not an actual problem. It's actually in a separate bill. It's not in an education bill. It's in a house. Miss Alene. Yeah, exactly. It's what it is, is that giving you permission to transfer the debt to the town. Transfer what debt? So in other words, East Montpelier, instead of their district, the school district, having that debt. And then if we made one big district, it would have the debt. East Montpelier could take their debt and transfer it to the town of East Montpelier rather than the school district. But the difficulty with that is that when people who are on income sensitive tax rates, the income sensitivity does not kick in on the town part of taxes. So it would hurt all the people on income sensitivity because income sensitivity is only for your education taxes. I always screw the poor people. Have the natives ever realized that when they're past this? They didn't consult me, John. What were they learned? They don't know what they're doing down there. That also takes the question of what about the debt that's moving forward, the debt moving forward? Does the debt moving forward then get absorbed? I believe that's current debt, correct, up to this point. But then there's the issue of investment in the school. Which is still the same issue about? Well, actually, in Janet's letter, at least the one that I got, she said that that would not benefit Calis as much as some of the other changes that were made. I really thank everybody for coming. I mean, it's a horrible time of day. We should ask that question about combining the finances. Isn't that the standard that you're hoping to make when you write up the new proposal? To justify the alternate model is that the debt and equity run in five towns is why we want an alternate model. Oh, that would be part of the survey, for sure. But I think we should ask right here right now. How many people here? How many people here would pay the debt? No. Really? You should ask that. I don't. Was he nobody to pay the debt? She didn't tell us. I'm sorry. Don't read that. I'm sorry. It's a preferred model. You don't think that Chantere was the first one to speak out about not doing that? I just, I think it's kind of ironic though. You know, we're one of the most fiscally responsible towns. In Act 46, I think, in its essence, is trying to be fiscally responsible. But I think, you know, for us, the struggle is that we don't trust the other towns to be fiscally responsible. Well, we've seen them not. Exactly. Exactly. And I think, you know, to me, it's, yeah, it's born of, you know, the money and the fiscal responsibility, but it's really about control. And I think a lot of us have chosen to be in Calis for the school and for the community and controls. So, I mean, to me, it's, you know, I think, you know, we've done a good job of voting for our school budgets. You know, we clearly support our schools. And if we feel like it's ready, it's time, you know, when moments are down and it's time to, you know, absorb with someone else, I think we can make that decision. I know we can. I don't know if we need, you know, I forget this gentleman's name up here, but it's top-down legislation. And, you know, I don't think we're ready. I really don't think we're ready for that yet. I mean, Shantel asked the question about the $25,000 per pupil. I'd probably vote yes, because then my, if the school would close my house would not sell. I mean, that's the part. That's what I'm really worried about, like, long-term. Like, the value of my property would diminish greatly. That's, like, selfish, but that's... Are we down? Yeah, we're down. We're down. We're down. We're down. Self-interest drives everything. Yes. Great. So, for you. Well, I'm really impressed with how many people came for a second throw-around. Thank you. How many people are here? They're coming. If you all signed in, I'll have a count. If you didn't sign in, please sign in on your way out. I didn't mind. Oh, that's why I didn't make you for it. It's all right. It's all right. Thanks, everyone. Thanks, everyone. Thank you.