 I'm going to go ahead and call the meeting to order 602 and I have one agenda item to add and that's going to be under the board education and it's just a quick update I sent. There's one spot over there Megan. I sent you all an email with the change it's in our board procedures and Linda you all should be able to copy it and she three-hole punched it so you can take in your binder you can take out the page and while I was doing it I fixed the letters the letter was after all that alphabetizing in elementary school and I still messed it up anyway so I just want to draw your attention to it so I'm adding that under board education that'll take like one minute. So the rest of the meeting will be looking at ownership linkage planning and getting a report on that committee meeting and then the other majority of the meeting will be on financial planning and budgeting in relation to the ends accomplishment and preparing the budget. So any questions on sort of the agenda as we get going okay so moving along we're going to start with public comment as always and again I'm going to start with just our preamble for how our public comment will take place so the board welcomes comments but is not able to take any action on them other than to direct the public to the appropriate staff member or to the complaint procedure comments are limited to three minutes per speaker time may not be seated to another speaker comments are to be addressed to me the board chair or the board as a whole not to any individual on the board on the staff or in the public please raise your hand and wait to speak until you are asked to by me please identify yourself with your first and last name and your town of residence please refrain from restating comments that have already been shared you can express agreement with those comments order into quorum shall be observed by everyone shouting and profanity are prohibited as the board chair I will maintain the order into quorum of the meeting so I'm going to open it up now to public comment looks like we have one person there those of you who might be online please raise your hand using the little icon on the bottom if you would like to speak and since we have someone here in person and you've raised your hand hi John hellfant parent of three OSSD students the fortune of the graduate our ownership subcommittee meeting I attended there's little talk of parents and stakeholders and I think actually they need to be the main stakeholders in that discussion there are children we brought them up when they leave the school system they'll still be our children will still be raising them in their 20s and until they go on with life even when they get older they're going to turn to us so I think we have the main responsibility to be stakeholders in that conversation there was talk of students and teachers and board members and the tell for kids and local business owners I think local business owners would be important as with parents we've been in the workforce we know what's needed from graduates from people we want to hire in the future so I think that's really important I heard a lot of talk about students they should have input but I would like to point out they haven't graduated yet they haven't been in full-time the full-time workforce I don't think they really comprehend exactly what's needed yet so their input would be great but I think the people that have already been out in the workforce should really have the main talk on that the tell for kids is funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates organization foundation and I don't think we need a globalist funded organization interfering with our local decisions for our children I would not use them I think parents and local local business owners can guide our children better enough on that topic I'd like to talk about Lane's comments in the recent RTCC video his quote is this is tied to their religious belief systems and hatred and bigotry is tied to belief systems I think that was highly inappropriate there's probably people here sitting at this table that are part of a belief system that actually concur with the gender identity policies of the school system and to lump everybody together is is is a horrible thing for him to do as an executive myself and my profession I would never think of classifying a group of people with the terms hatred and bigotry it would get me fired and I think the porch sanctioned him for that and I don't think they should renew his contract when it comes up it's just another example of the divisiveness he's caused in our community and he's used the same words in front porch forum and in his open forums and I don't think it's acceptable we need somebody different thank you thank you very much we have anybody else doesn't look like it okay so moving on I'm just gonna start with this addition to our procedures so you can replace this I think it's the fifth page in and our procedures there's just one little change on the committees so again just to help people remember with the committees open meeting law requires that committee meetings be open to the public that means we have to have public comment at the beginning of them it means that they need to be warned 48 hours in advance if possible it means we need to take minutes however you know committees tend to be you know for four or five meetings and then they're over so that final meeting that's where when I was talking with the legal counsel through the BSBA she redirected me to this Secretary of State's office to their legal person because there's actually in the law there's nothing that says minutes have to be approved so but so what I did as I she basically said what you could do is just if it's a me if it's a committee that's meeting several times you know to review the minutes at the beginning of the meeting and approve them kind of gets everybody in the mindset of oh yeah would we do last time and and that's fine but at your the final minutes from the last time that that committee is going to meet you will just send them in to Linda she'll post them they'll be draft minutes they just stay available to the public for around a year so I put that information under H the committees and its section D just so that everybody knows because we are doing a little bit of our work as committees any questions on that okay awesome so you can pull out that other page and and replace it so we've got the right information so next up and I apologize I realized that I hadn't sent out the letter the first draft that Ben had put together so Ben does the sort of the public relations writing for the district so I apologize there was one reviewing the minutes I realized you were on that committee and Chelsea and I forgot and we met with Ben and we had the meeting and so sorry about that so Ben put together a draft and basically this is just the letter that goes out with the there's a there's a sort of a glossy brochure that goes out to all the voters with the with the budget information their letters from the principles there's a letter from Lane there's a letter from the board and so Chelsea and I met with Ben we went over sort of you know what things the board had been up to this is what he drafted so if hopefully you've had a chance to read it we're basically he has to the board has to approve the letter at our January meeting so between now and then if you read through it and you're like oh my goodness you know there's this huge error in it or or you see something that really needs to be in there please let me know and and we'll make changes so so that's that and at our next meeting we'll be approving that letter it's called the message to voters so that's that any questions on that so you all and you all have a meet an email from me with it attached made a mistake attached the minutes from the meeting the first time around thank you catch up for catching that so the letter is attached at the second email so just let me know if you've got any question any edits you can also let Chelsea or Sarah no okay so next up is just reviewing the who's up for election so Katya Hannah Sam you were all up for election if you want to continue with the board and so in order to do that you have to get signatures and it varies from town to town I believe Linda do you know the specifics like I know Randolph it's 30 for Randolph I don't know during COVID they didn't even do that yeah I assume they're back to that yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah I have to post it by I think Jane my first day is January 26 so yeah we have to have it certainly a day yeah I would check with your town clerk just to make sure you know the exact because I think it's like a week before because we have to get to wait before meeting I forget the exact timeframe but do you have that information Linda in the office I know not for petitions because I don't know okay how about when your warnings is between 30 and 40 days before the vote so you can't post them before 40 days so it's like January 26 I think until February 5th is my window to post morning all right if any of you three have to have any questions or need to have finding that information be aware it is a little bit ahead of I think it's toward the it is definitely toward the end of January so Christmas parties usually you don't have to it's usually kept in the office of the town really I canvassed my neighborhood anyway all right so folks know that information so next up was the complaint procedure we just had the board had had asked me to just review with the lawyer the just the very last section of that complaint procedure again just to really clarify kind of what the board is doing and that and that was did we did you you attach that right the second page okay there it is yep so are there any questions on that and this came right from Sean he does it does are folks feeling good about that yeah yeah so we just went back right right yeah so it's more in in line with what we have on step 5 on the first page yeah and we basically just reiterated it on step 7 on the second page to approve to approve but I'll move to approve the OSST board procedure for hearing complaints as written interviewed by the lawyer excuse me there we go so the ownership linkage plan committee met and I'm gonna catch us sort of do a report out on what happened virtually feels like a long time ago but it was just on the 30th it looks like just to discuss it was kind of just a planning meeting the first time of us gathering together to just see what this was gonna potentially look like to come together with some ideas especially focusing on the you know desire really to have this more in the community's hands as far as getting gaining that input and really having that involvement from our community members about what this looks like so came up with a lot of the idea of really having these dinners potential dinners where we have communities come members come together we start discussing and brainstorming we can kind of come up with these things all together of what the idea of our portrait of a graduate looks like you know what that student looks like when they've graduated through the OSST and then there was some discussion of how this would be kind of structured from a facilitator standpoint so Heather did bring in some ideas regarding this I'm not going to know that say the name correctly the tell organization that does facilitate these types of gatherings and coming up with a porch of a graduate so we also talked about the importance of really getting this work done hopefully within the school year so having a document that we can kind of present to the community after all that community involvement in June end of the year end of the school year I think we all kind of agree that you know the again like I said that that should be taking place in the public and so having committee meetings and having you know we just need to kind of go out there and start this work so hoping to kind of kick it off in January which is very soon and seeing how we can get that done so there were a number of us also present so I don't know if Hannah or Megan or Anne or Heather want to share any other insights from it I was there did we and now I'm thinking did we set the date and so I reached out to Sarah Natvig to discuss the creation of a base meal we had you had brought up the concept of using some discretionary board funds to fund either one or more of these community dinners to provide a base meal and invite people to also bring a potluck item if they so if it's they're able or interested in doing so so you might want to consider I don't know if it's appropriate but to move for discretionary funds to be allocated for that purpose so that we could move forward we have not booked a date for it yet that is true okay she was like I'll absolutely do it like a budget like oh it'll be about probably if we anticipate a hundred people however many people we anticipate she could do a full meal for under $10 per person have you done any type of surveying to see how many people would be interested so it would be attending this as far as planning you know I'm thinking if you're going to have like some type of catering or food provided so we don't have too much or too little exactly so what I so I reach out to the principles to ask if they would estimate based on what they their current turnouts for their home community events but the feedback I got was that would not be an accurate representation because people have a different feeling about coming to their home elementary school right or their their child's current school then possibly going to another location for an all-community event so what we've decided to do is that once we pick a date to ask people to pre-register quick little survey we're coming this is how many people so that we have an estimated count and I think definitely yeah yes doing one and Randolph one and Brookfield one and then maybe the fourth one back and Randolph again but that we can give everyone a chance to feel comfortable and we also will we be targeting to make sure we get a diversity of voices as well a little bit or we just gonna you know it seems to me sometimes if you don't reach out to some folks they might not show up and yet their viewpoint and their experience might be important to hear right so yeah right but of course that will go out but front porch forum the paper and I spoke with Lance Matzi who's our video instructor about the creation of a marketing video Milton recently started some equity work and they made such a wonderful video that really invited the community in it made it sound like it was going to be such a fun night you know we're going to eat together we're going to talk together and so I showed that Milton video to Lance and I said help can you help us make something this wonderful and he's like yeah piece of cake so we will use front porch forum but we'll also use our students to in this Votek program to help us create some marketing and I think I think that pretty much wraps up the meeting we we emphasize the importance of student and parent involvement and we talked also about the importance of including business owners and other taxpayers I mean people need to plan out right and we need time to plan how it's going to work if we're thinking January we don't meet again until January right we need to nail down and the semester ends right around Martin Luther King Day right usually so it might be that might be a nice time to do it right after the semester ends just because everybody's calming down and worse you're starting kind of a new I mean yes yeah I've seen more than we have you considered maybe rather than holding like maybe the first one holding it at the high school that's kind of more of a draw to people where it's not people from every town coming you know it seems like more of a yes yeah a shared space rather than one of the elementary schools yeah yeah yeah okay Thursday February 2nd is it is it ground up questions would be though it sounds like whether or not we're going to facilitate this ourselves in district or have an organization facilitate for us would we would we have that answer by February 2nd we have another meeting in January so we need to make any decision well if it's something that we can we can set a date and ask them if they can't do it then they could come to the next one but that could be like the introduction like these are coming to the next meeting we wanted to introduce everyone to what we're doing they're gonna come and facilitate this that's kind of like the backup and remember we've authorized Heather to get this move yeah to make it happen yeah so even if the committee isn't meeting she can be doing some of the behind-the-scenes organizing as she already has in reaching out to Sarah facilitating getting as if we delay too much it's just no I agree we need to start in February we're already in February well I just wanted to but yeah that I mean that gives you enough time and it gives like you can only ring a bell once right so I'd like I'd like are the first time right right so I'd like the launch to be a really good feeling thing so I that's why I put that I propose that date could I propose it as a tentative date and then subsequently to secure I need to I want to check with the building principles to make sure the calendar is clear and to make sure that I'm not stepping on any community events that are already in place but I'll put it as a tentative date well you we've already charged you to go ahead and get things going so you could also just sort of float some dates to us okay so got it go ahead and get so you have work back that in terms of the OSSD calendar it's clear and meet to announce it so we can start right about it right yes and then we'll have that January we'll have a January meeting this is the proposal from the person to facilitate so that would be a topic for a subcommittee meeting yeah I can send out thank you that's all we have any other questions from the board all right awesome so we are moving forward on that front okay so next up is just the first review of the financial planning and budgeting monitoring report which is nice because it's right in line with the time where we're going to be looking at the budgeting for next this next year as well as the emergency superintendent succession and that's where it's kind of nice that we have an assistant superintendent so hopefully the training is taking place there too so makes that a little less urgent to make sure for sure we've got somebody there because before it was bringing up a principal and this time we've gotten this assistant superintendent so Lane you want to tell us a little bit about those again Sam you're new so the first time we get these monitoring reports he just sort of explains what he's what he's done and then during this next month you can go down in his office he has some binders that have any supporting documents that he might not because he can't put everything in that you can go and take a look at and if you have any questions about the report you can always set up a time to just come in and ask him a few questions if you don't understand what's going on as well as of me and any of the other board members so in both cases both are in compliance policy 2.4 the financial planning and budgeting is really if I were to sum it up it's about two things it's making sure that we're following fine you know normal financial procedures accepted financial procedures as we go about our work the bigger part of it though kind of connects back with budgeting and making sure because remember when we're planning our budget it's for a year and a year in advance right so what we're planning now affects the next school year it doesn't affect this right now so it's making sure that the data that we use as we do those budget production projections is credible all right it's coming from good sources it makes sense it's reasonable and so so some of the evidence that was put in there so I don't know if there's any specific questions on either one again this is like your first first sort of go around with it this was a longer one in terms of writing some of them are short some of them are long and the second one the emergency superintendent succession did you change it up a little bit now that you have the assistant superintendent yeah there's with the addition of the assistant superintendent so we talked a little bit about that and I also just to make sure that it was documented someplace in case I'm incapacitated directly within the report is the procedure the process the board would follow to kind of make that that transition and who to contact and whatnot so again all board members you want to review those and explain any questions going to home and remember the central office is now we're up here right over there the old faculty room and then Heather and I are actually in the front office here at least for the next month and a half to look at the repairs done we're laughing it was I don't know if you've had one yet the kids that's where they used to use it as kind of the reset room the timeout room so I'll be sitting in there doing my work and a little kid will come in and just sit down and won't say a word it's happened like three times it's hilarious I got in trouble because one of the one of the kids was running away from the school they had to go out and catch the poor little bugger and she came in and of course I usually work with a high schooler so I'm not thinking too much about the elementary's and the abstract thought piece I said no next time run faster because they caught her and of course you didn't get that it was a joke so then I had to explain it but it's been fun okay so next up is the facilities report yeah the unless unless there's specific questions the two big things there obviously are the heat so the I think I put it in the superintendent's report but the overall cost so far is about 285,000 is where it's coming in at talked a little bit about it in superintendent's report to try to give an explanation of you know what happened why it took so long to get things done but as they were doing the work they obviously uncovered other problems there is the electrical conduit that carries electricity and the control systems and the wires for that out to the little shed where the heating boilers are housed those are in a steel conduit which is corroded away so that system needs to be replaced those boilers also heat the domestic hot water for the building and they used for whatever reason the same iron pipe at that point in time and so those have corroded enough they haven't failed but they're bad enough and since we're in there anyway we're going to have them do that that work in that replacement we did put in for a reserve request of facilities reserve request for about another 150,000 which we're hoping covers the remainder so that work as well as the resurfacing all right they'd rip up quite a bit of asphalt and part of the foundations of both buildings to do the work so you know you're looking looking at what 450,000 in total by the time that this is done we have worked closely with the insurance company to see what they can do there's not much they're willing to step them to to help us in terms of this it's it's it's old it was you know it was a catastrophic I was hoping that we'd be able to at least get some money for the emergency stuff that we had to pull in to keep the building safe and so we're still working on that a little bit with them but but it's up it's running incredibly well the facilities team itself I cannot understate the gratitude to them they work on the clock I think I kind of had mentioned this there were about almost a dozen different vendors that literally dropped everything they were doing and made this their priority so they're going to need to be thanked we're planning on getting a full page spread in the in the local paper for that and then the other folks that need to be thanked are all the ones that were waiting on the contractors to come and do the works in their homes that were willing to give up their work and wait a little bit so that this so it was it was a real community kind of pulling together the other big kind of project that's going on and there may be a reserve fund request for this is the central office is undergoing repair and renovation as part of the work when the structural engineer came in there was very deep concern about the supports in the basement that hold the building up in terms of the catastrophic failure so it won't be anywhere near as expensive as the work that's happening on the building itself but it'll probably be in the ten thousand dollar range to have them come in and shore that up the way that it needs to be in to do it properly so it was actually good that we're doing the work because they came in and checked on that they are moving forward with the locker room work that is being done by the same company that is doing the repairs on the central office so they'll be doing it at the same time projection for being done is hopefully after they get started on or about the 15th of December I mean six to eight weeks there's a lot of planning they have to get the forms they have to have the fire marshal come in and look at things and and so that actually takes longer than the darn construction itself and then we're keeping our fingers crossed the supply chain issues seem to be clearing up across the country right now so hopefully the materials that be coming in but yeah but again there are the nine other spaces in the building that folks can use for privacy that have always been there I have a question who ever do you know who originally installed those heating pipes and can they be held accountable for so mailing it was about 20 years ago it may or may not have been chip tech so how all this work came about and why those boilers aren't physically in the high school where they should be was because and you may have been around long enough to remember this they received a grant is my understanding to put in a wood chip boiler and so they built that little building out back built the wood chip boiler in there and actually heat the water that goes through the buildings and heats the buildings and at the same time for whatever reason they decided to move the the two boilers out of the building and put them in the same location which actually caused us some problems that I described in the support piece and it was at that time that they ran those those pipes and stuff we did do a little bit of research you know why wasn't it PVC you know plastics and cast iron and things are the standards that aren't going to get eaten up by the road salts it was the time that it was built was within a year or two of when they were transferring to that new standard why they put in steel in an area there where road salt is going to be encroaching on it I have no idea that made no sense to me at the time and what complicated things considerably was it was a specialty company it was a startup there were a lot of startups around that time for wood chip boiler for renewable energies and the company went out of business shortly thereafter and so they used all their own specialty parts on everything which is why we couldn't get our hands on what we needed yeah we we lucked out in that the first company was actually going to get them manufactured another contractor was able to get connected with a company I believe that was in China they had parts that didn't quite fit the bill but that this company had the knowledge manpower and equipment to actually adapt to make it fit and work and that's how they were able to speed it up and again that was due to the work of the facilities team but I don't think we can go back there was also some failures in terms of maintenance over over the years the two new co-facilities directors they actually started a month or two into my tenure and they picked up on the fact that first year that the water chemistry was not being maintained it's a closed loop system with hot water in it and usually that water is treated to prevent two things prevent scale from building up and clogging up the pipes and or keeping the pipes from being corroded because with hot water the chemical reactions are going to happen two or three times faster than you know at normal temperatures and so we don't know how many years that was not being done but they did start doing that water chemistry work immediately when they picked up on it so that may have contributed so some of it may have been our own fault a lot more than you wanted probably that was helpful for sure other questions facilities or the facilities report seeing none I'm gonna move us along here so next it's you again Lane on kind of take giving us an overview of how the budgeting is looking for this year this is actually going to be a fun presentation if I can get it up because it's gonna scare the crap out of you up front and then it actually works out really well in the end so but give me a second I've got a I'm gonna see if I can actually get it on the screen so okay so maybe we get if we want we can take a five minute recess and people can use the bathroom or they can just stand up and see if I can do this without setting off all sorts of yeah to get back from that. Right, right. Well, I came home and I just kind of sat for a little while and I reviewed some stuff. There we go. Looks like it's up. Yes. I know. My family is too. I am really psyched. How did the kiddos do? Were they asleep before they got home last night? They were so awake when I got home. Yeah. They were asleep when we came for the negotiation. I remember when she was fading. I was so grateful. By the way, I'm just hungry. It wasn't that bad. It looked like they were having fun. Okay, looks like Chelsea is still not back. I did say five minutes. I did say five minutes and I didn't check the time. Oh, dear. That's me in time. So, and a lot of this is, it's not just to communicate to the board. There'll be a number of forums and conversations with the community about this, especially as we get more and more of the formulas and data that we still need to really kind of complete the process from this day. We actually have quite a bit of it now. And so I'll put that caution out there that, you know, this is the best data that we have at the time. It is definitely well within the ballpark, but it may not be exact. So a couple of things about the budget process and what we've been striving for over the last couple of years. We're getting closer, but we're not quite there yet, but it will happen as time goes on. And that's the idea that we start off at the top, which is actually the board, right? You have your mission statement that's codified in the ends. And what we've done over the last year or so is we have created an evaluation system for the staff where they literally take the ends and they break them down into the personal goals that they will be working on for the year that support the ends. And then they communicate back to the administrative team, hey, these are the goals I'm working on. This is in support of the math, and this is how it is. This is the data I'm using to measure whether I'm being successful or not. If I'm going to do this effectively, this is what I need in terms of resources. So it is one of the primary drivers behind a lot of the budget, right? Because the budget is our main tool for doing the work of the district. And in this case, the work of the ends. So we're late in the season, but we're early in terms of all the data and the formulas that we need to be able to kind of complete the budget in totality. So the things that we're still kind of missing at this point in time is the impact of the negotiations with both the teachers and the staff unions. And those impacts can be significant, right? If they were getting no raises for next year, they'd still get their step raises. And so the budget would probably go up by, you know, 300,000 just on that alone. In terms of the potential asking where they are now, you're anywhere from 300,000 to 1.4 million in terms of those negotiations. The other question that we have is the state has a large surplus, about $64 million. And the question is, will they keep that all connected to the ED fund or will they do something else with it? The recommendation in the December 1st letter, which comes out, was that it should all go into supporting the Education Fund. So this particular budget is based upon the fact that they will be putting that 64 million into the ED fund. The other piece that we still are waiting for finalization on is our surplus from last year. We had a significant surplus. We usually do a couple of things with that money. Some of it we typically roll over into the next year to subsidize next year's taxes to bring taxes down for folks. And some of it we ask the voters to put into various reserve funds to help us out with big projects when they come, so that we don't have to go out to bond. The auditors have to finalize that. And so when they give us that number, you know, that'll be the next thing that we're kind of talking about, is what do we want to do or what should we be doing with this money? Statewide, the expectation is that education budgets will increase by a minimum of 8.5%. That's due to inflation. That's due to all the other factors that have been happening in the economy over the last year or two as we come out of a COVID pandemic. I'll give you the good news. So revenue considerations, so these are additional funds that we are expecting. Remember that we are transitioning in terms of how we fund special education. In the older days, it was a reimbursement model. We'd have kids, we'd serve them, and then we would send a bill to the state for a portion of that money, and they would provide that back to us. And that was great because if we had several kids move in in the middle of the year after our budget was already set, we would be guaranteed that we would have the funding to supply their needs. They have shifted to a block grant model, and they've done some kind of manipulations around who gets what amount based upon the population of students that they have. And so based upon this transition to the block grant model, we are up $234,000 that we did not expect in terms of previous years. It compensates us for the $200,000 hit we took last year in the first year of the transition. The big one is that the property yield is up by over $2,000, so that means the equalized pupil money that we will be receiving is going to increase by $1.7 million. And so that's a very good thing. We also do a very good job of attracting students to the district. Last year we received $465,000 in money for students who tuitioned in to be a part of our district. That has been consistently rising. It may drop a little next year from this number. We've had a lot of LGBTQ students who are moving out of the district right now, given the controversies that have been happening. We also, if folks remember three years ago, when I was concerned about what might happen to the economy across the country and didn't know what impact that was going to have on the Ed fund, I started putting surplus money away to be able to subsidize future budgets, put money in so that taxpayers didn't have to pay as much. That money was promised, they voted on it, and so there is $746,503 that will help to subsidize this budget this coming year. On the expense side, additional things that we're looking to have to pay above and beyond what we are doing currently this year. And a lot of these are tied directly to the ends. We have the Carnegie Math program that was brought in. It's been in place for a couple of years. The teachers are getting training on it each year to try to expand their skill with that. Running those programs costs money to keep up on the consumables that go along with it as well as the software packages. It's $37,000 a year. It sounds like a lot. It's not. That is typical. One of the reasons why it's kind of an addition for us is because for many years we did not have textbooks and materials. And so we are trying to reverse that trend. It's very hard to educate kids well without those materials. We are adding a little bit more to our robotics program. That $13,600 supports both the robotics program that exists within the classes that students can take at RUHS, and as well as an after-school program. So a lot of it is, you know, we've actually probably pumped about 450,000 into that program over the course of the last three or four years. This is for replacement parts. They've got most of the equipment they need and for travel to be able to go to the competitions. We have brought in well-researched programs to improve literacy for our students. So kind of like the Carnegie Math. These are the materials and the books and the software packages needed to improve the student literacy. And so this is for English language arts. It's the programs are Geodes, Witten Wisdom, and Foundations. Project Lead the Way is a piece that Heather has brought up. This falls under kind of the critical thinking on the science foundational standard. It's kind of a pre-engineering STEM sort of program that will be very good for students. We are purchasing materials for the LEED curriculum for the health instructors. This falls under kind of the life skills portion of the board's ends. We have two curriculum directors. We have one that is overseeing K-12 Math and one that is overseeing K-12 ELA. They have traditionally been on a teacher-style contract where they're only here, you know, the 185 days that the teachers are. But there is a lot of planning, especially with these new materials that are coming in that they need to do. So this is to pay them to come in for a couple extra weeks over the summer. Get that planning done to take a look at the data assessment data that is supposed to be coming out around those times and start to use it to do an analysis to say, hey, you know, on those first days of school and we have professional development with the teachers, this is where we meet, this is what we need to work on and let's get together and figure out how we're going to make this better. And so that's what that money is for. As part of kind of supporting all teachers to make sure that they can effectively deliver on the ends, we started what's called a boot camp program about three years ago which we've expanded. All the new teachers come in for a week and get training in who we are, what we do, all the initiatives like Carnegie and robotics and geodes and wit and wisdom so that on the first day of school they can hit the ground running confidently with those programs with the students. In terms of transportation, the costs are just going up and so that's why those are there. So these are kind of the general expenses. In terms of preschool, we are looking for a 1-0 para at Brookfield. Remember going back a few years what the district did is we recognized that if we were going to improve student outcomes the best place to start was with the youngest students to give them those pre-skills that are going to help them really succeed when they get into the elementary grades to help them with their socialization skills as well as to early identify any learning disabilities that they may have so that we can address them early before they magnify over time. A lot of the preschool program was originally built using grant money and what we have slowly been doing is as the grant money is drying up is we are transferring those people over to the regular budget to make it a permanent program. So we have full-day free kindergarten for all four-year-olds and Pat has been doing a wonderful job expanding the hours for our three-year-olds now as well. So our students are literally getting a whole extra year of education and a little bit more than that in terms of the three-year-olds. Enrollments are interesting. They dropped when COVID hit because people were afraid to have their students here. They homeschooled them, but it's been slowly rising and it's almost backed the high number that we had prior to COVID. Is there a waiting list? Do you know? We've been able to pretty much meet. We actually have, it's either one or two. We have one student that we are paying to attend a preschool in a different district. We have two that are actually coming in from other districts. So we're at the point where we're at capacity. I think there's about 74 students in there which is bigger than a normal grade of students that we have. So it's been really good. Braintree, one of the things that we've been trying to do and you'll see this at Brookfield as well is we started off a few years back where our librarians were one day a week. We tried to get them to two days a week. Now I'm trying to get them to three days a week. Why? Well, it has to do with preparation time for the teachers. At the high school, there's actually plenty of prep time, right? It's a schedule that allows for seven classes. They teach five, so they've got two periods off. In some cases there's duties, but in other cases it's prep time. Elementary teachers don't get that. So I'm also trying to honor their request for that prep time as best I can and this is the best way I can do it. As we build in more time for the librarians, as the kids are spending time with the librarians, that's teacher's prep time. The other reason to do it is that part of the ends work and the curriculum work that we've been doing is we've been developing a digital literacy curriculum. And that digital literacy curriculum is embedded in all the other work the students do with their other teachers, but the primary, high-level kind of components are delivered by the librarians to the students and they need the time to do that. Brain tree has always had trouble getting an academic interventionist. We have one right now that's a .8 and so we just want to get them up the full time so that we don't lose them. Because academic interventionists have the full credentials of a teacher. Same thing like we just talked about Brookfield, we're just increasing the librarian to get another day to help with the planning time with the teachers and to increase the ability to deliver that digital literacy curriculum. Why are those library media .2s so different between them? Because one of them has more seniority than the other. Remember they go up on the pay scale? So one of them is younger, one of them is good eyes. Randolph Elementary, the world almost stopped in its tracks, made no requests this year. They're usually the big, big requesters, that was actually pretty impressive. RUHS, .5 for a drug and alcohol counselor. This is actually moving call and over from the tech center to the high school. A couple of reasons for that. As was noted when we were doing our data analysis and our teamwork during COVID, the incidence of alcohol and substance abuse was going up dramatically. A lot of that due to the social isolation of the times and so Colin has been instrumental in helping to kind of reverse that trend. As Felicia as the ROTCC team is really trying to work out their budget, what typically happens with other schools, the other sending schools, not us, is that their counselors actually support their kids from their sending school. And so in an effort to try to help her with her budget, as well as to follow the same model, which is through the school column, the ROTCC students that come from RUHS. But it gets the $35,000 out of her budget to help kind of modify the tuition. Life skills program, again, this is a part of the ends. This is one of the ends piece. We've done some initial work. We've talked with the community. We've talked with the teachers. We had a small discussion with a group of students that were willing the other day to actually hammer out the specifics of this. I've talked with Lisa and Katie, and it looks like, you know, Deb Larry, we may be hitting up to actually start to put the programming together for this. They'll need a little bit of extra money for supplies to get things off the ground and a little bit of money for transportation if it turns out the way that we're envisioning it. Jason Finley, who is now over at RUHS, is looking again, prices have gone up, especially for fuel of a little extra money to help them with the transportation as they do their career exploration and internships and whatnot. I'm going fast. Interrupt me any time you want. It's just numbers, the important stuff at the end with what's going to potentially happen to your taxes. RUHS. We talked about, so special education. It was kind of interesting. The number of students on IEPs is in the third year of a downward trend. So we have been able to reverse that. But that does not mean that we have not been having new students come in from out of districts a lot with high needs. And so a lot of these costs have to do with that. So we need a full-time paraeducator to come in to work with one of our students or at least anticipating it for next year. One of the big impacts of COVID, again with that social isolation is we've seen a huge increase in terms of aggression. Aggressive behaviors that we physically cannot accommodate within the building. So there will be a couple of students that will be tuitioned out potentially next year. And so we need to be able to pay for that. Associated with those tuition out students were responsible for transportation. So we'll have to pay for the rides back and forth. And obviously again transportation costs are a little bit higher because of the inflation and the fuel increases. We've been spending more and more money on occupational therapy. OT, especially a lot of you that are different better than I do. But OT is around being able to do daily life skills. You know, for our kids, it could be things as simple as holding a pencil properly. But there's been a growing need in the younger population as they're coming up for OT so we're putting money aside in anticipation of that. We have had a speech language pathologist who has historically been paid for by grants. That's not a comfortable place for them to be because if the grant dries up we lose the speech pathologist. Luckily those grants have been fairly secure but the appropriate thing is to move them to the regular budget which we are doing. We also have a student or two that are coming in with severe vision impairment so we need to buy specialized equipment to be able to allow them to access the curriculum as they should be allowed to. Is there one SLP for the district or two for the... So there's two and potentially a third depending upon what Kayla decides to do the third might be through the title grant and there's a reason for it. A couple of years back we had a finding from the state that we were having a high number of students being found in need of speech and language services about three times the normal rate. And so we worked with AOE to try to find the best way to fix it to try to get us down to where everybody else was. And so what was decided was kind of like what we were talking about in preschool is that the students weren't getting the services they needed until too late until they had actually expanded to the point where now you need a full IEP to deal with it. So at that time we had brought on through a grant the ESR money actually to have a speech and language pathologist who works directly with those preschool students identifies them early gives them the services there while they're still regular education students so that they never advance to the level of needing an IEP service. So yeah, so good questions. There are the CMOs I call these the contractual and mandatory increases. So these are things that we don't really have a lot of control over. Some stuff is discretionary. Yeah, I can choose to hire that para or not. In some cases I can choose to pay for that Carnegie math program or not but these are ones that just happen we have to pay, right? So there's to be salary increases for the staff based upon the contract. That is set by contract it will happen. Part of that number is my best estimate where negotiations are going to land based upon the comparables that are coming in around the state. So that's almost a million bucks but 189,000 health insurance costs are going up 269,000 this year for the district. Because of inflation the supplies will cost 116,000 more just to keep things at the same level that they were last year to get the same amount of supplies. Heating costs will go up about 62,000. The other utilities electricity and whatnot we're looking at an increase of 23,000. And this is one that we will talk about when we get to the RTCC budget. But remember that we are the main feeder for the technical center where we pay tuition for our students to go there. So if their tuitions go up that impacts our local budget. That impacts our orange southwest budget the one that we're talking about because we have to pay those tuitions. I put that in blue because she's asked for a pretty hefty increase and as we go from now to the next budget we're going to have some pretty hard talks about that because it's driven tuition up. You'll see that a little bit later. I'm just trying to get a grasp on percentage-wise here like for example, heating where are we at currently? That's a $60,000 increase, correct? Yeah, it's about a 16%. If I remember correctly, it's about a 16% increase. Health insurance overall was up about 12.7%. Supplies was also high-ish. That was in the 14 to 16% range. And the utilities was small. I believe that was in the 7 to 9% range in terms of the estimates on there. You will get an actual, I can actually even give it to you tonight but you're probably better off waiting until more of the formulas and things from the standard finalized. It will have all of that. This was last year. This is this year. This is the increase. This is the decrease. You'll get a financial statement that shows that well before you vote on it in January. All right. So the expenses. I got that down there from the old TV show Chuck there. Don't freak out. So this year's budget, the year that we are currently sitting in 2022-23, the overall budget was $22 million. Based upon what we just talked about, we're looking at a total increase in expenses of $2.2 million, which would bring our budget for next year to $24 million, which is about a 10% increase. The reason not to freak out is because we have significant revenues to offset most of this. And so I'll show you that in about two slides. One of the things to always kind of, I try to point out, is that in terms of these expenses, that $2.2 million increase in our expenses for next year is what's discretionary and what's mandated. The orange is what we have no or little control over the blue is what we do. So 1.9 million of that is completely due to contractual obligations and mandatory things that we have to pay. The $274,000 is actually discretionary, things that we're adding in this case to help out the ends. All right, bottom line. So this is the good stuff. So the new expenses, the expenses are going up by $2.2 million, but the new revenue that we are generating this year is $3.1 million. So the change from last year is that we will actually be asking directly from taxpayers for $901,000 less than we did last year. Assuming that there's no major change in CLA, common level of appraisal, that is information that we don't have at this point in time. It's supposed to come out on the 15th, which is what, tomorrow. That'll help us kind of clarify things. But if the CLA is about what it was last year, and remember last year, housing prices have gone up, it hasn't changed too much since then, it's actually predicted to start dropping like a rock, which actually makes things good for us for next year. But at this point in time, what folks are looking at is a $0.05 decrease for $100 in assessed value on their properties. So if you've got the average home price now, the average price home in Vermont, which goes for $358,000, you're looking at $180 savings on your school taxes. So, again, based on the data that we have now, it will be in the ballpark, but it may not be exactly the same. What's that? That's a crazy average. How many of our graduates are going to buy a house? Right. I couldn't in Massachusetts, and I was making a hell of a salary, and I saved up money for years, and I still couldn't do it. There are average prices when I left for a home that you could actually move into without doing a lot of work, which is probably $150,000. So, yeah, it makes life tough. Questions at all? That's the OSSD budget, and then we'll do it really quick on the tech center and then the Raven. The only one that you were actually voting on tonight is the Raven budget. So, RTCC. They're asking for a lot, but there's good reasons for it. So, at the tech center, again, we do three separate budgets. There's the district budget, which is the elementary schools, middle school, the high school. RTCC is a whole separate animal, and then we have the Raven program, which is a collaborative for students with a higher level of need, and they're their own budget as well. So, at RTCC, we're going to bring in another math teacher and an ELA social studies teacher. And why she is doing this is it goes back to the district's ends. These students need education in both of those subjects to be successful, to also score well on the assessments that they're required to do to show proficiency at RTCC. And right now, under the structure that they have, they have 160 kids, one English teacher who has to teach them all, and that is not a workload that any teacher should have. Typically, what you look for in a super good environment in a wealthy district that can afford an ELA, the teacher should not have more than 80 students on their workload. Students outside of the ELA, the typical standard is 100 total. Same thing right now with the math teacher. She's trying to get those teachers in there to give the kids the quality education in those subject areas that they need to get their performance up. She's also looking to take the part of the current ELA teacher out of Perkins that's being paid for by a grant. It's been in there for a while. Typical rule of thumb is that the grantors will allow folks to pull for the same thing for three years, and by that time either you've completed the mission, that person has completed their mission and should no longer be needed, or this is a long-term piece that you need and should just go into your regular budget. I think she's anticipating that three-year kind of general rule. Same thing with the para for the same reason they've been in there for more than three years, and they might no longer allow it to come out of the Perkins grant. Allow them to come out of the Perkins grant. The dental program that was built last year was built and constructed using the time grant, and so now all that money and cost of that program needs to shift over to the regular budget. The grants are good to get things up and running and started, but after they're up and running and started, it has to come out of their regular budget. It is self-sustaining right now. The numbers are a little lower than we had hoped, but I think a lot of that was due to our original teacher quitting just before the start of the year, and they were able to put something together piecemeal so that the students are getting three days of instruction each week and then doing other work, and so I think that's had a drag on the program. Benefits for the administrative assistant. One of the administrative assistants that is there is retiring at the end of the year. She does not take benefits, and so we have to put money aside in case the person that replaces her does. Is that at full-time? Yeah, and so that tells you the cost of the benefits that we provide to the staff. Every staff member has access to $30,000 worth of benefits paid for by the district. The nurses, there is a shared nurse, and we've been trying to increase the nursing staff. Some of that started with COVID, but it was needed prior to, and so this is additional cost to make sure that she still has access to a nurse at the level that she's historically needed over the last couple of years. So her total in terms of additional expenses is $400,000, $399,100. What the impact is, the impact is a lot greater on RTCC because it's a smaller budget. If it were $400,000 against a $24 million budget, like we have that wouldn't be a drop in the bucket, things wouldn't shift much, but it's a huge difference here. So in 2022-23, the year that we're currently in, she was at $3.1 million for her budget. Given these things that she is looking for, she would be at $3.7 million, $3.8 million, which is an 18% increase. Tuition this year is $18,670, which is right in the middle of what the other tech centers around the state when we took a look are charging. Her tuition next year, if this were to go through, would be $23,291. And I still, from my perspective, usually I would be very negative about that for some reason, and I still haven't figured out why my gut says it's okay. Probably due to the cost increases of everything. We also have to remember that our tech center is run differently than the other tech centers we provide a full day. How does it compare to Green Mountain tech center up in, that's attached to them because they're a full day? I can actually, Robin was pulling that together. So I'll send that to you. It's going to be a little bit difficult because it's going to be this year's numbers not what they're projecting yet for next year. That's what we're waiting for. But currently when we looked at the other tech centers we're right kind of in the middle. Some of them are here, some of them are here. Right, but I think it's unfair when you compare a half day set up to a full day. And the fact that we would now have the ability for the students to take their classes in-house with fully qualified teachers in an environment that's going to be a really positive one because the numbers will be respectable. Yeah, so I know Green Mountain doesn't, they ship them over to the Lamoille but they do offer that but I think they do have an English and a math instructor and they have a very fancy building. I was like, wow, this is really nice. Felicia is also getting the benefit of the fact that the numbers have increased post-COVID and so each year she gets a little bit more funding from the state. It's based upon a three-year average. So like last year we were all grumpy because it's like we got 157 kids but the state's only given us funding for 124. And so it has an impact. If the numbers stay where they are in one more year she will be getting the full value of the population of her students which she doesn't have right now. But again, I've got to do some more thinking about it. 23 is high but for some reason my gut's telling me it's not and I've got to understand why that is. So I just have one good question because I know that there was some discussion maybe last year of changing the format to a half day. So it sounds like it was killed. So we had a long discussion with the AOE about it. Their highest recommendation was leave it alone but you do need to get your math and your ELA scores up and the way to do that is to get the additional teachers. The reason that they said to leave it alone was because the state was looking at during this coming legislative session potentially of revamping how tech centers are funded. And one of the things that they were looking at was the data and the research around was it better to have the students take their core academics at their homeschool and come to the tech center for the tech or was it better to embed to bring those teachers have those core academic teachers in the tech center and the research was saying they better have the teachers in the tech center. So to Felicia's credit she is actually following in the advice of the AOE at the time so make no major changes until we find out what happens in the legislature. So good question. Questions on our TCC. So there will be some changes. I don't know what we've got to have some discussions. This is always the first budget. This is everything everybody asked for because this is what we would need to hopefully achieve all the ends. Will you float it out sending districts to just see if they go oh no although I know they can't they're not allowed to that's what I was about to say they do it at the same time but at the same time I'm under. But again the biggest impact is us because the 150 kids that are there 67 on Marars so it's when it goes up so but you know what again I think where my intuition is leading me is that you know if we have those additional resources there those kids are going to get such a better education it's worth it. So but again I got a month to work with Felicia for us to really kind of plow through it. The Raven budget, the Raven is our specialty program it is a collaborative we typically it typically serves about 14 students that are fairly high needs but in a special category of high needs on average three of the students of those 14 are ours the rest of them pay tuition to come in and take advantage of the program I did an analysis prior to COVID on it just to see you know what the cost impact was to the district. Because sending these students out to other locales to receive these services would cost significantly more just on our students alone Raven saves us about a million dollars every six to seven years in terms of being able to have the program and it is quite successful. There's not typically a lot of change with Raven all the change that 4.43% increase that you see that is all due to just their step projected salary increases in almost more is the health insurance increases there's no other changes there so their tuition would go from 25,241 to 26,410 to get similar services in another location probably the cheapest place would be about $60,000 to have it done and we'd have to pay for transportation on top of that. There's two. We actually when we had to shut down and we moved into the new building where they're at a few years back we actually had the planning done to expand the size of the building to potentially expand the size of the program to serve more students because we were going through and all the districts were going through an influx in terms of trauma-based behaviors which is a lot of what this program serves so we actually had the plans drawn up to be able to blow out the north wall of that building and expand the space we did spend a year we put money in the budget to get another teacher there so that we could try to start increasing the enrollment we've always got the students for the program but we couldn't find a teacher that fit exactly what was needed for that and we tried for a year or two and then we've given up at this point in time I am deathly fearful that are two personnel that are there that if they retire at some point in time the program dies is that hard to find somebody who's qualified with these students so that's constantly on my mind and constantly as we're doing hiring each year and seeing our special educators that are coming in I'm constantly screening them for people that are capable or would be willing there were capable people out there but they weren't willing to work in that program but it is a jewel of the district and they've done an incredible job for budget kind of where we are so the reality is is we're spending a lot more but we've got a hell of a lot more revenue coming in that more than compensates for it our overall spending when you balance those two things out means that are asked to the community tax payers would be for 901,000 less than the previous year so we seem to be in pretty good stead things that could tank this is if the legislature decides to tap some of that $64 million surplus money to the Ed fund and use it for other purposes we should have more information on that when we meet in January and as I get some real final final numbers that's when I pick up I typically do three community discussions about this it's not worth doing until I can actually show them what their tax rates are going to be I'm really interested in so I have one question can you hear me yeah last year we discussed the surplus in the OSSD and what that is allocated for can you talk about that a little bit so we have it looks like for this next year so we have a significant surplus that so the surplus comes from what was not spent at the end of last year so we have a significant surplus that is part of this budget process we have to decide what we want to do with it we can roll some of it over to help further subsidize next year's taxes so people don't have to pay as much we usually put some into the various reserve accounts to be used in the future we usually put some in the facility's reserve account so that we have it on hand so when things happen like the heat we have the money right here and there to fix it without having to go out to bond I think Brent actually originally built that one to make sure that there was enough money to replace the roofs every 20 years when the roofs needed to be replaced I built a variety of other reserve funds over the course of time to protect us from deficits in areas where it was hard to predict what was going to happen in future use I cannot give you a total dollar amount that has to come from the auditors we have the auditors come in they do a yearly audit and that will be the official number once we receive that it should be coming in from them any day now it is on or about a million dollars will be the surplus so did I I gave a lot of information ask it further if I missed what you were asking no I think that that answers my question about what the surplus will be so you will keep sufficient funds in those reserve funds and then at the end of the day there will likely be a million dollars that we need to decide if we are going to put it in more facilities or in something else so that is good information is there like Felicia has a plan for the tech center and yes the costs are going up and it seems justified is there a plan like that that Katie and Lisa have come up with for the high school in terms of which aspects in terms of you know maybe some new programs or they've built actually quite a bit the STEM program that we originally started has morphed into a full robotics program in programming that is associated with it one of the big projects that they are working on now that I started with them at the beginning of the school year was taking a look at a good master schedule and that is huge because that is the structure that guides how all learning happens within a building and a good master schedule on its own can actually improve student outcomes so they are doing a tremendous amount of work around that right now because that takes an awful lot of buy in from students from the community members from the teachers and from the union and so hopefully that will be up the new schedule will be up and running in place next year there's other things I draw on a blank right now just at the end of a long meeting but there has been significant work that they've been engaged in the Carnegie math is primarily geared towards grades 6 to 12 so that is within their program one of the ELA new programs that is geared towards 6 to 12 as well so they've got that work going on in those parts of the ends that will have the life skills program hopefully that is in and up and running next year as we complete that work so they do have a significant amount that's going on Heather's got some equity work that's going on that's directly affecting the school that she's working in tandem with Katie and Lisa like a lot of the vision work isn't hitting the budget but it's things like adding an expectation that all students participate in a science fair in grade 9 things like that so it's not having a you're not seeing it here in this presentation but I think it would be really great to invite them to come to do a presentation, short report to the board they're working we've had pretty good discussions I'm bringing in an AP music theory but one of the problems that we had in kind of getting it off the ground is the current master schedule that they have is actually restricting kids from being able to take music and take band and that's one of the other reasons to change it but AP music theory is an incredible course because the AP courses are kind of ranked some of them are much more prestigious than others at the high end you've got the AP physics calc the calculus AB and BC and right up there with it is AP music theory at the lower end you've got environmental science and biology but that is a pretty prestigious course and takes quite a bit of skill and intellectual capacity for the students to do well on it and so that is something that's also kind of on the slate in the discussion but we're going to have to get the master schedule straightened out before we can actually support that fully plus the teacher is interested in teaching it has to go off to the training in St. John's Berry they have to go through what's called their audit full curriculum and how the AP organization actually approved it for use so yeah some good questions that would be awesome yeah it is I learned a lot back when I was a principal doing observations on teachers teaching that class it was awesome other questions how far over did I go uh wasn't my sense of time was fine to me but 13 minutes of your time okay so 733 I need someone to be kind of like a timer person because for me I'm just absorbed in the presentation and I have no sense of how much stuff has gone by alright well our next thing um policy 4.5 um so again Sam you're kind of new at this so we had a training last spring and one of the results of that was uh the trainer recommended that we look at the policies that so we monitor playing with the executive limitations policies the other policies so the governance process policies are our policies and so this is kind of a way for us to monitor our own behavior and whether or not we're doing things um according to our policies so um everyone should have gotten um the next policy that we're going to be doing for the January meeting is the committee principles policy so you should all have a blank one remember you wanted to get those ahead of time just so you had a whole full month to do those um as I was doing this 4.5 um I found that um it hasn't come up a lot um because this is the conflict of um a lot of it is conflict of interest um so anyway um I'm curious as other folks um sort of reviewed our our board behavior in light of this policy um I found I found like the first two parts of the policy you know we were we're I think we're doing a great job um I think we've been speaking with one voice um as a board um I think all of us have been very conscious of open meeting law and not having conversations about board business over email or in person outside of a board meeting um I don't know if other folks have tell me if I'm wrong um has anyone observed anything where we're maybe falling short on that on that piece okay um and then um um members must demonstrate loyalty the ownership unconflicted by loyalties to staff other organizations or any personal interests or as parents or guardians um I feel like we've been we've done that very well I would say I've heard from all board members um really wanting to reach out and connect with the community with the ownership um and sort of uh going along with the idea of pushing ourselves as the board to go out there and do that and we are we are finally doing it we're making it happen um with the portrait of the graduate um what do other people think in terms of that one um I haven't seen a lot of people say wait you know they're not they're not sort of thinking they're thinking K-12 they're not thinking my children um which is um what we are we're charged to do um yeah I mean I think putting always is I mean we're human right right of course we're many of us are thinking as parents so to put always a little bit of a lie but because we're human right right um uh the conflict of interest stuff I put as not applicable just because we haven't had any conflict issue come up with any board member as far as I'm aware um so I just put an A that nothing has arisen um and then um uh let's see number four on the very last page um board members will respect the confidentiality appropriate to issues of a sensitive nature um again you know I I feel like our board does a good job of of keeping executive session information in executive session um I haven't haven't been hearing things um out in the community and there hasn't been anybody you know rogue going out to the press or anything like that um board members will be properly prepared for board deliberation you know we had a couple of you know quasi judicial board things that came I felt like everyone was pretty well prepared for those and asking um good questions and anyone else have other uh responses to those and I think it's helping us be more properly prepared with this kind of exercise that we're given something very specific to do for the next meeting to prepare rather than simply reading through the materials that we'll be discussing we have to actively engage in something in order to prepare for the next meeting so this exercise is a good one and then number six board members will support the legitimacy and authority of the board on any matter irrespective of the board members personal position on the issue I think I would say we've done a good job of that it seems to me that in our discussions a lot of times we end up coming around almost to a consensus a few times there's been um someone who's maybe not in agreement but I haven't seen at least in my experience um you know that they can't go along with the majority of the board um so I think we've done that really well um so when I came to the end I was like I don't really see anything in this particular policy that I feel like we need to work on but I don't know if anyone else has a different uh viewpoint on this policy so then I just said we'll take a look again next year because maybe some conflict of interest will show up or something um and we maybe yeah I'll have to keep Sam in line here alright so I think we made up some time with that um and I am I'm sort of keeping these Linda sort of jots down quick notes I know I was speaking kind of fast with that one but we do usually have some kind of summary of uh if there was anything big that came up as we were reviewing it um so next up we have required state policies so again remember that as um the way our board governs um we have delegated to lane to make sure that we have all of the state policies that are necessary um according to state law um uh in our district and um you know read through by us and approved by us and in our uh on our website um for uh district policies so he went through and I'm going to let you sort of there are some new ones that requiring so the one of the things to just point out is that if folks remember that the website had gotten taken down when it was hacked one of the things that the hackers were doing was they were anywhere where we had linked something or put something in onto the website like the policies they had pulled those down and put pictures and comments that which we won't go into up up in their place so as part of this work I was actually scanning through the the website um there are policies that we have that were removed and need to be put back up and it's a quite extensive job so I'm working with Ben to get that done um during the same time um usually quarterly I kind of go through and do a scan and see kind of what's changed and what else needs to be added so there's either eight or nine of these now um all of them we currently have um in one form or another um and so you'll see in the notes on those where it says cleaner language so in other words we already have these policies in place but the VSBA pulls a group of legal folks together usually from PHOS firm and kind of refines it if there's been any changes so cleaner language just just means just that the big new one um is uh comes from the the school mascot and branding law and so we are required to have policies so this is the model policy from the state when it came out um to talk about the other one that's on here is this fund balance policy that is not a required mandate all the others are required uh or mandated policy um this has been a recommendation um from the auditors in the last audit it was not a finding or anything like that it's like a it would be nice if you and so we were stating um that I worked with Robin it's a fairly complex purpose um what it basically has you do is uh categorize your funds like if you look at the financial statement you know it'll say transportation that's a fund and there's a bunch of little lines that roll up into it you categorize the funds um as to whether or not they can be used there is a deficit so in other words if it looks like we're going to be in the red at the end of the year and I need to compensate for that because under the law we're not allowed to be in a deficit what funds am I allowed to pull money from to cover that deficit and so that's kind of what it does um it's a little bit more complex than that but that's the basic interest um so that that is in there for review and again it's just based on our auditors uh recommendation since we paid them all that money it seems wise to listen to them okay and these um this is the first reading so at the next meeting we will be approving those those policies are there any questions about any of them and again you have if you've got any questions we've got a we've got a month to sort of look at them if you have any questions but again those are we've delegated lane to make sure we're in order with all of those so it's really his lane not ours we're just making sure he's abiding by state law um so next up is um we had tabled this and now it feels like a long time ago uh Heather and I were at the VSBA conference and I can't even October 20th and October 21st right and um it was in accordance with your policy um providing collaborative learning opportunities for board members and district leadership the title and focus of the conference was how are the students doing and the keynote address was from Kay Douglas um and she's with the Texas Association of School Boards she had a really great perspective being from Texas and dealing with the diversity equity inclusion issues there um and she really emphasized the importance of student voice uh there were a series of workshops right on Thursday and another series workshops were right on Friday and I attended both days the topics um were shared with you um by Ann and are still available online at the Vermont Vermont School Board Association dot org do backslash conference right they're still all there and each of them the slides and the content are really robust I mean if you have the time to go through some of them they're quite engaging topics included um improving student achievement um through increasing student voice um and how school leaders can overcome educational inequities using data literacy to boost school board knowledge and oversight um the school boards role in district culture and climate and um so I don't want to read all the titles to you Ann did email them to you and we can resend that to you again for your review but I do want to say it was time well spent and they also went over some of these model policies and state required policies with us and specifically Act 1 uh which is which is huge and has to do with equity and inclusion and how um the state is going to be guiding curriculum changes and other expectations of school districts to make sure um that all of our youth are safe and included in schools so it was very informative and I we attended different sessions right we tried to maximize because she was interested in some and I was interested in others um so and one of the ones that I went to was on the uh comprehensive assessment system so it was getting a look at sort of from the portrait of a graduate all the different testing that the state um is requiring well some of it is required but some of it is um the AOE provides um provides help to districts to help them find and refine their local assessments um so that so that they are working toward achieving those portrait graduate ends um so that was kind of interesting um I also found it I went to another one that the VSBA folks put on and that was all about doing things like codifying your procedures and and I was like oh great we're actually doing something that they're that they um really um are trying to get boards to do um so that uh you can you know so that you can run run your meetings well and you can stay focused on what you really need to do and then the other one that I went on went to um was related to Kay's um presentation and that was just again sort of really even the national school boards association really trying to get board members to think in a systemic way you know we're systems thinkers we're looking at a complete system um and to try not to get bogged down in in detail operational details which um when you listen to some other districts and and especially she had stories of being in Texas where boards are meddling into things rather than looking at the system as a whole um so that was really I felt it made me feel like we were um headed in the right direction in terms of uh the way we're operating so um but always really interesting to sit down with other there are other board members um from other districts and I did go to one other presentation and the chair of the Dresden school district so that's uh New Hampshire Vermont it's Hanover high schools uh district they were having some difficult meetings and uh some people going through and making you know they had to dismiss somebody from a meeting and then they didn't escort them out of the building and so they were taking TikTok made a TikTok of all these different things that were on the walls as they were going out of the school and just you know just for harassing the board a little bit so made it made me feel a little bit better about some of the stuff that's been happening up here but anyway it was I would I would strongly recommend um you know if you have that time in October it's always in October um I actually had said to them well you know we may have a really nice conference center up in Randolph right in the middle of the state that maybe they should um use that venue so we'll see what happens but it's fair but make it a lot easier than having Lake Maury is really beautiful but I don't know there was one downstairs section it was like sewage smelling and I was like ah I grew up in Bradford and a couple of my friends used to I waited tables at the other resort it was at the other end of the lake but it's been around a long time and it looks about the same when I was a kid so anyway but it was really great I love that they brought students in they brought students in to talk about the importance of youth in partnership with uh district governance with school board district governance and the students were so enthusiastic about the work it made it made me wish that we already had it built right um and so they gave us tips on how to do it it was really that was to me that all the all the sessions were great the high school students saying oh yeah we contribute to our school board we bring them reports that we write with our principal just I was like I want to build that you know so we've been in talks with Katie and Lisa and sort of hoping to at some point bring you some student voice here let's move on to the next one so moving along we have uh the meeting with the legislators we usually do that in February and we didn't do it the two years of COVID but um Cacho is particularly interested in doing it and um so she's going to kind of lead this uh discussion about sort of um I don't actually particularly interested is the I mean I think the thing that I was most concerned about maybe just being the constituent one of the constituents from Braintree is that we have new representation um and so this year um because Braintree was pulled out um of the district for Orange County and we're now in with Washington County which is a puts us in an interesting position just because we have now three new legislators who are not familiar um with Braintree and so it was basically just advocating to have this legislative meeting this year inviting legislators to come so that we are kind of like a hey we're here we're Braintree you represent us now so let's just remember that um and give them a good chance to kind of meet this district um meet the school board um and then just start having us be kind of a little bit of a bird in their ears like knowing that we're down here so that was my only kind of um reasoning so it would be a good idea to have this again this year and obviously we've had a few years I think where we now haven't had our legislators coming to see us so just a good chance to kind of reconnect with them um and invite some new ones and so I didn't really have a lot for this other than just saying I think it's a good idea yeah sounds like your great idea well and how can we um facilitate that well we would just invite them to um have a certain amount of time to come to our next board meeting in February so we would actually just during our advocacy that would be um legislators like a visit from legislators and they usually come and just present on kind of the topics that are of interest and education in Montpelier right now um and introduce themselves and some of the policies that are kind of coming on the table well and we do have that that surplus they've got to decide what they're going to do we've got more power now yeah a couple legislators up there right right I'm still trying to figure out if that 64 million is due to leftover grant money from Essar or if it actually came from tax revenues because that has implications for the following year right because the grants will be gone so that would be a good question to ask right um um so what does that look like like the three from Washington County is there three in Washington County and then also our representatives or it would look it has looked in the past as our um representatives uh and our uh senator so we share representatives right but we don't share us senators so it would be the same representatives but a different but um our McDonald's and then three from Washington and I don't know if all three would show you they have three senators we have three now yeah three heavy hitting senators so it would be um I think last time you know as opposed to three people coming we would have now more than we would have five if they all came six um right math yeah so it would just be a you know I think it would just be a really good chance for those I mean again selfishly for those individuals to come visit the district because they have never been here before and that's reminding me the other big issue that I think we need to sort of put a little pressure on them about is our high school and the whole testing for what is it PFOA PCBs I keep getting that mixed up um yeah putting money aside in a building school building authority funds so that you know there's matching funds of some sort if people need to renovate or rebuild because if you all remember our high school is in the worst shape when they when they were kind of assessing without without really much useful life yeah yeah so who typically sends the invitation and when um I think we from the chair the chair yeah um and I think it should just be a simple email going out saying you know we'd like to invite you to the February and maybe give them a little bit of like you'll have 10 minutes right to speak kind of thing we're gonna make you wait till the end by the way right they used to do like a little open question session for a couple of minutes but it wasn't long I think it would be nice to have it um if we can move it to after public comment as being the first things that if we do have public here we have our representatives here as well and they're hearing public comment as well mm-hmm yeah so we'll do the February meeting um I can send out the invites you can just let me know who your senators are I suppose I can look it up and Andy and Ann and Cummings and Pritchlett okay I can look I can look them up too um so we'll do the February meeting after public comment after public comment and we'll be talking about that um so and do we want to set it up with um just a ten minute or maybe a five minute tell us what committees you're on tell us um kind of what you're I don't know five minutes yeah if we've got if all of them showed up and then but then a question and answer period yeah just for the board members or for public the question yeah in the past was it open to the public they were well behaved for the past and we would keep it up would it be a question and answer for person or I think we'd need to be a maybe monitor at our big schedule but what typically I mean I feel like that has typically been I can look and see so we know that there's usually more time set aside for that yeah I was going to say I think it was at least 45 to an hour and you used to have Jeff Francis he's a real talker though yes so depending on who replies and if I can ask ahead of time like maybe even get it out before the holidays at least the first invite they can get it on their calendar although when they don't they start what the end of January or is it the first week in January first week in January so so if I even hit them up or maybe I hit them up the first week in January or maybe I hit them before the holidays yeah before they get their real goals right no because it's a it's a schedule yeah and it's typically also because of town being coming up the next one touch base with you on the next meeting about what you're going to say because usually in February we just have a little bit of budget information but that's going to be rolling right along are we going to be on a second we're just going to be on a review of some monitoring reports and then meet the legislators so that's sort of the the gist of the meeting so it sounds like you'll send an invite out to them at least the first invite to say this is the date of the meeting we'd like to have you with your attendance and then after next meeting once we know we can also send out a second reminder so I'm going to I'm going to aim that for before the holidays what great February meeting falls like maybe the 9th it's pretty early it's the 8th with an RTCC yeah so yeah for those folks who do the RTCC you're the rep you're the rep oh you two are the reps okay so and are we okay with with me saying you get about 5 minutes I think you can say like a brief introduction of yourself a brief introduction yeah they're going to rather field questions than do a stump speech he's not a legislator he's not a legislator he's with the VSBA he's the oh yeah he's the political guy yeah I don't know if we need to invite him then no I would say we'd probably be okay I think just legislators okay and then Q&A okay perfect that gives me enough to run to run run with that unless there are any other questions okay alright so we're on schedule oh um so good and it's the February meeting okay so do we need a movement to approve this from last uh so I'm gonna have us do something we should pull out are we wrapping that raven budget in here or is it best to pull that out as a separate vote um I think it can be we've already gone through it I think unless there is if there is someone who wants to make a motion to pull that out separately otherwise we can okay do we have a second by Hannah any discussion seeing none all those in favor say aye aye any opposed alright so that is passed um and then lane you sort of gave us an update on uh-huh unions it has a good go back and check on the ground rules in terms of what could be shared publicly basically the comment that I remember is as long as it's being talked about people who have a legitimate need to know what you would so there's support staff uh the support staff negotiations are currently in pass we worked with them we made a couple of offers the district did not feel that they were making any counter offers and there was no motion that was official they did state that you know would move in terms of their second year ask for salary increase but never actually made anything official so at that point in time it was it's in pass right now those of you I sent out an email that are on the support staff committee they're looking for was it the 25th of January to do the mediation session the teachers we had some tentative agreement that was in place we had another tentative agreement that was in place but required folks to do some typing up of the document so that it could be signed at the next meeting we came into the next meeting they refused to honor so we had some words about that we tried to have a tentative agreement on another issue they came back and said well we have to pass this by Stewart before we can you know TA on that and we pointed out the fact that the ground rules required that you have everybody at the meeting who can sign off on TA's immediately when they're conducted so we felt it was a violation of the ground rules they didn't do some moving on their initial salary request but it wasn't enough considering where they were starting from and so we kind of basically said look you know if there's not significant movement here we're probably going to be at an impasse pretty quickly and that's kind of where we set and the next meeting there every we booked it for January depends on which one is so the support staff meetings what was happening originally is they were meeting you know one this week one the next week and they were alternating support staff will be whenever the mediation is it was 20 it was January wasn't it was the next one for the teachers my ADHD has come down and I remember things really well all right so we're moving on then unless anyone has any other questions so we have the reports from the principals and the superintendent financial report anything actually just more of a couple of comments as I was looking through it and some things were kind of jumping out a little bit so on the revenue page there's a lot of negative numbers on the balance side what that means is that we're just waiting for reimbursements a lot of these are grants and other things where we actually have to pay it up front and so we go into the negative and then it comes positive again when you know the reimbursements come in the reimbursements usually come in monthly to quarter from most of these folks so these are actually in very good stead central office general liability insurance we actually is ending up costing us a little bit more than we planned for it won't cause any deficits or anything like that but that particular line is a little bit overspent as you know when you have insurance claims like the water burst that we had at RGCC this year typically your insurance goes up so that's the piece for that you will see most likely under maintenance that some of their lines have been significantly spent like repairs and maintenance there's only 10% of it left for the remainder of the year since we're 512th to the way through the year it should be about 40 to 50% that's left 50 to 60% right now the reason it's not is because how the reserve funds that we request from you work you actually grant us the use of those funds but we actually do not take them unless we absolutely need them so we wait until the end of the year and if there is enough money left over to cover all that from our regular budget we never touch those reserve funds so that one will be negative because we've paid a lot of the repairs and stuff out of that at this point in time so that's a good shape so just more logistics behind how things work but things are good Robin had no concerns I always ask for that specific question to the day before the play meeting okay so we're to the recap I'm going to be reaching out to the legislators for our February meeting I think we are going to be looking forward to at least google starting a graduate committee meeting to coordinate again with Heather as we approach the hopefully first week of February community gathering anything else that I'm forgetting just remember to look over those monitoring reports remember that is our way of holding our superintendent accountable so you want to make sure that you understand what those reports are saying and that's it so I don't believe we need any executive discussion so I need a motion to adjourn moved by Katja do I have a second seconded by Megan all those in favor aye alright 813