 Everything is handed on to the screen also because of the proximity in the room, the board wants to situate yourselves closer. So this is version 6 of the agenda for the budget. I think because we have such a large crowd and such a large amount of information to get through, let's let Dave finish his presentation and make notes on the questions he might have. But rather than interrupting him as he goes on to clarify things, if we could save our questions to the end, that would be probably really helpful. I'm sorry the question you thought of in the beginning he'll hopefully have answered by the time he's done it. This is draft 6 which means a lot of work has happened before and we'll get some more work off to this. This is not the final version of the budget but it's where we are right now. And in terms of what I'm going to be sharing with you today is three things. There are three different worksheets that I will be sharing. There are others behind it but the three I'll be sharing is the tax impact of this budget. What will it do to the tax rate? It's a common question that people have and that's what we will address tonight. We will also look at the different kinds of revenue that we've identified for inclusion in this budget. I'll say some of these expenses and then the rest of the revenue will come from the general state support grant. In the expenditure side that's the one which has been, we spend most of our time working on. There have been a number of changes. One of them is sequence of things. So we first now have all the pre-K programs, then all the K6 programs, then all the secondary programs, and then the program just goes across all of the grade levels and a total number of the very end. So it's divided into the grade level sections of the budget and the sequence in which you would imagine it would be start with pre-K to go out and move everybody. Within each area there is a heading for a certain type of work and a state called a function. So the function of general information instruction is the first and in fact the only one in the pre-K program. And we have some salaries and some benefits and some other kinds of purchases. And the total cost is in the yellow for each of the sections. So if you go through there's a lot of pages and a lot of different lines. You can also reference them by the row number or by the column letter. So if you've got a question and you want to know what does that number mean, you can say David on row 126 in column D, where do we get that number from? So that's the easy way to reference it is by the row number and the column letter. So that's I would say is the 40,000 foot level view of the budget as we have it tonight. And I'm going to go down to about 4,000 feet and then go down to about 400 feet. So we're coming into land. The weather is good. I came over the mountain and it was foggy up there but it's kind of slow. It's okay. It's still winter. It's still winter I think. It's by the counter saying that it's spring. So let me jump to the end point because this will help to inform our discussion, especially of the expenditure side. So this is the tax consequence of the budget as it presents here with the expenditures and the revenue. So the total expenditures of this budget as it stands today are 3,907,000 years to change. We have what they call a state called local revenue which is to say any revenue that is available other than the general state support grant, the education spending amount. So that's the difference between the total expenditure and the revenue from other sources is what the state will give us. Whatever we say we want, they will give it to us. They will charge us the tax revenue course to get that money but all over my mind as the law says, the education spending amount is the amount that the state is obligated to give any district that says whatever budget they want. When we get the total amount of net costs, we then divide that by the equalised pupils so we get a pupil cost which is a term which has a very specific meaning. So if you take everything that we spend and divide by all the students, that's not the same as this. This is a very nuanced expression within education finance information that is used solely for the purpose of calculating tax rates. So if you look here and you say, well, I looked somewhere and it said that there was spending worth 17,000 per pupil. Another place I looked it was for the 1,000 per pupil. You tell me it's 15,000 per pupil. In this context, I repeat wrong, this is what the number is. And this is the number which drives the tax rate. And the tax rate that comes out here is the equalised residential tax rate is $1.58.85, $1.5885. Because of our merging as two districts forming into a unified district, we're entitled to an eight cent incentive. So that eight cents gets taken up to $1.58, and it brings out $1.50 with some numbers in the end. The equalised non-residential rate is $1.6290. So somebody who has a business, this with their pay or a second home, or somebody who lives out of town and is paying taxes on their second home here in town, that's the rate that they will pay. So the homestead, the equalised tax rate is less than the business rates. That's another way to describe that. Now, this looks fine and dandy, especially if we look over here, there's a threshold tax rate which is calculated each year. And as soon as you get above that threshold, you start paying twice as much in taxes as you want to spend. So for every dollar you spend above that, you pay $2 in taxes. But we know we're near that because we're down here at $15,000, something that threshold for the Mexican growth cap is $70,000. So we're outside of that danger zone. That's why it's a concern that people might expect to know. Are we above the threshold? Are we in the healthy phase, as they say, for the healthy ones? No, we know we're near. Dollar 58 was $15,600 against $17,800. So we're safe from the penalty, from being double taxed is what people sometimes call it. So I'm going to go down the page of over here to see how this sugars up because it gets a little complicated. But it's important information to know because it will impact our discussions because we have an expenditure budget. So there are all sorts of numbers here. I talked a minute ago about the threshold. If we're spending computations above that $17,000, we pay double taxes. We're well below it so we're out of that danger. There's another law, another regulation about the tax rate. In the merging situation that we're in, that the tax rate that results after the merger cannot be more than 5% above nor 5% below. What was the previous year? So the equalized tax rate of FY18 the last year, the last time we voted, was $1,62. So this calculates what the range is that our tax rate must be this time, this year. So it must be between $1,70 and $1,54 for Rochester and for Stockbridge between $1,70. The same because we have the same equalized tax rate, very similar equalized tax rates. Last year they were not the same, this year they will be the same because we are a unified district. FY19, one of the things of being unified district is that every member of that district gets the same tax rates. Every same gets the same equalized tax rates. So here we see that we calculated that the equalized tax rate preliminarily was $1,50. And it falls outside of the range of 5%. So it cannot go below $1,54. So far as Rochester is concerned, so far as Stockbridge is concerned, it cannot go below $1,54 or 60. So this is the one that rules. So that's what our minimum, what our actual tax rate will be for next year based on this budget is $1,54 or 60. But our spending only brings us to $1,50,85. What that means is, and some unified districts have discovered this, is that between $1,50,85 and $1,54,60 we can spend more and what effect our tax rate. Because our tax rate, if we spend more and go to $1,51,52,53,54 up to this $1,54,60, at that point it will start to increase. There's additional spending possibilities. Now that's under the current law. But there is legislation going through at the moment which says that retroactively, the legislature wants to say that this cap will not be in effect for this year, for 2019. So those districts that have been saying, and some have been saying, well we can spend more without having paid more taxes. And those districts have usually been wise enough to not spend on expenses that are occurring. So they've come back next year, they've done one-time expenses like replacing a boiler or something like that. They don't expect to do that every year. So some one-time expenses have been incurred more than was considered necessary because it didn't change the tax rate. So in other words, if we are talking in the expenditure side, we're not going to change that matter. But if we're talking in the expenditure, we're trying to save $100, it's not going to change our tax rate. If we cut $10,000 out of the budget, it's not going to change our tax rate. If we cut $100,000 out of the budget, it's not going to take our tax rate because we cannot fall below the 5% from the prior year. So we can add to our expenditure. And if we reduce them, it's not going to change our tax rate. David, I don't want to interrupt you, but I just wanted to ask, the changes that we made today are very reflected in this layout. Thank you. So the reason why I came here about 15 minutes late today was that I was trying to get those last-minute changes in. So now you have the hottest news. So what this says is that if you look down at the bottom here, you see that the changes in the tax rate based on what's in the budget up there is a 9 cent... I'm jumping over a few stages and I can go back and go through the stages. But the bottom line is that a home state tax rate, what actually shows up in your tax bill, is going to be 9 cents less than last year in Rochester and 11 cents, almost 12 cents less than last year in Stumpridge. That's the net impact of this budget. That's good. So in that context, understanding that changing the expenditures will not necessarily have a direct impact at all. The tax rate occurs... We've got about 4 cents in the tax rate here that we can spend more before the tax rate goes up. You can make any cuts or something that reduce the tax rate. Given that, you just get tired and ready. So look at the bottom line is about 9 or 12 cents reduction with the budget as it is. Let me jump back then to the revenue side of things. So the revenues begin by looking at any fund balance that's carried forward from a prior year. Now, we are not in a position, districts in general are not in a position to take the immediate past year fund balance and deal with the recordings of the law because typically the order takes place in the fall and into the winter. And just last week, we got our orders in for the districts within our sub-budgets. And usually the budgets are approved in January. So there's usually a year gap between when you fund the fund balance. So this is not the fund balance as of June 2017. This is the fund balance of June 2016, the order that was completed about a year ago. And if there's a fund balance in there and if the voters have not decided otherwise that they want to put that fund balance into a reserve fund or maintenance or tuition or something like that, if there's no decision action by the voters, not the board, not the voters, then the law says it must be returned to the voters in the next available budget, which is this budget. So this fund balance acts like a kind of a revenue. It's available to offset the expenses that are down at the expense side of the budget. So in Rochester, at the end of June 2016, there was $200,000, the order just said, $200,000 in fund balance in the general fund. Must be returned to the voters unless the voters decide otherwise. So here is being returned to the voters in the FY19 budget. So we start with the fund balance and some revenue coming into Rochester next year and a small amount of interest, a small amount of brand value income, some sub-brands, which are from the Supervisory and which are mostly the Title I CFP Schoolwide Program Funds. We'll see how we spend them in a minute. Small amount of miscellaneous stuff. So these are local revenues and then these revenues are sorted by the source. It's the first local source, the state and federal source. So on the state side, these two numbers together make up the education spending amount and they are made up of the general state support grant and an amount that the state pays to tech centers on behalf of the resident students of our district. It's kind of like it's trying to achieve a cash flow for the tech centers. So these two numbers together form the education spending amount. So you add these two numbers here and you get to that amount and that's the difference between our total expenditures and the revenues from other sources other than the state grant. So this tech tuition paid by the state on behalf of the district is not an additional amount that the state pays to the tech centers. It's part of our education spending. It's part of the difference between what we're entitled to, the difference between our total expenditures and these revenues and two of these other revenues here besides the next, what we've got to get money for to cover the rest of our expenses. That's what these two numbers together are. We have a few small state grants, small schools grants, transportation aid and some e-rate money, which we can point out there. It's not really a state source. So the bottom line is these are the numbers and they're in the second to last page of the handout there. You'll see that by each town the different revenues. This year we have not included any revenue from the trustee of public funds in prior years. There's sometimes been, or several years, there's been something like $60,000 in each town. If we know about that money we can put it in here and it will reduce the taxes. But we've heard nothing about that so far so we have put it in there. If we don't put it in it means that we will raise that amount of taxes. If it comes in, if the trustees decide next month that they're going to support school districts by a certain amount, that money can come in and that will produce a surplus in the current year. We don't have to spend the money, the tax money that was raised that we didn't need to raise. We can keep it aside and go into the fund balance at the end of 2018 or 2019 that next current year and it will come back to the taxpayers two years later in the next budget. So these are the revenue sources. Now we move to the expenditure side of the budget. It's the same as the other tax sheet. The total budget is $3.9 million. The revenues from local sources here from sources other than the state support grant are $1 million, that's $2 million, $2.8 million is what the education spending amount is and that's what the state guarantees that it will get to us. And they will charge a tax rate. Not that our taxes cover what we get back. Most districts in Vermont do not raise enough property taxes to cover the education spending. It comes from other sources. It comes from things like the lottery and from there's a grant that's made from the general fund of the state into the education fund of the state. There are various other sources that go into it. So there are very few districts in Vermont that actually pay rate as much taxes from their property to cover the education spending amount. It's usually significantly less. I was on the school board in Roxbury over the mountain here and I made a presentation about eight years ago in which I showed that the property taxes raised at Roxbury were about $4,000 per pupil and the spending was about $23,000 per pupil. $5,000 came from second homes and from businesses. Not many businesses in Roxbury go to second homes. And the other, so that was $9,000 to $23,000. So $14,000 came from other towns and other sources. So only $4,000 came from the residents that's paid through their property taxes. That's a little extreme, but it's not terribly unusual for us. There's always a small amount of the tax of the total spending to be covered by what used to be called local property taxes. Now state property taxes. So what we have here is we see how the education spending amount gets identified. We divide that by the number of equalized pupils and we come up with the education spending for equalized pupil, which is the number which goes in tax calculation. And by now, probably most of you are familiar with what an equalized pupil is. It's not a pupil that's knocked down to size so they're all on the same height. An equalized pupil is an attempt by the state in the tax formula. It's only ever used that I've seen in the tax formula. And it's an attempt to be made to recognize that certain kind of students, it's with certain demographics, cost-borne education. So if you've got a high school student versus an elementary student, there's more specialized courses, more specialized equipment and so on that's needed for a high school student. So there's a weighting that's given to the WEIGHTNG, weighting, it's more weight given to a secondary student because it's perceived to cost more. Some people think that's nonsense and they complained about it a few years ago and the state went in and looked at it and they said, you know, you're right. It's not as much as we thought it was. So there was a time when a secondary student had a weight of something like a 1.23 is down to much more like 1.25, something like that. There's also a weighting given for poverty, a weighting given for students who have English as not as their home language, English language learners because it costs more to educate a student like that. When I was working in Burlington we spent $6 billion on the ELL programming one year. That was our average spending on the ELL. So that kind of weight makes a big difference for the city of Burlington because there are 600 students in the ELL program. It's very big. 60 different language groups. So coming right back to here, this is the education spending paper. It goes into the tax formula. This is the threshold. So we're well under the thresholds. We're not in danger of paying twice for the same. Now we come to the spending. Some of you have seen this layout. Some of you this is totally new. So there's a lot of numbers on the sheet. The main number is in this column F. This is the number which ordinarily we would be the only column we would see here. So as a budget, for example, for general education structure for the Rochester Stock Ridge Unified District salaries for teachers would be $91,716. Based on the actual teachers that are currently here that we expect will be back next year. So that's how we budget. And then coming back. But the other columns are used for analysis and interpretation and to give board members and community members and everybody who's interested an opportunity to understand what the numbers mean. One of the considerations that was near the top in many of the decisions to form unified districts for Rochester and Rochester Stock Ridge to come together in Unified District was to say how do we know that the budget is going to be fair? Our children will be getting a good shape compared to the children over there. And this is an attempt to show not to prove because there are various factors under here that mean that this is not a firm definite proof but it is a strong indicator. A good reason, a good explanation why it's not a strong proof is that if you have a teacher over here with 12 kids a teacher over here with 20 kids and this one has 30 years of experience with a salary up here with this one with one year one experience it's not going to cost the same but it doesn't mean it's inequitable necessarily. So it's very hard to compare apples to apples but this analysis here is an attempt to give some indication. The percentages were way up we say wait a minute let's look into that a little bit more. It seems like in this area oh so you mean that in that school there are three teachers in this school there are two teachers is that equitable and there may be reasons why it is equitable because of the number of classes whatever it is any number of reasons what I'm trying to say is that these percentages are indicators but not final proof there are two percentages up here the first one is the percentage by enrollment enrollment is a technical term that they use to describe a particular way of counting students in all the districts of Vermont during the 20 day period of the average day membership count in the middle of that period in the fall membership in a school not attendance so a child can be sick for every day of the of the counting period and still be a member of all those days so if they're all there and a member they count the fact that they're sick doesn't mean that it affects the average day membership membership is not the same as attendance and obviously all our members to be attending all the time it's obviously important but we don't we don't lose on the count just because somebody is sick so enrollment is one day's snapshot in the midst of this average day membership count which happens in the fall so on October 1 the state takes out from that sample of 20 days and they say on this day in this school there were so many students enrolled and at that school there were so many students enrolled and it can be that in a school like Rochester which is really close to a grandma and handcart that a number of the children from the grandpa and the handcart tell them they're part of the enrollment number they're not part of the average day membership number the average day membership number counts only the students that are righteous to students in the righteous to school so the ADM counts collection of students for a different purpose just like Igloy's pupil has done for the text purpose it's not useful anything else so there are different kinds of counts somebody will say well I thought that we had 100 kids in this school how can our ADM only be 57 well above those 100 students somebody were tuition students and they don't count for our ADM so there's different kinds of counts so what we have here on the bottom of this you can see the count out of the percentage on the right in the very bottom you can see it on row 306 that in the Rochester, Rochester's indeed it's not just the E, R, S, S it's a number of sequence of things that on October 1 last year the most recent count that we had was current data there were 90 students enrolled in Rochester school in the pre-KDs right, pre-KDs not pre-KDs pre-KDs K6 there were 90 in Rochester and 50 in Stockbridge so that's where these enrollment percentages come from that you saw at the very top so what here is you see the percentage of what the actual expenditures were that were allocated or identified for each town so you can see that there's a reasonably close correlation between the enrollment percentages and the spending percentages so far as the total spending on this side we'll come back to the minutes to see what's up here on this side the green is for personnel, for salaries and benefits of employees and you can see that in this situation Rochester has 59% of the full-time equivalence that is measured off the level of staffing one teacher for the whole year is at 1.0 FTE full-time equivalent and the cost of those teachers throughout all the different areas of the school is at the cost of salaries and benefits for all people in both schools so these are the percentages that relate to the personnel, the salaries and benefits and these are the percentages that relate to the non-salary benefits, for example supplies so supplies are not salaries and benefits, they're not in the green bin earlier so what it's showing is that 63% of the personnel costs are equal to Rochester but only 58% of the non-salary and there are reasons for that there's not a direct one of the simple reasons would be that for example that Rochester may have recently bought a lot of computers so it doesn't have a lot of it's just an example, hypothetical to understand the concept may not need to buy many computers this year but Stockbridge may not have bought computers for a little while so they go to some catch-up so that would be a reason why these percentages would be different from the enrollment percentages because a program needs to vary by school just a point that came up in the last conversation about this with the 90 and the 50 we know this is the October count it may be a little different now it may be three kids less in Rochester and three kids more in Stockbridge but we wanted to stay consistent with that October one count because that's a pretty consistent measure of the count so it's an official count otherwise what could happen is that somebody would say well I want to choose February the second and you might say well I want to watch the first it's more favorable to me you might say I want January the 29th or we could have a long debate about which data to use for the count but if we use one of the accounts which is used by the state as a standard date that makes them seem to make more sense the board could decide otherwise if we could put different numbers in and see what difference it does we have that amount of time but I think this is the way we're starting here so now let me go up into the details of budgets I didn't hear that it's done by grade level age slash grade level so we set up the pre-kindergarten the pre-kindergarten program and we can see here that these are the expenses there's one ATE for teacher in Rochester and one ATE for para, para professionals who support that person in Rochester the same in Stockbridge 1.0 and 1.0 in fact the dollar numbers are more or less the same very similar other places it's not the same in these cases 45, 7, 45, 9 that's pretty close and so this tells you the total FTE and the total cost of these salaries and benefits this green section and the non-personal is over on that side so we start with the pre-kindergarten and then we go to the K6 program K6 programs we deal with the general instruction general education and you can see that there's a lot of different things that come in here there are salaries and benefits there are the cost of field trips excluding the busing busing for field trips needs to come in student transportation coming out that's the last version of the budget things like the internet connection comes in here, tuition right just one elementary students that is tuition to another district particular educational purposes reasons, there are things like books software and equipment things like that and also the one kind of program support is here in the instruction area some of these things have appeared in different parts of the budget in a year but seem to be in a list of where they belong then we report them to the state and behind every one of these lines is an account code gets reported to the state periodically and they use for a multitude of reasons including a student support district the general state support so we begin in element the K36 is the what the state calls elementary those are the elementary grades so instruction for elementary total of $675,000 with five FTEs in Rochester three FTEs of teacher in Stockbrook one FTE of parity in Stockbrook after the general instruction come for medial instruction and this is a part of the budget which is funded with grant money so title one money which is a federal grant we identify a section of that grant we get a significant size grant and we identify a section of it for sharing amongst the districts for what are called school-wide programs it's a way of spending federal money with with more flexibility we don't have to count for things in quite as precise a way as you do if you have for example in the title one program you could say we in the district are going to spend it on on a math interventionist and then if you've got a very narrowly defined then you have to account for it very narrowly but if you have a school-wide program it's much more important it's much simpler, it takes less time and this is a challenge so that's one of the reasons why we many districts have developed school-wide programs which are primarily there to provide additional resources to the instructional program of the school to bring students up to speed to stay in on the pace and so on once we've dealt with general instruction then we come to the IS program so we have IS physical education so we have a small amount of additional activities some people call it extra-curricular activities some people call they use different places so we are referring to nine at least and we have a small amount of salaries for people who are I think could be larger activities within the school then we come to various kinds of so all this up here is instruction all instruction services and state differential instruction and supportive instruction now we come to a variety of supports of instruction some of which are administratively in nature we're going to come to a minute but first of all we start with support services for students and we have a number of them one of them is behavioral support and we have in all documents we have a safety program that is identified as such and there's not one in Rochester some programs vary by by school then we come down to guidance services which are also there as a support for students and other kinds of support for students including the health services which we call the nurse so health services health health and public nurses that's what people are more accustomed to calling it so these are all services which are supporting students so that they can be more effective and productive in learning there are those services so one of the programs that we have which is not special education special education is something quite different and we do have a program called the 504 programs which is designed under section of the federal law which is called the 504 program and within that there are a variety of services for students that we make available and in our districts we've used for using this year three different kinds of services to support 504 programs we are engaging in psychological services for students counseling of various kinds SLP speech and language pathology services and physical therapy services the fact that they are grouped in this kind of a way indicates that they are not we do not have somebody on staff who provides those but they go out so for example we go on to up to Randolph to the hospital there to get physical therapy we have a psychologist in the community who provides psychological services for some of my speech services so these are services which we contract out with other vendors who have capacity to serve our students and then there are a couple of areas of which could be characterized as supports to teachers so these are all supports to students now we've got supports for teachers first one is with curriculum so we have a certain amount of money which we have a curriculum coordinator at the university union for which there is an assessment and in our district here the total for next year will be 16,000 this will come as a surprise to some people because they are accustomed to seeing well the central office costs us 320,000 or something like that but what we don't when we think of it like the central office we don't understand what it is that we are buying through that we can get really lost and confused so what this budget does is it pulls apart what that paper does to the central office so we can see what is the cost to the superintendent is he driving a new car recently with a business manager no not like a head-triple anal come out today and fix it so there is some curriculum work there is some training or professional development work which is done to support teachers so they can be more effective teachers and we also do some educational testing we use a couple of different programs Star 360 and SWIFT this is a new function that has not shown up previously in the budget but it is something that we seem to be wanting to keep a good eye on so numbers always in the budget is very somewhere so now it is pulled apart so we can see it so there are three kinds of expenditures that are for improving instruction development of curriculum training how do we teach math in the 21st century that kind of thing and finally the testing of students so that we can understand just exactly what kind of support they need education not emotionally education so this is all to do with instruction the next set of areas is to do administration library important part is to have all the resources there is much more than just places in books so there are all kinds of resources in the library and indeed from the state point of view the library is a resource to support teachers who are instructed so that is why it is listed in this area and after that we come to the traditional administration areas so first of all within our district we have principal services the services of the principal's office so you can see it is much more than just the salary of the principal there can be administrative assistance so in Rochester there is 1.5 FTE of administration assistant in Stockbridge there is 1.0 and there are all these other kinds of expenses that relate to what the state calls school based administration school administration so the school administration which is here and the central administration which is what happens in the supervisory office the school administration is a library which may be new to some of you it has been part of for a long time there has been an assessment for several years it has been an assessment for technology administration or sometimes it is called the assessment for technology there are 2 kinds of technology from the state's point of view there is technology which is related to improving instruction sometimes called tech integration which is a service which is provided by certain kinds of professionals certified to do so they are often closely related to the library or to the video center and their work is to work with teachers so if you want to be doing some studies project on the civil war what kind of resources are available technology wise that is what the tech integrations can do would help teachers to locate websites and various other kinds of resources that are on the internet and that we don't have much of that but we have quite a lot of costs involved in keeping print of the working and making sure that people know how to sign on and sign off and sign on the game next time making sure that the wiring is working effectively that the connection with the internet is up and running and at the right speed so the administration is what this is about and some of that function happens at the central office and some of it happens in the school and it varies by district and there is a certain there is an assessment for grants administration in order to obtain the grant that we talked about earlier the general one schoolwide program grant there needs to be an application there needs to be various reporting of various kinds that administration of the grant is done centrally and the share that comes to Rajasastopra's unified district is $6,000 a year it's part of what previously was called the central office assessment but now we're seeing that if we didn't have the central office we'd still have to do grants administration it's our expense district's expense it's not the ones to the district and each of these assessments are we didn't have administration there we needed to hire somebody many districts do hire able to administer there in network or wherever it is coming down to buildings and grounds that's another area that's very important people a lot of different kinds of expenses we have custodians people that charge up the buildings and grounds take care of it in Rajasastopra we have $2.0 of salaries that we're looking for for next year and in Stockbridge we're looking at 0.63 a crossing guard is in here previously it was support services for students in your budget the reason why it's in here is that the state considers this crossing guard as part of security and so there's a code which when I report to the state about what we spent on the crossing guard last month or something like that that goes into this area here which has to do with the security so it's not exactly going to the grounds but it's closely connected to it snow removal is in here various things so a few more if you tell me something so that's where that goes and we're still in the area of the spaces then there are student transportation classes and there are field trips so the second grade class is going off to the Wanchai Museum or going off to see the Science Museum of Boston that we spent on the night there so that's where the transportation piece of that trip would come the cost of going into the museum would be up to the field trip expense but the cost of transportation just like with every aspect of the budget if we're talking about the athletic program the cost of the baseball and the bag would be up here in athletics but the transportation for getting the team to the competition would be down here in student transportation so whatever kind of transportation is for students whether we're talking about taking students from home to school and back each day or taking them to an athletic trip whatever kind of student transportation we're talking about all belongs here, different categories so this assessment for transportation this one a change that took place in legislation about three years ago maybe four by now and the state said that transportation must be purchased and controlled by the supervisory union if we do not see doing that and having expense in its accounts when I do the reporting in the year I have to show where every district spend all this money they said if it shows up in the school and not in the supervisory union there will be no reimbursement the next year there will be no revenue for transportation aid the next year it has to be spent and that's why transportation is called out in school transportation came from home to school for that so that's what the assessment is for just for the home to school and back field trips and public trips are still charged at the district level to the schools that do those trips so transportation is not divided between the home to school and back which is paid for which is organized and paid for by the supervisory union by law and field trips are used and supporting trips which can be organized and welcoming by debt service the state means long term debt service so we're talking about bonds so in right just till there is still a bond as stated so that's the amount that needs to be paid for the principal next year there are no bonds that I could find for stock exchange there's another kind of interest which shows up in the in the short term interest that we pay on the tax anticipation note in order to have cash flow coming in so that salaries come in purchases can be paid for before taxes are collected and sent by the towns we need to take out a loan typically it's very common for districts to take out a loan in anticipation of the taxes coming in and that interest is not charged here there's not a long term debt there's short term debt it gets paid off by the end of the year as the taxes come in it just gets paid off so cash flow management food service is a part of the budget where coming out of the general fund there's a decision made to support the food program the food meal program for students because it's considered just as having paper and pencils as necessary for education students that are living in the stomach they can't go out so that's the rationale usually placed for putting in support the total of all the the K6 programs for both schools for next year is here where these hashtags are because there are too many digits on the format that I have on my computer screen looks fine but on here it doesn't but you've got the product where it shows the actual number so then we go into this what are often called secondary student costs the 712 program is a secondary student cost and there are three kinds of costs here they're all tuition related because we don't, next year we will not be operating any school either in Rochester or in Stockbridge to educate to instruct our secondary students so this number here is for general education, tuition and for the students that have been identified and the places that we understand that they intend to go next year this is the cost this is not a number pulled out of the sky this is looking at specific students at specific choices that they've made for next year and we understand that students change their mind families change their mind so this is a fluid number it can look different next time we look at the budget we try to keep it up as we can we get information and we try to update so that's the most common information that you have what it's showing is that for secondary students we are needing to send out one eight million dollars for tuition payments that's the first line the second line is technical center of tuition and there are two pieces to it one is the part that we pay directly and the other part is paid on other half by the state we saw it on the revenue side that they take a portion of our education spending money out send it straight off to the tech side that's the same line as this one here suddenly we never see that money so we have to afford it as a revenue and an expense of equal size and the really weird thing about this it's got nothing to do with the students that this year if by 19 or going to the tech centers tech centers have a formula system and I won't go into too much detail but it basically says that over a period of four or five years the cost of a student this year is paid over the next four or five years one six one third one third one sixth of two years so if somebody says well we've got four students at the tech center this year well we've got no students at the tech center why are we paying tech centers because we are part of the four-year trailing average that we have to pay for so we never pay in the current year for the students that are attending the tech center this year unlike these students so a student that's going to another school district this year we pay this year tech education is different so this one is what the state pays on our behalf and this is the balance so it may be that the state pays $7,000 per student to the Randolph Career and Tech Technical Center on our behalf because of the students that live in Rochester and Stockbridge and then so that maybe is $7,000 so and maybe Randolph Career and Tech Center charges $13,000 so the other $6,000 comes from us so that's where they come so they send $7,000 on behalf per student and we pay the other $6,000 to make up the total amount of the announced tuition for the tech center some programs that go across all the grades Randolph Pre-K all the way through the 2012 grade in future I'd like to call this number apart because that's a very big number and it would be helpful to have a better understanding of how that special education assessment is priced but right now what it shows is across the instruction and special education and also support services and special education so if a student is receiving special education services for assisting with mathematics that would be the instructional piece if they are receiving speech and language pathology support that would be the support services piece and right now they are both combined so we don't really see the difference between what's instruction and what's support services then we have the school board and the oversight is over all of the above so they may think that they are just looking out to the Pre-K 6 but they are responsible for the 712 as well so they are over all the grade ranges super likewise the superintendent office is responsible for all the grade levels and the business office is responsible for the grade levels so you can see that where do you see the customer seeing the superintendent's office or the central office sometimes simple office might be several hundred thousand dollars of assessment when we pull apart the services that we get from the district gets from the central office what's left for the cost of the superintendent is just thirty nine thousand and you can't even get a decent car thirty nine thousand so they don't even go there in the business services there are two expenses one is assessment so for the central office staff that does the business work which includes human resources and payroll accounts payable the share that belongs to Rochester Stockbridge Unified District is sixty thousand this is the other interest short term interest that we pay on the tax anticipation of us it's just one month but it belongs to the business office according to the statement so if we look down the bottom here if I change the font size you'll be able to see what these numbers were you've got on your hand out but this is basically an overview of the run-through of the various sections of the expenditure budget Mr. Chairman I'm sure I have the proper command to sit down Peter you take the question David a couple questions you were going to clarify do we have clarity that the 158,000 small schools grant for Rochester is the correct figure for this year we had a question he said yes I don't know he said he's not yet found whether the state has changed the number the state the number reflects what we received last year there's not been a lot of clarity from on Peter as to whether that number would be changed because of the change in students that are here or not in transportation does that number include anything for co-curricular transport kids between campuses for any programming does it include field trips perhaps if we were moving kids between schools to work on a show or to do something like that we haven't put any money in for that yet lastly the things that you pulled out I'm assuming that they had all been in the central office just the plain old central office assessment when you pulled them out you used the same the same assessment formula those were the technical questions that popped to my mind does anyone else on the board have questions no but I did just want to comment that I was quite encouraged looking at our per pupil spending that we're at $18,600 in this budget and that our tax rate how nicely we were able to attain we're actually so far below what we're allowed to have so we're in really good shape even when sitting in front of us right here I have a lot of questions can we start from the top and go down and if anyone has questions can we do this I have a wonderful question on you moved the funding for both schools programs into the budget the winter our winter wellness ski program we were asked to put that for both schools into the budget what line would that be on David field trips is what I believe we have decided last time those field trips and field trip busing would that be 42 line 42 it would be transportation in student costs it would be line 42 field trips we have a combined of $12,060 for combined field trips for our district and then our field trip busing is $12,190 it's in on the Rochester side we have ski charts on top the Stockard side includes a trip to Keywaden and also as far as I was told they'd like to take a trip to a zoo somewhere and I tried to beef up the Rochester side so that they could maybe do a joint trip for both of those things where's the Stockard ski program I think it's the question yes we need to get those numbers and depending if you want to stick with Milbury Snowball or you want to go a different route I think we should just whatever program or the run but they should be put into the budget the Stockbridge side does not include ski program so that needs to be added about Rochester side does and the mileage for the Rochester side is $18.95 so I'm guessing if you put 20 or 100 in there it would be extra miles to Stockbridge that's just the mileage unless they chose another ski area well the big thing is that ski needs to be in the budget so the kids can ski just one thing I wanted to make the border where we did look into and I think it was right there in the cross country area they can't take both schools at once because they don't have enough small size boots we tried to see if we could do that and I'm pretty sure it was on the cross country side that they didn't have the right number of sufficient size equipment to take all the little kids at once so to Megan's point where it happens is near nor there we just want them to get out of their skiing that the program is important yes I don't think in terms of Holberg the Outdoor Center that we have to add anything for Stockbridge if it's not in there because our one bus isn't going to fill up with just Rochester kids there's going to be plenty of room for Stockbridge's fifth graders or whatever grade decides to go do you guys go to Starbase? actually yes and we're getting Starbase lined up with we're going to send our you guys go every other year we're going to send just our fifth graders next year and then we're on the every other year scene together because our sixth graders have already gone when I get started with the next year that Stockbridge did not go to Starbase this year they go every other year they went last year so they won't be going this year so they'll go again next year next year this is the year that Starbase needs to be in the budget I'm just trying to clarify to get the application the application at the at committee meetings we had it seemed like there was interest in our sixth graders or fifth graders doing the key weighting program with Stockbridge I'd love to see that number in here it's not just a field trip it's a four night experience that's in the Rochester side I did put $3,500 in there for key weighting in Stockbridge both under field trips on line 42 so it is 42 just to clarify who sits in there for Stockbridge and Rochester I didn't really ask you whether you wanted to go I'm so sorry where does the math FTE come into here I don't see the math for Stockbridge there's salary where does that fall under would that be like 31 in general well there's three primary teachers and then there's a 0.6 for math what line do you want I'm not because I don't see it in here it would be in a general education education instruction well I was unaware that we might have pumped up Donna Gallin's FTE's they may not have been pumped up in the right place she's in for a library of 0.2 that's correct that's correct number for that what's going on here what's going on here and this is new as of yesterday that she came to me and said we've gone to look at the Williamstown program which is where they teach content specific work and she'd like to work with Mr. Brown the fifth and sixth grade teacher to try to to work one of them work on literacy and social studies and the other one to work in math so we could try to do what they are really good at each of them and so the hope was that we would be able to have the time of the budget to be able to make that split and those kids would be worked with both of those teachers so if I didn't put it in math in the right place I'm not sure we backed it out that way I think it's under instruction in the general category but there's only three FTEs well before she left just a little while ago she said it was in the wrong place that's why I'm saying it to you okay let's write it here now there are three under remedial she's a third and fifth grade math but that's where she said to put it so we're working with her on making sure that's categorical that she's in here though there are three positions that are in that 1.2 that's a pretty small portion of it I was wondering where and there's the math person and there's the remedial teacher so there are three I'll make sure we clarify that tomorrow first question why did part go up point one for Rochester because we believe that there were too many classes for her to teach within the time allotted that there are there was a need to give a little more time in art to be able to accommodate a number of kids that needed to be there it went up to a point five but the salary went down by five thousand I don't know about the salary but I put in the position I pumped up the position David you know why the salary might have changed can we back something out of there so we just tried to right size it according to the amount of classes that we're going to be seeing and under the same category of art I'm curious why the fiscal year 16 and 17 art was 35,000 and 36,000 but this year without the high school it's 32,000 where are you looking number 73 73 what was it Johnny fiscal year 16 it was or I have written down 16 17 it was 35 and 36,000 approximately that's what it says in the town report and you're not looking at salary looking at the total art I didn't have the report with me last week it's the high school position it's being paid I'm sorry what's your question so the art total number line 73 fiscal year 16 and 17 the actual amounts were 35 and 36,000 and that's with the high school so now without the high school we're at 32,000 it's only a $3,000 difference irrational and I also noticed that on the guidance I believe the total is about the same as well as the administrative assistant well let's just go back to the art per second 0.5 would be how many classes how many high school see I think that's what people have to understand about these classes the high school didn't take up like a full half of the schedule right that's what it's all about how many classes with the kids the elementary would be well we have a pre-k and then we'll have a k and a 1 a 2, 3, a 4, 5, 5, 6 so they'll be 6 so 7 through 12 didn't have an art class not always there's a row full right that's what you said there was a high school art class there was one high school art class family had one art class now the elementary is different they must take it and they all have high school I believe drama and language are both bitter arts drama is is language true? so there's your difference that could be we're running high schools it's a little different I asked about the staff counselor why could we refer to the number line that you're 1 out of 7 maybe his body can speak to this as it relates to guidance we did and the model we're opting for now carries is we have implemented and drafted this budget we keep the guidance position at full time and one of the rationales there is that sometimes with some of our families there are so many people working with them they can't sort out the system and there's frustration and sometimes they withdraw from services one of our thoughts is that we would have the guidance well our thought is that we would have the guidance counselor pick up the SAP responsibilities as well as trying to do some additional outreach with some of our families I don't know if this is the case in Stockbridge but in Rochester we have a significant priority and absentee problem that we also have to start doing outreach to families for if we're going to change that in the previous rendition for Stockbridge it was a .3 which is a day and a half in this rendition it's two days so that was bumped a little bit because we really we've got to see kids that need some significant help and we needed a guidance counselor another half day I'm not sure that's even enough but that's what we did and shove me down quickly if I can but is this a possibility a full-time position that we can share between schools well you really pay somebody a full and they're going back and forth and then you're really getting the this is one of those things that you know we get a full-time and why are we thinking both schools both schools love their guidance counselors I mean I'm going to put it right out there they really like people that work in those positions so yeah we could do it sure but I want you to know that they do good work they've done we're trying to hold on to good people and I thought one of the questions we had that you were going to follow up with the Stockbridge guidance counselor was to do the same thing there that Bonnie's advising to do in Rochester and to move the SAP responsibilities she has the time and the capacity to take that schedule and then yeah this funding is about I think it's on the line there around $7,800 yeah and wrap that into the guidance yeah well she's got to work another half day I mean I don't know whether that's enough it might not be enough but that's what I did from last addition to this one there's another half day in there and the only thing I would say Bruce I'm just going to take an alternative look at this a bit I really believe that the Rochester school as it is with its 90 kids is a full-time position for a guidance counselor I don't know that we could share it and not be cutting back on some things we think we need to do well fair enough I just looking at guidance if guidance is a very important position and we've got something very good there at Stockbridge shouldn't we be trying to get them .5 whatever is going to get some insurance or something like that I mean you know right and that is a very it looks on paper like it's a very inequitable situation but I'm just being honest with you about no I think you're right we're not going to give her up I mean everyone I'm just one I mean what you see is what you get that's it why can't we just I think there are significant problems behavioral problems at Stockbridge that we should use a problem the problem is that she's shared with another school so you can't have her to the point where she won't be able to I know she works at Killington part-time so I'm just trying to could we see if we could do at least a point well if you're interested in that we certainly could I mean Bonnie's comments made sense last week I think they do here which is if we could drop the SAP counselor money and roll that over to Mary and have her do the same thing at Stockbridge that the counselor is doing in Rochester where you have more of one point of contact for the families and I you mentioned last time that she was working she does have other obligations but if she's got the capacity I think I would rather have her expand her presence at the school and not have a someone coming in from Clare Martin or wherever the SAP person is so we're saying yes to point five here we'll see what she's doing and to pay Peter we'll rob SAP Paul which is fine but we get revenue for SAP going the way Bonnie is doing it by the counselor with the SAP you still get the revenue do you get the revenue from if the guidance does the SAP I'm not sure about that yeah we write the grant we get the money we get the revenue so would she get benefits I know David the question is would she get benefits for being a half-time person there's a threshold that you have to go over to get and we would not be there would be two different schools two different districts 15 I don't know what she does it's always possible it has been for three years to have a lot of time in two different districts one district says we'll put in one block of benefits we'll charge you for the portion of the other district for example in Roxbury for example Roxbury and Webstown would share a physical teacher and Roxbury would take on the responsibility of offering the benefits and then they would charge three days a week's worth of benefits or two days a week's worth of benefits the situations in the past and stockings that's exactly how it's been handled our previous music teacher she was a 0.4 in Reading or somewhere and then 0.2 and us in two other districts and at least in this area the way it's been handled is whichever district employs her either first or for the longest is the district that offers the benefits then that district back bills the supporting districts whatever their share is because it's hard enough for someone to come to your school one day a week to tell them oh you can come here one day a week and not have any kind of health insurance or retirement benefits makes hiring impossible oh you understand that there is a benefits package even our portion of it would follow that decision correct it's not a straight salary deal is this something that could happen this negotiation doesn't have to be in place before we vote on the budget it's something that could be negotiated afterwards I would like you to be fully aware of what you're doing before you vote on this so we have some sense of what that part share might be a 50.5% of health and insurance could we get that normal writing these down David yeah he is I see him he's writing something going backwards to music we'd increase I'm sorry 8.5 we increased the stock bridge from 0.2 to 0.4 but the salary only went up $300 that's a good question it should be more should you hear the question David so number 85 the music teacher we had a 0.2 for stock bridge and we changed to 0.4 but the salary only went up $300 actually before we didn't have a listed for FTE but she was working 0.2 yeah we bumped that up another day so but I don't I can't speak for the salary part of it no I think that number is incorrect you should double check on 85M which also would effect 85O and 85F yeah and depending on how he calculates FICA if that's a if that's a percentage formula in cell M87 for example when that salary number changes to a more accurate number M85 it's going to bump that up as well so you remember the scenes here right here is a variety of different ways of doing this all happening at the same time sometimes it was just a number dropping for salary and sometimes there was FTE and sometimes there was something that was connected to the teacher's group something like that what I'm trying to do is keep it linear so you'll see adjustments from one room to the next which is to do with getting a cost or a present to a linear rational yes even down to the workers comp and on the part of the insurance it wasn't showing up there's a question now it's going to show up for the movie and that's not either right yet it's going to get there long term as a movie sometimes it'll show up in one line that was covered in the whole school but it's in there somewhere you just have to pull it out to put it in the right spot but I hope it's in there somewhere there's an amount in there somewhere there's the right amount right is the total amount correct between the supervisor and me for that position there's 36,000 for a full time FTE oh well it depends on how long the teacher's worked and there's a lot of things that factor into that three minutes because then they need to check those numbers and we'll write sizes and that's that same one we were talking about for music and moving on guidance the nurse 129 we had 0.5 and 0.5 I'm wondering why we changed that thought we were good with that last time number plate 129 129 129 well I think because of the and we could change it back but we thought that probably this was a more equitable split because of the number of students in each of the buildings that right now there's a the nurse is doing I think practically 80-10 or 80-20 so we really believe that by boosting up and pulling down Rochester a little bit and boosting up Stockbridge a little bit we were getting closer to the true number of service we also did mention still comes out the 1.0 and this position is a position that is able to move out needed I think that's the point we made last time I thought I remember we were going to leave at 50-50 understanding that if a youngster with high medical needs moves into either school then you have to adjust that nurse's time you can't say no they can't go down there because she's supposed to be here on Tuesday so the nurse is going to have to let us know based on student needs that's why we had gone to a 50-50 that's why we said we were just going to put that down understanding it's going to change every year because it was 50-50 last time the bottom line doesn't really matter it does I know but we talked about keeping it the same no that's kind of remember I'm going to ask you if you say that it's 60-40 or 50-50 the same dollars in the years but if you're saying that somebody goes to one office two days a week another office two days a week and is available across it's a different kind of situation and it's up to you how you want to call it and since there are 90 students it's 30 students there's a rationale for that and that's what we do I'm going to finish by pointing this out when you don't preclude the possibility of moving across the need and that gives you a base that's more important to you so what do you want to do you want to stay with 50-50 you want to go 60-40 it really doesn't matter as long as the last line is one so I guess it would be more equitable if they're looking at this budget for this first year when they've broken it out I think they want to stay more equity in terms of share but equal doesn't mean the same remember our enrollment is 60% of the total enrollment there enrollment is 40% so we should see a breakdown of 60-40 and I think in this particular to be equitable to truly be equitable you would see more of a 60% you know but I mean for this particular I'm fine with 60-40 I just wondered why it was changed because we talked about leaving the same I heard a loud cry from the crowd that they wanted equity in the split between both schools and I was reacting to that I think you ought to take the percentages out and just put a 1.0 at the other ends and you know that they're going to serve the whole board yeah that's a good idea there's a music too if you can I don't know whether that David allowed that I think it's important for someone who's got regular regularized duties in a place to have it accurately reflect the percentages see there's really no place for her in Stockbridge anyway so seriously we're going to get to that yes we are so how do we do it you can do whatever you want 60-40 60-40 I know I crossed it three different times I don't think we care 180 180 administrative assistant and this gets to the bigger question of buildings which starts with buildings and grounds but why 1.5 I made that recommendation for 1.5 based on usage based on demands on leases time based on the fact that I know it sounds a bit of a stretch but 90 youngsters generate just that much more just that many more phone calls trips to the office kids who are sick et cetera et cetera so we have two this year 1.5 and the thought is someone would be at the front desk to handle all those other things that three three and a half hours in the morning so that Lisa could get all of the myriad of financial and personnel things that she does and then she would take over that front desk in the afternoon I accept that there were 10 days added to the Stockbridge administrative assistant contract it works 194 days for next year 10 days to that should the base salary of the two administrative assistants be the same no because they have different amounts of experience qualifications the admin assistant is higher than what it was for the high when the high school was open in 17 it was 52,000 you know what there's a little I just found this out the day before yesterday I can't explain why but what I can say is the figure for this year is less than it actually is the entire salary for the second administrative assistant position is not in that line it's someplace else in the budget I found a little note from budget work last year but I can't find it was 52,000 we're looking for the administrative assistant salary for both administrative assistants so line 180 says 64,000 the fiscal year 17 less salary office manager finance and a salary receptionist and the total is 52,000 so why is that higher now well it's two years later as far as salaries go just in 10,000 three people read me those people getting your reading salary office manager finances one 40,000 and the salary receptionist so I would like 10 to 12 that was their FY actual well I know that we had a similar situation where there was only a part time over here in the high school and now is Ryan a full time let us talk about names two full time there was a part time administrative assistant over in the high school and that was not cutting it we thought we were going to be able to do that so we had to bring, we brought one back that was a full time so I'm not sure the budget is not showing that properly because of wherever somebody decided to put those lines but I know we tried it with a full high school to do just one and a half but we weren't able to and what I did is I tracked responsibilities that the office assistant, the full time administrative assistant has the handles payroll finance, professional development mandatory training all that stuff and decided that we could cut back a half a position but I do not believe that one administrative assistant can fulfill all the other efficiencies between the districts that we can do together and as you say this last thing and then I'll answer that so I don't think when we look at that that we can fulfill all of the obligations that we expect of the administrative assistance position in Rochester with one position I do think we're going to need that half a position I wonder if there's a different job description in Stockbridge maybe there's different job responsibilities that our full time administrative assistance might have taken on some responsibilities when we get to town voting day are we going to be able to defend that because Bonnie's not on the board making this decision who can defend that well we do have 90 kids that if you need to call 90 kids it's different than calling 50 kids well now she's doing a great job it's an example it's just more of an example that there's that many more kids and sometimes we have 12 kids that aren't accounted for and sometimes we have 14 sometimes we have and those calls have to be made home to everyone to make sure the child years the child there were the child but to answer your question Jenny yes I think after this board gets through its first year you'll start to find areas where you will you will find efficiencies I think right now the board the communities are learning to put a budget together and work together and it's hard to know where the efficiencies can be can you restart how many schools with 90 kids have and how many teachers they have I did not do that what I did is I looked very carefully at what the expectations here are of our community and our teachers our kids our parents and determine that yes we could go down a half a position but I really didn't think we could go down a full position and still meet all the obligations that we have and I just made my very best assessment of what I felt we needed to provide the same level of service because I don't think the service level is going to go down I don't think anybody is going to expect less from this position and the reality is we don't have that many 7 through 12 graders here right now so it's not like the workload is going to be cut in half for the folks who are here it just doesn't translate into that no but a couple years ago there were more students and if they could just barely handle it then can't they handle it now all I can do is offer you my best assessment which is we need one and a half positions and what does everyone else think about that besides we used to have two full time administrative assistants and the current one who is handling the majority of everything took on the job of the second administrative assistant and then an assistant was hired that did not have the same qualifications experience etc at a much lesser pay so the person who is handling the bulk of everything was handling it for two positions so she got a pay high makes sense and thank you for doing your research Bonnie it sounds like this is the right number I was going to add the next time you see the budget this line would be wrong or not because in fact we only have the 125 admin assistants here at Rochester I discovered today that we don't have 1.5 we have 0.5 and we have one office manager and the office manager for example the head is a salary position that is not under the collective bargaining agreement I discovered that today so I'm learning as you are holding lots of things so we're not talking about apples and apples we're talking about apples and oranges she's a hero so you're saying that one of those two employees is no longer under the support services contract and she also works year round right you can work year round on the support services contract the big thing is that for a lot of people you have to pay them more because the support services salary the salaries you get under the support services contract are often not when you can hire someone to do it there's a similar kind of thing happening in some of our districts I know it's not happening this year in our district here but in other districts in the custodial area the maintenance area is being serrated into a lot of maintenance and custodians and maintenance is outside the union in a salary and has wider duties some more administrative survival right a lot of places you have the food service directors as well they take you can't hire someone under the support services contract salary structures generally to do that level of management of menu planning so you hire a manager instead and keep your union people just work the point is still on there it is the decision of the board the unified board but it burdens the dollars but we've heard the input from one side I just would like to say I won't say names but the person in Rochester is fabulous she works so hard and she does such a great job and you're really lucky to have her and I think she does do a job in half but I think our gal is really great too it just seems like we finally got someone and the continuity would be great and I would really hate to lose her as well so if there was a way it seems like that doesn't seem like a lot for what she does I was there last week and she was on clogging toilets and doing all sorts of tasks in this little space of time and I just think she's great and I wouldn't want to lose her because she found a better job someplace else because I do love yours I mean yours is great, she's fabulous and I think the question is not because for Stockbridge there is that one FTE that person has a full-time position there's not a cut or a reduction is she just art she was working 194 days a year she extended her 240 days so we increased her from last week to give her I'm so happy I thought I said the same thing last week okay Joanne if you are happy we're happy so happy and hope she's happy and pushy you are right into that so she makes the same amount of money she'll make more she'll make more so she's working more days so is this number correct has this been increased David told me that the numbers were adjusted okay it books the same it is the same I mean 10 days isn't much but it's the same well it's a couple thousand bucks it did not change so David they're saying that that salary line for Stockbridge did not change line 180 she might be insulting but the last budget line 203 she was at a 21 as well right she was at a 21 but she will be working more days right yeah that number hasn't moved it was 2406 2406 607 now so we need to check the number in line 180 so you're saying she's actually more than a 0.1 no she's working more days more days she's working more days for the same amount right so what's that are kind of confusing because the FTE actually means are you working a full day a full number of days during the week we have supports that like cafeteria people don't really work during the summer unless we have a summer camp program so in the sports staff there's school year employees there's extended employee extended year employees and full year employees so she's a full time extended year employee now full time school year employees and the rationale was because we were going to give her a little more time before school starts and at the end after school has ended to wrap things up so that's five days on each end is what I would project it might be seven on one and three on the other I don't know I'm thinking probably more on the front end and less on the back maybe but I'm just glad we put some more time in there so I'm sure but if we explain the why like the boy's position why you found out for 40% so for students it explains why for 90% we would need 1.5 I think that makes sense that's what it's that's what it's at can we go back one to the principal salaries sorry, 179 is the 8708 a placeholder for Rochester I haven't we've talked about the model for next year I want to do that in non-public with them and then come out and tell you what that's going to be it's a decision if they want to go in a particular direction but I need some time with them to talk about it and we haven't yet so I mean I've crossed by a couple ideas with them but we haven't it's going to be their decision but I don't have some time and not probably because there are personalities involved so right now it's a placeholder, yes but I don't expect it to be that way moving forward and that does include so Stockbridge used to have a 0.8 principal in the beginning of this year changed to a 1 with funding from the public of trustees I always get the name of that wrong and this does show the full correct but the numbers that are in there if you guys accept what I'm talking about they're not going to say they're going to go down not to be mysterious but no principal salary would go down the total would go down so onto buildings and gowns can I go back sorry go for it 144.504 program is there still OT services listed I think before it used to be lumped together but I'm not sure where that it's like a it invoices for this here there are no invoices for OT services there isn't OT I can guarantee that because my daughter works with her in Stockbridge under the 504 program it was not built to 504 it didn't show up as 504 so what will it show the point is let me just get to the board as well as the public the budget is not a series of envelopes it's not a series of cash a lot of people think of budget like that but I don't think of the budget like that and I don't believe state law requires the budget to be treated like that rather the budget is a plan of action to accomplish some goals so to answer the question about OT in specific terms let's say that there's no need for any physical therapy there's no reason why that money cannot be moved to cover OT but it needs to have a pocket of money to come from it's not a set of envelopes with cash in them that's the point the budget is as a whole the voters don't vote for every line in the budget they vote for the total if you look at the board even the board doesn't vote for the line items and certainly the public doesn't what is the total amount we're going to spend 6 million dollars like see a 3 million dollars because it is and the administration says this is how we think we're going to spend it and the board says well I think that sounds reasonable but then different students come in different needs come in and there's a need to change the plan to meet the circumstances that arise during the course of the year and as long as the total amount that's being approved by the voters is used appropriately it doesn't mean it's exactly it's not cash in an envelope so can we add a line item for that do you have an idea if OT services are under physical therapy no so one of the most important things that I have a responsibility for is reporting to the state accurately what we're actually doing so we can see that I need to report absolutely and the 504 program that's where we are 504 504 504 the stock which is a 504 the stock which is a 504 right you had in the previous budget you had $7,000 lumped into just one line of contract services 504 and then you broke it out for this version you broke it the same $7,000 out into three lines of psych speech and language and PT and we're just the concern is we know that there was OT there was OT offered and we're making we want to make sure it doesn't fall through the cracks and again I understand you're saying that if there's not an item that says OT on the budget we know that doesn't mean we can't have OT what I just want to make sure of is that whatever envelope those dollars that were paid for last year came out of whether it was just one lump line that said contract services that were not dropping dollars that we're not going to find that we really had another $2,000 of OT somewhere because that's in some ways dropping and forgetting about those things is often how deficits happen because as you spoke of fairly well last time the point of like private fund raised funds being kind of treated as an unofficial revenue source and then when those when the bake sales don't pan out that year and suddenly you're faced with either drawing down monies to support the services that you thought you were paying for with private fund raising and generating a deficit where you're cutting a service here that I think it's the same logic we want to make sure that we know there was OT at the school if it's tucked into psychological services really $1,000 and it was 2,000 of OT and 2,000 of PT and 2,000 of speech language whatever I mean as long as the total the seven grand is the accurate total and not that we've forgotten that we've dropped OT in next year's okay great thank you well I mean I think as you said this is what the needs of one or two kids or three kids or however many kids are getting five or four services at Stockbridge and we're trying to project that forward so you know a budget isn't it's also not an upper cap it's our best guess what we think is a reasonable assumption our spending is going to be and we know we're not going to get laser focused but we want to make sure that we're showing what we have we choose not to take money out from the bank to cover a particular kind of spending can I have to stay in the bank in which case it goes into service at the end of the year it comes back to the taxpayers two years later or it may be that there's another need that arises that the principal says this is the most important thing we have to do this year this kid's coming and doesn't have the service and we need to provide the service and so it could be the budget could be as a management tool not just checking what the approved budget but the adjusted budget could be made to cover some other kind of expense or maybe the boil blew up and you got to cover the cost of the boil so it will work maybe so I'm a kind of a filter of what the opportunity arises that we could go to New York to listen to something the orchestra or so that's good so that's a really good tip and then this difference in what we're spending versus what we've been allocating and what is that difference how much money I thought of getting asked that question but I didn't have the time to do it but I will bring it to the next year are you referring to how much between the five percent allowable before our tax rate goes up I was wondering that too and also what is that actually money that's available how much other people's money can we spend before we have to go somewhere buildings and grounds buildings and grounds let's see that it's like fuel and electricity and we want to know what each building is actually what is the expense of each building did you get the poof report as far as heat I do have the poof report it doesn't answer this question it didn't break down what are the expenses we do have separate meters for each building so at the business office we could check the electricity bills and find out should we only have the elementary school building on here no the district is going to own all of Rochester's property we were going to have to pay for a high school a junior high school will be out the building no that was you get the long sum and if you decide to discard part of it if the town that goes back to the town or whatever that's a whole different question what is the loop point we move good the buildings and grounds budget what is that based on is that assuming that we are operating both buildings as we are right now or is it based on operating elementary or part of the high school these numbers right here that we're looking at here makes the assumption that I wanted to put a worst case scenario so that we could change it downward this assumes both buildings are operating we obviously will not need the full high school building we also without limiting without backing down on opportunities for kids in the Rochester side of our district cannot all fit into the elementary building in fact physically we cannot all fit into the elementary building I think that's a discussion after the budget this number theoretically we should be able to take down it's just a matter of how much so we could move using this number it's not going to be any higher than this number if we say had all the elementary kids in here and operated you know gym and food service program out of the elementary it's still going to come under this number the way I would answer that is that firing any unseen huge fights in the cost of fuel oil, propane, electricity this should be a worst case scenario regardless of how we use the two buildings this should be sufficient to cover any use that the board ultimately well it seems to be out of bounds more than the stock rich one I think in all due respect the board hasn't wrapped their head around exactly what they want to do they've had a request but they haven't really debated that amongst themselves they really haven't had time to talk about it and that's one of those unfinished things that we... well this is what Ploof was all about was at least going to tell us about zones and they did tell you about zones so what can we break apart in this building do you want to do it now or do you want to go through the budget and go back to it because it's a fair amount of information I can give but I think it totally relates to this right on the budget this budget comes in it is only going to get better and we already we already don't... but there's serious questions about the intent can we finish the budget? it seems like that's a whole separate discussion I think we're off towards the end yeah so buildings and grounds we are is basically where we're at out of the budget 244 the field trips Bruce I don't know if you could comment on what what succeeded that number was zero the last time I believe yes the trips 244 you said well I basically there was a high number on the Rochester side and nothing on the Stockridge side but obviously Stockridge is taking field trips and they need to be supported for being able to do that we don't have a number for it there's a number there now but I'm saying for what they worth well part of this is confused about the number back on the first page that it says transportation we took some of the number off that field trips on line 42 and we tried to bring it into the line because the line that's field trips 244 is the going and coming to that so it's a little different the other one would be fees and things like entrance fees for field trips and things like that like you wait in previous budgets was field trips had transportation it was probably put into one category and it all came out of that so what Dave was trying to do is rearrange this into categories that are right so you can see the formula here for the transportation Stockridge says 1800 plus 400 plus 500 400 was the number across about 500 was the cost of transportation cross on each of those 1800 so you just took a number and put it in from that we were trying to sort those two columns well I believe that PTO usually pays for the field trips she'll know I did that what I'd like to see to the field trips that PTO paid for we discussed in our educational committee about bringing the funds that PTO has been raising into the budget for less than the pressure on the PTOs I think that's what we discussed because it needs to be something that we can be consistent with every year same with the Winter Wellness Program just to know that those funds are there for our kids every single year in both of our communities so it's been a discussion to bring the fundraising portion into our budget and no defence to the PTO I'm grateful for what's been done it was just just to be consistent we have an analogous to the individual instruction programs we have in the budget if we took it out of the budget as we say well the federal grant will cover it we don't see what the cost is and if things change by the funding source we thought about the expense so we decided we're not going to so the general idea is best not to dent things out we've been doing accounting for it's only a state that expects that we will not dent out so we don't have to what the federal government does it's hard to find the agility until we go over the 5% then we all have to pay for it again sorry we said this year the taxes are going to start going up if you're taking all this money and moving it around in previous meetings we've had such a cry for equity fair share so we're trying to make that happen and also I didn't pad that number that's just a real number but it's the idea that we're putting the number in without actually spending that was negotiated in the original agreement I know you attend the meetings that you that those expenses were put into the agreement that we voted on it so just let me clarify for field trips I guess I just want to say this again in terms of the Halbert Outdoor Center the Montchartin Museum which is where first grades a lot of first grade teachers like to go Park Safari which is I think probably the closest zoo perhaps that youngsters access the Boston Science Museum if the teachers from both schools want to take those trips and come together neither school is going to fill up a bus so the money that I put in on the Rochester column for those particular trips I just mentioned is also going to cover the largest part of the expense for Stockbridge because it's the bus and the driver so I'm comfortable that unless there's a lot of other field trips to either myself or Bruce there's adequate money in there for both schools to do everything that we've talked about the exception is the winter wellness and I think assuming it might be Riker and what's the other one it's not more assuming it might be that I think 22, maybe $2,300 because ours is almost 19 would easily cover winter wellness driver and mileage for Stockbridge and then I think we have the field trips well covered unless there's something major that someone's thinking about doing they haven't told us I think we can look at what we take this year for winter wellness and just make sure that gets added in and that's what I did Carl when I did these we just need to get that number from Stockbridge exactly so for 244 the transport field trip I know the breakdown doesn't matter but when we present it to the public it does matter for this year so if that $12,000 is a good number it seems like $60,40 is the magic number here what's that $60,40 because the goal is also to get our kids together and there's going to be savings on the buses by going together so if we can do that 624 244 64 and can we also again when we see this budget again next week can we have some sort of budget entry for the cost of whatever programming the educational committee and the staff and the administration things going to happen we say all along we'll bring kids to Stockbridge to do this, we'll bring kids to Rochester to do that something you know we've got to have an entry for that we do that's an estimate of how many trips we might take between the two places you know how many times kids from Stockbridge are going to need to be bussed to Roger how many times kids from Rochester are going to need to be bussed to Roger if it's a performance from what I got from Donna and Rochester staff last week was that it was regularly hopefully monthly or monthly with let's try to but if you're doing a performance as we've talked about it's going to be easily five for round trips a week for the final so we just need to and if you do two of those or there's a science fair or something like that we've talked about Olympics and things like that we're talking the week of since we don't know what that number is give me a number how much is it costing I don't mean to figure but how many trips I don't mean a money number what's the school year how many days in the school year would you say 30 30 trips 30 trips back and forth I don't know I don't even know how to guess it he wants a number so we're trying to give him 10 say you add 5 or 4 20 days 20 days these are the figures you can use we'll give you a number it's 95 cents a mile and it's 1925 an hour for the driver what is it for the driver 1925 is this year's where we've been comfortable talking about how often we want to get our kids together it won't be weekly that's not we're just taking these are all steps that we're starting with just see what we can do together what are the exciting programs that we can come up with I think the other thing we have to do is we have to give teachers additional time like we had last week to get together certainly this sense of collaboration is what we want and its value but we can't force it on teachers in either school unless it fits their instructional needs because there is so much they're already trying to do in a day and a week and we have to make sure that these opportunities to come together assist with their instruction not come on top of what we're already at sure and they're appropriate and they're authentic and they're valuable we just need to get in time to generate what those experiences are what we need to do today is we need to say about how many times do they do that so we can put in a figure so we can get them so Megan and Ethan and Janie and some teachers have been involved with the educational steering committee and I was wondering both towns have done the surveys and we're all about STEM and all that kind of stuff and the performances it would be great it's nice to be all enthusiastic about those but it doesn't seem like there's money in the budget for that we can have a line item for special programs that's when you get throughout the year because it would be a shame if we're all excited to be doing that but we're trying to guesstimate the days but I mean that would be in addition to the transportation supplies for STEM or arts and residence unless you want to provide your time terrible thing well it is something that brought it up too it's been part of this for a little while but there's no drama there's no artist or residence I'd like to recommend too maybe looking at the first few times we bring our kids together to really make it a team building activity because I've noticed that kids in Rochester and kids in Stockbridge they do not want to go outside of their little social circles and I remember Jordan telling me last year he was a psych coordinator in one planet he's like every time we have a combined field trip the Stockbridge kids are like no I don't want to go with Rochester or no I don't want to go with Bethel Rochester kids do the same thing you bring them together and on a field trip situation they don't mix summer camp when they're together for four weeks and they're doing a lot of team building stuff that's when good stuff can happen and it really helps them break down their barriers and I think it's unfortunate I don't think it's a healthy thing that our kids are so one example of a success was this wonderful I think it was from just sledding and the younger kids but I do think that is also why we want those 20 trips in there because that's the kind of thing where it's like what a great idea so glad we had the money to get those kids over there and they had a blast and they were talking new friends and all that kind of thing and that's where we started if we're taking the long game of bringing the supervises to campuses together those are the kids who are going to be living I think it also depends on the summer programs and if my kids do summer programs in Rochester and the Stockbridge and in Bethel and they have friends in all three temples and they're a social group I think it's that one time like I said during the summer the kids after the first day or two are like they're bonded but we do a lot of field trips during the summer during the school year and it's like they come together for a field trip and they're definitely separate and then they don't see each other for three months and they come back and they're separate and so I think it's great if we have 20 days in the calendar that we can get kids together and make it a regular thing and they still see kids from Rochester and they still remember their names and I'm like those kids, I don't remember but they still remember all of their friends from Rochester I was in Chelsea in Tunbridge and we were doing basically the same thing, putting a budget together trying to figure out all the things we need and it occurred to me that one thing that might be very very helpful is if both campuses could invest in interactive television so that we can instruct from one place and the kids could be involved on both campuses without having to move anywhere You can but a projection screen is what I'm talking about so that the kids don't have to be in their little screen so that they can be up and I mean you can't let kids go into a room and be unattended, there have to be somebody with them but there could be co-instruction you could use it to do field trips without having to leave the room the blue museum and different places it would really help I think to unite us around instruction without the kids having to actually drive to the campus I think they'd really love it if you'd put it up at recess They're like an angel in recess in the gym I know I'm serious and I suggest that we think the same thing to talk about great, can we have a proposal for the next week's budget that'd be awesome I think that's really cool I don't think we're talking about a lot of money we're not talking about a lot of money I know that I'm not talking about a TV I'm talking about a projection screen and they're really not we've got one at the central office and we use it when people don't want to drive to a meeting they just come in on the go to meeting type of thing and they're there and they can see us we can see them you can put up directions on the screen if a teacher is trying to teach or whatever it doesn't replace being in the room with a teacher but it's pretty close and we wouldn't have to bust them I haven't heard anything mentioned about sports but I think it's one of the best bonding experiences since Rochester and Banffo did the call five years ago and myself was one of the first kids who started playing soccer over Banffo and then it moved on to basketball and baseball those kids and I don't know because I moved to Rochester I heard about like, oh, Bethel and Rochester two of them are so competitive I didn't know why or what the source was based on how it started but I just saw my son just loved playing with the battle teams and it was just like many kids they just interacted so well and they got to know each other so they dated each other I mean, so are you suggesting that we try and find ways that they can play so like sports because the soccer world we may have is totally after school independent it's a tritown that's what I'm saying we're talking, which of course also starts bumping up our trips if we start putting soccer together we do have really nice fields there I think another thing we have to think about that will start emerging is so far we've talked almost exclusively about youngsters getting together to do different activities, do different trips the other wonderful thing that becomes possible is if we have a teacher in Rochester and a teacher in Stockbridge you'll have a specialty area that's really good and I love to teach there's no reason they can't for five or six weeks if it's their choice to go to the other school and be a guest teacher it's like many fulbrights you put an application together and you go down to Stockbridge and you do your thing or you come up to Rochester and you do your thing there's so many ways that we can collaborate once we get this first kind of swath under our belt I hope that that bus number I think is actually really, really important so at the SU or the SU has a person and a half that provide that for the whole SU I don't know whether you're asking more specifically to Rochester itself well particularly Rochester Stockbridge I mean is it their whole curriculum proposal to help with the merge and to utilize the two campuses and to really think about the benefits of bringing these two groups together so that you know of course a lot of that too is the leadership that's found at Stockbridge that you talked about when the leader you know how we figure out that what the principal self is but basically what these folks have been doing is going out and looking at models the staff here and the staff at Stockbridge we've talked to them about some possibilities and here it's a move to go to multi-age which is having two grades in one you know be instructed that way we've talked to them about what Williamstown and Orange and Washington are doing right now and that is having content specialists do the instruction so one person who's really passionate about math will be working in several grades teaching math because they're really good at it love it and somebody else would do the literacy and social studies humanities and maybe somebody else in science so that's some of the things that we've talked to them about and my conversation with Donna Gallant was because they had just gone out and looked at some programs and they were excited about maybe doing that so you know we are talking about various ideas can you post that community engagement for our programming I can't I can't speak to that but maybe somebody else here can it's a statewide organization that trains teachers to go in and do very specific segments related to the arts to help coordinate with teachers so in programming it could be a really excellent idea to think about emerging around particular concepts and also very specifically about this merge doing it successfully through very creative measures and they have an extreme it's a huge resource you should really think about community engagement is called the community engagement and the people that are involved in it one of them actually is the two experts that are connected to it and one of them is the national one of them is very connected to the Lincoln Center and the other one is one of the leaders in education but they are based in Vermont and they have a STEM program and they've worked in Randolph and Windsor it's a movie worthwhile looking at it where are they based out of? that's the thing in Montana so Jenny has a suggestion I think the other thing if we could make it broad enough Faye just passed me something today there are grants out there it's something like for $200 if we could put $200 enough front money you can get $1,000 with the STEM equipment so if we could in that line item include some seed money it's the same thing it's the same thing for when they got I was super smirkus it was like a a couple hundred bucks I think for the school they had a grant that covered the rest of it when they could come in and that would be really fun so since this is a guess what do you want to put in it what kind of money? $25 $5, thank you what we are watching we spend really nearly well we've we've got some we've got some of the other big kids talking about it $5 for both $5 for a total $5 for a total $60, $40 but we're going to spend it together $5 thank you do you hear that David? special projects line for $5,000 it's like the price is running so I think I think we can we can say that so the things that I heard us come up with that we haven't had answers on we need to check the small schools Grant Mount for Rochester we need to add the winter wellness program for Stockbridge we need to add 20 days of transport inter-campus transport we need to add Bruce's interactive gear item or put that together and then add a special projects line for $5,000 so those are the things we're going to we're going to be looking at also a line from 2 line from 2 and we need to correct the salary we need 24 $7 $6 we didn't the 10 extra days weren't added to the the administrative assistant at Stockbridge we don't believe the music salary and Stockbridge is correct and we were going to look at the counselor in Stockbridge and whether or not there was capacity to give her more time there and eliminate the SAP the $7,800 in SAP for Stockbridge I'll be good to go alright just one thing online 264 the tech tuition that's paid on behalf of the state how come that's added in if it's paid for because it's also added on the revenue page okay so it's a wash based on the state gives us money the state takes that money back it comes from the war budget sounds like the way they do business they just want to show us that they gave us money right Carl I'm not sure if you looked on the list it's a 262 grade 7 through 12 right now there's a Stockbridge person that goes to Woodstock I'm assuming that individual parents pay for them but they'll need to be on the list next year it didn't look like he was on the list to me I don't know I'll take a look at that I think I know who it is I knew who it is I just don't want to say please don't say he'll be in 7th grade next year right so he'll move to the list alright um so the building you're going to talk to us about the proof report you're going to talk to us about did you find the 7th Barbs file about the building the module no I didn't do anything you did give me a ballpark number let me talk about it Jerry Cloop owner came over and spent about two hours walking the two buildings with myself and then Jesse Potter our maintenance director joined us he is coming back during vacation because he needs to do further assessment on some aspects of our building they have maintained the two buildings the high school and elementary building for the past two or three years what he pointed out to me is that our buildings have not benefitted well from routine preventative maintenance like most schools in the area aggressive, preventative maintenance it sort of fix things when they break which obviously is not the best way to maintain the building but that's what's been in practice our control systems are a early 70's vintage they're not particularly programmable they aren't able to take advantage of a lot of energy saving steps that we can take there's new controls out that come on and off based on the inside air etc etc we don't really have control systems like that here so the ability to I think the term a lot of us have been using is which building can we shut down where can we shut down the building and that's for the high school this is for both buildings basically his assessment is that it's not very practical to think about shutting down completely either building and sort of here's why the high school building and I passed out a map to everyone and they're going around for folks visiting the high school basically has three zones, three heating zones this commons area that we're sitting in is the largest one heating zone then the second heating zone goes from the shop up through to the mechanical room there at the top of that little ramp and then the third heating zone encompasses the auditorium, the music room the family and consumer science room and out into the to the front lobby area upstairs here overhead in the mezzanine we have a water charged sprinkler system he doesn't recommend that we drain that sprinkler system and he also added that he's not certain that fire code in a public building would allow us to drain that sprinkler system he also raised the issue that if it was decided to drain the sprinkler system we should contact our insurance company because there are insurability issues if you disconnect any sort of safety system so he just brought up those two things just to clarify the water charged sprinkler system is only in zone one it's only upstairs in the mezzanine it's not even right here it's upstairs in the mezzanine over zone one but it's over zone one yes it's over zone one what he recommends instead is if we're not using this section of this building is that we shut the temperature down to 55 he wants to see what's involved with draining the domestic water so many of the classrooms have sinks in them he wants to look at what's involved in draining those systems shutting the temperature down to 50 to 55 and then inspecting closely and often and the reality is that the environment in Vermont doesn't allow us to close a building and walk away without creating huge problems for ourselves one of the other reasons he doesn't recommend discharging the sprinkler system upstairs is the volume of material that's up there there's a lot of records up there we really have to get it sorting that out at some point but right now there's a lot of just paper stuff and things up there the elementary building is essentially one zone the area backed by the preschool room he said something about circulator pumps and that and I don't obviously I'm not a plumber so I didn't get it all but he basically said it's like a little mini zone but it's not independent it can't operate on its own so basically he considers the elementary building excuse me to be one zone to shut down the classroom part of that building he would essentially do the same thing he would bring in whatever equipment he needs drain the domestic water so the fountains and things like that to the classroom blow out the pipes put the temperature down but again he said we have to monitor it closely you have to inspect it frequently and there will be issues that will crop up just because the environment in Vermont doesn't really let you walk away from the building the new addition the addition at the end of the elementary building that has radiant heat in the floor and one of his little concerns about that is one of the things he's going to check into when he comes back is over the vacation week is to look at as to whether or not we've just added to that system if you add glycol to a system it has to be maintained now Jesse Potter spent here four years we've never done any maintenance on it it just hasn't happened one of the situations is if you don't maintain a glycol system it begins to eat away all the seals and everything in your equipment we have begun to experience some leaking here and there and so one of the things he's going to do when he comes back over the vacation is to probably pull the glycol out of that system and inject new glycol into the system because you can't let it sit there if it's doing what he's fearful it's doing it's just going to continue to erode and cause difficulties but he has a way to test he does have a way to test if there's glycol in the system yes he does so basically his assessment from that visit is that it's not going to be as simple as maybe folks have been thinking it was to leave a section of either of these buildings it is possible to shut the temperatures down to drain the water from the classroom systems, drinking fountains, etc but again they have to be monitored closely and inspected frequently I will certainly know more after after he comes back over vacation there is some routine work he has to do but mostly he's going to be looking at sort of delving into the detail so if the board comes back and says this is the section we're not going to be occupying next year what's the very best you can do with it in terms of lowering our cost for meeting I did tell him, I did at one point speak to the board I said I don't believe the board is interested in doing anything that puts either of the buildings at risk of having bigger problems like everything freezes up and pipes burst and ceiling issues and all that that's just the problem which building is neither I'm sure is efficient in terms of this but which building would be less take up less electricity is it cheaper to keep the elementary and keep this at 55 the problem is you need both buildings a little bit of each of the buildings in order to be able to service the kids the cafeteria and the gym or the kitchen and the gym over there if you're going to use this building the auditorium and maybe a couple of classroom like the art room on this building you're going to be over there his sort of guess was, Jamie, that's part of what he wants to look at his guess was obviously here because it's more square footage this is more expensive we'd probably save more money by shutting the temperatures down here than we would doing it anywhere else but again he needs to look into a little more of that when he comes over the break he did say that any of the zones we could deal with shutting down any of the zones so we can shut this down keep one and two we could shut one and two down, keep this shut the wing of the elementary building where the classrooms are simply by lowering the temperatures long term the board needs to think about a plan for replacing our control systems in both buildings because right now we're not able to take very much advantage of any energy conservation because we don't have the appropriate controls to do that we can't fit all the interest students in that building right now we have fit barriers here and we also need 5, 5, 5 and 6 well 6th grade will go on to 6th grade will go on to middle school we have to get the present fit 6th grade will be here still sorry, sorry so they will need to be here no the elementary the elementary population the classroom population could fit into the elementary building where we come up short is trying to fit art music one planet those programs that are in this building the Rochester elementary school is slightly twice as large as the Stockbridge elementary school and it seems like there's some rooms in the Rochester that can be reconfigured to be more equitable to what Stockbridge has I know we talked about a potential modular unit at Stockbridge raising the bar but right now the bar for Stockbridge is far lower than the bar there needs to be somebody needs to look at what can creatively happen in the Rochester elementary before we just say we can't fit right there's two more Rochester will need two more classrooms they have the classroom space but there's the other space I don't know how familiar you are with Stockbridge but a lot of things in Stockbridge happen in the multi-purpose room the OTPT happens in the hallway there's some reconfiguration that needs to be looked at Bruce does not have the numbers on a modular classroom or what the ultimate cost of that would be when you bond it out because you know I really I really thought about this really really a lot because Bonnie made a point of raising the bar for everyone not lowering it but after speaking to a lot of community members and thinking about it a lot I really think that both communities have gone through a lot you guys are losing your middle school and your high school we're merging and we haven't had a principal since February to make any more changes I really think we can configure the elementary school I'm not saying forever just doing this merger there are so many changes going on at least for this next year Stockbridge people will promise guys that's why we came on is that the high school was going to close and now to turn around and say no we're not doing and I'm not saying that we don't do that at some point it's not a question of if it's a question of when and right now I really think to bring the communities together that we really need to kind of stick to what we said I mean the elementary school is twice the size you have twice the kids it's twice the size it seems to me that somehow we could be able to figure out how to make that work May I ask a point that has been raised by different people from different points of view over the course of the evening it is the first year to think about the curriculum first before you start shutting certain things, certain opportunities off it would be a really good thing you might find that in fact the auditorium is extremely functional and critical to the advancement of a really much better curriculum for you all I mean that provides an incredible opportunity for speech writing, for presentations for theatre for lectures for all kinds of things you don't have right now but that's one of the incredible benefits that could be shared likewise the music room could be one of those occasions where you are coming over we have special dedicated spaces here I'm not advocating for one thing or another I'm just saying that actually I think the most important thing is curriculum first to get you really what you want which is something that is really elevated that speaks to the strengths of having a really you know usually increased student body where everybody can benefit from you know these relationships that should be the first thing I agree and I think we all said that the auditorium would be used for certain things I mean we want drama, we want plays and things like that anywhere and it can exist where the passion is where you find a space to do it that can be curriculum I've seen it done all over and again I'm not saying that it's a question of if, I'm saying when and I think you're going the practical matter, the reality is Stockbridge is going to push back because it's not what was said to begin with again, I think once there's more trust once we're together, once we go over that bridge yeah, there's a lot more possibilities but in the beginning I think it's a bad way to start a relationship this ends up, I think we need to start calling on people just to make sure we're going to start over here I always add a lot of the merger meetings and I think one of the attractive parts of Rochester's contribution to this relationship was parts of our campus and so we want to share that and rather than we want to cut space I agree, my children are in the elementary school but we don't need this section of the building but if I don't want to cut things from Rochester kids, I'd rather add things for Stockbridge community things that we don't have here that we can take advantage of in Stockbridge awesome things like we've thrown out some ideas already but maybe that being the farm to table base for the programs, maybe it being the tech center all of our laptops, computers go down maybe it's the media center where the kids have their own YouTube channel and they're doing weather forecasts and product reviews that's what they're doing these days so maybe Stockbridge is the STEM center and just zone 3 and 2 is the sort of arts campus and the kids can take advantage of both campuses so rather than cut things that are good for kids because at the merger meetings I think one of the things was lowering the tax rate and what's going to benefit the kids so let's add to Stockbridge's campus so both campuses are equally awesome and I think we can build on that because apparently our under budget there's ways we can do one time expenses to start these things in both areas and I think that's a conversation that we need to keep going put the funds for let's not cut to go down let's bring the other side up because then next year when this is all one budget and there's no Rochester and Stockbridge side anymore it's one we know what programs and we're all sharing them but last year I was looking at proposals from the principal about expanding space and there had been some work she had done in terms of we had suggested that she not look at permanent construction because we didn't have a clear enough vision we thought for that but there had been some work I'm looking at putting a modular classroom outside at the time the thought had been that that would be a preschool building which made it more expensive because of the facilities and the bathrooms and the things that their preschool kids were a part of my law to have in their space I was hoping that we would have had some information on that but putting in some sort of some sort of space for specials for a maker space for an art room or something like that because again there already was the Stockbridge board was already feeling that that building was somewhat cramped for all the programming. Greenhouses, Yerks, there's other ways to expand it I just wanted to mention I live in Stockbridge on the Dillingham Tax Collector in our town and we do have quite an elderly population so when I come to this my kids went to Stockbridge and then they came there for high school and I think this merger is a good thing but I also feel let's get through this first year and get some of these great ideas going but also we have to look at numbers too and when we have some firm numbers on the kids how many kids we're going to have in Stockbridge how many kids in Rochester and how we can bring them all together there's a great gym here that so much can be done in if you know as far as utilizing the Rochester Grammar school and I'm just kind of paying attention to because we do have quite an elderly population in Stockbridge and a lot of people on fixed incomes and people many of them aren't they're trusting our board and trusting people who are coming here to talk about money and how it's going to be spent and I just really want to make sure that we're fiscally responsible and get through the first year and see how things go and hopefully we can expand and make some changes that'll be good for everybody can we get the company ploof can we get an itemized cost for opening and closing each different section of the building and possibly think about it like hey we're going to close the building for these two months but then we're going to open the auditorium section because we're going to throw a joint holiday you know concert or something together you know we're going to open this section for these two months and like what would cost to open and close at will so then we're not cutting slashing for the whole like goodbye for the whole year forget about it but we're saying bring me super strategic how much is it going to cost to open and close different sections of the building at a time for these things that we've decided we want to do this is what the curriculum draws us to do this is what the kids and the community wants us to do we see we can utilize this space for one month to accomplish this goal what's it going to cost us to open and close it for that duration of time I think that would be really valuable I can certainly get that information what I'm guessing is it's going to be cost prohibitive because both of the buildings when he talked about closing them down involve bringing in equipment to blow out the lines drain the lines and my guess is it's probably going to be cost prohibitive to do that for a month or two months or a sort of shorter timeline but I certainly can ask him that can you talk about what we're draining lines for 55 degree weather too I'm confused as to when you say we're taking the temperature down to 55 and it seems like that's one step and then the other step involves draining a line and really winterizing building like it was a deer camp or something well one of the things that he explained to me is we will have some water pipes near outside walls so if you take it down to 50 or 55 there's still the chance that those pipes are going to freeze when it's 15 below because they're on an outside wall they're near a window they're at a drafty spot whenever and that's why he said we have to be monitoring and looking at the building very very carefully so I think it's a tremendously complicated question and I feel like we have heard a couple of options one option is basically leave everything alone and move all the kids in here keep paying for the heat that's one option another option is to have is to do the kind of thing that you were talking about but all of these are very complicated and we have a tremendous force here but also with I don't blame Stockbridge for looking at that fuel bill and going crazy I don't blame him Rochester has an ethical responsibility to see how that number can be reduced but you can't do it in a week you need engineering information you need options maybe you can come in here maybe if you start changing the plumbing and changing the sensors and stuff you can improve we don't know we don't know so I think you ought to put together a committee of stakeholders and give them a deadline and come up with a finite number of reasonable options and then come back with those what that does to your deadline I don't know I think just doing one thing absolutely putting all the kids in here or shutting the whole thing down either one of those to me it seems kind of blunt headed I think really studying it in a deeper way is what's called for ma'am you've been very hanging thank you I don't believe Act 46 was designed excuse me to take educational opportunities away from our students I think that that was not there the legislative intent at all art in the cart in the elementary is going to take art away from our children there won't be any chance to do play there won't be any chance to do paint because I'll be in different rooms the maintenance people will have a fit because there's going to be stuff everywhere in all the rooms increasing their time I just don't think it's fair to our kids that they will have to have art on the cart there was an early we did speak in the auditorium in our early meetings this summer and fall we did speak about wanting to use the auditorium at least for our music program I would like to continue using those rooms you know I think we're going to find inequities like for instance you guys have full day preschool at something we do not I think there's going to have to be a little bit of give and take you know inequities on each campus and coming to some kind of inclusion that benefits people I can talk to you know speak a little bit about that and I just wanted to kind of get to Jamie's point too about the trauma I mean I would use that word really for our community I don't know maybe you feel the same way in Stockbridge but our community has been traumatized in the last few years for you know going through this experience of do we keep our schools open where our kids going to go to middle school, high school I don't even have a middle school or high school aged student but I can imagine it's not easy it's not easy so I just feel like for that same reason I would say let's not think about cutting the most we can cut and remember that our back is not against the wall we have a good number in our budget my son didn't know how to read music or play an instrument and he can play he can play songs on a saxophone it's awesome and I want all the Stockbridge kids to have that opportunity too so if that means you know we do have music building we just have to do it in the multi-purpose room because we don't have to do it in cash one at a time Stockbridge folks really want Rochester kids to lose programming so everything feels equal no, we can't even get a budget on an extra building that's all we asked where it was a shed and we didn't even get that hopefully we will have that maybe I would like to say that as far as I'm concerned with this board Carl and I talked about this and we're very disappointed that it's not here today because it was talked about and it's something and I hear you that it's too bad that we can't put it in the budget right now because the extra space is the quid pro quo as far as I'm concerned for allowing a section of this building to stay open for us you need to do both I would feel bad about keeping open a section of the building but we didn't come through with that again just to echo a little bit of what John has said what everybody said in there not to emphasize the trauma that we have experienced because it is a significant trauma we are looking at a certain fragility that is just a code to our community as a result of losing middle and high school and there's a rebuilding that there's the potential of rebuilding so you shut down this school you shut down this facility it shuts down a tremendous amount of other opportunities which actually could be operating this building independently of the school ultimately so the more prudent perhaps more pragmatic approach would be to suspend this conversation until as Rob has suggested an appropriate group of people have been convened to discuss the options that would include having the building ultimately be self-sustaining and also giving the school the opportunity of having the parts of this particular building that it would really like to have so there's not enough time in this particular moment we understand that Stockbridge feels a certain kind of put upon grievance in all of this but if it could also focus on some of the very positives that come with this situation and know that we feel equally with this loss we want to fill it right we don't want to just have an empty building that's absolutely that's like the worst thing that could really happen to us so we know we can't fill it with school children let's have the year to discover what really would be an appropriate thing to move in here and there are people here in the community that are thinking very concerningly about how this could be repurposed so it's not blithely, it's not irresponsible it's not disrespectful it's not any of those things we're all doing something that actually has to do with the preservation of the entire valley and we have to know that but there are some areas that just cannot be worked out right now it's not possible or it could be destructive it could be very destructive if it wasn't managed properly but I think that Bonnie has indicated that it would be incredibly inefficient to shut this thing down right now maybe it's something that we agree that comes to the table that in a year or 18 months the final decision has to be made about it if it is indeed very cost prohibitive and the committee that convenes to repurpose this and use it in a very productive way for the community if they haven't done their job if they haven't aligned the right forces to make this work then you get to say, hey this is time to shut the stand but I think it's premature it's really a premature decision and closing closing the whole building would mean losing our after school program because we have funded about 21 years we should not we still have to be careful about this because we're talking about things that Stockbridge has lived with for many many years well can I interject though it didn't come up in our findings at our last site visit state level I'm happy with Stockbridge's but that doesn't but you understand every time we say we can't do without something and Stockbridge is saying we've been doing that for many many years but that does not mean that they will be allowed I'm not saying that please hear me from what I'm actually saying is that it ends up being a slap in the face it's a slap in the face to another school to say what we've been doing is not possible for us and it sounds arrogant sorry it sounds a little arrogant and this is what I've heard from these people and I know that's hard and I have my kids in this school I don't want to take away his things but we have to form a partnership here and to form a partnership we have to hear the other side and I don't feel like Rochester is yet doing the other side yet and I think that's part of this process we're talking about rubber we have to balance it out but it's really hard for us to say we can't go out we can't go without when our partner has been making do in a lot of very creative ways and I've done workshops there and I've been in that school and I've worked with those teachers they may do in a lot of creative ways Stockbridge stood by Rochester we were promised the same promises we were promised a second language we were promised a lot of things that are not happening I'd like to read a paragraph on page 10 of the merger that says faith with this situation and it's talking about the funding and the cost for people and Rochester losing the fandom students faith with this situation Rochester will need to decrease spending in the amount of $335,000 in order to get her student spending this will be achieved by closure of the operation of the school for grades 7-12 and tuitioning students at a lower cost and by modifying the elementary grade delivery model which is what we've done we have so I think at this point we don't have we have some information about closing the building we don't have we don't have information about additional space at Stockbridge it is nearly 10 o'clock so we've been at this for close to four hours I think what we need to do is we need to probably bring back at the next meeting which is where we're going to finalize that some information about what we can do at Stockbridge to increase some of the space and as Rob said the idea of finding things that finding the beyond just saying let's not do classes in the or let's not do instruction in a hallway let's have an area that has a title and spaces or one of these buildings let's also look at what we can do that would be something that would be whether it's a language program or a maker space or a STEM thing but let's try to come back and have some information let's also remember that the point of this meeting now what we're trying to accomplish by the 12th is to come up with that number that 4,000 foot number or 40,000 foot number the voters of the Towns of Stockbridge and Rochester are going to pay this amount of money and that's the total figure we don't have to decide whether that money is going to be spent on you know I mean a lot of the things we talked about today were important I think clarifying a lot of the budget numbers were important but the big picture is that what we need to have is 30 days in advance of our annual school meeting we have to have a dollar figure that's reasonable and prudent and fair to our taxpayers and fair to our kids because that's the job of the board is to balance what we're asking our communities to pay for and what we're saying our kids deserve and what our kids need to have so I think we've got and we've given you the information we have on the building but I don't know that we can really take this conversation fruitfully any farther we don't have enough of the information I think we've gotten a good start with understanding that we really cannot one of the things we were hoping that the police could tell us was you could shut this building down much more easily that you could shut that building down how can you make some of these things work we got some information then we really can't completely close down the buildings so I think let's I would suggest we table this discussion for tonight and we come back to it next week when we have more information and we have more planning from the administration I need to talk to you right before I don't want to go down to a last meeting we're going to do that so we just need to make clarification to it by next week's meeting we won't have additional information on the building it's going to take well we might have on some of the ideas you might have information on the module that's right but in terms of shutting down information on electrical there's two meters and fuel meeting we can analyze that I think it comes out a small thing what we do have to remember is that in the budget that was presented tonight that came in way under budget it did have this building kind of status quo and the elementary building status quo we can only get better but if nothing else because we're coming down to a time crunch we're coming down to a lot going on remember the numbers in this budget I think the other thing just for clarification is important and this didn't dawn on me until a couple of days ago because I was continuing to hear this very legitimate concern about we were told that the high school would close and it's not closing we were told that the high school would close I think there was I think there was a crystal clarity on what it meant to close the building because this high school building is closing we're not at this point needing the space right now the issue is the programs that were never just high school programs they were K-12 programs which is art, music well one planet isn't K-12 but it's K-6 so there were uses in this building that were not high school building that were not high school uses and that's where some of the rub is coming yeah how many of you have heard of this? how many of you have heard of this? I was just wondering if there's a way that you can bus kids you know if one of us kids having a sports having experiences when they get to socialize together why are you going to be bus kids for specials where we have a nice camera they can do sports together they can do concerts in the auditorium and then they can come over here for art and then they can get a math class with somebody who specializes in math or science just figure out a schedule so that they can be having lunch together even we want to make use of these sections of the building that we're talking about if we're talking about busing kids back and forth already I don't know why we couldn't figure out a schedule to realize those spaces and then the other spaces where you want to have OT in the space that you use in the gym you can use that for other things why the kids are over here in their specials thank you for the call we really need to stop we really think in fairness because everybody's got one more thing and I think we really have to do some executive work I just wanted to but there is one thing that I do not understand I believe the Suzuki camp is still in the plan far back it is but it's not the time to start it's still in the plan it's still in the plan I would like to I would like to I would like to I would like to I would like to I would like to mention that there's a law that's come partly in the pipeline and we're actually removing that 5% and then charging that full amount can anybody expand on that this is the first time I've heard of that and it could potentially affect our budget so in the merger between South Wilton and Stepple they took advantage of an opportunity to basically use money that their tax rate went to a place that it couldn't move any farther but they had an opportunity to grab some money that wouldn't have pushed their tax rates up they had gone as far as they could go and so they took they utilized $500,000 to fix one time things that they needed to fix like a boiler like a modular that things that could be you'll never have the chance to do it again but it was an opportunity to do it this law that we know about that's what I'm saying in the funding formula that if the legislature feels like I guess that it's been misused or whatever they could probably yank yank it it protects you if you go the other direction if your tax rate goes up it protects the tax pay from having to have a 5% tax hike in one year but I think it's a good thing I'm just saying that if we take advantage of that gap which would be a really cool way to pay for our modular that we've been talking about kind of slicing the issue but I don't want to see any town or any tax payer pay a huge penalty much our tax rates go up because they yank that and do this law thing and I remember him saying wait we need to go back to that we need more information on that I think we asked Annie didn't you ask tonight to ask David to find out what that he'll find out the number I'm just saying I don't want the legislature to get burned by that yeah I don't remember the use of this are you allowed to do not to be a vital yeah we've probably you're not going to do it in the meeting part of it you're just a approval to inform a committee to talk about building this I think we'll probably put that committee together at the next meeting when we have a better idea of which way we're just in general what the scope of that committee's work should be once we have an idea of because we're one district it should be looking at the school use of all the district's buildings and if we're going to be some of the programming may to speak to roger point the idea of a maker space or some kind of stem facility in stock bridge that might change how this building was used or how other buildings were used yeah at least some idea of what the options are down the valley there but I think that we need to so I want to put that off till next meeting we have an idea of just if the module is even feasible so this is not necessarily important it's driven it's really something that the community would use as a business hobby in another way well yeah there's there's I hear what you're saying like a co-working space or some of the okay so in that plan you've got to be careful about the kids people being in here they just put a fingerprint in and all that kind of thing they're going to be mixing the kids so I'm just that's an issue you know we're going to board would like to entertain a motion to enter into executive session to discuss a personnel matter no action is anticipated after that meeting the board will adjourn then thank you very much