 Thank you very much. Thanks, Lori. Okay, so goals. Very important. Because of budget, even though it's all about money and they're just loaded with numbers, it's basically about how we manage to do what we're trying to do. And this outlines essentially the broad aims, the broad things that we're trying to do. So, communication. That's this. Long-term planning. The budget is one year by year element of what we try to have as a long-term idea of where we want to go with our schools. And then, making things better in our schools. And having things work better for U.S. students so that you learn a lot, you have fun, it's interesting, and you come out of school being able to do all kinds of things that you were never able to do before. That's us, including those of us who aren't here quite yet. And in fact, well and added, any one of my colleges I invite to shine in at any point, if you like. This is basically us, most of the time, making exactly those kinds of faces. So, lots of things are going on when you try to set up a budget. And it's essentially the product of a lot of pulling and hauling and pushing, trying to make things work that don't necessarily fit together very well. They are. Thank you. Yeah, this is the flow chart. And so the people who work for the schools get together and they figure out what they need for money for the next year. And then, excuse me, it's up to us on the board and we look at it and try to figure out if our people can afford to pay that much, to spend that much in taxes. And then it goes, we show out and we talk to all of you, to, mostly to grownups, but to as many people who are willing to give us their ideas about what's going on. And then with changes, with different ideas, with other sorts of plans that might come up, we go back and start all over again and go through maybe several times. And this time three times we went through, roughly. Honestly, I didn't see so it was probably six. Okay, so there were six rinse cycles in this before we came up with the document that you have. One of the very important things for taxes is how many students we actually have since our tax rate is based on how much we spend divided by how many students we have. But there are two ways of counting students. Well, there are more than two ways, actually. But the two that we have here are actual student bodies around 1600 I guess roughly. But what matters for the taxes are equalized pupils so that elementary school kids are I guess because they're not as big, they're lighter, so they're not weighted as heavily as high school students and there are different there are different ways of weighting students so when you factor in those weights the numbers are somewhat lower and you can see that there's a slight dip and what happens when there's a dip in the number of equalized pupils even if we're spending the same amount our tax rate goes up because it's spending divided by equalized pupils. So anyway, this is some of the highlights 1500 and 74 students all together in our five elementary schools in U32 even though you saw there was a slight decline in equalized pupils it's basically pretty stable, it's not dropping off a cliff but excellent administration faculty and staff and board I might add dynamic student body very definitely yes educational opportunities and then the fact of the merger as of July 1st of this past year so this is the first budget that is done as a merged district and this is this is a summary of lots of numbers I think the main one to look at is this one the combined total is about $35 million which is a lot of money and the other important number to look at is this one right here which is the net impact of this increase on our education spending which is part of that tax formula so these these two numbers are really important ones others make a difference too though we're lucky that we're getting half a million dollars more but half a million dollars more to defray what would otherwise have been a higher increase so 3% a little bit over 3% is within sort of historic levels for year 32 at least 4.65 would have been a little on the high side and that those revenues are related to paying off a bond for year 32 so that's a one time windfall that's the debt reduction oh my apologies sorry Lori is correcting me that's what I was just talking about the debt reduction these are these are revenues from special education special education we get reimbursed on average around 56% for every dollar we spend which means 56 cents for every dollar we spend and then we also have additional revenues for tuition because year 32 has a number of savings that come in from other towns so they pay tuition thank you okay here is the pie I think you can see that the money that we spend in our schools goes to people salaries and benefits and even some of those those smaller slices also are people correct Lori right right so all together what percentage of all of this would you say goes to paying 76% so about three quarters of the money that we spend pays people who are family members neighbors people we do business with this is part of what is a kind of economic engine for our communities as well so even though $35 million is a lot of money it's three quarters of it is circulating to our communities so anyway okay more numbers what do you think about this yeah there's a lot going on in this chart and it made it better for you to look at it on your own what I would just what you might want to focus on are any big changes in the in the percentage column on the farm right so that you can see that the biggest change down the biggest savings is in the debt service which is right about in the middle that's the bond repayment for U32 percentage wise the biggest increase is in support to the food program but the biggest overall dollar increase is almost $900,000 in direct instruction which is a 7.3% increase now remember the overall increase for the budget before the revenues was about 4.65 about 4.2 thirds and the bottom line was about 3% so 7.3% is much more than that as is special education which is even more than that as a percentage increase so you can see how how money is being how we're having to put more money towards some things and less money towards others in order to get what we wind up with okay this is the tax rates so I'll just let you look at those yourself as I mentioned there are all the function of education spending divided by equalized pupils and there are a few other elements that go into the tax formula including what is called the common level of appraisal and that is what the state uses in order to take account of the fact that in different towns the appraised value sort of falls out of out of sync with the market value so let's take an example in Calis for example the common level of appraisal means that the state has decided or has calculated more of the state corrected if I need to be the state has decided that the appraised value of Calis properties is only 95 or 61% of their market value great what that means is that we have to the amount that we are otherwise going to pay is divided again by 0.9561 which increases it again so Wister is right about where it should be so it's increased it has very very small decrease and others that is more peculiar has a relatively high increase this year and this year all of the increases are essentially due to the common level of appraisal last year was different last year had to do with the adjustment of last year I mean this year we are talking about next school year for this present school year it was all the adjustments that came with putting all the schools together with their various different levels of spending including the tax rate was that $400,000 I believe no okay you can let's say the tax rate of 187.6 for 100,000 let's see a $61 increase instead of a 6 cent increase per 100,000 so it would be $61 per 100,000 if you wanted to kind of convert it out sorry true per 100,000 sorry what's the rate yes okay so anyway this is how we try to inform all of you and others about this budget may I ask how has it worked do you feel informed have you gotten the information you need thank you Michael okay you can you can give your sort of sidebar answers to that question if you prefer not to give it publicly to any one of us we're all interested these are the slides we put together for the work of media presentations there's one or two for every school and along with pictures of students from the school so we should slowly go through them and let people read if you wish or however you'd like to receive it we don't have any Berlin board members here but maybe for each school so Calis that would be me but all of you know more about what's going on in Calis than I do Calis which you'd like to say well I can't help but notice that right at the top one of the things that I highlighted for Calis was our Calis Cougar leadership team and we have some representation of that here tonight there are several of our older students who have spent some time really thinking about restorative practices training which is a great tie-in with the learning the practices that we have at U32 some of the things that I talked about for Calis we had a unified district program for athletics and drama that covers all of the elementary schools except for Eastmont Piliar they have their own rec association in Eastmont Piliar but this is a chance for us to start becoming a little bit more aligned across all of our schools it's been such a great opportunity and it takes a lot of folks wanting to put some time and effort into doing that work and I always think it's important to highlight some of the traditions that we hold dear here at Calis and one thing I don't think I have up there but I think it's important to note is the amount of support that we get from folks in the community we have people who are retired community members and they come in and they do the training for WINS, our science-based nature program and they do instruction in the classrooms we have coaches, we have people who chaperone field trips the list can go on and on but people who really take the time to make some commitments in this community I think we have it Did I miss anything girls? We're awesome So for Doty we have Jonas VanCleven who we may wish to send you over Hi so I think the one thing that's not on here that I want to mention is that we have a principal Kili Fuqua this year who I think has done a great job integrating into the community and the school the first set of bullets up there about building improvements some of the doors and door handles are being placed in the interest of public safety there's going to be some work being done on the envelope of the building and we're starting to think about new playground equipment in terms of individualized learning opportunities I think that's something that comes with being good to have the cat nodding along with that and I'll be honest I'm not entirely sure what the partnership with the Tarrant Institute is but I'm sure that Deborah can tell you anything about that I have a kid in Doty and another one who will be there in a couple of years and my experience with Doty with the new principal this year and the new merch districts if you could I'm hoping to find that out for the community as well I also want to give Mike Klos a shout out for the mission of the strings program that we're hoping to have rolled out to all schools next year I just wanted to mention about the Tarrant Institute they are working in a pilot type of program just with Doty Elementary this year it is a foundation that's based in UPM and their sole purpose is to support teacher development so Katie Farber who's a former teacher from our district has been working with our goodness spray teacher in Doty and they're working on a project-based learning this year and have done some remarkable things we hope to expand it through the entire school next year and possibly beyond and Florin and Linda you're so good some of the highlights that you see here is the Outdoor Program I would mention that Jillian was recently honored with being at a life changing award and she's really responsible for the kingdom we used to have at school and for Wentz and now they start younger and she's been really the one taking that program into other rates too and it's amazing to see what they do they cook outside it's just really beautiful to see what they do the Tech Club and the Book Club and the Student Leadership our librarian takes a lot of that from her and Mrs. Christy, the Bronx Student Leadership Team the one thing that is not there is that the major space is one of the favorite places for all kids for recess and after school we have several parent volunteers that come in Wednesdays and Fridays to make sure that that stays alive and is brought out for kids and it's great to see that it's really great to see and all teachers are involved in it and use it on a professional development today I'm just not here today it's the usual Wednesday, three hours all the teachers spend learning and it's something that they do in most of our schools but it's really the kid talk is probably one of my favorite things that is not mentioned there really getting to know where each kid is and setting goals for each kid triangulating data but also humanizing that data so it's not just numbers but also response to her trauma from practices and really getting to know each kid and I guess that's one of my favorite things we just have to mention is that Marty Milder who was a great community member for his non-pillow and helped a lot when we were doing our building and was in our the service committee a lot of them Mr. Gaines here with us today passed away this year just recently and we are doing kind of a kind of a assembly a kind of challenge for that he wanted to really be a part of it and we'll have a celebration we also hold a I Love Me Smoky Lair each year which was something that we raised up with 20 years ago and this was the 50th year but I Love Me Smoky Lair and Marilyn Strymon from those times we updated our preschool this year to make it completely accessible we updated our K through 6 playground probably about 2 or 3 years ago so that's a great space for the kids to be in and then we I don't know for the only school that has that little tractor that was a helpful thing for us this year we do monthly all school meetings that every grade hosts and that's student run it's really fun to go to and it's open to all of the parents and Ben Weiss is one of our 1-2 teachers who got a teacher here in Vermont this year so he's an amazing teacher every morning in every classroom the kids do do the morning meeting in my child's 3rd grade class usually they share throughout the week the students each take turns sharing something and making it a learning moment and then I don't think that I see up here we also do Go it started in kindergarten maybe 5 or 6 years ago and then our preschool program now also participate in that this year or maybe last year that Deanna implemented that which is exactly what for had to said and then some of the things that make us really great we do do welcome back ice cream social every summer that's so fun we do a pie breakfast done by the PTO we are very close with the food shelf so every school event that we do we try to raise our brain in food for the food shelf food for the food try thank you very much year 32 I guess we don't have Stephen here but the rest of us will try to win so Christiana Martin very proud of her for being a teacher of the year as well I guess district wise teacher of the year okay we have two for district so flexible pathways when you guys get to year 32 you'll find that it's totally different and hopefully in a good way in a way that you're ready for because you're old enough to take advantage but there are all sorts of ways that you can do school whether you're outside of school in communities whether you're working with other people mentors who can tell you about all different kinds of things that you might be interested in pilot it's a program personalized okay it stands for something personalized that I don't know yeah and then there's early college dual enrollment and all sorts of new stuff that makes things more flexible than it was when I was going to high school which was a long time ago in terms of community support have any of you ever been to a game at U32 or to a concert to a concert how did you like it was it good did you ever go to a play one sorry two of them are the oldest in their family and one has an older sibling so they'll get there they'll get there you'll find that they're really really good and fight fun and then again mentoring that means that other grown-ups who aren't necessarily teachers will come in and will work with you and that means that you want to do because you're interested in them yourself rather than because they're classes that you have to go to and yeah we try to support a lot of sports and theater and music and different kinds of clubs and groups as well as really great classes for you to attend that are interesting and exciting when you learn a lot so okay I might just these are clubs and organizations that it just goes to show that when you get into middle and high school that things you're much more grown up and you're doing things much more like grown-ups forming groups of people who share the same interests and dealing with issues that are very important in the world so you'll have all of this to look forward to so I can't tell elementary school students to remember to vote on March 3rd but remember to tell your parents to vote on March 3rd okay so here's about it definitely a question that's here sure so as you know we have a single budget and therefore a single ballot the first basic ballot are the board of school directors who are running for election we do have a few positions that are open this year we're adding one additional board member from every town so if you notice a few areas where there's a position but no individual we're looking for writing candidates if you know anyone please know or pass the word on that they're welcome you can take one more slide but next there's two sides of ballots so don't forget to go to the second side when you're in the point the second side is the one which includes one additional board member and then some articles that are really here because we are merged as a new district and there's some things that we needed to do in order to operate effectively as a single district so first of all we have to set the salaries for our district officers which you'll see under article 5 that includes the clerk, treasurer and the school directors who as you know if you've been attending any meetings put in many more hours than the site can provide so we appreciate all of their hard work article 6 is the all important budget article and that includes the total budget amount which is 35 million and the amount per people likes people and how much more that is in last year's which is 4.61% so that is a question that relates to will you support the district budget yes or no following that the last three articles are again more literature or merger the first one is concerning use of our audit surplus funds on an emergency basis the next one that follows is a permission to borrow tax anticipation no type of thing in the event as we wait for our town taxes to be collected and made available to us or our state reimbursement funds from time to time we have to take a short term loan and that gives us permission to do it it's something we've done in this district for quite some time but we need your permission to do that and the last is relating to starting a new capital fund that is district-wide in prior meetings if you follow us we're probably discussing capital budget for the summer and long term there are capital funds that we're carrying forward from prior districts and we're also going to begin one for all of our schools in a combined way which this board will determine how we will allocate any questions about the ballot thanks no all of the funds that were previously collected are remaining in our budget this is relating to future thank you very much everyone now I hope we haven't bludgeoned you into a stupor with all of these PowerPoint slides this is a hard part for you because there are 15 minutes that you have to fill with your best questions so we're hoping that you have some fire away back well I saw a lot of evidence of all of the great extracurricular activities going on in elementary schools but I don't see how are kids doing in math and reading I mean how are we doing for the rest of the state and the rest of the nation I mean what I mean I think that in 1973 2018 requires us to implement RGI what's the progress on that our teacher being trained in that you know what's the status of these kind of things that directly impact the education of the kids not just extracurricular activities yeah that's extremely important in fact that's really goes to the core of our entire purpose here and I believe in April we're going to be looking at some of that we did one in October we provided a presentation on October we're going to do a second one in April there is some outcome data relating to the high school and the annual report which relates to percentage of graduates and so on we do have information online which highlights how well our high school graduates are doing and in relation to your question I'd be happy to share copies of the slides being prepared if you would like if you just wanted to leave me your email address I'd be happy to email those to you more questions are welcome and if there's yeah ladies if you have if there's anything may I just ask you does this make any sense no ask them they're nervous to ask you this question I probably won't be able to answer it but that's okay sure they want to know why are we paying the Board of Education 207,000 dollars rather than 208,000 dollars that is on page 10 when it says Board of Education that refers to us the school board and we're not getting paid that much believe me a lot of that money goes to pay for lawyers and for I mean for the lawyer and the book it gives you a detail of what gets paid for the Board the bulk of it is for insurance we have to pay almost 100,000 dollars for insurance the second thing is the legal of 25,000 so it's kind of that's very tough would you like me to show you that the details of each 20,000 but the bulk of it is for insurance for every school building and every we have insurance on every building so this is a accumulation of all insurances for our property and for our in case somebody sued us with the type of insurance to protect the district because we have over 60,000,000 dollars in assets and we use this policy to help rebuild so anyway yeah we each one of us does get paid a thousand dollars in Europe and I tell you we're worth every penny I hope other questions um may I ask can you explain the theory and practice of equalized pupils why do we have that now and apparently we did not have that before we've had it we've had it from you'll please tell us the history of that because it's something that I have heard many times but I've never really understood yes um I would have to punt on this one at least on the history of it so when Act 60 and Act 68 came to be those are legislative acts they were trying to find a way to fund education so that we would statewide have a common funding formula so what happens is we get a certain number of students for kids that are actually in the building and we get a certain number oh I'm answering for you and we also have preschool programs and those students get reduced because they're here 10 hours a week we pro-rate some of these trial counts so that we get a certain amount of money for kids that are here I call it part time um we also get additional waiting for high school students who are statewide cost more to provide educational services to we also in the formula we take a two year average so that it doesn't cause spikes in the formula um it's quite a lengthy formula the state is re-looking at that as we speak on how to adjust that formula and it's in this current session so I don't have the current legislative bill I don't know if you do but it's in a really deep conversation at this time to adjust the formula um did I answer your question so it's in a state of evolution currently this is the first they did a study this past year on it to re-look at it statewide because we actually get what we call phantom students for poverty in the districts so some communities get an additional waiting for students who have um Medicaid in different state programs for poverty deep breath I have the formula if you really want to see it line by line um I have a formula system okay well no thank you that explains the basic concept thank you thank you um yes please so on page 17 we saw that the graduation rate for U32 was going up and at 9 something with the other 10% like how are we going to help them I'm so glad you asked that question now because Mr. Stephen Dumpter-Pate who is the principal of U32 is the president at any time um so I would tell you one thing that's the four year graduation rate and we do have some students who do not graduate in four years because of a variety of circumstances and so um when we look at our graduation rate um those other 10% of a big majority of them will typically graduate in the next um one to two years depending on what their needs are um there are a few uh students who would fall into a dropout category that occur over time and so there but that's a small percentage of one or two percent that we see overall and those are students who leave U32 and do not enroll in another school immediately or within the next couple of years even some of those students end up going back to something like adult basic education and eventually get their GED but that doesn't get added into our uh graduation total um the GED is is um there it is general equivalency diploma um so that's um that can be anyone who does not graduate um from high school could go take it's a test but they also usually take courses associated with that so that they're prepared for it and then when they take that test they get the general equivalency diploma which isn't an official it's not a U32 diploma it's just kind of a generic diploma that they get for high school completion the old folks are wondering to um so I I know that Deborah said she'd send you the deck of slides uh with the test scores but I wanted to address it because I was able to pull it up um first I mean talking about student achievement it's good to see that our ACG scores in 32 are higher than the state average I mean you know we've there a strong record of graduation rates there's a strong college attendance rate um looking at the verbal and math scores from uh that we saw in October that were primarily elementary scores there's a lot of ways to break the numbers down right but in general the average literacy scores are higher than the state average in general the math scores are slightly lower than state average but I think what's most you know and that's you can tell a good news story you can tell a bad news story I think that what we have talked about here most is the is equity in opportunity and trying to get to equity with outcomes because there is a large disparity between you know the in test scores between kids who are on IMPs, kids who are not on IMPs kids who are free or reduced lunch kids who are free and reduced lunch and that's the data that we have right that's how we're able to break down these demographics um and seeing the not mean when you look at sort of a scatterplot of scores right above and below a mean line um seeing so many of those data points below the state average is I think what's most concerning to us um we've talked in the last couple of meetings about addressing teaching the quality of education and the quality of instruction which we have not had the opportunity to do this year it's been a really busy year Chris isn't here but I'll give the policy committee a ton of credit for going through a whole lot of material uh the finance committee with a bunch of gather lory's help I think we're a pretty good tax number um we're negotiating but that is absolutely I mean talking about instruction talking about the outcomes that's of course why we're here um and I wanted to give a little bit of that detail before Debra sent that to me so it's you know it's a double-edged sword there's some things that I think we're doing well there are a lot of places where we need to improve we're working on addressing in terms of MTSS I think every school is implementing that there's a goal to improve the implementation of MTSS in every school but I think we're there um I just wanted to make sure that we got a little bit of detail on that Cindy what happened in White's emergency I think that's right I'm tripping right in the middle here um Ben White's oh Ben with White who is the teacher of the year right Ben Hines I think is getting some kind of a grant right right um so anyway they're just a lot of friends but they're all doing great so more power to them we're coming up on 630 which will mark the transition from budget forum to board meeting but I don't want to deprive anyone of the chance to ask that last question that with a flap of thunder and both of lightning causes everything to fall into place there is such a one just the thing peaches and plums I mean U32 slide for clubs most of the clubs were pretty well guessed so there are actually two groups there's peaches and plums which is a young women's group that meets and talks about issues associated with gender and sexuality and then there's a nuts and bolts group that is the young men's group and that's how students can actually identify with those two groups but it's just really a lot of thunder thunder many many thanks to all of you for coming and you're all loving to stay but you're also loving to leave if that's your preference either way we're glad to have you thank you oh and uh yeah I've just been reminding to ask you please to support what this is all about and any further questions we might have later feel free to direct them to any one of us