 Good evening. This is the full board reorganization meeting of the White River Valley Supervisory Union. I'm gonna call the meeting to order at 6.04, is that correct, the screen, 6.03. Are there any adjustments to the agenda meeting tonight? I hope you get a room for adjustments. Mary Ann, you can't hear us? Got it now. I'll speak up. I'm sorry, I'll use that PE voice. Looks like you're on your horse. I am on my horse. All right, so the only adjustment to the agenda I'm gonna have is that I want to use move 5.1 up and in regards to reorganization of the board before signing timekeepers and things of that nature, that cool folks, getting some thumbs up, excellent. 5.1, elected chairperson of the board. Is there a motion for a chairperson to the board? I'd like to make a motion. This is Sarah Root. Yes. I would like to nominate Kathy Galuzzo as Sarah of the board. This is Sue from S-Bud. I would second that. Okay. Discussion or other motion? Move to close nominations. Is there a second to that? Second. Who's seconded? That was Meg Teachout. Meg Teachout. No other discussion. Hearing none, I'll do a roll call vote. I'm going by my list. Amy Top, sorry, sorry, I apologize. Andrew Jones. All right. John Tell. Crack it. John Tell. I, sorry, I said it before I unmuted. Abstain. Ethan. Lisa. Erin Karen, are you on? Megan. Meg Teachout. I. Mika Tucker. I. Michael Gray. I. Sarah Root. Stacey Peters. I. Susan Kay. I. Bob, sorry, I'm not used to people being here. I'm looking at the thing. I apologize. Bob Gray. And Kathy, you're willing to accept? I'm willing to accept. Real quick, we had missed one there. Mary Ann, are you back on? Yes, I'm back on. Mary Ann, are you and I? Yes. Congratulations, Kathy, the meeting's yours. Kathy, just before you go, Don, I'd like to thank you. I haven't been on the full board long, but I appreciate your communication with me and your organization of the board. So thank you. I would second that. Thank you, Don. Thanks, Don. Thank you, Don. My regards to the agenda. Just a sign of time keeper. I'd like to sign a time keeper. You want to keep time and I'll volunteer at once. I didn't keep time. So I'm happy to thank you. Kathy? Yeah. Just one note. Just if I don't know where the mic is on your video. If you can. I can move up. If it can be closer, that'd be great. Thank you. I just want to make sure we're clear. OK, yeah. Thank you. I don't know where. It's in the ceiling. Got a yell, Kathy. OK, I can be loud. All right, so public comment. No public comments tonight? OK. Sorry to interrupt. I did see a private call it on the attendee list and I was just wondering if that person could identify Emma Husser or if we know. We were on the other call when they came in. I'm sure it's Orca. OK. We don't need to identify them unless they speak. No, I was just wondering if it was a board member. OK. Thanks. Elected vice chairperson. Do I have any nominations? Only if Lisa. I would nominate Lisa Floyd. I'll second that. Any other nominations, your vice chair? I would nominate Carl Grappie. I'll second that. Do you guys, I mean, as a board, you need to decide whether you're going to do a roll call vote or whether you want us to try to push out a Google form. I'm fine with a roll call. This is not recommended roll call. Has nominations been closed? No. Any other nominations? Move to close. Second. Ethan. The nominations have been closed. We have Carl and Lisa. They're just up here in college personally. Point of order. Might be asked, might be nice. We ask if they're willing to fulfill the roll. They gave thumbs ups. They did. Thank you. OK. So Andrew Jones. Lisa Floyd. Carl Grappie. I'll abstain. She didn't tell bracket. I'll abstain as well. Doncha. I'll go for Carl. OK. Ethan. I'll go for Lisa. Lisa. Floyd. I'll abstain. Megan Teachout. Lisa. Floyd. Micah Tucker. My vote is for Lisa Floyd. Michael Gray. Lisa Floyd. Is there a route? Lisa Floyd. Pinky Peters. Lisa Floyd. Susan Kay. Yeah, sorry about that. Lisa Floyd. Anybody else? Did I miss anybody? Marianne still on? Marianne, are you still on? So I didn't. Kathy. Oh. I thought you did it too. That's not right. Oh, Gray. Lisa. Lisa. OK. So. You have a total, Marianne. Kathy. Kathy. So Lisa Floyd. I have 10 votes. Thank you. So Lisa has an elective clerk. And Stacy is your third. Isn't Stacy your third? Stacy, are you the clerk now? Am I the clerk now? I think you are the clerk. Yes, you are. I would nominate Stacy Peters. It's my favorite job. I second that. Any other nominations? Move to close. It's really fast. Trigger finger, you got this, Sarah. Pretty good at it, aren't I? Lots of practice. All right. So we'll do a roll call. Who's your Jones? Hi. Pro Graffie. Hi. Suggest since there's only one, we would instruct it to have one vote cast for Ms. Peters for Clark. I'll make a motion for one vote cast for Stacy Peters. So moved. Point of recording secretary. I don't know if we have anybody that is willing to do it anymore. Anybody have recording secretaries on their board that would be able to be willing to be a recording secretary? Very fun job. Jackie's sister is doing it for us, but maybe I could approach her. Yeah, talk to the board. Yeah, so one of our board members, her sister, is doing it for the first branch board. So perhaps I can ask her if she's interested in doing it. Be your recording secretary. And then I can bring her back if she's interested. So since we don't have anybody, we'll move on and I'll see if somebody's interested. A point one member for signing AP and payroll. Currently, that position is Rodney and I. That still works for you? That works for me. Because those are appointed. They're not voted, elected. Yeah, I'd be willing to do it again. Rodney is not on, so I'm not sure somebody else interested in doing it. I can do it. I'd rather have Rodney do it, but I mean, I'm available to get over to the SQ and sign things if we need that as the alternative or alternate. It's not an alternate. We both have to sign. I think, well, I know that Rodney's father recently passed away, so I suspect that he's with family right now. And I don't feel comfortable speaking for him, but it is a responsibility he's taken seriously, and I believe he's gotten to the SQ offices to sign in a timely manner as he served in that position. So I'm not certain that he wants to continue with that, but I also know that his father died two days ago, so. And then Rodney, I think you would be happy to continue doing it. I mean, who I've talked about before, he doesn't mind doing it. I feel more comfortable appointing somebody who's present. OK. Could we, sorry, could we nominate him in his absence? And if he refuses, bring this back up in the next meeting, given that he's already had this rule? We can do that. I think we just had someone express a desire to have somebody from that's present. Yeah, I'm just wondering if that would mitigate that. So why don't we nominate another person and then we can discuss it if Rodney really still wants to do it. Maybe we'll come back and I'll see if the board will allow him that I had to switch, because I'm OK with it. I have a point, sir. So do we have a second person who's interested in doing it? I'm not willing to make a trip over to the SQ as much as I'd have to to do that. I'd do it as an alternate, but not as a permanent. Anybody else? Sue Kay, you're great at this on our board for speaking on it. Bob, do you have any interest? So I could be, we need two people to do it. So Ethan, since nobody else seems to want to do it, would you be comfortable with it being Rodney? Yes, it's pretty important, folks. Can I just ask a question just because I don't know? What's the schedule as far as having to be available at the SU? What's the frequency? Terry, you want to answer that? Every two weeks, Chantel. On a specific day, or does it vary? We try to have the SU Horan's ready to go by Tuesday or Wednesday for checks to be issued by Friday. And then if we need to do, because I have signing authority for the SU, if we have to do an emergency payment, that also would be a time that we would, like we just had one last week to get Tense on order. And we had to ask for an emergency signing. And do we have to be there at the same time to sign, or I just have to make, OK. No. You can do it. If you have the ability to sign electronically, we can also send the warrants to you. That is what Kathy does. She reviews and signs them electronically because she has that capability of electronic signature. I do as well. I'm willing to step up and do it. Thank you. I'm sorry, Ms. Tu is speaking then. Chantel. Chantel, thank you. So you would do it, Chantel? Yeah. OK. I'm working. I'm primarily working remotely from home in Sharon. So, I mean, but I have electronic capability as well. So. OK. Very good. Can I nominate Kathy Galizzo and Chantel Brackett for members of the signing APM payment? They're appointed, not nominated. Oh, they're appointed. OK. Yes. So Chantel, point one alternate. Designate newspaper radio stations for official notices. You see, if you have a question, Harold and the Valley News. Currently, the Harold and the Valley News are what we're using. The Harold and Valley News work for everybody. Any other? We've at our board meeting, we've talked about that this needs to be updated a little bit about where we're posting, that there's so many electronic possibilities now. I know it doesn't require that. I'm just wondering if we should appoint that. So that would be under the designated posting places coming up on the agenda. This was just the newspaper's radios. Yeah. So packing up a bit, I got the Harold and the Valley News. Is there a radio station to add to that? The Great Eastern Radio Network is where we currently use for school closings. The Great Eastern Radio Network is where we currently use for school closings. OK. Thank you. Which my understanding is it has multiple different stations within that. We want to also use that radio station. There another radio station. That daytime location of regular school board meetings. Currently, we are to alternate the. You guys currently have the 4th Monday of the month. What's my understanding? Alternate between. And you alternate between goal and exact. Right. For the 4th Monday, we alternate between executive board and full board. Does that still work for everyone? How does that work? What's your opinion of that, Jamie? The alternating. Well, you know, I gotta tell you, it's the first time I've worked in an SU that had an executive board. So I'm still trying to wrap my head around what that looks like. I've always dealt with a full board. And so I'm trying to figure out what should be going to the executive board versus what goes to the full board. And that's something that, you know, I need to work with the executive board about and their upcoming meeting. Can someone who's been on both boards for longer than I give sort of a rationale for the split? Yeah, the executive board usually does more of a deeper dive into things. A lot of times, for example, the executive board went through the transportation contract proposal before the full board did. Some of the more mundane business gets done by the executive board. Some of the motions around approving various submissions to the state, for example, that sort of paperwork structure that requires board approval about statute. It's not the executive board. And we went trouble getting a quorum for a full board. Ostensibly, the executive board was created for that very purpose. Multiple evenings we had meetings called and we didn't have a quorum. So we created the executive board in order to continue with our functions. That makes sense. That makes sense. All right, so. I support. I support. The executive board was given authority to do any work other than hiring a superintendent. That was my understanding, okay. All right, so fourth Monday, alternating between executive board and full board. 6 p.m. works. Designate post-sumption, designate posting places. This is what you were talking about, Ethan. Where do we post that thing? What do we feel about various of Facebook and other social media sites? Is that official or is that sort of ad hoc? Well, I think my concern about it is if we miss it and you've designated as a posting. So I just caution you about that. We can still post there as practice. I just get concerned when we start naming all these areas and if we miss one. So for right now, our posting place is the website for the full board meetings. Do you want to add the WRVSU Facebook page? I feel like I can control that. I would feel comfortable with that. I feel like it's moving ahead. Anybody else have any places they want to post it? What are you thinking about? Okay, so for now, the WRVSU website and WRVSU Facebook page. Raise on it. You just give me a big thumbs up. Any other, is there any other things you feel we need to designate or point right now? Back to approved minutes of July 13th. I didn't see any minutes. So I think there was a shout out by Christy to get these minutes. Yeah, Christy sent me the recordings today. I've never bumped into any of them. But I said I would go to the recordings. Does anybody remember if they took minutes on the 13th of the 10th? So what I said to Christy, I would do is we recorded them, we'll go through, we'll get draft minutes out to you for approval of the next meeting. Same thing with August 10th. So we are on reports to the board. Good evening. All right, so you have my superintendents report embedded in that where the draft strategic plan overarching goals and they're the goals that we'll use for the CIP. The admin team worked on this during the administrative retreat. They aligned nicely to the task and goals that you guys had in your strategic plan. The idea though is that we would capture those in three overarching goals that looks at forming and sustaining a comprehensive multi-tiered system of supports that the WRVSU will implement at pre-K through 12 proficiency-based learning system and that the WRVSU will improve student learning and increase equitable educational opportunities through the development of a culture that promotes interdependence among all stakeholders, example being like the WRVSU Virtual Academy as one example and enhance a student achievement choice in voice. So the SU will be coming back with a fourth goal that more specifically speaks to equity as we move forward, that is part of something that we need to do is our continuous improvement plan from the agency of education. We were in designated as a SU that needed to address equity and so we'll get to that in a future agenda, but designated by who? Jamie. By the agency of education, Don. It's part of our continuous improvement plan which is tied to our federal grants and we had a district that was designated in regards to that attitude and we'll talk about that at that district. And so later in the agenda, I'll look for you guys to provide feedback and hopefully move to approve these. What you'll see is from this, schools will then look and they've already created draft CIPs that have been submitted, but the idea would be that we have roadmaps of success both at the SU which you call a strategic plan and at the local districts that spill out of these overarching goals and all the tasks align and that your principals will provide updates on a monthly basis around each one of these goals. And if you remember, back in July, you approved a data calendar that then the principals will be providing data monthly, social emotional data was in September. And so you'll get data reports monthly both at the SU level and at the local level at different data points that all go to support this work. The idea being to wait for you to progress monitor how we move forward, okay? The only other thing I'll add is that I had some letters of resignation to my report that I just wanted to make you aware about. We had a letter of resignation from Jane Phelps. She served us for 30 years as a paraeducator in the SU and James decided not to return this upcoming school year. Is it all right with the board if I go through each one of them? And then you can accept. We had a resignation from Nicole Racicot who was a special educator and is going to be moving out of state for the upcoming school year. And we had another special educator who is also has resigned from WRVSU and wanted to wish the students, faculty, staff and families of the WRVSU all the best and had served us for four years. I'm hopeful that that was Erica Young and I'm hopeful that as we move forward that resignations decrease, I think that everyone had a different circumstance or was not one circumstance and it's challenging times and they face the COVID-19 as well. Jamie, have we received all the letters of intent to return? Yes, at this time we have. Okay. Thank you, John, for asking that. Can someone move to accept those resignations? So moved. Second. All those, any discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Any nays? So moved. The rest, we have a pretty, we have a lot on the agenda and so you'll hear from me later. Tonight we're focused on our current finances. There's a budget timeline that hopefully you looked at in your packet. I also add as coming up, the central office staff had quite a bit in their reports. If you didn't have the opportunity to look at those, they're gonna highlight some things, but we've been very hard at work and I gotta put a shout out that the admin team, the teachers and staff have worked so incredibly hard to safely and effectively reopen on the eighth and I gotta tell you, we are one of a handful of SUs that are moving forward with five days of in-person instruction and part of that is why we're getting some publicity for this right now in a positive light and I should hear from CBS here in the next day or two of whether or not they're gonna be prepared and have gone through all the things the Department of Health has required them because I've made it clear that they need permission from the Department of Health and I need to see it in order to work with us, but I do suspect that it's highly likely that they will be capturing us on CBS 60 and 60 for the SU over the next couple of weeks in regards to our reopening plans and so that's really excited. There's been a lot that you guys have been doing throughout the years. I think some positive publicity for our faculty, staff, admin and all of you is well-deserved and it's high time. So I just wanna let you know, we continue to work on that and then if you have any other questions, I'll entertain them. Any questions for Jamie, anyone? Yeah, this is Lisa. I just have a question around our remote option. I had a family ask me about that the other day so I'm just wondering if you could share with us what that will look like for families who don't feel comfortable sending their students back for five days. Can I wait and do that during COVID updates? Sure. We can hear the communication going on. You guys. Yeah, no, go. I was just asking Jamie if you wanted me to actually do my discussion items with you all tonight or request that they got put on a future agenda item because we have so much to do tonight. So I sent you all my reports. The one update that I wanted to provide to you was we received the second draft of the supervisory union audit on Friday. So my team and I will go through that and see if we have any further questions or concerns for the auditors. And if that's all good to go, then we will get it out to the executive board for review. And then down at the end of my report is where my discussion items were. So the four, three main topics for this section each year, the agency of education determines our allowable tuition versus the announced tuition for each of our member districts and the other districts throughout the state of Vermont. My understanding after learning more about this is that you as a board need to decide if we are going to bill or credit once that is done and it is an all or nothing policy. So if we bill exterior districts or credit exterior districts we also have to do it within our own districts. So I just need your guidance on what you would like me to do for that. The last couple of years as some of you already are aware of the AOE is getting later and later at getting that information out to us it's supposed to be done by statute by December. And last year we received it in July for FY 19. So due to all the problems with the uploads that are going through the state longitudinal data system it's getting that part of it out later and later. So what is your- So I would suggest we just review what's upcoming and we'll put these as an action item at the next board meeting. Is that cool with folks? I just want to give you a preview. Nothing we need this decision tonight. Is that good? Thumbs up. I wish you were in here with me. Okay. The second item is process for not paying tuition as a result of no residency verification. A lot of our sending districts have students that we did not pay tuition for because to date we still have not been able to verify residency. So I believe that what should happen in the future is that we should be doing residency hearings whenever we have a questionable situation that we can't verify or a student who has not verified residency prior to the end of the second semester if at all possible. So that would be my recommendation for you all to consider. But again, it will be up to you how you wish to handle that. And then my last one is board stipends. And when do you want them processed? Please remember that you all will be paid through payroll this year for our auditors and for legal counsel. We will no longer be paying that as an accounts payable. So if you have not been paid by payroll historically which is the majority of all of you you will need to do the payroll documentation in order to get your board stipends this year. So those options will all be there to vote on at the next meeting they'll be action items. Is there any questions about those before they see? Tara, I just wanted a little bit of clarification on the idea of residency hearings who would be administering those hearings? You're super intended. I see. And we will counsel if we needed them but primarily it's done by the superintendent. Okay, perfect. In the past I thought we had someone that went out to check residencies in the cases like that and we're not going to be doing that anymore. More likely than not I would. Yup. I didn't hear that. I said more likely than not I would do that. Yes. We would hire someone to do that work in regards to verifying. Some SUs use like a PI. Yup. Here are that word. I think this is for those cases where after that work there are still no residency. Right, exactly, Stacey. Right over there. And there need to be official hearing and if it's looking sticky then certainly legal counsel would be called in to support this work as well. Can I ask how many cases we've had historically? My sense is, Don, there's times that it could have been sticky and it wasn't. It didn't get to that level. I don't know how diligent we've always been about verifying at times. One case this year. We have one case this year that was pretty sticky. One case in how many years? Well, that was this year. I can't speak to the other ones prior to that. I don't recall any others, that's all. I just, all right. And it's a big, it's a, you know, monetarily it's a pretty big deal. I mean, we worked on this. It ended up being upwards of. I want to say $80,000? Yeah, like $80,000. So it's just something that I need to make certain that the board takes action on about how we want to go about it. And I want to have the process established in writing and in our process and procedure manual that this is how we as a supervisory union will be handling residency. It's important that we have that documented. So we won't be doing it at the local school level anymore? Is that right? I think you have. No, the last step would be that they'll come back to that local level. Yeah, but I think you as a full board have to decide what the process is because you all should be doing the same process. Okay. Okay. These are all things that are gonna come back as action items at our next meeting. And that would be an executive session board, correct? Yeah, that would be the executive committee. If that's what you guys decide tonight. That's what I'm recommending. That's all I had, unless you have questions on my report. I have a question. When do you do a balance sheet about with the finances of the SU to the board? That is normally supposed to be done quarterly? Sorry, I couldn't hear the question. So Bob asked when we do a statement of finances to the board for the board. But if you all wish to have it more than that, you just dictate what you want us to do. And Tara said we usually get it quarterly. I think we should have it at every meeting. Did you guys hear that? Bob is recommending we have it at every meeting. How much work does that create to be able to get done? And do you have it like something that you just got in there? It is something that we can absolutely do if you choose to have it at every meeting. Do we wanna? Can you guys hear them? I think we gotta speak up in this room. Sorry, Bob was asking how frequently we give a balance sheet report to the full board. And I said it should be done quarterly. And his recommendation is to have it done monthly. So if you all would like that done monthly, you just need to let us know what your wishes are. And we will make it happen. This is Sarah Corvalli is fine with me. This is Lisa and I'm just wondering if it makes sense to sort of strike a balance between the two and have it present at every full board meeting as opposed to quarterly. So with a little more frequency than what we have seen it, but at the same time, not necessarily every month. I think that's a good idea. Yeah, this is Chantel. I'm fine with quarterly too. I like Lisa's idea of just the full board meeting. I like Lisa's idea as well. I think the bi-monthly makes more sense since otherwise every other one's gonna land on an executive board meeting. So, I think having it be consistent is a good idea. I would make a motion. I don't think you need to make a motion. No, I'm here in the direction of the board as the superintendent is that we provide those to you bi-monthly at the full board meetings. Comfortable. That would be good. Good to have you here. Absolutely. Director of Special Services. Yes, good evening everyone. I hope everyone was able to read my report. I touched based on three different topics, the alternative classroom restructuring, the ALE report on the indicators of five and seven and the SPED restructuring. Are there any questions regarding my report? Can you guys hear Don? A few people can't hear you. So his question was, do we have any questions regarding his report? But specifically, I gotta add to that, there was a lot of information in that. And so it talked about restructuring some areas in special ed that were gonna get to the why shortly here in the budget presentation, but there's also some corrective action things that we need to do for the AOE. Just to get a general drift of it, these efficient, it sounds like these were efficiencies. Of spreading out larger student load to each professional in each school. Is that correct? Is that's what you're assigning? That's correct. What I found was that we had, it wasn't fair and balanced across the SU where some school districts would have the case manager, one person having five students, where another district, one person having 27 students on their case load. So if you look at what's fair and balanced or fair and equitable case management, is that the between 15 and 20 students? I believe Carl has a question. I'm sorry, Don, I have a, as I look at it, I see there's a SPED report, WRVSU board, 824, 2020. Then there's one that has a parentheses two after it. I think they're the same. They're just the same documents? Okay. Yes, I think there's just two copies of it. That's what I see. And that's, there's a update. I didn't see any update on them. Okay. No, I think that that must have just got copied twice. It should be dated August 18th, 2020. 19th or 18th? 18th. 18th, yes. Yeah, they're the same document as far as I can see. And are we feeling like we're staffed enough with the meetings? Yeah, currently, and again, I had moved some people reassigned some folks to support other districts. And again, I'm looking at that reasonable face load of anywhere between 15 and 20 students. Every case manager is 14 or below, currently. How was the feedback from your staff? Both are pretty positive. There's a lot of questions, but nothing negative. I mean, I think it's important to add one of the things is Don and I continue to meet with the special ed staff. We're talking about, this all has to come under the guise of one comprehensive system. And that special education is not any different. It's not a magic one special education. And so what we're looking to do is say, we've got to work as a team in regular education and special education to ensure that it's a wraparound approach to best supporting students. And one of the steps you heard in Don's report is, is that we're really pushing on principles that they have to act as the LEA, which means essentially they have to oversee and make decisions when the team can't agree in an IEP team meeting, because those are their students. We can't work in silos. And what I would say is, is as we've analyzed, there are some silos across the SU that we're trying to slowly tear down, but one of them that we had to hyper focus on was special education, because it was clear that folks weren't communicating. That principles did not have a sense of what interventions and supports were happening within their building. And as a superintendent, that's just unacceptable. We've got to ensure that your educational leaders knows what is happening with all their students. And I have to say the emphasis is all. And so that's what we're trying to create is a culture of we and not you and I, and that that's Bob's job. No, that's all of our jobs. We all have to work together in this. I wanna know, does the board know what an LEA is? I always have to remind myself, but I was gonna ask that, thank you. It's the local education administrator. So like what I just said is, they're the decision maker at the table, if the team can't come to consensus around what needs to happen for the student in regards to interventions that supports service via an IEP. And one of the things we've changed and one of the things you're gonna see in your fiscal update is, is that we put that responsibility on the principles as your educational leaders. And that's not the case. Does that mean they get a final say necessarily? I mean, they would work in conjunction with Don. Yeah, again, it's at the table. You have to have somebody that has the ability to make decisions that will impact the, but financially. And so when you have somebody at the table that doesn't have that authority by law that you should, you shouldn't go there. So you have to have somebody that has that authority. And as we're talking to the administrators, they're gonna be the LEA, the local education agency for a lot of different kids. When there's a decision that they know of that's gonna impact the budget or it's a new hire, they'll be consulting with me. And so we'll make the decisions together prior to the meeting just so that they know which way we could go and which way we shouldn't go. I'm just imagining a possibility of a disagreement on practice, but is that not really what this is about? It's a principle wouldn't be able to overstep a SPED instructor as far as a practice. Hopefully it would be something that would work out together. Yeah, I don't think it would be the practice of how you're gonna instruct, but what tools might be out there or resources that might be out there that can support a student. For instance, a parent might come in and the student might need occupational therapy. And the parent might request equine, because I'm gonna say that equine therapy somewhere. And the principal would be the authority to say yes, that'll meet that kid's needs, or no, we have occupational therapists who can do that job in-house and we don't have to go out of the district to provide that service. I mean, Ethan, the other thing is I'm gonna be looking at as the superintendent saying the principles with Don, help me understand why the team made these decisions around interventions and supports, right? Like example might be a student struggling with literacy and let's say they're only getting reading intervention twice a week. Well, we know all the research says they need it four times a week. So I'm looking at, I'm not gonna go to the special educator and ask that necessarily, Don might, but I wanna say to the principal, you were there, you gotta help me understand. And so the idea is that what we're trying to do is create this emphasis of you're an instructional leader for all and that the system all has to make sense. We can't have students who are service VIPs getting less interventions potentially than a student who service via targeted intervention plan. In my sense is there's probably times we have that across the ESU. So that's part of what we're trying to address is ensure that we have some clear and consistent definitions to what intervention is and how we go about increase in intensity. Good, thank you. We need to have, the LEA needs to be at the table if we're gonna spend money and has to decide probably in a team effort whether that money is gonna be spent. We have 22 out of district placements, I speak to report. And yeah, that goes back to what superintendent's talking about is building that MTSS structure that we gotta look at, what are we not doing and build instead of just shipping out. So an LEA would have to be present at the table to decide whether or not another district placement happens. And we're gonna have a really clearly defined procedure of what have we done to exhaust interventions and supports prior to that next step and one of the gaps we've seen is right now we don't have a menu of intervention socially emotionally that's comprehensive enough to not result in our buildings feeling at times the only tool they have is what was formerly known as the restorative classroom. So we're looking to put in another level of intervention before we get to that. Formerly known, what is it known as now? We don't have a name for it yet. Okay. And I met with the team today for an hour to do more visioning and talking about how do we make that a more interdependent system within the buildings they're in. One of the things we found was that principals and staff didn't necessarily know all the RC staff or be able to identify them by name and that didn't feel great. I think either way is what I would say. And so we're trying to ensure that that system is more of an interdependent we system. I also think it should help when we go to transitioning students back. I mean, I think one of the things that we've heard is that we had some problems transitioning students and a part of that is folks not feeling like they had the tools to best receive students. And one of the things Don and I are trying to communicate is that's a non-negotiable. We got to build toolkits up and you got to understand that that student is going to feel welcomed and nurtured and that we're providing the scaffolding and supports needed for them to transition back. But just saying no is not, and it's not going to be the answer. And one of the steps we're going to put in place, for instance, if we have a student from Chelsea who's attending South Royalton, that case manager will be more involved on all the meetings and the progress reporting and whatever is going to happen with that child during their time at the formerly known as the RC classroom. So that connection will stay. It's not going to be out of sight, out of mind. Stacey, did you get your question answered? No, thank you Don. Jamie and Don, I was hoping that you could just speak a little bit to how the plan to transition existing families who are part of what was once known as the restorative classroom, given that they probably have a lot of personal and emotional investment in being in that, just if there's a way to kind of move them kind of calmly into the next phase of this or what that might look like. Yes, and I've talked to several families already about the transition to a new program, a different model. It's all going to be the same. It's just not going to be a clinical model right now. And one of the aspects I want to add to that program is more of a BCBA out of Claire Martin, which would be funded, hopefully we can, I think we have enough money in the IDAB grant. And so that person would be housed or working very closely day to day with the classrooms, all three classrooms and their instructors. However, if there was a hotspot or a hotspot in Chelsea, that person can go out and work with the Chelsea team to really kind of shore up the IEP and the behavioral program in that building prior to making a referral for either the alternative classroom or an alternative school somewhere else. And again, working with teams, building up there, as Jamie said, the toolbox is getting full of tools of different methods and modalities to teach these kids. Again, we've had a lot of interaction with families. And so far it's been pretty positive. We've had two families who thought they were going to go to another out of district program. I reached out to them and explained that I didn't feel like we've exhausted all our resources here in town and that we want to have another shot. Both families were very pleased with that suggestion. So in addition to families have been contacted by Dr. Ketterer and then followed up with Michelle Pringle, who's going to be taking the lead for our most intensive programming. And you're going to hear me use the word programming intentionally. I'm trying to train the staff on that because I think program speaks to a self-contained unit. And that's not what we're looking to have. We want students to be able to transition in and out. We may know a student's really successful in a content and that they should be continuing to receive that content mainstreamed. And maybe they need other intensive supports the rest of the day. So you're going to hear me use the word programming because I don't think we want a program that's just self-contained. I think we want to be able to speak to the fact that it can be fluid. And that really chimes into the importance of the principles being the LEA and being part of that programming because they know the teachers that we can get kids into their classroom and really build up their self-confidence. Any other questions for Dawn? I've done. Do you know about the UVM IT team? Yep. Have you used them? Yep. Okay. The first question was, he asked Dawn if you knew about the UVM IT team? Yeah. And how do you use them? And Dawn responded yes. Does everybody know what the UVM IT team is? You all know what the UVM IT team is? No. It's a team of folks professionals that will come in and work with schools. They used to be free of charge. It's no longer free of charge. And it's not, I don't know what they charge now but they'll come in and if we have a student that's really, we're kind of at loss with and trying to, we're exhausting everything. We're just not making that progress. They'll come in and assist us to really shore up a kids program. And they have the experts across the field of education that really fine tune a program for school and really work with kids. And a lot of times I've dealt with the IT team with the real intensive needs kiddos. Any other questions for Dawn? Thank you, Dawn. Technology, Ray. Hey, everybody. You have my report. I entertain any questions? Ray, the inventory process that you're going through as you're looking at making sure that we're maximizing our depreciation and not retaining gear beyond its usefulness. Is that revealing new kind of deficits or surprises in our budget? I mean, at either the SQ level or the individual boards or as you basically the question in a general sense is as you're flipping over the rocks, what kind of bugs and things are you finding? No, no, no great big bugs. Carl, I want it to be well planned out into the future. I am not expecting any big holes at the moment. Thank you. Ray, all of our kids have a computer and need one? Yes. One quick question, Ray. What was our return rate for computers that have been loaned out at the end of last school year? I don't think I ever heard anything about that. Yep, very high. I'm gonna say 95%. So the ones that are still out, we expect the students to show up with them very shortly. Ray, it's, sorry, did I interrupt someone? No, no, no, you're good. Okay, I'm curious about the blackboard system and other educational technology that teachers might be using or the train to use in the event of remote education. I know back in March, nobody was really trained and everybody had to wing it. And I just wanted to check in and see that procedures have been in place to make sure that people are on the same suite and using the same tools and know how to use them for some level of proficiency. Sure, so blackboard is not something teachers use. Right. But the school uses, and now the superintendent to send alert messages, phone calls, texts, emails. Right. So, yes, there was a lot of winging it in the spring. And Mary Ellen, what might remind me, we had two days of PD over three days, right? Focused on technology at the end of the year. There has been a little bit offered over the summer and then there'll be more starting Thursday into next week. And Mary Ellen can expand upon that in her upcoming report. Any more questions for Ray? This is Meg Ticho. I have, I don't, I'm not a tech person, but I have liked using Zoom a lot more in the webinars and things that I have participated in over the last six months. And I'm wondering if we have given any thought to shifting software as we think about a possible return to remote learning and the children that will be in virtual? Quite honestly, no. And I'll give you the full reason here in a minute, but on any given day, we might have 400 people using meat. So, Zoom offers certain features free as do its competitors, Google and Microsoft. And just like with our other tools, this is what we have used and we'll continue to use at this point. I think that the idea is Meg, is that it's part of our Google Classroom platform. And as we look to move forward, we're gonna try to leverage Google Classroom across the whole SU. And we really are a Google school. We're using Google Chromebooks more and more. We're trying to really utilize Google platforms and they're pretty kind to schools in regards to what they charge us. I think what Ray was gonna speak to is there's some incurred costs if we were gonna move to Zoom, is my understanding. I would also add. I would work with the Google stuff early on that it seemed like things got, we were on Zoom and then we hopped off. So it's good to hear that there's at least been some thought behind it. No, no, we were never on Zoom. And this is the part I'll explain. Is that right at the shutdown, it was not even legal to use Zoom with students under 13. So we were using Meet with students as young as pre-K by the end of the year. Now they have fixed that. And Zoom has also settled with the New York AG's office in the middle of the summer with the deficiencies that they had. But at this point, it's only at that point mid-summer that I would even consider using Zoom. Again, across 400 adults and 1,300 students. Okay. All right, any other questions? Grant coordinator Cynthia, you're on the screen. Right there. I am. Okay, there you are. Okay, any questions about it? We have received all of the federal and state funds that we have applied for. And I may be looking at some social, emotional misuse of drugs things. But at the moment, I'm just trying to make sure that we have support in the areas that you need, like the devices and trainings and things like that. Does anybody have any questions? Any questions, anyone? Cynthia, do you feel that we have, I know at various times, you've been advocating for us to make sure that we've got family engagement people, that we've got the appropriate kind of interventionists and people like that that are reaching some of our slipperier families to use a euphemistic term. Do we feel that we've got the resources to reach those families, especially in this time of pandemic, we have all the things we need to get our various MTSS supports out to the families? Well, we certainly have invested in them. So it is to be hoped that all our investments will reach what we had thought. And I really feel that this is the perfect moment to have a lot of family engagement. And I think we're poised to be able to do that. Okay, do we have a system to get feedback and to get, to track our responses and to kind of hone in our approaches to this? Because I would imagine that this is uncharted water, obviously, in terms of how we reach our families and how we support their kids being educated in these times. And Carl, I'm gonna talk about that in my curriculum report too. I think we don't have a specific tool, but this is definitely the time to employ it because it is probably, this is the time that parents can make the most contribution to their children's education. And one of the things that I have heard from parents, and this is just personal gossip, is that they really want to know what their children are trying to learn. And I think we're making a big effort to make that a priority. Right, I know last year we made that big investment in Otis and the data warehousing cloud platform. And I was wondering if this was an opportunity we could leverage our investment into that, into helping to track some of our kids' social emotional learning and where they're at. And I'll be talking more about that in my report too, Carl. I think we're basically, we have information. We just, things have been changing so quickly that we can't put everything into, we haven't, let's just put it this way. We haven't a chance to really analyze the data with the constantly changing situation as far as how education is delivered. I mean, at this point, how are we really going to measure kids who didn't go to school, who haven't been to school since March and won't be going to school maybe until December. All right, I'm gonna move us on if we can. I think we do have a plan for some of these things. And so I don't want to get ahead of ourselves because we do have a pretty comprehensive assessment plan. Okay. Thank you, Cynthia. Very well. And in my area is the curriculum instruction and assessment. And I'm one of the few areas that kind of reaches out to all the other areas. I know you heard Jamie talk about with technology that kind of overlaps with what I do, with grants overlaps with what I do, with intervention and special ed. I kind of work with all of the other areas of the business office. We work together really closely. So our team consists of three people, myself and Amy talk and she's on the call here tonight and Charlie Watson. And we kind of touch all the areas. We've been really busy preparing for the opening of school, helping teachers get ready. We have Amy put on a plan for your first six weeks class and we had over 24 teachers in that class that took that training to plan out the first six weeks of school. So we feel like we're really in a good spot to go. We're also working really closely with the interventionists. We are developing a robust assessment system for them as well as taking a look at their curriculum and instruction and setting up plans for them to monitor students progress, to identify that growth and record it back out again. In addition to that, I've also been working with policy committee as some of you just know, working on an equity task force to create policies around equity, racial justice and inclusion, working for the supervised learning center, which is for our employees, which I think Jamie's gonna talk about a little bit later, creating CIPs for all of our schools, new faculty orientation. We just had our new teachers come in this week and they are great last week and they're great. We love them. We updated the assessment framework and I did put that in my report for everybody that matches the board calendar that Jamie had given you last time. So you can see when those assessments come out and when they'll get reported back out again. We also work with homeless families. We work with mentors, family engagement and I could probably go on and on and on. Is there any questions based on the report that was given out? Carl. I'll use Daisy's. I think I really appreciate the board data calendar that you gave us. What I'm curious about though is, and I usually know all this cool ed lingo, what's an ODR? Office Discipline Referral. Ah, okay, okay. So we're trying, we're gonna be tracking discipline against social emotional learning and relating that. Yeah, part of the idea, Carl, would be that the average referral is about 15 minutes of lost instructional time at best. So one of the things we'd look to start to track is how much time are students actually losing on instruction and how are we putting intervention plans to better support that as we move forward? Okay, I thought this was really, really cool and I'm looking forward to seeing this get implemented across my next, I guess, well, we stop in November because we have to do stupid budgets. I'm really, I found this really exciting. I wanted to say kudos to you guys for this. Daisy. Yes, prior to my question, I actually just wanted to say thank you all for putting together these written reports. It's been really helpful for me to be able to scroll through and see quantitatively what's been going on. So thank you all. Mary Ellen, I have two questions actually about Charlie's portion. The first was about working with newly homeless families and I wondered whether you've seen an increase in homelessness that we should be aware of. If so, is it specific to certain communities and is there anything board members can do to help those families? And then secondly, the point about providing KN95 masks to staff, I wanted to know if there was some process in place to make sure that students are also adequately masked. Yeah, so, we'll continue to gain data on homelessness as the school year opens and every school district has target intensive social emotional teams now that's gonna be analyzing and looking at that data. And if we are struggling with best supporting those students from a school level, you can see that we're looking to implement an SU-wide social emotional team that's gonna have the greatest minds we have across the SU to think tank with other outside agencies to ensure that there's interagency coordination. Often those were formerly known as child protection teams because it brings DCF to the table it'll bring Clara Martin to the table and it will also bring our district attorneys to the table to ensure that we're all working together in regards to homelessness, truancy, things of that nature. And your other question was about the masks. We have plenty of PPE that meets the specifications that we've put out as recommendations to provide for any student or staff as we move forward. And I can tell you Stacey that Charlie has received some referrals for homeless families already. It does usually get going right around the beginning of the school year. So we are anticipating quite a few more, maybe a little more this year than normal but we have plans in place to address them. Thank you. Yeah. Anything else from Mary Ellen? Right. Negotiations. No updates on negotiations from the last time we met. We're awaiting a response from the support staff. All of these. Excuse me, when we sent our letter out didn't we give them a drop dead date to the support staff? I'd have to review that letter, Don. I don't remember. We should have so that we had not handcuffed ourselves to inactivity. I think the letter came directly from your legal counsel. So I'd have to review it to see whether or not that was provided or not. Then we might have to fix that situation. Yeah. So you're not waiting. I will find a copy of the letter that went out and report back if I had a date or not and it's not, we'll have to get together as negotiations team and deal with that. Right, policies. We just had a policy committee meeting. Lisa, how about you? You wanna go and talk about the policy committee meeting? I just, excuse me one second. We just got a comment from Marty Gratz. Evidently there's a response coming. So we'll look forward to that response. Thank you Marty. Thanks Marty. So in our policy committee meeting tonight we looked at three draft policies from the VSBA. They're not required policies, but they are recommended. One is the board's relationship with the superintendent. Another one relates to budgeting and a third relates to handling of staff complaints. And we agreed at the policy committee meeting that they will be sent out to the policy committee members because there were only four members at our meeting this evening. Mary Ellen will ask people to make copies of those policies, comment on them and get them back to her by the second week of September. So she can assimilate all of those comments into draft policies that she'll then get out to all of us. Is that an okay summary? Is that good to me? Please a reminder not to be corresponding as a policy committee on these. We were clear about that in the policy meeting. Question item. So the expectation is that you as a board will get a draft of these policies at your next executive meeting to provide feedback and start the conversation moving forward with the hopes of getting these adopted this fall. Eight point one is discussion items policies, Jamie. Yeah, you guys had in your packet the disposition of assets policy, F-28 and F-29 investment. I also put these in for the last full board, the special meeting. These were in there for you guys to review and discuss. So I'm hopeful that you guys could move and adopt these tonight. They were then worn in the paper. And so that's what I'm hoping you will do. And they are further down under action items. So bring them up at that point. Do you want to deal with this now? Do you want to motion now? I would love for you just to take care of it. Yeah, it's listed as discussion items. We accept policies at F-28 disposition of assets and F-29 investment as presented in the board packet. I'll second. Sorry, can you tell me who made that second? Sorry, I heard a few voices. Ethan? I did. Oh, okay, got it. Well, Ethan did, so you can pick one. I want to ask a question. Okay. All right. How much money invested right now? Is it all in one bank to the $250,000 guarantee by the federal government? Do you have accounts that are over $250,000? We have what are called sweep accounts. So our money goes into it. We have what are called sweep accounts. Each of the treasurers has their primary checking account and the sweep account. So the funds that are above and beyond the $25,000 that we keep as a general fund go to the sweep account, which is protected by FDIC. So the actual funds, and then they sweep in the money as we need it to cover the expenditures. The bank automatically does that based on the daily balance. So what's the limit? It's $250,000, isn't it? I mean, you're handing me the dollars here. I didn't hear the question or comment. Well, I'm trying. The federal government insures money in an account up to $250,000, right? Yeah. Okay. We have millions of dollars that are dealing with in our business office. How are we doing it? How are we investing? Do we know that everything is covered by FDIC insurance? Sarah, I seem that I have all those accounts separate, indicative to the districts rather than the SU. Yes, Don, that is correct. Each entity maintains their own bank account. Okay. And the entity maintains its own sweep account through Mascoma Savings Bank for all entities except for Sharon, which is done through Community National Bank. That's why everyone has to go through their own separate arbitrage. Correct. So it's not one lump sum, per se, Bob. No. It's individual accounts. No, but we have wealth and buckle, 12 million bucks. Well. How do we have it invested? And then what's the treasure? Or is it all protected? It is protected. We're based on what the auditors confirmed during our fiscal audit. Our funds are maintained in the sweep accounts, which protects them. And just so everyone knows, Don, our auditors, I did invite them tonight, Bob. So if that's a question you have for them after, I encourage you to ask for them. So we have a motion on the table and it's seconded to approve F28 and F29 policies. Is there any other discussion? Okay, hearing none, all those in favor? Say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Hearing none, it's all moved. Jamie, are you to vote for the calendar? I think that's after the financial update. Oh, sorry. Financial update in current state of, okay, so we're gonna do financial update in current state of River Valley SU. So as Tara's moving and Ray, there's a presentation to project. I thought it was really important as I had met with the auditors and we dug into the finances that we provide an overview update for WRVSU of where we're currently at financially at this time. I think that I had a sense that we were dealing with some financial challenges as I accepted the position as I've gotten into the job. It became clear that I just needed to make certain that we articulated to you all where we currently are financially and we're starting to make several changes within the business office and also our system of supports, specifically around special education, intervention, how we approach universal instruction to find more efficiencies. And I'm telling you that it is time for us to change how we do business because if we continue the same model that we're doing, it's not sustainable. You're up against the tax threshold in most districts already and we're running deficits across the board and specifically at the SU level. And so I wanted to lay that out to you tonight and then talk to you all about what we're currently doing in response to it. And then also I brought the auditors here so you can ask questions to them because we're also working in conjunction with the auditors to ensure that the steps we're taking makes sense based on their feedback. This is Don, I just want to caution those of folks that aren't up against the threshold, like don't want the water muddy to try to put everything together so that it mitigates it. If you know what I mean. I don't know what you mean. It can be lumped all in together to bring everybody up on one level playing field. No, no, no, we're broken all this down by district, Donna. Okay. Are any of these subjects non-public at this point because we are being recorded? There's an executive session for personnel at the end of the meeting. No, I'm talking about in this report that's coming up financially. All this is for public. Okay. We are not talking about any personnel, contracts, anything that should be an executive session. Okay. Okay, so what we have here, I know it's hard to read on the screen is the FY 18, 19 audited balances per the last drafts of the audits that we've received. Most of them you've all approved. We have three left to go through approval process. What our projected general fund net income or losses for FY 20. And then the last column is the FY 19, 20 cumulative projected surplus or deficit, which is including the FY 19 surplus in deficit. We're showing you the general fund for each of the entities in the food service for each of the entities that an implies that has a food service. And then under the SU, the first column is just based on the second draft of the audit that we received on Friday. The second column includes special education, what our projections are for the deficit there. And then again, the general fund adds, the last column adds the two first columns together. So I'll read the numbers. If that's what you all would like me to do, I'll go each entity. I'm comfortable with you sharing the presentation as well with the board. Can I ask a quick question too with the numbers? Are the individual districts include the deficits shared out or are they? No Andrew, this would be prior to doing the last assessment for the SU because that we wait until we have the audited numbers to do final assessments. So starting right at the top, I'm gonna go in alphabetical order. First branch unified district and FY 19, they had a general fund surplus of $71,516 and a food service surplus of $26,312. Our projected loss in the general fund for FY 20 is $111,258.06 in the general fund, $52,679.96 in the food service for a total general fund deficit of $39,740.06 and food service total deficit of $26,367.96. For G HUD, you have a general fund surplus in FY 19 of $78,710. A projected general fund surplus in FY 20 of $204,822.94 for a cumulative surplus of $283,532.94. Rochester Stockbridge, you have a general fund surplus in FY 19 of $259,483. Food service surplus of $37,770. Projected surplus in FY 20 of $11,734.15 a projected deficit and food service of $62,628.24 for a cumulative general fund surplus of 271,217.15 and a cumulative deficit and food service of $24,858.24. And Sharon, you have a projected or an FY 19 deficit in the general fund of $93,973. A deficit in food service of $17,569. A projected deficit in the general fund for FY 20 in the amount of $74,064.066.52. Food service projected deficit of $7,424.61 for a cumulative general fund deficit of $168,039.52 cumulative food service deficit of $24,993.61 for a strafford in FY 19, you had a general fund deficit of $56,382. Food service deficit of $42,607. A projected deficit in the FY 20 general fund of $99,289.86 with a projected surplus of $10,738.79 in food service for a cumulative general fund deficit of $155,671.86 a cumulative deficit and food service of $31,868.21. Rudd, you had an FY 19 general fund deficit of $440,417 a food service deficit of $31,532. A projected general fund surplus in FY 20 of $122,487.77 a projected food service deficit of $121,924.85 for a cumulative general fund deficit of $317,929.23 and a cumulative food service deficit of $153,456.85 and the supervisory union per draft two of the FY 19 audit the current deficit is $68,370. Our projected general fund and special education deficit for FY 20 is $492,047.46 for a cumulative general fund deficit for the supervisory union of $560,417.46 So the cumulative and FY 20 income or surplus or deficits are prior to audit. This is based on our current reconciliations which we continue to work through. We do have to submit a revised SEAR report to the agency of education which is our special education expenditure report for the closure of the fiscal year. We do have to submit a revised report to them to account for the liability reconciliations that we have completed over the last month. So there could be some additional revenue coming in from the agency of education to help offset special education. So that is still a changing balance as far as the special education current deficit. All of these again are just based on our current year-end closure. They have not gone through all the auditing process that the auditors do in final year-end journal entries and also any final assessments once we have the solid numbers for the supervisory union and special education. So that's the snapshot as of today. Tara, what's the total deficit for health growth? Well, before the previous, before the SUSS is out of which you're 47% out. Before it, you're running out. $471,386.08 is your general funding your food service combined? 471,000. 386.08. Okay. And 40% of the 560. Could potentially go to run if that number doesn't change. Yeah. So what is it, do you know? I can do that. Not that good for you, but sure. Would you go to the next slide while Tara's running that? And we're gonna answer all kinds of questions at the end. 224,000. Sorry. I wanted to jump in with a question about food service. In general, it seems like we're running, deficits across the board. Is that because of food that was purchased and spoiled while it sat in refrigerators or losses? Was that because we weren't able to submit the proper paperwork to get reimbursements under the various funding options or reimbursement options for food service? Or is this another indication of why we really need to have a supervisory level employee food director? So Carl, I think it's a combination of those factors. I think the budgeting process for food service has not been solid throughout the supervisory union throughout the last several fiscal years. I think it's important that these food service managers at each of our building level, this next fiscal year, they will be working with me more closely on establishing a budget based on historical factors that have come into play throughout the last several years. So we will look at the last several years to see where their budgets are off. One of the big factors that I found is that we are not charging enough for our paid meal prices. So each year we have to do what is called the paid lunch equity tool. We were not aware that it hadn't been done for the prior fiscal year until I went through the food service audit and got the food service results last August that we needed to do that. So upon completion of that, it was found again that our numbers were below. And then this year when I did our renewal application that is now a function of the renewal application is that paid lunch equity tool. The recommendation based on our numbers is that we charge a minimum of $3.05 for paid lunch, but you're not allowed by USDA guidelines to increase your paid lunch price by more than 10 cents in any one school year. So we have several buildings that are still down in the 285, 295 range. So we're low in several of our entities as far as what we're charging for paid lunch. And then the actual reimbursement rates that we get they came out late last fiscal year. We do have them for this fiscal year. So I think it's just a matter of following and understanding those budgets and working more closely with the food service managers. I do, you've all heard me say multiple times throughout this past year when I've been blessed to be the school food authority that we absolutely need to change the way we are handling our school food accounts. It should all be maintained at the supervisory union level that would give us the opportunity for both buying purchases and for better tracking purposes in this far as having that same consistent pricing throughout the supervisory union. I do think food service is one of the places that we need to put some focus in. I do know that Jamie mentioned in a prior board meeting is desire to obtain some bids as far as putting our food service out to a contractor. So I think that's definitely something that we will look into in the future as well. But there are definitely some places in the food service that we need to be paying closer attention to. And the fact that the general fund needs to offset any deficits that we have in the food service that perhaps we need to be looking at what you're allocating now in your budget cycle to supplement your food service programs and if we need to make adjustments there. I know last year, many people just continued to do what they have done in the past, which clearly wasn't enough because we still ended up with a deficit. So I think there's multiple factors that we need to look at when it comes to food service. I would love us to have some sort of analysis about how much money we've been leaving on the table in terms of not getting our full FDA reimbursements or not doing appropriate purchasing or appropriate recipe and meal planning. I remember a similar argument being made a couple of years ago about that. And we didn't have this kind of data when we came into the budget cycle. And as we're going into the budget cycle, it would be great to understand what, because it seems like we have this conversation that we should have an SU food service coordinator most every year. And we say, well, that's a lot of money to pay someone to do that for us. And then we all pay deficits. So I would really like us to see some sort of analysis of what savings or maybe not savings could be had or what we're going to do to try to not run these consistent food service deficits and still give wellness because I do not believe the answer is to serve everything out of a Cisco can or out of some sort of central kitchen that's shipping out, you know, warming trays. Well, I do think that there is some some, not all food service programs are serving things out of a warming tray and looking at the deficit that everybody has, maybe it's time to at least revisit and get some solid numbers on what we could actually save. I'm curious how a supervisory union managed food service is going to affect local purchasing. Because I agree, I think sometimes economy is going to affect quality. And if we're trying to improve or grow our farm to school program and local buying, I'm just curious how that's going to affect. I feel like these are an additional agenda item for an upcoming meeting. But what I can tell you is, is that my experience is whether we centralized food service and did it ourselves or whether we went out to contract that local buying and purchasing in a bulk way, still happens. The example I can give you is that I previously worked with the Abbey Group. We still bought potatoes from the local farmer in Williamstown. And we were able to do it via bulk buying through Chappelle's. And if you haven't had their potatoes, I recommend you do your great potatoes. And they also helped us write the grant for the farm to school program. So I think it's something that you guys got to wrestle with as a board at a very soon to be upcoming agenda. Because there's some big decisions there in regards to the contract and getting a sense of what those numbers look like. But until we have someone take a look and provide us with that information, it's hard for you to make an informed decision on what we could do locally versus someone else coming in. But what I can tell you is schools are not in the business to run food service programs in order to come close to breaking even. That's not what we were trained to do. And so right now, the problem is we don't have that oversight in regards to ensuring that the recipes, that the promotion, that the free and reduced lunch paperwork and all that's handled in a way that ensures the most efficient system. And that's what we got to figure out whether we're going to do that in-house or whether we're going to have someone help us with that. And that's what I need you guys to help decide. I need some direction on whether you want me to pursue that or not and an upcoming agenda. Ter, a question on the slide reasons for projected deficits. Is this prioritized or just a, I mean, is there was HRA, one of the biggest issues or is it all of a sudden equally? It was just all the potential reasons compiled into a list. It's not in a, this is the primary number one reason. It's not in any of that kind of order. Is it possible that we could get that because I think that would focus our- I mean, we know that at the SU level around our deficit, our two major issues is special education, okay? And that there were times we were over projecting federal revenue. And that was just miscommunication within the SU office of when we were budgeting federal revenues that we were overstating them in some local districts during the budget process and or essentially the same dollar was counted in two places for as revenues stated in your budgets. And so at the SU level, those are two major issues. Also, HRA was of course under budgeted for everybody throughout the entire supervisory union including central office and including special education. So we had already identified that as an issue last year when we went through the budgeting cycle for FY 21 that's why I made the recommendations that I made and you as boards decided how you wanted to move forward and that will continue to be an issue if we end up with higher utilizations than what the average was at that point. So that will always be something that we need to watch very closely as I expressed to you all when we were building your FY 21 budgets that ultimately the goal would be to build up an HRA reserve fund eventually so that we protect us on the years that we have higher utilization versus the years that we don't have as much utilization. And then with the statewide negotiated contracts HSAs are now going to be a factor for us as well starting in January of 2021. So that will be another factor that we're going to need to budget for in 2022 depending on they can choose between an HRA which again is a health reimbursement arrangement or a health savings account which is the HSA. So they do have those options in the new statewide negotiated health plan. So that will continue to be something that we will visit each year and we'll get those utilization reports to try and make the best decisions that we can for the budgets. Another way of prioritizing if I may say it would be nice to know what is the SU level problems and what are the individual. I'm just going to say that Ethan. So why you're getting this as an SU is because in general, your deficits are being caused by reassessments from the SU. So the supervisory union is overrunning budgets in regards to the SU budget and then more specifically, special ed has been traditionally and the auditors are on here. They can confirm this for you. And then that's being reassessed back out. And so many of your local district budget shortfalls started with the SU in our reassessments. And as you can see, as we're projecting currently right now in fiscal year 20, it's almost a half a million dollars. That's going to be assessed back out to you all by your percentages. And so therefore those numbers you can look right now, Rudd's doing well, they're in the black. That's not going to happen once we reassess back out. And so at the local level, the issue that we see mostly affecting us has to do with preventative maintenance and the cost for contracted services in regard to maintaining our buildings, Ethan. And so at the local level, that's an area that we're going to try to hyper focus on because it's one of the reasons I did a tour over the last two weeks of every building and what became clear to me is in many places we're still reacting to something breaks and we don't have plans in place for preventative maintenance and or our reserve accounts really are not in place after the merger. And then, you know, we also had the Google bit crew come out last year. So between Jamie's walkthroughs with your facility maintenance directors and with what was discovered by this bit, it really gives us the jumping off point on building that replacement plan for your facilities. And with the VISBIT reports, as you all may recall when you receive them that they did put them in order of priorities so that it helps you to know what really needs to be done now versus, you know, what's a low priority. So by using all of that information, we can really help develop that maintenance plan for each of the buildings. Like Carl, you had something? That I thought I understood that like our SUD, our line was that line you showed on that table and that we also were responsible for our share of that bottom line for the SU. But now it seems like you're saying that our SU piece is already shown. No, I'm saying that those numbers you see for fiscal year 20 above WRVSU are pre-assessing that dollar out. So we should expect that we would pay our 14% or whatever our SU is for the SU bottom line. Correct. How close, obviously, this is a lot of this is new information. How close are you to giving us some idea of what the savings will be with efficiencies in special ed and federal estimating? Well, we've got the next slide. We've got some rough estimates of where we're headed. Can we finish this slide? There was a couple of questions we didn't touch on. So Jamie mentioned the over projection of federal revenue and grants and Medicaid in special education. We are over in contracted services. There are budget shortfalls in the occupational therapy salaries and overspending in the reminding speech language pathology. Thank you. I couldn't remember the first one. And then one of the big things as you're building administrators, they dread the annual budget spend regular special ed Paras regular ed build backs. So that is something some of them try to budget for based on what they know they're gonna need to use for regular ed services of their special education Paras. But there are instances throughout the school year where things happen and based on the time studies that can change what we can claim for reimbursement under special ed versus what has to be built back to the entities for using those Paras in regular education ways. We talked about the HRA. Jamie talked about the reactive maintenance and replacement plan. And then one of the other areas that we seemed to be a lot over budget under was the need for substitutes. And that often points to a climate and culture issue. And then we did talk about the budget process for food service. So upon our initial review of where overdges were this is a quick snapshot to give you some ideas of where the projected deficits are coming from. Obviously when each of you receive your own report we can go through and see what your individual entity where their areas were. But this was just common general factors that we've discovered throughout this process. Tara, when you say budget overfalls in regular education using a regular education usage of SPED Paras do you mean for 504 program support or you just mean for plain old regular education because at least in our district we at one point in time got dinged because we had a para who was straight in the classroom and straight in the classroom with a regular classroom expense versus the idea that we've got paras that are providing 504 services and 504 services are paid for by the local education authority. I'm going to refer you to that answer to Don Carl. He's more equipped to answer that for you. What we found was the uses of the special ed paras doing a lot more regular ed duties in a classroom when we did these time study analysis what we're finding is I'm going to try to say this in the simplest ways because it gets confusing. When we do time studies when a pair is working with a kid they have to do what's prescribed in the IEP. For instance, if a student has a math weakness disability and the IEP calls three times a week for 20 minutes 20 minutes three times a week we have people doing 40 minutes five times a week. That's just a made up example but that's the stuff that we're finding. We're also finding that paras were working with students and providing services that weren't even in the IEP. For instance, if you had a reading disability they're helping them in math class or if there was a group of students and they say small group instruction there might be the majority of the kids have to be on IEPs we're finding that they weren't. So all kinds of irregularities that we're going to pull together training before our next staff meeting or before October anyway and train not only the teachers but also the principals. So when they look at their time studies because they have to redo these and sign off on them that they know what they're looking at. So it's not 504 support it's actually general tutorial support it's general reading blah blah blah math or whatever or it's supports that aren't directly under an IEP that we're providing to try to help the whole student and not just the parts of the student that the federal government says we're allowed to support. And Carl we're cool with that we just got to make certain that we're budgeting accordingly for it. And I try to understand if this is a management if this is something where we're doing a better job of planning and plotting and organizing so that we can expect that we're not gonna have these kinds of deficits going forward because we're doing a better job of understanding and organizing our parrots and our sped instructors time versus this is still something that we should just expect because we're trying to meet the needs of the student and that may mean that we're providing a different support of 504 support or a tutorial support and we're okay with that because we're supporting the whole student. Agreement that kids need to help that's why these parrots are in the business to helping kids we just have to identify if the time they're gonna be working with regular ed kids 504 kids or ESD planned kids we just got to identify that and make sure that we're budgeting accordingly and not say, well, we got this amount of money but we're this amount of money in the budget but we're gonna spend this amount, you know? We got to know that prior. Don, can you just explain to them about time studies? Bob asked Don to explain about time studies just so you know. Are you aware of time studies? Okay, they happen there's two weeks out of the year that they happen and it's October and February and what happens is everyone who is paid under the special ed umbrella has to do them and what it is is it's a snapshot in time of a schedule and so if a paraeducator has to document exactly what they are doing and each, you know, you know from the start of their contract of hours to the end of their contract of hours and what happens is that the state comes in and does an audit and if they find in those two weeks that a paraeducator went over the services in a IP for instance they're applying math 20 minutes, three times a week which should be two times a week they will deduct that salary for the whole year. So we have to be as I always said we gotta be creative but not fraudulent when we do our time studies and that, you know, we, you know again when we're teachers or we're working in a school in Little Sally who's not on an IEP asked for help we're not gonna not help her, we're gonna help her but we can't do that over a consistent period of time day in and day out, month in and month out. Thank you, thank you. Thanks Sarah. The next slide when Ray gets it back up on the screen is what have we done for FY 2021 to try and make sure this doesn't continue to happen? So the first one is that I am now overseeing grants, Medicaid and special education where before that was primarily done by the individuals who handle that. So now I am very much involved in the decisions and watching the spending and approving the spending and being part of the spending and revenue process for them. Grants will be written with a team approach moving forward. So we will be working based on our goals throughout the supervisory union. We'll be working with Mary Yellen and curriculum, Dawn and special education, each of the building administrators and Cynthia and myself and Jamie will be working as a team each year and Ray when it has anything to do with technology or technology usage to establish what we need our federal funds for and how we're going to spend them based on the goals of the supervisory union. Liability reconciliations will be done on a monthly basis not on a fiscal year end. So what that means- Tara, can you just clarify what liability reconciliation is? Yeah, that's what I was just gonna say. So liability accounts are, for example, when we deduct health insurance from an employee's paycheck we have to reconcile to make sure the appropriate amount of money is taken out and that appropriate amount of money is then offset and sent to the insurance company to cover their 20% of their health insurance premium. So historically it appears that that was being done at the end of the year which as all of you have seen, most likely in your last week's warrants and what your warrants will be this year that it was done at year end. So there are some additional charges for any cleanup. So additional liability accounts would be the long-term disability insurance that the supervisory union paid on behalf of the districts and then need to get the money back from the districts. The HRA accounts making sure that the money that was paid out by Datapath is in fact what we paid Datapath. So there's a lot of moving pieces in the behind the scenes accounts through in our software system that need to be reconciled on a monthly basis. So I instructed the business office staff that that is my expectation is that it's done every month moving forward and no longer at fiscal year end. Tara, are we also gonna be reconciling leave time so that the employees know exactly what they have? Yes, that is one of the things that they need to be reconciling on a monthly basis done. Okay. So we shifted roles within the business office. Several of you have heard that I have a new payroll administrator that started on June 1st, Robyn Deniken. She is up and running and is still here with us as a part-time accountant handling the monthly billing of the benefit line items and also still being available for Robyn as a resource. Particularly this week, it's the beginning of the school year. We start payroll for all of the teachers. So to make sure that what they selected for their weekly pay cycles is set up correctly in the system that the salaries are set up correctly. We'll be sending out to the administrators once it's all established to again confirm that the appropriate account code is being used for payroll as you all recall. In the last two years, there have been several positions that were miscoded. So you ended up having a substantial salary increase overage and general elementary where you had a substantial surplus in the middle school level. So to make sure that all of the individuals are appropriately coded. So that's some of the work that Anne will also be working with Robyn to do in addition to quarterly reports. Rose, she is handling all general ledger functions of the business office on her side. So that's bank reconciliation, accounts receivable, postings and then Jane handles all of our grants and special education. Accounting right now. So she confirms that purchases and expenditures that are being applied to grants match the strategies that the grants were written on to make sure that we can actually get the reimbursement funding from the state and feds when it's a federal grant. And then in special education, she just maintains the expenditure report. She does the initial draft of the special education expenditure reports and then I review it and sign off on it. So that's her primary function at this point. And then myself as the school food authority and as the business manager, what I oversee on my side, Johanna continues to be our accounts payable clerk. And then Lisa is our human resource administrator slash administrative assistant to the business office. So that's where we currently stand. As far as the business office, Lori is still our Medicaid clerk and Tracy is still the special education administrative assistant. So they still work very closely with the business office on making sure all of those things run smoothly. So that's the current status of the business office. And bank reconciliations, because now that we have capacity with Rose being here, bank reconciliations, as you saw in the draft continuous improvement plan that I submitted to the full board that they are now being done on the monthly basis that they need to be within the 21 days of the close of the month. We get the bank statements from the banks and then Rose works with the treasurers to get all the backup documentation that's needed for deposits that were made by the treasurers so that we can reconcile all of the, I think we're up to 28 bank accounts right now. So bank reconciliation takes a lot of time. My goal is to get some of those extra bank accounts closed because there is no reason why we should have 28 bank accounts throughout the supervisory union. So it's a lot of work to reconcile. And it takes a good week of time to reconcile all those bank accounts. That's given that every piece of documentation is at hand and she can move right through it. But there is a lot of back and forth between her and the treasurers in order to obtain that documentation to make sure the reconciliations go through the way they need to go through. We created a finance committee in RUD and in FBUD and Jamie and I have discussed also trying to create an SU finance committee in the near future. So we'll be coming back to you all for that. And on the next slide, we'll review what the roles and responsibilities are of the finance committee. Jamie mentioned earlier that we're changing the budget process. I submitted a draft timeline to you all at part of my business manager's report. So this year we are starting from zero and building up. We're not going to use, this is what we did last year. So this is what we're gonna do this year. So we are literally going to start from nothing and build it based on needs and necessities. And we're going to be building it in segments as you'll see, or if you haven't already read the budget timeline. We changed the PO procedure, which is purchase orders, all purchase orders that are over $1,000 for any entity within the supervisory union. Jamie has to approve the person making the purchase order request has to be able to substantiate the need for that order. And then here within the supervisory union and within RUD, I will be reviewing and improving all purchase orders prior to the orders being placed. And then restructuring. And the reason for that is to make sure that we have the funds available in the budget and that it really is a necessity. As you all know, we froze off spending unless it was a necessity. So that just continues to help solidify that process and to make sure it's being followed. And then the restructuring and special education Don touched on some of this already in his reports. So principles are now the LEAs we're no longer using a leadership team. So that was a projected savings of $56,000. We have changed some of the contracted psychological services that we were utilizing. That's a projected savings of $130,000. And the management decision not to fill two vacancies is an additional projected $130,000 savings. And then Don has also put in place in his department caps on individual services and supply orders of $200. And anything that exceeds that would require prior approval from him. And then Jamie and the appropriate administrator is analyzing every vacancy throughout the supervisory union to determine efficiency. And if there is a need for replacement and in some of those situations they've already determined that there is not a need for replacement. And there's a projected $65,000 between salaries and benefits and some of those positions that were not filling. Those have all come to the local district board just so folks know. And I am no longer contracting with my mentor which is a projected savings of $57,000 over last year. Any questions on that slide? Go ahead, Ray. So this is the finance committee's roles and responsibilities. So during the finance committee meetings we'll review the monthly expenditure reports and quarterly revenue reports. They will review the approved warrants for questions, concerns, or coding errors. It will be the place where we do the budget development prior to the monthly board meetings. And we'll go over again that budget development calendar and tool that I sent out in my board report. We're gonna look at monthly food service reports and then to review the facilities committee strategic plan for proactive maintenance that will be developed throughout this next school year is my understanding. Is that correct, Jamie? Yeah. So that's the roles and responsibilities of the finance committee. And then ultimately they would then come your finance committee would then come to you as your board and present the information that was established during the finance committee meetings. So for RUD we are meeting on the first Thursday of the month and for first branch we still need to establish what our calendar is going to be. Could I ask how many people are on these various committees? So right now for RUD we have two board members and then we have the building administrators and then they have invited two community members to be part of their finance committee. My understanding and Bob can correct me if I'm wrong. They both are CPAs and are in the field of accounting so that they'll be a valuable resource for the boards and to the administrators to help with that understanding and making that transition between common language and accounting gobbledygook. Is that correct Bob? Yeah, I see three board members. Oh yeah, sorry, three board members in RUD. Thank you. Yeah, but that's true. Thank you. FBUD currently has two board members but we haven't met to establish that they're going to have any additional members or how they're going to handle that. And it will be their two building administrators as well. Okay. Is there, I also have the auditors on because you just got provided a great deal of information and I wanted to make certain that if you had questions that you could ask them as well and they've been working with us now. Well, they worked in Windsor Northwest. I want to say Northeast, get it down here. Windsor Northwest for several years and they've been working with you for the last since the merger. And so I was wanting to make certain that if you had questions or if you could say is what the administration just presented what you guys are seeing in your analysis that you would have the opportunity to do so. I would like to ask that question to the auditors. So to the auditors, do you feel that this is going to get us in the right direction? I mean, are these some of the recommendations that you have? Ron, you're on mute, I think. I can't hear you. Doesn't show me. Can't hear you. Try and turn your volume up, Ron, and see if that will work. You're not muted, but we can't hear you. His browser may also be denying him permissions to use the microphone. He may need to go into his browser settings and turn on his microphone again. So Ron is in charge of R.H.R. Smith and Josh Quinn is our individual auditor. Just to give you context of who the two of them are. We still can't hear Ron. Yeah, Ron, we still can't hear you. Can you hear us, I guess? Yep. No, Ron, can you hear us? No, okay, Ron, we don't know. Wait, can you approach him? Josh, can you unmute and see if we can hear you and make sure it's not a problem just for outsiders? Ron, can you drop out and come right back? Josh, we can't hear you either. Can you hear me? Yes. Okay, I'm in outside. Oh no, I guess I'm not an outsider. I'm not an outsider, I'm sorry. Josh, we can't hear you either. Maybe drop down and come back. Unmute. Ron, there you go. Nope. This is frustrating. Maybe try calling in with the phone number. What's the number? Yeah, we can interview Josh. We got you, Josh. All right, good. Well, I'll just start while Ron tries to fix his IP problems. So yes, I guess to respond to your question, yes, these are all items we have recommended and then some. I think Tara and Jamie have probably come up with themselves and definitely something, especially from a budgeting perspective, you guys talked a lot about food service. Always a challenge to budget food service when a lot of schools across the state have food service managers, for example, who are cooks, are chefs and have not ever been putting new budgets together and trying to follow budgets. And Special Ed, you talked a lot about the regular end para usage being built back. Also a common problem of just trying to get those budgets right and then having people follow those, follow the requirements of what they're supposed to do whenever possible if possible. What you guys were talking about. Hold on a second thing, Ron's calling me. See if he can jump in, hold on. Ron, it's Dars, there you go. Can you hear me now? We got ya. We can. Listen, we're having some nasty thunderstorms here. I don't know if that's affecting me. It didn't affect my video, but I don't know about my audio. So Josh, Josh, were you able to respond to the question? I think so, did that help? Was that helpful? Yeah. Yeah, and again, I was just listening to a lot of conversation, the data that you guys are presenting. The one thing that I would say this week that I said last week is just us huddling up with Jamie and Tara and her group has been a lot of work done. We haven't really had a chance to get into 2020 yet, but I know that's a priority for Tara and Jamie and it's a priority for us. And really, I think that like I say, 19 with 19 to bed now, our focus is mainly on 20 to just confirm with Tara and make sure nothing was missed, the presentation that her and her people spent a lot of time apparently putting together for tonight to give you some data, focus on that, given the fact that 19 is old. I'd wanna know if I'm in your all chair right now. And yeah, that's our focus point as we told Jamie and Tara and that's something certainly we have fast track for you all right now. And back to the food service, I absolutely think you know, that you guys are doing the right thing by taking a deeper dive into it. And Jamie and Tara, we can give you at least three to five other business managers who just recently within the past year, just went through the same situation that you're in in the same dive, and reached out to Abbey and Cafe. I believe one chose to sit tight, the other four decided to outsource. So may I recommend that you allow us to connect you with some of your fellow business managers so that they can kind of give you the down and dirty of what they did and why they did it. That would be awesome, thank you Ron. And so do you feel like with what's put in place here we're doing everything that you're recommending so that we're not looking at this next year? I think you're doing everything that you're recommending. I think that your biggest obstacle is gonna be time. I think Rose was a great addition, as I said last week to your staff. I think she's covered a lot of ground. I think that you're under-resourced still in that area. And I know when I sat in front of all you guys back last October at Halloween-ish, one of the things that we advocated was getting Tara some good accounting help in there. I think that as Jamie and Tara continue to look in the mirror at the DNA of their business office I actually think that I'd be prepared to really look at that hard and just look at the staffing what you got right now and whether or not is the ability to look at your detail, look at your job, look at your people sitting in the chairs and try to get some money freed up of their accounting. And I would trust that Jamie and Tara, I'm using us as a sounding board. I definitely think that that's gonna be a need of your supervisor union, which will allow Tara and give her the best chance her and her staff the best chance to implement the plan and the corrective action that we've been talking about now for a long time. And with the strain that to 19, as I said, FY19, just imposed a lot of huge challenges that Tara walked into. And I think staffing, and I think that that's something that needs to be looked at hard by the SQ2, but I know Rose has done a herculean effort to try to get that place caught up. I'm just worried that there's not enough time for her between now and say October 15th when we wanna start talking about drafts and confirmation with you all. I'm just afraid that there's not enough time and we're gonna run out of time and Tara won't have a chance to take that plan for a spin. That's my biggest concern. And if Josh, you wanna respond to, I'll let you respond to do that as well. I don't think you covered it. Any other questions of the auditors? With this deficit, how are we able to maintain meat payroll, cash flow? You're asking me? Is that question directed at us? Oh, okay, I can let you answer it or I can answer it, Ron. Tara, I'll lead back completely up to you. If you want me to take a shot at the question. So we would use our tax anticipation notes that we've already put in place. And if those are not enough to cover the expenditures in anticipation of tax revenue and the education funding coming in, then we would need to go to the banks and ask for short-term expenditure notes to cover those additional expenses that we don't have enough cash to cover them. We gotta go to the voters to do that. You would need to go to the voters in some situations, may not necessarily in all. So I would need to research that to figure out if you can borrow money without going to the voters. Well, it's one of the articles that you pass already in your annual meetings is to allow the school district to borrow funds and anticipation of tax revenue. So if because of COVID-19 and the state of Vermont allowing property taxes to be extended and the due dates for property taxes to be extended, that would also be a situation where you've already authorized your school board to do that on your behalf. So we may not have to go to the voters again to ask that question. So that's something I would need to research. You're definitely gonna have a cashflow problem. Yeah, and I completely concur. I think you have a cashflow problem probably right now that needed to be remedied by that boring. But there is a statute just to hop in here that allows you provided that it's for an anticipation of taxes. You have one year to pay that back and you do not need voter approval to do that. Just to leave no doubt about that question. That's the truth. Correct, and you can when you have a formally, you know, when you have a formally decided deficit you can without voter approval, roll that deficit into a three year note. Yeah, correct. And you can actually pass that deficit off to municipalities within your school. There's the options that you have, you know, certainly that the statute allows you for. And just to kind of expand on it, I think that the other wild card, the other variable that nobody knows the answer to and if anybody, and I'm getting tired, you know, listening to like the states respectively try to, you know, talk their way out of some of the cashflow problems and put some kind of understanding out there. And maybe, you know, I'm not gonna say promises, but put these, you know, put these, you know, what's going to happen because of this COVID and how that's going to affect. Nobody knows what the financial future of government brings. Now, because the federal government doesn't know they haven't passed that stimulus package three, four and five, you know, that they've gotten, they've been working on it now for months. And I'm afraid that that's going to be done so late in the game. I think it's going to put a lot of pressure on local government, including schools, you know, that's going to be a big wild card, you guys. I really think that, and that's why, you know, Tara needs the, you know, the resources just to make sure that she can execute what these numbers are going to be, you know, and then add in the element possibly of any funding that doesn't come through the door. So. I'll just add to complicate factors. We are concerned that the ed payment in September is going to be delayed. So in the areas where we are having cashflow shortages, that's not going to be helpful. I think they're going to see it, you all, is very in February. I think that that, I think that they're still, that if we're in the eye of the hurricane, I'm more worried about all the back side, you know, that hurricane coming in. And that's what I see right now. I don't think we've really seen, you know, any of that effect yet. And I'm afraid it's going to be January and February before government sees it from everything that I'm being told and seen out there. So. One of our other factors is we have three entities that did not, three districts that did not have an approved budget when tax bills needed to go out. So they had to issue tax bills that weren't reflective of what their approved budget tax rates are going to be. So the revenue that the towns are going to receive for the education tax is going to be less than what it needs to be in order to get these approved budgets. So where we have two districts that just have their approved budget and still are in the 30 day reconsideration window, those town clerks had already had to issue their tax bills because they were due. And then we just ran into the same situation in first branch where they do not have an approved budget. Their town clerks had to issue their tax bills based on a $1 tax rate times their CLA. And whatever their budget ends up being the town's going to have to then issue a secondary tax bill. So that will also delay tax revenue coming in. So in those three entities where we had that situation, they will also experience potential cash flow issues because they're not getting their appropriate funding. So Tara, is that confirmed that they'll reissue a supplemental tax bill? That is what the tax department indicated that once the approved budget has gone through that they will need to reissue an adjusted tax bill. Where did they get the dollar tax rate? That's set by the treasurer's department and it's what's in statute that it's $1 times your CLA when you don't have an approved budget. I bet you said two years that number. I don't know what Becky used. That was my conversation with her this morning and I referred her to the tax department to get some guidance. Because that really is something she needs to go over with the tax department. Good news for us because they're going to be so happy to have the information. I know I haven't seen my tax bill yet. What else we have on the agenda for tonight, folks? Well, any more questions of the others? I'm not sure where Jamie went. Thank you, Ron and Josh, for joining us tonight. Tara, we'll be working close soon. So just holler when you're ready to engage. Awesome, thanks, Ron. Take care. See you, George. Take care, I'll see ya. All right, any other questions of Tara for the financial update? Tara, have you put the budget into the computer yet? Are we operating maintenance of the budget? The budgets are tentatively in, but they didn't load. So I have an email out to IV, I'm working on them. So they're heating. We've got two months of paying bills and that's not recorded against the budget. It would be yes, but it's not. It will be yes. I'm sorry, I can't hear the government. The budget is in there. It will be against the budget. It right now is looking as paid and it's showing that you had $0 budgeted in that you're overspent what your expenditures were for the month of July. That's what it shows right now when I generate an expenditure report because the budget isn't pulling into the expenditure report. That's what I emailed IV again today. Right, so Jamie, proposed budget calendar. So there's a proposed budget calendar in your packets. What we look to do is, and we ran this by the Rudd Finance Committee just to get some feedback from them, is that we would take the budget chunk by chunk. And so my eyes are not great, right? I think it's in my packet just a minute. That we would break it down by student support originally by district and across the SU. And that would occur in October. So student support would encompass special education, interventionists that are funded via our federal grants, positions and for example, behavioral analysts, MTSS personnel, student support specialists, anything that has to do with targeted or intensive interventions, not universal instruction, not classroom instructors, but interventionists would come before you in October. You would provide us feedback just on that part of the budget. We'd have a discussion. We would then go back and work on that part of the budget based on feedback provided by the board. Meanwhile, we're also developing for a presentation in November, all regular ed in general ed, education at best supports programming. So in November, you're gonna get two pieces of your budget, student support, which is a huge chunk in regular ed. Essentially by the end of November, you've got a good solid 80% of your budget for feedback on. We then go and work in December to finalize the rest of the pieces of the budget, specifically around facilities, operations, SGU assessment. In December, we will look for final feedback based on those three components that have been broken out. And we would review the warning. The idea would be that no later than January, we formally adopted the budget and that we're moving forward for plannings of informational meetings, pre-town meeting, annual meeting, et cetera. And so this is the timeline that we'd like to propose that the board take action on across the SU so that it's consistent, so that my business office knows how they're going about approaching the budget. And what I can tell you is, is that the reasoning for this is, I believe we don't know what's in our current budgets. Line item to line item. And I think that what we've done is we've said, this is what we had last year. So let's start there and then build from that. What I'd rather we do is say, what do we need to do to best support students through student support? And what are the goals of that outcome? Then we look and analyze, what do we need universally for instruction? And we propose that. So instead of trying to do the budget all at once, we would break it down in chunks. And I will also tell you that at the budget table, it would be members of central office supporting principles in the development of the budget and that will ensure, like with student support, Cynthia's at the table, Mary Ellen's at the table, Don's at the table, Tara's at the table. So that when we go to budget federal revenues within student support, that those funds equate to the FTEs, you've budgeted locally. Because that is one of the areas where we've had an issue. As we've said, we're gonna budget a 0.4 interventionists, but what's been budgeted in the federal grant might be a some money amount that doesn't equate to the 0.4 with benefits. And so that's why we're gonna tackle that part first is we know that student support right now is the area that we've had the most issues within our budget process, special ed and the budgeting of federal monies to support interventions. So we want to tackle that number one. Do you want to motion to approve this now? I would love you guys to give us an approval. I think that we need to be transparent about how we do it so that we can move forward and get a strong game plan in place. Did Don have a question? I do, I gotta confess, I didn't have a chance to review it completely. When is the SU budget going to be put to bed so the individual budgets can be focused on? Right now we're developing and presenting the SU budget to the SU board in October. Did you hear that, Don? I can hear. Now October, Don, so we know that the asset is not on the list. What's that? That's on the list? Yeah, it's what's highlighted in blue, Don, under October. Thank you. Does that make sense? It does because yes. Although what are the towns that don't have meetings until June gonna do? Well, we said this schedule may differ for districts whose budget votes are not on or around town meeting day. Rochester Stockbridge and Grand Valley Hancock meet in May. So we could extend this out a bit but I'll work with those local boards but my suggestion would be that we try to stay in alignment just because my hope would be that we become really efficient at this at the business office, right? We know this month we're doing this and those meetings are scheduled and we're hyper focused on those areas. I don't want to... On the other side, in G-HUB, please weigh in. But... Well, just a question, what are the variables? I think you mentioned this before, obviously. I don't remember what it's called but the big number that the state gives us supposed to be in December doesn't come, didn't came down May this year. That's our equalized pupil and our average daily membership and the property yield and the non-residential tax rate. Those are all factors when we're developing your tax rates that we need to wait until the AOE releases that but we can build your necessities and your needs prior to having that information. And then obviously once we get that information we would calculate where your tax rate stands. Okay. So you can, it doesn't... You can still keep to this schedule even without that... Well, what it would do is it's going to adjust your tax rate and so when you guys see that you may say, hey, we felt really good about this but due to the fact that we lost equalized pupils we got to go back and find something. And so, I mean, that's where the adjustment would come based on that. It wouldn't change what we're discussing about the needs for programming are or where we're able to find efficiencies. Right, the biggest thing the biggest thing in the past for us has been in many cases, how many kids are going to Rutland and how many kids are going to Sharon Academy because Sharon Academy holds its independent school tuition at the Union School District which is below the Royalton and Woodstock and Randolph Tuitions. And Rutland is super low and we've traditionally had some families that have gone that way. So what it's benefited us in the past has been is just having an understanding of where, because we can't control where our families send their kids. They can go wherever they want. And that's fine, that's the law but having an idea that we're putting this many kids in Rutland or TSA versus this many kids in Woodstock or Randolph matters very much to our particular district. So Carl, the numbers that we would be using in November would be projected numbers because the districts don't have to set their announced tax rate by statute until January 15. So we wouldn't have the solid numbers as to what announced tuition would be and what the state average tuition would be until after January 15. Which is why we have our meeting in bank. Numbers. That's why we have a lot of other sending districts that we don't have that situation. Don't have that luxury already. And I would always say we should be budgeting conservatively to ensure that we don't cut ourselves short on anticipated expenditures in that area. I think it's a really sound plan to get this budget in form. However, in hearing the auditors just recently, I think we're gonna be finding numbers coming from the state lacking come February, March. I don't think they know what the hell they're gonna do, frankly. I think that's true also, but I think we have to do our work business. I agree. So does somebody wanna make a motion to approve the budget timeline? Do we want more discussion on it, more time? I would make a motion to go with the designed budget plan outline. So second it. Any more discussion on it? It's not all those in favor? Aye. Aye. Post. You guys have it. Thanks, guys. Thank you. Jamie, we are the SE Revised Goals and CIP. So, Mary Ellen can jump in. I mean, I'm looking for you guys to give us permission to really utilize those three goals I outlined in my report as the overarching goals for our work as we move forward for the next three years. They align nicely to most of the task within your guys' prior strategic plan. We did a crosswalk and took the task and aligned them to those overarching goals. The tasks have started to be revised at the SU level based on the admin team. We did some of that during the admin retreat. You will get a finalized document for review, feedback, and approval in the future. But I at least wanna have something that we can say to faculty and staff, this is the overarching work ahead of us. And also for us to start reporting out on so that you can hold us accountable to them. Like what measures are you taking to get us there? And then Mary Ellen can jump into where we're currently at in the CIP process. So right now we're putting together the supervisor union CIP and we're using those three goals that Jamie outlined as the framework for setting that up. So one of them is academic proficiency. One of them deals with the MTSS and the safe and healthy schools. And the third one is the equity area. Those are the three that we're using. And so CIP, you know, it's continuous improvement plan. It's required by the agency of education and that that should with our data analysis drive how we're using federal monies. And so this was another accountability measure that the agency have had put in place to ensure continuous improvement. But to also say your investment should be toward these goals, right? Like you're not just spending money willy-nilly but the way you're using your federal funds should be to support these overarching goals. And so we're trying to change this process significantly to say to principals and to teachers and staff what's your data telling you and where do you need to invest? And one of the things you hear us say in student support just cause we have invested money this way the last five years doesn't mean it's necessarily the way we need to invest money moving forward. We need to analyze and drill down and say what is it we need? And so we're gonna try to do that drill down earlier and not later in the game. So that it's used as part of the budget process. Any questions on that? I believe strongly and I think we'll be free to protect it. Can I hear you? I feel strongly about academic freedom for teachers and I'm not certain what he means by that but I will say that we certainly try to say to teachers here's the tools you need that's implement them to get students to these ends. And so we don't say this is the program and you got to fit just so you know Bob we don't say you got to be on chapter two page five on such and such a day. What we say is here's the ends by grade level you need to get students. And I think one of the things we got to do the better job is how do we define curriculum and curriculums not defined by programs. It really should be defined by your guys's ends at grade level that you guys have done so much work on in regards to your proficiency work. So do I have a motion to approve the WRB as you revise goals and CIP? Second it. Any discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? All right hearing none. Yeah, let's have it. COVID-19 update, Jamie. So as far as COVID-19 updates go administrators and teams of teachers continue to work their way to ensure a safe and effective reopening. Thursday night we have a virtual academy meeting. We worked out the final details around staffing the virtual academy today. The numbers increased a bit over the last four days. So we had to make some adjustments at the elementary level. CARES money has covered any expenses we've incurred thus far for COVID-19. We're feeling confident about that. Tara and I are continuing to work on the grant. We're submitting that next week. One of them. That is for the CRF funds, the ESCR funds is later on. So we have two buckets of money that we're working from. Two buckets of money for CARES fund. And don't ask me to let you yet CRF stands for versus the other because I don't know at this point, Don. There's been a lot in my mind. I just know I gotta get this grant done with Tara. And what we're doing just so you know and you're aware is we've tried to prioritize staff who would be qualified under the Families First Coronavirus Relief Act to staff the virtual academy. And so we've been successful at doing that. For the most part, there was one more elementary teacher that we had to secure within the SU and we prioritize that person based on current student enrollment once we found out the virtual academy numbers. We're trying to do this without incurring additional costs to any district or the SU just so you know. Jamie, question about. What's that Ethan? Oh yeah, sorry. Question about CARES. Any chance in your estimation we can be left holding the bag here? That this money won't be what we expected to be? We have a sense of currently right now what they're estimating the money will be. Until that money is in our accounts, I don't know what to expect. Are we? Obviously we- They're coming back in session. They gave us an approximate dollar amount and that's what we're working on but we try to be really conservative with it. Yeah, I'm just worried you know that if we are spending money and we get left holding the bag as I say, but- Well, we've tried to limit expenditures as much as possible and my goal is to come underneath that number. I mean, we're looking at trying to come, Taryn and I talked about the idea that we're trying to come under that number by around 90,000 at the moment because we don't want to incur costs that then we don't have the revenue for and we're not in a financial state that we can do so. What's our total estimation of what we're hoping or spending from CARES right now? Do we have a number on that? What we're currently expensed? Yeah, I don't know. I mean, have we gotten any money yet at all? No money yet at all. Okay, so what is our total as far as what we're anticipating or thinking about spending from CARES money? Because I know- I think strategically that might not put us in a great place. I'm just gonna speak to that in a public meeting to release that money at this time, that amount at this time because we are trying to be very conservative with that. Very good. The board wants me to speak to that, I can but I just advise that that might not make sense to do right now publicly. Jamie, speaking to the virtual academy, do you feel like we have the resources we need to support that? We've got, I know Lindy is leading that as the virtual principal of the virtual academy. Are we in a good place with that? Do we need more resources for that? Are we stretching Lindy too thin and she's gonna be yelling at me in my next board meeting? Lindy was yelling at me in my next board meeting. Are we just overview, are we in good shape for that? I'm feeling comfortable at this time, we're in good shape. I'm looking at Mary Ellen. I mean, Mary Ellen and Amy Toth have been doing a lot of work with this too, behind the scenes to support the academy myself. I mean, I was in contact with Lindy two or three times today around the academy. There's been staff meetings already happening for the virtual academy. There's an informational letter went out to those families and an invite to Thursday evening for a virtual academy informational meeting specific to those parents and students that Lindy and I will be putting on in place of the regular weekly virtual academy, the regular weekly WRVSU info nights, which by the way, have had over 40 in attendance the last two weeks. So that's great in addition to the local meetings. But the virtual academy meeting will happen Thursday night. And what we're looking to do is a flip classroom so that staff will tape their mini lessons. They will then, that will be presented within the instructional block, but also folks can access via the Google classrooms the platform we're using for the virtual academy, by the way, those lessons can be accessed anytime in the Google classroom. Then within the block specified, like let's say nine to 10 30 is literacy, teachers will be then providing reinforcement in mini lessons based on reinforcement on the mini lesson that was already provided taped. Now, let's say a family says that time doesn't work for me. We're also providing office hours in the afternoon. So that reinforcement could also happen. That's the place where I've gotten community feedback is just what's this virtual academy gonna be like? We understand what I've gotten positive comments around outdoor classrooms, the kids are gonna be in school full day or full week, that's great. It's the questions I've heard have been like, so what's this virtual academy gonna be like? And can Lindy do that if she's teaching my kids in Stockbridge too? So thank you. All the teachers that we have are just devoted to the virtual academy, except for when we get to seven through 12. At the high school level, teachers have been assigned virtual academy blocks and at the middle school level, we've assigned virtual academy blocks based on staffing that had capacity. So instead of having, I'm just gonna throw out a number, instead of having four preps in person, you teach three classes in one virtual. So instead of maybe having two sections of algebra one, both in person. There's one section of algebra one in person, one section of algebra one virtual. And part of the delay in us releasing the information is we wanted teacher feedback. And it took me, I've been meetings in a lot of HR meetings and it took me until this past Friday to know exactly what teaching staff we had for WRVSU. I didn't want to be academy, I didn't want to assign teachers to it. And then we're all of a sudden looking to replace teachers. Do you see what I'm saying? I tried to look at who enrolled for students, where did we have capacity across the SU and what teachers would qualify for a reasonable accommodation for the academy. And then Lindy wanted to make certain the plan we were rolling out made sense to that group of teachers. So that's why that one piece has been a bit delayed. And I understand it has been, but we're trying to get ahead of it now the best we can. Jamie, I'm sure you answered this question somewhere else in great detail. What does the whole SU go on to virtual academy if suddenly we go virtual? I've heard there's talk about possibly delaying coming back to school after Christmas break. Well, so we're planning for lots of different phases, right? Like if the event that all of a sudden COVID blows up in a particular school, in all these decisions will be made in consultation in the department of health, right? So we would contact trace number one, number two, we would then get advice from the department of health. And then we would make determinations based on that building. So the only way the full SU would shut down is in the event that COVID numbers have gone up in Vermont or gone up here locally in consultation with the department of health, they've recommended we need to do so, of which I would pull an emergency meeting together and inform you guys. So there's right now, we are focused on outdoor learning for the first nine weeks with the idea that we are building up stamina for the use of masks, that we're ensuring that we have appropriate social distancing, that we're training students on what it means to social distance inside, so we're gonna utilize the outside to get them trained to move to the inside. And we understand that after the first nine weeks, we're moving inside the building. Now, if we determine that the current plans we have in place won't work, then we may have to go to a mixed model of which I would inform you about before we do. But we're very hopeful that we can continue with five days a week learning of smaller K-8s and that we're hopeful at RUD, we're moving to four days a week after the first six weeks. But all the data and feedback we receive will determine how we move forward with that. And we're definitely gonna hold informational meetings for feedback throughout, and we're gonna continue to survey parents, both in the virtual academy and in person, so that if we need to change, we can change to better meet our family's needs and students' needs. All right, guys. Any more, anything else for Jamie on COVID? Great. Any other business for the board? So we have an executive session for personnel. Could I step back? Sorry, could I step back for one second? And how are we standing with transportation, Jamie? Have we didn't need to adjust any routes or anything yet? So no, John, the plan that we put in place was it looked like we wanted to ensure we had the capacity without adjusting routes was our concern. It appears that we had the capacity. What I said to the principals and transportation company is, I wanna run those routes for the first month and look at ridership, and then we can make some informed decisions if we wanna adjust. I didn't wanna adjust now and then all of a sudden, we find like, oh, that adjustment didn't make sense. I wanted to look at ridership and analyze that for a month, and then we could meet and make adjustments if it made sense. Does that sound good? Sounds good. Jamie, remind me, are we doing temperature screenings when the kids get on the bus or when they get off the bus at the campus? We are doing temperature screens when they get off the bus. Parents have to complete a temperature check and document that on the health screening form prior to getting on the bus, and then we will do another temperature check after they get off the bus. So the bus driver is going to look at an iPad or something and say this kid did complete the work. I can let them on the bus. This kid did not complete the work. I can not let them on the bus. We are letting students on the bus. It's a paper copy for this reason because we didn't want bus drivers looking at an iPad. Yeah, I was concerned about electronic and cell reception in places. And so there was other questions. We were gonna originally try to do an electronic health form at the building level. And right now we have concerns about connectivity and I don't want parents completing a health form, getting to the school and finding out, oh, by the way, your health form didn't load. Angry parent, right? Yes. So we're going with hard copies for now. Parents fill it out ahead of time, hand the sheet to the health screening person. Health screening person collects the sheet, takes the temperature, student goes right in. Excellent, thank you. We need to go into an executive session for personnel.