 I think just sprung some good news on me that I'm supposed to be the moderator here. I attended the meeting last year in Rochester. There was a gentleman whose name escaped me. Yeah, and they go like that again. Yes, thank you. Who was elected as moderator in my world. Whoever was a moderator is the moderator until you elect somebody this time. So I got all gussed up. I didn't know what I was even coming to the meeting at, but here I am, and Carol hit me with the good news since I walked through the door, so we'll see what we can do. There you go. See, he's bridging the crew. Yeah, I will say. He smirks. I got one point. In my world, the town court has always read the warning, so I don't know who reads the warning, but I'm supposed to read the warning, or one of the board members is supposed to read the warning, or you can all read it for yourself, so. The moderator. Moderator. Moderator. Moderator. Thank you, I'm learning already, and thank God I remembered my glasses. Otherwise, somebody else would be reading the warning. I'll be glad you'll care. I'll be glad you'll care. I'll be glad you'll care. Rochester Stockbridge, Unified School District, annual meeting warning. The legal voters of the Rochester Stockbridge, Unified School District, consisting of the towns of Rochester and Stockbridge, are hereby notified and warned to meet at the Stockbridge Central School, right here. On May 28th, 2019, at 7 p.m. to consider and act the following articles, one through 10, to be acted upon on May 28th, 2019, article one, to elect a moderator who shall assume office immediately and serve a one-year term, or until the election and qualification of a successor. And that's the way I read it. Article two, to elect a clerk who shall assume office immediately and serve a one-year term, or until the election and qualification of a successor. Article three, to elect this treasurer who shall assume office immediately and serve a one-year term, or until the election and qualification of a successor. Article four, to hear and act upon the reports of the school district director and officers. Article five, to authorize the district's board of directors to borrow money by the issuance of bonds or notes, not in excess of anticipated revenues for the fiscal year 2019-2020 per 16 DSA 562, parenthesis nine. Article six, shall the voters of the school district approve the school board to expend 4,480,562 dollars and no cents, which is the amount the school board has determined to be necessary for the ensuing fiscal year. It is estimated that this proposed budget of approved will result in education spending of 18,427 dollars and 32 cents for equalized people. This projected spending for equalized people is 6.84 percent higher than spending for the current year. I didn't plan on talking this long. Article seven, I'm not your normal moderator. I throw in a little psych comics here and there, but. That's what we love here. Wonderful. Thank you, mature lady. To elect directors to the Rochester Stockbridge Unified School District as follows, Rochester one director for a three year term, Stockbridge one director for a three year term. Article eight, shall the annual meeting of the Rochester Stockbridge Unified District be moved to the first Tuesday of April for all subsequent years, beginning with the 2020 meeting. Article nine, to transact any other business which may legally come before this meeting. The legal voters of the Stockbridge Stockbridge Unified School District are further notified that voter qualification and registration relative to set meeting shall be as provided in section 706 U parenthesis or title 16. In chapters 43, 51, 55 and title 70, Vermont Statutes Annotated. Dated this eighth day of April 2019 in Stockbridge, Vermont, Paragraphy Chair, Amy Wilt, Vice Chair, Ethan Boen, Director. I didn't sign it. Are you protesting? Not this time. This is a mature lady. Jenny Austin-Clarke, Megan Payne Director, received her record and recorded this nine day, not should be ninth, day of April 2019 by Joanne McDonnell, part of the district. There we go. All right. At this point, we can start the meeting and I'll turn it over to my man, Karl Dropping, to find a moderator here. Okay. I would open nominations for a moderator of this annual meeting. I nominate Ken Butterfield to succeed himself. Ken Butterfield has been nominated. Do I hear a second? Second. Second. Are there any other nominations? Can I move the nominations seats? No. But a motion has been made to close nominations. Is there a second? Second. A motion has been made and seconded to close nominations with only one nominee. Therefore, I instruct the clerk to cast one ballot for Ken Butterfield to be our moderator for this annual meeting. Ken, congratulations. I guess that deserves a thank you, but for somebody that wasn't the declared candidate on my hand in the building. Thank you. Thank you. We'll see how we do. Article two, to elect a clerk who shall assume office immediately and serve a one year term or until the election qualifications of his, I'm for tongue-tied here and I'm so excited. All right, successor. I have to apologize, I guess to the... Joanne McDonnell is the current clerk. You electing the... Thank you, Charles. You're my left-hand man. Nomination's in order for a clerk. Will she do it again? Is she... No, she's resigning as a technical officer for this meeting. Oh, I see. For this meeting, one year. For this meeting? For this meeting? We need an inquiry. Can I nominate Jenny Austin? A second. Could I nominate Mrs. Feinberg? No. Ha, ha, ha. Ha, ha, ha. You can certainly nominate, you can certainly nominate Jenny Austin, if you like. This meeting? Of course. It's for this meeting. It's for the annual meeting. Office meeting. Second. I do that. Oh, you are the clerk. I'm sorry. Sure. That's a fairly good idea. Thank you, Frank. So, Frank has nominated Jenny Austin. Do I hear a second? Any other nominations? Sorry. That's right. You're the one. We'll be closed nominations. What was it made in second to be closed nominations? A little to-favor, second to-favor thing. Aye. Aye. Roll the pose. The clerk. You get your fingers on the keyboard, so I assume you're the clerk in here. So, Cat Flunbel, please, for Jenny. Jenny Austin. Moving right along. We should be out of here by 7.30, at this rate. Do you elect a treasurer who shall assume office immediately and serve a one-year term or until the election and qualification of a successor? I nominate Amy Will. I don't think we can be, you cannot be a treasurer and be on the board. You cannot be a treasurer and be on the board members. The current, Kathy, you're the current treasurer. Are you not? I am. I nominate Kathy Brown. A second. Can you? I'm a treasurer. She's not a treasurer. Welcome to the meeting, Kathy Brown. Now you know other nominations. Just coming in the door. Do you have a nomination? Any other nominations? Thank you. Thank you. What was it made in second to be closed nominations? All those to-favor, second to-favor thing. Aye. Aye. Roll the pose. I would have the clerk cast one ballot for Kathy Brown. Kathy Brown as the treasurer. Thank you. We're at the meeting again. Our two committees 12 miles apart. We're fairly close to each other. We're fairly close inside. It's always about a 60-40 split. Rochester has 66% of the population. Stoches is 34. Rochester has 60% of our total grand list. Stoches is 40. Stoches is 36% of the students. 41% of the school expenditures. And Rochester has 64% of the students and 59% of the school expenditures. So it is not completely a 50-50 split. The big thing we've been looking at this year and working on has been a couple special projects. We put out forbid a request for firms to come and do a facilities assessment and analyze our buildings, the systems in our buildings, the infrastructure, the doors, the windows, the installation, the utilization. We got eight, I think, different bits. We got eight bits from companies around. I'm sealing the bits and choosing a Black River design in February. The facilities assessment is underway. They expect that we're going to have a final report in June. The information that you give us now will go into in a minute. We've done a space assessment. I'll talk about that. The other project that we have been working on and really nailing down is understanding the status of the school here at Stockton Central School as confirming that it is the town's emergency shelter. The town's warming station is the fire, is the fire station. And we have put out forbid a generator for this facility. We lost an extra day to power loss and had it closed for snow day because we couldn't power this school. We had to close this school early when the trees went down and boiled and we're in Sharon rather and the whole area got blacked out in the afternoon. We had to close school early. So we are going to get a generator done. Both of these projects are not in the budget that's in your hands. Both of these projects are more intense to fund from reserve funds, restricted funds. We've already set aside for things like this as well as grants. Part of the facility's assessment already is being underwritten by a grant from... Efficiency Vermont. Efficiency Vermont. And we also anticipate Liddywood has been looking into grants because we're in emergency shelter to help support the cost of the generator. Those two projects will be about $90,000. As I said, we're not funding them from the budget. It's funding from money that we've already set aside for issues like that. I wanted to talk some about the space analysis of where we are. So what Black River Design has done is they've gone through and they've looked at and mapped out and they've blueprinted all the buildings. They've looked at how the spaces are used in each building and then they've looked at the Department of Education or the Agency of Education space recommendations, as well as the average amount of space used for these things in schools of our size around Vermont. And they have found that the Stockbridge building is, it's not really a need for that, but I like the word deficit. Right now, special education and guidance, interventions happen in the hallway. There's no guidance out office or health office in this building. This room that you're sitting in is the cafeteria. It is also the gymnasium. It is also the music room and it is also the art room. And in general, the Agency of Education recommendation of multi-purpose spaces are used for two purposes, not four. So their recommendation is that this building should have about 2,100 square foot expansion. And they suggest either putting it behind this wall behind us or off next to the library coming out into the parking lot. As far as Rochester goes, they looked at both the buildings there. And if we look at the elementary school, they see that the music and art space that the elementary school uses now is over in the high school. They see a need for additional office space and additional storage. And they really see a need to reconfigure the entry of the elementary school. So to use the elementary school in Rochester as the sole building, their initial recommendation is that you put a 4,200 square foot expansion on that building, of which about 700 is right here in the entranceway. And then you can either put the other 3,500 here or here on one of the two sides of the gymnasium. When they look at the high school, right now, this is the high school space layout. These colored areas are the areas that we are currently using. The purple area we use for art, the green is obviously the auditorium and stage, and that's the ground area for the back of the auditorium and stage to use it for. So that's what that building is currently being used for. They think that if we use that building and convert that building, the high school building into the Rochester school, they would recommend changing this area out to the top into a multi-purpose room, changing the current art room into a kitchen, and then converting the art and space kind of up into this part of the building and then converting offices kind of into here. So when they do that calculation, they say that building has about 1,000 extra square feet. But that's their description of using the high school building as the sole school building in Rochester. Now, it's important to understand this is just a preliminary assessment. This is just getting some experts in to measure out the space, to see how our space conforms to what the typical school in Vermont is and what the recommendations of the Department of Education are. This is not something that the board is saying, we're gonna do this. As a matter of fact, the only thing that I could say that definitively that this is told the board to do is that in Stockbridge, when we put the generator in, don't put it here, don't put it there. That's about the only firm conclusion that we've really at this point drawn from that information. Once we get the final report from them, that's going to analyze heating zones and furnace life and roof life and all those sorts of information, we're going to put together a presentation to the town's communities and start that discussion of figuring out what the towns want to do. For reference, should the board decide that they really could be in one building or the other whether we expand the elementary school in Rochester or move into the high school building in Rochester? The way that the other building is disposed of is it is first offered to the town, so it would be offered to the town of Rochester for the sum of one dollar. If Rochester took us up on that, they would receive a building and any repairs or work that had been done by the school board within the last five years of them trying to dispose of the building, they would have to pay the school board back for it. So some of the work we've done in the elementary building already, if we gave a building to the town and they flipped it, they would pay the district back for more recent work. But again, we're not at the position of having a conversation yet about here's a plan that we're going forward with. We're trying to let you know what information we gathered as of this moment and what we're thinking about and letting you know there's going to be conversations coming to the communities about the buildings and what their future is. You said there's a properties party that's not going to be used in this building. In the Rochester building? No, when you put in all of the facilities that the school would need, you add, you change this to the cafeteria jam, you put a kitchen over here, you reconfigure this to get all the office space in. The building itself is about 1,000 square feet more than the agency of education said. It's not like there's a room we would be closing or whatever. It's just that. So it's not like the second floor that we could have office space in? Right, right. Now, conceivably the school board could do something like that with the other building, with our building we were using. But again, we haven't come that far. The general conversations that I've been hearing around school boards about things like that is that school boards really should not necessarily try to be third party landlords or run a health club or do anything like that. Why do you think we're like supervisory? Yeah, there couldn't be space for, we have a pull out classrooms for multi-tiered support kids. We could use more of that space there for that. We certainly could probably find a good educational use to do with that or like you said, bring the students to really good offices. Now, before I start talking about the budget, does anyone have any more questions about this? Is certain? Is the facilities evaluation included architectural for solar on those buildings? There's a discussion of energy options, yeah. We haven't, we didn't pay to have a whole budget, is it to have a really thorough analysis of where we were to put a biomass versus where we should put solar versus is it viable for wind? But there's a general discussion about efficiencies and systems and about alternative energy. Frank? Thanks to the generator, what would it be, gas? For the, sorry. We've got some bits out of our propane. We're also reaching out to see if there's ways that we could do a power wall kind of option. We're waiting here back for three months to power on that, that's a pretty good question. We use too much wattage for that right now, so we have to explore a different path. Ah, okay. Yeah. I have a question. Why have the Irene building been generated then? Because there was, after Irene, there was all that air money, there was all the recovery money, and as the, we were thinking that we could maybe have done that with stock, which is portion, but at the time the superintendent then was saying no, we're distributing the air money from the SU level, and it never, it never, it got distributed to other things. Oh, okay. Wade? Yes. Was that in reference to the commercial use of a power wall that Tesla has there? They have commercial units for industry. Right. Right now, three-mountain powers refer us to someone that does commercial, but three-mountain power itself. Okay, but that's not quite what I heard, okay. Thank you. Right. How would the, with that building that was the Rochester Junior Senior High School, maybe this is just a consideration of space and not a consideration of insulation or... Right. Yeah, this analysis here is still just a consideration of space. We haven't gotten the numbers on insulation, how the zones break out, you know, those things, you know, how the windows are, those type of issues. But it's like how that space is still being maintained. Right. Yeah, we've been keeping it at 55. There's three zones in the high school building, two of which are being needed at 55 degrees. The third zone, which controls the auditorium, the music room, and where the art room is, have been needed at 68 degrees because kids are in there in the process. Okay. Going on to the budget. When we build a budget, we have really five things we're trying to do with the budget. We're trying to align our education and our operational systems. We're trying hard and the support is part of it. It's a new budget to understand our infrastructure needs. We're working to develop the Rochester transition blueprint, determine the Stockard space configuration, and then as always, we're trying to create an educational teaching plan. We're trying to improve our reading scores. We're trying to improve our kids' community engagement. We're trying to improve the supports we give them. And the learning to provide, frankly. I assume you're implementing the wide part of the Valley Supervisor Union strategic plan. And at this strategic plan, it would be in one. Yes, yes, we support it. We're working on the VSU strategic plan. It's got a lot of good things going for it. In particular, the focus of getting all kids reading it grade by third grade is something that we are really looking for. You were thinking this district has had a brand, which is wellness and outdoor learning. I can't remember the other one. How has that been operating as a driver of how things are? So, we've kind of gone at three different approaches, I would say. There's been a literacy, literacy has been a huge focus, but in terms of wellness, K through six, both buildings did winter wellness together for six weeks, which some students did downhill skiing or snowboarding at the snow wall, others did cross-country skiing and skiing at Breaker. Both buildings have school education two times a week where fitness schools have been set based on state standards and they're monitored several times throughout the course of the year. Outdoor ed, several classes in both buildings participate in outdoor education programs, commonly known as Forest Friday for a lot of age groups and it's a range of age groups and we also have two teachers, the five steps teacher in this building, but also our shared music teacher both come from outdoor ed backgrounds or they run outdoor education programs for other students, so those are just the high points. Well, I mean, I know any, I know any Bronners doing very interesting things with outdoor and quality and I have to assume that what she's been developing could somehow be a model that could be applied to everyone. Right, I would say that both kindergarten teachers and both buildings have implemented an outdoor, implement and use an outdoor education program and they've also done several field trips together implementing those things together from going to different state parks to going apple picking to, you know, part of an apple, learning about the seeds, making a math lesson and cooking lesson and nutrition lesson, those are just some of the things. Yeah, another thing as far as our educational future plan is we're doing, the SU has a recently licensed day data warehouse called Otis, so we'll be tracking a student outcomes and student progress in that and one of the things that works, the Stockbridge Rochester group is excited about and that is one of the things we often find is that we're really good at tracking, you know, what happens to our kiddos while we're in our building K through six, but it could be hard to see how well they do seven through 12 and having a data warehouse in place where we can start plugging in that information whether we're getting it from Woodstock or Sharing Academy or Middlebury or wherever so that we can start seeing, you know, the stuff we did in K to six was did it bear fruit in seven through 12? Are we able to see where, you know, where we need to work in our curriculum to help our kids that are going to, you know, White River Valley or going to the Woodstock or wherever so that we're really able to understand what the outcomes of the foundation, the foundational education between the kids here. Have those rules been, have those rules been recruiting here as the appropriate time for me? We've had, we had, it was in what it was here. Right, we had a middle school fair night and it was supposed to be here this year and next year it'll be over in Rochester and there was Woodstock, Sharing Academy, Randolph, Otter Valley, White River Valley School. I don't think we're gonna do that. Middlebury did not because they used a different process last year that seemed to work well and that was kind of their, yeah. Yeah, it was hard to do. Right, no one's gonna have to do that. Okay. That was funny. This person was very handy. Does that study well, does that take a lot of study that was really helpful? They can start at any point in time, I believe. So for some kids, we have it and for other kids it's, we're still working on the foundational skills. So, it's important. I just wanted to call on the rules of attention too. And I think we have projections of where the kids, we have quite a few, we have projections which is very helpful. So, some highlights of the budget. The board is happy to report that we were able to return $236,516 to the taxpayers. So, that's just, we've not taken surplus and spent it. We just floated into this year's budget and they used it to reduce total costs. On the expenditure side of things, our expenditures increased 3.7%. There's an 11% increase in healthcare. There was, what was the wage increase? This left 2.9, 2.9. Our local revenues increased 1.7% even though our tuition and reasonable subsidies had a drop of $86,000. The true tax increase from this budget over last year is 2.4% and by true tax increase I mean do not consider the CLA, do not consider the merger incentives. If you just look at the base amount of taxes that were tax rate last year of 1.60 to 1.66, it's a 2.4% increase. Which also means that the budget also shows that our income-based homestead rate is 2.1, 2.81% on the first $400,000 of value of your homestead if you make up to $90,000. There's a yellow-haired sheet like this that Bill Edgerton puts together for us every year that talks about your school tax based on your income versus based on the value of your property. The interesting thing is about 60% to 3rds of our monitors pay the majority of their income or majority of their property tax based on their income level. Not on the property tax value, at least on the first again, the first $400,000 of your homestead. I was reading the report by the public. I'm going to look at the reading pre-K grant funding as well as limiting it. That's practically it. Yeah, there was a grant that we applied for and went away this year. It was a state grant. It was there to try to encourage school preschool education, work facilities, new work resources, and it's now... Those were part of that 77. Yeah, one 77. Isn't that a mandate? With 3K education? It absolutely is. Just because you have a mandate doesn't mean the government has to fund it. Oh, that's right. But is that something that we should be talking to about? So as I think we explained, we talked about the merger. The incentive dropped to 25% this year. It goes from eight cents off the tax rate to six cents. The CLA has dropped in both towns from around 114% to 110. In Rochester, it's about 3.5% value loss there and 4% loss in Rochester. In Astakras, we went from 104 to about 100%. Our ADM, which is your average daily membership, it's a weighted count of the kids that are in this school. It tries to account for the fact that it costs more to educate a high school kid than it does preschooler. So a preschool kid is like 0.8 of a kid. A high school kid is like 1.15 of a kid. It was the second language affects the ADM count. The number of kids that are on free and reduced lunch. So the poverty level of the towns affects ADM. And then it's obviously just the number of bodies. So our ADM declined at 2.3%, which is given some of the declines we've had previously, it's pretty good. The tuition we pay out for middle and high school increased to 4.3% in this budget. We also increased our professional development normally to around $15,000. We added $8,500. So about 15% more to have some special literacy training to bring our teachers up to speed on some of the new curriculum and literacy offerings that we're trying to bring there. I'm surprised I got asked this question, but it's always funny, the questions that people ask when they read the budget. No, we are not dropping the audit. If you look at the budget, it says that our audit was an enlisted audit amount for this year and it says we're paying nothing. We are professionally audited every year. We just have an SU-wide contract now. So the audit's moving off our books as a direct line item and it'll be a shared cost that's passed out to us in our central office assessment. And speaking of our central office assessment and our special education assessment, it is flat. It's actually about $950. It's around $395,000, but the costs we pay for special education when we pay for central office are pretty much the same this year. So going ahead, these are the opportunities the board is still working towards. We're working towards a visionary elementary education model that's sustainable and exciting. An emphasis on STEM and STEAM and collaborative learning. We're still working really hard to have intensive arts experiences shared between both campuses. We've got a person championing that right here. We are working at our outdoor education experiences. We're working on our farm to school experiences. We're trying to explore the things we can do together like star base, taking the kids to Boston. Things that we can do more affordably because we've got a bigger group of kiddos. And then we're really interested in trying to leverage where we live. I mean, we're in the middle of the Green Mountains. It's gorgeous here. It's a great active community and we really want to showcase that and support that with our kids and attract the kind of families that live here. Now we want to increase our kids coming in from Hancock and Grandville and in Pittsfield and also just be the school that attracts kids to move to this area to say, you know, when I'm thinking about moving to Central Vermont, maybe I'll pick Rochester or Stock Ridge instead of Bethel or Loyalton. So that's where we're hoping to go to produce a affordable and exciting education for kids. With that, questions about the budget? Sir. I've got a question, right? I've made you a letter about the school report. About the income side and I think, I don't know, I see the full budget at the $9,000 from the Attorney of Public Fund and there was not any last year. So what have been the changes there? Last year, we did not, we specifically, we hadn't had advice from our attorney yet as to whether or not the requests that make up the public funds, the Wicom funds, the funds in Rochester are, you know, the requests were saying they were for the educational benefit of the kids in Stock Ridge, from the Stock Ridge Trusts and for the educational benefit of the kids in Rochester from the Rochester Trusts. We wanted to make sure that because we're a unified district that using those monies was not going to violate the terms of the request and make the money go away. Our attorneys told us that given the size of the overall budget and the amount of money that we're pulling in, that it's perfectly fine to use money for the joint operations of the schools because the amount of funds that are pulled from either Stock Ridge or Rochester in this year is just from Stock Ridge, are, you know, we can point to an equal amount of money that's being spent on Stock Ridge children going on their share of the trip, for example. We're doing their share of an activity. So we were told that this is not a violating the terms of the request. The interesting thing was that the board had not really considered was we had asked for a one-year moratorium last year. The difference in the way the funds are drawn down and allocated between Stock Ridge and Rochester. In Rochester, the trustees of public funds expect the school board to, you know, ask for some of their money. And in Stock Ridge, the trustees of the public funds look at the performance of the funds, they look at what they've given the school historically, and they give the money to the school rather than the school saying, give us $9,000 of our money. The trustees of public funds say, here's $9,000 that we're giving you for the operation of the school. So we did not go out and go through the regular protocol with Rochester. Now, what that means, however, is as we've, one of the things we look at when we consider funding both the feasibility study and the generator, the $90,000 for the projects, we certainly can go to Barbara Hart and the Rochester trustees of public funds and say to backfill the rest of this project, you know, now that we've got our VLCT grants for the generator, now that we've gotten our efficiency remand grants for the energy studies of the building, now we've pulled money from the daycare sale funds or wherever we're taking them, we could also still go and get that. And regardless of how this project's sugar out, they'll be in the audit for next year. So you'll see, you'll see the disposition of how we pay for all those things. I don't understand. The $9,000 came from what board of trustees of public funds? They came from the Stocking Board of Trustees of Public Funds. They came from the Stocking Board of Trustees of Public Funds. Well, my follow-up question would be, what happened to the development that are not lifted in here that Rochester had, that Rochester school had and was controlling it themselves, not was Rochester the trustees of public funds. That's right. Right, and maybe correct you by saying something. I've had a meeting with Barbara Hart recently to try to get a handle on all those funds. There's still, have those funds gone through the trustees of Rochester, the school funds? No. They have not gone through. I don't know if I really had to answer that correctly. The trustees of public funds has managed the school funds in the past. So they have- Separately though. Separately though, completely separate. They just, because they were doing it anyway with similar funds, even funds of similar names. So they have been managing them, but. Meanwhile, there will be some income coming from the development that the trustees of public funds has adjusted but hasn't laid a low in the Rochester County Board and I don't see it at all in the Unified District Board. Okay, again, I had met with her a couple weeks ago to try to get a handle on this and there's some more digging to do and there's a little through some files to find some paperwork and find the right context for who is the financial manager in the bank. You know. It's very important. It is very important. That people will not get addicted to the big box. Right. And so forth. I mean, that's correct. There are separate funds like the Crick-Pack Crick Fund, the Wing Fund, that are specifically designated for what's run at the school. And then there's another set of funds and it wasn't, I mean, it had to have a case in the past that I mean, the school would make the request for funding and they'd be funded separate from the Wing Crick-Pack and the Crick-Pack Funds, but that's something. I mean, how do you direct the two separate sources? I think the longer the budget is for Amy then that I would like to know how much of the school endowment funds got transferred to the Rochester trustee of public funds. And I assume that they can do it for both the town schools but I don't know that. They are counted as actually not school-designed. Right. Trustee. And so, anyway. Right. It wasn't that it got transferred to them, it's just they took management of them. All right. I understand that. And the other question is, as a total of tuition projections, this is all part of your report on page 10. I am about to be 83 for most students that are going to be tuition down next year and we're going to fund it. And so what we're presenting is the 83 that might not be the wrong of a recycling and traffic. I'm very curious about that. Okay. Can I? Can I figure? Yeah, let me figure it out. Okay. Because it's all merged together right now and I do have it in second. So it's just going to take me a second. All right. Okay. So. No, it's okay. I guess you're right. I think we need to know. Okay. Absolutely. Yeah. Well, she's adding that up, man. And my question goes to Mr. Harvey's. I wasn't looking at percentage. I was just looking at how many kids from each town are in the district. Yeah. Oh. Yep. Total. That is. Yeah. How many Rochester kids? How many Stockbridge? How many Grandville, Hancock, Fittsfield, wherever anybody might be sending kids to our schools. How many kids are there from each town? In each, so you're talking preschool through sixth grade, right? I'd take all 12 grades. Okay. I can tell you through sixth grade right now. Okay. By now. So preschool through sixth grade and Stockbridge there's 54 students currently enrolled. Me and second, I'm Rochester. You're speaking to me in the lower grade. Yeah. Yes, 93. Thank you, Lisa. So NACOP, NACOP, Grandville, Fittsfield. That's total in Rochester. So what I was trying to figure out was how many kids that were in each town? In a time school. Yeah. Okay. So you mean excluding Grandville and Hancock in Rochester and the St. Louis? How many kids would be in Grandville? No. How many kids from Grandville go to the school? How many kids from Rochester and how many kids from Hancock? How many kids from Stockbridge? How many kids from Fittsfield or Fittsfield? Where else where they might be doing in from? I mean, this is, I mean, this is trying to indicate it was, you know, kids about tuitioning out. I mean, I have a question about the kid that's tuitioning out in the district. But actually, I mean, if a kid from Grandville is going to Rochester Elementary, there's a tuition coming into the district. Right, that's the revenue coming into the district. Yeah. Right. Well, I think we're gaining, right? So, I do not have any answers to that question. The kid that, the fifth grader that's going to Middlebury has been going there. You asked this question last year, and the body's answer, as I recall, was it's a special placement? Right. But if we're funding it, it's a special placement. We would fund it. I mean, this one is part of the importance. This one is part of the importance because it's indicating, well, this kid lives in Grandville, so this kid would like to go to Rochester Elementary rather than, you know, Brisbane. So that's an important, in terms of. Right, right. I don't think the kids can have it. And I can tell you that if we could, if we could divide, if I do with the two, I'm trying to remember what the bar tuition we charged was going to begin with, you know, the $511,500 of tuition that we brought in this last year represents, I think it's like 15 grand in change of the kid. So, I mean, the $511,000 divided by $15,000 would be a close number of how many kids we tuition in. Because that's our, so, I mean, our income from tuition in the current year, we projected $511,500, and we were sending out about twice that in terms of high school and middle school education. And that's often been a close relation we've had here, where our midfield kids have crossed the line. Easy for me. I want to see you do that. So, I mean, how's it going forward? I mean, I really appreciate it saying, yes, but that kind of graph, like tuition in, would be very good to see too. OK. Thank you. We can certainly put that together. No need. Sir. So, I have two questions, but who is there? Who's the principal author of the budget? Who does most of the heavy lifting? The SUs and the principal? It's the SU and the jobs you with the principals? So, this is why I, I will make myself vulnerable here to the president's saying, I had a really hard time making Ezra Tails out of this. And I, you know, and I had other people in my ancestors say, well, you know, you just have to trust the school board. So, when I was in business, we had to present a budget to a client in order to get their money. It had to be very clear to that client what we're spending their money on. And we had to prepare a narrative for every section of the budget to explain, this is what we're going to do with this, this is what we're going to, because otherwise we're going to give you the money. And so, we have seen a situation here with a lot of our cane terms and the organization of the budget is different from the spreadsheets I'm used to. So, I really have to say that they do in this process, whoever, I'm presuming there's probably state software or something that makes it look like this. But if you have people that are just kind of waving their hands to say, well, I don't quite pay attention to it, because then you're cutting the citizens off from the process, you're cutting them off from caring about the school, you're separating them. I would like to also encourage people to come to the free meetings that we've had before this that we went through the budget line by line and ask questions about what everything's for and question it in a backing house more. I understand and agree with what you're saying, but I would also like to encourage people to get involved a little earlier to really get good answers to what you're looking for. Yeah, that first part's noted. Okay, the other question is, do I understand we're paying the SU-8375 or something like that, 883,000, 790,000? Is that what we pay for SU service? Is that the total? No, there's a number of them. No, there's more, it's more than that? If you look on page 18, that's the central office budget. And then on page 23 is the triple E, the essential early education budget and the special education budget. So we're paying 252,251, 187, and then 239,290 in the essential office, all total, our central office assessment is around $395,000. So is there a legal reason why we can't treat the SU as a separate vendor, load on it separately? So because as I said, there's no bargaining, we have no bargaining. There is not, and as a matter of fact, we cannot. The way that the law works is very clear. We have to, and this is a problem, and you are not allowed to launch, I'm saying that SU budgets initially were set up and an SU is not a standalone unit that can have bank accounts or take loans or really function. It was really originally designed to be just kind of an over an educational umbrella that employees who pretend that would go around and interact with all the local boards of their individual schools and all the school decisions were made at the local level. That shifted into the state in Act 46 was actually one of the latest attempts to do that where they said the preferred structure for Act 46 is not what even what we do here. If the preferred structure is what happened in Randall, what happened in Woodstock, where Supervisory Union becomes a supervisory district. So there is one board that is both an SU board and a local board because it's a local board that you elect and it's a local budget you vote on. What has happened over the years is that more and more stuff has been given to the SU. Transportation has been moved to the SU level. All special education is all done at the SU level. Audit, we, the superintendent, all the local boards and the SU board act as the board of directors and the superintendent is the CEO. So for example, if we decided to board we hated Lindsey, we wanted her to fight. We could not, the most absurd example to make the point, but the point is we cannot, as a board, we cannot fire a principal. The one person that can fire a principal is a superintendent. The SU has accumulated a lot of power and the way that, but the budgeting situation of that is still the way it was when the SU was really like a superintendent and pickup trucker. The SU budget has to be paid and we, the taxpayers do not get to vote on it. The SU board members get to vote on it, but the individual taxpayers do not get to vote on that budget at all. And as a matter of fact, it has to be paid. So the first thing, so the SU has to be paid and sending tuition has to be paid. So when our families say we want our kids to go to Middlebury, we pay that. And they said we wanted to go to the TSA and they pay the state average because in Penn School we pay that. We try to make sure that we're checking residency and we're not paying for things we're not supposed to pay for, but we pay the costs we need to pay for our kids to go to other schools and that has to be paid before our local budget. So the money that we give to this local school is really the only dollars that we get to control and they're the other monies, the monies for the SU and the money for outside tuition, we just have to spend. Parents get to decide where their kids go, we don't get a choice on that and that's fine, that's the law. And a lot of people, that's why people like choice, they get to send their kids wherever they want. But we also have to pay whenever the SU decides we should pay. And if they don't like to what the SU has, what leverage do we not, or are you saying there isn't any? If the only leverage is that we as a combined board, we have three votes out of what's 16 that are there and that SU board does vote on this. Greg? I mean, it's just too simple a way to think about it. That's the SU assessment is here and let's keep the SU like a separate. Because I mean, it's just made it, there's been just a strategic plan we're calling for, you know, literacy by grade three and that's been just, I mean, it's been this substantial investment by the SU in literacy in terms of, but I mean, that money doesn't come from the SU, that money comes from this grant, that grant, this grant, federal money, state money. Sure, some of it comes from us, yeah. Some of it does come from us, it's in terms of the assessment. But I think you, I don't know, but I think you have to think about that assessment as enabling a multiply that the SU is allowing that for that money, you're getting access or grant applications or, it's just too simple a thing to ask you to do what's cut off and negotiate. It's just too simple a way to think about it. It's no more complicated. Kathy? I have a question on page 14. $30,000 and $90,000. What is that? Is that, is that a discount again? That's the kids, that's the kids with seven and 12 quaters. By Vermont LDA means Vermont local education authority. So what the new law has changed is they wanted, it used to be, we just said, here's the tuition we're paying out. So if you look at, and this is by the way, it is in that first block, that 1,100 block regular rate of instruction, she's talking about line 561 down there. If you look at our 19 budget, there's just one sum of 1,213,898. And then for this year coming forward, there's 971,315 going to the Vermont LEAs and then tuition of private sources before 708. The state has said that we want, they want us to split out of what we're sending to Vermont public schools, which are the Vermont LEAs, versus what we're sending to independent schools, accredited independent schools, which is the 294. What are we paying for? We're paying for the tuition of our seven and 12 quaters. That's where the cost of the vegan kids going to Woodstock, my kid going to Sharon Academy. That's in that line. I thought this was about tuition, but is it going to? Is that what it's supposed to be? That's, it's going to, yeah, but it's all summed up. So the pay, that graph on page 20, where, or is it 20? 10. 10 round words. All the kids are being shown. That total, that 1,251,200 dollars is not my end of the show on the budget. So this is all our, this is what all our high schools is. No worries. Yeah, I saw that Vermont LEA, I'm like, that's all for something. Yeah, that's basically it. We're taking that to school. Frank? I find it way into that, supervisor's new thing, but I don't know what a room is going to talk about. I don't know what a beddy was going to talk about. So I don't know how complicated that is. And the grants and I don't know. The only thing I'll say is that we've got more and more responsibility. Those things that come out of your budget, you go into the SUP and you pay for them, they don't pay for them back in that way. So, and every year we get more and more things that were supposed to be in charge of for the future, especially that food service that you ought to follow the state. But it appears to me that the book that we've got versus the page of the six pages, yes, that was an error. Yes, I was afraid to do it. Because it doesn't give us an opportunity to actually review this information certainly except for in the moment, just now. And the budget should be in order that you can hand the different print out and that should be all in order, as printed. I know we're very sorry that this happened. This is... Where are those? Oh, there's somebody here who wants to come in. You came in late. And if you wanted to talk about the pages, yep, how would you describe what to do for them? Okay, you see how there's numbers that... So they change one of the description that says it's 1,100, it says regular ed instruction as our main title at the very top of the first page that you have. So then you would, in this section you can actually refer to it as the 1,100 and then line 320, say. And so you'd go down to 320 and that's contracted for structural services. So I can see how it would be confusing for you to be here in the box. Yes, it would. And this is also going to change because the state is still arguing over a new chart. Are they finished with the chart? I understand. The chart is kind of finalized. No, no, no, cool. We are not adopting this year. I think that we shouldn't just be continuing to wait and hold it off because though they've made a decision as far as what we see mandated software program will be and what status done then at that point. Because we did this trend for the last year and it would not be feasible to do it again this year. Oh, by the way, I apologize, I'm remissed. Can you not go and stand up? This is our new business manager, Tara Weatherworth. Since we had this meeting last year, she's the third business manager in the role, but good things come and freeze or something. We're just glad that she's here. So, but yeah, if you had a question about the line, that's a good way to refer to it. Sir. So I'm afraid of sounding stupid here because I didn't go to the meeting so I'm... Page 19, lines like 580 Travel, 610 Supply, and there's a tremendous difference between numbers than the, this was your 20 budget proposed and the previous numbers, for instance, the Ackles in 2018 or I guess it's... If you're on page 19, or if you have your white grubellic SQ budget. In the middle of this page here. Yeah, so that's our SQ budget. So why is there a giant difference between that number of $24,000 one-line and 1,200 in the previous line? One-line and one-line and one-line and one-line and one-line. And they're one of you. It's hard to understand. I think left and right, it has a number. Yeah, look, for a number. 610 Supply is general... Right, there's a left one. I think I'll say 580. On page 19, let's just take one line. Just wait, the 610 Supply, so it's in the right column, it's 24,750, and in the 19 budget it's $1,200. So it's such a dramatic difference. There must be some reason for that. All right, so that's the SQ budget. So... Well, we're paying for that. Right, right, right. So I can't speak to what's in the SQ. What's in the supply line, I don't know. I can for Rochester. Does how many know? For who do we know? Ask. Which supply is it? All right. On page 2212, page 19. Page 19, the line is 610. Supply is general. So it's from 2212 to 610. You have to look at the heading. 2212, 2212 to 610. This is true of my argument here, but we can't find... Page 610, here is 610. But you said 2212 for a yield instruction, 610. 24,750, and that's in the year before 1200. So why is there such a huge difference? There's not a little difference, a massive difference. Why is that? But I would just to blow my own horn again. We have to struggle to try to come to this kind of a common understanding about one line and the item. It means it's a difficult document to deal with. Well, that page doesn't come from us. That's the entire SQ. Right, but it's still in the SQ. We understand. Wait a minute. And I'm not trying to, I'm just, I'm struggling with this. I'm not... Yeah, no, I'm... Then if you look at the line below at 640, that went from $400 to $28,000. Of course, that whole block in there would still go up. Under the new software program that we have been told to do, basically, from the state. A lot of these figures have been come together. Where as you would find zero in some accounts, they've been regrouped in other accounts and they don't compare very well with the one previous because of the change in software. And that's happened across the SQ all the time. We didn't take this software conversion. This is something that the SQ has had thrust on it to prove it, prove it, prove it. I didn't pick the software either. I'm just going to pay for it out of my tax. So if you can't tell me, and your business manager can't tell me what this figure is, where you say, then how are we supposed to operate as you're telling you to cover it? I don't want you to know. So you're saying to me now, I don't need an argument. Neither of you know what this is about. I started March 1st. I'm not... No, I'm explaining. I started March 1st and all of these budgets were done prior to the start. So I have not found lines by line under each one of these budgets to analyze what they are or what they're going to build. So I have to go back when someone asks a question like that. I then have to go back to the budget that was built and I have to find the detail that supports that number. I don't know it off the top of my head. But can we pause for a moment and see how silly this is? Hold it. Yeah, we have people coming in and waiting for a moment. Nobody has any idea. We have the note next to the subtotes that says that it reflects a strategic plan initiative for student achievement, cost to be offset by existing grant funds. Oh, okay. So I'm not sure what that means. My guy's saying it has something to do with the avenue of action. That's what I got to say. We're going to hire them. We're going to hire the literacy coach that will be working throughout the SU trying to work with teachers. And she's going to be mobile, basically, to work with them on direct instruction and try to make sure that everybody's doing it the same way. That's probably a part of this, but we've also got grant funds to be able to pay for some of this. Are we voting on this? I'm making this up. So we're not voting on this. Actually, this is like starting out with the missing. No, this is not voting on this. It's not voting on this. No, no, no. I'm talking about the information. The flow of information, what we're looking at. That's the video. I don't want to take it. No, you are very correct. It is very frustrating. The state changes the way that they want information presented and handled. It is a very obtuse process that gets, it seems like more and more confusing a year by year as they layer on something else. Just think about the conversation of Montpelier last month, where they wanted to talk about cleaning up Lake Champlain in the rivers. They thought, well, we'll take some money out of the Ed fund. Then we'll add in a new tax for cloud software to replenish the Ed fund. It's like, okay, maybe we'll just take the new tax and use that to clean up the water. But there's really a lot of, it seems like Robbie Peter to Pay Paul that goes on and gets baked into the way the information gets presented. And it does get really, really confusing. So I certainly, I'm going to reiterate, just for a minute, that we know we made it. We've been here till 10 o'clock at night. And so there's a lot that we tried to get done here. And during those meetings, that's when we went, as you said, line by line, item by item, the ability to make their presentation at that point. I just want to make sure that people know that we're here at your point. And I've heard it from several people that you deserve an organized budget that has narrative titles that tell you what this page is about. And that that's part of transparency and that's part of making a public document. And that this is, as our first, this is our first report. And as someone who did the cover at a meeting because we needed a cover right then, I understand we're hearing you and it will do better. There are things from the state, there are things from the Supervisor Union, but we hear you. We need to do better in our presentation because one of our big things when we got together originally was transparency and being able to be, that you could understand what we're talking about when we're talking about it. So, if we hear you, we really do. We'll be taking lots of notes on this to make this clearer and clearer process. And so, please keep asking every question you have because that's what tonight's about, is to make sure you're clear before you vote. To Tara's credit, Tara put in with a few months that she's been in here, a lot of work kind of fixing and trying to line up items that were different from last year and explaining it to us. So, it's not just something that we're going and flying towards, she's definitely put in a lot of work and the principal's working with her as well. But to that, you know, Jamie, I appreciate it. We can't always, not everyone here can make those mistakes. So, we rely on the situation of the House in our mail box. I have a full-time job, two-side gates, and other things that I have going on. So, I can't be here all the time when you have those meetings because I have other obligations. No, but this is the piece of the information that I count on when it shows up that I'm going to have that week to be able to look at and decipher and ask my questions. And I appreciate that and I do agree with Ethan. I don't want to be defensive about this. We want to be transparent. We want everyone to know, because we want your support. These are small schools. We need your support to keep them going. And you're right, that situation shouldn't be correct. Thank God. Well, you shouldn't necessarily always have to come back when you've been here for three meetings before because that's not fair. Right. You're right. Thank you. This is the single most important public document that we put out and we should be able to stand behind it and say this is the absolute best we could do. I'm sorry, I meant to be able to do that. Exactly, exactly. And you should be able to come in with a good understanding of this and we're hearing it. So, we didn't do a good job and we'll do better. But I do appreciate the fact that you guys do do this job because not only you. Man. Perhaps. Explain the supervisory piece of it on new grants that would support this type of expenditure which might clarify one reason. I mean, it might not be exact numbers, but specifically what kind of grants would support those numbers. There's many grants. One of them is just a energy. I'm sorry. Medicaid funds, we have just purchased about $450,000 of literacy money. None of this come out of your budget. It is money that has been kind of stockpiled from Medicaid funds, which we get a percentage of. And that money, part of the strategic plan was identifying a goal that wanted kids to be on grade level by the end of third grade. And we are moving on that. We hired a literacy coach that I just talked about before. So just because you see higher areas for like travel doesn't mean that there's not revenue and support coming from another place in order to be able to offset that. In the case of the literacy effort, all of the coaches pay and all of, except for a period of time that she's working directly with kids, she's gonna be working with teachers. All of that is offset by the other funds that we have identified coming out of Medicaid. There is also other grants and funds that we have to create a plan every year and then we get federal grants through the state to support these kind of numbers. So the whole SU has profited from the stockpiling of those funds and we are now spending that money to try to get the goal done about getting our kids on grade level. And that's just an example, I guess. I just wanted to say, if you look at page 18 at the bottom list, it's benefit, it's not an obvious place. But if you look where it says, there's the grid that shows whatever one is paying FY20 assessment and then below that it shows the total budget expenditures. You see how that grid totals to 1,206, $26.60. If you look, though, the budget expenditures that are listed in total are $1,645.50. And then we're lowering that amount. You see where it says Medicaid and federal title funds. The million and six expenditures that are shown in that SU budget that we were just looking at that had those jumps, you also see that there's revenues that are one-time grant revenues that are Medicaid that Bruce just mentioned, the Medicaid and title monies that are bringing that million six down to the million two, which is the amount that you're assessed. And yes, that's not easy to read and it took me staring at this five minutes and I didn't suppose to know this document to find that. So it certainly supports your point, it supports what he's saying, but I think you can see where you see some of those revenue jumps for the special project. Here's where you can see where they're offset and not coming out of your pocket. I'm sure that they're there and I'm certainly not accusing you guys. Oh no, no, no, I don't think you are. I'm just trying to show you that somewhere in there there's a bit of an answer and it's just, I think one of the other things that happens is that because we spend our time in all these meetings going through all of this, we end up sometimes assuming that you know more of, you have some of these same arcane knowledge media for that, we're sorry. Leslie? You know where I come from, I was at the last meeting and I made my voice very clear, I think. Can we, but it was the question that you hired and she knows the certified people. And I asked her this at the last meeting and I said that had to be, or I'm gonna get up here and tell everybody my story. Well, I don't know that she's not, I don't know that she is, so. She needs to know the certified people. Well, I'm the Specialized Director for the USU and we have Wilson certified, there's what the literacy initiative is starting with is a tier one instruction or the instruction that all kids will get in that specific program. That's not a special education. No, but the second level, the tier two with the intervention level, the kids might get a menu of many different programs which could include Wilson or some of the Wilson. Well, at least we've done well. They can't be incorporated with other methods. So that's the third tier is the Wilson program or the William Gillingham program, a very specific language based intensive program. So the tier two and the tier three could have, like tier two could have elements of Wilson and William Gillingham, excuse me, like the foundation program is a Wilson program that is more for all kids. And so some kids might get that tier two but for those kids that need it, we do, we have been working on getting some of Wilson and William Gillingham certified and all of our students, we get all of them. That's been going on since my son's first grade and they are now going to be sophomores and I have them repeat year. And that was when they told me they had some of the Wilson certified in the school. And it's still not, I mean six months on Wilson, they learned how to read and set. Where would they be right now if that had happened in third grade? I agree with them, I think there's a lot of people certified and then they go to shops other places. They don't need to make their job more, more appealing to them. Yeah. I agree, I still love to retain great teachers. This year we are in doing a collaboration with Woodstock. So we have middle and high school teachers getting certified in Wilson, just words. I think you can see you at the special education, the convention that they have read it. I was in favor of maintaining this. My family was there. Yeah. We got it in spoke to all the other schools that read it. And so here's what we've been training after this summer, we've been also seeing how those are small schools. So I think we're much more committed to the state. 44%, I don't know what the state average is. The SU average is probably, we're a little low here and this is one of the reasons why we face the coach here part of the time. I would say in the 60% kids being on grade level, about 60%, throughout the SU. And we're at 44. I just want to go back, I have numbers. It is eight, our students on page 10. 48 of them are Rochester residents, 35 are Stockbridge. That covers that chart on page 10. Okay. 48 and one? Yeah, 48 are Rochester residents and 35 are Stockbridge residents. These are two, this is the two which now, the numbers from here. Okay, can you see them? About 48 for Rochester and 35 for Stockbridge. There are 83, you were right. And then someone else asked the breakdown of other numbers. So in the building where other residents are coming from. In Rochester, there's 94 students, 20 are from Hancock, eight are from Granville and 66 are from Rochester and my Stockbridge sheet. In Stockbridge, there's 54 students, two are from Granville, five are from Pittsfield and 47 are from Stockbridge. You're welcome. Thank you. You're welcome. Make an X. Yeah. Do it on the plan next year for you guys. Thanks. Up to the school or the board to request funds from the Rochester Trust within the next year? Or no? Is that the December one? That's December beyond that, we did not realize that we had to attend the December one. We asked, I'm sorry, to talk into the February, for asking for appropriate funds. That would be funds from, would be monies from the funds and also monies from the monies the trustees have in Rochester, et cetera. Yep. Yep. We're completely either a calendar for the school board so we don't miss these major reviews because this is our first year and we're realizing that there's kind of a talentless thing, kind of school does things. So. Sound right. Yeah. I'd like to move on to the board, please. That's fine. First floor, Carol jumped in before the board. We never moved this question initially, that we should do it before you can discuss it. I want to correct that. Yeah. We'll just vote on accepting article number six with your board. Thank you. Seconded. To move the question, all members in front of the A.I. Okay, so article four, to hear and act upon the right reports of the school district directors and officers. We just did that. Yep. So now we're ready to vote. Seconded. We're ready to vote. Seconded. Seconded. Seconded. Seconded. Seconded. Seconded. Seconded. Seconded. Seconded. Seconded. Seconded. Seconded. Seconded. Seconded. Seconded. Second. So we need to vote now. I'm getting the words when you moved article four actually. You don't wanna move it. I just want to vote on it. Oh, I didn't, no. Thanks so much. Motion made seconded. We could start the front bolほど. Corrections to borrow money by the issuers of bonds or notes not in excess, of anticipated revenue for the fiscal year, 2019-2020, for 16 BSA 562, for instance, this is 9, and we need a motion. So a motion. Second. Second. Second. All right. Discounts. And I'll put it out. Move to close discussion. So I take a second. I can't, it shouldn't have been called a question. No, it called a question. Oh, fine. I didn't hear it up here. My hearing is not explicit. My wife will attest. In Particle 6, shall the voters of the school district approve the school board to expend $4 million, $480,000, $400,000, $400,000. We don't want to get into 10 to 2,000 too much. $480,000. $4,000,000. $480,560,000, which is the amount the school board has determined to be necessary for the ensuing fiscal year. And it's been said that this proposed budget will prove a result in education spending of $18,000, $420,000, $32,000 for equalized people. The most protected spending for equalized people is 6.84% higher than spending for the current year. So a motion. Second. Any discussion? I don't remember what it's funny. Keep having questions. Second watching. Second. Second with the particular ones. No. I'm going to go read article 6 again, not to interfere with the rule about whatever. I'll hold in favor of article 6. You all will signify the same, aye. Aye. I'll suppose. All right. And take long to spend $4 million. Article 7, do you like corrections? To the Rochester Starcraft Unified School District, it follows. You need one director for a three-year term for Rochester. I don't know who it is. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Wow. We're packed. We're packed, we're packed. Either point in the denominator. Do I Gunna moment? Does you want to make a Champions Feeste? I'm not an owner. But do you want to put on the same two words? But then is that for a three-year term? Yes. your turn. Which I just found out. So if I'm alone, just still sit here. You wanted yourself to be shorter? No. I just wanted an opportunity for a fair war. I think he understands that. He's signing up for three years. Any other nominations? Move to close nominations. Motion's made to second, we close nominations. All those famous in the White Mosaic, aye. Can I have two bottles, please? I'm sorry I missed you when you came to Stockbrook on your campaigning program. I nominate Jamie Fineburn. Oh, you find her, isn't it? Thanks, Jamie. Was there a second on that? I was having too much fun. No post office. No accidents at the post office. Who worked for me, it's not happening. The nomination is closed. Motion's made. Seconded. And second, we close nominations. All those famous in the White Mosaic, aye. Aye. All those, uh, would like to have somebody cast a ballot for a secure one? I don't even know who's the chore. Yeah, and second for her. I don't always say wiser. Well, we're going to stick with the chore. Just allow me to help you came and chore together. All right, come on. You get to square away with her. You for another three years. You realize it's been three years. I do. The Rochester to Stockbrook Unified District be moved to the first Tuesday of April for all subsequent years beginning with a meeting. Why is this? And if it's moved, will the numbers be moved? Move the question. Second. Discussion. This is why I'm moving it to April 1st. And if it were moved, will the numbers be there? So when we come to meet, we will have a week before. Good numbers, uh, by that first Tuesday, uh, in April date. Um, one of the things that we like about as a board, we liked about the idea of moving it, moving it forward is that, um, we, by law, we really need to have a budget done and approved by June 30th. If you do it in the beginning of April, if we get something that's contentious, if there's numbers that we're going in the wrong direction, we're heading down a long path and you guys tend to tell us when we do that. Um, it gives us a chance to, uh, to pull back and regroup. If, um, if a budget goes down, you have to rewarn it for another 30 days unless you table the meeting immediately with a date certain. So if we voted to, if we had voted the budget down, we could have immediately tabled the meeting and said we, we are tabling this meeting until we come back to you on, you know, uh, June 1st, which is more than, you know, less than the 30 days that you're required for a formal rewarn of a special meeting. Um, what we'd like to be able to do is if we have the meeting at the beginning of April and there's parts of the, the, the, uh, agenda or the, the morning that the townspeople disagree with or they want us to go back to drawing board for, it gives us the opportunity to not have to do a hurrying table and we can finish addressing the issues there, have a discussion, prepare, prepare whatever, uh, uh, items the voters told us to reconsider and then we can do that, you know, if, if, so if that happens in the beginning of April we can do that in the beginning to middle of May and then we still have time, if we still didn't get it right to have another meeting before, before June without having to get great. So it's basically, it's to give us cushion. The business office has said that they are pretty confident that, that they could have our numbers together and, and ready, uh, for us by then. Um, right, Tara? Yeah. So, so, uh, we think, we, we, we think it could be closer. We also had a lot of people that wanted to see it move to town meeting day. Yeah. We wanted to kind of get closer to that and see how our numbers were before we moved, we moved it all the way there. For a while, once doctors had it on town meeting day, we sometimes didn't have the clear reports back then. Um, for various selfish reasons. Um, I'm against this because I won't be able to vote on the school budget if we don't have it then. And I think that there are, I don't know how many people in town go south but a lot of us come back later on. And our schools need to go right next town meeting and I might be able to vote on schools like this. If, if you were going to move it, I think you should move it. I've always been, I, I always thought that town meeting would get more participation. You did that, but that, that clearly has not happened over the years. But now you're trying to go. Um, and, and, but, but, you got weather considerations that early earned you move it and you have, and you basically take out quite a few people that go south from being able to participate. And I'm one of them. So how do you vote how long? That's a very good point, Cheryl. Thank you. That is about what I'd like to, um, amend that article to the first truth in May. Um, you know, like Malaysia, I won't be very long is the fact that those of us that are a little sick of Vermont winters will not be back by the first truth of April. And we do love this process. Uh, and we would like to be involved in the first truth of April. Okay. As in November. Second. All right. This whole process. We can. We can. Yes, you can. Yes, you can. Yes, you can. The only thing that is, that is, is, uh, determined by law in the morning is the day of the meeting. However, so, so the feeding, the electric never gets to vote, whether it's a morning meeting or an evening meeting, the electric only gets to pick a day. Um, but I will say that like what we did have on town meeting boards at that time, just the stockage board, but the board's feeling was that so many people work in New Hampshire, this whole, you know, the way it used to be that you want shut down to have a town meeting day doesn't really happen for so many people, especially, you know, the parents of the school are often, the younger adults. And so it can be hard for them to get the time. So, I mean, philosophically, you know, while technically you can, I mean, I would find very hard for it to not be anything, uh, an inner. Right. So, Cheryl, they have been recording these. Can you get that through Facebook? Or is it, I don't know. I've been posting the Orca Media videos to the Rochester Resort for Unified District, um, meetings. So, you can get the meetings on the Facebook page and then come and vote. I don't understand. I mean, I can all, you can watch the school board meeting, but when is this, when is the vote going to be held? The amendment out of the letter is going to be the first Tuesday in May. Well, I like that better than you, after what was the case. So, do we need to go ahead and come begin? You might have, there was a member on before and then the second one we're discussing. Yeah. First Tuesday in May. Second Tuesday in May. Second Tuesday in May. First Tuesday in May. First Tuesday in May. Second Tuesday in May. First Tuesday in May. First Tuesday in May. Your amendment was First Tuesday in May, correct? Yes. That was the first Tuesday. So you call it a day. Right. Yeah. Yeah, the first Tuesday in May. Yeah. So, it's a call to vote to change that. Can I call to vote now? Well, if there's no more discussion. Yeah. Bill? Yes. I have attended a lot of these school meetings and it's a great thing because we talk about the most important thing as a community we do when that's education. And we're all results of most of us public education wherever we came from. You know, so it was a struggling. But nothing's more important. And in my recollections come to these meetings, we've never voted on a budget. But what we've done is we've heatedly debated various things. And one thing that frustrates when we heard it tonight and we spent most of our time talking about understanding the numbers. We also talked about some of the numbers weren't included. And that to me suggests that until we can get the process, the administrative, the budgeting process really stopped. Now, let's face it, this is directly the first time they've worked together in these two communities. So there's changes all over the place, including our budget director. So my suggestion is that we focus not on worrying about the budget being turned down. And it might be turned down because the numbers aren't there. The numbers are confusing. Or they're absent. I suggest that we give this the school director's time to come up with a coherent, transparent budget that that budget come together and is shared with us in a timely fashion, that we have time to have our public hearings. As Janie talked about, where we can go into the weeds about the line items. But that does not speak to me about moving the budget and the annual school meeting to April. I'm not even sure it speaks to the first Tuesday in May. What it speaks to that we're still on this journey to come up with coherent budget and program. We have not spent one, I don't know, maybe a minute talking about educational outcomes. We've talked about the inputs. Okay, we're talking about line items. What are the results of all those numbers? And that's one of the most difficult things we, as a school committee and a community, we figure out what are the outcomes of all this money that we're spending? And that's a challenge that every school committee has throughout the state and probably in the country. But short of that, I urge that we don't rush to move the calendar. We're now first Tuesday, second Tuesday, April, May. Why don't we delegate that back to the school directors and let them determine that. In the meantime, it's getting late. Let's, I suggest that we vote this article, this amendment down the article down and down a journey. I have a different strategy still, I agree with you. But I think we should vote for the amendment and then vote for the amendment. Don't just, don't vote the amendment down and then vote for the article. Go for the amendment. Point of order. Thanks, President. Will we're missing? Yes, go ahead. If the article is voted down, the date remains today. The fourth Tuesday? Fourth Tuesday. Thank you. I just want to make sure everyone understood that. If the article gets voted down, it's going to stay tonight. Thank you. I have to move the amendment first. I mean, I have to disagree that we haven't talked about outcomes here. To me, the discussions about funding have had to do with, I mean, we had an SEO assessment. That was numbers. But we have talked about outcomes as in, grade level proficiency and grade freeze. I disagree with that characterization. The numbers and the process. It seems to me we have talked about outcomes. It seemed to me Carl's kind of good deal of time talking about outcomes as well. I mean that specific outcome of grade level literacy and by the end of the day, that's the specific outcome. It seems to me we will be specific about educational stuff. Okay, so. Any more discussions? We'll do the discussion seats. Motion made in second? Second. Thank you. Motion made in second? Second. Thank you. Motion made in second? I can get ahead of myself sometimes. If any of you are the whole way back here. Motion made in second? I mean, we're not the only ones that went wrong. Want the article again? Yeah. They're gonna be stable. Well, I'm trying to get there. Here. Okay. Can you repeat what Mara think? I don't know what we're voting on. I can read it. Okay. The article will read if the amendment would read, shall the annual meeting of the Rochester Stockbridge Unified District be moved to the first Tuesday in May for all subsequent years beginning with the 2020 meeting. Okay. Well, if you vote yes, you vote yes. All new information and the consequence of a no vote would be one. It would go back to the original article, which is first Tuesday in April, which then we have to vote on. Sue, I mean, we have to vote on the amendment first. You have to vote on the amendment first. We want to keep it as it is. And depending on your outcome of the amendment, shall you go back to the original article? You accept the amendment? That's it. First Tuesday in May is what we're voting on right now. Yes or no? Yes. What was the point of order? My understanding would be, and they'd be wrong, but it's that the first thing you do is move to substitute for the original article. Right. Then there has to be another vote on what you've done. Correct. So my strategy as somebody that would like it to stay the way it is is going to be to vote for Mars amendment first and then vote the article down so it stays that way. If you vote down Mars amendment, it's better than the original article in my opinion. So I'm going to vote for it. And then when you ask us, now we have the article as amended. Are you going to vote for that? And I'm going to go, no. That's my strategy. So you can vote for the amendment. It doesn't work. Somebody's got it. Obviously it's motion. Right. Obviously. That is the way it works. Yes, but clarify if we vote for the amendment. Well, I never got a chance. I'm going to ask you to clarify that to make sure that when I vote, if I support the amendment and it gets adopted, there's going to be another vote, yes or no, whether enough to adopt the article. Is that correct? Yes. Let him do his job, please. Let the moderator control the meeting. Otherwise it's just, it's going to go on forever. Okay. Thank you. If I do have the floor, I'm going to interrupt it. If you vote yes, then you have voted to have your next school meeting on the 2nd of May. 2nd. 1st. 2nd. 2nd. 1st. 2nd. 1st. 2nd. 2nd. 3rd. Three. 3rd. Carrying some. I have this information in front of me, so I'm trying to trust memory and when you get to be 75, your memory doesn't all sort ofies. We'll do the best we can, if I get screwed up correctly. But then, the 2nd of 2nd mute excursion. understand. Will there be no second? With this amendment vote, then there is no more vote. Thank you. You answered my question. I disagree with the procedure that you're using, but I understand what's happening. So I vote to nothing. But true, you want the amendment, but you're voting to make. We vote on the amendment. We vote on the amended protocol. Yes, sir. I agree. That's what we want to do. If you vote for the amendment, you have accepted the day. No, no, just in order to change the question. Is there any reason why this should change tonight? The reason being that if for some reason the budget has trouble, we have enough time to do it again before we run out of time. Again, it's too late when budgets have to be used. Thank you. I just want to say, I remember three times, we just had a town meeting, we voted it down, we voted it down together later, and finally passed it and then sold it. Now, there's some reason for having a town meeting, they took it. I know that. Yeah, we did that in order to do it. So tonight we vote on the first Tuesday. First Tuesday of May. Yeah. I'm going to vote. I'm voting for the first Tuesday of May. For changing the wording of the article from first Tuesday in April to first Tuesday in April. Has anybody else changed the meeting yet? No, not my vote yet. If you are in favor of the first Tuesday of May for yes, no for no, yes or no. Okay, so we've amended the question. So now, yes. Now we're voting on the amended article. Who wish to vote no, raise your right. It's I's Kevin. Oh. So, first Tuesday in May in 2020. Consolidation process with education. We have increased transportation overall. I like to know what our vision is to get away from fossil fuels in that transportation process and have a plan. Has this been seriously taken up by our board? The board has beyond beyond discussing the equipment that our contractor, but the bus service has in terms of wanting to make sure that we when we had the conversation about renewing their contract last year, the closest thing we came to your point, Mason, is a week. We discussed that, you know, was both the right sizing our buses? Were they sending a big, you know, the full length 50 some 60 pass bus, you know, up to get five kids? And you know, are they giving us the best equipment for our for our load? So beyond beyond, like I said, making sure that we're right sizing the transportation. There was not a discussion of whether or not they're running hybrids or, you know, natural gas buses or electric or anything like that. No, I'm sure to come up as as a a there becomes more commercial school buses that have those options and be as they start, you know, they're required by contract to keep our fleet within a certain number of years and miles, just years and miles. So as that equipment comes up, I'm sure we're going to be encouraging them to do that. But it's not it's not a specification of contract. So with with two communities, we have a voice to speak of the urgency that we like to move forward with that. On a state level with contracts, it's a large buying group. We work this out with New Hampshire bus companies. I mean, the volume of buses is that correct, Bruce? It's a Vermont company. So we're we are contracting with them as a consumer body. We want to move forward away from fossil fuels. They will because they're in the business and making money. That's how this process works. But we have to speak up for the difference. We it's not us waiting in longer because for me, paying all this tax money, I want to create a future for the kids. And that means education needs to reflect reality now on the ground. So I think we need to speak up as a collective body of people saying, if you want our contract, you better get on it and give us a plan. Maybe this needs to come up at next year's meeting to present to us a process that we can move forward with that. Thank you. I think the board has understood what you're asking for. Anything else you need to be brought forward this time? Well, I'd like to move to a chair. You're my savior. Thank you. Pass. A round of applause for the mature woman who's giving up three years. And for the normal test here who's giving up three years.