 Hello, my name is Dr. Deborah Taylor and I'm the Superintendent of Washington Central Unified Union School District. I'm here today to share with you some information about our school budget that is proposed for voter approval on town meeting day March 3rd. Before we begin I wanted to let you know that we have had a wonderful first year as a merged school district. This is our first fully merged budget and we're very pleased with the outcome. I will speak with you a little bit about the background that led us to the proposed budget and then after the budget summary I'll be inviting members of our administrative team, principals from each school, to share some highlights about their programs. I'd first like to let you know that our board worked hard this year to set three goals which they have been utilizing to guide their governance work throughout the year. They include, first, broadening communication with the community, second, engaging in long-term planning and third, supporting improved educational and academic outcomes for all students in the district. Our school board members for this current year include Scott Thompson Chair, Flora Diaz-Smith Vice Chair, Jonas Eno Van Fleet-Clerk, Vera Frazier, George Gross, Lindy Johnson, Chris McVeigh, Dorothy Naylor, Gile Pulse Camp and Mary Lynn Stratchin. Each of these members represents one of our five communities. There are actually two members from each of the five communities in our district. Developing a budget in these times is very challenging. There are many competing pressures and we both include within and across each of our schools. First of all, we consider all of the required mandates. There are mandates required from the federal and state government and there are also concerns about facilities maintenance that have to be taken into effect. There are economic pressures that relate to our tax burden. There are costs for tuition students, but most importantly, we focus our budget on the lens of supporting outcomes for students. Educational quality is a very high priority. Our budgets are developed with input from a variety of individuals, including members of our community. But let's start back from the beginning. We have a team of individuals who develop budgets and we actually begin that work in the fall of the school year preceding March when the town votes on our budgets. First of all, our superintendent, myself and business administrator Laurie Beebeau and our principals receive input from our staff and determine what are the highest priorities in order for us to meet our educational goals and improve our student outcomes. We then develop our budget draft scenarios and we present those to our board finance committee and finally to our school board and community for review and comment. We've held two community budget forums and another is scheduled on February 19th at 5.30 p.m. at U32 and each of those budget forums are designed to provide us with information about how our to provide our taxpayers with information about how our budget is developed and also to seek their input very importantly about programs and future goals that they'd like to envision as included in the budget. Finally, our board approves the budget and this year it was completed on January 15th and as I mentioned previously voter approval is hoped for on March 3rd. One important question that people ask us as a district is what about our enrollment trends? First of all our student enrollment has been very steady as you can see since 2016 where we are nearly at the same level as we were at that time. The chart on the right is our equalized pupil chart which is really a weighted chart focusing on the individual students and based upon their age or grade level or special need a weighting is assigned. So while our numbers are approximately the same there has been a slight variation in our equalized pupils. Some important highlights about the district as a whole as you can see from our previous enrollment chart as of October we enrolled 1,574 students preschool through graduation age. We have a stable enrollment. We are pleased with our excellent administration faculty and staff. We have a dynamic student body, innovative educational opportunities and we've merged to a single district as I mentioned previously on July 1st of 2019. Now I'd like to present to you our proposed budget summary as approved by the school board on January 15th, 2020. First of all you will note that this slide provides you with a summary of three primary areas of expenditure. First the salary and benefits, next non-salary items and finally debt service and capital fund transfer. As you can see from the far right column our budget is anticipated to increase 4.65% or 35,430,502 dollars. However when you anticipate the revenues that we expect to be available for our district next year there will be an overall budget impact of 3.09% on our tax rates. This is another way to look at our budget. As you can see it's broken out into salaries and benefits which comprise 70% of the budget. Next the area of debt service are non-salary items, special education, tuition and contracted services costs, operations, plant and miscellaneous and transportation services. This is another way to look at that same set of information and here it is comparative to the prior year. You'll notice the percentages are an expression of the percent of budget change for that particular area, not an overall budget increase. Finally one of the changes this year as we move into a merged district is that we now have one single equalized tax rate which is comprised of all of our expenditures minus our revenues in terms of the and based upon the costs that are through the state formula. The tax rate for the total district is 1.7934 and the total common level of appraisal actually impacts the tax rate and those differ by town. On this chart you can see the variations in the tax rate from the initial equalized tax rate amount and also a comparative rating between this year and last year. We understand that this is a new system. We are no longer seeking voter approval individually by school or by the Union High School District so it's very important that we communicate the budget information to you thoroughly. First we have provided an annual report for the school district. Copies of this report are now available on the web and within a few days they will be available at our town offices and schools once the printing has been completed. We also are pleased to let you know that we'll be informing every registered voter via mail and of course our public television program today. And we're also cognizant of the fact that some of our voters may wish to peruse the budget in greater detail. So we will have copies available on the web and in our school and central offices of both our budget and our previous year audit. Hello my name is Aaron Boynton I'm the principal of Berlin Elementary School. This is my second year at Berlin Elementary School and I want to thank everybody for the opportunity for being here today to talk a little bit about Berlin Elementary School as we present our budget. I've been at Berlin Elementary School for two years and the Berlin Elementary School and community is a fantastic community. I've been very lucky to be working at Berlin. The community and the parents and the faculty and staff and the students are all all fantastic. I had made a comment last year to the community regarding the level of of respect that I see throughout the community amongst parents and staff and students and it's just a fantastic place to be working and I'm very honored to be part of the Berlin School and part of the Berlin community. I've been in education for for 20 years and I have seen many changes to the education system and we face a number of challenges as as schools do at this time and Berlin has been working very hard to to meet the needs of all students in this in this age and today I wanted to talk a little bit about some of the highlights of Berlin Elementary School and on the slide here you'll see a couple of things that are important to us and some things that we've been working on over the years. At first you'll see that that we have worked very hard over the years to ensure that we are preparing students for the the 21st century workforce and over the years we have worked hard to incorporate a number of technology tools into the classroom and into student learning. I would say that over my over my 20 years in education we've seen a lot of things come and go around technology and I think we're really settled into some some some solid teaching practices with with technology. We use Chromebooks which is a tool that is Google-based and that offers many opportunities for students not only in the classroom but to be able to access their work at home as well. So we're fortunate at Berlin Elementary School that all students all students have access to to laptops through through Chromebooks. They use those Chromebooks throughout the day when needed for anything from doing research to working collaboratively on on projects even practice their typing with with Chromebooks as well. This is just named just to name a few things. You have very robust Wi-Fi infrastructure. We do have smart boards in every classroom and that's a project that took a couple of years to implement. Smart boards are tech tools that allow students to be interactive with the boards but also allows teachers to be able to project a student work and anything that they might be doing that students are able to interact with and see. Teachers do balance the use of technology integration into learning. It is not just all using technology throughout the day of course. We use it properly and when needed. The rest of our learning at Berlin Elementary School provides a wide variety of experience for experiences for students. One of our values is to ensure that we are fostering well-rounded individuals and that we are meeting all of their learning needs through many different methods of instruction. Another area that we are focusing very heavily on is trauma informed practices. This is something that our whole district has been working on over the last number of years and at Berlin Elementary School we recognize the challenges that students face and families and we work to understand that all students need something a little bit different from time to time. So we work to provide a supporting environment and many of our approaches and practices work to understand each individual child. We do use a approach called PBIS, Positive Behavior Intervention and Supports and that allows us to positively reinforce good student behavior. We focus on being safe respectful and ready at Berlin Elementary School and we celebrate very often the positive behavior that students show along with many school-wide celebrations and traditions that really bring us together as a caring, safe and respectful community. Our greater community at Berlin Elementary School is very supportive. We have a very active parent group, PTNA, Parent Teacher Neighbor Association and a number of dedicated volunteers. I'm very proud to be working in a school that has such a positive support network throughout the community. We have many businesses and opportunities around the school that always offer their support to the school and support kids. We have many volunteers through not only PTNA but other organizations that are present in the school and allow us to expand our opportunities for students at school. So overall, again, I'm very happy to be at Berlin Elementary School. I do appreciate all of the support that I have seen over the years in education and most recently at Berlin Elementary School. So thank you so much and have a great rest of the day. Hi, I'm Kat Fair. I'm the principal at Calis Elementary. I'm here today because I wanted to take a few minutes to reflect on some of the elements that I think are real highlights at Calis Elementary. The first thing I wanted to note was the real sense of leadership and responsibility that some of our students engage in at Calis. We've had in the last year some students who have really focused on global awareness and climate and have really engaged in some advocacy. We have a number of older students who have started to reach out and do some training around restorative practice. We also have some students that are in our upper classrooms that have focused on a student leadership team, and they're still in the place of kind of exploring what that looks like. Another highlight for Calis is our strong drama and sports program. In the last year, we made a shift in Washington Central where we took in a new director of elementary athletics and enrichment programs, and he's now trying to align our practices. His name is Chris Cataret all across Washington Central Elementary schools, and it's creating really richer opportunities for students. Another thing that I feel like is really important for us to highlight at Calis is the partnerships that we engage in with our community, and we do that in a variety of ways. Our PTNL, our parent, teacher, neighbor organization, is incredibly strong. Each year, they provide us with opportunities to create community building events that bring in folks from all of our community in Calis. They reach out to other communities as well. We see that parents and community members come in and coach. They take time to really support our community. I know our local fire department does that in the holiday season, and we travel out and make connections between our students and some of our local nursing homes, so it's giving us a sense of really creating closer relationships with our broader community, something that I'm really proud of. Another, I think, really important thing to highlight at Calis is the focus in our work in the last few years around, for both students and staff, around health and wellness and social-emotional learning and really a deeper dive into trauma-informed approaches. I'm so impressed at the hard work that we've begun to do at Calis and across all of Washington Central, and I hope to see that continue. I don't want to end this without taking the time to say what a pleasure it is for me to serve the community in both Calis and Washington Central. I feel very fortunate to be in this position. Thank you. Good morning. My name is Gillian Fuqua. I'm the principal at Doty Memorial School in Worcester, Vermont. This is my first year here at Doty, and it has been super exciting with several improvements happening around the building. This year we've applied for and received a Department of Public Safety grant so that we can have an all-school PA system to alert students in the event of an emergency or just to give them helpful information about indoor or outdoor recess, which is a very hot topic here. The other thing is this summer, if you drive by, you'll notice that we are getting new windows and siding in an effort to be more energy-efficient. We're going to be increasing our insulation as well as having double-pane, more efficient windows. I think the most exciting project that we're working on at Doty is the new playground. This is going to be a long process working with the Worcester community so that we can develop a playground and an area that meets the needs of our students and of our community members. Doty is the smallest school in the U32 district, having this year a census of 73 students, and so we really use our size to sort of leverage really individualized learning opportunities for our students. We really work to have a blended approach to instruction so that we can meet the needs of individual learners, and we're also working to encourage students to pursue their interests while they're learning, because what we know about learning is that when you are learning about something that is interesting to you, you're more motivated to learn about it, and then the learning sticks. We're also able to have many opportunities for students to have hands-on collaborative learning, where they're working not just with classmates, but also our fifth and sixth grade are engaged in several exciting projects with members of the Worcester community, looking at what sorts of projects that they can they do to help serve the Worcester community. At Doty we work to support all learners understanding that everybody comes from a different place, so our philosophy is that we don't really care where our students start the year, but our primary goal as instructors, as teachers, is to make sure that wherever a student starts and a learner starts that they're making progress in a way that makes sense for them and best meets their needs. We've also been doing some very interesting work with the Tarrant Institute and the Institute for Sustainable Communities. This work is primarily happening with the fifth and sixth grades at this time, where they are looking at the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, and they're looking at how can they apply those goals and issues to their own community of Worcester. So our students are currently engaged in projects like trying to start up a play group, working to put some benches around town so that when people go for walks they're able to stop and rest. We're looking at they're working at trying to figure out how can they put in a recreational trail. And the whole idea is that with such a small school we recognize that the school is really an integral part of the community. So what we're looking for is to try to figure out how we can have the walls be as porous as possible so that Doty School doesn't just serve the students of Worcester but serves the Worcester community as a whole. Thank you. Hi, I'm Alicia Leifert, the principal Eastmont Player Elementary School in Eastmont Player, Vermont. This is my tenth year serving as principal or assistant principal before principal at Eastmont Player School. And there's so much to celebrate about Eastmont Player School and highlight. I think some of the things I want to highlight this morning are really the work that our teachers do to put into learning outside and beyond the classroom. We have ten wonderful classroom teachers and many other support teachers as well in our building who provide opportunities to students inside the classroom each and every day. And in addition to that, we offer our students opportunities outside of the classroom as well. Some of those examples in our pre-K through sixth school are educating children outdoors. Our kindergarteners through second graders participate in eco. Each week we collaborate with the North Branch Nature Center. Our teachers have been trained from instructors at the North Branch Nature Center to provide a standard space nature immersion program to our youngest students. And what what the students do is they spend a good portion of their day once a week outside in the woods. And beyond we have some wonderful fields and streams and wetlands behind the school that students go and learn and participate in in really hands-on science. Some other opportunities for students as they go throughout their years in school are we have first students in grades four through six book club that they can participate in students read together or on their own Dorothy Canfield Fisher books and come together once a month in the library with three of our teachers to celebrate together. Sometimes we have the author of the book come and spend time with students and talk about the book. They do arts and crafts and activities that go along with the book and just have rich meaningful conversations about the books that they're reading. We also have tech club for students in the upper grades where they can participate in high and low tech learning opportunities. They these students support our younger students. They support our teachers sometimes in in the use of technology around the school. And at the end of the year these students are able to really celebrate all the learning and run our tech night which all students K through six participate in and parents come back in the evening and and celebrate all the learning that's happened around technology and robotics learning throughout the school year. We also have an incredibly vibrant student leadership team where our sixth graders are trained and become student leaders. It's it's quite an honor in the building and they participate in lots of different activities. They lead our recycling and composting efforts in the school each week. They provide our morning announcements each morning. They help serve in some of our all school meals like our I love East Montpellier meal and our harvest feast our harvest luncheon our holiday feast. They really learn how to be servant leaders and do an amazing job with this. They also come up with a number of ideas on their own. They run a school store each week on Fridays and they help create bond with the community. None of this work could happen without the incredible staff that we have at East Montpellier. We have professional development each week that's both embedded throughout the school day and also in the afternoons on Wednesdays. Our staff participate in about three hours of professional development with each other each week. And in that they plan for all of these activities that I just shared with you. They also participate in group book studies. They review and analyze student data. They create curriculum and calibrate scoring. And it's just a wonderful time for our teachers to be able to spend with each other in small teams working together collaboratively to serve the needs of our students. And I think finally the last thing I want to highlight Jillian's Eilinga was recently honored with the National Life Changer Award through National Life. And Jillian is our second teacher. Beth Parker last year was also nominated for this honor. And really it's given to teachers who go above and beyond and change the lives of students. And honestly if we could give a Life Changer Award for every teacher in our building they all deserve one because they work so incredibly hard to serve the needs of all of our children and to really provide such rich learning opportunities for them. So in closing I'm just incredibly honored and proud of the work that we do at East Mount Piliar and it couldn't be done without these amazing educators and the support from our families and community members. Hello my name is Casey Provost and I'm the principal of Remney Memorial School in Middlesex. This is my first year at Remney and I've been very excited to be part of the learning community there. We have a lot that's happened this year and we have a lot more to go so far in the second half of the year and we're looking forward to the support that we've gained from our families and from our community members and all that we have to offer. Some recent additions that we've had this year include our playground. So in the preschool area of our playground we've seen some renovations. We've made an accessible path that's been resurfaced with crushed stone. We have some new equipment on our playground that our preschool students have really enjoyed and we have a tractor that enables our facility staff to support being able to get up to the pathway and to make sure that all of our students can access and all other conditions as we see. Responsive classroom is a component of all of our schools in the district and this looks this takes place every morning in classrooms with daily morning meeting where teachers create positive welcoming environments for students and setting the tone for the day for learning outcomes and how we treat each other as part of a community. Responsive classroom also stretches to the school-wide level. So each month we meet as an entire school community. Every classroom has an opportunity to lead the school-wide meeting. We focus on our values as a school and students have an opportunity to share about their learning as well. Community-wide and community-building are elements that we focus on every single day. In the summer we began with a welcome back ice cream social where we welcomed all of our students, our families and community members as a way right before school started to get to know each other and to look forward to what was to come. Early in the fall we also had our first school-wide adventure and that was an opportunity where all of our students in kindergarten through grade six had a time to go to Hubbard Park here in Montpelier and we had mixed grade groupings so that students could get to know each other and we could have some opportunities for mentorship and leadership and learning from others. In grades three and four we do focus on some history in middle sex. We also had a school-wide food drive this year and our students were really proud about the amount of food that they had food and dry goods that they were able to bring to our community. Right now we're in the middle of our winter wellness program. We have a four-week offering where students in kindergarten through grade six go out to the community. Some stay at our school in Remney and others do go out into the community and have opportunities to learn new skills, to practice different adventures and to gain their confidence over the course of four weeks and in a couple in the next month or so we'll be looking forward to the sugaring program. We have a lot of great things that do happen at our school. We're really proud of the students that we have and the commitment that we have from our families. I know that our students are really proud of all that they're doing. We have great mentoring that happens between kindergarten and fifth grade buddies. We have six graders who are working on passion projects for them, ways to support our school and our community at large and we're really proud of the community support that we have. We have a growing and positive and strong parent group that we're really proud of. It wouldn't be possible without the support of our families and our community so we're really thankful and we're looking forward to the second half of the school year. Hi I'm Stephen Dellinger Paid. I'm the principal at U32 and I've been there for six years now and I'd like to highlight a few things that we've done in the past year or two and things that are going on at the school that are going really well. So the first thing I'd like to point out is that we have a really strong flexible pathways program for learning and for that we really appreciate all the community support to do our community-based learning, our pilot program, our branching out. We also have things like early college and dual enrollment that our kids are able to take part in courses at our local universities and community colleges and in addition to that we have a lot of independent learning opportunities that are in school through some of those programs like pilot and through individual teachers and we also have a lot of students who are able to take online courses through things like VTVLC. We really want to stress that the community support for U32 is really second to none. The work-based learning opportunities that come from our community members are one of the things that we really are excited about. Our kids are in internships or they're able to be with mentors. There are all kinds of opportunities that our community members have afforded our kids over the last years and that really translates well into all of those community members being at the school as well. So we see our school events well attended so our sporting events, our arts bash and the open houses, we also end our year with a big mentor appreciation that brings together a lot of people throughout the community who have done a lot of things for our kids from sign language to teaching Korean language to showing them the latest in farming. And so we really appreciate those mentors and the work that they've done. And then the last piece of community support that we really want to thank the community for is how much they support our budgets because it helps us provide such wonderful co-curricular and academic programs that we think at U32 or second to none. So we really appreciate the community support for those budgets. And then the big thing that I would like to stress that's been going on at U32 that may not always be seen, but sometimes it is because it's in the newspapers or on TV is that we have really had a lot of student voice and student activism that has increased over the last couple of years. And so you can see the list of clubs and organizations and that's just a small part of it. And really just pointing out that like our green team has done a lot of work with climate change and even getting our cafeteria to go plastic free. So we have no disposable items in our cafeteria right now. We only use reusable plates and silverware. And that was a big push for our green team. And then you look at some of the other groups like our BLAM group who has really been working to reduce the isolation that some of our students feel at the school and then new this year is our youth and adults transforming schools together. And that team is really looking at how can we survey our student body and our teachers and find out the issues that they want to address and to get stronger at in our school. And then I would really point out that we've got a lot of student organized events that are happening these days. So last year was our resurgence of our diversity day that was planned and run by students. And so it was a full day of looking at different cultures and how they impact us here in Vermont. And then finally the student groups that you see listed above some of them organized climate marches we had a gun control rally a second amendment support walkout and so we've had various different student organized events and what we're really excited about is that our students are are starting to to look at what is their place in our local and global communities and how can they make a difference as global citizens. And so where you can see a lot of that information is the school newspaper. And so we're going to put a big plug in for for that. The Chronicle has a lot of articles about what's going on at the school and what students are doing, who's new as teachers. And so I really want to point you to that to learn a lot more about what's happening at U32. And that's done from the student perspective. And so we really are excited about what's going on and we really appreciate the opportunity to share some of the great things we're doing at U32. I hope you enjoyed hearing some of the exciting activities and learning opportunities that are occurring throughout Washington Central from our principles today. We are very, very proud of the work that we do. And we're so appreciative of the support of our community and the hard work of our school staff. A reminder, the voting day this year is on March 3rd for all of the articles in the school district budget. In addition, you may vote early. Vermont permits people to vote in advance of Election Day. Next, I'd like to just briefly share a copy of our ballot for the school district. This year as a newly merged district, all of our elections for officers and board member candidates are going to be voted on by all community members across all five towns. This page shows you the individuals who are running for election. In addition, there are some open seats. There's always a right and option for anyone who may be interested in pursuing that. In additionally, the board will be required to appoint board members following the election in March if we do not fill all the seats that are presently open. The second side of our ballot focuses on the compensation for board members and other officers in the district, as well as the approval for our budget, which is noted here, and the institution of a couple of funds, one to permit the board to utilize prior year surplus for operation of the school, and another to permit the board to institute a capital fund for all of the districts across the unified union school district. Within this ballot is also a request for the voters permission to authorize the board of school directors to borrow money in advance of tax receipts. This is something sometimes known as tax anticipation notes, and it's commonly done in age school as we await tax resources to be made available to us. In summary, I'd like to thank you all once again for your time and attention. If you have any questions, I encourage you to call the central office for the school district or go online and view information about our school budget or contact any of our principals if you wish to have more information about our school programs and or our school budget. Thank you very, very much. Have a good day.